NEWS: FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited

Jeff Liebermann wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

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"In fact, six U.S. cities have been found guilty of shortening the yellow light cycles below what is allowed by law on intersections equipped with cameras meant to catch red-light runners. Those local governments have completely ignored the safety benefit of increasing the yellow light time and decided to install red-light cameras, shorten the yellow light duration, and collect the profits instead."

Yes Jeff...by LAW, the yellow light MUST be a minimum duration. Actually, there's a yellow light here that is illegal. Down one of the 'party district' streets, there's 6 or 7 signals on it. The last signal on the street, the yellow's about 500 ms long.

Here's an interesting read..

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San Francisco Collision report. If you were to search on 'camera' within the PDF, you'd find that the is only 1 graph that shows a reduction in accidents since red-light camera installation.

Reply to
DanS
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On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:17:14 -0800, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

May well be coming soon to an auto dealer near you.

Reply to
John Navas

This is already being piloted. Some states are trying to decide if GPS reporting back to the State can be used for road taxes, since we are driving more miles with more efficiency and the old way isn't making enough money. There is also the equivalent of black box on some kinds of cars that records speed, etc.

Not such a stretch. Just look at how everybody is applying the RICO laws that were originally just supposed to ensnare the random Goomba

Reply to
Kurt Ullman

Most rental cars already include some form of data logger. In its simplest form, it's a GPS mapping display, with an SD card that records all the NMEA-183 data. If you leave the state, drive too fast, exceed acceleration limits, or induce a high G force (like driving off the curb), the data logger will record it. When you return the vehicle, you get a bill. I don't rent vehicles very often, but I got a short lecture that boiled down to "we're watching what you're doing with our car" from the rental person. I would have asked for details, but there was a line.

Similarly, there is a manufacturer supplied data logger (i.e. crash recorder) that records that last few seconds of ODB data before a crash. The idea is for the manufacturer to use the data to determine what happened and how to improve vehicle survivability. The courts and insurance companies supposidly cannot use this data to penalize the customer, but there have been many exceptions:

All that would be necessary is to add GPS for location, and add some intelligence to the sampling, and we have a built in tracker.

Uncle Sam doesn't want you. He wants your money.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Okay, you run a state. Your state is $20 billion in debt. Where do you cut?

Do you cut welfare, knowing that if the poorest of the poor can't get shelter they're going to be living on the streets and in your parks? This is not an urban thing by the way. In California there are tens of thousands of people living in rural state and national parks, on BLM land, etc.

Do you cut school budgets, clearly one of the biggest expenditures any state makes? Sure. Cut schools and other countries get ahead of us. It's no accident that other countries are taking away our tech lead. It's no accident that people can get better medical care for cheaper outside the U.S. In most

*civilized* countries of the world a higher education costs the student nothing. Here, a decent education is anything from $50k to $200k, causing a debt most students carry for decades.

Do you cut road maintenance? California did that. You don't want to drive on a lot of California roads anymore.

Do you cut public transit? People have suggested that the Golden Gate Bridge bus and ferry system be shut down. Fine. Do that and you double the traffic on the bridge, which is already at a standstill from 3pm to about 8pm daily.

Where do you cut?

Reply to
David Kaye

Why the complexity? If the current method/rate isn't enough, why not just raise the rate? Why the rush for Big Brother reporting of everything we do and everywhere we go? The odometer can work just as well, but without turning our lives over to the government. And frankly, gas taxes also encourage energy efficiency.

Again, if the rate is too low (something I really doubt), then raise the rate, not the government intrusion.

Reply to
John Higdon

So, what you're saying is that if we should be afraid of anyone it's not the government but the car rental companies. And yet our laws say that they have every right to collect all that information about our travels since they own the cars.

On the other hand, a good case could be made (and maybe won) in the courts against the government collecting similar information.

Reply to
David Kaye

I'd cut military spending, like the hundreds of thousands of millions wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan ..... be lots left over to distribute to the various states. Back to wireless ? Please ? []'s

Reply to
Shadow

Across the board every (including the office of the governor) department gets cut. Everybody gets screwed equally.

Or do you increase taxes which can mean more people also losing their shelter. More likely run off your jobs (like California has).

There is absolutely no correlation between money spent on education and outcomes. Thus the Washington DC school system has the highest cost per student, among the highest dropout rates, poorest graduation rates, etc. Idaho exactly the opposite. I find it really interesting that two of things that the government is most involved (healthcare and higher education) are two of the things were the inflation rate is consistently WAY above general inflation. Also, again, taxes going up take away money that the person might have been able to use for college, etc. There seems to be an underlying assumption that taxes appear out of thin air and have no impact on other areas.

What do you do instead?

Reply to
Kurt Ullman

It easier to raise intrusion than it is to raise the rate. Easier to hide politically.

Reply to
Kurt Ullman

On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:37:15 -0800, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

Most? In all of the many rentals I've been doing there's no GPS unless I pay extra for a navigation system, which I don't do because Google Maps on my cell is quite sufficient.

What company? I use Avis (and a few others), and haven't seen anything like that.

Reply to
John Navas

On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:18:18 -0500, Kurt Ullman wrote in :

Patently not true.

Reply to
John Navas

Patently true. Look at the stats.

Reply to
Kurt Ullman

Rather than tracking your vehicle, it seems there's currently more interest in tracking your cell phone, at least at the Federal level:

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Reply to
Malcolm Hoar

Radical, perhaps, but I'd put marijuana in the same category as alcohol. Make it available everywhere and tax it. Turn the $20b debt into a surplus.

Reply to
Char Jackson

When I still lived in England my neighbour was a police inspector in the drug squad. He said that too - it would also keep the users away from the criminals.

Reply to
Christopher A. Lee

Well, you right (this time only). It's been a few years since I've rented a car and things seem to have changed.

Budget Rent-A-Car in Santa Cruz before it became Enterprise Rent-A-Car (about 2-3 years ago). I rented a tiny Chevy something for a day. I didn't bother tearing into the trunk looking for the goodies. There was no GPS mapping display, but there was a round patch antenna on the trunk lid. I had no problem with the tracking device as long as it was properly disclosed.

However, apparently there is now a law in California making it illegal to use GPS tracking devices for imposing extra charges:

"Can Car Rental Companies Use Technology to Monitor Our Driving?"

In California, for instance, car rental companies may no longer use GPS information to impose surcharges, fines or penalties relating to the renter's use of a leased vehicle.

Digging for the actual law, I find under Civil Code Section 1936:

(6) This subdivision does not prohibit a rental company from obtaining, accessing, or using information from electronic surveillance technology for the sole purpose of determining the date and time the vehicle is returned to the rental company, and the total mileage driven and the vehicle fuel level of the returned vehicle. This paragraph, however, shall apply only after the renter has returned the vehicle to the rental company, and the information shall only be used for the purpose described in this paragraph.

(p) A rental company shall not use electronic surveillance technology to track a renter in order to impose fines or surcharges relating to the renter's use of the rental vehicle.

More: "Some Rental Cars Are Keeping Tabs on the Drivers"

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

As is Google, don't forget.

Reply to
David Kaye

On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:09:57 -0500, Kurt Ullman wrote in :

Been there; done that. If you reduce funding to zero, then outcomes would most definitely change. In short, patently not true.

Reply to
John Navas

On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:02:06 -0600, Char Jackson wrote in :

Unfortunately that would come at the expense of more productive economic activity -- TANSTAAFL. Much the same logic is behind state-sponsored gambling, which is mostly a tax on the poor, and thus beloved of more well-to-do conservatives.

Reply to
John Navas

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