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Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
12/29/08
As usual, I must disclose that I live part of my life on Webcams at home, so I may be biased.
12/29/08
yeah, who cares about human rights abuses when they are happening everywhere? no point in fighting evil, not if it's winning, i guess. best to lay down and let mr. po-po search you, if you have nothing to hide...
12/29/08
12/29/08
In theory, it is permissible to hang CCTV cameras on every street corner because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy on a public street. That does not mean that the populace won't feel unease about chronic surveillance. Evidently, Britain is largely okay with it. As far as the US is concerned, is it constitutional? Yes. Would it pass muster Stateside? Probably not anymore.
One of the great end-runs around the Fourth Amendment was a readjustment of what constituted a "reasonable expectation of privacy". By making sure the word was out that programs like Carnivore were scanning all emails and that warrantless wiretaps of phone calls were taking place, the expectation of privacy was eroded.
I don't know if Britain has a similar Bill of Rights as here. And, in the US circa 2002, I could easily see CCTV cameras being installed in classrooms. We have them all over NYC, including on subway platforms and in some city buses. If you are in public, you are probably being watched and it's perfectly constitutional.
Finally, a little less on the histrionics. I'm a firm believer in the "No, thank you" approach to searches whether by the police or store security. But throwing tantrums doesn't help anyone. CCTV cameras aren't a human rights violation; it's a manifestation of the evolution of privacy in our modern age.
12/29/08
i was being facetious, einstein.
12/29/08
oh and one doesn't "get" a class, one attends a class, or enrolls therein.
i don't normally zing so low, but a misplaced dis regarding reading and comprehension itself containing grammatical errors... it's too much to pass up.
12/29/08
ANd yes it is creepy that these guys are putting cameras in the classrooms for 4 year olds. They are kids for crying outloud!! Yes they are kids that talk behind the teachers back so friggin wat?
12/29/08
Edit Button plz?!
12/29/08
Is that man dropping a deuce in that stall, or is he dropping 20 oz. of cocaine? You'll find this out and more on Giz-gone-UK!
12/29/08
I'm Chris Hansen...
12/29/08
12/29/08
11/27/08
[in.reuters.com]
Apparently people in Indonesia are going to fight against this proposal. Manangsang is from Papua, which is part of the island famous for film of supposedly 'stone-age' natives as recently as the '70s. Frankly, this is quite interesting to watch as a natural experiment in how democratic institutions function in a period of rapid acculturation.
Although it's common for journos to use horrific imagery and invective to inflame public opinion, in order to recruit readers for whatever political purpose the author intends, this particular proposal doesn't really resemble anything the Nazis did historically.
Then again, you wouldn't get as many hits on your website if you didn't use the Nazi header. Well done, Giz!
11/25/08
your US paradigm != the ave. Indonesian's reality
11/26/08
11/26/08
Had you actually read my post, you would realize that you are supporting my point. I'm surprised at the positive response here, so I was critical of posters here (i.e. in the "west") assuming that their reality was the same reality that this program would be implemented in. This is not surprising to me, given how few people in the US travel abroad, or even own passports. That said, I'm still baffled at people thinking a program like this would ever be "fairly and justly" implemented... even here.
11/26/08
Fair enough. That's all any of us can do, really, anyway. Unfortunately, there's more heat than light in the blogosphere, even one as enlightened as Giz and the Gawker Network. Invective is tiresome. My apologies.
11/25/08
11/25/08
If I accost someone on the street and inject that person with the HIV virus using a syringe, do I not become the worst kind of criminal? If, on the other hand, I had HIV and knew so and led a sexual partner of mine to believe that I did not, and had sex with that person, causing him/her to contract HIV, my penis being the implement facilitating the virus' ingress into the person's body rather than a syringe, would I not in this case be a criminal of the highest and worst order just as I would be if I simply used a syringe to inject the person with the virus as in my former example? For I should be infecting a person with a terrible and (for the time being) incurable disease in order to engender pleasureful feelings for myself.
This program may cause a bit of suffering for those infected with aids, but this is not a human right violation, because no human being has the right to infect another with HIV to gratify himself.
Why don't you take a moment to perform a bit of cursory cost-benefit analysis? Imagine if you were in the position of this, in your words, "Himmler-wannabe" for a moment. You have the choice to stifle the freedom of a smaller group of people and the choice to preserve their freedom but at the expense of their future victims. (And their victims, if not kept in check, will go on to make others THEIR victims and so on and so forth.)
You see, by inconveniencing a fairly small group of people now (by preventing them from victimizing others with an HIV infection), you can free and protect a much larger group of people from the suffering that AIDS precipitates. This action, as I see it then, is perfectly in line with utilitarian ethics, a form of ethics which I deem to be the paragon of all forms of ethics. The very purpose of government is to put limitations on peoples' freedom and thus on their capacity to harm one another; this is ultimately done in order to create the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people and the least amount of suffering for the least number of people (utilitarianism).
The Nazis put identifying symbols on those who posed no threat to anyone, people who were not criminals in any sense, not in the name of preserving the welfare of the majority, but rather for the sake of "purifying" the German people. Another difference is that the Nazis killed those whose clothing was thus emblazoned with identifying marks, whereas those Indonesians who infect others with HIV (and essentially sentencing them to death) will not receive capital punishment, but rather will simply be tossed in prison(?)... as they should be!
