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Comment by snickerbockers | Hacker News Reader

So I definitely agree it's a positive development that these cameras are being taken down because they're absolutely orwellian, but I really don't understand why "the line" is being drawn at immigration enforcement? Were people really okay with this until the point where they found out that illegal immigrants can be tracked by the surveillance state too?

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This isn't the "people" waking up and not being okay with this, it is one governmental power (the state) realizing that its own power to manage its citizens (the residents of WA) and its sovereignty is being threatened by another power (the fed) in a new way. The system the state previously used to enforce its own power over its constituents is now helping the competing power to have more power over those constituents outside of cooperation with the state power, so they are removing it. There is no sudden awakening of citizen consciousness here. Many of the actions emerging around ICE stuff are about states trying to combat overreaching federal power.

People were okay with it when they assumed, I think naively, that only guilty people had anything to hide.

Now that we've got someone willing to throw all rules and morals to the wayside in charge, they've understandably begun to reassess.

Sure wish Americans could understand the issues before they happen. Not after it's too late.

Stupidity is not exclusive to Americans. It's something that unites all of mankind.

I'd like to say that the people who championed them realized that if fedcops can basically arrest their landscaper over what amounts to a civil infraction then it has implications for them. Unfortunately I don't think the people who championed the cameras in the first place have that kind of self awareness and what we're seeing is instead the typically silent majority saying "no, I akshually agree with the privacy people those are bad".

I'd have no problems enforcing laws about illegal immigrants if they actually bothered to check and not just deport random brown people even if they're citizens.

Masked ICE thugs have been abducting citizens, and refusing their victims their due process. Stop acting like you're still ignorant about that.

> Stop acting like you're still ignorant about that.

We've asked you multiple times recently to not post in the flamewar style on HN. It's not what HN is for, and eventually we have to ban accounts that keep doing it.

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