How Does Government Score You?
Jan 11, 2016 Tyranny
The advances in technology over the years have made it much easier for the government to spy on its citizens. We know the NSA does it at the direction of the politicians in DC. We know local governments do it with equipment given to them by the federal agencies and we know they sign nondisclosure agreements to use the stuff.
We also know the government tracks cell phones and scoops up a lot of cell phone calls and it uses license plate readers to compile a lot of information disguised as a looking for bad guys mission.
These things would appear to violate our rights. We are supposed to be free people and the government does not belong sticking its nose in our business. Unless we do something wrong and are caught as a result of doing it (as opposed to being caught through illegal surveillance) we should be left alone
Now government has taken its intrusion to a new level. The police department in Fresno California uses a system that compiles a profile on people based on a number of things including criminal record, property records, and social media posts. The person is then given a score that tells the officer if you are not considered a threat, are a possible threat or are definitely a threat (those are my descriptions. The system calls you red, yellow, or green).
This has disaster written all over it. The company that developed this is the only entity that knows how it works so there is no telling how the score is derived or if there are errors in the design. How long will it be before a person’s residence returns a score that is red and officers arriving treat it as such and end up killing someone who is only watering his lawn in violation of the water ban?
I want to make it clear that I do not think the police should be using this kind of system to classify citizens and make decisions based on that. It is a violation of our privacy and it allows government to profile us according to criteria it wants. Some anti-gun moron could easily have the software provider code the system so that all gun owners are deemed a threat. It is just too open to abuse.
Now the police, well they say this is a must have. They need it to solve crimes and to serve the public. It is a “vital tool” that they need to make us safe.
Everything they need is a vital tool. We have to arm them with military gear because it is vital. We have to give them drones because it is vital. We have to give them the ability to scoop up all our cell phone calls because it is vital. Then when they abuse drones, act like they are attacking an enemy or abuse the phone information to solve crimes that were not part of the intended target we are told that if we are doing nothing wrong we should not have anything to worry about.
What is vital is the privacy, freedom and security of the people. There can be no justification for this. If you feel that the people need to give up some of their rights for security then you are sadly mistaken.
This is from the article:
In promotional materials, Intrado writes that Beware could reveal that the resident of a particular address was a war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, had criminal convictions for assault and had posted worrisome messages about his battle experiences on social media. Washington Post
How did it get all of this information? How does it know the person is a veteran and has PTSD? Did it pick up random posts from social media or is the federal government (the VA) feeding information into this thing?
This is supposed to make the reader believe that it helps the officer responding because it lets him know of the potential danger.
Does the system also score officers and look over how many complaints have been filed, how many reprimands he has gotten, how many shooting incidents, any off duty trouble, memberships in organizations, etc.? It would be helpful if the system scored the cop and called the person at the home to warn him that the cop responding has an itchy trigger finger and might blast away.
These kinds of things will eventually lead to problems (of course then the problem needs more training, more money and more surveillance) and the ones who get screwed are the citizens. Some cop will blast the veteran described above because he had the remote to the TV in his hand when he answered the door and the apologists will come out in full force, say there was a mistake, the officer feared for his life, good kill, go home nothing to see here.
Maybe if he did not have his head filled with information from Beware he might not have had a preconceived notion and he would not have been in fear for his life over a remote control.
What next America? Will we require every person who goes to a medical facility of any kind to be tested for AIDS to keep health care providers safe?
No, wait, we expect them to exercise caution with every patient.
Maybe the police Community could try that.
Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Tags: beware, government surveillance, lies, police, scoring, veterans, vital
Baltimore City Alone Should Pay For This
May 27, 2015 Commentary, Political
Baltimore City is a liberal haven and has been run by those very liberals for generations. The result is an uneducated population that lives off taxpayers. The city is in decline and has been for decades as liberal leaders continue to push policies that enslave people to government. The goal of decades of neglect is to enslave people to the liberal plantation and ensure those downtrodden people continue to vote Democrat.
You might have heard that recently the city suffered a lot of damage because of riots. A bunch of thugs rioted and destroyed property. The cost is placed at $20 MILLION.
The cost includes overtime for police and firefighters as well as money owed to jurisdictions that came to help the city. It also includes the cost of damage to city owned property. It appears as if this dollar figure does not include the damage to private property which is in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
The expenses the city owes will go before the board of estimates today so they can approve the money to pay the bills.
Where will the money come from? It is highly unlikely that any of the people who destroyed so much are taxpayers so it will not come out of their pockets. It is unlikely that the rioters have anything of value that can be confiscated to pay for their destruction. The reality is this money will have to come from the taxpayer or by cutting from other budgeted items or from a combination of the two.
This money MUST not come from the taxpayers in the state that do NOT live in Baltimore. I know Baltimore will appeal with hat in hand asking for money from the state to pay for this but it is not the responsibility of the taxpayers outside of the city to pay for this mess.
I recommend budget cuts to the City Attorney’s office and I recommend that the welfare money be redirected to pay for the damage.
