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Going Quiet: More States Are Hiding 911 Recordings

251 points by danso 7y ago

decasia 7y ago
I generally support regulations that protect privacy, as I'm sure most of us do. But they can come at a very real human cost, as in this case. Especially when it comes to regulations that affect people who aren't able to express their preferences (because they have died, are incapacitated, are not able to think clearly for whatever reason, etc), any general rule is going to lead to some bad outcomes. FWIW I tend to think 911 calls ought to be public because they are public records. There are probably ways of making them public but not completely easy to access (eg, you could only listen to a specific record on site in a records archive). That would at least guard against the problems of releasing everything on the internet, which would impose major reputational risks to everybody who ever made a 911 call.
- ghaff 7y ago
  This is one of the privacy conundrums that we mostly have never come to grips with. There are a lot of things that would seem to be legitimately public records. But there's arguably a big difference between records that you have to go to some county clerk's office to access and possibly provide at least a cursory justification for doing so and being able to click a few keys on your computer and skim through records for the hell of it. Both are public at some level but one is not like the other.
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    Could you articulate this “big difference” a bit more? So far the only one I can parse from your comment is ease of access, driving to a clerk versus walking to my desk. That doesn’t seem particularly convincing. Or at least I don’t see how this feeds into the privacy “conundrum”
    - mruts 7y ago
      I could be wrong but maybe one is recursively enumerable and the other is not? i.e at a clerk you need to know what you’re looking for in contrast to a list of records that you can just look through.
      - dvtrn 7y ago
        The records are no less public in either situation? They can be accessed by anyone, regardless if they’re actively looking for a specific record or stumbling across one while scrolling through their local clerk database on a Saturday afternoon. I still don’t understand the conceit. If one were to say checking documents out from a central clerking office acts as a check or something against unauthorized and potentially unethical use of public records, well then yes absolutely I can see some merit. As delivered presently, not as much.
        mruts 7y ago
        So could you ask the clerk to produce every piece of information he has? Would he be obligated to give it to you?
        dvtrn 7y ago
        Depends on the jurisdictions’ open records laws I would imagine yes they more than likely would be. Presumably if they have such statutes, some jurisdictions have provisions to catch such types “burdensome requests” and either slap a heavy fee for processing such a request and hopefully deter the requestor, or they appeal to a higher court when denying the request entirely But otherwise if a state has open records laws and you make a lawful request for a large body of publicly available records then I’m inclined to say by definition the clerk is required to provide them provided all requirements of the request are satisfied.
        nvusuvu 7y ago
        It allows voyeurism.
  - jplayer01 7y ago
    > But there's arguably a big difference between records that you have to go to some county clerk's office to access and possibly provide at least a cursory justification for doing so and being able to click a few keys on your computer and skim through records for the hell of it. I think it's important to consider the context. Privacy is important, but in an environment where authorities happen to "disappear" records that might be used against them or could be used to hold them to account, and fight tooth and nail to prevent easy access to them as in the US (and are often able to weaponize the courts to prevent access), there's a case to be argued that there are clear benefits to keeping it public in a way where there are no barriers.
    - evgen 7y ago
      The converse is also true: in an environment where random strangers take perverse pleasure in using any record in which you may appear to provide the worse possible representation, where you have no way of controlling this potential invasion of your privacy, where the record will endure _forever_ (and other groups will go to great lengths to ensure access to these records by anyone on the planet who happens to be curious), and where your ability to contextualize an event in which you happen to appear will be drowned out by whatever outrage machine has the biggest megaphone and fastest meme team, there is a strong case to be argued that there should be significant and prohibitive barriers to public access.
