What’s the problem with that!? Well, for anyone out there just no dipping their feet into the warm waters of advanced video watching technology, here’s a hint: don’t pronounce all the acronyms. You will drive your otherwise friendly sales help to madness.
In lieu of my recent posting on brain scans and the 5th amendment, I’d like to post this great video that will give you several good reasons (from an attorney) as to why you should never talk to the police and why your 5th amendment right may be your most important in this century. In short, there are so many federal codes, so many laws, you cannot know when you are incriminating yourself. It takes a lawyer. Professor James Duane, “Everything you tell the police can be used against you. It cannot be used for you.” Read more…
Ran into this story regarding using brain scans in court as evidence against criminals via io9. SFgate has a bit more on the story and the general consensus is that techniques such as fMRI and new lie detection will be admissible in court within the next five years. What I don’t understand is why in neither of these articles is the 5th amendment to the Constitution even mentioned. For a fun civil rights lesson, let’s review it.
The inevitable (and naive) question raised when new surveillance technology makes itself available to the public sector, is “Well, what’s the harm—surveillance just makes everyone safer.” And yet, just as inevitably, every time one of these technologies is implemented it turns out that there is some clever way to abuse it that never occurred to anyone. For instance, the cameras being installed at intersections around the country that capture the license plates of cars running red lights; how could a government abuse this simple and seemingly reasonable safety precaution? Well, why shouldn’t a municipality shorten the length of time that the yellow light shows and increase their revenue? Why not, in fact, shorten the interval of the yellow light to a length of time that is against the law and causes more car wrecks? Oh sheep, when will you learn. You cannot trust the government.
Never have the foibles of modern technology been made so obvious than with artist William Lamson’s piece—a carefully placed balloon in front of a CCTV camera. (found via Boingboing)
