Why are they tracking every American household by GPS?

Well isn't this a mystery? The movie clip has appeared on BNN's site, but it's the only one that won't play. At least it won't play for me, while all the other clips do. Here's the link if anyone want to try.

watch.bnn.ca...

Originally posted by earlywatcher
reply to post by Albertarocks

 

Personally I don't think the police would need this level of secrecy for the most part. these tinkets are expensive and I would thing would be reserved for deeper project.

Good find Albertarocks!

The developer was saying that his customers, or at least the people interested in buying these devices, are police departments. I think the dragonfly versions are a few years off and undoubtedly much more vulnerable to wind conditions. No, it's definitely cops who want these things.

reply to post by Albertarocks


oh good, then I'll watch out for tiny flying machines when I speed or make moonshine. I sure misspelled a lot of things in my last post. sorry about that.

we used to hear a lot of talk about meth labs in residences in Oregon. i don't know if they quit talking about it because it's less of a problem or because there are so many other things to worry about, but I bet these flying gizmos would be exceptionally helpful in watching for this kind of dangerous drug activity.

Originally posted by earlywatcher
reply to post by Albertarocks

 

oh good, then I'll watch out for tiny flying machines when I speed or make moonshine. I sure misspelled a lot of things in my last post. sorry about that.

we used to hear a lot of talk about meth labs in residences in Oregon. i don't know if they quit talking about it because it's less of a problem or because there are so many other things to worry about, but I bet these flying gizmos would be exceptionally helpful in watching for this kind of dangerous drug activity.

Yes, and they'll be ideal for buzzing over riots in the city. I doubt they'd be used for actual surveillance but rather for hot spots that are already in progress with some sort of action.

And dude... don't wurry about your speling

reply to post by Albertarocks


how many cities really have riots though. Portland doesn't. I don't think anyplace in Oregon or Washington does, except for that one time in Seattle when that world trade organization met and people demonstrated, probably people who traveled to the city for that purpose rather than residents. do very many cities in canada have riots? I'm sure they do in san francisco and los angeles but i doubt if anywhere in idaho, montana, wyoming, does. probably chicago. so from chicago south and east there might be more call for that kind of thing. we're kind of boring out west. oregonians don't even jaywalk for the most part. i can't seem them justifying the cost of riot monitoring gear in the northwest. what are they actually called? the flying machines?

Originally posted by earlywatcher
reply to post by Albertarocks

 

this is one the more plausible explanations I've seen for collecting the gps coordinates for every household. I admit that my discovery of the huge money spent in buying these custom made handheld gadgets that are really sophisticated computers rather than simple gps devices, i was thoroughly demoralized by the excessive cost, particularly when it turned out they were not quite sophisticated enough and anyway the census workers could mostly not work them properly, so the whole thing was a waste. They they are sill collecting those coordinates and they will use them for something.

I have long thought that surveillance could easily done with tiny cameras mounted on remote controlled devices. my thought was something the size of a dragonfly or a small bird but a tiny helicopter would be fine though more noticeable. I applaud Canadians for the ingenuity in creating these! I'm sure if this is showing up on the media they have far fancier gadgets available for covert use.

Personally I don't think the police would need this level of secrecy for the most part. these tinkets are expensive and I would thing would be reserved for deeper project.

Good find Albertarocks!

Reminds me of a commercial I saw a while back. This may be a way to get rid of a few of them.


www.youtube.com...

Skeeting practice anyone?





[edit on 15-5-2009 by NightSkyeB4Dawn]

reply to post by NightSkyeB4Dawn


that is a great video!

bug strips and skeet practice. so many ways to foil the evil overlords!

Originally posted by earlywatcher
reply to post by Albertarocks

 

how many cities really have riots though. Portland doesn't.

Wait 6 months! There will be more than you'd ever envision. Hopefully none in Portland though. I was there in 1975... what a lovely city!

reply to post by Albertarocks


that's true. maybe less time than that. i hear two schools of thought: july the economy will tank completely and riots will ensue; late september the swine flue will come back from his tour in the southern hemisphere mutated into something more deadly and riots will ensue. so i guess we'll find out.

hopefully we're all wrong and will be wrangling happily about some new topic this fall. i so wish that would happen but things are not looking good.

Ok, here is the video clip from BNN showing the flying surveillance device that the police departments are all drooling about:


watch.bnn.ca...

reply to post by Albertarocks


that does it. i want a scout. it could find me parking places downtown and all sorts of other useful things. very clever device. this is a really exciting invention, even if it will mean the end of privacy.

reply to post by earlywatcher


HAHAHAHA! I doesn't necessarily have to be the end of privacy. Do you have a shotgun?

