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They were co-operating/conspiring with CBP as an extension of the federal government.

Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense.

Don't think your company could just put up cameras and post the location of LEO and they'd let you get away with something like that.

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> Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense.

This sounds like some sort of legal procedures adopted from the USSR.

Well, you're probably right for some types of procedures.

But this type of thing (surveillance cameras) would actually fall under state security and be ordered by the Central Committee and done top down without any comments anywhere along the line (because everyone understood what was good for them).

You're probably thinking of the "we're making the wrong type of tractor ball bearings"/"we're making broken consumer radios" type of issue where yeah, they'd give you the runaround.

It isn't just USSR, it is the core Russian principle of "oprichnina" - you can violate any laws, human or God's, as long as you're serving the tzar, Secretary General or President Putin. We start to see a hint of it here with ICE, and i'm sure we'll see a bit more of it with the newly formed Domestic Terrorism Task Force.

> Domestic Terrorism Task Force

That is ... a surprisingly honest name for a force that'll terrorize any domestic opposition, gotta give them that at least.

It's not hard to draw potential dots:

Designate Venezuelan boats as "likely terrorists" (drug dealers). Authorize use of extrajudicial military lethal force (blow up boats with dealers aboard).

Justify the above due to "terrorism".

Designate "Antifa" as a "domestic terrorism group".

Not hard to see the next step of "deploy military force against individuals suspected of being Antifa". No need for pesky trials. They're terrorists. This is a war...

And if I'd have to wager anyone that dare speaking out would be labelled antifa, therefore a terrorist, therefore free for all from a law enforcement perspective...

Things are going downhill at an impressive pace... Not going to lie watching the Trainwreck in slow motion is entertaining in a sort of morbid way. Though I wished that it wouldn't go that way...

Send help.

Trainwreck spotting is best conducted from outside of the train.

I think that most cases of seemingly unwarranted depression and apathy in people today in fact stem from their subconscious acknowledgement of this trainwreck in progress, and failure of consciousness to accept that and/or do anything about it.

In other words, mass cognitive dissonance.

>I think that most cases of seemingly unwarranted depression and apathy in people today in fact stem from their subconscious acknowledgement of this trainwreck in progress, and failure of consciousness to accept that and/or do anything about it

I think many sense this, want to get off the train, and away from the tracks but can't figure out how to do it. To pull off it seems overwhelming.

First articulated in 2005 by scholar Alexei Yurchak to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia, hypernormalization describes life in a society where two main things are happening.

The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.

> "watching the Trainwreck in slow motion"

I only wish the train-wreck were in "slow motion" so there'd be a bit more time to take some meaningful actions as opposed to piling manufactured crises atop one another (and another, and another) in rapid succession as is currently happening.

This mode of operation is completely the reverse of my country the Netherlands.

In Dutch society it doesn't really matter who the current ruling party is the big machine keeps rolling on. The names change frequently- governments keep tumbling down- but every day like clockwork people get up in the morning, go to work and follow their programming. Prime minister A is replaced by prime minister B.

In some ways having a personality cult is less scary. You can kill a man but how do you destroy a collective?

> "In some ways having a personality cult is less scary. You can kill a man but how do you destroy a collective?"

In some ways it's far more terrifying, because of the operative word "cult" there. Sometimes the object of such a "personality cult" can attract the mindset of an actual cult to form around them and create a highly destructive and dangerous "collective". It's happened many times already throughout recorded history, and it never really seems to go all that well for anyone involved.

This is one of the exact frustrations that has led the US to our current open fascism, so try not to take your state of affairs for granted. It's much easier to resist and avoid a bureaucracy (as it mostly operates on predictable rules), than a cult of personality autocrat who chooses new targets by the week.

You sound like someone who's never experienced a personality cult.

That's actually comparing two collectives:

1. A collective where there is a belief (however slow or stodgy) in the consistent application of known rules.

2. A collective where the only real rule is to make the cult leader happy even if it means a forest of contradictions and rewriting history.

While (2) can easily change on a whim... it's not your whim.

Which leads us to the practical question: Which collective do you think you and your community could best fight against when it starts hurting you? I think a majority of the time I'd rather be opposed to (1).

> I think a majority of the time I'd rather be opposed to (1)

This sounds terrible. Any political system can be good or bad, but some of them are much more prone to autocratic drift than others. There should be absolutely no hesitation: rule of law is much better than personal dictatorship. It is not sufficient because the law can be oppressive, but it is absolutely necessary.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. The phrase "I'd rather be opposed to" refers to choosing between two mutually-exclusive scenarios where I'm tasked to confront two different kinds of opponents.

If someone says: "Between catching Tuberculosis or AIDS, I'd rather be fighting Tuberculosis", that does not mean they have a favorable opinion towards AIDS.

> It isn't just USSR, it is the core Russian principle of "oprichnina" - you can violate any laws, human or God's, as long as you're serving the tzar, Secretary General or President Putin.

“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.” — Oscar R. Benavides, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Óscar_R._Benavides

"oprichnina" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprichnina

It turns out capitalism devolves into authoritarianism too when money gets concentrated enough. Basically any extreme concentration of power (wealth concentration or Stalinism) is going to tend toward this kind of outcome.

Slight correction, capitalism has no political ideology and craves monopoly. Corporate feudalism and capitalism are totally compatible.

No need to look abroad; companies have gotten away with this kind of stuff for most of the history of the US. Union busting is a particular flashpoint for engaging in illegal activity with the blessing of the government.

A bunch of companies seem to be relying on similar federal cover. To me it seems dumb because whatever legal exposure they create will outlast the current administration. It’s impossible to predict who will be running the federal government 3 years from now, and liability does not evaporate much in that time frame.

The next administration could decide to side with localities, and assist prosecutions of the companies and executives involved. Or even pursue their own federal prosecutions.

Do you have a source for their cooperation with CBP? I think that would make this an even bigger story.

Yes the posted article

  This decision came after Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias discovered that Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a “pilot program” against state law,

Flock promises all sorts of safeguards and ethics around, y'know, the law, but the reality is their perspective is "it's not our job to tell you that you can or can't do something, even if we know for a fact that you can't".

Reminds me when I build health insurance claims management software (pre-ACA). "We want to mine the database for familial history of conditions, based on familial claims and ICD codes".

"We can't do that."

"Why not? It's all in the database."

"It is. And we are legally forbidden from running such queries."

"..."

> Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court

The keep saying this and losing in court. I don’t have much respect left for these bootlickers who won’t fight.

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