Videos on social media show officers from ICE and CBP using facial recognition technology on people in the field. One expert described the practice as "pure dystopian creep."
"You don't got no ID?" a Border Patrol agent in a baseball cap, sunglasses, and neck gaiter asks a kid on a bike. The officer and three others had just stopped the two young men on their bikes during the day in what a video documenting the incident says is Chicago. One of the boys is filming the encounter on his phone. He says in the video he was born here, meaning he would be an American citizen.
When the boy says he doesn't have ID on him, the Border Patrol officer has an alternative. He calls over to one of the other officers, "can you do facial?" The second officer then approaches the boy, gets him to turn around to face the sun, and points his own phone camera directly at him, hovering it over the boy's face for a couple seconds. The officer then looks at his phone's screen and asks for the boy to verify his name. The video stops.
- Extended article:
https://www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-agents-are-scanning-peoples-faces-on-the-street-to-verify-citizenship/
https://archive.ph/HUQwc
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, @11:32AM (16 children)
It's the newest fashion trend! EVERYONE should be wearing sunglasses and masks!!
It's trendy (all the ICE agents are doing it!), timely (Covid masks! It's flu season *cough*), practical, private (celebrities can go out without that annoying paparazzi!), social (help out your neighbors by obscuring who you/they/everyone is!), political expression (We don't like you face-scanning us!!), and a whole bunch more!
Seriously. In the United States, now, *everyone* should be wearing masks, hats, and sunglasses any time they go outside. For your safety, and the safety of others. Totally not joking.
Any time you see a group of mask-and-sunglasses people surrounding another person, you should go up, spread your arms wide, and slide between them and that person - with your back to the person. Three or four people should do this, while another records and someone calls 911 and reports an abduction attempt in progress. Those circling the individual should chant, "Cops Don't Wear Masks! Show us your ID, Verify with your face! Wait while I take a picture, this will all go faster!"
Don't let harrassment happen in your neighborhood. Surround them, video, ignore claims that anonymous masked individuals are police, and chant that police don't wear masks. Call 911 and report abduction is happening, by multiple masked individuals with guns.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, @01:53PM (7 children)
Okay, this is a good interim workaround. How about we ALL lobby Congress to pass some actual privacy laws? I believe California has. Not sure how effective they are but IIRC you have the right to have your personal information removed from these mass surveillance databases.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Saturday November 01, @01:54PM (6 children)
Would you imply that the behavior exhibited by ICE is not already against the law?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, @02:24PM (2 children)
Certainly some things will be ruled to be against the law, but most of these behaviors are old hat routine stuff that's only new to whites and has been deemed legal time and again. Welcome to everyone else's world.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, @05:10PM (1 child)
Those that are participating in warrant less arrests, by masked 'law enforcement' who remain unidentified, is not something that we have seen before.
This has not been experienced before by any ethnic group. Can you recall how many arrests have you seen by masked 'law enforcement' where those arrested have been read their rights. I can - none. They have a right to remain silent. They have a right to a lawyer. Pity those who are participating don't accept this.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Sunday November 02, @06:02AM
The brown shirts in Germany didn't even wear masks.
(Score: 1, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Saturday November 01, @05:48PM
Why would it be against the law? If you are in public, there is no law against your image being captured and used to identify you. Legally, it's no different than a cop standing on the street corner, watching you go by, and checking for your picture on the most wanted list.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday November 01, @08:56PM (1 child)
If it is against the law, it soon won't be.
It's quite obvious that some members of the Supreme Court are violating both the oaths they swore and the assurances they gave during confirmation hearings in order to give Trump anything he wants.
We have the decision granting immunity to the President, which has no support in the Constitution, and the more recent example allowing racial profiling.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Sunday November 02, @08:36PM
Yes, although keep in mind that there are a bunch of things that SCOTUS allows to be "illegal" but then completely eviscerates any actual way of prosecuting it. It's stuff like the No Fly List where you can't get far enough into legal proceedings to force them to say if you're on it because you can't prove that you're on it without that information being provided. Or how it's still technically illegal to bribe a public official, but you pretty much have to write a contract tying a payment to a specific corrupt act that wasn't already going to possibly happen.
(Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Saturday November 01, @03:21PM (4 children)
What's the long term societal upside to all this proposed nonsense, vs the long term effects of being invaded? Doesn't seem like a valuable tradeoff.
