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Drug Enforcement Administration agent used Illinois cop’s Flock license plate reader password for immigration enforcement searches

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  • That’s completely irrelevant. If you can identify someone as being in the country illegally it makes no sense to not be allowed to act on it.

    You need to shut up. You're spreading ignorance and blatantly ignoring the situation.

    Again. You need yo knock it off and go somewhere magats hang out.

  • Entering the country illegally is a crime under federal law, not civil. Remaining in the country after your legal immigration status is up is a civil issue, but deportation is a lawful response.

    Why do you think people should get to stay in a country illegally? I’m genuinely curious.

    Do you think a person should be seperated from thier families, put into prison, subjected to violence, and sent to a country they've never been to for a misdemeanor?

    Because thats a criminal misdemeanor, not civil like immigration. But you dont care do you? You got yours..

    Ghoul

  • That’s completely irrelevant. If you can identify someone as being in the country illegally it makes no sense to not be allowed to act on it.

    This isn't a good argument.

    If law enforcement had access to all of your social media, e-mails and live video feeds from inside your house then they would be able to catch criminals more effectively.

    We have laws specifically limiting police powers because we recognize that there are more things to consider than simply maximizing arrests.

    Protection against unreasonable search is written into the constitution, after all

  • Can you imagine how bad it would be if the fascists felt free to kick in any door in an unarmed society? The mind boggles.

    They do feel pretty free to do that, and they also heavily signal that if you’re of a darker complexion, even if they barge in unannounced, that they’re going to fill your house full of holes but if you’re white, even if you knew what was going on, they’ll detain you alive. It happens all the time, and in “unarmed” societies that aren’t massively shit people don’t need to worry about it anyway.

    “Greatest country on earth” but everyone needs to be constantly afraid of their neighbours and government.

  • A bit of missing context - the officer with the access to the FLOCK system shared his account details with many other officers including the DEA agent because he thought that’s just what was done since he was the only one with an account.

    Also on this:

    State legislation prohibits Illinois license plate reader data from being used for immigration enforcement purposes.

    Why?! Why is immigration enforcement being stifled so much? Imagine if there was a police database that could help find murderers whenever they drove their car in public and legislators said “no you’re not allowed to use that to help find wanted murderers”. It makes no sense.

    Despite all the downvotes, I think it's a reasonable enough question. It happens to have a very reasonable answer though.

    First of all, your concern is largely addressed, since immigration control can still access law enforcement databases if they have a warrant.

    As for why this law exists at all, well it's actually to the benefit of law enforcement: the idea is that immigrant communities are more likely to cooperate with law enforcement if they aren't scared that they will be the target of immigration control. This is all the more practical now, when ICE has degraded into a largely lawless and authoritarian organization, since you can imagine most immigrants wouldn't want to say a word to any police officer unless they at least have the protections of the 2017 TRUST act in place.

    Now, what I'm a bit confused about is why you are so up-in-arms about the existence of this law instead of the violation of this law. Surely if you are so law-abiding as you make out to be in your comments, you should be shouting for legal action against the police officers involved in breaking the law.

  • Nah. People should not be in a country illegally. They want to migrate? Do it legally like the rest of the law abiding citizens.

    They're arresting legal citizens too, chud.

  • But if they did criminalise my favourite hobby, and they had evidence that I’m continuing to do that hobby in plain sight, they see me doing it every day……I’d expect them to come get me. That makes sense. It makes no sense to have that technology there to be used to find some crimes but not others.

    I see what you're saying. You're not talking about "making sense" in an ethical or social well-being sense, you mean it's literally confusing why the technology wouldn't be used for all kinds of crimes, given that it already exists - irrespective of whether the technology should be used. Is that right? I think you're getting downvoted because it kinda sounds like you're saying this is all a good idea when you say it "makes sense". Unfortunate English ambiguities. But you're saying, like, sure it's dystopian and creepy and wrong, but why wouldn't the creepy dystopia use the tech for all cases then rather than just some? That's a good question. I think because there is legitimately some understanding of the dangers of using these powerful tools willy-nilly. While people aren't perfect angels, they also aren't perfect devils either. Another factor is that there is some pressure to appear not to be overly heavy-handed with these tools - as we see in those chats, they knew it made them look bad for this to get out.

