> Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin said the city disagrees with the ruling and is concerned about who could obtain the footage. “We were very disappointed,” Franklin said. “That means perpetrators of crime, people who are maybe engaged in domestic abuse or stalkers, they can request footage and that could cause a lot of harm.”
These people are fooling themselves if they think that keeping the cameras but not allowing the public to see the data will stop domestic abuse or stalkers. We've already seen these cameras used to stalk people and it wasn't random members of the public doing it, it was police officers. As long as this data is being collected it will be abused. If not by the public, then by police, or by Flock employees, or by hackers. The only way to protect people is to not gather the data at all. Anyone who keeps these cameras doesn't actually care about the public's safety.
The mayor is making a great argument for not blanketing your city in a surveillance dragnet.
Policymakers were warned about precisely these dangers ahead of time. They went ahead anyway, and now they want to play blameless and are trying to shift the blame on anyone but themselves.
I think both will be true. We'll be dealing with the fallout of this administration and dealing with his goons and cronies for decades while still looking back at this time in disbelief and wondering how we ever let it happen and what needs to change to prevent it in the future.
Don't bother. He just effectively argued that there are no illegitimate targets in war because soldiers can be anywhere and that hospitals must be targeted or else they are "get out of jail free cards" whatever the fuck that means. War is war, but war crimes are still war crimes. No point trying to have rational discourse with someone advocating for war crimes.
> He just effectively argued that there are no illegitimate targets in war
No, this is not what I've said.
> because soldiers can be anywhere and that hospitals must be targeted or else they are "get out of jail free cards" whatever the fuck that means.
The law is clear in this regard. If you use hospital for military purposes, it is a valid target.
> War is war, but war crimes are still war crimes.
When a hospital is used for military purposes and then attacked, it is not a war crime from the PoV of international law. You may not like it, but it is a fact.
> No point trying to have rational discourse with someone advocating for war crimes.
I think you are irrational here. Your reasoning is based on emotions, and not facts.
> The law is clear in this regard. If you use hospital for military purposes, it is a valid target.
This is wrong. Hospitals can only be valid targets if they are used to launch "acts harmful to the enemy". There are countless military purposes that still don't rise to that level. Sheltering soldiers, even using floors as war rooms for planning is not enough. Any response taken against a hospital must also be proportionate to the harm. Small arms fire from a hospital window does not justify bombing the entire building into rubble.
> The ICRC’s Commentary cites as examples “firing at the enemy for reasons other than individual self-defence, installing a firing position in a medical post, the use of a hospital as a shelter for able-bodied combatants, as an arms or ammunition dump, or as a military observation post.” It also states that “transmitting information of military value” or being used “as a centre for liaison with fighting troops” results in loss of protection.
> Sheltering soldiers, even using floors as war rooms for planning is not enough.
It is enough for the hospital to loose its protection.
> Any response taken against a hospital must also be proportionate to the harm.
This is completely different question though: proportionality of response vs. protected status of various institutions and buildings at war.
What do you think fascism is? What we have is a populist, nationalist, racist, far-right regime headed by a man that our highest court has ruled can't be held accountable for his "official" actions and who acts like a dictator (as further evidenced in this case by going to war without congress) who uses to the power of the government to attack/threaten/suppress his "enemies" here in the US. If this isn't textbook fascism you must admit that it at least checks a lot of the same boxes
Well this is not fascism, this is, as you said, a populist regime.
The far left loves to categorize everything at its right as "fascist". The infamous Berlin wall was the "antifascist protection wall". In Yugoslavia, you'd hear every day at the radio a rant about the "fascists", even though the country was communist.
There are many definitions of what "fascism" is. The best I think is to refer to the historical italian fascist government, to understand it.
Btw presidential immunity is not fascist, many countries have similar laws.
> The best I think is to refer to the historical italian fascist government, to understand it.
Sure, why don't we:
- leader with a cult of personality
- an idealized story of the prosperous past (make america great again)
- pinning blame for the nation's downfall on marginalized minorities and persecuting them (immigrants, socialists)
- aggressively anti-socialist/leftist, protection of capital and suppression of labor rights
- glorification of violence (ICE, hate crimes, "department of war")
- ramping up existing and starting new imperialistic conflicts (Venezuela, Cuba, now Iran)
- rolling back personal liberties (freedom of speech, right to due process, women's rights)
- suppression of the free press given unfavorable reporting (revocation of TV licenses, revocation of access to white house)
- clear desire with ongoing attempts to dismantle democracy (capitol attack, violating separation of powers by illegally withholding funding for programs and violating court orders)
- demands complete subservience rather than competence in all appointed roles
- all of this with full support of the elites (clear shift in the 2nd term)
If you want to argue that the US isn't fascist because Trump hasn't completely dismantled the judicial branch yet, be my guest.
