In France.

You just finish watching La Haine?

Of course your grandchildren have the right to play without fear of being harmed. Of course they do. But they don’t need to be constant camera surveillance. That’s what adults are for.

It’s easy to start this on the border – illegal immigrants have little efficacy and power to protest and unfair system, and we can get used to joe racist playing border patrol for funsees. And then we’ll set up inner city cameras, and instead of having paid people watch them like in the UK, we will just let whoever wants to do it for fun. A scary bureaucracy is at least accountable. Anonymous tipsters with a police state apparatus are free to do what they will. Gah. They’ll move this from inner cities to schools, and within a generation we are all beningly maybe-monitored and just used to security everywhere.

Border security is a kind of pathetic thing to sacrifice this much freedom and common sense for. It’s a useless system, security theatre, and it can lead to tyranny without the tyrants.

No thanks, Texas. Please stop giving the rest of the nation horrible, horrible ideas.

The best homeland security cameras are the ones C-SPAN has on Congress.

Too bad C-SPAN is CAM encrypted, instead of provided as Clear QAM.

5 gold for a confirmed event
10 gold for an arrest
100 gold for a conviction
10000 gold for bigfoot

an innovative real-time surveillance program designed to empower the public to proactively participate in fighting border crime.

How about an innovative real-time program designed to empower the public to overcome their xenophobia and stop restricting freedom of movement?

“If you see movement from the left to the right it’s just white people sneaking over to buy cheap drugs, so don’t worry about it.”

@#2 i agree. heh

hopefully this will keep nutjobs indoors staring at their screens instead of outside doing actual harm

ah, irony!

I’m reading these arguments about why crowd sourcing your surveillance is a bad thing…

for reasons of accountability, reliability, potential for manipulation, etc…

yet crowd-sourced sites such as Slashdot and Digg are always jumping at shadows and putting items of VERY questionable authenticity on the front page… even BB has been known to run with a blog of a blog of a rumor…

where’s the outcry about the trustworthiness of news that has been crowd-sourced?

Glass houses, throwing stones.

“Officer, I just saw a group of armed men walking along the border. Rifles, pistols, even big knives.”

an innovative real-time surveillance program designed to empower the public to proactively participate in fighting border crime.

Exactly! They could/should have used software to detect changes to the images. There are many free open-source programs available. The real reason for this program is to let people feel involved.

I see that one needs little more than an email address to create a Virtual Border Watch account: http://www.blueservo.net/caccount.php

If people opposed to these Orwellian and xenophobic methods were to sign up and “help” by reporting nonexistent violations, the program would become almost completely ineffective.

I’m trying to think of how to word this without it being seen as flamebait, but the meme that “they’re just looking for work” is an oft-repeated one. I wonder how many people who don’t live in border states know how many hospitals are closing down due to the cost of providing healthcare for illegals. It used to be just a border city issue, but it’s pretty universal now.

Yeah, our immigration system is broken. Our healthcare system is broken, wadded up, and stomped on. And we keep throwing ridiculous ideas at both issues.

* Most recently: http://digg.com/world_news/Oakland_Police_Officer_Shoots_Unarmed_Man_Handcuffed_Man

Zuzu, are you saying that countries shouldn’t be free to to restrict movement of people or goods across their borders?

Not on the basis of citizenship or visas, no. Perhaps explicitly exiled people convicted of particular extreme crimes such as genocide.

But these are just people looking for work, and there are businesses willing to hire them. There’s no legitimate reason for a third party to interfere with that mutual arrangement. If you want to talk about citizenship entitlements such as unemployment insurance, public education, and voting — those can be provided upon proof of citizenship.

I can’t say I put much thought into the comment. It was meant to be read ironically.

Let’s encourage vigilantism! Horray!

I’M BATMAN!