In short, Jesus Diaz, you are a moron and I can't believe you are allowed to write such sensationalistic, editorializing, bilge-water articles and actually submit them to the front page of well-known and widely read news site like Gizmodo. You fail colossally at civics, ethics, philosophy, and basic reasoning.
11/25/08
Utilitarism is a flawed philosphy that screws over the minority in every way and your broad use of the social contract theory shows that you don't really understand the principle behind it.
11/25/08
"Utilitarism" you say? I am tempted to think that one who can actually spell the term is apt to know a great deal more about it than one who can not.
You say that "Utilitarism is a flawed philosphy that screws over the minority in every way". Yes? And what would you prefer? That the majority be screwed over in order to promote the welfare of the minority? Does that make any sense? You have to screw some number of people over... why choose to screw over the larger group rather than the smaller?
As usual, I find that those who are opposed to utilitarianism are so because they are committing some variation of the gambler's fallacy, and because they tend to empathize and identify with minority rather than the majority in the course of examining the worthiness of utilitarian ethics.
The only who has made himself out to be ignorant is you.
11/25/08
I just find it funny that you promote utilitarianism in one paragraph and then praise social contract theory, a theory that by it's very nature allows a small group (government) to regulate what the larger population is allowed to do.
And is empathy for the minority such a horrible thing for a government? Freeing slaves goes against the philosphy of utilitarianism, so does that mean that it was a bad idea? It is the government's role to balance minority rights against the rights of the majority, we as a people expressly give up certain rights in order for us all to have social stability.
But then what do I know I'm ignorant?
11/25/08
It's not the governments role to balance rights of majorities vs minorities groups, it is the governments job to uphold the rights of the individual. Which is quite a bit different.
11/25/08
First, tagging someone with HIV/AIDS will not in any way stop them from having sex so why tag them to begin with? Second, just because the Indonesian government is intending on tracking these people how exactly do they know if and when the infected person is having sex? Since non-infected people would not be tagged they would have no way of knowing if the tagged person is alone or has a companion with them. So what's next? Thermal imaging scanners? Street mounted cameras and microphones? It would require serious invasions of privacy to determine if an HIV/AIDS infected person was engaging in sex. Third, how is the selection process being determined? Is everyone HIV/AIDS infected getting tagged or just those deemed 'sexually active', and what's the criteria for that, questionares?
"You have HIV or AIDS. Are you sexually active?"
"Uhm, no."
Are they going to be tagged after being convicted of knowingly having sex with someone non-infected or is the governemt just just going to assume all infected people will commit the crime so tag 'em all and let God sort them out first?? If someone has been caught, found guilty and convicted of doing this they should be getting life in prison, not being tagged and released so they can do it again. Tagging them before the crime is wrong. It assumes guilt and it stigmatizes these people even further not to mention the fact that I'm certain the money and resources used for the RFID program could probably be put to better use elsewhere in Indonesia. Using this technology will not prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS unless the government plans on outfitting all non-infected people with RFID readers so they will know if the person they're about to do the nasty with is safe or not.
There's an easier way to do that. Make all the infected wear a Scarlet letter...
11/25/08
Or better yet why not segregate the population and have AIDS colonies instead of Lepers?
Or we could just nuke Indonesia from orbit. After all, it's the only way to be sure...
Sigh.... this topic makes me sad on so many different levels.
11/25/08
11/25/08
Why not be reactionary and post no viable alternative?
11/25/08
11/25/08
Let's see how far this goes when one of their politicians accidentally contracts HIV. You'll see how fast this gets turned around or has some exception ammendment added to it...
11/25/08
11/25/08
11/25/08
11/25/08
11/25/08
11/25/08
Just goes to show you just how subjective morality is.
11/25/08
11/25/08
11/25/08
And if that was the case, how does it change the fact that this RFID thing is wrong?
11/25/08
=\
11/25/08
[www.time.com]
If the law is in face aimed at chipping every person found to carry the virus then I completely agree with the stance that it is both the wrong course of action and ethically unsound.
On the other hand, people who run around killing other people have their civil liberties infringed upon all the time. We call it jail.
11/25/08
What is "sexually aggressive" or "sexually active"? What do you mean "chronic offenders"?
You mean people who fuck a lot? Are those the "chronic offenders"? Offending who? Do you think these men and women go around trying to infect others?
Have you read the reasons for the 200x VIH rate in that area? Lack of condoms. Lack of education. Culture problems.
How do you solve the those problems? Punishing people who want to have sex? Putting them in a ghetto so they don't have sex with "healthy" people? Who's next in this list? People with other STDs? Gays?
Are you saying here that the government has the power to decide who does or doesn't have sex?
Isn't education and condoms a better way to stop the spreading of a disease than punishing people and treating them like cattle? Should we prohibit sex to HIV infected people or provide the means to avoid infection?
11/25/08
It's called Human Rights. There are NO exceptions to Human Rights. No trading. No rights abolition in the name of a "greater good" (usually defined by people like Hitler). Human Rights are absolute, by definition. Hence, the solution has to be another, not RFID tagging and punishment.
11/25/08
11/25/08
11/25/08