Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 09-03-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

09-03-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. It is so great having you here for Wheels Up Wednesday. It's 11 minutes after six. Join the conversation at 77056633. 770KMED email bill of Bill Myers Show.com.

Yeah, Wheels Up means Eric's Peters will be joining me. We'll talk about some latest car reviews and dig into some other transportation news. and also the rise of the automated license plate readers. He wrote an article there a couple of days ago that I was reading on vacation, and it was really interesting, and it's something that has kind of crept into Southern Oregon, too. And there's a website, deflock.me, which kind of details just everywhere you go, Southern Oregon law enforcement is building, I guess, in one form or another, these databases of people's travel and it's not necessarily and it's not

criminals it's not just criminals everybody ends up getting swept up in it and this is one of those um odd technocracy slash police state uh kind of stories and and i was looking at the at deflock me and they report where a lot of these cameras are because people have been writing me and saying bill what are these weird cameras they have a little solar cell on and here's the uh you know there's like a little poles you'll see them around places you're not seeing them up in the normal traffic light kind of areas and you find out oh okay these are flock cameras flock is the you know the brand name of the company there and they've kind of cornered this market and Metford is a big hotbed

of this and apparently Metford must be the one where all the lawbreakers are filled up because we just have them in all sorts of intersections and and various choke points and the question has always been civil liberties yes people can take your picture as you're you know heading around and uh when you're out on the street i understand that aspect but the idea that your travel patterns and habits are being recorded and bringing back to uh and just uh searchable sellable i think would be another uh way of looking at this and civil liberties are something that um in today's america you don't hear a lot a conversation about it. I think there's a certain amounts of since the war on terror time

that that we've been used to, well, this is just the way it has to be done to keep us safe. And is it really keeping us safe or is it just making law enforcement's job easier? Well, it's okay. We don't have to have patrols or go out there and search things or keep an eye on people. And watch out. All we have to do is just, you know, call up which cars we're going where and when. You know, those kind of questions get brought up. and I'm not exactly sure how it was approved or who brought it in. So much of this stuff ends up coming through, I would imagine, through transportation and grant stream funding. You know, the grant stream funding, and of course, no city would ever want to, what, turn down?

I could still remember there was a Medford City counselor came on the show a number of years ago. And I said, you know, every time you do stuff and you take money from the state or the federal government, you take a grant, you know, a grant, you end up kind of losing control. why don't you just not take the grant and then they always look at you as if you have you know three or four heads what not take the money what do you mean much like what happened with uh rogue valley transit district right why wouldn't we take absolutely every chance to expand the transit business with a free federal money what could go wrong oh the free federal money could end up going away which is what happened with rvtd of course, and that's why they're having to cut services now.

Yeah, if you really want something, if you think something is really good, if you really think that automated license plate readers or something that we should be doing, well, maybe you should ask the people about it. But we never seem to be asked those kind of things. It's just, well, it's new technology, so we have to do it. Anyway, Eric and I will be talking about that, and a bunch more. of the illegal and the legal Kobe reporting K-O-B-I

remember we were told by the drug legalization or the cannabis legalization people you know you end up doing the legalization and we never have to worry about the black market because people will just sell the weed legally it's no problem and it's going to be monitored by the state

a couple people arrested going into the Labor Day weekend six-month investigation 11 warrants late Thursday, and while they searched 4,000 pounds of bulk marijuana, marijuana extract, 23 grams of meth, 7 firearms, and a partridge in a pear tree, illegal butane, honey, oil laboratory, well, at least they didn't blow up. You know, usually they find the lab when the lab blows up. That's at least been the experience in Grants Pass, from what I understand. And the dispensary was operating under a hemp license. Yeah.

