6 ms·

> being able to select targets after-the-fact at little additional cost because of indiscriminate surveillance This seems like a bizarre way of thinking, that

by freyir 8y ago

> being able to select targets after-the-fact at little additional cost because of indiscriminate surveillance This seems like a bizarre way of thinking, that crimes should only be punished if the criminal happens to be caught in the act, or if law enforcement follows a trail of breadcrumbs involving unreliable eyewitness accounts and scraps of evidence. How many people have been wrongfully convicted because the police needed to get the crime off the books, or evidence was misleading, or eyewitnesses gave false testimony? You speak as if it's a forgone conclusion that this is the way things should be, but what's the basis?

pdkl95 8y ago
Limiting the exercise of power is the goal. The police by design are supposed to meet a high standard of evidence for the use of their power to be justified. The reason for this should be obvious: unrestrained power leads to very bad effects. Before any technology or policy is used, it first needs to be considered as a weapon, because the historical record shows that this is how powerful tools end up being used regardless of how they were intended to be used. Denying law enforcement any evidence that doesn't meet specific standards isn't the way it "should be", it's the least worst way we know of having functional law enforcement without letting it devolve into various types of oppressive police states. > what's the basis? "Innocent until proven guilty."
- freyir 8y ago
  > "Innocent until proven guilty." Whose innocence being questioned here? The quote is a non-sequitur in this context, unless you consider "being on camera" a punishment reserved for the guilty. I have bad news for you, if you've ever set foot inside a supermarket, drugstore, fast-food restaurant, corporate office, etc.
  - pdkl95 8y ago
    > if you've ever set foot inside a supermarket, drugstore, fast-food restaurant, office, etc. All of which require a warrant before they can be used as evidence against you. You're conflating private recordings that are not generally available to the enforcement power of the state with the state regularly gathering evidence against you without cause. The entire point of "innocent until proven guilty" is that there must be an established due process of law in the application of the power of the state. For supermarket cameras, that's the warrant requirement before police can look at the recording, which creates a legal paper trail documenting their justification for needing to see the recording (which can be challenged later in court), and limits the scope of seized recordings to those at lest theoretically involved with a specific incident.
    - nradov 8y ago
      Police only need a warrant (or other court order) to look at private camera recordings if the owner demands it. Most supermarket managers will happily hand over anything the police ask for.
    - nkurz 8y ago
      All of which require a warrant before they can be used as evidence against you. If you are talking about the US, I think you are mistaken. While a warrant would usually be required to compel the store to provide the videotape to the police against their will, the store can always choose to provide it voluntarily. Once the prosecution has a copy of the video, they can use it as evidence whether or not there was a warrant.
    - tjfl 8y ago
      > All of which require a warrant before they can be used as evidence against you. Only if law enforcement wants to seize them. If the owner or representative of the business shares them no warrant is needed.
lovich 8y ago
I think it's more an issue that many of are laws are predicated on the fact that there cannot be 100% enforcement. Look at speeding laws. If those were enforced through complete surveillance practically everyone who drives would be receiving multiple tickets whenever they drove. This would be an undue burden on everyone that the laws didn't intend for.
- nradov 8y ago
  If there was 100% enforcement of speed laws then everyone would simply stop speeding. We can argue about whether that's a good thing, but the reality is that people do react to deterrents. Some UK highways have so many speed cameras now that enforcement is close to 100%. Drivers complain, but they mostly obey the limits.
  - lovich 8y ago
    The law says you go over X you get a ticket. Your speedometer is not as accurate as triangulating your speed from multiple static locations as would happen with cameras everywhere. This would lead to a need for much more accurate cameras or a reduction in speed by the margin of error for the average speedometer. Those affects were not intended and aren't even enforced now when police visibly see you going at X speed limit +/- 5 mph. This is just an example, but improving the accuracy and coverage of surveillance materially changes the situation that the laws we're created in, in the first place
    - jstanley 8y ago
      Actually speedometers are required never to under-report the speed. They are allowed something like a 10% margin for over-reporting, but no under-reporting, to solve exactly the problem you describe.
      - lovich 8y ago
        Required != what happens in reality 100% compliance of laws in a population of millions increases costs astronomicaly. Assuming you are involved in building software if you are in, imagine it this way. It the difference in cost between Google garunteeing they have a 99.5% uptime vs Google garunteeing they have 100% uptime on a service. That small difference in uptime percentage would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and Foogle is not even close to a national scale
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
panic 8y ago
Most crime doesn't happen in the view of streetlights. Fraud, wage theft, domestic violence… how do cameras help with any of that?
- freyir 8y ago
  There were 30,000 car break-ins reported in San Francisco last year. Just because fraud exists, this does not mean street crime does not exist. What a strange argument.
  - panic 8y ago
    Where did I say street crime doesn't exist? My point is that most criminals are not going to be tracked down using streetlight cameras.
    - freyir 8y ago
      > Where did I say street crime doesn't exist? Your argument is that if cameras don't help with fraud or wage theft or domestic violence, they serve no purpose. Cameras may impact street crime, and street crime is rampant in many U.S. cities. White collar crime has no bearing on this, and it's irrelevant to the discussion.
- xfitm3 8y ago
  Source?
int_19h 8y ago
> How many people have been wrongfully convicted because the police needed to get the crime off the books, or evidence was misleading, or eyewitnesses gave false testimony? There are numerous cases where people have been wrongfully convicted even though the police and the prosecutors had evidence indicating that they were innocent. This is especially true for prosecutors, and has been hashed out so many times I won't even bother linking to any specific article - just google for "prosecutor withheld evidence of innocence", and read a couple of stories that pop up in search results. Worse yet, the American legal system refuses to acknowledge this practice as unequivocally wrong and a miscarriage of justice
- freyir 8y ago
  Of course, but this doesn't negate the fact that more evidence (and better evidence) is generally good.

