Now the TSA will have a database to use on everyone while they wait in line for a bus, train or plane.
You protested at OWS? No flying for you. Oh you false match a felon? No flying for you either.
I wonder when they will just start grabbing people left and right off the street to do iris scans like the military does to the locals in Iraq and Afghanistan.
* Even on a very good day, the government is demonstrably bad at deploying new technology, especially at scale.
* Especially when that scale involves training any personnel at all.
* Especially when people are wary of that technology anyway.
* Especially when they are deploying suspicious technology in a visible arena.
* Especially when this technology will be observing US persons.
It doesn't look like it from the outside, but there is a lot of politics and bureaucracy in deploying a system like this, not just internally, but also from places like politicians.
In my experience, people who have never been around an organization like the FBI seem to have a naive view of what is possible. My recommendation is to critically evaluate anything that anyone tells you about what goes on in such places.
The TSA is not an intelligence organization. Its job is not to secretly develop intelligence. It does not have the same problem of needing to not be accountable to the public as, say, the FBI or the NSA.
Second, that claim is a lot stronger than you're pretending it is. If you're going to throw around a term like "police state", you will need a lot more proof than hand-wavy "every day they add new stuff like this". Everything in your argument is attributable to selection bias, and if you're going to level a convincing point, you will need to do more than appeal to the fact that people seem to want to believe this stuff. TBH when you say that, it makes me wonder if you really know what a police state even is.
Third, my point is not that there is no abuse or that the government is incapable of doing bad things, it's that we should be evaluating pie-in-the-sky predictions with actual evidence. "We are becoming a police state, DUH" is not evidence. And neither is the ridiculous claim that tomorrow the OWS people will be barred from flying.
What you're describing is an invisible exercise of power. What I'm saying is, exercising power in a public fashion, particularly when such a display involves technology that people are nervous about to begin with, causes there to be more attention focused at the organization in question. Generally they avoid this because it means they have more oversight. Maybe this opens doors to things like the above, maybe it doesn't.
Anyway, that's bad form to ask. :(
Edit: Also, for those not in the know, "US Person" is a legal term that covers not just US citizens, but also legal aliens and citizens of certain countries like the UK that we hold close ties with.
It's not being used to convict people, it's used to identify a suspect who could end up being found guilty via normal procedure --but this does not bypass that procedure.
Besides, as the grandparent mentioned, the potential for abuse is too high. Especially in the hands of a government who shows clear tendencies towards a police state - which most western ones do, including the US.
So do I. Automating facial recognition seems preferable to broadcasting mugshots and perp walks. The technology already abounds in the private sector anyway; if you can take a photo with your phone and have Facebook or Picasa ID and tag the people in it, it's unrealistic to demand that law enforcement abstain from using technology available to teenagers.
>Automating facial recognition seems preferable to broadcasting mugshots and perp walks.
You might know the story of boiling a frog. The fact that you think it's fine is the worst thing about this ordeal. Next thing we know, people will be fine with a totalitarian government for the same reason.
Also, maybe we should consider finding better ways to fight crime instead of fighting criminals, which is, in the long term, pointless. I can never resist to quote Motörhead's March Or Die when it comes to this topic:
Children weep and widows wail,
Our education systems fail,
To hide our guilt we build more jails,
and we shall build still moreSometimes it does make sense to tie law enforcement's hands behind its back. But it doesn't always or even often make that kind of sense. So why exactly in this case do we want to hobble them?
I'm also not sure how much productive conversation there is to be had about what technology law enforcement should get access to when you appear to not believe in the concept of law enforcement at all.
And I am saying that instead of allowing law enforcement to use this technologies as well (because hey, everyone is using them), I'm saying we should instead limit everyone else from using it, as well. Especially big corporations like Google and Facebook.
>you appear to not believe in the concept of law enforcement at all.
I never said that. What I've been saying is that law enforcement is merely reactive. It doesn't solve problems, it merely fights the symptoms. The true problems are an entire generation of disillusioned people, a failing society reigned by corporate greed and kept in check by false hopes and dreams (yes, I'm talking about the American one). You have to fight these, not (just) the things they inevitably produce.
Yes there is; if private citizens have access routine to technology that law enforcement is barred from using, then you'll have situations where there is photographic evidence of criminality that police are unable to act on (a popular example lately: webcams on laptops being used to ID thieves). If the police can't or won't act on it, while the recognition technology is freely available to web service users, then you're quickly heading for vigilantism and a lack of confidence in law enforcement.
Vigilantism has a poor record in dispensing justice as it has no procedural safeguards or judicial review whatsoever. Historical records show that prior to the establishment of professional police forces, rates of murder and other violent crimes were considerably higher. State-run police forces are what we got after market solutions had failed.
David D Friedman has studied libertarian approaches to law enforcement in some depth, and points out various shortcomings as well as some apparent benefits: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/England_18thc./Englan...