If its so awful to have safety, rule of law, property rights, prosperity, and self determination, can't the people who hate that, simply move somewhere preferably far away from here? Aren't most of the refugees escaping from countries run by exactly that kind of people?
If you're embarrassed by your identity or refuse to participate cooperatively in society, you have to keep in mind that most people are not, and you can't fix yourself by punishing everyone else harder than you punish yourself.
(Score: 5, Informative) by gnuman on Saturday November 01, @04:41PM (1 child)
Stop drinking that weird kool-aid -- no one is being invaded.
Here, meet some of your "invaders".
https://apnews.com/article/adoption-citizenship-congress-immigration-a1ec84a94f2442e3dc4b7a31cad27d21 [apnews.com]
Or these ones.
https://www.reuters.com/business/immigration-raids-leave-crops-unharvested-california-farms-risk-2025-06-30/ [reuters.com]
95% of people are good people that just want to have a normal life. That's on average, everywhere.
https://fortune.com/2025/07/07/vermont-dairy-farm-migrant-ice-raids-put-industry-edge-immigrant-workers/ [fortune.com]
Labeling them as "invaders" is just insanity. It's a clear example of how propaganda works. Immigration reforms? Who needs that when you can scare the sheeple into voting for the very people that created their manufactured crises.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 06, @03:06AM
Let's put it this way, when Florida shipped [wikipedia.org] 50 "primarily Venezuelan asylum seekers" to Martha's Vinyard, did Florida invade New York? What sort of military response should New York have done in return for this invasion? Bomb Tallahassee? When it's one thing when they do it, and another when an imaginary foreign power does it, that's hypocrisy among other issues.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday November 01, @09:52PM (1 child)
What invasion? Invasions need invaders which are solely lacking in your narrative. We have no duty to entertain your or Trump's delusions.
I knew the Trump administration would be a huge clusterfuck even by presidential standards, but I was willing to tolerate it for the sake of democracy and perhaps a little progress on cutting federal spending. Fabricating invasions just to bypass constitutional law is one of several such things that changed my opinion on this - it's for real Nazi stuff [soylentnews.org] (link to half-hearted Nazi staged propaganda for rationalizing the invasion of Poland, narrative was that Poland invaded Germany first, with dead German Jewish political prisoners no less).
Trump no more has my support. If there truly should be an invasion of the US or other dire emergency in the future, then I await Trump's resignation so that someone else can take care of it, such as current Vice President Vance.
Cooperate with what? Fake invasions? Serious violations of the law and Constitution? You can see it as "punishing people". I see lack of cooperation as the natural consequence of deception and dishonesty.
I ran across an interesting and relevant concept here, Grifterism [amgreatness.com]. It's basically a variant of a kleptocracy where society is run by and for grifters. The author non-ironically blamed democrats, but that's not who's in charge currently.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 03, @02:19AM
By this, I mean that I would support some of his policies such as DOGE, not that I'd ever vote for him.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, @05:33PM
Your president will declare an "insurrection". End of story...
It's over, Johnny. It's over
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday November 02, @12:30AM (1 child)
How about an unisex burka?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Monday November 03, @02:05PM
Since burqa's are so ... out of style with the "other" extremists, just search for Nun's Habit and some had veils
https://goldenbridgeinmate39.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/veiled-nuns/ [wordpress.com]
Histories of different religions is not the same, nevertheless, they do tend to rhyme. Eventually maybe we will find out that we are better finding common ground than trying to find differences between each other. Tribalism has never really worked well in advancing our interests.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday November 01, @12:33PM (14 children)
Yep. This is definitely the Epstein presidency, when it's a-okay for masked men to stop a boy and ask one another it they can do a facial.
Fuck the pedo fascists, is what I say.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by r1348 on Saturday November 01, @01:38PM (1 child)
This episode is deeply troubling, but not for the reason you mention.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday November 01, @05:36PM
There can be more than one reason.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, @02:06PM (11 children)
What you're not grasping is that you liberals, who herd, are divisive. Conservatives are people too, (yes, really) and have normal human negative / defensive reactions to your divisive attacks (like I'm having right now). Constant use of terms like "liar", "rapist", and "fascist" cause me (and obviously millions of others) to vote R, or anything not D.
The fix is for y'all to stop the craziness and attacks, and ALL work TOGETHER to get laws passed to protect privacy and presumption of innocence. You might be surprised at how much most evil fascist MAGAs would join with you to stop the mass surveillance.
