I do not understand what you are trying to say with that article. Yes, there are points under the LAPD that are kind of dumb, but overall, this is what security forces are taught from experiences. Having served and been to many, many counter terrorism briefs and realistic training evolutions, there is a reason for this. If you are trying to draw a connection between the police following you and suspicious activity, then you have done so correctly, but you seem to ignore the reason why they do such things. In LA it is very possible for a "jogger" to be gathering intelligence on a famous person's home or them. Remember LA has a history of stalker cases where someone was either assaulted or killed. I am not justifying every case someone has been maybe harassed by the police, but that is what courts and judges are for. It is not the fault of the LAPD for the way this is written, you can thank the lawyers.
The point is that suspicious activity is a matter of perspective, and that there are databases that are used to record instances of suspicious activity because someone reported an instance of what they viewed as suspicious. This happens in a much wider context than just LA. As I understand it, once you are in one of those databases, then it is nearly impossible to get out. Thus, you are guilty without being proven guilty, and without having committed a crime, nor without even a proven intent. This is justice?
Personally, it seems that paranoia has become rampant, and everywhere, there are rules that sacrifice individual liberty at the expense of paranoia. A jogger stopping and stretching somewhere is not evidence of terrorist activity - even if that same jogger takes the same route every day and stops at the same place and stretches every day, and even if that place happens to be near or around a valued location.
And yes, I get that there are high value people and landmarks out there; however, that still does not make that jogger a terrorist.
So what is the guidance in this case? Someone calls the police on the jogger, and the police take a report that the jogger was engaging in suspicious activity even though there was no other intent than to stay healthy. Now that jogger is in a database of having engaged in suspicious activity, and may never be able to get out of it. Do the police then tell the jogger to jog somewhere else? And if so, where might that "somewhere else" be? Just as easily, the jogger could take a different route and stretch on that different route and someone could inform the police that that very same jogger is engaging in suspicious activity. Now are the police called again, and this time, maybe they arrest the jogger because the jogger is already in their database of suspicious persons? So we sacrifice individual liberty to catch the infinitesimally small percentage of the population that may be terrorists?
So how does this tie back to the article? Because, as I see it, outlawing this rule is one more instance where those in power have decided to sacrifice privacy for whatever reason. Yes, I get that the rules that were outlawed had not yet taken place; however, from my viewpoint, I view what is done online as private unless, such as posting here, one chooses to do that in a public context.
If ISPs decide that they are going to sell this info to interested parties and ISPs decide that they are also going to redirect traffic to sites for pay, then the internet becomes useless.
As far as we know, there are no rules to prevent this, and if net neutrality is overturned, which has been promised, then what will stop ISPs from doing things like redirecting traffic to where they are getting paid to redirect it? As I see it, such actions are the definition of piracy, and overriding rules like these legalizes that piracy.
The internet, even with all the garbage that exists on it, does have some very useful sites. However, with the way things are heading, the internet is becoming less and less useful over time. Already, search engines assume you want to buy something if you search for it when that may not be the case.