      - jplayer01 7y ago
        They're 911 calls. Show me one example of a 911 call and its misrepresentation being used to really harm somebody. Control only means those in power will abuse that control and prohibit its use as a method of ensuring accountability and transparency in how 911 hotlines are run. Further, I think privacy is worth preserving for privacy's sake. We all have a right to it. But there are times where we have to give up rights in order to serve the interests of the community. I know it's not a popular way of thinking in the US, but it's just a fact of living in a society with other people. We don't have the complete freedom to do anything and everything we want. Giving up the privacy of 911 calls has clear benefits, and I haven't yet seen sufficient evidence that enough harm is caused by them being public to consider otherwise. Even further, these states aren't making these records private for privacy reasons. You're just playing into their narrative and defending them on morality when they're doing it to cover their asses.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    One way that I've often thought we should divide it is that part of the public record is who is accessing the record and why they're doing it. E.g., I'd be happier with the government having data on me if I knew I'd get notified any time somebody looked at it. And I'd also feel safer if privacy-focused non-profits were watching the stats on who's viewing what to ask questions like, "Why has Greg looked up 14 addresses on women in his neighborhood over the last month?"
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - traderjane 7y ago
    It's a problem of scale and similar to other issues of automated criminal justice. If having your issues heard in court were a few clicks away that would blow the system up, which is why cities swat away automated filings in any way possible. It implies an uncomfortable truth that justice relies on underutilisation in order to service demand.
- mnw21cam 7y ago
  To play devil's advocate, 911 calls are information about yourself that you are giving to the government. There isn't anything more than that which makes it a "public record". I can think of other types of information about yourself that one gives to the government, such as your tax return. Should that be public record, and how is it different to a 911 recording?
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Norway offers an interesting example. There, tax returns are public... but so is who looked yours up. https://qz.com/784186/in-norway-you-can-browse-everyones-tax-returns-but-theres-a-good-reason-you-might-not-want-to/ https://qz.com/784186/in-norway-you-can-browse-everyones-tax...
    - steve76 7y ago
      Norway houses architects of the Final Solution, both right and left. They owe me money, and have absolutely no say into any debate until they pay. They finance war criminals who kill undesirables, including Americans, to this day. I should have gone radio silent after Hiroshima, and just kept dropping bomb, after bomb, after bomb, after bomb, after bomb. That is how much the world has failed me.
    - kbenson 7y ago
      That dies provide an interesting example. Requiring the accessing party disclose who they are (and who they may be acting for), and putting strict access limits on the requests based on that (once per 10 minutes or hour possibly, unless you petition for a slightly higher access rate because of need, such as your profession) and all under penalty of prosecution of the U.S. government neatly solves the issue for me I think. If you have to supply your SSN, name and an email for each request, and the name and SSN are shown to later requesters, that easily allows the government to track abuse of an SSN to access records, allows for preventing third parties from accumulating all the records to circumvent the controls, and allows public view of records that might be problematic to have negative privacy consequences if data mined completely.
- usrusr 7y ago
  It would also come at a very real human cost if people started thinking twice before calling 911. Of all situations where you do not want self-censoring effects to happen, this is the one that stands out above all others.
  - ryacko 7y ago
    It is recommended (IANAL, read this over the internet, but this seems legally sound to me) that if you are involved in an incident of self-defense, one would say, “I want to report a ____” and go on to explain the /outcome/ of events to the operator.
  - drdeadringer 7y ago
    I deeply feel both sides of this. * If I were receiving domestic violence and in fear of my life, how would I feel calling emergency services knowing my screams for help in one of my most vulnerable states in life would later be public? * If I suspected I could be vulnerable to domestic violence, how inspired might I be to make the same type of call once hearing another person's similar emergency call? Two sides of a coin to consider.
- gwbas1c 7y ago
  People call 911 in domestic abuse situations. Those should not be made public record. Doing so will give an abuser more leverage.
vorpalhex 7y ago
Making 911 calls available because "your family wants to know" seems to be too far of a violation of privacy. While I feel sorry for the person who lost their brother, he can go to court and ask for the records to be released - which seems about the correct amount of privacy protection for something like this.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  I understand the privacy side of things, but I'm suspicious of the motive. We've seen with police body cameras that the cops are quick to release exonerating ones, but "we don't release evidence during a pending investigation, but trust us, the video is exonerating" in cases where the footage is damning.
