Category: Uncategorized

Sorry About the Lack of Posting

Work is overwhelming at the moment, and I am running a discussion over at The Fabulous Baker Boys which is growing at about a post a day.

I think I’m winning.

According to this press release:

On Mother’s Day Weekend, Million Mom March Will Gather in DC, Urge Congress to ‘Halt the Assault’ on Child Safety

Oh, right. Fighting idiotic gun laws is an “assault on child safety.” You want to protect children? Teach them how to swim. Keep them away from household chemicals. PUT THEM IN CAR SEATS AND MAKE THEM WEAR SEAT BELTS. Finally, STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM FELONS.

With children at risk in their schools, their playgrounds and their communities, America’s mothers and others will gather this Mother’s Day weekend, May 8-10, in the shadow of the Capitol in Washington D.C., to demand gun violence solutions, Million Mom March members announced today.

“Demand gun violence solutions” = “Demand sweeping gun bans.” Not a solution, but that’s what they want.

Concerned citizens, community leaders, gun violence victims, and a coalition of state-based gun safety groups gathered with Million Mom March members in New York today to announce plans for the Mother’s Day 2004 Halt the Assault Weekend, May 8-10. The announcement was made outside Martin Luther King Jr. High School, where two students were shot on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in 2002.

What?!? At a gun-free zone?!?

“There are war casualties all around us. We need to stand up and say we’ve had enough,” said Shikha Hamilton, official spokesperson for the Mother’s Day March to Halt the Assault. “America’s mothers have had enough. We are calling a timeout in the war against the next generation — our children.”

Ms. Hamilton, then I suggest you direct your attention towards the problem of drug trafficking, because that’s what’s driving the violence that’s killing your children.

The Million Mom March, a chapter-based, grassroots organization with thousands of members and many more thousands of supporters (Even they no longer claim anywhere near a million.) throughout the nation, announced the support of Essence Communications Partners and ESSENCE magazine, which have agreed to underwrite some of the event’s costs and to reach out aggressively to attract supporters over the next three months.

Really? “Aggressively”? Does that mean junk-mail and dinnertime phone calls? TV propaganda ads? What?

The main element in the Halt the Assault weekend plans announced today is a public gathering at the West Front of the Capitol starting in the late morning of Mother’s Day, May 9. Following an interfaith service at the start of the program, a number of speakers and entertainers will fill the afternoon. Informational booths and other visual elements will be scattered throughout the area.

And hopefully the 2nd Amendment Sisters will be there too. Maybe this time they won’t be harassed and threatened, and their literature won’t be stolen and thrown away by the nice Mommies.

The weekend will be preceded by events throughout America urging rational steps to reduce gun violence through legislation, public education, lobbying (REDUNDANCY ALERT!) and other activities. Locally based chapters of the Million Mom March will hold press conferences and other events in their cities to call attention to the need for action to protect America’s children.

Further details of the weekend, as they develop, will be posted on the official Mother’s Day March to Halt the Assault Web site, http://www.mmm2004.com.

On Mother’s Day 2000, with memories of the horrible events at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado fresh in the public’s mind, hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the Mall in Washington D.C. to demand saner gun policies in our country.

Best estimates I have seen give the attendance at something over 100,000. Max. But who are we to dis a good soundbite?

“Since our last march, 120,000 Americans — almost 14,000 of them children — have died from gun violence.

Numbers that have declined steadily, year by year, until just recently. But because they can’t point to a gun control law (or six) as a cause of this decline, it’s not “progress.” Never mind that the CDC’s study couldn’t find any correlation between gun control laws and changes in gun crime statistics.

We are deeply disappointed that Congress hasn’t made progress — and instead is trying to turn back the clock on the progress we’ve made,” said Mary Leigh Blek, president emeritus of the Million Mom March. “We are resolute, and we won’t rest until our children are safer.”

As I’ve said, they equate “progress” to “more gun laws.” Nothing else. And “safer”? “Safer” than what standard? Don’t want your kids dead of gun violence? Move out of the city. That will be your best single thing to do.

The gathering comes at a time of great challenge to responsible gun policies.

“Responsible gun policies” = “more and more restrictions on the right to arms.”