Now, the hemp license means that you're growing stuff that doesn't have much of the T. THC make you high stuff in it. The seized cannabis, according to the K-OBI story, testing it more than 20%. Yep, that is pretty good stuff. That is not ditchweed from the early 1970s back when I was in high school, which I think was the only stuff we had in those dark, dark days. All right, all right. Road Valley Times reporting that Department of Justice in Oregon is not going to investigate

criminal allegations raised by Fire District 5 officials. This was a year after a bunch of internal investigations were afforded. Oregon DOJ say they don't believe further investigation would lead to evidence of approvable criminal conduct. Meanwhile, former Fire District 5 Chief Charles Haney, or Hanley rather, he lost his job with the district a year ago over Hinky allegations, files a lawsuit a little, well, just a few weeks ago over what he claims is retaliatory termination, retaliatory termination, saying that they went after him for this. Of course, we know how things work today in government

employee. You always have a right to a job. You have a right to your government paid jobs and benefits. Now, I don't know, Charles Hanley. I'm not making a comment on that. But I love it. Okay, retaliatory termination, whatever. You know, in the private sector world, for the most part, If they don't want you there, they just get rid of you. Oh, can't do that in the public world, right? Oh, you've got to just investigations and fall on your sword, with contracts, et cetera, et cetera, pers. Sorry, I get irritated when I, you know,

see these kind of stories about government employees. Daily Courier, interesting story. Grants Passman busted over the weekend here and practically alleged one-man crime spree has been going on here for several months now. Now, 31-year-old Anthony Mooney, he was taken in custody at Taser Point, according to the latest story here. Grants Pass cops acting out a tip spotted him in the downtown 7-Eleven story. He had been investigated for a whole bunch of burglaries in January, breakings at Farmers, Building Supply, Fields, Home Improvement, Buy Mart, Sweet Tea Express, Dawn's Bike Shop, Rogue Fly Shop, and he's also accused of taking off with a specialized bike valued at 5,400.

according to a search warrant affidavit and so they had him a taser point they brought him in maybe a few yeah he was accused of being drunk and disorderly in another time it is astounding when you look at it I remember when Mike Boudreau used

to come on the program and we would do the crime stoppers a situation he always talked about the frequent flyers no doubt 90 to 95% of your crime here in southern Oregon is always done by the same 10% of crime hooks and dirt bags. That's just the way it is.

90, 95% every time. It's why, you know, go look at the usual suspects. Meanwhile, Oregon lawmakers getting involved in federal stuff again here. This is in the Oregonian. Four members of Oregon's congressional delegation among 50 lawmakers from the feds, signing a letter, and they want answers after the arrest of a couple of firefighting crew members that were fighting the Bear Galtz Fire on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. Oregonian reporting this story. The BLM ended up tearing up the contracts with Table Rock Forestry. That's a company here in Medford and also ASI Arden Solutions in eastern Oregon.

And they ended up taking 42 of these other workers off of federal lands. In other words, they're accusing, in other words, hiring a lot of illegal aliens to, run the fire crews. Does that really surprise you? Yes, I know you can engage in look at them as you see the fire crew trucks kind of going around town and saying, well, you know, there is kind of a common theme to many of these fire crews. But anyway, Scott Polhamis, who is the secretary of the organization of fire contractors

and affiliates, a nonprofit, of which Table Rock Forestry as a member, said that people that were supposed to meet with them never showed up and eventually immigration showed up instead, Table Rock Forestry workers were checked, and then the company was able to show that its firefighters had all legal H-2B visas, which allows foreigns to fill temporary non-agricultural jobs. Still, the company's crew was demobilized and sent home due to a half-hour discrepancy on a timesheet, a company. You know, it's a little bit confusing, but we have mostly the Democrats that are getting really upset because two arrests and dozens of firefighters temporarily sidelined during an active wildfire raises questions about the priority exercised by federal

agencies. In other words, well, they're illegal aliens, sure, but we have to fight the fire. I don't know if you have an opinion on that or not, but needless to say, most of the Oregon Democrat congressional delegation ended up, you know, complaining about this. Cliff Bentz kind of said, nah, I'm not getting involved in this particular one. This is an interesting one for the future of minerals. Minerals are going on a tear right now in the United States. President Trump has made it clear that here is that he is all over getting certain minerals

and strategic chemicals and processes on short here. And that we're not just always going to, let's say as an example, import all of our UreS. uranium from Australia or some other country. You know, we want to make sure that we actually have some of these strategic minerals here and that we do a better job of getting it done here. El, the Epic Times reporting, the 7th U.S. uranium project has now been greenlit for fast review under Trump's executive order, South Dakota development, the seventh new or revitalized uranium mining project, approved rather, for fast permitting.

