Thursday, August 26, 2010

Eye In The Sky

Also, eye under your car! The good ol' Ninth Circus says it's oooooo-tay if Agents of The Gummint stick a GPS-based tracking device under your own car parked in your own driveway (or wherever), cos you didn't have any expectation of privacy there and you soooo don't when you are out driving on your presumptively-lawful occasions, oh, hells no.

Chap at the link has a few suggestions on what you can do with government property abandoned upon your own personal vehicle. Sadly, "Go stuff it, slathered with high-grade hot sauce and naptha, up the distal sphincter of the chief officer of whatever Arm of the Supposed Law had it stuck on your ride" is not on the list; he's way nicer and more clever than the likes of me.

D'ye suppose we can convince some cop-like agency (or C13\/eR HaXX0RZ) t'stick widgets on the private cars of the august Juutfruices of the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Nonsense, an' post live and detailed tracking information on the Whirled Wide Web? For their own good, I mean; so peoples can tell where they are in case of a flat tire or civil unrest or anything. I mean, shuckies, what if one of them were about to buy dope and/or whores by mistake or something? Those poor, poor fellers need our love and understanding an' helpfulness. And to be tracked like bugs, prisoners or Lindsay Lohan, 24/7/365. But not in a bad way. Heck, no.

Like Tam says, George Orwell was Rebbecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Number One Chief Justice In Charge Kozinski, WTF? Officer Krupke?

13 comments:

John B said...

Well get a doritos bag, empty, fill with helium, use bag resealer, and have an old fashioned balloon ascension.

Buy gmrs gps trackers on ebay, put on all 9th circus judges cars, and get one big google earth website.

What you said!

Anonymous said...

Snore.

Oh cripes, here we go. The usual libertarian crap of making life as tough as possible on law enforcement and then whining when the guys can't do their jobs cos the crooks have every benefit of the doubt and the cops have to fight crime with both arms tied behind them.

Grow up chickie. The cops don't care if you're sneaking out at night with the Fister Sisters to the gay bath house, or taking your clothes to the laundromat or if you are going to the bowling alley.

They want to track the movement of criminals. They want to place them at the scene of the crime, find out who is assisting them and enabling them and this is an unobtrusive way to do that.

Ya know what the awful truth is? Most human beings are uneducable cretins that need a big brother watching over them to keep them honest.

I don''t like it any more than you do but that is the way of it.

parabarbarian said...

I don't mind so much when an anonymous fool want to sell himself for safety. It's the nature of a cur to lick the hand that beats it. It's when that coward wants to sell me out too that the claws come out.

Scott Lowther said...

> The usual libertarian crap of making life as tough as possible on law enforcement

What, really? How does it make life as tough as possible for cops to tell 'em that they are not allowed to use technology they probably don't even have yet without first obtaining a search warrant? Especially when the use of the technology is predicated upon an invasion of private property?

Roberta X said...

Sayeth Anon, 9:58: "Oh cripes, here we go. The usual libertarian crap of making life as tough as possible on law enforcement and then whining when the guys can't do their jobs cos the crooks have every benefit of the doubt and the cops have to fight crime with both arms tied behind them.

"Grow up chickie."

Yeah, you're happy to get strip-searched to fly an airplane, pee in a cup for the nice man every other week, and have the po-leece do drive-by x-raying of your house once a week, cos You Have Nothing To Hide. (That's why you sign your name "Anonmymous," is it?)

And the police, prosecutors, politicians and each and every secretary in their employ is as pure, noble and honest as the driven snow. They would never, EVAR abuse the vast power you've thrown over your inherent right t'give 'em, so's you can feel all safe and secure, just like a bondage model.

Tell me, son, you a JOO? One a'them clinic-bombing Bap-spit-tists? You a deadly, seething gun-owner? Have you ever committed any one of the 'leventy-six Texas felonies involving lobsters? Are you sure you have nothing to hide -- and still will come next time some would-be Senatorial Kefauver moves from investigating organized crime to digging through your kid's comic-book collection? Next Kristallnacht?

Will you still sing, "the cops have to fight crime with both arms tied behind them, waah, waah" next time IRS audits you?

The hands of the police and police--like agencies are not tied nearly enough, and every Congress, ever state, city and county government, every last little Bureau and Agency is adding new crimes every time they convene.

"Most human beings are uneducable cretins that need a big brother watching over them to keep them honest."
Sez you. It is the job of the honest citizen to educate those "uneducable cretins," rather, that subset inclined to initiate force or fruad against others -- or eliminate them in the attempt, not your double-dammned Big Brother who is himself a cretin, no less brutal or crooked than the least-decent of his minions.

You g'wan, bwana. Get the hell off my side. I don't want you around; you're stinkin' the place up. Go vote for an incumbent or somethin'.

Tam said...

Anonymouse,

"The cops don't care if you're sneaking out at night with the Fister Sisters to the gay bath house..."

Funny choice of illustrations from one so quick to grab his own ankles.

Roberta X said...

Scott, that "technology they don't have yet" is something ham radio operators have been installing in their cars for fun for about as long as you could buy civilian portable GPS receivers. It's easy tech, though the GPS antenna still needs to get a fair peek at the sky; that's the only even slightly hard part.

John B said...

Cheer up Roberta!
mr. a-no-no-mouse there will require that cars carry a plastic roof ornament, similar to a TAXI sign. To facilitate the better use of GPS trackers.

Seriously darling, you need to get a better, quicker-minded, more articulate class of troll.

Maybe you should advertise on craigslist. :D

Standard Mischief said...

Ah, the classic "The Bork Tapes" mischief. Thanks to one sneaky Alt-newspaper reporter, the video tapes you and I rent have an enhanced protection from disclosure from anything short of the perpetual PATRIOT act. Search-fu "Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988"

Too bad we didn't get anything out of looting our congress-critters curbside trashbags.

Scott Lowther said...

By "tech they don't have yet" I meant "tech they don't have sitting on their shelf yet." GPS trackers have been around for a while,but I have doubts that disposable, small, easily concealed and quickly attached trackers are a common item in stock in most police stations. Could be wrong, of course.

Ken said...

By "tech they don't have yet" I meant "tech they don't have sitting on their shelf yet." GPS trackers have been around for a while,but I have doubts that disposable, small, easily concealed and quickly attached trackers are a common item in stock in most police stations.

TracFones and the like go for about $20 a pop, and that's retail. Wholesale and in bulk probably quite a bit less. Fire it up and if you don't actually make or receive calls on it, a current cell phone will run for a couple of weeks. I doubt technology of the type indicated is all that hard to obtain.

Roberta X said...

Scott, if lower levels of positional accuracy will do, all it takes is a celphone and some stickum -- and how, you may ask, is this better than using the suspect's own phone? Easy: no warrant!

Andrew said...

GPS trackers have been around for a while,but I have doubts that disposable, small, easily concealed and quickly attached trackers are a common item in stock in most police stations. Could be wrong, of course.

You're wrong. A Minneapolis cop got in trouble a couple years ago for attaching one to his ex-girlfriend's car.

All it takes to get one, by the way, is $50-$100 and a credit card.

http://www.dealextreme.com/products.dx/category.413~search.tracker