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Saturday November 01, @03:35PM
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/10/27/sexual-fantasies-republicans-democrats-politics-221919/ [politico.com]
There are fundamental psychological differences between the demographics of the party leadership. Someone who doesn't like being literally whipped can't argue the other side into "not whipping" because its painful, when the other side quite literally gets off sexually to the pain.
The right wing does not understand this aspect of psychology of the left wing. You'll see arguments like "women should not be raped and beheaded by invaders" because they see the suffering as bad, whereas it makes the opposition sexually release so they see it as a "feature not a bug". They want more invaders causing more pain because it causes pain, righties think they can be cured if its pointed out that "hitting your thumb with a hammer hurts so stop doing that" but if the pain gets them off then they'll keep right on hammering.
That's before you get into demographic dynamics "Well as long as it happens mostly to white urban univerisity girls then its OK because our people will be not any worse off in our segregated neighborhoods"
Its not all of them obviously and you can't disprove it with anecdotes as per above its a statistical thing. But it infects the leadership like a mind virus. Remember Hillary calling people "deplorables" or Biden gleefully reporting a "winter of illness and death to the non-vaccinated" and then being utterly shocked that their support collapsed in polls? They expected sexual release not revulsion from the population. It runs psychologically deep and concentrates at the top, unfortunately.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, @04:51PM
Well, stop voting for rapists and fascists. Seems simple.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday November 01, @06:04PM (7 children)
If you don't like people tossing those terms around to describe Republicans, then get Republican leaders that aren't liars, rapists, and fascists.
Just so we're clear: I'm on the far left side of the political spectrum, but I believe there is or at least could be such a thing as a decent Republican. Many if not most of the rank-and-file party members are exactly what I'm talking about: The kind of people who try to live a moral life, serve their community and their country honorably, generally keep sexual stuff within their marriage, provide private charity for those in need, spend their Sunday mornings at church, etc. Politically, they want government to not overly interfere in private affairs and business, have lower taxes, that sort of thing. Guys like Dwight Eisenhower and John McCain at least did a good job of presenting themselves as the kind of people I'm talking about, and I've met much lesser-known figures who generally seem to be at least trying to be that kind of person, and while I might disagree with them on ideal government policy I wouldn't call them liars (any more than an average politician), rapists, or fascists.
That's not who the Republicans are now, and haven't been ever since they started their love affair with the current president: The current president has been a cheat, a liar, and rapist since long before he entered politics, according to dozens if not hundreds of people who have known him or been close to him. He has substantial mob ties - there's every reason to think that Rudy Guiliani could have indicted him in the Gambino Crime Family case that busted a bunch of prominent New Yorkers and made Guiliani famous. The guy can't even play golf honestly. He has 34 felonies on his rap sheet, and before you claim that that was all a Democratic conspiracy he was indicted by 18 ordinary citizens on the grand jury, and found guilty by 12 ordinary citizens at trial, and there were other legal proceedings where ordinary citizens all judged him to be guilty as heck even though the cases were dismissed on technicalities. At last count, the number of women who have accused him of raping or sexually assaulting them, many of them when they were under 18, is somewhere around 30, and odds are pretty much 100% that he did some stuff he shouldn't have done when hanging around with Jeffrey Epstein. As for the fascist part, he has said and done numerous things that suggest that he is at heart an authoritarian who believes he should hold absolute power over the country, rather than a democratically elected leader that should answer to the Constitution, the courts, and ultimately We The People. But most tellingly, normal presidents do not send the military to attack US citizens, which is what this president has done, repeatedly.
And it's not just the current president himself: For example, the recently leaked Young Republicans chat, where the people in question, many of them holding elected office, were singing the praises of Adolf Hitler. Elon Musk has provided a whole lot of funding for Republicans and had major influence on Republican policy and after a long period of helping Nazis speak louder on X proudly gave a Nazi salute on camera in front of everybody. Why should the word "fascist" be out of bounds for describing people who have either privately or publicly announced their support for the ideals of the Third Reich?
