

More on the war against photography - cwan
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/Examiner-Opinion-Zone/Is-a-mans-home-still-his-castle-101681398.html

======
teilo
"The castle walls may be crumbling and decayed, but they invaders can be
fought back and the walls rebuilt."

I want to think so. I really do. But all I see is the erosion continuing. More
and more _you_ can't photograph or videotape the police (regardless of what
the law actually says). Why? For your protection. On the other hand, _they_
and other government organizations can photograph and videotape you all they
want and you have no recourse. Why? For your protection.

I have long held a theory that as freedoms erode, good men and women will not
wish to be engaged in the violation of said freedoms. Therefore they will
naturally not want to be a part of law enforcement. This means that, over
time, law enforcement will be dominated more and more by those who don't give
a damn about your liberty and will abuse it however they see fit.

~~~
enjo
Thankfully law enforcement, ultimately, is responsible to the electorate. This
whole thing is our (collective) fault. The American people have gladly
exchanged essential freedom for the promise of security from a threat that was
never terribly real to begin with.

\- We flocked to suburbs because cities just aren't safe.

\- We turned into a nation of helicopter parents terrified that our children
were surely going to be kidnapped at any moment.

\- We elected politicians who promised to be "tough on crime" giving us such
gems as mandatory minimum sentencing, huge prison terms for petty crimes,
trying 15 year old kids as adults, etc...

\- We massively increased the number of police on our streets.

And we did all of this, despite the fact that statistically we we're actually
never in much of anything resembling danger. I remember folks in Cabot
Arkansas (where I attended high school for two years) freaking out over a
perceived gang problem. It was ridiculous then, but they made sure to hire a
few more police officers to keep an eye on it.

Americans have proven to be two things: 1) terrified and 2) really bad at
math. Our reporters don't understand statistics and our soccer moms are even
worse.

That's why I'm greatly amused about all the fighting we do over national
politics. Who cares about Obama... you should be fighting tooth and nail over
your mayor. The person who is in charge of your police and ultimately much
more likely to impact your freedom.

How many folks have made this an issue locally? I haven't heard a peep here in
Denver.

~~~
philwelch
Crime wasn't always an imaginary problem in this country. In fact, not too
long ago it was a major problem
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States>). Right now we have
almost half the level of violent crime and homicide we had about 20 years ago.
Some cities, like New York, had even higher crime rates in the 80's and 90's
compared to now than the country as a whole.

------
jdietrich
The United States: Land of the free, home of the biggest prison population in
the world.

In all seriousness, I wish more USians were aware of how much of the rest of
the world views the current state of your nation. I could address this
specific point, but I just feel it's irrelevant in light of the much bigger
issues. I think that this clip is quite insightful to the prevailing attitude
in Britain and much of Europe:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E7wgFcCefE>

At 3:06, Jimmy Carr says "I'd very much like to say something hilarious, but
something must be done." Take note of his tone - it's not the indignation
usually aimed at America. There's no sense that he thinks you should know
better. It's the same tone he would use to talk about a humanitarian disaster
in the developing world. He's just sad. We're describing "slavery by the
backdoor" and we're not even angry.

We don't view you as "the evil empire", not any more. We don't hate you, we
just don't have the heart to. We pity you. We pity what you have become and
what you may yet become. You look to many of us like a punched-out former
heavyweight - once great, now just an incoherent wreck, old and infirm before
your time.

When hurricane Katrina hit, many of us agreed with Kanye West's sentiment that
"George Bush does not care about black people". Five years on, many of us have
come to believe that the US is just becoming incapable of managing its own
affairs. I'm not sure which is a sadder thing to believe.

Us Brits can empathise to an extent - we used to have an empire on which the
sun never set, now we're just a drizzly little island with a few rotten banks
and a rubbish football team. Where we can't empathise is that we've always
been able to feed our poor and sick and old. Since 1948 we've had a right to a
hospital bed, regardless of our means. We used to think that you were
unwilling, but now we're not sure whether you're just unable.

