You might live in a Police State if...

Tress

Tress

stienman said:
If the police can require you to notify them of any sexual activity 24 hours in advance, even though you've never been convicted of any sexual crimes.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-36481127

That's one weird new law. I could see, perhaps, this sort of order being made as part of a probation (ie, you can go to jail, or you can go on probation but your activities must be self reported and monitored and you can't do certain things). In other words its a form of prison without having to report to prison - but you have to have been convicted of a crime that this probation would prevent, and the probation ultimately does end at some point, just as most jail sentences do.

But to be able to do so simply on order of the court without conviction seems very police-state-ish.
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That is one of the most deplorable things I've ever seen.
 
Sara_2814

Sara_2814

stienman said:
If the police can require you to notify them of any sexual activity 24 hours in advance, even though you've never been convicted of any sexual crimes.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-36481127

That's one weird new law. I could see, perhaps, this sort of order being made as part of a probation (ie, you can go to jail, or you can go on probation but your activities must be self reported and monitored and you can't do certain things). In other words its a form of prison without having to report to prison - but you have to have been convicted of a crime that this probation would prevent, and the probation ultimately does end at some point, just as most jail sentences do.

But to be able to do so simply on order of the court without conviction seems very police-state-ish.
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Nope, I don't think that's a "seems" or an "-ish". That's full on police state.

And why do the police need "the details of any female including her name, address and date of birth... at least 24 hours prior to any sexual activity taking place". What are they planning on doing with the sexual histories of these women?

That is some creepy shit.
 
Tress

Tress

Sara_2814 said:
Nope, I don't think that's a "seems" or an "-ish". That's full on police state.

And why do the police need "the details of any female including her name, address and date of birth... at least 24 hours prior to any sexual activity taking place". What are they planning on doing with the sexual histories of these women?

That is some creepy shit.
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I assume they want that to contact them and harass them, so he can't have sex. I didn't even consider gathering the info on them. Ugh.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

They want (note that I'm not defending it!) their info to follow up and help them if things go south. Y'know, in the "huh, 15 women have disappeared in this region in the past 5 years, we may have a serial killer" kind of way, or the "huh, this woman filed rape charges against this guy, but how are we ever going to find his previous girlfriends/sexual partners to build a history". If things go bad and he turns out to be a genuine risk, it's very good and useful information to have.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

So what I'm essentially seeing is that, because this guy would not provide the code to unlock his phone, the authorities retaliated by making it significantly more difficult to have sex.

--Patrick
 
mikerc

mikerc

And if he has sex without giving the police 24 hours notice he goes to jail for 5 years. Without being convicted of a crime!

And during his trial jurors were told that he visited a fetish club with an ex-partner. Which was relevant how exactly? Sexual shaming much?
 
strawman

strawman

You know about civil asset forfeiture, right? So if the police think you might have property on you that was earned from a crime, they don't have to arrest or prosecute you, they simply take the property, and then you have to go to court to prove that it's actually legal.

Used to be they only used it for vehicles and cash in the vehicles.

Now Oklahoma has decided that if you are carrying debit cards, then that is property you have on you, and thus they can take it as well. So they've paid a company to make a device they installed in their cruisers, and they simply swipe all your cards. If any of them are debit cards they empty the card - whether it's a prepaid card or tied to your personal bank account (from some reports).

The company makes 7.7% of the total, and if you go to court you can't recover that fee. The police get the other 92.3%, unless you go to court (which you can't easily do because you have no liquid cash to hire a lawyer).

I'm not sure how much of this is being exaggerated, if any, but if there's any truth to any part of this then it's much worse than plain civil forfeiture, which is a bad enough indication of a police state.[DOUBLEPOST=1465519893,1465519572][/DOUBLEPOST]Linky: http://5newsonline.com/2016/06/08/ohp-uses-new-device-to-seize-money-from-bank-accounts/[DOUBLEPOST=1465519927][/DOUBLEPOST]Or search google for "oklahoma erad"
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Just posted about this is the politics thread. Amazing. I know a state I won't ever visit again, even if I have to go hours out of my way to avoid it.
 