Unless Congress acts to renew and strengthen it, the nation’s landmark assault weapons ban will expire on September 13 of this year, and AK47s and Uzis will be legal (still are) and easier for criminals to acquire. (They can get them regardless.) Weeks ago, the gun lobby’s friends in Congress passed a dreadful law that requires rapid destruction of Brady background check records. (And this was “dreadful” why?) In the coming weeks, those same Congressional allies of the gun lobby will try to pass gun industry immunity that would slam the courthouse doors on gun violence victims and protect reckless gun dealers like Bull’s Eye Shooter Supply, the gun dealer that “lost” the assault rifle used by the infamous Washington D.C. area snipers in October of 2002.

This is another of my pet peeves. The lawsuit is also against Bushmaster – the manufacturer of the firearm. How, precisely, is Bushmaster responsible for a gun stolen out of, or even legally sold out of any gunshop? If it can be proven that Bull’s Eye illegally sold the weapon, the lawsuit against it is not protected under this legislation, but Bushmaster is. And rightfully so. But you will never hear that from people like this.

“We are all entitled to a life free of gun violence,” said ESSENCE magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, Diane Weathers.

Like hell you are, Ms. Weathers. Nor are you “entitled” to a life free from cancer, nor a life free from want.

This “entitlement” bullshit really jerks my chain.

“The magazine will work hard to help spread the word that women of every color and every economic background have an opportunity to be a force for positive change. The Million Mom March will unite these women and show the impact they have in saving lives.”

As the nation’s largest national, non-partisan, chapter-based grassroots organization leading the fight to prevent gun violence, the Million Mom March is dedicated to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in their communities.

ESSENCE magazine is the preeminent lifestyle magazine for eight million African-American women. The magazine delivers cutting-edge information on careers, money, health, fashion and beauty. Last year, ESSENCE was ranked seventh on Advertising Age’s “A-List,” which spotlights the best in the magazine industry for the year. This is the first time that an African-American targeted publication received this honor.

I will say that ESSENCE is probably a good forum for this, as the overwhelming majority of both perpetrators of homicide and victims of homicide are the tiny minority of urban black males between the ages of 15 and 35. They are, in fact, suffering from the equivalent of an epidemic of gun violence. But if you’re not young, male, urban, and black, your odds of being a victim of gun violence aren’t all that much worse than that of any average European. This argues that the problem isn’t one of guns, but one of culture – especially as recent black immigrants from African and Carribean nations have about the same risk as the general caucasian population.

Want to end it? Address that problem.

Oh, and stop defending Barbara Lipscomb. At least be consistent on that.

Anybody Know Anything About This?

Seems the BATF has indicted Oliver M. and Ulrich H. Wiegand, owners of InterOrdnance “on 83 counts alleging conspiracy, illegal importation of machineguns, illegal possession and transfer of machineguns, structuring, and money laundering.”

Really? Only 83? The ATF press release says:

The charges involve the Wiegand brothers’ federally licensed firearms business, Interordnance of America, L.P., located in Monroe, North Carolina, as well as foreign companies located in Witten, Germany and Ferlach, Austria, at one time owned and controlled by the Wiegand brothers.

According to the indictment, Ulrich and Oliver Wiegand are German nationals who established Interordnance of America in June 1995 as a firearms importation business and used the business to illegally import machineguns into the United States as machinegun component parts. According to the indictment, Ulrich and Oliver Wiegand also owned and controlled two foreign companies Wiegand Ordnance GmbH, located in Witten, Germany and Interordnance Waffenhandel GmbH, located in Ferlach, Austria, which were used by Ulrich and Oliver Wiegand to illegally import Russian-made PPSH 41 machinegun component parts into the United States for subsequent sale by Interordnance of America. In addition, the indictment alleges that Ulrich and Oliver Wiegand also illegally imported FN FAL IMBEL and STEYR MP69 machineguns. The indictment alleges that Ulrich and Oliver Wiegand imported the machinegun component parts knowing that the machineguns had not been destroyed according to ATF specifications. Further, the indictment alleges that Ulrich and Oliver Wiegand sold these machineguns as parts kits to customers throughout the United States knowing that the component parts could be assembled as functional machineguns. According to the indictment, Ulrich and Oliver Wiegand, through Interordnance of America, sold over 2000 PPSH 41, over 1000 FN FAL IMBEL and over 500 STEYR MP69 machineguns to customers throughout the United States without conducting any background checks and without recording any ownership registration information with the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record.