    And the final most pessimistic factor is that this Flock company almost certainly charges per seat, so giving direct usernames and logins to every officer or even every department is probably absurdly expensive. Companies (in this case the police) will often try to limit their license seats to as few people as possible and then just funnel as much different people's work through that one person's license as they can.

  • I see what you're saying. You're not talking about "making sense" in an ethical or social well-being sense, you mean it's literally confusing why the technology wouldn't be used for all kinds of crimes, given that it already exists - irrespective of whether the technology should be used. Is that right? I think you're getting downvoted because it kinda sounds like you're saying this is all a good idea when you say it "makes sense". Unfortunate English ambiguities. But you're saying, like, sure it's dystopian and creepy and wrong, but why wouldn't the creepy dystopia use the tech for all cases then rather than just some? That's a good question. I think because there is legitimately some understanding of the dangers of using these powerful tools willy-nilly. While people aren't perfect angels, they also aren't perfect devils either. Another factor is that there is some pressure to appear not to be overly heavy-handed with these tools - as we see in those chats, they knew it made them look bad for this to get out.

    And the final most pessimistic factor is that this Flock company almost certainly charges per seat, so giving direct usernames and logins to every officer or even every department is probably absurdly expensive. Companies (in this case the police) will often try to limit their license seats to as few people as possible and then just funnel as much different people's work through that one person's license as they can.

    But you’re saying, like, sure it’s dystopian and creepy and wrong, but why wouldn’t the creepy dystopia use the tech for all cases then rather than just some?

    I'm also saying it's not really any more creepy or dystopian than say ..... speed cameras. They're there to catch people that break the law. If these cameras are already used to catch people breaking some laws, the logic of "well they should only be allowed to catch people who break these specific laws, but not these other laws" doesn't make any sense.

    If you know the license plate of a car of a wanted murderer, and the FLOCK camera system recognises that number plate, why on earth would anyone be against the FLOCK camera system arbitrarily not being allowed to be used to catch that murderer? Like what is the reasoning behind that train of thought?

  • They're arresting legal citizens too, chud.

    For being illegal immigrants? No they're not lol.

  • Despite all the downvotes, I think it's a reasonable enough question. It happens to have a very reasonable answer though.

    First of all, your concern is largely addressed, since immigration control can still access law enforcement databases if they have a warrant.

    As for why this law exists at all, well it's actually to the benefit of law enforcement: the idea is that immigrant communities are more likely to cooperate with law enforcement if they aren't scared that they will be the target of immigration control. This is all the more practical now, when ICE has degraded into a largely lawless and authoritarian organization, since you can imagine most immigrants wouldn't want to say a word to any police officer unless they at least have the protections of the 2017 TRUST act in place.

    Now, what I'm a bit confused about is why you are so up-in-arms about the existence of this law instead of the violation of this law. Surely if you are so law-abiding as you make out to be in your comments, you should be shouting for legal action against the police officers involved in breaking the law.

    when ICE has degraded into a largely lawless and authoritarian organization

    I think you're mistaking actually enforcing the law as being "lawless and authoritarian".

    Now, what I’m a bit confused about is why you are so up-in-arms about the existence of this law instead of the violation of this law.

    I'm not so "up in arms" about anything, just questioning why the authorities are handicapped on what they can use one of their systems for. Sure, the violation of the law is bad - but the law itself seems ridiculous. The only people it benefits are literally criminals.

  • This isn't a good argument.

    If law enforcement had access to all of your social media, e-mails and live video feeds from inside your house then they would be able to catch criminals more effectively.

    We have laws specifically limiting police powers because we recognize that there are more things to consider than simply maximizing arrests.

    Protection against unreasonable search is written into the constitution, after all

    If law enforcement had access to all of your social media, e-mails and live video feeds from inside your house then they would be able to catch criminals more effectively.

    This isn't the same because law enforcement don't have access to all of your social media already. This is more like if they did but were only allowed to arrest you for you posting a video of you murdering someone, but not for you posting a video of you raping someone.

    Protection against unreasonable search is written into the constitution, after all

    Your car registration being checked to see who it is registered to and if you have any outstanding warrants etc is not an "unreasonable search".