But fascism isn't just a concrete political system where a dictator has absolute power, it's an ideology, and Trump and the Republican party are clearly fascist in that sense - that is their goal. It's just a question of whether they'll succeed in dismantling the judicial branch before his term is over.
The only people who benefit from this sort of language policing are the fascists themselves.
P.S. I probably shouldn't be saying this but the fact that you refer to people sounding the alarm as "the far left" really gives the game away.
Each point, aside from the cult of personality regarding Trump, is shallow.
For instance, the US didn't start a war against Venezuela or Cuba under Trump. America was much more aggressive in the 80´s, if you want to compare.
Immigration can totally be a problem, and voters in the western world increasingly ask their leaders to address it. It's not "democracy" when it suits your ideas and "fascism" when it doesn't.
Opposing socialism isn't "fascist" and afaik the Trump admin has done nothing significant about it: social expenses and the deficit are still growing faster than ever. What is mainly happening is that ressources are being redirected toward the retired, who are influencial voters and a growing demographic. It's the same everywhere in the western world.
Again, all of those measures are very superficial and nothing like what real fascism did in Italy or what Nazis did when they came to power. You can't reason just with outrage and headlines.
By the way, most of those points have their Democrat counterpart with a different style, it's mainly linked to the evolution of the governance style in the US. Democrats also had their DEI unsuited hires, censorships (Meta was censoring on the order of the White House), and so on.
> Immigration can totally be a problem, and voters in the western world increasingly ask their leaders to address it.
Stop equivocating. I didn't say that opposing immigration = fascism, I said that identifying marginalized groups, pinning all of the nation's problems on those groups and then persecuting, victimizing, terrorizing anyone who looks like they belong to one of those groups - that is fascist.
> Opposing socialism isn't "fascist"
Again, stop equivocating. I didn't say that opposing socialism is fascist, I said "aggressively anti-socialist", as in, violent anti-socialist rhetoric. Similar to the previous point.
> afaik the Trump admin has done nothing significant about it
That's wholly detached from reality. The only reason he hasn't dismantled all of the social programs yet is because the courts have stepped in and intervened when he tried. See: USAID, withholding SNAP funding, Medicaid, the whole DOGE disaster.
> Again, all of those measures are very superficial and nothing like what real fascism did in Italy or what Nazis did when they came to power. You can't reason just with outrage and headlines.
Those are the core qualities of fascism. I get it, you don't like being called a fascist so you sea-lion about the differences to distract from the overwhelming similarities.
Even when Trump dismantles the judicial branch, people like you will maintain that the US isn't fascist because people aren't speaking Italian like they did in fascist Italy, or German like they did in nazi Germany.
I feel comfortable saying this because we're not just disagreeing on whether the US is fascist right now and there's still room to have argue there, but we're disagreeing on whether Trump has a fascist agenda and whether he's actively working to transform the US into a totalitarian regime following the fascist playbook, which he absolutely is.
I'm not American, I'm not even Trumpist so your ad-hominem falls flat. I however live in a country where the soviet propaganda was crying "fascism" every single day of the year, for 60 years, so when I see people do the same I tend to be skeptical about it.
I still don't understand why "aggressively anti-socialist" policies are fascist. Fascism is itself a branch of socialism (Mussolini was one, in France the fascist leader Jacques Doriot was one as well, for instance). Being a totalitarism, it aims at engulfing every aspect of the daily life, which means supporting socialist policies (similar to communism, another totalitarism).
Authoritarian regimes in the 30´s that were "aggressively anti-socialist" weren't fascist. Franco or Salazar are relevant examples, even thought today they would be categorized as such, since you guys seem now to have only single word left to designate populist or authoritarian regimes then don't like.
Trump lacks deeply indeed the socialist aspect of fascism; it would likely be better defined as plutocratic cesarism, even though he did not make a coup (yet).
> I'm not American, I'm not even Trumpist so your ad-hominem falls flat.
You don't have to be American to be a fascist-sympathizer, which you clearly are, since you label opposition to totalitarian methods as "the far left", lie about matters of fact, and grossly misrepresent the events that happened in fascist Italy while trying to represent yourself as someone intimately familiar with the matter.