So, what they’re saying is that some 3500 illegal machineguns are now in circulation? Good job ATF! A two-year investigation! Job security!

I seem to remember something about torch-cut FAL receivers that the BATF was running around trying to collect from people who had purchased parts kits.

Oh, and of course here’s another example of asset forfeiture at work:

The indictment includes a Notice of Forfeiture that asks that the defendants be required to forfeit to the United States all of the property involved in the offenses charged in the indictment and all property traceable to such offenses.

Which means, effectively, “everything they own.”

InterOrdnance has a response up at their web site. The response is here. Key quote:

Interordnance maintains that its actions regarding the importation and sale of the parts kits were at all times legal and in accordance with BATF regulations. Presently, none of the parts kits are offered by Interordnance pending resolution of the formal charges, even though similar parts kits can be found for legal sale by other firearms dealers.

Problem is, the BATF has such a bad reputation with me that I tend to believe almost anybody over them.

An Interesting Email Exchange

Ok, so I found it interesting, but I thought you might, too.

When I started The Fabulous Baker Boys, Swen Swenson of Coyote at the Dog Show was the first to comment (and the first to link), and he took exception to my characterization that “rights are whatever the majority says they are.” Thus began an email exchange that ran the better part of a week. I asked him about it, and we decided that posting the exchange might be interesting to others, so here it is, my comments in blue, his in grey (and no, I don’t mean anything by that color combination.)

Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2004 8:53 PM

Subject: RE: A right is what the majority believes it is.

Swen:

Thanks for the link.

Actually, that’s the subject of an essay I wrote a while back. I didn’t link it at the debate site, but if you’d like to read my reasoning, it’s here:

http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2003_05_11_smallestminority_archive.html#94367045

And you’re right – it’s a pragmatic view of the idea of rights. Idealism is all well and good, but not all that useful in the real world. Words on paper don’t hold the idea – we hold it in our hearts.

A couple of posts above that one is a concise explanation of the idea, supposedly stated by Associate Justice Scalia, though I’ve never been able to find a definitive citation:

To some degree, a constitutional guarantee is like a commercial loan, you can only get it if, at the time, you don’t really need it. The most important, enduring, and stable portions of the Constitution represent such a deep social consensus that one suspects if they were entirely eliminated, very little would change. And the converse is also true. A guarantee may appear in the words of the Constitution, but when the society ceases to possess an abiding belief in it, it has no living effect. Consider the fate of the principle expressed in the Tenth Amendment that the federal government is a government of limited powers. I do not suggest that constitutionalization has no effect in helping the society to preserve allegiance to its fundamental principles. That is the whole purpose of a constitution. But the allegiance comes first and the preservation afterwards.

My purpose in blogging is to help in my small way to keep that abiding belief alive in those who hold it, and rekindle it in those who have let it die out. If we don’t do that, once gone getting it back will be a bad, bloody business.

Kevin

Sent: Monday, February 09, 2004 7:34 PM

Subject: Re: A right is what the majority believes it is.

>>Idealism is all well and good, but not all that useful in the real world. Words on paper don’t hold the idea – we hold it in our hearts.

And what is it we hold in our hearts if not idealism?

I understand what you are getting at, and I agree with you. But consider — Encyclopedia.com offers this introduction to its definition of natural rights:

“Natural Rights — political theory that maintains that an individual enters into society with certain basic rights and that no government can deny these rights.” http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/n1/natrlrig.asp

So you see, I really am making a pretty quibbling point. *By definition*, no government or majority of people can deny your natural rights. You still have the right to life, liberty, and happiness, after they’ve stoned you to death. Cold comfort, I know. I think this is what Heinlein was getting at, that you may *enjoy* only the rights you are willing to fight for, and strong and intelligent enough to fight for successfully. After all, he was espousing the philosophy of a country that had put that philosophy into practice, where only those who had served in the military had full rights.

There would be little need to discuss natural rights, human rights, or whatever, if there weren’t a distinct tendency by governments and various other entities to violate those rights. Yes, a majority can vote to violate your rights, just like a brutal dictator can do it on his whim, but in either case it is no less a violation of rights. So perhaps you might better say that you can only *exercise those rights* that a majority agree to.

