I built a mobile app that allows you to get a morning wake up call from a real person. Part of my motivation here was to help add a little human interaction to what is a lonely experience for some people.
I'm fine with license plates being read and parsed. I'm fine with license plates being read, parsed, assessed for violation, and ticketed automatically, or cross-checked for amber alerts. That's literally my line of work.
I want strict, strict guardrails on when and where that occurs. I want that information erased as soon as the context of the citation wraps up. I want every company/contractor in this space FOIA-able and held to as strict or stricter requirements than the government for transparency and corruption and other regulation. I don't want every timestamped/geostamped datapoint of every law abiding driver passing into any juncture hoovered into a data lake and tracked and easily queryable. That's (IMHO, IANAL, WTF, BBQ) a flagrant 4th amendment violation, and had the framers been able to conceive such a thing, they'd absolutely add a "and no dragnet surveilance" provision from day 1.
If that seems hypocritical, my line starts with "has a crime occurred with decent likelihood?" "Lets collect everything and go snoopin for crimes" is beyond the pale.
because it would be ridiculous for police to be able to track every car everywhere it goes! (10 years ago)
Judges require warrants to put a GPS tracker on your car. Now that Flock cameras are so ubiquitous in many cities, this gives them access to the same data without a warrant.
I can reasonably expect that government agents don't follow me every time I leave the house. Legal basis for that belief or not, that's what most people expect.
I'd argue it's a 4A violation to require it to be displayed, though. It's a search of your registration 'papers' without RAS or PC of an offense.
The fact that driving is a 'privilege' doesn't negate your rights to be secure in your papers, the police should have to have articulable suspicion that your car is unregistered or unlicensed before they can demand you to display your plate.
I dont personally agree but that is a really interesting argument I can kinda get behind. I guess the question is, what if you have footage of a crime being committed, and you would have a great lead if you only had a way to pair a vehicle with a person?
I also don't agree with the argument you replied to, but a counter-argument to your point is that we don't mandate individuals to wear name tags while in public
Legally, you're absolutely right. But as camera technology, data transmission, data storage, and automated data analysis progress, maybe it's also reasonable that privacy laws progress with the technology. I expect any police officer or other person to freely view my license plate as I drive around and I have no problem with that.
But, I do not think it's reasonable for an automated system to systematically capture, store, and analyze all of my movements (or anyone else who is not suspected of a serious crime). If they suspect I have done something illegal, they should have to get a warrant and then the system can be triggered to start tracking me.
I understand the desire for the data... sometimes I would like to know if my kids are following the rules at home, but I have a stronger conviction that I don't want my kids to grow up in a home where they feel like they are under constant surveillance. It's a gross feeling to be under constant surveillance, like you're living in a panopticon built for prisoners, which is an unfair side effect when you've done nothing wrong. Mass data surveillance of everyone is a totalitarian dystopian that I don't want to live in.
> Willing to work for less than an American, but somehow doesn’t drive wages down for Americans.
Yeah, they obviously do. That's plain bullshit.
.... ooooon the other hand, we've never tried having an economy without them. We didn't meaningfully limit migration from elsewhere in the Americas until like the '50s, and at the time beginning such enforcement was controversial because we already used them for a ton of cheap farm labor and farmers' interest groups thought it'd ruin them if we significantly limited such migration. The reason their fears didn't manifest as reality is that we simply, and at least in part on purpose, never bothered to enforce those new laws as completely as we technically could, especially for farm labor.
So like they do lower wages (again: obviously) but also they always have, so removing them is a big change from the status quo of practically the entire history of the country's economy. I dunno, worth looking at I guess, but I personally would want to ease into it in case it turns out to be a bad idea.
> Lives in American housing yet somehow doesn’t drive up the cost of housing.
I think the cheap-labor effect on construction probably outweighs this by a good margin. But maybe not.
> Creates ethnic enclaves which mostly speak their own languages yet somehow assimilate into American culture.
Eh. That complaint has been leveled against every prior migrant group, and hasn't held up over the long haul. Even prior waves of hispanic immigrants. I'd need a reason to think it's different this time to give this any credence whatsoever.
Well heck, I see an awful lot of people on the internet trying to argue that they somehow don’t drive wages down for Americans. The number of foreign born people living in the USA is at an all time high, over 5 times larger than what it was in the middle of the last century. Being able to throw cheap labor at a problem is a crutch that keeps people from having to innovate or pay their own countrymen a decent wage. The same argument was used by pro-slavery folks back in the day. “Who will pick the cotton?” was seen as a compelling argument. But when your business is forced to deal with a problem instead of throwing cheap labor at it, you often come up with much better ways to do things and your own fellow citizens share the benefits as well.
>cheap-labor effect on construction probably outweighs this by a good margin
The data shows clearly that immigrants drive up the cost of housing by increasing demand. Americans built our own housing for most of our history, this trend of cheap immigrant labor working most of the construction jobs was not always the case. We could afford to pay construction workers a little bit more and the cost of housing would be more than offset by the reduced housing demand.
>hasn't held up over the long haul
It has absolutely held up, take a trip to any major US city and visit one of its many ethnic enclaves. Many areas of Los Angeles speak exclusively Spanish, you can visit neighborhoods that are indistinguishable from a city in Mexico. The problem is so glaring that the left has switched tactics and hardly even argues that assimilation occurs anymore, rather they argue that “multiculturalism” is the new thing we are supposed to support. Where ethnic enclaves live alongside each other.
Well, entire areas of Los Angeles speaking Spanish seems to be quite normal considering the history of the state? It's like complaining that people in Chinatown speak Chinese.
Some other other people: "i can't tell the difference between rotten apples and fresh oranges. therefore all fruit is shit."
But which one do you think is accurate? Here's an article to consider, where ICE broke into an apartment building without warrants to arrest citizens and children. Does this sound like Gestapo tactics or no?: https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/10/01/massive-...
It doesn't matter what I think. The reality is most people who voted, voted for this or something like this. This will only change at the ballot box, assuming you believe in fair elections.
So what is your actual point? Is there a true reality in your world or is it just all political spin? Does ICE's violence against US citizens even exist in your worldview? Is ICE's violence against US citizens something that is objectively true in your eyes? Say something concrete.
This is not a direct democracy but a constitutional republic. I don't care if 99% of people WANT this. If they can't follow the proper process and laws then it's treason or war at this point.
Yes, and has continued to spin over millions of years as various atrocities have occurred. The question for everyone: what are you going to do about it?
I won't be dismissing it with a trite line like "the world keeps spinning", for a start. Secondly, I am politically active and engaged, which is the most effective way to effect change right now.
Encouraging others to actually engage with politics instead of being dismissive, with the goal to build a coalition of people who want to protect our rights against this consolidating dictatorship.
You want to do something about it? Call your senator and voice your opinion.
Your senators and congress critters suck? Find a local challenger and work to build pressure against your sitting reps.
You think nothing can be done? Get out of the way.
Hey, more power to you! Fight for the change you want to see. I would like all people, of all political persuasions, to fight for the change they want to see.
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