Waze

One of the clearest indications you live in a police state – or one well on its way to becoming one – is “rules for us” (you and me) and “rules for them” (government officials and enforcers). This manifests in numerous ugly ways, the latest being the controversy over an app called Waze.

Among other useful functions such as alerting drivers to traffic jams down the road, it alerts drivers to cops down the road. Cops, of course, do not like this at all. It is bad for business. And that is exactly the right word.

We’re told that radar traps and so on exist not to extract dollars from our wallets but for “safety.” If so, why do the cops squeal so loudly about Waze? After all, people slow down for the trap up ahead. Isn’t that the desired object?

Obviously, not.

The squealing erupts not because people are slowing down but because they slow down in time to avoid being hit with a fine for not slowing down.  As they used to teach in journalism school: Follow the money. It is always about the money.

Power, though, is another big inducement.

Waze undermines the power wielded by the state’s Praetorians. It somewhat levels the playing field. It helps ordinary citizens avoid interactions with the costumed and badged power-trippers running amok these days. “The law” is of no real use because it works for them – not for us. If you doubt this, try asserting your Fourth or Fifth or even First Amendments in court… or for that matter, on the street.

The rights of the Praetorians, meanwhile, are effectively without limit.

Which is why Waze and other organic countermeasures have been sprouting up. Like the underground press behind the old Iron Curtain, such means are the only means available when the entire system is geared to crush the ordinary person under its bloated and indifferent weight.

One of the most delightful features of Waze is that – using real time updates collated via social media such as Twitter – it can hip you to a “safety” or “drunk driving” checkpoint up ahead in ample time to avoid it. Previously, one had no real choice but to submit to the rights-rape of a random/probable cause-free police investigation (interrogation and search). Roll up on one of these rights-rape zones and you had to go through it. Because making a U turn would result in even worse. You’ve just given the rights-rapers their “probable cause” to come screeching after you. Your disinclination to have your rights raped becoming the pretext for having your rights raped.

Waze can alert you to the rights-rape zone miles before you actually reach it – such that a casual turn-off cannot be construed (yet) as evidence of “something to hide.” This, of course, drives the rights-rapers to carpet-chewing  fury.

For example, Bedford County, Va. Sheriff Mike Brown: “The police community (what is it with this community stuff?) needs to coordinate a effort to have the owner (Google) act like the responsible corporate citizen they have always been (ha!) and remove this feature from the application before (here the lips curl back and the boar reveals his tusks) any litigation or statutory action.” Brown is Chairman of the National Sheriff’s Association – the rights-rape official analog of the Gambino Family in New York.

What are we constantly told by the rights-rapers? If we don’t have anything to hide, what are we afraid of?

Well, just so.

What are they afraid of?

Among other things, they are afraid of a level playing field. Or even one that’s slightly less than 100 percent tilted in their favor. Is it not bad enough that “the law” offers us effectively no legal protection against their outrages? Indeed, that the law countenances such outrages? Do you know that you are legally subject to being strip searched if arrested? And that you are subject to arrest at almost any time – because “the law” has given rights-rapers virtual carte blanche to conjure charges on the spot? “Disorderly conduct” fits almost any situation. Or, “interfering with a police investigation.” Any time you’re within snout-reach of a cop, you are vulnerable. Which is why apps like Waze are so valuable.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu counsels avoiding confrontation with a superior opponent. Dodge him, wear him out. Let him exhaust his resources so that he becomes weak – or at least weakened. Such that the fight – if it comes – is on more equal terms.

Again, that is what the rights-rapers cannot abide. It is why they have sought (and sometimes succeeded) in making it illegal (or very difficult) for anyone except them to carry “high powered” weapons (and body armor). And it is why they are furious about us video recording them.

Now comes Waze – and the rights-rapers really have their panties in a bunch. Not because of the threat this app poses to their “safety” – but because it undermines their power over us.

If there’s anything good about the age in which we live, it is that this technology – which they hoped could be deployed unilaterally (against us) works the other way, too.

And Pandora cannot be stuffed back in the box. Too late, boys.

It’s about damned time…

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