  • Do you think a person should be seperated from thier families, put into prison, subjected to violence, and sent to a country they've never been to for a misdemeanor?

    Because thats a criminal misdemeanor, not civil like immigration. But you dont care do you? You got yours..

    Ghoul

    Do you think a person should be seperated from thier families

    This argument is such a stupid one that is purely made to pull at people's heart strings. If someone commits murder should they not be sent to jail because doing so would "separate them from their family"?

    People in the country illegally should be removed from the country. Full stop. They're just deported back to their country of citizenship, unless they're one of the gang members in which case they are going to prison.

  • I'm not responding to you're entire verbal vomit. am going to say this.

    What youve written at the end is not what's happening.

    What youve written at the end is not what’s happening.

    It is though.

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    medicpigbabysaver@lemmy.worldM
    Fuck Israel, genocidal scum!
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    S
    So while Utah punches above its weight in tech, St. Paul area absolutely dwarfs it in population. Surely they have a robust cybersecurity industry there... https://lecbyo.files.cmp.optimizely.com/download/fa9be256b74111efa0ca8e42e80f1a8f?sfvrsn=a8aa5246_2 Utah, #1 projected tech sector growth in the next decade, of all 50 states. Utah, #8 for tech sector % of entire state economy, of all 50 states. Minnesota? Doesn't crack top 10 for any metrics. Utah may not be the biggest or techiest state, but it is way more so than Minnesota. The National Guard just seems like a desperate move. Again, this is my argument, but you are only seeing desperation as due to incompetence, not due to... actual severity. When they're deployed, they take orders from the the federal military, Not actually true unless the Nat Guard has been given a direct command by the Pentagon. and at peace, monitoring foreign threats seems like a federal thing. ... which is why the FBI were called in, in addition to the Nat Guard being able to report up the military CoC. You call in the National Guard to put down a riot or something where you just need bodies, not for anything niche. I mean, you yourself have explained that the Nat Guard does have a CyberSec ability, and I've explained they also have the ability to potentially summon even greater CyberSec ability. I guess you would be surprised how involved the military is / can be in defending against national security threatening, critical infrastructure comprimising kinds of domestic threats. Remember Stuxnet? Yeah other people can do that to us now, we kinda uncorked the genie bottle on that one. Otherwise, just call a local cybersecurity firm to trace the attack and assess damage. It is not everyone's instinct or best practice to immediately hire a contracted firm to do things that government agencies can, and have a responsibility to do. If this was like, Amazon being comprimised, yeah I can see that being a more likely avenue, though if it was serious, they'd probably call in some or multiple forms of 'the Feds' as well. But this was a breach/compromise of a municipal network... thats a government thing. Not a private sector thing. EDIT: Also, you are acting like either you are unaware of the following, or ... don't think its real? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center Kind of a really big deal in terms of Utah and the tech sector and the Federal government and... things that were totally illegal before the PATRIOT Act. Exabytes of storage. Exabytes. Utah literally is where the NSA is doing their damndest to make a hardcopy of literally all internet traffic and content. Given how classified this facility is, I wouldn't be surprised if their employees don't exactly show up in standard Utah employment figures.
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    F
    You said it yourself: extra places that need human attention ... those need ... humans, right? It's easy to say "let AI find the mistakes". But that tells us nothing at all. There's no substance. It's just a sales pitch for snake oil. In reality, there are various ways one can leverage technology to identify various errors, but that only happens through the focused actions of people who actually understand the details of what's happening. And think about it here. We already have computer systems that monitor patients' real-time data when they're hospitalized. We already have systems that check for allergies in prescribed medication. We already have systems for all kinds of safety mechanisms. We're already using safety tech in hospitals, so what can be inferred from a vague headline about AI doing something that's ... checks notes ... already being done? ... Yeah, the safe money is that it's just a scam.
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  • Judge backs AI firm over use of copyrighted books

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    artisian@lemmy.worldA
    The students read Tolkien, then invent their own settings. The judge thinks this is similar to how claude works. I, nor I suspect the judge, meant that the students were reusing world building whole cloth.
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  • Big Tech Wants to Become Its Own Bank

    Technology technology
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    B
    I know, I was just being snarky
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    E
    No, just laminated ones. Closed at one end. Easy enough to make or buy. You can even improvise the propellant.