And if you're a right-wing sort who is disgusted by what the Republicans have become and have started voting Libertarian or something else in response, then you aren't who the left is accusing of being liars, rapists, and fascists, and have no reason to defend the people who are the target of that kind of vitriol.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, @09:26PM (6 children)
We conservatives feel things have gone way too far to the left, and for no real good reason. I am white and was horrifically discriminated against when I tried to get financial aid in college. Lacking $ badly hurt my education and career. Frustratingly college is competitive, and I had to work long hours when other students were studying. Financial aid office said to me "if you were Black or Hispanic there would be all kinds of money available to you". Things like that have impacted more and more of the good people you mentioned, and we got sick of it and hired a thug to start cleaning things up. Everyone else has been feckless.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 01, @09:55PM
Is anyone trying to fix that?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday November 02, @12:54AM (3 children)
So riddle me this: Why, based on that experience, would you oppose people arguing for free public college for everybody who qualifies, paid for by taxing very rich people who will still be very rich after paying the tax? That way, you wouldn't have been fighting for a limited pool of financial aid between you and black students and Hispanic students, it would have been more like "your test scores are good enough, your grades are good enough, welcome to Organic Chemistry!"
Also:
1. Why would you expect a thug given more power to "clean things up", as opposed to remaining a thug but now with more power?
2. Why are you mad that people are using nasty words to describe someone you just referred to as a "thug"?
3. What exactly would "cleaned up" look like? What's the vision here, exactly? The conservative utopian dream?
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday November 02, @01:18AM (2 children)
What exactly is the conservative utopian dream?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday November 02, @01:45AM (1 child)
Yes, that's what I'm asking: Assume for a moment that you live in a world where conservatives get 100% of what they want. What does that world look like? What does everyday life look like to people living in that world? Why is that the best possible world to live in?
Because most political ideologies, I can get answers to those questions, and when a political ideology refuses to answer that question I get suspicious that they're reasonably certain I wouldn't like the answer.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday November 02, @02:03AM
Trump pushes towards extreme neo-liberalism of feudalistic monarchy extraction. That is: total deregulation regulations, you'll do as I say if you are less powerful than me
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday November 02, @08:39PM
That's just beyond stupid. Where is the conservative competing view point to address any of this in any sort of substantive way other than funneling more money to the people that either caused the problems or are profiting off of them? I'd have far more sympathy if there was any sort of good faith effort being made to offer up real solutions that haven't already been tried and didn't work the last time.
(Score: 4, Informative) by epitaxial on Sunday November 02, @06:10AM
Fuck you. You voted for this. I don't have to tolerate fascist bootlickers. You want to work together? Call up the MAGA cultists and tell them to invoke the 25th amendment.
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Saturday November 01, @01:59PM (18 children)
Hmm 404 media is clickbait / ragebait funded (admittedly like most "media", but much much moreso) so I'm not sure a TDS meltdown is 100% trustworthy. Just because they say 2+2=4 doesn't prove its wrong, but the trust-meter is not very high based upon the domain and this has ALL the characteristics of a funding drive story.
"just stopped the two young men on their bikes during the day" Yeah I'm sure thats the whole story LOL (sarcasm)
The story also has the characteristics you commonly see infantilizing adults. So they're toddlers on tricycles. Oh wait they're 20-somethings. Oh wait they're young men. Oh wait they're "kids". Combined with the usual white savior racism of low expectations. "Why only white people are intelligent enough to obtain ID you can't expect mere minorities to be able to acquire a legal ID card they just aren't smart enough for racial reasons compared to us white saviors". You hear that a lot with lefties in general across multiple social programs. I'm sure the people writing this assume only white people are smart enough and hard working enough to get an ID. Even the furthest right wingers think higher of non-whites than the lefties.
Their main problem in the story seems to be that without facial recognition they could report more of a two-minutes-hate from having to haul the kid to the station to ID the kid. With a dose of "new is scary", "we are the authority at telling you what is right and wrong" and general TDS.
The premise seems to be that we're not under continuous constant video surveillance from CCTV and doorbell cams and everyone's got a phone with a camera etc. If you live in a city you currently live in a dystopian cyberpunk hell already, which is why anyone with money moves out ASAP, so a governmental process that gets you out of being hauled to the station seems to have no practical "in 2025" downsides.