Eriol

Eriol

Stealing from Gas's main thread: In Support Of A Total Ban on Civilians Owning Firearms

This is not an abstract or hypothetical point. We live in a country in which arbitrary power is routinely abused, usually to the detriment of the least powerful and the most abused among us. We live in a country in which we have been panicked into giving the government more and more power to protect us from harm, and that power is most often not used for the things we were told, but to solidify and expand previously existing government power. We live in a country where the government uses the power we've already given it as a rationale for giving it more: "how can we not ban x when we've already banned y?" We live in a country where vague laws are used arbitrarily and capriciously. We live in a country that is about to nominate Donald Trump as the Republican candidate for President of the United States: a man who wants to limit free speech, ban people based on religion, and generally jackboot around. We live in a country where his opponent is a long-time advocate of the security state who got famous helping label young black men "superpredators."
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I thought the examples there were pretty good for this thread.
 
Eriol

Eriol

OK, this one doesn't really work easily with my thread prefix, but this thread seemed most appropriate: Apple Is Pulling Apps By Iranian Developers From The App Store To Comply With US Sanctions
Apple is pulling apps created by Iranian developers that are specifically designed for people in Iran from its App Stores to comply with US sanctions, The New York Times reports.

Apple does not sell its products in Iran and an Iranian version of the Apple App Store doesn’t exist, but smuggled iPhones are popular among wealthy Iranians. Iranian developers have created thousands of apps for these users and offer them on App Stores in other countries including the US App Store. For the last few weeks, Apple has been removing Iranian food delivery and shopping apps, and on Thursday, it removed Snapp, an Uber-like ride hailing app that is popular in Iran.

According to the Times, Apple sent this message to Iranian developers whose apps they removed: “Under the U.S. sanctions regulations, the App Store cannot host, distribute or do business with apps or developers connected to certain U.S. embargoed countries.”
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Here's the original NYT article.

This whole thing is odd, and involves intergovernmental weirdness. Apple dictates what you can HAVE on your device (Android is not quite the same, as you can install ANYTHING if you download it yourself, you just USUALLY get it from Google Play or the Amazon store), but is controlled on what's in its App Stores per-country. So I can't "fault" them for complying with US law when they don't have an "Iranian" App Store, or subsidiary in that country.

So... thoughts?
 
Denbrought

Denbrought

Eriol said:
OK, this one doesn't really work easily with my thread prefix, but this thread seemed most appropriate: Apple Is Pulling Apps By Iranian Developers From The App Store To Comply With US Sanctions

Here's the original NYT article.

This whole thing is odd, and involves intergovernmental weirdness. Apple dictates what you can HAVE on your device (Android is not quite the same, as you can install ANYTHING if you download it yourself, you just USUALLY get it from Google Play or the Amazon store), but is controlled on what's in its App Stores per-country. So I can't "fault" them for complying with US law when they don't have an "Iranian" App Store, or subsidiary in that country.

So... thoughts?
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The last paragraph is fairly useful to quote as well:
In July, Apple removed apps that allowed people in China to evade censorship to comply with Chinese regulations, sparking criticism that it was bowing to Beijing's stringent censorship.
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They're following whatever laws they're beholden to, specially those they don't think they could challenge in court. That seems reasonable and sane, given that they're a public corporation. Not sure what else there is to discuss, unless/until Apple becomes something else.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

I don't see how it's weird. You're not allowed to export apples to Iran, why would you be allowed to sell them apps?

I'm not saying it strikes me as good for the freedom of the net, or a bunch of other stuff ,but in itself, it only seems logical.
 
Eriol

Eriol

Bubble181 said:
I don't see how it's weird. You're not allowed to export apples to Iran, why would you be allowed to sell them apps?

I'm not saying it strikes me as good for the freedom of the net, or a bunch of other stuff ,but in itself, it only seems logical.
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I agree it's a logical move, it's just odd in terms of how much power they have over what people can install, and how that's wielded by governments, that's all.
 
