Phoenicianpirate

The same thing in Canada. Despite the reputation of Canadians being polite wusses by Americans the Canadian legal system is much harsher than the American system.

This is why libertarians and many modern authoritarian LOVE corporations. Unlike governments which have some accountability (that has seriously been dwindling) corporations can basically do what they want. Laws are effectively written by corporations so that anyone in any position of authority is never thrown in prison or even needs to worry about that (ultra low level workers can be thrown to the dogs to placate the public every once in a while) and meanwhile the right of protestors has been so seriously curtailed that soon even in formerly first world countries they might be able to break out the machine guns like they did in central America in the 1910s and 1950s. In Britain protestors are being sentenced to record prison terms that were formerly reserved for rapists and muggers.

There is little question that corporations are behind them all.

The reason is the same reason why bullies go after vulnerable and/or isolated kids. The type of person who has a car and has the money and means to illegally modify it is also the type of person who would give the police absolute hell if they so much as dared to look at them the wrong way. A person jumping a small toll is someone who is poor and will never attract the sympathies of any judge who will treat them very harshly.

They would never win. The police were just doing their jobs after all. So what if a couple of innocent people get shot? After all, just because they are currently innocent, doesn't mean they aren't future criminals. So really, by shooting them they make it less likely that they'll commit future crimes!

This is an age old American tradition of shooting people who try to stow on train cars. There is an image in American culture of the freighthopping hobo who is trying to find a better place to live and work despite not having a dime to his name. Of course in reality many people have been shot for doing that. Property and a few dollars is worth much, much more than a poor person's life.

I am aware, but sometimes my autism still demands I write it anyway. In my experience comments read by people can still inform them even if they have no idea who wrote them and the reason why. I just want to leave the world a better place than I found it.

Exactly. I am elder millennial, and I grew up in Dubai. Back in the 80s and 90s in Dubai the only security cameras that existed were in malls and some supermarkets, and public CCTV by police did not exist. Traffic light cameras to catch people speeding and/or running a red light only got started in the early 2000s. This is one thing that I honestly say that really demarcates the early 2000s from previous times is the fact that the possibility of mass surveillance became a reality only back then. Before that surveillance was mostly disjointed and not at all interconnected. If you had security cameras, then they were on VHS tapes and unless you had the budget to get new tapes regularly, most people would just rewind the tapes and tape over and over, meaning they will degrade fairly quickly, and since most places didn't keep an archive for too long, if something 'suspicious' happened a few weeks prior that you weren't informed about until today, it would be lost since those tapes were likely overwritten, and there is no way to recover that.

The 90s were far from perfect for me. I had a fairly hard time growing up. But I honestly just wish for the dignity of not being on camera 24/7. My apartment building has cameras on all floors and I cannot exit or enter my own apartment without being caught on camera. That is if those cameras are real and not fakes.

Robocop... the movie they love but don't realize is a complete mockery of THEM. As a kid I thought that Robo was just cool, but as I got older and rewatched it a few times, I realized just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

You know what's one profound thing I noticed a few years ago that flew over my head? The ED-209 robot does not have a non-lethal apprehension method. It only threatens to kill for non-compliance, and then does so if compliance is not absolute. It has no way of restraining or leading arrested suspects if they comply, and no other method to deal with non-compliant suspects other than to blow them away. No tasers, no net gun, no ropes, no tear gas, no sci-fi 'set for stun' laser beam, nothing.

On top of that another thing I realized is that Dick Jones considered that thing to be street ready to take on law enforcement. From everything to ultra-violent encounters to jaywalking and parking tickets. What it tells me about his mentality is that he would be a HIGHLY successful billionaire today...

Not only that, he will probably set all the cameras that he is in control of to switch off on command or if he is in the vicinity (in addition to purging the previous 10 minutes or so) so that he is NEVER caught on any camera, period.

Which is far worse. Governments are, to a large extent (even dictatorial governments) still have some accountability to the people. Corporations NEVER have that. The greatest propaganda trick that corporations did is that somehow they are better than governments and the less restrictions on them, the 'freer' and 'richer' the average person will be.

While wearing a mask that'll fool AI on top of a ski mask beneath it.

they put that shit into water bottles... water bottles! Like they have a water bottle that can be synched to your phone and it's % shown on screen and it changes color at set intervals to remind you to drink. Like for fucks sake dude!