  - steve76 7y ago
    The number one threat vector against nation states is social engineering first responders. Anyone who publically advocates this, yet cannot follow the rules, should prepare for Micro Plumb Island. Micro Plumb Island is when I use highly individualize accoustics to keep you from doing things a toddler knows. Don't walk into the street. I don't care if you die, but you may kill the nice mommy and daddy just driving to by food or medicine for baby. Food and medicine makes baby feel good, I'm a baby, and I want to feel good. This ends with all adolescent fools of all shapes and sizes, ages and ethnicities, blips and blops, flips and flops, being duct taped to a guerney at their local behavioral ward. For you may very well leave the Emerald Palace of Cheshire Borgia, noble wanderer, yet it never leaves you now, does it? At least, all the way ... ... ... A HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
  - Ajedi32 7y ago
    Assuming that's true, couldn't that maybe be because exonerating evidence precludes the need for a pending investigation, whereas unclear or damning evidence requires further investigation to build a proper case before the whole thing goes to trial? Our legal system is intentionally biased towards "innocent until proven guilty", so it generally makes sense to not release evidence of criminal activity prior to the case being brought to trial. The same obviously doesn't apply to evidence of innocence, especially if that evidence is strong enough that it likely means the case will never make it to trial in the first place.
BurningFrog 7y ago
Having 911 recordings public is one of the most insane things about this country. Why not make my doctor visits public too?
- _jal 7y ago
  911 recordings are records generated by public servants, and have implications for the wider public. This is similar to court records, which are also default-public. Unless you're contagious, your health has no wider public implications. And if you are, your wishes are also going to be ignored.
  - mruts 7y ago
    I mean it wouldn’t be right to publish a list of all the people with AIDS, right? That could have some implications for the public but it still probably shouldn’t be available.
    - mnw21cam 7y ago
      Thankfully, that particular one is hopefully dealt with by the fact that deliberately infecting someone with AIDS is punishable and hopefully deterred. The whole world doesn't need to know that a person has AIDS for that person to take necessary steps to avoid infecting people.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    > This is similar to court records, which are also default-public It's hard for me to see how the trial of a rapist is similar to a rape victim calling for help. The trial needs to be public so we can monitor the application of justice in the legal system. The details of somebody's worst moments of their life needs to be public because...? If I ever need to call 911, I want to only focus on getting help fast. But as it is, I also need to think about how I'll sound if this call is being played on the news or Twitter.
    - dvtrn 7y ago
hnsocks 7y ago
Going quiet by government by hiding mistakes of police forces.. oh yes. Hide more ..
justin66 7y ago
It's instructive to look at why the ACLU went from supporting to not supporting the statute in RI: Supporters of the bill included the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Steven Brown, the ACLU chapter’s executive director, said the organization’s support was based on the “privacy values in not having these often very intimate types of calls just available to everybody in the public.” But over the years, the interpretation of the law by the courts has been “problematic,” Brown said, because judges have denied access to 911 recordings even when they would serve the public interest. He said the ACLU would support adding a “good cause mechanism” in the law to allow for the release of 911 calls if it can be shown that there is an “important public service in knowing what’s in those calls.”
kdmccormick 7y ago
I think a reasonable compromise would be a sort of "public-by-default after X number of days, but private if requested so by caller". I understand the utility of them being public. On the other hand, I have made 911 calls that I definitely don't want to be publicly available, especially online where voice-recognition tools could be used to find a specific person's calls.
- t34543 7y ago
  I like this model a lot.
- dkural 7y ago
  This would protect people making calls based on racial profiling - "man walking in my neighborhood while black".
  - kdmccormick 7y ago
    Protect them from what? Public shaming by people who look them up in databases? Being racist isn't illegal. I'm inclined to think that this is less important than protecting the calls of people who had mental health emergencies and the like.
    - rolltiide 7y ago
      > Protect them from what? Public shaming by people who look them up in databases? Being racist isn't illegal. Retribution, that was obvious to me. Examples: Physical violence as retribution is illegal, while being kicked off of board seats and other areas of influence isn't. Being 86'd (banned) from private establishments isn't illegal. All is possible.
  - ben509 7y ago
    It would also protect people making calls that could lead to accusations of racial profiling.
