President blocked surveillance probe

OneST8 · 07-21-06, 07:26 AM

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4056228.html

I put this in just for fun because I personally do not believe politics or religion belong in general discussion.

darkstorme · 07-21-06, 07:53 AM

Yeah, I heard about this. Unprecedented in US history, too.

lonnarin · 07-21-06, 01:48 PM

When I rise to power, one of my 1st measures will be that every member of government will have a dedicated webserver which hosts a webcam in their office and an audio-stream of their office phone, ESPECIALLY my chief of state office. I don't mind surveillance so long as some folk aren't making themselves more equal than others in the application. When the congress and senate start seeing cameras pointed at themselves instead of their constituents, these types of illegal govt surveillance efforts will be thwarted from within.

Furthermore, I am currently working on an OnStar-like device which, like the car-cameras on the show COPS, will constantly be recording what is going around your property, your car. There will be a front and rear mounted camera, as well as one pointing to both passenger windows, with a sensitive microphone to pick up everything said. All footage taken in this device will be stored on a Flash-memory pack for personal playback, WITH an added button which uses current wireless internet/cellular technology to live uplink it's video feed and dump its data on a 3rd party server run by the company. That way nobody can "pull the tape" so to speak, Bubba can't drive off with your ride and just destroy the camera. There will also be an option during parked mode for the camera to start dumping data to the server upon noises or movement detected by the microphone... ie car alarm or somebody entering the vehicle.

Not only will this serve to help prosecute auto thefts, vandalization and traffic violations incured against you, but it will also document all traffic stops brought against the citizen by law enforcement, ensuring that they do not step outside the constitution. As the car is your property which you have a right to survey, they can't holler "shut that camera off!" and break your camera to avoid being fired/prosecuted, since as soon as you hit that uplink button, there's another copy of the incident off on a server he cannot access. Now, if the officer refuses to give you a badge number and a written statement for his violations (a felony in itself) you'll have his face and voice for his watch commander to review. I call this the "Little Brother Project". Perhaps also we can add an odometer for when he tells you that you were going 50 in a 30 and you were really going 35 like you said, which could be activated via time-clocked radar detector.

Most importantly, since the consumer is paying for this service, nobody but the subscriber o the service may review the data or have it admissable in court. There will also be a total data-dump button in case you need to flash the memory cartridge clean, if you supect somebody's trying to use your own camera against you. I expect many makes and models of this unit scaled by price... some will have their own LCD screens, some with speakers, some with just a headphone jack, some with faster or slower modems, all will have USB ports for data transfer (possibly flash memory portable drive based), All subscription-based models will have the upload feature and server space with their own online manageable account. Even when the supscription of the service lapses, the hidden camera is yours to keep and use, with its own viewing software for your personal computer. (and since people really don't NEED to be uploading everything but the most dire emergencies, subscription prices should be low, estimating 40-50 bucks/YEAR)