I remember a time when government eavesdropping was a bad thing.
Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations, according to documents obtained by a news outlet.
The systems are being installed in San Francisco, Baltimore, and other cities with funding from the Department of Homeland Security in some cases, according to the Daily, which obtained copies of contracts, procurement requests, specs and other documents.
Of course, that was “a time” when the President was Republican.
If this creeping surveillance apparatus doesn’t stop soon, next thing you know we will wake up to the installation of listening devices in Goldman Sach’s boardroom.
Cheap electronics + paranoid corrupt government + indoctrinated pacified population = BIG BROTHER
I bet the people who were saying that the US will become a fully surveilled police state under post-0/11 politics don’t look like tinfoil hat conspiracy nuts now do they?
Pretty soon it’ll be like East Germany where every 5th person was a government snitch…
FORWARD to state serfdom and slavery…MARCH!!
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
I’m not going to make a 1984 reference, I’m not going to make a 1984 reference, I’m not going to make a 1984 reference, I’m not goin…
BIG BROTHER IS LISTENING TO YOU!
Damnit!
Who knew that wearing a niquab would become good idea (not to mention you then become a “protected minority”).
Richard Nixon was right,he was’nt a crook.He was’nt a democrat and he was’nt black.He was just ahead of his time.I will bet that the dems have bugged the GOP headquarters every year since Nixon.The dems learned well from the Soviets.
This kind of thing has little to do with whether the president is a Rep. or Dem. It’s just what governments do – if we let them. Wake up, people. The biggest threat to your well-being is government.
Did you know that the title 1984 was originaly 1948.
As I’ve said before the biggest terorist org in Canada is the gov of Canada.
Mic’s everywhere. LAS’s wet dream!!!Just need to add a camera for him/her/it.
Scratch a leftist … find a totalitarian.
Long discussion about this over at Zerohedge.
Most cogent comment was: “A bus is a public place. What should your expectation of privacy be in a public place? Zero.” Which, much as I dislike to admit it, seems to be true.
However, someone else quickly made the point that Islamic terror cells are not well known for having their monthly meetings on a bus. It seems far more likely that these mikes will pick up comments from Joe Sixpack such as “what an (expletive) that (politician/public official) is”. And what exactly will the recording of those comments be used for? Nothing good, I suspect.
Hoodies, vandalism and taxes will of course,….. anyone,…. anyone?
KevinB – that was my first thought too. Like cctv in Britain, covering public places. Big Brother is when you are overtly watched and told what to do/how to do it while you’re in your own home.
I’m sure the primary, if not only reason these bus services want them is because they think it will help deal with complaints about and abuse of/attacks on their drivers. I’m equally sure that other authorities will misappropriate and abuse the data gathered and that private miscreants will find ways to hack into the systems for no good.
That is inevitable for government eavesdropping. Eavesdropping on government would be a good thing.
Hypothetically speaking, say in a not too distant future, we see the rise of a local majority of folks outside of the cultural iron curtain of the institutional left unhappy with the direction of the nation. The folks involved want to take the entire US Constitution and rather than continue to use it as toilet paper, form a separate nation stretching from the Gulf Coast through the heartland (Red States)including Alberta and Saskatchewan if they were willing, in order to pick up Alaska with a neatly divided continent. The Left and East Coasts could happily morph into something resembling Pakistan and Bangladesh leaving a free and prosperous energy, agricultural, and mineral giant in the middle.
Hypothetically speaking, the folks involved would have a very difficult time communicating, building support, conducting meetings etc. The state is now so incredibly pervasive, I wonder if it is even possible?
1984 was a warning, not a how-to manual!
No bus riders on this blog? I’ll let you in on it, at least from Calgary.
Buses already have security cameras.
Nobody talks on the bus. Most are plugged into a phone, ipod, etc.
Puddin n pie – Same thing here in Vancouver!
Keep voting Left but take your airhorns on the bus.
It’s alright when THEY do it.
In 1982, one of my uncles went to visit relatives in Russia. When they wanted to discuss things, they would turn the radio on, or motion to go outside. The families had to preregister each home that was to be on the visiting list and the Soviet utility people had come to make sure the electrical system was working properly and had bugged the house. My uncle could only visit those homes that were preregistered.
Is this where we are going? No doubt it is for the good of the “people”.
A bus may be a “public place” but that doesn’t mean the government should be able to snoop around all “public places” at will.
What are the authorities really looking for? (1) People plotting terrorist attacks; (2) People saying “BUCK OFAMA” with a couple of letters switched.
Ironically, when I clicked the link, an ad came up for a previous article that read, “FTC Probing Children’s Mobile Apps for Privacy Breaches”.
Right. The partisan rhetoric is all smoke & mirrors.
Check out this famous clause of the Magna Carta — it’s being shredded in the most ecumenical fashion possible.
// 39) No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. //
The major changes are mainly a function of technical advances, with lags for adoption — Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama … the signatures change but the surveillance state rolls on. Of course the OUT party is critical, but the dance continues as the partners change.
There’s even a theory —
// The National Surveillance State responds to the particlular needs of warfare, foreign policy, and domestic law enforcement [the mechanism being] “partisan entrenchment” //
Similarly with weapons — the unmanned spy planes of the late Vietnam war have become the drone weapons of TWAT. The space shuttle is now becoming the eye in space, with weaponization the next advance.
Ken, the Soviets were a bunch of incompetent drunks. These days the FBI can track your movements with your cell phone, they can turn it on and have audio and video coverage from it, and they can turn on any other phone in the area and get audio/video from that. Going outside doesn’t help.
That’s not a tinfoil hat fantasy, that’s a known capability that they’ve already used, which has been revealed and discussed in court.
We also have whistleblower confirmation that the NSA archives -all- emails that pass through the US fiber backbones, and they have done so for many years. Pretty much every email you ever sent in your life is sitting in a hard drive someplace at the NSA. It would not amaze me to hear that they archive every web page and blog post as well. I think we may be sure that every comment n -this- blog gets read by a variety of police services. (Hi boys!)
At some point this will all come to a head, probably pretty soon at the speed events are unfolding.
Life imitates art.
Obama’s making a list, and checking it twice…
mhb23re