and it's N-Core Energy Corporation. And so that is going to be pumping out uranium pretty soon. You know what's driving this one is the nuclear power push that they want to get for the AI because the AI is going to make everybody rich by being smarter than us. And so I know I'm always a little sarcastic on the AI thing, but that is the deal. The AI tech bros want their power plants, they'll probably get them. You know, if we the people wanted our nuclear power plants because we would just like low power prices, now that doesn't matter.

Then we don't get that. That's why I've only half-joked that maybe we the people here in Southern Oregon should just declare entire Southern Oregon a data center. We just become a data center and then we can get any damn power plant cited that we want. All right. And I'm only half kidding about it. It's kind of like I joke about, hey, you know, if you want Civil Liberties back, maybe we should just all join a Indian tribe here too. just say this is tribal land you can't be here feds this is the bill myers show and you're on kmED and kbxg 623 when was the last time you had your well water test sponsored by grange co-op

hi i'm matt stone owner of stone heating and air and i'm on 106.3 cammede just kind of noodling around the headlines this wheels up Wednesday eric peters joins me in about 10 minutes by the way it looks like we're going to have to wait another two weeks or so before we get a final work on the plunder, the big four, five, four to five billion dollar tax increase that the Democrats are foisting upon the people here in the state of Oregon, special

session, that whole thing. And it's all because there's one Democratic senator who is ill right now, and Democrats need all of their 18 senators to vote yes on the plunder bill. The plunder bus. yeah we can call that the plunder bus instead of an omnibus like they do over in congress here we'll just call it the plunder bus yeah the plunder bus the five six billion dollar plunder bus doubling of the payroll tax a just massive increases in the gas tax massive increases in registration fees blah blah blah blah blah blah we're going to put the chips on electric cars maybe and so that way they can put chips on the rest of us at some point when there's not yet enough gas tax money coming in we have to bail out the bloated or going to Department of Transportation people. That's what it is. That's who ended up

testifying in favor of it, along with some of the local road people. You know, they're also, yes, we need these taxes higher. And if they want that higher, gosh, darn it, the Democrats are going to make sure that they get it higher because they don't want to have to, you know, you don't want to have to get rid of an SEIU employee, right? You can't do that. That's not the way you get elected and keep your job. Yes, I know. My sarcasm just kind of boils over on this. they're going to have to wait for this one state senator, is one Democrat state senator who is ill right now to get back, you know, to get back in so that he is available to vote.

He was not available to vote this week. We'll get that whole story. We have a state senator, Noel Robinson, who will check in and kind of explain what has been going on behind the scenes. We'll have that story for you, too. In other legislative news, Oregon Capital Chroniclecom, uh, dot com, rather, Interesting story, and I'd be curious your opinion on this.

Do you think that police officers should be allowed to have masks? Masks are anything that kind of anonymizes them, makes it difficult to tell who they are. This is becoming a big controversy right now. And in Oregon Capital Chronicle.com today, an Oregon Republican and Democrat joining forces now and they're going to introduce a law to block immigration officers and other law enforcement from covering their faces. Now, there are concerns that this is an untested idea, the reporter says here they would invite legal vulnerabilities for the state.

Now, we have representatives, oh, it's Cyrus Javadie. Javadie, that's the Republican from Tillamook. This is the same Republican that had the dancing drag queens and was really thrilled about the dancing drag queens. This is the This is the Democrat masquerading as the Republican. So this is how they can say it's bipartisan. All you got to do is get Javadie to sign on to it.

Oh, it's bipartisan, right? So we got Javaday from Tillamuk and Tom Anderson, a dem from Salem, announcing Sunday that they're going to ask voters to amend the Oregon Constitution to ban what they call secret police, law enforcement officers wearing face coverings to conceal their identity. and they want to introduce this bill in the 2026 short session and they're hoping to get a constitutional amendment before you, the voter, later in the year.