Finally, I voted for this. There seems to be a genre of journalism now that boils down to acting surprised that elected politicians would do what they promised to do if elected, rather than their pre-election promises being abstract aspirational jeans commercial messages like their own party does every time they're elected. If the worst thing that can happen to a human being is being asked to identify themselves, they can just self-deport. We hardly lack for invaders or will miss out on anything if they leave to a better locale. The people that hand-wring about the tragedy of enforcement of immigration laws should also leave, they should illegally immigrate to the countries that people are fleeing from and "fix" those countries. They already have the "white savior" racism thing down so all they need to do is move to El Salvador and simply be white leftists there, and that should magically fix El Salvador, removing the pressure to illegally invade/immigrate at the root. After all, the only problem is they're not in charge, so go be in charge of El Salvador and I'm sure that'll fix everything (LOL, those type of people being in charge over there, is probably why we have humanitarian crisis and resulting invasion to begin with, I'm sure they want to do to us what they did to El Salvador). In summary WRT TDS, he's not going to lose a single vote for doing this.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, @02:10PM (8 children)
I'm mostly on your side, but I'm very very strongly in favor of innocence until proven guilty. I'm 100% against "stop and frisk" for example.
Why? Well because humans are imperfect and mistakes will happen. The cops who get the wrong address, or somehow end up at the wrong house, perform a "no-knock warrant", reasonable resident performs self-defense, but gets killed by cops. NOT OKAY. You're quite smart- fix that.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by VLM on Saturday November 01, @03:06PM (7 children)
In a way, I think we're all on the same page or similar page as I'll explain below:
They could release a "very small shell script" to trawl the archives of the worlds CCTV archives, all the doorbell cameras, and then electronically drop arrest warrants based on facial analysis of literally everyone, but instead they're putting humans on the street to make a judgment call on the spot if they have probable cause or not.
Remember its not 1980 anymore. At least in urban areas we live in an intense surveillance society where everyone's recorded all the time from multiple angles and its all online. Its ALL on camera all the time and having humans in the loop at ICE, even with surveillance as a backup option, is kind of refreshing.
I'm sure the humans in the loop are not infallible all the time, but I feel better with them in the loop than only having a "very small shell script" in a NSA data center somewhere.
I like how even in the propaganda story, they used e-surveillance as a backup, not their primary method. I think that's good.
Yeah but that's not their job, they're essentially rentacop security guards in the propaganda story. Are you allowed to be here yes or no? If yes then its literally no problem, and if no then they should leave. The rentacop at the bank branch standing in front of the vault is not doing a heck of a lot of investigation beyond checking badges and that is fine with me and we need more of that not less. Don't confuse the rentacop at the bank vault with some kind of self incriminating IRS audit or elaborate planned drug raid.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, @05:53PM (6 children)
But stopping kids riding bikes because of the color of their skin or maybe not speaking English is ok? And demanding to see their papers?
In 1980, at least, it was an inconceivable thought that the US would develop their own Stasi and require you to carry your "papers" or else be picked up for "further investigation."
(Score: 1, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Saturday November 01, @10:12PM (4 children)
I guess you must have selective amnesia. From 2020 to 2024, enforcement of our borders was non-existent. Literally millions of illegal aliens, a significant number who were criminals released from prisons in their countries of origin, flooded into our country. To make matters worse, they were automatically enrolled in our social welfare programs and allowed to draw billions in illegal benefits.
So that is how we arrived at "show me your papers". If the rule of law had actually prevailed during the auto-pen administration, none of this would be necessary.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 02, @01:34AM
"Selective amnesia" indeed. I find your recollection of the facts to be very amusing, or I would if it didn't lead us to the point of tearing up the founding documents and principles on which the country was founded.
It is amazing this rationalizing, and even whole-hearted embrace of "show me your papers" and turning out the military against the citizens. I never thought such un- and anti-American sentiment would be so gleefully accepted in my lifetime. How did we get to the point where so many have turned against America and Americans? So you're ok with secret masked police picking up citizens and holding them for days without warrant or charges? But this is all ok because someone on TV told you criminals were getting social welfare benefits? I would have at least wanted to see real proof before throwing the Constitution away and taking up a dictatorship government.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday November 02, @01:41AM
First off, I'm guessing you meant to make this claim about 2021-2025, because Donald Trump was president for the entirety of 2020. It sounds like this talking point was aimed at somebody who doesn't know that presidents don't immediately take office after the election, and also don't retroactively control federal policy for the portion of the year prior to the election.
So, what's your evidence that that's happening?
