Tag Archives: cops

WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR, So any journalist passing through London’s Heathrow has now been warned: do not take any documents with you. Britain is now a police state when it comes to journalists, just like Russia is.

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WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR, So any journalist passing through London’s Heathrow has now been warned: do not take any documents with you. Britain is now a police state when it comes to journalists, just like Russia is..

This post by Wil Wheaton is a really great reminder that when you are traveling, and I wouldn’t necessarily just put this as international to Britain but even when visiting the next town or crossing state lines even. Rights are being trampled everywhere you go, wether it be from a out-of-control cop, a bloodthirsty Sheriffs deputy or even a sticky-fingered TSA agent there is no lack of potential thugs, enemies, and thieves in your midst.

There are ways to secure your data and keep it handy as well. Store everything in an encrypted disk image or TrueCrypt archive on a cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive and duplicate the same things in your memory sticks. If the thugs take your devices then you can rest assured that all you lost was the material itself, but no content.

I’m surprised that journalists and people who know journalists don’t all use GPG to secure their communications. I would think that if you were a whistleblower or had contact with a whistleblower that these little checkboxes would be foremost on your mind and already checked off.

You can’t trust any government, any cop, or any Vampire to keep their word. This goes for everyone as well, including your carrier and service providers. What should Verizon know? Shit. How about Dropbox? The same. Trust nobody and you’ll be safer than someone who trusted someone else. Trust is earned and right now, very very few people have it.

Two Kinds Of Law

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I’ve lived my life under a really useful expression. “Do not invite Vampires or Policemen into your home.” mostly because you just cannot trust a cop. They are supposed to protect and serve, at least that’s what it says on paper but everyone has seen instance after instance where the police abuse their powers granted to them by the people to do everything from simple infractions or derelictions of duty all the way up to what could be argued as murder. It runs the gamut, between the cop who turns on his sirens and lights to zoom through an intersection just so he can get to the donut shop because he’s got a dire craving to the cop that beats a retarded man nearly to death with a baton.

We don’t get that kind of action so much here in the delightful little town of Kalamazoo. By and large I’d say the cops are more an ever-present miasma than they are a downright menace. It’s a little town with a lot of police. You’ve got Michigan State Cops, you have Kalamazoo City Cops, you have County Sheriffs, and you have Kalamazoo Township Cops. Their spheres of influence are a messy geographic venn diagram and so because you don’t really get who does what, you just shrug and go about living your life.

Everything is just fine until you witness a cop breaking the law. Now I have to say that there are some situations where the law bends for a cop, like in an emergency the speed limit doesn’t matter and this post isn’t about that sort of thing. This post is about what happens when a cop, probably without thought, does something that is patently illegal – and you catch him at it.

Video says so much… so here we go. Officer Friendly driving 082 X 046 did something wrong:

[jwplayer mediaid=”2272″]

Yes, this is a very small infraction and lots of people do it all the time, I get that. But what irks me is when those who are set above us to “enforce the law” do not do so themselves. After looking up this particular naughty I came across this, which I sort of want to put on a ticket and attach to the cops car:

Negligent use of a motor vehicle – Prosecutable
Unattended – engine running or brake not set
Driver not in proper control of vehicle

Anyhow, I just took the video principally for lulz, but still, it is worth talking about. Who is above the law and who isn’t, and what those who aren’t do when they find out that the ones who are, aren’t.