Thursday, May 07, 2009

Are You Down for the Count?

Some people...are upset over an army of some 140,000 workers hired in part with a $700 million taxpayer-funded contract to collect GPS readings for every front door in the nation. [More]
Now come on--if you're not a rightwing domestic terrorist, what have you got to hide? It's not like a government with Patriot Act powers would ever abuse a GPS locator for your front door--or that they can't be trusted with front doors in general...

Y'know, I took a look at what the Constitution has to say about the census:
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
and
The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative...
Pretty straightforward, really--how many of us are there? There's certainly nothing in there about Hispanic Origin, or Food Stamps Eligibility or Plumbing or Fertility or Vehicles or...here's the questionnaire--see for yourself.

But it does make me wonder how the occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., 38.898590 Latitude and -77.035971 Longitude, will answer questions 7, 8 and 9:


[Via Avg Joe]

10 comments:

Defender said...

Number of people in household. Period.
Now go away.

jon said...

i burn census forms. at my doorstep, in fact.

jon said...

after googling for a bit, i've come to the conclusion that low-cost GPS jamming is feasible. go take a look.

it's technically illegal, but it's also proven effective.

AvgJoe said...

Abuse of GPS of our front door could be: If we have troops from another country helping the government here. They may not be able to read a map but they will darn sure know how to use a GPS. The second point would be, could a air to ground small rocket be sent to any home that would fight before turning in their guns. Through saving any blood on the government's side.
No matter how you slice the pie on this one. This is very, very bad for citizen's freedom.
Our home addresses have worked for everything for hundreds of years. In fact EMT, police and fire has never asked for anything different because the address system that we have works.
This is going to come back and bite freedom, your freedom, watch and see.

Anonymous said...

Three letters: UAV

They don't take any oaths and you don't need very many oath breakers to control them.

Anonymous said...

and a new generation of bigger, faster, heavier payload toys are coming soon...

straightarrow said...

sure sounds like targeting information to me.

bob r said...

Whitehouse:
NW corner:
(38.897736032566314, -77.03688383102417)
SE corner:
(38.89749910349286, -77.03628301620483)

Zoom Google Maps to any point of interest, right click on the map and select "Center map here", paste "javascript:alert(window.gApplication.getMap().getCenter());"
into the URL line on the browser and hit "Enter". A window pops up with the latitude and longitude.

They don't have to send anybody out to get this info. Doing so _might_ make the address to lat/long correlation better.

Anonymous said...

Well, if you can tie a particular name to an address and then find out how the person at that address is registered to vote, you could use the GPS co-ords when planning the layout of congressional districts prior to the 2010 election. This works especially well if you have the census data under the control of the occupant of the white house via his acorn buddies.

Mike Gallo said...

So how exactly to they figure they're allowed on my property without my permission or a warrant?