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    I'm fine with that. We want people to feel free to call 911 when they feel threatened. Some people will feel threatened for stupid reasons, and some of those stupid reasons are racist. But it's better to let people call without risk of being shamed and then let the operator decide how to react to a call.
DoctorOetker 7y ago
This should probably be handled the same way as donating your dead body for science (or profit): make this an individuals own choice. This improves societal cohesion: if the individual allows the release of this private data when it concerns him- or herself, any designated people are free to request this data, and each one of them should be free to share this freely, it's up to the individual to choose discreet people if so desired, avoiding anger between the mourning individuals with respect to the state. It also improves cohesion between individuals and the state in aother way: if the deceased chose to not release such private data, then the mourning individuals will be less angry at the state and more angry with the "poor" decision of the deceased... As with all such systems you get the endless meta-fight of opt-in versus opt-out: as a stoichiocrat, my preferred solution is to provably flip a random coin toss, such that anyone who cares about this setting must explicitly opt-in or explicitly opt-out, those who act careless simply do not care about their setting, and the conundrum of systemic bias in the sense of all opt-in versus all opt-out is avoided. The probability of the coin toss can even be set identically to the fraction of people who explicitly opt-in vs explicitly opt-out (in example if 90% of the populace ignores the setting, and 7% opt for release and 3% opt for privacy after death, then for the 90% without explicitly stated preferencee a random 7 out of 10 people will have the details released and 3 out of 10 will have the details withheld)
- hacker_123 7y ago
  I haven't heard the label stoichiocrat[1] before, and Google search only finds this HN page. Do you know if many others share these views, and if they've ever been implemented? It's easiest to think of rules in a black and white, opt-in or opt-out way, and I hadn't considered the probabilistic option. [1] Without knowing the words, I think you mean "stochiocrat", which would be related to "stochastic" and probabilistic. Google found one result for this, but it didn't provide good context; I think it was referring to how Venetian Doges were elected [2]. "Stoichiocrat" would be more related to "stoichiometery", coming from a Greek word that can mean "element". [2] https://theumlaut.com/mechanism-design-in-the-venetian-republic-bbedc3a25ea0 https://theumlaut.com/mechanism-design-in-the-venetian-repub...
  - 7y ago
born2discover 7y ago
This is sad to read. I understand the will to protect the privacy of the people calling in, but wouldn't the public interest prevail in some cases? What I mean by that is, when weighing between keeping 911 records sealed for the sake of privacy; against releasing them to the public for the sake of public service (for example for performance review, reconstruction of the chain of events ...), shouldn't the public's interest prevail (as in many versus one)?
- peteretep 7y ago
  > but wouldn't the public interest prevail in some cases? I'm pretty comfortable with a court deciding those cases
- darkpuma 7y ago
  You're failing to consider the possibility that there is a public interest in maintaining privacy for 911 calls. It could be the case that people are more hesitant to call in something if they know the recording will become public. This could conceivably do more harm to the public at large than keeping the records private would.
gumby 7y ago
Seems like the caller's interest should trump that of the victims' families, and doing so could make the system safer. If you are taking drugs with someone and they look like they are dying it should definitely be safe for you to call 911, even if you are participating, or are somewhere you shouldn't be, or don't have a visa, or whatever. If you break into a building, perhaps to steal, and your companion falls and breaks a limb you should definitely be able to call 911 (bad luck for your companion who will surely be arrested though). A person's heart stops, you call 911, the try CPR and they die anyway (well, they're already "dead" if you're doing CPR). You shouldn't have any liability. Grand juries and review boards could still confidentially review 911 calls for cases like this, where the family fears malpractice by the first responders. == This is no different for why TSA should not screen for drugs or anything but weapons that could threaten a flight; why people not already in the court system should not be arrested in courthouses (or nearby). Why people who are here illegally should get vaccines and drivers' licenses. What seems "unfair" can actually promote the public welfare.
