4 ms·

>The notion that it is 100% okay that things that happen in public view may be subject to notice and recording at any time is very important to preserve. Yes,

>The notion that it is 100% okay that things that happen in public view may be subject to notice and recording at any time is very important to preserve. Yes, but the problem here isn't that this number was recorded, it's that it was recorded at a garden supply shop with no real reason to believe that anyone at the shop was growing marijuana. The key bit is that it puts innocent people under suspicion and leads to wasted effort on the police side, along with pointless legal bullshit on the innocent's side. Not everyone who goes to that stpre is gonna be a marijuana dealer, or even a user; garden supply stores are kind of a key place to get supplies for any garden. The chance of that garden being laced with pot is a lot smaller than 100% of the time.

simoncion 11y ago
> Yes, but the problem here isn't that this number was recorded, it's that it was recorded at a garden supply shop with no real reason to believe that anyone at the shop was growing marijuana. We all have a right to privacy. However, we all also have a long-standing right to notice and take note of things that happen in plain sight in public areas. Be very careful with how you propose to fix any wrongs here. > The key bit is that it puts innocent people under suspicion and leads to wasted effort on the police side... I'm having difficulty understanding what this has to do with surveillance of a parking lot that was publicly visible. Anyone who has undertaken a non-trivial endeavor understands that one is likely to try many approaches that end up not working out. Police investigation is often non-trivial work. Sometimes, you'll go to a place, collect a bunch of publicly available information, sift through that information, and discover that it was all a dead end. This seems to me to be perfectly okay, as long as your motivation for gathering that information was good. If incompetent or lazy officers are either spending an inordinate amount of time chasing dead ends, or they are throwing cuffs on the first name that floats in front of their faces, they should be corrected. If they can't be corrected, they should be removed from policing. If incompetent or lazy officers end up jailing or causing someone to have to pay legal fees when that someone is obviously not the person(s) that they're after, the department should be required to compensate [0] the person that they fucked over. If malicious officers are using their powers to harass and intimidate, they should face real charges and be removed from policing. [0] This compensation would obviously go above and beyond compensation for direct costs and time lost and cover pain and anguish compensation as well.
- dawnbreez 11y ago
  The problem isn't that the information was supposedly private, or that the parking lot was public. The problem is that people were being raided based on buying garden supplies. The purchase of legal, useful tools--used for things like growing your own food, or even basic maintenance of your front yard (which is mandatory in some places)--was being used as a means of deciding who to arrest. This is not only a massive insult to the people being raided, but also a waste of time for the police, on top of being questionably moral and against the principles upon which the US was founded. Literally everyone involved is losing here, and that means this method of looking for people to arrest is wrong.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    > The problem is that people were being raided based on buying garden supplies. I get that. That's a big problem. I thought I made my stance on this clear. :) Don't get confused! The problem isn't the exercise of the right to take notice and note of things that happen in public. The problem is police who perform balls-to-the-wall SWAT raids on people just because they were seen purchasing gardening supplies. Punish the shitty policing. Make those who were raided far more than whole. Actually punish the people responsible for ordering the raid on such flimsy evidence. Make it abundantly clear that this is behavior is entirely unacceptable and not how police behave. If you don't fix the root cause, the problem will happen over and over again.

simoncion 11y ago

> Yes, but the problem here isn't that this number was recorded, it's that it was recorded at a garden supply shop with no real reason to believe that anyone at the shop was growing marijuana. We all have a right to privacy. However, we all also have a long-standing right to notice and take note of things that happen in plain sight in public areas. Be very careful with how you propose to fix any wrongs here. > The key bit is that it puts innocent people under suspicion and leads to wasted effort on the police side... I'm having difficulty understanding what this has to do with surveillance of a parking lot that was publicly visible. Anyone who has undertaken a non-trivial endeavor understands that one is likely to try many approaches that end up not working out. Police investigation is often non-trivial work. Sometimes, you'll go to a place, collect a bunch of publicly available information, sift through that information, and discover that it was all a dead end. This seems to me to be perfectly okay, as long as your motivation for gathering that information was good. If incompetent or lazy officers are either spending an inordinate amount of time chasing dead ends, or they are throwing cuffs on the first name that floats in front of their faces, they should be corrected. If they can't be corrected, they should be removed from policing. If incompetent or lazy officers end up jailing or causing someone to have to pay legal fees when that someone is obviously not the person(s) that they're after, the department should be required to compensate [0] the person that they fucked over. If malicious officers are using their powers to harass and intimidate, they should face real charges and be removed from policing. [0] This compensation would obviously go above and beyond compensation for direct costs and time lost and cover pain and anguish compensation as well.

dawnbreez 11y ago
The problem isn't that the information was supposedly private, or that the parking lot was public. The problem is that people were being raided based on buying garden supplies. The purchase of legal, useful tools--used for things like growing your own food, or even basic maintenance of your front yard (which is mandatory in some places)--was being used as a means of deciding who to arrest. This is not only a massive insult to the people being raided, but also a waste of time for the police, on top of being questionably moral and against the principles upon which the US was founded. Literally everyone involved is losing here, and that means this method of looking for people to arrest is wrong.
- simoncion 11y ago
  > The problem is that people were being raided based on buying garden supplies. I get that. That's a big problem. I thought I made my stance on this clear. :) Don't get confused! The problem isn't the exercise of the right to take notice and note of things that happen in public. The problem is police who perform balls-to-the-wall SWAT raids on people just because they were seen purchasing gardening supplies. Punish the shitty policing. Make those who were raided far more than whole. Actually punish the people responsible for ordering the raid on such flimsy evidence. Make it abundantly clear that this is behavior is entirely unacceptable and not how police behave. If you don't fix the root cause, the problem will happen over and over again.