Me: here’s something interesting… driving around town last night, there was a road block on Elston with signs that said “Voluntary Survey” and an SUV marked “Sheriff” was redirecting people into the Microcenter parking lot
Me: signs all the place that say voluntary survey. we had 5 people in my mustang.
Me: it was about 2am. this woman approaches the car. someone in the car thought to ask “is this a state or federal operation” and she said “federal”. asked me if I’d like to answer questions as part of a survey, completely anonymously.
Me: I said, “this is hardly anonymous, you have the ability to take my license plate number”
Me: which caught this woman off guard. “we aren’t collecting that, sir”.
Me: so I denied to take the voluntary survey, and she asked if I’d consent to an anonymous, voluntary breathalyser test
Me: and I said “no”
Friend: wow, that is really fucked up man!
Friend: It is getting out of control
Me: which apparently was unexpected, because she called over some other woman and said “this guy says he doesn’t want to participate”
Friend: whoa
Me: and the other woman said, “well, they can go” and kind of gave a surprised look at the survey woman, like “duh, it’s voluntary”
Friend: voluntary breathalyser “survey”
Friend: that stinks like week old fish
Me: well, the first part was apparently questions
Me: I wonder if they were supposed to offer the breathalizer if one said they didn’t want to answer the questions
Me: they had like three or four cars lined up talking to them
Friend: Hmmmmm
Friend: How many people will actually refuse such?
Me: exactly
Friend: Is it not really a violation of your privacy to even stop you without due cause?
Me: when we were talking later, it came up “I bet they were thinking, ’shit a car full of educated white people, better not push it’”
Friend: Bingo
Me: it’s not unreasonable search if it’s “anonymous”
Me: apparently
Friend: Did it look like busts were happening?
Me: no
Friend: Right I remember those bullshit rulings about the road blocks
Me: but the sheriff car gave it an air of legitimacy
Here’s a Google map of where the voluntary survey checkpoint was.
Update (2007-08-04): idolatrare found this survey methodology description (Pilot Test of New Roadside Survey Methodology for Impaired Driving DOT HS 810 704) that very closely matches the experience (up to the part about actually participating, which I have no information on). Check out this bit in “Basic Survey Technique”:
As the motorist came to a safe stop in the bay, the data collector recorded basic demographics based on observation (e.g., the number of passengers, use of a safety belt by the driver, and the gender and ethnicity of the driver). These data were recorded so that we would have descriptive information of potential subjects who refused.
Anonymous should mean no identifying information. However, they only made a claim that taking the survey was anonymous; one does not have a right to privacy if one refuses the survey, apparently.
See also the Executive Summary.
When the hell is Apple going to get their head out of their asses and catch up with the rest of the Internet? Does anyone else use QuickTime to distribute marketing videos on the Internet? Does anyone else use QuickTime to distribute videos over the Internet that they actually expect people to watch? The entire Apple website is centered around marketing, and I, as the consumer, have to go download some additional tool in order to witness the marketing? Apple, you’ve lost the web-browser-embedded video-via-a-plugin war (although technically, since QuickTime is pretty much a one-trick pony compared to Flash, you barely even showed up at the battle). It does not matter how interesting the video is, or what better kind of quality QuickTime has over Flash-based video, the barrier to entry to have to install yet another thing, just for a rarely used feature, is just too great.