- wool_gather 7y ago
  > A person's heart stops, you call 911, the try CPR and they die anyway (well, they're already "dead" if you're doing CPR). You shouldn't have any liability. There's already some kind of provision for this in many places; it's known as a "Good Samaritan law". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  > If you are taking drugs with someone and they look like they are dying it should definitely be safe for you to call 911 In Washington state, this is how it is, and there are education programs, and statutes to this effect, telling kids/anyone "If you call 911 because you think your or your friends life is at risk because of alcohol or drug use, neither you nor they will be arrested for that".
jcoffland 7y ago
The problem is lawyers not privacy. The 911 operators and the state obviously don't want sued.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  If you don't want a source used in civil courts you can just tell the courts they are't allowed to use it. That's what is done for accident investigation. Accident investigators need to understand what actually happened, not just a bunch of useless backside covering as everyone tries to avoid getting sued. So, their evidence just isn't admissible in civil courts. An investigation by, say, the NTSB or analogous organisations in many developed countries produces a public report, but you can't take that report into a civil court because it says in the law and on the report that it can't be used that way. It would probably take more effort to ensure this was effective in the revenge-hungry United States of America than in countries where the mainstream zeitgeist incorporates the understanding that hurting somebody else doesn't fix anything, but it could be done.
tzs 7y ago
Similar issues can arise with police body cameras. Seattle's initial attempt to use body cams had to be stopped because all of the footage was available under state open record laws, and someone was filing requests for all of it and putting it up on YouTube. This was a massive violation of the privacy of numerous people caught on those videos. Police go into people's home, often uninvited and on short notice, and can easily see intimate and private details of those people's lives. At first Seattle tried editing the footage before release to redact parts that might violate the privacy of anyone other then the officers and alleged criminals. I don't remember how many officers were involved in the initial body cam deployment, but it was enough that they generated so much footage that they didn't have the budget to edit it. I remember at one point they were even asking hackers for help with automating some of this. A couple years or so later, they resumed using body cams. I'm not sure how they dealt with the privacy issues.
- halbgnarf 7y ago
  For some morbid reason I love those accounts of random law trolls, thanks for sharing.
  - deleted 7y ago
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- deleted 7y ago
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- pfranz 7y ago
  I wish I had more concrete information, but I remember hearing about one police department treating bodycam recordings in public and in private places differently for this reason. I imagine the officer would tag it when they left their shift or offloaded the footage. In general, I've heard reviewing the footage is a huge undertaking and an unexpected burden. I wouldn't be surprised if, like many backup systems, they're not often tested and found to be insufficient when they go to pull a video...but, then again, they also deal with evidence which has similar requirements.
  - 7y ago
rb808 7y ago
No other country in the world makes emergency calls public, I dont see why US calls are.
- peteretep 7y ago
  American police are absurdly trigger-happy compared with other rich countries[0], maybe this helps counter that? 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
  - darkpuma 7y ago
    What happens when you adjust those figures for something like differences in private gun ownership rates between populations? It seems obvious that America has the most guns, and that having so many more guns than anybody else probably causes a dramatic increase in the number of justifiable homicides police are involved in.
- cabaalis 7y ago
  I don't know about other countries, but it's probably an extension of the overall American feeling of government in general: "Okay, I put you in office and will allow you to run certain parts of my life. But remember that I pay your salary, and that everything you have in that fancy office belongs to me." Recordings held on hard drives fall under that "everything in that fancy office belongs to me" line of reasoning.
  - efdee 7y ago
    In almost every company, the person you can talk to when you feel threatened or are for some other reason panicking will very explicitly not automatically pass on this information to whoever is paying his salary. This is a weird reasoning (but I realise you might just be iterating the reasoning rather than agreeing to it).
dev_dull 7y ago
Our litigious society has driven us in two directions: limiting liability and secrecy. Limiting liability by outsourcing important functions to contractors, who can absorb a lawsuit and simply go under. A government has effectively unlimited liability since it can raise taxes, and can't easily go under, which leaves it broadly exposed. And secrecy like this article. Something will have to give or we'll see more and more of these trends.
ardani 7y ago
Charge the requesters a review fee, per minute of footage? That way you can categorize the video on demand, and release it as a public good after. The categorization would need an appeals process. Categorization would be akin to: release now, release in a year (for embarassment), release in 30 years (for crimes) and perhaps never release (murder scenes etc., but let it bitrot in a cabinet for 30 years first). If you're poor you can ask a privacy and open governance charity to buy a block of footage encompassing the footage you need. Perhaps someone could write an RFC for this and send it around police departments. It should be framed as a minor source of income and that it may be a fun occasional distraction to some agents - if the tooling has a sufficiently powerful playback and fast-forward function.

