...they can probably stop hating us any ol' time now.
The fact that ANYBODY thinks that this is a swell idea just blows my mind.
1984 was not supposed to be a flippin' instruction manual, fer gawd’s sake. Of course, nowadays the telescreen isn't behind the picture; it's in your pocket.
Between a national license plate reader database and your cell phone data, an inner party member would theoretically be able to print out a map of your whereabouts at a keystroke whenever they felt like it. "Oh, but that would take a warrant!" Yeah, pull the other one, it has bells on it.
It's like they design this stuff to fail the "Jews in the attic" test.
Remind me which side lost the Cold War again? It was the evil Spy State, right? The one that listened in on all its citizens' communications and could barge in and search their domiciles on a whim?
*checks watch* Thankfully I've only got another couple decades of this
stuff up with which to put. Maybe less if I take up smoking again.
I wonder if they'll be able to find a contractor from Belarus to do the work?
ReplyDeleteBut that whole freedom of movement thing is just so 1790....
ReplyDeleteTurns my stomach.
ReplyDeleteGerry
"could barge in and search their domiciles on a whim"
ReplyDeleteIn Soviet Russia they had to at least drag you off to Lubyanka before they started beating you or shot your dog, I think. On the other hand, we Americans have always been so much more efficient and have always valued convenience; so we shoot you and your dog in your home to save you the trip.
Actually, we're closer to Brave New World than 1984, but the goal seems to be a sort of mash-up.
ReplyDelete"Trust us, this is really for your own good."--which is only a slight restatement of "Just get into the van, bitch. I promise I won't hurt you."
ReplyDeleteJust saw on FOX where the FCC wants to place gov't monitors ( agents) in news rooms.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but if I take up smoking again the last year will be in a bed with lines running in all over. I've had enough of that already, thank you.
ReplyDeletePlus who wants a mouth that taste like a ash tray when you wake up?
I prefer to think we're closer to 2112, I like the ending better than 1984.
ReplyDeleteIt's one thing to use automated license plate readers to run a check of vehicles seen on the street against an electronic hot sheet (how the local PD uses it now), quite another to put everyone on the "hot sheet" just in case.
ReplyDeleteEvery technology has a line between useful and malignant, this proposal crosses that line
Oldthinkers duckspeak, unbellyfeel Ingsoc. Ownlife doubleplus ungood, crimethink.
ReplyDeleteBB!
The automatic license plate readers were intended to provide notification of a stolen vehicle when a car mounting them cruised through a parking lot. Of course the road to good intentions does tend to be stretched when new utilities or concerns come to light. I’ll readily say that I have negative feelings and opinions regarding any form of automated surveillance used to issue citations. I feel even more strongly about intrusive tracking and information gathering just to button hole and subjugate the citizenry on a pretext of public safety. I’m concerned for my country and what all of this increased internal monitoring will lead to.
ReplyDelete"Just saw on FOX where the FCC wants to place gov't monitors ( agents) in news rooms."
ReplyDeleteYou mean a замполит? (zampolit = "political officer.")
If it CAN be abused, it WILL be abused. Human nature, filtered and distilled, through a government.
ReplyDeleteGodwin's Law predates the "Jews in the Attic" Test by nine years. However, more then two hundred years ago British statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797) said "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."
ReplyDeleteJDRush commented "But that whole freedom of movement thing is just so 1790....", a year near the end of Edmund Burke's life. I recently read that someone argued for National Right to Carry Reciprocity, claiming that a firearms license issued in any state should be honored in all states. The Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights (a 1787-1791 thing that is still with us) does not include any verbiage about licenses being necessary to exercise any rights, so others argue that Constitutional Carry should not be prohibited in any state, whether the citizen is a citizen of that state or not. They further argued that all state regulation of firearms (such as arbitrarily limiting magazine capacity) as well as Federal law and Executive Orders are unconstitutional and are invalid and void. That is also just so 1790....
I presume, tam, that you have seen the film 'The Lives of Others'? If not, you should...as should anyone else who hasn't. Fitting that the film is set in 1984.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Also: "...gov't monitors ( agents) in news rooms."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r1nxl86RXY
Babylon5 from 20 years ago...Eerily prescient.
2112? I don't know the reference. However, I sometimes wonder if Barrack Hussein Obama is an anagram for Nehemiah Scudder.
ReplyDeletestay safe
Rush. Give it a listen.
DeleteAs I understand it, the quartering of troops referred to in the third amendment, was a means of placing government monitors in certain targeted private homes. Technology has since developed many more ways for the government to keep tabs on we the people. I think the people who wrote that amendment would have written it differently if they had known what was coming.
ReplyDeleteEd,
ReplyDelete"Godwin's Law predates the "Jews in the Attic" Test by nine years."
Pasteurization predates the Model T by over a hundred years, too.
Much like "Godwin's Law" and Joe's "Jews In The Attic" test, I don't really see the connection?
"Pull my other leg and it plays jingle bells"...I use that one all the time, and no one ever gets the reference!
ReplyDeleteMy faith in humanity is restored.
I picked the wrong millenia to stop binge drinking.
ReplyDeleteOne possible reaction we must be wary of: There might be a law passed outlawing such databases in such a way that it will be used against citizens trying to keep track of what the State is doing. We must recall that people arrested in the War on Photography are frequently charged with violating anti-wiretapping laws.
ReplyDeleteAh, Tam, your prepositional exposition was sublimely executed. Freedom still has a few tricks under her wing.
ReplyDeleteAll y'all paranoia whiners can relax. The voices in my head just told me that the same folks who built the Obamacare website have been given the contract for this job. And for onlt twice the money.
ReplyDeletestay safe.
We can all relax, they've withdrawn the proposal.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2014/02/19/us/ice-license-plate-tracking/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
So move along, nothing to see here. They're no longer going to do that thing that they've been doing all along.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
ReplyDelete--Goethe
But we need for fight them TURRISTS. We need all available means to KILL EM TURRISTS.
ReplyDeleteNow do people understand why war is bad?
Some of the most serious conversations with my parents involve "what happened to America." (born in 38 and 39)
ReplyDeleteMy parents feel a sense of relief that they've only seen the beginning of the end of freedom over their lifetimes.
They are painfully aware that I and my children will get to live every stinking minute of the death throes.