[http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704...](http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704913304575370950363737746.html)

~~~
hyperbovine
Meh. I am well aware of how the rest of the world views the U.S., having spent
a fair amount of time traveling around it. In Europe I got a sense that a lot
of people were rooting for the U.S. to fail, and that those sentiments tended
to cloud their otherwise sound judgement. Like for example the girl from
Greece I met who swore that 9/11 was a CIA-instigated plot, and said everyone
she knew agreed. Or the French guy who was berating America for backing
dictatorships in the Mid-East and Africa, while his own government merrily
sells them the guns and bombs needed to prolong the oppression. During Bush II
I lived in Spain for a time, and the amount of distortions and outright
fabrications that appeared in the papers there about things our leaders had
said or done never ceased to amaze me.

And then we have the Brits, who never miss a chance to loudly empathize with
what it's like to live in an "ex-empire", and boast about NHS--you know, the
institution under which my friend waited 13 months to get a knee operation.
(That's a long time to be crippled.) Of course, who knows how long that will
last, what that hideous budget deficit you're now forced to confront.

The mistake people from other countries always seem to make when it comes to
us Americans is that they mistake our politeness for ignorance. We're not
blind to our deficiencies, our yours; we're just too polite to go around
rubbing them in.

You could learn something from that.

~~~
semanticist
Aside from appearing petty ('someone was mean about America, I'll be mean
about their country'), I wouldn't raise the issue of healthcare as an example
of America doing things right. You have one of the worst healthcare systems in
any developed nation!

My wife is American and when we were first married, we had a discussion about
where we would live. I didn't want to leave Scotland, so she moved here. Now
she would refuse to move back to the US, even after the election of Obama in
the US and Cameron here.

America is a deeply confusing and terrifying country to many people. It's a
country that doesn't appear to care about its citizens in any meaningful way -
and its citizens appear to be largely in favour of this. There are very deep
cultural divides between the UK and the US, divides that are easily missed due
to the common language and shared history.

In any event, this particular issue is in no way an American one. The same
problem of overzealous police reaction to photographers is widely reported in
the UK, to the extent of questions being asked in Parliament and the ACPO
issuing guidance telling the plod on the beat to stop harassing photographers,
which said plod largely ignore, especially in London.

I think it's pretty much inevitable. Our governments are spending so much time
pounding out the 'BE AFRAID, BE ALERT' message that any push back against that
is perceived as a direct attack, and is treated as such. The answer is to stop
the paranoia about terrorists, but neither of our countries new governments
seem keen to do that.

~~~
philwelch
American culture is very sink-or-swim. There isn't as much cultural demand for
a safety net. I attribute this to our cultural memory of the frontier.
Europeans think of welfare as a country taking care of its citizens--Americans
are more likely to think of it as forcing hardworking, productive people to
support those who can't be bothered to work for a living.

Incidentally, it's a misnomer that the US has one of the worse healthcare
systems in any developed nation. The US has the single best healthcare system
in human history, if you can afford it. Some people from countries with
socialized medicine actually come here to have stuff done, since they'd rather
pay to travel and have medical care in the US rather than wait in the queue in
their own country. What the US lacks is a way of making the full use of that
system available to everyone.

~~~
epochwolf
> The US has the single best healthcare system in human history, if you can
> afford it.

It's that _if you can afford it_ that makes it _worst healthcare systems in
any developed nation_ in some people's eyes.

Everyone is comparing apples to oranges when it comes to this stuff.

System 1: Everyone has health care but it may be subject to wait-listing which
leads to major problems.

System 2: A percentage of the population can't afford basic care but those
that can, get exceptional care. Emergency care is typically available to
everyone through public hospitals regardless of ability to pay but if you can
afford part of it, it has the potential bankrupt you.

The systems reflect cultural bias.

Note: Any system has the potential to become rationed.

