Comment by ruszki
9 hours ago
> They aren't doing this for anyone's safety.
Strictly speaking, this is not completely true. When you call an emergency number, it’s very good that they can see exactly where you are. That was how this was sold 15+ years ago. But of course, that’s basically the only use case when this should be available.
Yet when I call emergency I must provide my location verbally, and then am usually contacted for a follow-up, because the guys cannot find the place. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that this location technology works perfectly well: just not for the "only use case when this should be available".
It is also useful for emergency services to double check you know the situation at hand and to cooperate with verification SOPs.
Except apparently they can't. I'm in L.A., a city where resources presumably represent what's available in modern cities, and the first thing I've been asked in any 911 call is "what's your location?"
This is particularly offensive considering that everyone was forced to replace his phone in the early 2000s to comply with "E-911." Verizon refused to let me activate a StarTAC I bought to replace my original, months before this mandate actually took effect.
Looking back on it, it was a perfect scam: Congress got paid off to throw a huge bone to everyone except the consumers. We were all forced to buy new phones, and for millions of people that meant renewing service contracts. Telcos win. Phone manufacturers win. Consumers lose.
Should it not be available with a valid court order as well?
Slavery also took advantage of valid court orders. “Because it’s the law” is not enough. Our rights should always be the biased stance.
Doubly so when the "law" is oligarchs and Ice.
Why? What is the rationale? Unless of course you subscribe to the idea that anything goes as long as a court decrees it, in which case there’s nothing to debate really.
Court approved warrants are pretty fundamental to how our legal system works and how some level of accountability is maintained. That system isn't perfect by any stretch, but removing it unlocks Pandoras box and I'm not sure we'd be better off without it.
As it stands, a cop has to get a warrant to enter and search your home, for example. If we remove that hurdle because we also don't trust the courts then we just have more searches.
I get the reaction to turn on the whole system, I have very little faith in it myself. But I don't think many people are really aware of or ready for what would come without it.
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That's how courts work. They have superuser access.
A court order is just a hurdle that legislation (or a constitutional provision) dicatates, in the investigation of crime (or prevention of future crime...). The distinction is the rights of the individual vs the rights of other individuals in the dilute sense we call society.
The problem is that individuals no longer have confidence in their institutions, for both good reasons (official corruption, motivated prosecutors, the dissolution of norms of executive behaviour) and bad ones (propaganda on Fox News, and the long tail of disinformation online).
The question becomes: how can citizens have confidence their rights will be protected? What structure would protect the right to privacy?
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Im a little confused. Do you not believe there should be courts at all?
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