Now, they already, in Oregon law, it says here, impersonating a police officer is already a crime, right? It's a low-level felony. And after the 2020 racial justice, you know, the BLM fraud protest, the state lawmakers passed a law in 2021 mandating that local law enforcement like sheriffs and cops, working crowds, have to display their first and last name

along with their identifying numbers. Okay, and that seems to be reasonable. However, the law that Jabadi and Anderson are talking about doesn't make a difference between local, state, and federal law enforcement. It would require all officers to wear uniforms with their names and identifying badge numbers, exempting SWAT teams and undercover officers. That's the only thing. The fake bipartisan but still bipartisan lawmakers saying that wearing masks as the ICE agents have been doing in recent raids

erodes trust in government with no recourse for identifying agents conducting arrests or detainments. On its face, they're probably right about that, aren't they? I know that we like the idea of immigration enforcement. I know a lot of Republicans, conservatives, listeners on my show probably like that. but that that's kind of feel a little loosey-goosey on the on the day you know how do you how do you know who's real how do you know who's real and what's what you know even right now we have all sorts of home invasion robbers fact we had one here in in southern

Oregon not that long ago remember that I think it was a couple years back in which people impersonating officers no names no badges or anything They just had all this stuff faked up, and then we're kind of conditioned. Go ahead and open the door, and then ended up just being a drug cartel people trying to cause trouble. I recall that story, you know, vaguely. So, I don't know. Do you think it's something that is worthy of? Well, let me put it this way.

Is the Democrat-Lite Republican Javidhi and Tom Anderson, the Democrat from Salem? Are they actually wrong? Are they wrong to want police officers to be easily identifiable when they're doing their job? You know, they could be coming after us someday. Just saying, you know, you just never know. I kind of, I like to step carefully on stuff like that. What do you think? We might be able to talk about that sometime this morning.

There'll be some open phone time here a little bit later, all right? Meanwhile, after news next, happy to get you on with Eric Peters, E.P.O.O.com. comment on a car classic or otherwise that you're looking at we'll kick that all around also talk about license plate readers the automated kind and boy we got a bunch of them in southern Oregon if you're remodeling your house start with the foundation Millet Construction offers a no prepre you're here in the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KmED wheels up Wednesday 635 Eric Peters joins me EP autos.com Eric been a couple of weeks since we had the chance to chat I had a great week

off and gosh, I imagine you've been busy out there on the open road here. How have things been in Virginia for you, huh? Well, they've been pretty good, but I feel like I need to start wearing a trench coat, dark glasses, and a slouch hat lately. Does this have to do where I'm going, right? Yeah, yeah. I was telling everybody, I was reading this article while I was on vacation and check it out your site. And you had the story about the automated license plate readers. And it's something which is a rising tide of government surveillance from local law enforcement and and I'm kind of wondering where it came from because and this all started a few weeks ago I had a list of right me said Bill what are

these weird cameras I'm seeing up here they have a little solar cells attached to them you'll see them on polls kind of all ever and they're not in the standard places they're not necessarily with with traffic lights in places like that where we've seen other traffic cameras you know those sort of things yeah and I wasn't sure what what they were until your article, oh, these are the license plate readers. And I don't remember We, the Sheeple, being consulted on such things. It just kind of appeared. Really weird.

Yeah. What happened? Yeah. Well, it's more than just license plate readers. They're data aggregators. Essentially, when you drive by one of these things, they take note of your plate and the plate of every other car that drives by, and they cross-reference those with the government databases. So, you know, let's say that you have some infraction.

you haven't paid your insurance, you have an outstanding child support payment, you have a dead safety inspection sticker, anything like that. They can just instantly mail you a ticket or notify a local cop who happens to be in the vicinity to target you and go after you. And more generally, they can create this database of our movements. They log the car. So the car was at particular point at 10 o'clock in the morning. They know it. And, you know, if you think that's benign, well, you may have felt at home in East Germany where they tracked you and knew absolutely everything you were doing in real time. But it gets worse. You know, the Alpers, that's the acronym, automated license plate reader, are something that the government deploys. Now, one of the major companies that

produces these things for the government is trying to partner with the manufacturer of one of the most popular dash cams out there that are used by private individuals. And so now they're going to use private cars to exponentially increase the surveillance. And this is particularly relevant because outside of the cities, there aren't that many Alper's because, you know, it's just more, it's more diffuse. There are only so many cops in a given region. Yeah. But there are a lot of cars aren't there. And, you know, a lot of cars now have these dash cams.