Originally posted by Albertarocks
reply to post by earlywatcher

 

HAHAHAHA! I doesn't necessarily have to be the end of privacy. Do you have a shotgun?

How about some strategically placed mirrors or fishing twine? High intensity motion activated lights?

There has to be more than one way to skin a cat.

I've been following this thread off and on for a while now and I finally have some local news to add.
A sister of a friend went down to job placement and found one of these positions open for a pre-census taker. While going door to door she wound up facing the business end of a shotgun. She called the police first and then the 1800 number she was supposed to call first if she encountered this. The next day she was summoned to what I understand is ACORN headquarters for this state. They are now threatening her with breach of contract for not calling them first! There first question they asked her was "What are your intentions" and why didn't you call the 1800 number first? The local police followed up with her and told her it is now a federal matter and the guy that pulled the gun was having a bad day. If this doesen't scream BS I dont know what does. I'm going to ask around to some friends on the force to see whats up.

I was thinking about all of this wondering to myself why the GPS. Now I haven't been through this entire thread to see if this theory has been mentioned so here goes.

As a member of a community, if we were having our rights infringed upon to the point of the authorities going door to door, what I would do was remove all street signs and numbers from all houses. The word would get out and everybody would do it with any luck. Any entity not familiar with the area would have a hard time pinpointing an agressor or particular house if this was done. But now that they have GPS points associated with addresses that defensive move has been taken from us.

Just a theory.

reply to post by The Undertaker


this is pretty creepy. here i've been hoping that my concern about ACORN was excessive, but come to find out not. I don't see how this pre-census taker could have been expected to call ACORN rather than her local emergency service. What on earth were they going to do about it? I don't see how calling the cops after being threatened is ever a "breach of contract". I hope you will keep us posted on how this plays out.

As for taking down my house number, the last thing I want to do is make it harder for UPS to find me when they've got a package. also friends would be hard put to distinguish my house from all the others on the first few visits. I feel like I have less to fear from the authorities than I have to lose by alienating friendly visitors to my house

I go back to my original stance that I don't have a clear reason for objecting to the gathering this data other than the possibility that it will be used to identify my personal details past the point when they are supposed to be unidentifiable. I understand the census workers who have posted reassurance that this is the normal kind of stuff collected. I'm still leery. And given some of the charges against ACORN workers, I don't trust them to be in possession of my personal data at all.

This incident throws up some red flags for me.

What is the Census?
# The census is a count of everyone living in the United States every 10 years.
# The census is mandated by the U.S. Constitution.
# The next census is in 2010.
# Your participation in the census is required by law.
# It takes less than 10 minutes to complete.
# Federal law protects the personal information you share during the census.
# Census data are used to distribute Congressional seats to states, to make decisions about what community services to provide, and to distribute $300 billion in federal funds to local, state and tribal governments each year.

Quit being paranoid, your all acting like a bunch of tweakers.
This happens every 10 years. Honestly, you don't remember them doing this in 2000? C'mon now..

Source

Originally posted by h1satsu
What is the Census?
# The census is a count of everyone living in the United States every 10 years.
# The census is mandated by the U.S. Constitution.
# The next census is in 2010.
# Your participation in the census is required by law.
# It takes less than 10 minutes to complete.
# Federal law protects the personal information you share during the census.
# Census data are used to distribute Congressional seats to states, to make decisions about what community services to provide, and to distribute $300 billion in federal funds to local, state and tribal governments each year.

Quit being paranoid, your all acting like a bunch of tweakers.
This happens every 10 years. Honestly, you don't remember them doing this in 2000? C'mon now..

Source

I have been around for a lot of previous census taking. The ones I remember were for the purpose of counting the number of Americans not tagging them.

So now we have become equivalent to the members of the endangered species list.

This year it is about tagging your door. They next time around I guess it will be about tagging you.

Originally posted by h1satsu
What is the Census?
# The census is a count of everyone living in the United States every 10 years.
# The census is mandated by the U.S. Constitution.
# The next census is in 2010.
# Your participation in the census is required by law.
# It takes less than 10 minutes to complete.
# Federal law protects the personal information you share during the census.
# Census data are used to distribute Congressional seats to states, to make decisions about what community services to provide, and to distribute $300 billion in federal funds to local, state and tribal governments each year.

Quit being paranoid, your all acting like a bunch of tweakers.
This happens every 10 years. Honestly, you don't remember them doing this in 2000? C'mon now..

