Thursday, November 20, 2008

Survalience Security o.O

I don’t travel much but I have seen security’s invasive escalation over the last few years. In my second semester at UB I received a ticket in the mail demanding of my father: $75 or appearance in court to contest a red-light camera. My father paid the $75 but he wasn’t the one who missed the yellow light by 00.3 seconds. I was going 45 on a 35 mph road and the yellow light was just too short to stop at the speed I was going so I decelerated a little, realized I couldn’t stop by the stop line without standing on the break and just continued through the light at 37mph.


Since that day I have been a bit paranoid about yellow lights. My dad didn’t make me pay the ticket but he did have me mow the lawn every other week for 3 months. I don’t own a car; I drive my mother or father’s car to UB for all my classes depending on what is available. My dad got the ticket from that red light camera because the License plate tags are registered to him. This is a little harder to scramble than RFID but I have read stories of hoodlums stealing or rearranging license plates. I wouldn’t be happy to have some crook running red-lights with my tags and costing me $75 a piece. Obviously we would contest charges of some1 else’s ticket on our plates but it still would be a costly inconvenience.


My life lays nearly %40 in my online personas (assuming “life” to mean socialization). I know my internet activity is wide open to anyone who cares enough to check. As important as my privacy is to me I don’t really care enough to switch to things that though safer may inconvenience me. By this I suppose though given the circumstances I doubt I would have acted differently than Marcus but I currently am in a state to sympathize with Marcus father or the average citizen. I have nothing to hide so why should I care if they watch me? Well that’s a mentality I might hold to but I have been hurt by Red-light cameras and have read many stories of the innocent under suspicion.


It may not de too hard to prove what you are but few if any people have the knowledge to prove what they are not, and the people with the knowledge to those that are not would need to prove themselves is generally gained by knowing too much about those that are. Just having that knowledge can make you a suspect. Seems a little inescapable doesn’t it? That’s why the thought of the government holding someone without probable cause or evidence is so scary. You cannot expect someone who is not to prove they are not and if you assume they are you will waste time effort and resources getting nowhere.


I’ve met several police officers over the years even took a tour of the Baltimore 911 facility. I have never had the misfortune to have been suspected of anything, and nearly all of my encounters with police officers have been on friendly terms. The only time I had encountered a police officer who had focused on me as a possible offender was when I was 8 years old. I had argued with a neighbor kid about my age and had been nearing the point in the argument where things could have gotten physical. We each went home and about half an hour later an officer knocked on my door. Apparently in telling his mother about the argument she had gotten the impression that I had hit him. The officer had talked with my neighbor and he came over and told me that I should try to avoid him for a while. I don’t remember ever hitting that neighbor so I kind of doubt I had but that was one of the scariest encounters I have ever had with a police officer.

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