So now you never know, the car that just passed you or the car that's behind you is sending data about you to the same nexus hive that's being used by the government in its Alper system. Now, the Alper system is an automated license plate reader always, is that always owned and controlled by a gun? government authority, or can anybody get one? Let's say maybe if you're a supermarket, you've had problems with criminals in your market, let's say, I mean, could you monitor people coming in or is it always a government function, do you know? No, absolutely. It's both now. And even private citizens can do it through these dash camps. You can get access to the data. And the reason that you can do it, you know, there was a, I can't remember the name of the case, but there was a Supreme Court case that says you don't have

any expectation of privacy in a public space. And on the surface of it, that sounds like a fine thing and a good thing. But what it's enabled is these corporations to defrock us of our ability to just be anonymous out in public. And it's an alarming thing. I would agree with this. And I was looking at that website that you linked to, which was defrock. Dot me.

Defrock. Dot me is it. And I was astounded. There were about 30, 35 cameras, just that they, and now I don't know this is. is actually an official one or just what users are volunteering to the site. Is that how that works? When they see it, they end up submitting it. Is that what happens? Yes. Yes. Okay. And so just the ones that have been submitted from people around southern Oregon, about 35 of them in the city of Medford. City of Medford seems to be the one that has it, you know, about 80,000

people in there. It's a, you know, moderate-sized city. The smaller cities, Grants Pass only has a handful of them. Ashland doesn't have any that we're aware of at this time, or else nobody's concerned about civil liberties in Ashland, and so they're not paying attention. I don't know, but it's interesting. It's the operative craze there, because this is relatively new technology. You know, this didn't exist five, ten years ago, certainly, but now it does, and now it is expanding it in an exponential rate. One of the things that concerns me greatly is that every single new car that's on the market now has cameras built into it, both externally and internally. And there's no reason that those cameras couldn't also be used as an adjunct of this very

same Ken Opticon that they're putting together to monitor everybody all the time. You know, they're using this technology against this. I'm not a Luddite, but I am aware that, you know, technology has its downsides, and I think that this is one of them. Is there any rise or mass rise of concern about this, or is it just one of these things that is, like for me, I think I'm kind of paying attention to a lot of this stuff, and I know you tend to pay attention to a lot of the stuff on the road, but it's like all of a sudden, there they are. I don't know. What do you thinking? Well, I'm thinking that the reason most people don't know about it is because they're not told about it. Certainly the mainstream outlets are not covering this.

You know, I've written about it and a handful of other people who are concerned about civil libertarians, and particularly civil libertarian issues as they relate to driving and motorist issues have written about it. But, you know, we're canaries chirping in you know, in a massive Super Bowl arena, and it's very difficult to get the word out. So most people just aren't aware of it yet. There's always this lag time, it seems, it's built into things. You know, you notice something, and you try to call people's attention to it, and it seems nobody's listening.

But after a while, the word kind of begins to propagate, and that's my hope that eventually people are going to recognize this and perhaps revolt against it. Now, I ended up buying on the van again that I have here, Eric. I ended up getting a license plate cover, just a shield on. the front. And it's because it tends to be at bumper level and it's low and it tends to get damaged a lot, get smacked by stuff and road debris. The one thing I've noticed is that when I take that and I'm up at a four-way stop that has, you know, speed cameras there, I'm surprised how often I'll just be sitting there and the cameras just flash and I'm the only person at

the intersection, you know, early in the morning. And I'm theorizing is it because I have a cover on the front of that license plate and the camera's having difficulty databasing me? I'm wondering. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's why I recommend monkey wrenching this stuff. You know, it's illegal. But, you know, how else are we supposed to fight back? You know, there are ways to obscure license plates in a way that's subtle but effective against these cameras. Another thing that I do when I drive these new cars that have the camera built into the steering column that's looking at me while I'm trying to drive. I take a piece of black electrical tape,

and I put it over the camera, because I don't want to be watched while I'm driving. Interesting. Eric Peters is with me. We're talking about the rise of the automated license plate readers, and the name of the story, by the way, is in-car-stazzy. In-car-stazi.