Here, I think, is the rub: It’s well and good to say you have ‘certain basic rights’, it’s not so easy to say what those rights might be, and it is in defining our rights that all the problems arise. The old socialists argued that human rights included the right to a job, food and shelter, and medical care. Tangible things very different from ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’. You’ll note that the constitution and amendments are vague throughout about other unenumerated rights held by the states and/or the people. A good part of that was because our constitutional framers couldn’t agree on what constituted our rights. Oddly, we’ve never achieved a consensus since, nor do I expect we ever will.

So yes, pragmatically, our rights are *effectively* whatever a majority agree they are, but to put it quite this way is definitionally and philosophically awkward.

Cheers!

Swen

Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 7:53 PM

Subject: Re: A right is what the majority believes it is.

Swen:

You’re right, we’re having an argument of philosophy. Do I believe I have an inherent right to be armed? I do. Do I believe I can exercise that right if society does not hold that ideal? I do not.

The problem I’ve got with many advocates of the right to arms is that they state, forcefully, that the Second Amendment protects an ABSOLUTE right to arms, and screw anybody who thinks otherwise. I hate to tell them, though, it does NOT. A cursory study of the legal history of the Second Amendment pretty much puts paid to that argument. The Second Amendment doesn’t protect ANYTHING – only an abiding belief in the right to arms can do that, and that belief has been under attack from long before ratification of the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment has simply provided a (rather steep) speed bump to the complete denial of the right, but hardly an impregnable barrier.

So to be semantically accurate I would have to say that the right to arms is a natural right, but governments CAN AND DO DENY IT. They can only SUCCESSFULLY deny it when the majority of the population does not hold the ideal in its heart. More accurately, they can only successfully deny it to the HONEST POPULATION when they do not hold the ideal. The criminal and the anarchist will exercise the right at the risk of sanction regardless.

Kevin

Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 11:41 AM

Subject: Re: A right is what the majority believes it is.

>>So to be semantically accurate I would have to say that the right to arms is a natural right, but governments CAN AND DO DENY IT.

No. *By definition* a government can’t deny your natural rights. However, governments do frequently *violate* them, hence the term ‘human rights violation’.

>>Do I believe I have an inherent right to be armed? I do. Do I believe I can exercise that right if society does not hold that ideal? I do not.

I’d point out that throughout history there have been plenty of people who have exercised their natural rights despite prohibitions by government — passing out bibles in an Islamic country comes to mind. Those folks know it’s against the law, they know they may be caught and punished, or even killed. They also believe that they are answering to a higher authority. Likewise, I suspect there are a lot of folks in places like NYC who exercise their 2nd amendment right and their basic right to self-defense despite their society’s denial of that ideal. They know they may be caught and punished, but perhaps their fear of criminals exceeds their fear of the law and they’ve made a simple, pragmatic decision.

Philosophically, I think you either believe you are ‘endowed by your creator with certain unalienable rights’ or you don’t. If you do believe you have rights that have come from some *higher source* [and it doesn’t have to be religious], how could you possibly argue that those rights should be submitted to the review of the unwashed masses? How could you even much care what society thinks? Is it *safe* to ignore society and follow your conscience? Of course not, never has been. But let’s not forget the old rub about trading freedom for safety — you will have neither.

I think I agree that there is no such thing as an absolute right. The right to bear arms should not give you the right to threaten or injure innocent people with them, any more than the right to free speech extends to shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. [I would argue that the right to bear arms doesn’t give you the right to run around like a lunatic playing vigilante either, an activity that seems to draw a lot of applause in some circles.] Bottom line, sometimes it comes down to whether you should follow your own conscience and common sense, or obey a law you know is foolishly, even dangerously wrong.

As in all things, we make our choices and we take our lumps.

Cheers!

Swen

Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 6:55 PM

Subject: Re: A right is what the majority believes it is.

Swen:

Oy, semantics.

Denial vs. violation of natural rights: Um, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, being the portion of the government responsible for ensuring the legal protection of my right to arms, denies that I have one. However, to date the actual violations of my right have been relatively minor. (I live in Arizona, thankfully.)

Exercise of right: Pardon me if I was unclear. Do I believe I can FREELY exercise my right if society does not hold it dear? No, I do not. I exercise it at the risk of prosecution, persecution, or worse, or I don’t exercise it at all.

