> A Modest Proposal for Digital Device Prohibition: A total ban on all cellular and GPS-capable devices for all operations within city limits.
> A Modest Proposal for Total Surveillance Abolition (Residential & Commercial): A total ban on all outward-facing cameras
> A Modest Proposal for Total Municipal and Commercial Decommissioning: A total termination of all internet services and electronic record-keeping
For those that didn't catch the reference, he's alluding to the 1729 publication by Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels
>A Modest Proposal For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick.
Which was a satirical work suggesting that the Irish poor's financial woes could be addressed by eating children, thus feeding people while reducing resource demand.
[1] https://www.banderabulletin.com/article/3093,council-votes-t...
Third one makes no sense.
Oh boy, back to this crap again. If that's true, for you to be acting this defensively sure is sending some signal.
Having the reporting from the local paper amplified outside the immediate community strengthens the signal, and supports the general norm of holding officials accountable.
"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main"
The author could have amplified that non-sensational article and tied it in with the Youtube clips and other non-sensational articles he found; there's good journalism lurking in here. But instead he wanted to be sensational.
Crime coverage is usually the easiest starting point. You can, and some people do, continually scan the country for crimes. Then when such a crime happens, you publish an emotive article declaring that it happened. Crime is of course bad, so each of these articles will make sense on its own terms; poor innocent victims who've been hurt or killed by evil men deserve sympathy! But if you only ever publish content on crime from within that framing, your readers will inevitably start to conclude that it's the only framing, and crime policy should primarily be focused on protecting us innocent potential victims from the hordes of evil men who want to hurt us.
Hopefully that makes sense. If it does, then I'd encourage you to take that critical eye and turn it to the 404Media Flock coverage (https://www.404media.co/tag/flock/). When you scroll through, does it seem like they're carefully studying Flock to keep you informed on the policy landscape surrounding it? Or does it seem like they're searching for the most sensational Flock-related stories they can find?
You haven't been on social media the last decade, have yoh? We're no longer in times where (if we ever were) of the most eloquent, subtle, balanced argument winning over elected representatives.
Now I hate the idea of Flock and think we should basically fully ban facial recognition technology, license plate readers, and similar topics. It is just too dangerous if the wrong people get in power. But we should make sure we are making real, fact based arguments.
[1]. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/670398
The strongest deterrent for the general populace.
Generally speaking, crime rates tend to be pretty low already. So the sample shifts from general populace to those who already commit crimes, or in such an emotional fervor that they gain the capacity for crime.
Among that population, I don't think surveillance cameras are stopping much.
I’m sure this is true for a subset but is not universal. I imagine just as big a subset or even the majority of criminals simply think they are smart enough to get away with the crime.
Assume a perfect world where this system resulted in swift capture and high conversion on charges to convictions to the point where it becomes a pop culture fact that petty crime wouldn’t pay anymore. Does the next generation of criminals still believe they won’t get away with it? Or does the criminal population shrink?
Of course people don’t just stop being poor simply because crime is more effectively rooted out, but maybe their efforts would be redirected towards the power structures that allow poverty to continue vs each other, like would be the case if you rob a 7-11 franchise.
The argument about surveillance is whether the negative trade-off (lack of privacy) is worth it.
Classic "all-or-nothing", "black and white" argument style
It's either one extreme or another
If the town wants to ban Flock cameras then surely it also wants to ban all outward-facing cameras, GPS-capable devices, cellular network devices, internet service and electronic record-keeping
There is no option to go back to a few years ago before Flock cameras were installed. Nope, the town must go back to "1880, paper ledgers and cash only"
Totally absurd
It's literally happening and this story makes it really clear. I wish it was this easy to spot. It's usually Flock donating to some charity a council person is also a board member on
A council member "crashing out" (ie. proposing some satirical bills) is "really clear" evidence of kickbacks? Seems like a stretch. At the very least I'd want evidence of some transaction having occurred, rather than "wow you strongly support something I can't possibly imagine anyone would support? You must be getting kickbacks!"
Well that's entirely up to the people. Anyone can be removed one way or another. This article is about a locality in Texas. Don't mess with Texans in a small town.
Nobody's bribing a councilmember in an 800-person rural township.
I suspect this happens a lot more often than people assume. It does not take much to bribe people to change their minds based on the publicly known international spy/espionage cases. People will sell out their country for like $5k.
It's weird that people seem to act like lobbying doesn't exist at the city council level.
Does said company operate against the best interests of the constituents?
Just box office baseball tickets, just a $2k steak dinner with high end wine, just a phone call with the governor, just a gift card, just an advisor position with some equity, etc, etc, etc.
> All forums start off good, enjoy a "honeymoon period" in which they continue to be good, and then steadily decline... from the point of view of each individual observer...
https://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2005/11/20/charles_rules_of_on...
I like this first law better.
It's not a bribe, but if a govenor is placing his time @ 1200/hour for an individualized bow of gratitude, I can only imagine how cheap it is for a not good govenor to sell out for his own personal interests.
At the scale these tech trillionaires are working, why not throw a few pennies at some small councilman?
Potential removal from office. Exclusion from all the things. Anything else their community has the wherewithal to implement. It's all up to them really. In a way he self reported to the people in a small Texas town. They know what's up. Now I have a song stuck in my head.
Secondly, singular emotional appeals work a lot better on convincing a populace than broad statistics. Stories like this will likely be better to push if your goal is changing the mind of the common citizen. People relate more to people than numbers.