Now, I have a dash cam that I bought, and I ended up buying it because of the rising trend of people, just break-checking, and actually trying to get you to get into an accident, so that way they get an insurance claim on you. We've seen some of that go on here in Southern Oregon. And I've looked at it as kind of a self-defensive thing. I know you have a dash cam in your vehicle and your GoPro, right, when you do your videos in the car?

Well, it's not a GoPro, but I have something equivalent. It's pretty cheesy and low-rent compared to a GoPro, but your point is, we'll take it. And it's exasperating because it's kind of like the cell phone, you know. It's convenient, and it's nice to be able to have a conversation with somebody in your car, or if you're out in the woods, or to be able to take a photo of something that, you just saw, you know, back in the days when we just had the corded lines, you couldn't do those things. So naturally, everybody got taken in by the smartphone. Look at this. It's neat. It's cool. And at the same time, they got us to accepting track and data mind all the time. And I see these

cameras as the same thing, because they're no longer just cameras that are disconnected. You know, it's a camera that does more than just record what you wanted to record. It's monitoring all sorts of things that you have no control over. What kind of monitoring is being done then with these dash cameras because you had said that the same company that does the automated license plate readers is partnering with the dash cam manufacturer which dash cam manufacturer is it and what are they doing with this now with your dash cam I should have written it down before we got on the phone it's in the article I've got a link to it so you can directly visit the site of the company that they're seeking to partner with but literally anything that your eye can see the

camera so it can see where you are it can see what the speed limit is it can be used in all sorts of ways to control and mulk you. And naturally, I'm, you know, certain the insurance mafia would love to have live streaming coverage of you as you drive everywhere you go, too. Yeah. Now, is the idea of this partnership, though, is that you buy this particular type of camera, and then you automatically consent then for the onboard Wi-Fi of that camera to partner with ALPR, the automated license plate readers? Is that what you agree to? Yeah, yeah, it's very, very, very, you know, very deeply in the fine print. You know, people, they buy it because they like having a dash can for just the reason that you said.

Yeah. You know, I want to have some evidence in case the guy in front of me slams on his brakes and, you know, causes an accident. I want to be able to prove that it wasn't my fault. So that's the reason why people buy these things generally. You know, it's not because they, you know, they just want to have the live streaming of their driving. But, you know, it's just like with these other technologies that you buy into. There's all sorts of other stuff that you may not want or even know. not be aware of that you're getting as part of the deal. What does it take, Eric? By the way, I'm

talking with Eric Peters at E.P.O.O.com. What does it take to actually get access to the database of when governments end up making a database of all the law-abiding people who are just going about their trips, minding their own business, so to speak? That's a good question. I, you know, I'm assuming you'd have to do a FOIA in order to get it. You know, nominally, it's public record, though, you know, it's not necessarily something that they're going to divulge. And I think the more profound question is, how did we get to the point where they just ericated this power to themselves? That, you know, all of a sudden, effectively we're living in a panopticon, an open-air prison.

It's literally that. You know, in prison, they monitor the comings and goings with the prisoners. The prisoners have no privacy. The guards know where they are all the time. They know what they're doing all the time. That's the position that we're increasingly finding ourselves in. The other part, the problem that I have with the monitoring of your cars coming and going is that it looks for a pattern

and you could even then develop patterns combined with the dash cams and everything else oh you know we understand that you're not a big supporter of the state of Oregon's government or plans and this and the other and oh we notice that you're meeting with this person and you're meeting with

that person and you're meeting with this group of people over you're hanging out at this public meeting in which uh people in other words you could be databaseed and then made even more part of here's the naughty list, so to speak, by... Yeah, sure. I mean, consider the whole January 6th thing.