251 points by danso 7y ago

I generally support regulations that protect privacy, as I'm sure most of us do. But they can come at a very real human cost, as in this case. Especially when it comes to regulations that affect people who aren't able to express their preferences (because they have died, are incapacitated, are not able to think clearly for whatever reason, etc), any general rule is going to lead to some bad outcomes. FWIW I tend to think 911 calls ought to be public because they are public records. There are probably ways of making them public but not completely easy to access (eg, you could only listen to a specific record on site in a records archive). That would at least guard against the problems of releasing everything on the internet, which would impose major reputational risks to everybody who ever made a 911 call.

ghaff 7y ago
This is one of the privacy conundrums that we mostly have never come to grips with. There are a lot of things that would seem to be legitimately public records. But there's arguably a big difference between records that you have to go to some county clerk's office to access and possibly provide at least a cursory justification for doing so and being able to click a few keys on your computer and skim through records for the hell of it. Both are public at some level but one is not like the other.
- dvtrn 7y ago
  Could you articulate this “big difference” a bit more? So far the only one I can parse from your comment is ease of access, driving to a clerk versus walking to my desk. That doesn’t seem particularly convincing. Or at least I don’t see how this feeds into the privacy “conundrum”
  - mruts 7y ago
    I could be wrong but maybe one is recursively enumerable and the other is not? i.e at a clerk you need to know what you’re looking for in contrast to a list of records that you can just look through.
    - dvtrn 7y ago
      The records are no less public in either situation? They can be accessed by anyone, regardless if they’re actively looking for a specific record or stumbling across one while scrolling through their local clerk database on a Saturday afternoon. I still don’t understand the conceit. If one were to say checking documents out from a central clerking office acts as a check or something against unauthorized and potentially unethical use of public records, well then yes absolutely I can see some merit. As delivered presently, not as much.
      - mruts 7y ago
        So could you ask the clerk to produce every piece of information he has? Would he be obligated to give it to you?
        dvtrn 7y ago
        Depends on the jurisdictions’ open records laws I would imagine yes they more than likely would be. Presumably if they have such statutes, some jurisdictions have provisions to catch such types “burdensome requests” and either slap a heavy fee for processing such a request and hopefully deter the requestor, or they appeal to a higher court when denying the request entirely But otherwise if a state has open records laws and you make a lawful request for a large body of publicly available records then I’m inclined to say by definition the clerk is required to provide them provided all requirements of the request are satisfied.
      - nvusuvu 7y ago
        It allows voyeurism.
- jplayer01 7y ago
  > But there's arguably a big difference between records that you have to go to some county clerk's office to access and possibly provide at least a cursory justification for doing so and being able to click a few keys on your computer and skim through records for the hell of it. I think it's important to consider the context. Privacy is important, but in an environment where authorities happen to "disappear" records that might be used against them or could be used to hold them to account, and fight tooth and nail to prevent easy access to them as in the US (and are often able to weaponize the courts to prevent access), there's a case to be argued that there are clear benefits to keeping it public in a way where there are no barriers.
  - evgen 7y ago
    The converse is also true: in an environment where random strangers take perverse pleasure in using any record in which you may appear to provide the worse possible representation, where you have no way of controlling this potential invasion of your privacy, where the record will endure _forever_ (and other groups will go to great lengths to ensure access to these records by anyone on the planet who happens to be curious), and where your ability to contextualize an event in which you happen to appear will be drowned out by whatever outrage machine has the biggest megaphone and fastest meme team, there is a strong case to be argued that there should be significant and prohibitive barriers to public access.