Source

Your post has absolutely nothing to do with the context of this thread. We all know what a census is. The question posed was "why are they recording GPS data?" Out of respect I'd say "Thanks for the refresher", but I just can't bring myself to do it. I guess it's because I have no respect for someone who tries to talk down to people who are more intelligent than he is.

[edit on 17-5-2009 by Albertarocks]

Thanks to everybody on this thread and my own research, i've revised my opinion about the census to want it discontinued completely or if it must go on, return to simply counting heads. I've been reading some stuff about the census from the Electronic Privacy Information Center. There is NOTHING about the census that benefits individual citizens.

The counting of citizens can be traced back to the Biblical recordings of Moses. In the Book of Numbers, Moses counted people in areas surrounding his kingdom in order to strengthen the count of the population under his control. Scholars discuss that the list of names was used as an original census, creating a legal identity of and control over a group of people.

The history of the United States census dates back to pre-Revolutionary times. It is thought that the census was developed to establish an equitable way to distribute the burden of the Revolutionary War, both economically and in manpower. The expense of the war was proposed to be distributed based upon population, among the 13 colonies, as the new United States government was created. In order to make this uniform, the concept of payment by distribution was included in the Articles of Confederation. The original Congress finally voted that the first distribution method would be by the cumulative value of property within each State. Enumeration of population became the chosen method directly after the Revolutionary War.

It was started as a way to get money and control over people!

General Sherman used census data to plan where to target attacks during the civil war. Hitler used census data to target who to exterminate. This is interesting about japanese americans:

A specific example of the privacy risks of the US census can also be found in the 1940s. During World War II, Japanese-American citizens were rounded up and sent to internment camps. The Census Bureau might not have necessarily given out individual Japanese-American names or numbers, but the Bureau did work with US War Department to offer aggregated data about certain localities. Although there is still a lack of consensus concerning specific conclusions, the Census Bureau has issued a formal apology and now reports that the Bureau did not protect Japanese-Americans.

It has been recorded that even before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered the Census Bureau to collect information on "American-born and foreign-born Japanese" from the Census data lists. Information was gathered from the 1930 and 1940 censuses on all Japanese-Americans and then given to the FBI and top military officials. These sources point directly to the census information as one of the reasons that led to the internment of almost 110,000 Japanese-Americans on the West Coast, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens.

It is now used a great deal for marketing purposes, as we all know, expecially when combined with other data widely available to companies. As for the laws that guarantee our privacy, this is how easy it is to re-identify people:

Re-identification is the process of linking anonymous data to the actual identity of an individual. Carnegie Mellon Professor Latanya Sweeney has demonstrated that anonymous data sets can often be readily re-identified. In one experiment, Sweeney, using 1990 Census data, demonstrated that individuals often have demographic values that occur infrequently. Since these values occur infrequently, they allow the re-identification of individuals in putatively anonymous datasets. Sweeney found in her report Uniqueness of Simple Demographics in the U.S. Population:

...87% (216 million of 248 million) of the population in the United States had reported characteristics that likely made them unique based only on [5-digit ZIP, gender, date of birth]. About half of the U.S. population (132 million of 248 million or 53%) are likely to be uniquely identified by only [place, gender, date of birth], where place is basically the city, town, or municipality in which the person resides. And even at the county level, [county, gender, date of birth] are likely to uniquely identify 18% of the U.S. population. In general, few characteristics are needed to uniquely identify a person.

adding the gps data to this conglomeration of data that is the huge legal invasion of privacy is just adding insult to injury. We have nothing to gain by answering these questions. The fact that participation is mandatory is no excuse. Why should we be forced by law to give away all this info? I think the census should be discontinued. We could cut many billions of dollars from the budget.

I realize this might seem an extreme solution but that is only because we have become accustomed to being bullied by our government. I speak for all people in all countries when i say that. no government can be justified in demanding information to use against its citizens in my opinion.

Take a look at this article for much more information and lots more sources to look up.

EPIC Census Privacy Page

reply to post by earlywatcher


I guess we never learn.

Throughout history the census taker was viewed as a threat and was used by the government and the elite as a means of control.

And yes you are right again. It has always been about the money. Our money and a way for them to take it from us and to use our money against us.

We have been convinced that it such a little harmless thing and you are unpatriotic not to acquiesce when the inconvenience is minor and is for the good of all.

Bull crap.

If we are going to wake up we need to do it all the way. This is not just counting citizens this is capture, tagging and releasing.

We are not chattel.