Do I believe that I have an inherent right to arms? Indeed I do. “(H)ow could (I) possibly argue that those rights should be submitted to the review of the unwashed masses?” I’m not arguing that they SHOULD, I’m arguing that they ARE. Fait accompli. I don’t have a choice in the matter, being but one voice among the “unwashed masses” that have decided that the right I believe in really isn’t what I believe it is. Since the government that supposedly represents them has accepted (or imposed) that view regardless of the written guarantee, and that government has the overwhelming firepower to carry out whatever it wishes (see Waco, TX) then I have but four choices: Follow the law even though I disagree with it; violate the law, but keep a low profile and hope for the best; violate the law openly (ride in the front of the bus) and risk certain incarceration; or violate the law violently and die for my beliefs.

Given those four choices, I VERY MUCH care what the public believes, as I like not being dead or incarcerated.

My remaining options, then are either to live with the status quo, which is ever-dwindling individual rights or to be an activist to try to affect the beliefs of the “unwashed masses” and their representatives in government in order to change the direction we are traveling. I choose option B. I’m not “trading freedom for safety,” I’m retaining my freedom so that I can work to recover the ability to freely exercise my inherent rights. The point may come where I decide to choose to violate the law and take my chances, or even violate the law and die for my beliefs, but I am not at either of those points – yet.

Is this helpful?

Kevin

Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 10:53 PM

Subject: Re: A right is what the majority believes it is.

Sigh.

I concluded my first email to you: “So yes, pragmatically, our rights are *effectively* whatever a majority agree they are, but to put it quite this way is definitionally and philosophically awkward.”

That, and only that was my disagreement with your original post and I believe I said from the first that it was only a minor quibble.

Cheers

Swen

Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 6:18 AM

Subject: Re: A right is what the majority believes it is.

Swen:

Yeah, but arguing about it is SO entertaining, isn’t it? 🙂

Look, my entire point is that if we don’t AS A GROUP recognize the reality that we live in a pragmatic world, our view will end up marginalized (as it is most definitely becoming.) That’s the reason I wrote that piece – as a wake-up call. Words have meaning, but as our exchange illustrates, unless we all agree on the meanings, any conversation we have will be useless. That’s why discussing things with a gun-control proponent is so difficult. We use the same words, but they don’t mean the same thing. And in my not-so-humble opinion, they understand that and use it on purpose to achieve their goals. That’s why they’ve dropped “gun CONTROL” and switched to “gun SAFETY”. But both terms, in their lexicon, mean “gun ELIMINATION.”

The problem is there’s not just two groups, us and them. There’s three: us, them, and the majority of the pragmatic population that lives somewhere in between. We’ve got to reach those pragmatists, and spouting idealism – regardless of which side you’re on – tends to chase them away. Our side is big on idealism. The gun control groups have learned that pragmatism works. Scare ’em with “assault weapons,” “plastic guns,” “cop-killer bullets,” etc, etc. Doesn’t matter whether anything they say is factually accurate, they just have to convince those in the middle that it’s a pragmatic thing to do to eliminate the perceived threat.

Anyway, it’s been interesting.

Kevin

Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 8:12 AM

Subject: Re: A right is what the majority believes it is.

>>Look, my entire point is that if we don’t AS A GROUP recognize the reality that we live in a pragmatic world, our view will end up marginalized (as it is most definitely becoming.)

Absolutely. Can’t eat all those principles and ideals. [A gripe I have with big ‘L’ Libertarians. Abolish the IRS indeed.] Although the bottom line I tend to draw is that some things are simply sacred and not to be trifled with — like the Bill of Rights. That, I’ll admit, is rooted in my gut, not my head. It’s my gut feeling that you’ve got to take a stand on something, so it might as well be on principle. *However*, you are absolutely right. Principles are very personal and emotional things, and it’s about impossible to get everyone together on what our principles should be. [Or even how we should verbally express them. Gad! Do you suppose the awkward construction of the 2nd amendment was due to similar problems? I bet it was.] Therefore, I’ll argue that while we should always be guided by principle, we must act pragmatically.

From a pragmatic point of view though, with the proliferation of ‘shall issue’ CCWs and even the recent jaw-dropping proposal of Vermont-style carry in Colorado, I’m surprised you’d suggest that we’re becoming more marginalized. It would appear to me that, shall we say, ‘pragmatic gun rights’* have been on the ascent since CCW passed in Florida [well, okay, there was the little Brady mess in there], and 9/11 has given us an immense boost, sending a wake-up to a lot of people who thought the government could protect us.

