On 09/15/2010 10:21 AM, J.A. Terranson wrote:
On Wed, 15 Sep 2010, Marsh Ray wrote:
On 09/15/2010 01:37 AM, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Clearly, your hearing is impaired. Anonymous travel is becoming nigh
impossible within the United States.
If I have a current plate on my car, a driver's license in my pocket, and
money for gas I can drive just about anywhere I want.
This is a long way from "travelling where and how I please". Air travel
has only recently required ID (I flew well into the 1990's without any ID
whatsoever, provided my tickets were purchased beforehand), and bus/rail
lines have only required ID since the 9/11 false flag incident.
Hmm, well, OK. I certainly didn't fly much back then.
As for
walking down the street, and doing nothing else, if for *any* reason you
should get stopped (maybe you vaguely resemble someone on the run, or
worse, you don't look like the rest of the neighborhood [black in white
suburb]), and you don't have ID, you *will* be spending some time (from
hours to days) with the local PD. The implicit assertion that ID isn't
required on a 24x7 basis is simply untrue.
Communities have always had laws about "vagrancy", and you're right, how
they're enforced varies wildly based on the circumstances and local
discretion. We could have endless discussion about the extent to which
that is unfair. Let's not, I've heard it all before.
Every few years I might get pulled over for a burned out bulb or
forgetting to renew my tag, but no one expects an ID otherwise. Hotels
and airplanes have always required ID for obvious reasons.
Oh? What "obvious reason" would that be? Because we all know how well a
terrorist is likely to use his or her *own* ID, right?
Hotels are entrusting their property to the guest and need to confirm
who's liable. And yes, there have been actual instances of people not
being on the plane which was brought down by their baggage.
I haven't noticed that much outward, objective change in the past few decades,
except that the police and highway patrol (especially in rural areas) are
likely to be better trained and more consistent.
Then you have your head in the sand pretty deep.
Or in the computer, more likely.
Seriously though, I actually have less paperwork for the car than I did
20 years ago. I moved from a state which required an annual vehicle
emissions inspection to one that does not, so now I don't need that
particular sticker.
As for the police training, it's just my impression. Try asking the
proverbial guy who doesn't "look like the rest of the neighborhood"
whether he'd rather be pulled over by a rural cop today or in 1975.
That said, there's been a huge increase in the number of fixed cameras
watching the roads.
They watch a lot more than just roads now. And while they are supposedly
just for traffic control [read: congestion] purposes, they are routinely
used for law enforcement purposes as well.
It's likely that many traffic cameras are reading and recording license
plates. In my town, the patrol cars have cameras pointing every
direction which recognize stolen (and recently expired :-) license
plates. There are enough fixed traffic cameras around town that they
never really need to chase anyone with lights and sirens like they used
to.
And yet, the chases continue. Wonder that, huh?
Not in my neighborhood. There are many PDs that have a "no chase" policy.
To what extent this data is recorded, retained, and centralized I don't know.
It's probably a fair guess that more data is collected than can be efficiently
searched,
Not so likely. Modern facial recognition systems are fast coming online.
I think those things are still an open question. Even if they had a low
1% false positive rate, it doesn't seem that that the resulting data
would be manageable.
yet few entities can bring themselves to throw it away either.
Eventually, it revenue-hungry states and municipalities could try to monetize
it by selling it to private entities such as insurers, marketers, and credit
bureaus.
"Eventually"? It's been in place since the cameras went up, at least in
Missouri (and this isn't exactly a progressive leaning State).
I'm near there, too. Do you have a link for that?
Genuine concerns over "identity theft" have cut down on some of the
enthusiasm for the sale of government records in recent years.
Cite?
I'd read about earlier plans, and at least one plan that was cancelled
years ago. But I doubt I could find a definitive source for my
impression. Probably I just stopped reading the news!
The public debate about this data collection isn't really happening for a
couple of reasons I can think of. First, the early groups who began objecting
to the odd camera here and there tended to discredit themselves by mixing it
in with a general paranoia of the federal government and international
organizations.
The implication being that these people needed tin foil hats. Yet, all
they were concerned of has come to pass...
Some, but not all of it. FEMA has not turned the Amtrack stations into
concentration camps, for example.
Also it's usually not acknowledged who's receiving the surveillance
feed, much less what their data retention, information sharing, and
privacy practices are.
So the tin foil'ers were right, eh?
Yes, in this case.
So the ID requirements on my car and in my pocket have not changed one bit.
You clearly aren't listening, even to yourself.
That's likely.
However, the contents of my wallet and car's glove compartment is an
objective fact.
As for the back-end infosystems, I suspect no one really knows or has a
plan.
I used the term "Oracleization" in the general database sense: it is
irrelevent which back end is in use where: the problem is the back end
existing at all.
It's definitely an issue.
Forget about accessing any federal building (for any reason
whatsoever) anonymously - or even with legitimate identity that has no
State certified picture to accompany you.
It wouldn't surprise me.
*Why* wouldn't it surprise you? Do you honestly think the ID requirement
(a) makes the building any safer, (b) has any legitimate purpose
whatsoever, (c) that the people working for the federal government should
receive better security at work than the rest of us?
Any sufficiently non-small organization will have at least a
receptionist, a sign-in sheet, vistor badges, and an employee escort. If
the building also happens to be a a courthouse, you can expect at least
gramps with a .38.
But some context that people from other countries may not have when they read
a statement like that is many or most Americans will go their entire lives
without ever actually entering a US federal building.
bullshit. Until recent changes in the "have business" requirements went
into place, it was very common for people to (anonymously) flood the local
federal building every year, in search of tax forms.
I always got my tax forms from the local library or post office. Never
saw any human DoS like that, except at the post office that stayed open
until midnight on the filing deadline.
Seriously, the biggest direct interaction a typical citizen under age 65
has with the federal government is filing a yearly tax form. Over 65 you
probably receive a monthly check. Oh, we also had to mail in a form this
year for the census which is every 10 years.
This has nothing to do with the central argument. Why the straws?
You originally stated "Anonymous travel is becoming nigh impossible
within the United States" and I replied with an observation that the
literal ID requirements have scarcely changed. (As well as an assorted
bunch of subjective impressions). My belief is that it's best to have a
good definition of whatever problem you're trying to solve.
It's easy to look at the policies of the federal government (or the news
from Washington DC) and get an inaccurate picture about daily life in
the US. Much like impressions formed based on television or a single
visit to Las Vegas.
Apologies everyone, this started out seeming to relate to crypto,
authentication, or data security but is way off topic now.
Perhaps this would be a good time for someone to raise an interesting
hard crypto question?
- Marsh
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