Denbrought

Denbrought

Eriol said:
I agree it's a logical move, it's just odd in terms of how much power they have over what people can install, and how that's wielded by governments, that's all.
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True enough. That should be coming to a head eventually, what with courts and lawmakers testing the waters in places like Canada, Australia, and Spain (with shit like "the right to be forgotten", or worldwide internet injunctions).
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

And until there's an alternative to the Internet, that's how it's going to be.

Even if there ultimately ends up being some sort of ad hoc mesh network alternative (and I fully believe someday there will be), it's still going to have trouble reaching across the wide bodies of water that separate countries.

--Patrick
 
Denbrought

Denbrought



relevant excerpts said:
[M]oving from the minimum to the maximum expenditure values, on average, increases civilian deaths by roughly 129%. As seen in Figure 3, counties that received no military equipment can expect to kill 0.068 fewer civilians, relative to the previous year, whereas those that received the maximum amount can expect to kill 0.188 more, holding all else constant.

(..) [W]hile no research method offers full certainty of a causal effect, we attempt to increase the plausibility of the claim that 1033 transfers lead to more police violence. We do so by measuring the transfers in the previous year, as well as by leveraging three different dependent variables. While the first dependent variable – civilian killings – represents the most direct measure to test the claim, using the next two dependent variables – change in civilian killings and dog killings – helped bypass endogeneity concerns to an extent
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Arming your police like an occupying force may have some deleterious effects, it seems.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

While I don't doubt the finding at all - it's a confirmation of several previous studies - I do wonder how much is caused by an inverse causation: the departments receiving higher grade weaponry because they're in an area/region considered more dangerous/deteriorating. An area can become more dangerous over time, and it would seem to me to make sense to more heavily arm the police in the neighbourhood where the police has been meeting increased aggression in the last years, which would translate into more shootings and thus killings, whereas you'd leave the police unarmed (or less armed, in the US) in safer areas.
 
Covar

Covar

I must be reading those numbers wrong, but a less than one person a year difference per department?
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

You guys either assume a lot more death, or really big counties.

In the UK, one civilian dies due to police bullets per 27 million citizens per year. I know the USA has waaaaayyyyy higher numbers, mostly because guns are so much more prevalent, but still.

I spent a bit of time looking for Belgian numbers, and, assuming people killed in anti-terrorist raids weren't innocent, the last two people to die because of the police were both assaulted and kicked/beaten to death. Last innocent shot by cop I could find is from 4 years ago.
 
Tress

Tress

Not to sound like a fascist, but I'd also point out that there's no way to quantify the numbers of additional lives saved by police departments with this kind of equipment vs. those who don't. It could be anything from zero to 100 per month, and we wouldn't know.
 
Denbrought

Denbrought

Tress said:
Not to sound like a fascist, but I'd also point out that there's no way to quantify the numbers of additional lives saved by police departments with this kind of equipment vs. those who don't. It could be anything from zero to 100 per month, and we wouldn't know.
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I'm having trouble with my imagination, how does military equipment enhance your police force's day-to-day life-saving abilities? I can only come up with weird hypotheticals that would end up making national news.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Denbrought said:
I'm having trouble with my imagination, how does military equipment enhance your police force's day-to-day life-saving abilities? I can only come up with weird hypotheticals that would end up making national news.
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The equipment is paraded as the answer to the increasingly militarized criminals that lurk just under the RADAR, (no doubt because they have implemented contraband jamming technology...).

--Patrick
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Denbrought said:
I'm having trouble with my imagination, how does military equipment enhance your police force's day-to-day life-saving abilities? I can only come up with weird hypotheticals that would end up making national news.
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This. What do towns like Stockbridge, MA, with "three stop signs, two police officers, and one police car" suddenly need with APCs and minesweepers?
 
Eriol

Eriol

... the Police have a backdoor into any and all electronics. Germany Preparing Law for Backdoors in Any Type of Modern Device

I'm guessing their younger generations don't remember the Stasi. Shame.

Also, I'll just leave this one here:

To those unwilling to click: "No matter how much we might wish it, there's no way to build a digital lock that only Angels can open and Demons cannot. Anyone saying otherwise is either ignorant of the mathematics, or less of an Angel than they appear."
 
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