Make the people who did this suffer for it.
Hell, maybe they can do what they did to fund the stadiums and make a few scratch lottery games to pay for it. At least people could decide to participate, or not and they would have a chance of winning some money.
I imagine the city will raise parking fees for stadium events and other events that take place in the city. It will probably tack on some kind of tax to event tickets and to hotel rooms and parking garages in order to pay for the mess that took place because the city has leaders who allowed the destruction to happen.
Liberalism exists to allow things to happen so long as someone else pays the bill.
If the people of Maryland who do not live in Baltimore get socked with this bill they should show up in the city with bulldozers and level the place and then stake a claim to the property they bought.
Screw Baltimore and screw the politicians there who have allowed a once great city to become a skeletal ruin of decaying structures and dependent people who have no respect or life or property.
Let them all suffer.
As an aside, they all wanted the police out of their lives. Now that the police are not, shall we say, being aggressive in their duties the city is rapidly falling [farther] into anarchy with multiple shootings and murders.
You got what you wanted now shut up and enjoy it.
Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Tags: anarchy, baltimore city, cost, liberalism, police, riots, taxpayer, thugs
Freddie Grey Was No Hero
May 5, 2015 Law Enforcement, Political
Let me start off by saying that Freddie Gray should not have died in custody. Even if he hurt himself in that van he was able to do so because he was not belted in. If he had been belted in then he probably could not have hurt himself (if that is what happened). No matter what, he should still be alive.
However he is no hero. The people in Baltimore and around the nation who are (still happening in some places) rioting, protesting and attacking police officers are acting as if Freddie Gray was some sort of hero. He was a drug dealer/user with a long arrest record. He should not have died but he is no hero.
[note]Baltimore, and likely many other places, will have more civil unrest when some or all of the police officers are found not guilty of the most serious, and maybe all, of the charges.[/note]
The community and its so called leaders from Mayor Blake to the race hustler Al Sharpton are all praising Freddie as if he cured cancer.
The cold hard facts about him are that he was a criminal and he ran afoul of the law a lot. PERIOD.
Once again, that does not mean he should have died while in custody. It is likely that he died as a result of his own actions (unless they can prove the driver deliberately gave him a rough ride) and while the police are complicit in his death (they should have buckled him in) they did not set out to murder the man or to do him lethal harm.
Freddie is the result of liberal policies that suck the soul out of people and drain them of their will to live and thrive. The reactions to his death in the violence (not the legal and peaceful protests) perpetrated by thugs is also a result of those same liberal policies.
While I think the police need to be held accountable (in all of their duties) I do not think that holding Gray as an angelic figure to unite around does anyone any good.
Given his lifestyle of drug dealing and use it is likely he would have ended up as a statistic sometime in the future and you can bet your bottom dollar that the city would not be holding him in high regard in that case.
If people want to change the animosity between them and the police they need to ensure they are in the right and fight the police in the legal system. Police officers who are alleged to have done wrong need to be investigated by independent agencies and if found in the wrong, held accountable.
Allowing them to investigate themselves makes no more sense than allowing the people they arrest to conduct their own trials and determine their own outcomes.
What happened in Baltimore is a shame and reflects the unease people have with an increasingly militarized police force that is often not held accountable for misdeeds particularly when coupled with an environment of failure that has been built by decades of liberal policies of dependence and victim hood.
We need police reform and we need reform in the liberal run cities.
But holding Gray up as the model for that reform makes no sense at all.
Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Tags: greddie gray, liberal policies, lies, police, riots, thugs, wrong doing
The Cost Of The Damage Is Higher Than Their Bail
Apr 30, 2015 Law Enforcement, Political
By now most of the people in the US know what is going on in Baltimore. The people who have been raised to be victims who are entitled to everything are upset because a black man named Freddie Gray died while in police custody. There is an investigation into the death but there are no results yet*.
On Saturday people were peacefully protesting the death when civil unrest and violence took hold of the crowd and the police had to step in. On Monday high school students initiated a purge and that purge ended up in a riot. Cars and buildings were burned and businesses ransacked and looted. The police were attacked by people who threw rocks and bricks at them.
The police did not clamp down on the rioters. They watched as the city burned and it has been reported that this was on orders from the mayor. Eventually the National Guard was activated and a curfew instituted. Things have been much quieter since then but there are rallies scheduled for this weekend so there is no telling how peaceful things will be.
It is also possible that the findings will show the police were not responsible for Gray’s death. If that is announced I suspect the city will light up again.
[note]Protestors say Gray deserved due process and did not get it. These same people have already convicted the police without due process. If the cops are responsible they should be dealt with harshly. Unfortunately, they might never get due process. Public pressure might land them in jail even if they did nothing wrong.[/note]
Over 200 people have been arrested for their participation in the destruction and violence. Their legal system is working to get them processed but the state of emergency and numbers of people is making it difficult for rapid processing so many are being held longer than the 24 hours allowed.