Some relevant data:
- According to the Department of Homeland Security data on the subject [dhs.gov], it turns out about 3 times as many people were removed, deported, and otherwise kicked out at least during the early couple of years of the range you're talking about. Most of those removed were kicked out on the basis of public health claims.
- SNAP shows no massive change in the numbers of recipients [usda.gov] over those 4 years. Neither does TANF data [acf.gov]. Neither does housing assistance [huduser.gov]. So what exactly is the social welfare program these people are receiving that is costing America billions of dollars?
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 02, @08:13AM (1 child)
Citation?
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Friday November 07, @11:11AM
https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/letter-enhanced-vetting.pdf [usda.gov]
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Sunday November 02, @05:25AM
It was only inconceivable to those who weren't paying attention to the little steps that were being taken in that direction. Those who were paying attention knew the "War of Drugs" that started in 1971 was only one more step down the steepening slope we are still blindly walking on.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gnuman on Saturday November 01, @03:21PM (7 children)
https://viewfromthewing.com/42388/ [viewfromthewing.com]
https://theconversation.com/an-entire-generation-of-americans-has-no-idea-how-easy-air-travel-used-to-be-166082 [theconversation.com]
So, I remember when showing ID was something of a misnomer in America. Americans would boast how they did not need to prove who they are to "the man". No one could randomly check your IDs. That was relegated to the authoritarian european nations, not the freedom americans.
How low have you fallen. Now instead of proclaiming that "the man" needs cause and proof to search, you blame the other side for being too stupid to carry id.
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by VLM on Saturday November 01, @03:40PM (6 children)
Did they really?
Generations gone past seemed REALLY proud of their social security cards, first drivers licenses, old enough to drink using ID at a bar, military IDs, uniforms with their org name and personal name on them...
This seems to be one of those things thats untrue but infinitely repeated and the infinite repetition seems used as the sole arbiter of truth. Not behavior or observation, just "somebody else said it so it must be true" when it coincidentally supports short term goals.
Then when its time to discuss the requirements to buy guns or concealed carry "oh well obviously we need id cards and endless paperwork" uh huh.
(Score: 4, Informative) by gnuman on Saturday November 01, @05:02PM
And infinite number of posts online how you are not required to identify yourself as passenger of a car during a traffic stop. Also,
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2005/05/ron-paul/totalitarian-id-cards/ [lewrockwell.com]
Also, SSN cards are not ID cards. Anyway....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 02, @02:08AM
Heh, you must be too young to remember when you could board an airplane with nothing more than your ticket (didn't even have your name on it), which you could purchase right there at the gate, just before they close the door. You could hop on any flight with an available seat. Or maybe you don't remember driving for days across the country with out passing a single checkpoint, or getting stopped at all.
What's happening now is definitely fascist, and opposition is either feeble or fake.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Monday November 03, @02:18PM (3 children)
ASIDE: it would be nice if we had some way of unmodding "flamebait" and "troll" and otherwise negative comments. While I do not agree with LVM on much, and I believe he exists in some echo-chamber, having all his comments marked as flamebait/troll is not helpful either.... someone I believe this site is somehow allowing cross-echo-chamber communication... and I think this is awesome.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 03, @02:44PM
I've caught all the mods on that one except funny, so far. Which I guess is appropriate.
I get that their side shows fealty to their leadership by expressing beliefs inconsistent with reality, and the more ridiculous the contrast the "better" followers they must be. Its an authoritarian thing.
But its ridiculous to claim the average teenage boy really hated earning their drivers license, or every military uniform doesn't have name on it, or you should drive cars without ID.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday November 03, @03:00PM (1 child)
The moderations that he has received over the last 18 comments days are from 10 different people. In this instance it looks like quite a few people disagree with what he is saying.
There is a way for staff to undo the results of mod-bombs if they occur but not adverse moderations from different people. When mod bombs are seen the perpetrator could receive a temporary moderation ban, usually after having been issued with a warning.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday November 03, @03:03PM
To clarify - that is adverse moderations to the last 18 comments. He has also received positive moderations as he himself has noted.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 3, Funny) by aafcac on Sunday November 02, @09:16PM
There's more to ability than an office just being open to do it. There's extra barriers like the hours that the relevant offices are open and costs that are often associated with getting the ID. Then there's the assumption that the Gestapo thugs that ICE hired are going to care. They've even had to admit to deporting a known US Citizen.
