4 ms·

Police prefer to work in a world that lacks transparency and accountability (it seems).

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
As with most other employees, police officers are not super fond of having every single action they take while on the job recorded, monitored, and scrutinized. I've heard horror stories about tech industry people who worked at offices where their bosses used remote desktop software to monitor employees work, and I think everyone mostly universally agrees that's horrible. There's a perfectly legitimate argument that as cops have the ability to use deadly force, there's a lot of good reasons for the public to want their work to be scrutinized heavily, but it's also perfectly understandable why police aren't super fond of it.
- sixothree 8y ago
  Imagine a hospital system where employees had unfettered and unloggable access to any patient's health data. That sounds like the workplace you are describing.
- vkou 8y ago
  > As with most other employees, police officers are not super fond of having every single action they take while on the job recorded, monitored, and scrutinized. I've heard horror stories about tech industry people who worked at offices where their bosses used remote desktop software to monitor employees work, and I think everyone mostly universally agrees that's horrible. I hate to break it to you, but in any half-decently-ran company with an IT department, everything you do on your work computer, including reading this post, is monitored and recorded.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    As I am the person in the IT department who sets up the logging and auditing, I'm surprisingly well versed on what is monitored and recorded. ;) There's a lot of nuance though to workplace monitoring, it's use should generally be for extreme circumstances, not everyday employee harassment. (And no, I don't exempt myself from anything everyone else is subject to.)
- Benjammer 8y ago
  It's also more complicated for cops than just "not wanting to be monitored all the time." There are interactions with innocent people, children, sex crimes victims, witnesses who need identity protection for their physical safety, etc. where they also need to turn off their cameras. There is definitely some funky stuff happening in a lot of places, but acting like it's a cut and dry issue of "watching the cops" or "not watching the cops," is underestimating the legal complexity here.
- drb91 8y ago
  > but it's also perfectly understandable why police aren't super fond of it. Only in the sense that people aren't super fond of doing their job right.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    So you would have no issue if your boss stood over your shoulder every hour of the day, evaluating how you spend your time?
    - drb91 8y ago
      I'm not a cop and my job is not to be violent on behalf of the state. Additionally, monitoring can also be exonerating if you are confident in the justice system, so I don't buy this idea that cops are uniformly against monitoring.
      - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        I already acknowledged that public interest in accountability above. To which you suggested anyone who didn't want to be monitored "aren't super fond of doing their job right". My point is that police officers, like you, find having someone staring over their shoulder while they work uncomfortable. So the fact that they don't like it and tend to oppose it doesn't mean they're inherently desiring to be corrupt or violent or bad cops. And yes, it's definitely true that police are regularly accused of lying, and can find appealing having recorded proof of their interactions. There's a lot of extra rules and regs around body cams and when they have to be recorded, and how they can be used by the department that can make the issue cloudier.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        vokep 8y ago
        >So the fact that they don't like it and tend to oppose it doesn't mean they're inherently desiring to be corrupt or violent or bad cops. But that fact is the seed that causes such corruption.
- threatofrain 8y ago
  A lot of people who work in sensitive situations understand the need and welcome automated documentation, especially in a world where reputation is everything. Not everyone has to work in the same circumstance, and I think that's okay. I would argue that some work is inherently benefited by transparency, such as when people have power over you and nobody can really see. I feel that in many ways the police handle a range of responsibilities more serious to citizen health than handling some level of classified government information.
Liquix 8y ago
How are they expected to work without a degree of opacity? If the police were transparent for the sake of vigilant privacy nerds and the public, their targets would stay two steps ahead of them and never get caught. I agree on the accountability front - some agency somewhere needs to keep a comprehensive record of all of these 'black budget' 'operational secrecy' kind of things. Otherwise (as evidenced by the runaway CIA/NSA), having the option of secrecy becomes too alluring and therefore the norm. At this point American citizens have pretty much zero idea what these agencies are doing on a daily basis - it's nice to believe they operate with our best interests in mind, but if not, how would we ever know?
- sixothree 8y ago
  They could start by describing and making accountable the systems that protect and audit access to surveillance data.

