Loss of Privacy

Taryn Simon has taken some great photos of many places you have never heard of in America. She specializes in taking photographs of highly restrictive areas around the world.

Her latest book, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, took four years to assemble as the photographer gained access to research facilities and government offices hidden from the public. “I felt like I was discovering a new landscape in America, a new terrain, morally and politically,” she said.

The New York Animal Import Center in Newburgh, New York, detains all imported birds for a mandatory 30-day quarantine before testing them for bird flu and other diseases.

“I decided to photograph this facility because as a citizen, I was concerned about (avian flu), and what things were being done to protect our country,” said Simon. Simon scheduled her visit to the Avian Quarantine Facility between trips to other limited-access research facilities to avoid cross-contamination.

Britain’s UK Culture Secretary has expressed his desire to regulate the Internet by giving web sites cinema style ratings.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Andy Burnham says he believes that new standards of decency need to be applied to the web. He is planning to negotiate with Barack Obama’s incoming American administration to draw up new international rules for English language websites.

The Cabinet minister describes the internet as “quite a dangerous place” and says he wants internet-service providers (ISPs) to offer parents “child-safe” web services.

The entire fucking world is a dangerous place.  Stop regulating things where there isn’t a massive problem.  The fact is that children are facing more dangers at, in, and around their home than on the Internet.

ISPs, such as BT, Tiscali, AOL or Sky could also be forced to offer internet services where the only websites accessible are those deemed suitable for children.

How about parents actually be fucking responsible for a change?  Do you let a 9-year old drive a car?  No, because he’s not physically or emotionally ready for it.  Why can’t parents just parent and regulate what their children see for themselves?  Why is it the government’s job to now tell children and parents what they can and can’t do?  Why is it so fucking hard to sit down with your child and explain things to them?

“There is content that should just not be available to be viewed.
Other than child porn, what is it that should not be available?

Mr Burnham reveals that he is currently considering a range of new safeguards. Initially, as with copyright violations, these could be policed by internet providers. However, new laws may be threatened if the initial approach is not successful.

How are you going to prevent people from circumventing this technology you intend to use to keep children safe online?  Are you going to force parents to use this technology if they have a child in the house?  How is the ISP supposed to know if it’s the parent or the child using the Internet or are they supposed to just cut off people’s access and assume that it must be the kid surfing around?

He points to the success of the 9pm television watershed at protecting children. The minister also backs a new age classification system on video games to stop children buying certain products.

9pm works because most small children are in bed by then, thus, they don’t even have an opportunity to look at TV this late.  As children get old, they stay up later, go to friends’ houses, etc., which means they are watching this stuff.  The government just likes to pretend that they don’t.  Children also buy video games that they aren’t supposed to.  A friend or a relative just has to pick it up now.

“It worries me – like anybody with children,” he says. “Leaving your child for two hours completely unregulated on the internet is not something you can do.

Yes, you can.  If you raise your children properly, instead of letting the state do so, then you don’t have to worry.  If they stumble upon something they shouldn’t, they might take a quick peek and then move on.  Children know when they are being naughty.  If your child cannot determine this, then they are too young to be on the Internet to begin with.

Mr Burnham also wants new industry-wide “take down times”. This means that if websites such as YouTube or Facebook are alerted to offensive or harmful content they will have to remove it within a specified time once it is brought to their attention.

Uhm, no.  They should just give a great big “fuck you” to the government and move on with life.  Unless it’s child porn or in violation of someone’s copyright, it should be allowed.  Who determines, anyway, what is and isn’t offensive or harmful?

Apparently, it’s okay to criticize countries like China for restricting Internet access, but when it comes to Britain’s children, we must do everything to hide them from the realities of life.  A myriad ways of protecting your children already exist online.  All are voluntary.  You can do it via browsers or through software.  The difference here is that it is your choice as a parent to use or not use it.

In case you didn’t already know this, most CCTV monitors are not looked at by anyone.

As cash-strapped police forces and councils around the UK are forced to tighten their belts in the recession, CCTV cameras around town centres are being left unmanned as they can’t afford to pay anyone to watch out for crime as it happens.

Instead, entire networks of surveillance cameras are being effectively put on auto-pilot, with police reviewing tapes only after a reported incident.

Now critics have called for a review of the future of CCTV surveillance which has cost taxpayers £500 million over the last decade, saying there is little point in having the cameras if no one is watching.

There was little point in having them to begin with.  They don’t prevent crime.  The only time they seemed of use was on a Friday or Saturday night to send the police to the latest drunken brawl.

But the move has angered police who say that it will be more difficult to detect and convict criminals without the support of the CCTV operators.

This is due to the fact that police will have to revert back to actually doing police work and solving crimes the old-fashioned, and hard, way.

Surveillance expert, Professor Nigel Gilbert, who last year produced a report for the Royal Academy of Engineers calling for a halt to CCTV cameras until their need was proven, said today that the situation had become farcical.

He said: ‘The evidence suggests surveillance cameras are completely useless as a way of reducing crime, their only use is as a way of collecting evidence a crime has been committed- it doesn’t stop it happening in the first place.

‘The public has been misled into believing that it’s a silver bullet for crime reduction and actually it is not.

The public was stupid enough to think that this would work.  Those of us who didn’t think that way, believed all along that they were useless during an incident and that they could only be somewhat helpful after a crime had occurred.  Unfortunately, the police rushed to the decision that these would solve all their problems and never looked at their usefulness.

The money should have been spent on real life officers who can actually do some work in the community and make things safer by his/her presence instead of a camera that can’t help anyone.

Maddox didn’t like the movie and he has no problem with saying it was a giant shitpile.

Imagine finding out you got rejected from community college, then finding out that your alcoholic father got arrested for domestic abuse, you lost all your life savings in a Ponzi scheme, and all of this happens to you while you’re on the space shuttle Challenger. Then you wake up and it’s all a bad dream, except you realize that you’re at work without clothes on, and work is NASA and you’re really on the space shuttle Challenger. That’s what this movie is like, only infinitely worse. Everything about this movie pissed me off, save for the lesbian finger bang scene. Except even that sucked because it wasn’t in the movie.

Read the whole review on his site.