Attorneys for those who have been arrested are complaining that their clients have excessive bail and are unable to get out of jail. Those attorneys were pushing for bail amounts of $25,000 but the judges have been putting those bonds at $100,000 and $500 of it must be cash.
It appears as if many of them can’t come up with bail and might well spend months in jail awaiting trial for their crimes.
I find it hard to have sympathy for people who have high bond amounts when they caused millions of dollars in damage and are costing the city and state millions in resources. If they can’t afford the bail then they can sit in jail until their trial dates. That will at least keep them off the streets and prevent them from causing more mayhem.
Perhaps they should have thought about the consequences of their actions before they broke the law. If they did not want to worry about bail money they should have stayed home instead of committing crimes.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. The police have thousands of images of people breaking the law. They have license plate number and photos of people looting. They will eventually hunt those people down and arrest them. There will be a heck of a lot more people with high bail amounts before this is all over.
I don’t blame the judge or the legal system for imposing high bonds on people who had no regard for property or the lives of the people in their city.
Jail is where they need to be to keep them off the street.
*(Just released) Preliminary Results indicate he broke his neck in the police van during his arrest.
Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Tags: arrests, bail, baltimore, crimes, freddie gray, police, riots
Black Lies Matter
Apr 27, 2015 Political
A man named Freddie Gray died while in the custody of the Baltimore City Police. Gray has a long record mostly for drug distribution and is likely not a good guy so the portrait of a great guy (a lie) is way over the top BUT he should not have died while in custody. Initial reports are that he suffered a spinal injury while in the custody of police and his requests for medical assistance fell on deaf ears.
No matter why he was arrested or what his history was he deserved better treatment and I hope this will all become clear after it is investigated. I say I hope because the police are conducting the investigation and that casts doubt on the integrity of the process. Officers are rarely found in the wrong when investigated by their own departments.
There are a lot of people in Baltimore who are upset about this and a large number of them decided to protest. I have no issue with peaceful protests. The act of protesting PEACEFULLY is part of what makes America great. The problems come when those protests end up interfering with the lives of other people or turn into riots.
It is great to protest but to block traffic and shut down businesses is interfering with the rights of others to move about unhampered and free of harassment.
When the protests turn to riots people get hurt and property gets damaged. The legal peaceful protest turns into an illegal act.
On Saturday night in Baltimore the protest turned into a riot as unlawful people began breaking windows of businesses, looting said businesses, damaging vehicles and attacking the public and the police.
People attending the Orioles game were not allowed to leave the stadium for a while because of the riots (this possibly unlawful detention is a subject that could have its own discussion). Perhaps the 30,000 or so people should have been unleashed on the rioters…
In any event, the Mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, proved she is a lightweight who is unable to lead. On top of that, she and Elijah Cummings lied about the nature of the violence.
The mayor and Representative Cummings both stated that the riots were the result of outside agitators and that most of the people involved were not from Baltimore.
[note]Al Shaprton, an outside agitator if ever there was one, will be going to Baltimore to get involved. You can bet that SRB and Cummings will welcome him and never think to blame any unrest on him.[/note]
First of all, how can they tell just by looking at the people? How did SRB and Cummings determine that these folks causing and participating in the riots were NOT from Baltimore?
The police arrest reports seem to paint another picture. Nearly all of those arrested for rioting were from Baltimore.
I am sure there were outside players who incited people but they are only part the reason for the riots. Those who participated were the major reason and most of them were from the city.
This lie is to paint a picture of a competent leader who has her finger on the pulse of the city and to keep people from drawing the conclusion that this all took place because of liberal rule, liberal policies and the liberal victim mindset.
SRB indicated that she told the police to protect the protestors and give them space. Fair enough. We can’t have them getting hit by cars or being attacked for peacefully protesting. But the dimwit also told police to give the rioters space to break things.
Many businesses were damaged and people were hurt. Property insurance usually has a clause that excludes damage from civil unrest. Will Baltimore write checks to the owners who lost property? Will the city pay for the damage it allowed to happen?
The police have some explaining to do with regard to how Gray ended up dead while under their control but they showed a lot of restraint during the rioting. Perhaps it is because they were following SRB’s orders but they showed restraint under very dangerous circumstances. A lot more people could have ended up hurt or dead if the police had been more aggressive (not that hurting rioters would be a bad thing).
The lack of spine SRB has and the lack of leadership during the outbreak of lawlessness will embolden those who wish to participate in more illegal and dangerous acts. Right now the police are on alert because rival gangs have banned together to stop killing each other and start killing police officers.
This is what happens in liberal run cities where people are lied to each and every day. They are held down by liberals and told they are victims. The people grown up with no desire to achieve and a belief that they are victims who can only be protected by the government.
The race hustlers and liberals like SRB and Cummings push that narrative and their lies have devastating consequences.
Yes, these black lies matter…
Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Tags: Al Sharpton, baltimore, cop deaths, death, elijah cummings, freddie gray, lies, police, protests, riots, stephanie rawlings blake