by freyir 8y ago

pdkl95 8y ago

Limiting the exercise of power is the goal. The police by design are supposed to meet a high standard of evidence for the use of their power to be justified. The reason for this should be obvious: unrestrained power leads to very bad effects. Before any technology or policy is used, it first needs to be considered as a weapon, because the historical record shows that this is how powerful tools end up being used regardless of how they were intended to be used. Denying law enforcement any evidence that doesn't meet specific standards isn't the way it "should be", it's the least worst way we know of having functional law enforcement without letting it devolve into various types of oppressive police states. > what's the basis? "Innocent until proven guilty."

freyir 8y ago
> "Innocent until proven guilty." Whose innocence being questioned here? The quote is a non-sequitur in this context, unless you consider "being on camera" a punishment reserved for the guilty. I have bad news for you, if you've ever set foot inside a supermarket, drugstore, fast-food restaurant, corporate office, etc.
- pdkl95 8y ago
  > if you've ever set foot inside a supermarket, drugstore, fast-food restaurant, office, etc. All of which require a warrant before they can be used as evidence against you. You're conflating private recordings that are not generally available to the enforcement power of the state with the state regularly gathering evidence against you without cause. The entire point of "innocent until proven guilty" is that there must be an established due process of law in the application of the power of the state. For supermarket cameras, that's the warrant requirement before police can look at the recording, which creates a legal paper trail documenting their justification for needing to see the recording (which can be challenged later in court), and limits the scope of seized recordings to those at lest theoretically involved with a specific incident.
  - nradov 8y ago
    Police only need a warrant (or other court order) to look at private camera recordings if the owner demands it. Most supermarket managers will happily hand over anything the police ask for.
  - nkurz 8y ago
    All of which require a warrant before they can be used as evidence against you. If you are talking about the US, I think you are mistaken. While a warrant would usually be required to compel the store to provide the videotape to the police against their will, the store can always choose to provide it voluntarily. Once the prosecution has a copy of the video, they can use it as evidence whether or not there was a warrant.
  - tjfl 8y ago
    > All of which require a warrant before they can be used as evidence against you. Only if law enforcement wants to seize them. If the owner or representative of the business shares them no warrant is needed.

lovich 8y ago

I think it's more an issue that many of are laws are predicated on the fact that there cannot be 100% enforcement. Look at speeding laws. If those were enforced through complete surveillance practically everyone who drives would be receiving multiple tickets whenever they drove. This would be an undue burden on everyone that the laws didn't intend for.

nradov 8y ago
If there was 100% enforcement of speed laws then everyone would simply stop speeding. We can argue about whether that's a good thing, but the reality is that people do react to deterrents. Some UK highways have so many speed cameras now that enforcement is close to 100%. Drivers complain, but they mostly obey the limits.
- lovich 8y ago
  The law says you go over X you get a ticket. Your speedometer is not as accurate as triangulating your speed from multiple static locations as would happen with cameras everywhere. This would lead to a need for much more accurate cameras or a reduction in speed by the margin of error for the average speedometer. Those affects were not intended and aren't even enforced now when police visibly see you going at X speed limit +/- 5 mph. This is just an example, but improving the accuracy and coverage of surveillance materially changes the situation that the laws we're created in, in the first place
  - jstanley 8y ago
    Actually speedometers are required never to under-report the speed. They are allowed something like a 10% margin for over-reporting, but no under-reporting, to solve exactly the problem you describe.
    - lovich 8y ago
      Required != what happens in reality 100% compliance of laws in a population of millions increases costs astronomicaly. Assuming you are involved in building software if you are in, imagine it this way. It the difference in cost between Google garunteeing they have a 99.5% uptime vs Google garunteeing they have 100% uptime on a service. That small difference in uptime percentage would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and Foogle is not even close to a national scale

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

panic 8y ago

Most crime doesn't happen in the view of streetlights. Fraud, wage theft, domestic violence… how do cameras help with any of that?

freyir 8y ago
There were 30,000 car break-ins reported in San Francisco last year. Just because fraud exists, this does not mean street crime does not exist. What a strange argument.
- panic 8y ago
  Where did I say street crime doesn't exist? My point is that most criminals are not going to be tracked down using streetlight cameras.
  - freyir 8y ago
    > Where did I say street crime doesn't exist? Your argument is that if cameras don't help with fraud or wage theft or domestic violence, they serve no purpose. Cameras may impact street crime, and street crime is rampant in many U.S. cities. White collar crime has no bearing on this, and it's irrelevant to the discussion.
xfitm3 8y ago
Source?

int_19h 8y ago

> How many people have been wrongfully convicted because the police needed to get the crime off the books, or evidence was misleading, or eyewitnesses gave false testimony? There are numerous cases where people have been wrongfully convicted even though the police and the prosecutors had evidence indicating that they were innocent. This is especially true for prosecutors, and has been hashed out so many times I won't even bother linking to any specific article - just google for "prosecutor withheld evidence of innocence", and read a couple of stories that pop up in search results. Worse yet, the American legal system refuses to acknowledge this practice as unequivocally wrong and a miscarriage of justice

freyir 8y ago
Of course, but this doesn't negate the fact that more evidence (and better evidence) is generally good.