*Here I should point out that while pragmatically, CCWs are a great advance in exercising our freedom, idealistically, licensing a natural right is an atrocious idea. For that reason, I’m mightily heartened by the new initiative in Colorado. One might even suggest that, by giving in a little on our ideals, in the form of CCW licensing, we’ve gotten a foot in the door to get back to a more ideal situation vis bearing arms. Give up a little in the short term to gain a lot more in the long. As you note, given the incrementalism gun banners are so fond of, I personally never would have believed I’d see the day when our congress critters would stand up in a state legislature and legitimately argue that the people should be able to bear arms. !What a concept!

Colorado’s new initiative is, I think, a shining example of why it is better not to be too rigidly absolutist and idealistic. In the give and take of politics it is difficult to get anywhere if you won’t compromise at all. Unfortunately, the record from the ’60s, when GCA ’68 was passed, to ’80s, when we started making gains again in places like Florida, has been that any compromise on our part meant all give for us and all get for the gun controllers. That, I think, is what makes so many, including myself, so absolutist and unwilling to compromise.

Of course, whether one is willing to compromise depends a good deal on which direction we’re moving. When it was ‘Oh, it’s a perfectly reasonable bit of gun control, give a little will ya?’ Compromise started to sound like a dirty word. But now that it’s ‘The Brady Bill was a useless bit of tomfoolery, give us back that little bit’ — when *we* gain by the compromise, which we seem to be doing on occasion now — it becomes a whole lot easier.

Bottom line, we’ve got a long way to go, but I think we’re making progress on a number of fronts.

Cheers!

Swen

Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 8:12 PM

Subject: Re: A right is what the majority believes it is.

Swen:

Y’know, we should have blogged this.

And I’ll retract that “more marginalized” comment. That was true without question up until, possibly, Florida’s passage of CCW. There are signs that the pendulum may be starting a backward swing, but I’m going to remain vigilant.

Kevin

So, your thoughts?

I Want a BUNCH of THESE!

Do you work at a place that has those “motivational posters” on the walls? You know, beautiful cibachrome shots of gorgeous scenery with an inspirational message at the bottom like this one on leadership?

The caption says something like “Until you spread your wings, you have no idea how far you can fly.”

I find these things annoying.

Apparently someone else does too, and in an excellent example of free market acumen, he has started a business to address (and create!) that market. The business is Despair.com and it produces DEmotivational posters, “Demotivators,” most of which are absolutely hilarious. Here are a few of my favorites:

Also true for “Government Regulators”

So absolutely true, especially to those of us in highly technical fields.

and

I would like very much to sneak a bunch of these professionally framed posters into some of the major corporation offices I have been in and replace the annoying ones with these just to see how long it would take somebody in management to notice.

Anyway, you can see the entire catalog here, so go and peruse. But put a towel over your keyboard. There are some funnier than these.

SMILE! You’re on Candid Camera! (Don’t You Feel Safer?)

This is one of the most disturbing trends that I’ve seen building over the last few years – more and more cameras being used by governments to observe the people they supposedly work for. These cameras take two forms: closed circuit TV where a few officials sit in some dark room and observe banks of monitors (or videotapes run for later review); and unattended cameras such as those used in speed traps which are checked periodically and used as revenue-gathering devices. In each case the cameras are installed with the promise of increasing “public safety,” yet the facts are that they do no such thing. I touched on this topic very briefly in “England Slides Further Toward Bondage” back in November, but I want to expand on this topic now because it was a closed-circuit TV camera that caught footage of the abduction of Carlie Brucia and led to the capture of her killer. But it’s hardly all up-sided.

I came across this Christian Science Monitor article in a link at FuturePundit that claims Britain has one (government run) CCTV camera for each 14 inhabitants, yet the evidence is that such surveillance only makes people think they’re safer. Read the entire FuturePundit piece, as Randall Parker goes into more detail concerning the effectiveness of these systems than I am going to. Go ahead, I’ll wait….

Finished? Good. Then I discovered that new blogger Gunner, proprietor of No Quarters, also had something to say on the topic (scroll down to “Burn Baby, Burn”). He links to two groups who are resisting the other kind of cameras, the ones used as revenue devices, and news stories of these cameras destroyed by “resisters.”

