Oakland moves forward with surveillance center

The Dystopia is here, administered by private contractors

our elected officials.

It's so simple.

There's a lot of money to be made from the Surveillance State, the Prison-Industrial Complex, and associated enterprises.

forget their principles entirely when it comes to scarfing down federal security pork.

If you did you would have presented it already.

And they love their Federal Pork Rinds and Chitlins.

We were talking about the Military-Industrial-Security-Congressional-Lobbyist complex in general, not the Oakland Center in particular.

Kind of touchy on the subject, aren't you?

We are talking about the Oakland center in particular. You generalized to the MIC and threw in lobbyists for good measure. From that you conclude that all Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are Libertarians, because you think that is a convenient "bad word" you can use to shit on people.

You have tarred a whole group with a broad brush. "All"; Prejudging whole groups like that is bigotry whether you are talking about Chinese or lesbians or Parkinson's Disease sufferers.

There are many Democrats and Progressives among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and some of those Democrats and progressives even lean a little to the libertarian end of progressivism.

Yeah, I'm a little touchy about people who are prejudiced. Anyone who shits on whole groups of people because of or because of what they do deserves to be called out, whether they are shitting on Georgians or New Yorkers or Azerbeijanis.

Entrepreneurism is not a crime and it is not despicable. Why do you hate Apple so thoroughly? Never use one of their products?

I didn't say entrepreneurship was a crime. Hypocrisy isn't a crime either, though it can be pretty ugly.
And "progressive" entrepreneurs who would sign up for surveillance pilot programs like this one are just as hypocritical as the libertarians who would sign up.

Second: I'll concede. Show me all the businesses where the owners donated more to Democrats and Republicans and I will accept your diatribe.

Other than that, it's just corporate apologists. And remember, Corporations are people. Right, Mitt?

As well as Libertarians. It's were the money is.

that might lead people to develop all kinds of ideas (government is competent, government should solve problems, poverty should be solved) that are inconvenient to the Ruling Class.

The proposed contractor, S.A.I.C., has a lot of creepy connections and is HQ'd in McLean, VA (gosh, where did I hear of that town before?)

These contractors are raking in mountains of cash (from cities that can't afford it) selling "solutions" that will ultimately solve nothing...

And it isn't just federal pork; on a state and local level almost all police departments are laughably over-funded and over-equipped with high-power weapons/armor/vehicles and next generation electronic toys in case al-qaeda decides to invade the 7-11 down the street...But it's a political death sentence to do anything except increase the police budget every year....

A friend was going to attend an art's council reception in Oakland. The event was for mostly under 30, up and coming artists.

Sounded really nice, with catered food, and live music. But I found myself urging him not to go. I had this bad feeling about the police in Oakland.

He went anyway. And sure enough, some fifteen or so of Oakland's finest busted up the event, saying there was no permit for the gathering. (Who ever heard of having to have a permit for an evening event inside a rented hall?)

From an Oakland police officer's perspective - far better to spend the evening busting up some innocuous event, than go out on some of the meaner streets in Oakland and actually deal with real criminals.

Has anyone seen America lately ?

Cuz it's gone ...

So long as there are good restrictions in place on how this information is used, I think plenty of people would have no problem with using public surveillance methods to monitor public spaces.

Granted, I don't know the Oakland PD very well, and plenty of people here say they aren't to be trusted, but that can be changed, too.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Nothing.[/center][/font][hr]

But LE not being allowed to use readily available technology does not seem like a good balance.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Nothing.[/center][/font][hr]

We can't save images from the body scans ... err, won't save images from the body scans ...
err, did save images from the body scans.

It's hardly a fine line when they step over the line.

And it[s hardly a fine line when they lie about what they did.

surveil your whereabouts whenever you go on the city streets and highways. And the Feds want to implant cameras and RECORDING MICROPHONES into your new Digital Televisions, so they can track your "advertising preferences," which I'm sure is another of their lies. The Feds have already implanted tracking technology in your car, mobile phone, passport, drivers license, and they scoop up your emails and telephone conversations, and scan & store the to/from addresses on all your personal snail mail. And 30,000 armed Drones are taking to your neighborhood skies, searching for "citizen terrorists"!!! They've written their way around the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and armed local police like a militia, so you have no real say in the process anymore.

The Police State has arrived!