For example:
> Fascism is itself a branch of socialism (Mussolini was one)
> Authoritarian regimes in the 30´s that were "aggressively anti-socialist" weren't fascist.
> Trump lacks deeply indeed the socialist aspect of fascism
Fascism is not a branch of socialism, fascism frames socialists as enemies of the state and pledges to destroy socialism. Mussolini was clearly not a socialist ideologically, as he had them killed. That was the entire MO of the blackshirts.
> since you guys seem now to have only single word left to designate populist or authoritarian regimes then don't like.
No, we're just using the word appropriately and you hate it. You'd rather lie and make up a story about fascism being a branch of socialism than admit that Trump is a fascist.
You should read more about this, the creator of the fascist doctrine stated plainly that fascism was socialism with nationalist characteristics.[0]
Socialism and fascism share many similarities, given that they developed in the same context with the same roots : youth movements, focus on controlling education, citizen's health seen as a responsibility of the State, strong management of the economy, and so on. Both tend to classify political ennemies as a single group ("communists" in the case of fascists, "fascists" in the case of socialists), without distinction, just like what you are doing.
The fact that Black Shirts (which don't have a Trumpian equivalent) didn't like the other socialists doesn't make fascism less socialist, just like the soviet campaign against Trotskists doesn't mean that the USSR was less communist.
> we're just using the word appropriately
Rubio just admitted that the US participated in the strikes against Iran to please Israel. There is nothing fascist about this, and again plutocracy is a much more efficient explanation for the current regime actions. Saying that something isn't fascist doesn't make me a fascist.
"If you are not with me, you're against me" type of thinking... where did I see this historically?
> The moment they made that name change and stated their expansionist agenda it finally became clear to me that this wasn't just MAGA anymore, this was actual fascism.
I'm pretty sure MAGA was always fascism. I mean, all the signs were there and people were sounding alarm bells almost immediately.
Trump ran on "no wars" because he was going to spend all his focus on America instead of burning taxpayer money dropping bombs overseas. I'm sure some people voted for him at least in part for that reason. You can argue that they should have known he was liar, but there is support for it. Also, with the new concentration camps, the soldiers in our streets, and the nazi salutes I'm not sure the whole "good guys" against the "bad guys" narrative is something trump voters care about at all. They seem pretty comfortable playing the "bad guys" part anyway.
The best way for government to fight that would be to remind those who refuse to comply with their demands that the government already knows exactly where they live, where they hang out, and that any one of them can also be targeted by a three letter agency or thrown into Guantánamo Bay. The government has been building and maintaining massive dossiers on everyone. They already have the ability to plant or fabricate whatever incriminating evidence they want. They already have the capability to jeopardize anyone, their personal assets, and their families and all of that could be turned against them if something goes haywire or where an outside adversary gains unauthorized access. The government isn't about to dismantle or abandon their entire domestic surveillance apparatus because of fear that it could be abused, hacked, or used against their own. Those are well known and accepted risks. AI is just one more risk they can't resist taking.
> with their demands that the government already knows exactly where they live, where they hang out…
You’d think this, and then you hear about how long it took the FBI to locate aaronsw (rip), who lived life online, and left lots of clues to his general location, but somehow the only place the FBI ever looked was 1,000 miles away? I guess you could say that was 15 years ago, but we had domestic spy programs 15 years ago, too.
And so we have the other side of the coin. Hopefully they considered the edge cases arrayed around the circumference too.
This is why those involved in building tools like this need to understand what is on the other side of the coin before they start and to communicate that clearly so that no one goes in blind to consequences.
Yes, but this is the same government, where the ministry of war chief Hegseth added random people to a secret chat on signal. If leadership messes up with 0 consequence, you can guess what happens at the lower ranks. In other words, they ain't so competent as you make it sound they are.
> Without having someone knowledgeable enough to build and operate them, AI models are worthless to the C-suite.
The obvious solution is to use AI to build and operate them. If AI is as intelligent as the hype claims it shouldn't be an issue. It's not as if the goal wasn't to get rid of workers anyway. Why not start now?
These people are fooling themselves if they think that keeping the cameras but not allowing the public to see the data will stop domestic abuse or stalkers. We've already seen these cameras used to stalk people and it wasn't random members of the public doing it, it was police officers. As long as this data is being collected it will be abused. If not by the public, then by police, or by Flock employees, or by hackers. The only way to protect people is to not gather the data at all. Anyone who keeps these cameras doesn't actually care about the public's safety.
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