Do you think the current situation is what they wanted?
I agree with you about division but the answer to this question is yes. Unfortunately there is a not insignificant number of Americans who would be completely happy with the current situation if it was only affecting the “others” they were told it would.
It’s important to understand there is a difference between those people who are upset because of what’s happening, full stop, and those people who are upset because it’s happening to them.
Fund raising?
That is one common method of raising money privately for a cause or organization.
Privately funded with what?
Money that doesn’t belong to the government. For example, money that is privately owned.
The state government also already covered half the costs of the program for the state. This is just some extra funding to cover the rest so that it doesn’t have to come from private funding.
Looks like it would be private funding like before except completely funded privately.
It’s not really about ALPRs though. ALPRs have been in use in some form since the 1970s. The issue is the information they gather and where it goes.
This focused hatred of “ALPRs” is good in the short term to drive change but not in the long term for sustainable action.
For example, all consumer automobiles in the US require front-facing collision avoidance cameras by 2029 under federal automotive safety laws. Tack an ALPR system on, use the built in cellular and satellite collections and all of a sudden every vehicle becomes an ALPR camera on wheels.
People are filmed and photographed all the time these days; think things like business CCTV, home camera systems like Ring, pre-existing DOT cameras, dash cams, people filming their lives and everywhere they go etc. etc.
In the long term people need to control the collection and use of the data and establish some significant penalties for misuse. It would be nice if, in the US, we could establish that any data gathered by ALPRs is covered under the 4th amendment and require a warrant for starters.
I also think the data should be required to be stored by the government agency utilizing it, no third parties.
Pocket shot or wrist ticket with ball bearings?
I swear I saw almost this exact same headline about 18 years ago…
Then they’d be the janitor too.
And then they’d be called a copywriter.
I don’t have a side in this but both my ‘93 Ford Escort and my ‘01 Ford Crown Victoria would turn on the A/C compressor if you hit the Defrost button for the windshield.
Edit: Just searched it and I think you two are in a semantic misunderstanding.
Online piracy is still incredibly common, accounting for as much as 22% of online traffic during peak times.
While it has declined somewhat overall there’s starting to be a resurgence and the crackdown in 2023 that took down most of the pirating sites just consolidated a lot of it and evolved how people pirate.
https://worldmetrics.org/piracy-statistics/