The era where there is any plausible deniability about whats going on and why ended over a decade ago. We know what's going on and why. At this point it's mostly just the truly hateful and truly ignorant that are pretending otherwise.
(Score: 4, Touché) by khallow on Saturday November 01, @03:27PM (3 children)
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by FuzzyTheBear on Saturday November 01, @08:45PM (2 children)
And meanwhile these American citizens will be held in jail , incommunicado, human rights in the USA ? Forget them.
I wonder what Americans are waiting for to revolt and take the trash out the white house to nearby guillottines.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, @08:52PM
They daren't because Trump might call it an insurrection. They are out-manoeuvred. Too little, too late, I fear.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 02, @03:24AM
I noticed that the AC replier referred to this as "Trump might call it an insurrection". And well, it would be an insurrection, right?
My take is that the great majority of US citizens aren't waiting for the revolt. And who will the US military side with?
(Score: 3, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Saturday November 01, @06:44PM
Law enforcers have always been hankering after 100% reliable technologies that instantly establish guilt or innocence. Too often, they have ignored that the real world isn't that simple and easy. They are suckers for junk science, things such as blood splatter analysis, voice analysis (of 911 calls particularly), lie detectors, matching of bullets to weapons [scientificamerican.com], and of course one of the latest fads in this area, facial recognition. Facial recognition cannot handle large numbers of faces. Too many false positives.
Worse, law enforcers allow their prejudices to bias their work, even indulge their prejudices to purposely accuse and convict innocent persons. Sometimes, their interest is improperly focused on making them look good and to that end, they have railroaded innocents just to make it look like they always catch criminals. Still another highly improper and all too common motive is revenue. Yet another terrible attitude is thinking that everyone is guilty of something, and so justice can convince themselves that punishing someone for a crime they did not commit is okay, because they certainly must have committed other crimes for which they do deserve the punishment they're receiving.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, @09:29PM (4 children)
Does anyone know of a good tech discussion site? This site is mostly politics, and frankly I don't understand why people are so crazed about all of it. Makes no real sense to me.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday November 01, @10:06PM (2 children)
Rubbish, you may have an axe to grind, but claiming that this site is mostly politics is ridiculous. There has been one story in the last 7 days week that has had a political nexus applied to it out of 36 stories posted.
If you mean in the journals then that is the responsibility of the journal owners themselves. However, there is one journal whose topic is politically related in the list of current journals on the front page, the rest are on a variety of non-political topics. What you appear to be complaining about is how every journal gets abused and turned into a political debate. That is the fault of the commentators - not of the journal owners. That is why journal owners can now use flagging, and why journals default now to 'Logged-in Users' only. If the owners wish to open them up to other commentators then they may do so.
How many "good" tech discussions have you submitted? What do you consider to be a 'good tech' topic? Have you forgotten about the main pages?
But in case you have missed it (I know you haven't, I've read your other recent comment) - your country is in political turmoil at the moment as a result of the last 10 months. He may be doing what you wanted him to do, but his methods and intentions are far from acceptable to most Americans. Wait until he declares an insurrection somewhere and introduces martial law. As they say in show business - "You ain't seen nothing yet..."
Oh, and where are the Epstein files that he promised he would release as an election pledge?
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 0, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Saturday November 01, @11:39PM (1 child)
"Rubbish, you may have an axe to grind, but claiming that this site is mostly politics is ridiculous."
You should have quit while you were ahead. Instead, you succinctly proved and underlined the point. By the time we get to the fourth paragraph, you just can't resist trying to justify the previously denied politicization by citing the "political turmoil at the moment as a result of the last 10 months", as if the bad orange man somehow gives the site a free pass to do what you denied it was doing.
(Score: 1, Troll) by janrinok on Sunday November 02, @03:43AM
If you care to look back, the AC had ALREADY politicised the discussion himself. He dislikes the discussion of politics so much he made a comment which began with an expression of his political views and how he now feels he should be getting even with the world for the way that he has been treated. Others have also responded to his comment. He should not do something and then complain that he has just done it.
This story is one about individual rights and how they are currently being abused using technology that was previously illegal, and which is now being used by a group of volunteer masked and armed thugs.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by epitaxial on Sunday November 02, @06:12AM
Feeling called out?
(Score: 2) by AlwaysNever on Sunday November 02, @09:46PM
...survives an encounter with a massive avalanche of outsiders.
The USA is now officially a shithole. Who would've thought?