Hm. Maybe Kodak could make a good comeback...

I think it was in Lone Star that they started mentioning that Digital Photography was not as accepted in court due to the proliferation of the ability to doctor digital photos, while traditional film was more accepted as doctored photos were sufficiently easier to prove/disprove for a court of law.

800,000 a year! In the US alone.
Mind you most of those are parents or other relatives without custody rights taking their children. Another good chunk are runnaways and what not. Most of them are recovered. 4% or 32,000 aren't so lucky.
If you're thinking of "traditional" abductions(stranger, non-family, more than 50 miles away, violent, etc,) that's more along the lines of 500 to 400 a year. Then it's approximately a dozen or so that never make it back.
However, all those moms and dads and grandparets who have had their kids taken by another parent or a runnaway never to be seen again sure would appriciate this Orwellian society we're so afraid of.

It can be illegal to video tape the police. Not only does your friend get beaten to death, you go to jail for recording it.

EDIT: Also here

The hilarious part is that Wiretapping Laws were put into place to protect citizens from obtrusive Police!

Also, there's also the issue of "Expectation of Privacy" that occurs. Cell phones aren't covered by Expectation of Privacy due to transmitting on radio signals, so that alone should have allowed it to be used, even if the other end was recording. Also, public place, no expectation of privacy again.

Finally, the dashboard cameras in cop cars.

Yet, the Police are expecting privacy... Go figure.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, eh?

Then who guards the guards who guard your guards?

Sam Vimes?

Rorschach

You mean 800,000 cases of children reported missing, including the same child being reported missing more than once. And as you said, the majority of this number are runaways


http://www.missingkids.com/en_US/documents...lyabduction.pdf
203,900 children were victims of "family abductions" over the period of one year. Six percent, or 12,234, "had not yet returned at the time of the survey interview."


Again, off by a few hundred percent. According to http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/ser...amp;PageId=2810 "115 children were the victims of “stereotypical” kidnapping. (These crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently.)"



And another RL annecdote: One of the driving forces behind the law mentioned in the OP, and the group clamouring the loudest for its reintroduction, is the German Police Union (GDP). Want to guess who was crying wolf about "breach of privacy" when AI suggested officers should wear pseudonymous ID numbers when operating in full stormtrooper gear? But hey, if you're a Dortmund fan travelling to a game in Gelsenkirchen (which is a game with _minor_ potential for conflict) and are greeted by a guy with an "Ultras Gelsenkirchen" sticker on his baton, you can still walk up to him and kindly ask for his ID...

Missingkids.com uses the '99 report. I'm referencing the '02 report. There are often many, many conflicting numbers about child abduction, far more than you or I can come up with and whose stats are best is a very contentious subject amongst those who follow the disturbing world of child abduction.
Never, ever visit a message board for people who have lost children. The flame wars about numbers get intense and personal, so I won't duplicate that here.
My point was that there are tens of thousands of kidnapped children in the US, often taken by a parent without legal custody, thousands taken by a friend or other family member and hundreds taken by strangers with malicious intent. If we were all being watched all the time, how could this happen?
If one wants to argue whether or not specific numbers are inflated or misrepresented, I'll cede the point. But horrific crimes occur in spite of this idea that every move you make is being monitored.

I'll further contend that if every move you make was being monitored in the Shadowrun universe, there would be no Shadowrunners. Crime would all but cease if everyone was being monitored 24/7 without hope of escape.
But often this concept of Big Brother monitoring is little more than security theater, designed to make people behave because they think they're being watched and give the normals a false sense of security.
We who run the shadows know better. Cameras have blind spots, sec-riggers can be bribed, dynamite is cheap and most people are bad at their jobs. Keep your head down, shoot straight and never deal with a dragon. The cats at Lone Star can't catch the Mayan Cutter, so the odds that they're monitoring some schmuck who broke into some lab is pretty small. I'll take my chances.

I'd guess because if your child was taken by your disgruntled spouse or Dr. Mitchell decided to jump ship with all your cutting-edge biochip research, a recording showing your ex taking the child or Mitchell getting into an unmarked chopper only helps Captain Obvious

All I know is that the "Stranger-Danger" thing put kids at more risk than less.

Absolutely. It's common theory that more emphasis needs to be put on recognizing danger from someone kids know. That theory is not being put into practice in many districts, yet.
My point is that if everyone can be tracked all the time and we live in this Orwellian society, how are so many terrible crimes still being committed? Can't you just track down the guy or the kid with his cell phone or computer or whatever it is you're worried about The Man using to trace you?
All of the "I can find you, no matter what." posturing falls by the wayside when faced with a problem larger than finding my IP address.
Heck, if you commit a murder you've got a 40% chance of getting away with it. TSA had a 30% detection rate in 2005 when the threat of terrorism was kind of a big deal.

The idea that The Man is watching you all the time falls apart in real world examples, and falls further apart in the dystopian world of Shadowrun where crime is as common as leafs on trees. I'm far more worried about being robbed and then arrested because my cell phone* was on when the cop took my statement than I am about Ares Macrotech knowing what I had for breakfast.


*I don't actually own a cell phone, but my point remains valid.

Because criminals know how to slip though the cracks, or they simply don't give a shit because they are acting out of impulse. So what does LS do with all that tech if no pedophile nazi terrorists show up on the pedophile nazi terrorist radar? Book in a few metas for loitering or distributing AR tags without filing Form 08-15 in triplicate...

