Honestly I have reported more than a few posts that rant about hang ing all gun owners. Or that gun owners need to be killed and have their firearms taken by force. etc... Facebook refuses to see that as hate speech but it clearly should be. Its also potentially inciting violence against a group of people whose majority is law abiding. I have also reported posts that are even more inflammatory and discriminating against a lot of different groups especially the NRA but others as well. FB has given me responses each time that its not hate speech and that if I don't want to see it then I should just hide it. Yet if I were to post a rant about killing anti-gun people it would be pulled nearly instantly for inciting violence etc. Their algorithm is heavily skewed. I think this more than anything is what Cruz was trying to get at. That the bias of what is allowed leans heavily to liberal view points but is exceedingly heavy handed on conservative viewpoints.
Umm the Speech or Debate Clause(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_or_Debate_Clause) means that a congress person as long as they are on the floor of either the senate or the house cannot be charged with a crime for reading something into record.
Any member of Congress who shares information with the public from a Wednesday briefing could be prosecuted for a crime.
I posted a quick thought about this on twitter and thought I should come here and say a little more.
1) I agree that taking a photo of a license plate should not be wrong and that as a publicly visible thing I have no expectation of privacy.
2) License plate readers are a great tool for Law Enforcement purposes... While driving down the road they don't need to be trying to type in a license plate of a vehicle near them. (Something that officers do a lot... The number of Felony warrants on vehicles is amazing)
3) I also believe that the issue is not really with photographing the plate. It is in creating a database of those images with location data, frequency etc that is the root of the issue, and where the privacy violations occur. To combat this privacy issue I think that there should be legislation that should allow the database to tally the number of plate hits but no additional information about the plate. And that way the ALPR systems are doing their original job of making the officer safer in his job and making as small of a privacy issue as possible.
Will the above solution ever occur? I highly doubt it and if it did I guarantee that the private companies providing the ALPR services would fight tooth and nail to keep the status quo.
Dallas did an upgrade in 2007 that led to a lot of issues. Including no vehicle or suspect data or delays in receiving it.
On one occasion as a rookie, less than a week out of the academy. At the beginning of a 10 hour shift I pulled over a car for running a stop sign. The computers yielded no information for the car or the driver. So, I wrote him a citation for running the stop sign and sent him on his way. About 8 hours into my shift, the servers crashed and had to be reset, they were back in a couple of minutes and officers were inundated with all the data requests they had made that day. The very first piece of data that I had requested was that car and its driver... Felony warrant out of DALLAS for Aggravated Assault on a Police officer... I had done a standard traffic stop on a guy that had a pretty good record of assaulting a police officer, thankfully I was not added to the list but it still causes me nightmares thinking about it.
If the new system they have is anything like the last upgrade it will be at least 2 months before officers can even trust the computer to give them accurate information. Or to actually be able to file reports using it an not just writing them by hand to be entered at a later date.
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(untitled comment)
I have also reported posts that are even more inflammatory and discriminating against a lot of different groups especially the NRA but others as well. FB has given me responses each time that its not hate speech and that if I don't want to see it then I should just hide it. Yet if I were to post a rant about killing anti-gun people it would be pulled nearly instantly for inciting violence etc. Their algorithm is heavily skewed. I think this more than anything is what Cruz was trying to get at. That the bias of what is allowed leans heavily to liberal view points but is exceedingly heavy handed on conservative viewpoints.
Re: FUD ignores the Speech and Debate Clause
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_or_Debate_Clause
Re: FUD ignores the Speech and Debate Clause
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_or_Debate_Clause
Re:
The above cannot be enforced...
(untitled comment)
1) I agree that taking a photo of a license plate should not be wrong and that as a publicly visible thing I have no expectation of privacy.
2) License plate readers are a great tool for Law Enforcement purposes... While driving down the road they don't need to be trying to type in a license plate of a vehicle near them. (Something that officers do a lot... The number of Felony warrants on vehicles is amazing)
3) I also believe that the issue is not really with photographing the plate. It is in creating a database of those images with location data, frequency etc that is the root of the issue, and where the privacy violations occur. To combat this privacy issue I think that there should be legislation that should allow the database to tally the number of plate hits but no additional information about the plate. And that way the ALPR systems are doing their original job of making the officer safer in his job and making as small of a privacy issue as possible.
Will the above solution ever occur? I highly doubt it and if it did I guarantee that the private companies providing the ALPR services would fight tooth and nail to keep the status quo.
Not the first CAD issue
On one occasion as a rookie, less than a week out of the academy. At the beginning of a 10 hour shift I pulled over a car for running a stop sign. The computers yielded no information for the car or the driver. So, I wrote him a citation for running the stop sign and sent him on his way. About 8 hours into my shift, the servers crashed and had to be reset, they were back in a couple of minutes and officers were inundated with all the data requests they had made that day. The very first piece of data that I had requested was that car and its driver... Felony warrant out of DALLAS for Aggravated Assault on a Police officer... I had done a standard traffic stop on a guy that had a pretty good record of assaulting a police officer, thankfully I was not added to the list but it still causes me nightmares thinking about it.
If the new system they have is anything like the last upgrade it will be at least 2 months before officers can even trust the computer to give them accurate information. Or to actually be able to file reports using it an not just writing them by hand to be entered at a later date.
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