Finally, there’s a post by the Geekwitha.45 on just one example of the idiocy of CCTV’s as a deterrent. His take on the subject has more to do with the death of jury nullification, but in “This is what happens…”, he tells the story of one Richard Albert who had the temerity to drive around the gate at a closed U.S./Canadian border station so he could go to his chosen church on Sundays. He faces a $5,000 fine for that.

As the Geek put it:

Since the gate is “duck aroundable”, the border station is pretty useless, isn’t it? But no, they installed cameras, and started taking pictures and handing out $5000 dollar fines to residents.

ANGER.

What extreme bullshit. Harrassing the local residents with revenue collection activities has absolutely nothing to do with serving the principles of securing our borders.

Not. A. Damned. Thing.

And the cameras?

Absofuckinglutely Pointless.

Any Al-Q agent who slipped through would be long, long gone, hidden in Boston or NYC within the next 10 hours, and whatever car they drove will have been ditched along the way.

Well, yes.

But don’t you feel safer? And isn’t that what matters?

In Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother put a camera in every room of your home. You never knew if you were being observed, but you knew you could be. In England today, they haven’t gotten to that point, but a ratio of one camera per 14 citizens subjects is, to me at least, disturbing. According to this USAToday piece:

If you live in London, you can’t get through a typical day without being captured on tape at least eight times – and possibly as many as 300.

and

“What you’re looking at in Britain, with saturation CCTV coverage in every nook and cranny of the country, is what you’ll be seeing all over the United States in the next 5 years.”

So sayeth Simon Davies, head of Privacy International, which predicts 6 million CCTV cameras in the U.S. in five to seven years.

The Christian Science Monitor piece points to two incidents where CCTV was used to apprehend violent criminals, one in which a “knife wielding assailant” was captured shortly after his crime was taped for posterity, and another more heinous crime in which 2-year old Jamie Bulger was abducted and murdered by two other children.

But here’s the difference: In the case of both Jamie Bulger and Carlie Brucia, the cameras that captured the footage were not run by any government agency. They were owned by the businesses at which the children were abducted. In none of these cases were these crimes prevented by the presence of cameras, though it is true that the cameras made it far easier to identify and capture the criminals. In the case of privately owned surveillance equipment, the implementation of these cameras is restricted by privacy laws, and the information they gather is not the property of any government body. If there is a crime, then the information can be freely given to the appropriate government agency, or that agency can attempt to get it through legal subpoena, but when the government owns and installs the cameras then they have little incentive to follow the requisite laws. For example, the CSM piece notes:

(S)erious question marks hang over the technology and its dark Orwellian implications. Many cameras are hidden or not signposted, in breach of regulations. Several cases of abuse have been documented, raising fears of snooping or worse.

According to this ACLU piece:

Surveillance systems present law enforcement “bad apples” with a tempting opportunity for criminal misuse. In 1997, for example, a top-ranking police official in Washington, DC was caught using police databases to gather information on patrons of a gay club. By looking up the license plate numbers of cars parked at the club and researching the backgrounds of the vehicles’ owners, he tried to blackmail patrons who were married.

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Powerful surveillance tools also create temptations to abuse them for personal purposes. An investigation by the Detroit Free Press, for example, showed that a database available to Michigan law enforcement was used by officers to help their friends or themselves stalk women, threaten motorists after traffic altercations, and track estranged spouses.

And I should be surprised… why?

The proliferation of closed-circuit TV and traffic camera systems is a given, since very few people appreciate or even consider the downsides. I have no answers for you here, though I’m quite enthusiastic about the vandalism civil disobedience idea (not that I’d ever do anything illegal, you understand.) The idea that surveillance and recognition systems might someday become as ubiquitous as illustrated in Spielberg’s film Minority Report bothers the hell out of me. I can think of nothing to add to FuturePundit’s concluding paragraph:

There is a limit to what technology can do to counteract the decay of a culture that has lost belief in the right of law-abiding people to defend themselves. One of the hardest problems when trying to guess about the future is that there is no way of knowing whether any given culture will partially or totally decay and become very degenerate. More generally, what technology can make possible is a far larger set of possibilities than what people will choose to do with it.

What do you think?

THIS is Why I Have Always Lived in the South

And why I now live in Arizona.

I do feel sorry for you guys.

It’s Beginning to get Interesting

The discussion over at The Fabulous Baker Boys is starting to ramp up. We’re up to about ten posts now, and we’re discussing specific issues. Give it a read.

If you haven’t been there before, start here.