I'm not talking about the people who actually stormed the Capitol. I'm just talking about the people who showed up because they wanted to express support for Trump. And again, I'm not saying that I support Trump. I'm just pointing out that it's legitimate to, you know, to go to a public place to express a point of view politically. Sure. So, you know, you had tens of thousands of people who just went up there because, hey,

you know, I just want to show my support. Well, in this context, they would know every person. And look at what happened to some of those people who went up there who really didn't do anything to speak of. Just being there got you popped by the FBI, in essence. Yeah, I mean, got the triggered the hut, hot, hut, you know, like literally the body armored automatic rifle-toating guys coming to kick in your door over something like that. Yeah. And that's why this is important. And, you know, like I said, it's not a matter of, I know that I'll get the same thing while, Bill, you have nothing to hide.

I really hate when I hear that. I still get those kind of things. If you have nothing to hide, everybody has. something to hide at some point, even when it's just our human dignity to go from point A to point B without being part of someone's database, somewhere, usually some government person. They don't have the right to know. You know, when I get that, and I get that thrown at me often, too, I say, well, maybe we should just allow the police to randomly come into your home whenever they feel like it, because you never know. Yeah. You know, you might be doing something inside your house,

so let them come in and see what's going on in your bedroom. Yeah, provide the government a key to your door, too, for that matter. Make it easy for them because you have nothing to hide, right? I'll tell you. I don't know. Maybe Americans don't treasure independence and liberty enough to say much about this rising electronic tide here, Eric. I don't have a conclusion yet at this point. I think that that's part of it. I think the other half of it is people are just PTSD by all of this stuff. It's a lot. We have been battered now for the past five years with things that were unprecedented in the history of the country, or at least certainly unprecedented in the time of most people who are still alive.

And we're kind of shell-shocked. It's difficult to deal with it and figure out what to do about it. That's the hardest part. Because this is all about, it's not about the information, it's about the information being in the hands of largely unelected people who force you to pay them. And I think that's a real issue. What could go wrong with such a thing? Now, I know that they're going to tell me, hey, you know, we were able to find this car theft right away.

I'll bet they do that a lot, right? because of the... Well, they do, but you know, they do, but the fallacy there, and it's a very interesting thing, and it's a thing that's very much worth pointing out. You know, they say that we have to endow the government with this stuff because there are bad people out there. And the circularity of that is, well, yeah, there are bad people out there. So you want to give bad people this sort of official power and think about what that

potentially pretends. You know, the assumption is somehow that the people that you give this power to are saintly people. They would never misuse their power. They can be trusted absolutely without any account. and without any mechanism for restraining their authority. And you have to be almost an imbecile to believe something like that. Yeah.

And I would dare say, and I even talked about this yesterday with one of our former state senators, one of the issues I, in the right-wing world, I tend to be a man of the right. I don't apologize for this. You're more of a libertarian guy. But the thing is, the right has a tendency to excuse or kind of downplay. Well, it's all right. you know, it's, you know, law enforcement is always a force for good, so to speak. That's all, right? Well, it does, and it doesn't kind of ask the question that's begged by that.

Well, well and good. Okay, so you think it's fine because right now the regime is on your side politically, and maybe so. But what happens when the regime is no longer on your side politically? Then what? You know, you've granted this power to the state, and now the state is going to turn around and use it against you. I remember under the Biden administration, the Biden thing, as you and I, you know, called it for all these years and what happened, right? That kind of thing. Exactly. Exactly.

That's the sort of power is bad. And, you know, that's why even if you think in the moment, oh, it might be a good idea to do this for the sake of some momentary gain in long term. It's a very bad idea. All right. Eric Peters. And once again, it's a great article on eP.otos.com, the in-carstazi. Well worth your time.

And really interesting to look up the unflock.me website, which is linked in that article, too, to see just how many of these license plate reading cameras are festooned all around here in southern Oregon. Eric, watch you hang on because we're going to dig into the review side of our program. And if anybody has a question or wants to kick around something about a car or transportation with you, 7705-633-770 KMED on Wheels Up Wednesday.