As with most other employees, police officers are not super fond of having every single action they take while on the job recorded, monitored, and scrutinized. I've heard horror stories about tech industry people who worked at offices where their bosses used remote desktop software to monitor employees work, and I think everyone mostly universally agrees that's horrible. There's a perfectly legitimate argument that as cops have the ability to use deadly force, there's a lot of good reasons for the public to want their work to be scrutinized heavily, but it's also perfectly understandable why police aren't super fond of it.

sixothree 8y ago
Imagine a hospital system where employees had unfettered and unloggable access to any patient's health data. That sounds like the workplace you are describing.
vkou 8y ago
> As with most other employees, police officers are not super fond of having every single action they take while on the job recorded, monitored, and scrutinized. I've heard horror stories about tech industry people who worked at offices where their bosses used remote desktop software to monitor employees work, and I think everyone mostly universally agrees that's horrible. I hate to break it to you, but in any half-decently-ran company with an IT department, everything you do on your work computer, including reading this post, is monitored and recorded.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  As I am the person in the IT department who sets up the logging and auditing, I'm surprisingly well versed on what is monitored and recorded. ;) There's a lot of nuance though to workplace monitoring, it's use should generally be for extreme circumstances, not everyday employee harassment. (And no, I don't exempt myself from anything everyone else is subject to.)
Benjammer 8y ago
It's also more complicated for cops than just "not wanting to be monitored all the time." There are interactions with innocent people, children, sex crimes victims, witnesses who need identity protection for their physical safety, etc. where they also need to turn off their cameras. There is definitely some funky stuff happening in a lot of places, but acting like it's a cut and dry issue of "watching the cops" or "not watching the cops," is underestimating the legal complexity here.
drb91 8y ago
> but it's also perfectly understandable why police aren't super fond of it. Only in the sense that people aren't super fond of doing their job right.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  So you would have no issue if your boss stood over your shoulder every hour of the day, evaluating how you spend your time?
  - drb91 8y ago
    I'm not a cop and my job is not to be violent on behalf of the state. Additionally, monitoring can also be exonerating if you are confident in the justice system, so I don't buy this idea that cops are uniformly against monitoring.
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      I already acknowledged that public interest in accountability above. To which you suggested anyone who didn't want to be monitored "aren't super fond of doing their job right". My point is that police officers, like you, find having someone staring over their shoulder while they work uncomfortable. So the fact that they don't like it and tend to oppose it doesn't mean they're inherently desiring to be corrupt or violent or bad cops. And yes, it's definitely true that police are regularly accused of lying, and can find appealing having recorded proof of their interactions. There's a lot of extra rules and regs around body cams and when they have to be recorded, and how they can be used by the department that can make the issue cloudier.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - vokep 8y ago
        >So the fact that they don't like it and tend to oppose it doesn't mean they're inherently desiring to be corrupt or violent or bad cops. But that fact is the seed that causes such corruption.
threatofrain 8y ago
A lot of people who work in sensitive situations understand the need and welcome automated documentation, especially in a world where reputation is everything. Not everyone has to work in the same circumstance, and I think that's okay. I would argue that some work is inherently benefited by transparency, such as when people have power over you and nobody can really see. I feel that in many ways the police handle a range of responsibilities more serious to citizen health than handling some level of classified government information.

Liquix 8y ago

How are they expected to work without a degree of opacity? If the police were transparent for the sake of vigilant privacy nerds and the public, their targets would stay two steps ahead of them and never get caught. I agree on the accountability front - some agency somewhere needs to keep a comprehensive record of all of these 'black budget' 'operational secrecy' kind of things. Otherwise (as evidenced by the runaway CIA/NSA), having the option of secrecy becomes too alluring and therefore the norm. At this point American citizens have pretty much zero idea what these agencies are doing on a daily basis - it's nice to believe they operate with our best interests in mind, but if not, how would we ever know?

sixothree 8y ago
They could start by describing and making accountable the systems that protect and audit access to surveillance data.