So the problem is not so much that you might get tracked during a run - it's that your...unconventional lifestyle or regular trips to Ammu-Nation might raise a flag.


And by the way, 60 percent clearance rate for homicide, WTF?! Over here it's like 95% and until now I considered that hardly exceptional...

And that's why I shop at Bob's Booze, Bullets, and Butts for all my alcohol, ammunition, and nicotine needs! He takes cash, blood diamonds, your women, or any other legitimate form of trade.

What about cocaine in kilo packs?

Mikey is in the back alley for that.

Because tracking a cell phone requires you know the cell phone number - and if you knew that, you'd already be most of the way to finding the guy.

Ultimately though, it's only Big Brother for people who follow the rules - who register their vehicle, don't encrypt their e-mail, and show real ID when asked. Those people can get spied on easily, you just look them up. Bad guys tend not to follow the rules, so they're not registered. The end result is, if you like privacy, it's better to be a bad guy.

Thankfully, Anthony Graber's case was thrown out of court by a judge with enough sense to see that the police didn't have a reasonable expectation of privacy while in the middle of a freeway off-ramp.

It's not illegal to do this, not according to any judicial decision or case. The cops may SAY it's illegal, in order to intimidate people. But police say a lot of shit that may or may not be true, including that it's illegal to photograph public landmarks.

And they (The Po-Lice!) wonder why they have a bad reputation with the general public now, or at least the people that aren't sheep.

'Course, a bunch of Baby Boomers that grew up in the '60s might have some effect on that as well...

I'm sure there's a lot of decent police officers and such in small towns, but I've only lived in cities and, well, rarely seen anything but the ugly side. And what I have seen that isn't ugly still isn't pretty.

Just ask your kids to leave town and ask the local chinese to build a wal arround your town, this could prevent your kids from being kidnaped. Of course they might end up working to mongolian raiders...

I live in Seattle; the SPD hasn't NOT signed off on a use of force case in years. Recently an SPD officer shot dead a local, elderly, half-deaf woodcarver for not handing over his knife. The officer was shouting from his deaf side, he was crossing the street (so there was traffic noise), the knife was legal, and the knife was CLOSED. The SPD cleared said officer of any wrongdoing.

It's gotten bad enough that the ACLU has requested a federal probe.

The SPD wants to be the LAPD, I think. Circa 1992.

I don't really know LA. What happened in 1992?

That was about when the Rampart Division of the LAPD started to go down the bad road into excessive beatings, planting evidence on suspects, forced confessions, etc. Police excess at its worst.

It actually started in 1987 or so with Operation HAMMER, but HAMMER lead to the Rampart Division and later, to CRASH, which is where it fell apart.

*googles*

Fascinating stuff. Thanks for the heads up!

The day's of friendly Officer Paddy knowing the family and people of the neighborhood have long gone away unless you're in Small Town, North America.

And then if Officer Paddy decides he doesn't like you, or he's related to someone who wronged you, you're screwed.

Yeah, well, that hasn't changed in forever.

And better than every police officer seeing the world in two colours: Blue and Scum.

At least that kind you can win over, sometimes. If it's your second cousin or your ex-boyfriend and the chief's his overindulgent father, you're really out of luck. My wife used to live in a very small town - not even a stop light, just a 4-way blinker - in an area where she was literally related to about half the county in some way, including a solid quarter of the town she was in. Most of them were Jehova's Witnesses, and the church leadership was always on her about little things - she had no expectation of privacy because she was family. I never want to live in a small town.

Grass is always greener, I guess.

It's not today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/science/05legal.html

Maryland it is illegal, under wiretapping laws. I suppose you can record video, but not audio without consent of both parties. It's never been tested in court as far as I'm aware (even when video evidence lead to the firing of a Baltimore City cop for berating some skateboarding kid in the inner harbor), but it's not something I'm eager to personally test.

Best just to go with the grey man tactics, IMO (or... you know... restrict illegal stuff to a rousing game of GTA).

I highly doubt it would hold up in a higher court if tested. Still, that law should be struck down pre-emptively. Videos of police misconduct are a very valuable tool to keep the government in line, one we should not be willing to give up.

Taping police compromises national security. It needs to stop.

Think of the children!

You know, I really wonder what kind of shake-up we'll see if old punks get elected to office.

I really expected more of old Hippies. But, then again, if you remember the '60s...

Punk? You mean perhaps this fine fellow?

You mean the Senator from Alabama?

Careful - people who don't know you might think you were serious.

We really need a sarcasm font.

Anyone who takes a statement followed by "think of the children" deserve what they get.

No, it really isn't. It went to trial and was determined by the judge to not fall under the wire tapping statutes. That was the root of my first comment: I am glad the apellate judge had some sense. Especially since bpd dash cams record audio.

Like I said, "No expectation of privacy". Glad the Judges didn't just side with the cops because, well, "We're all Law Enforcement around here..."

I've heard of an SPD case where they lost dash cam footage of a guy being taken in who knew his rights. He somehow managed to retrieve the footage despite getting stonewalled. This, of course, made the SPD quite pissy.
You gotta go along to get along, no?

Let's just say that where I come from, there's no Justice, there's Just Us.

At least, it feels that way a hell of a lot.

Down here, we have criminal justice. Which is worse is really up to personal preference.

That's what I'd call what happens back home, too.

It's just that some of them have badges.

I should probably shut up now.

We don't have a justice system; we have a legal system which attempts (theoretically) to dispense justice. Big difference.

That implies they even follow the law.