    - jplayer01 7y ago
      They're 911 calls. Show me one example of a 911 call and its misrepresentation being used to really harm somebody. Control only means those in power will abuse that control and prohibit its use as a method of ensuring accountability and transparency in how 911 hotlines are run. Further, I think privacy is worth preserving for privacy's sake. We all have a right to it. But there are times where we have to give up rights in order to serve the interests of the community. I know it's not a popular way of thinking in the US, but it's just a fact of living in a society with other people. We don't have the complete freedom to do anything and everything we want. Giving up the privacy of 911 calls has clear benefits, and I haven't yet seen sufficient evidence that enough harm is caused by them being public to consider otherwise. Even further, these states aren't making these records private for privacy reasons. You're just playing into their narrative and defending them on morality when they're doing it to cover their asses.
- wpietri 7y ago
  One way that I've often thought we should divide it is that part of the public record is who is accessing the record and why they're doing it. E.g., I'd be happier with the government having data on me if I knew I'd get notified any time somebody looked at it. And I'd also feel safer if privacy-focused non-profits were watching the stats on who's viewing what to ask questions like, "Why has Greg looked up 14 addresses on women in his neighborhood over the last month?"
- deleted 7y ago
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- traderjane 7y ago
  It's a problem of scale and similar to other issues of automated criminal justice. If having your issues heard in court were a few clicks away that would blow the system up, which is why cities swat away automated filings in any way possible. It implies an uncomfortable truth that justice relies on underutilisation in order to service demand.
mnw21cam 7y ago
To play devil's advocate, 911 calls are information about yourself that you are giving to the government. There isn't anything more than that which makes it a "public record". I can think of other types of information about yourself that one gives to the government, such as your tax return. Should that be public record, and how is it different to a 911 recording?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Norway offers an interesting example. There, tax returns are public... but so is who looked yours up. https://qz.com/784186/in-norway-you-can-browse-everyones-tax-returns-but-theres-a-good-reason-you-might-not-want-to/ https://qz.com/784186/in-norway-you-can-browse-everyones-tax...
  - steve76 7y ago
    Norway houses architects of the Final Solution, both right and left. They owe me money, and have absolutely no say into any debate until they pay. They finance war criminals who kill undesirables, including Americans, to this day. I should have gone radio silent after Hiroshima, and just kept dropping bomb, after bomb, after bomb, after bomb, after bomb. That is how much the world has failed me.
  - kbenson 7y ago
    That dies provide an interesting example. Requiring the accessing party disclose who they are (and who they may be acting for), and putting strict access limits on the requests based on that (once per 10 minutes or hour possibly, unless you petition for a slightly higher access rate because of need, such as your profession) and all under penalty of prosecution of the U.S. government neatly solves the issue for me I think. If you have to supply your SSN, name and an email for each request, and the name and SSN are shown to later requesters, that easily allows the government to track abuse of an SSN to access records, allows for preventing third parties from accumulating all the records to circumvent the controls, and allows public view of records that might be problematic to have negative privacy consequences if data mined completely.
usrusr 7y ago
It would also come at a very real human cost if people started thinking twice before calling 911. Of all situations where you do not want self-censoring effects to happen, this is the one that stands out above all others.
- ryacko 7y ago
  It is recommended (IANAL, read this over the internet, but this seems legally sound to me) that if you are involved in an incident of self-defense, one would say, “I want to report a ____” and go on to explain the /outcome/ of events to the operator.
- drdeadringer 7y ago
  I deeply feel both sides of this. * If I were receiving domestic violence and in fear of my life, how would I feel calling emergency services knowing my screams for help in one of my most vulnerable states in life would later be public? * If I suspected I could be vulnerable to domestic violence, how inspired might I be to make the same type of call once hearing another person's similar emergency call? Two sides of a coin to consider.
gwbas1c 7y ago
People call 911 in domestic abuse situations. Those should not be made public record. Doing so will give an abuser more leverage.

vorpalhex 7y ago

Making 911 calls available because "your family wants to know" seems to be too far of a violation of privacy. While I feel sorry for the person who lost their brother, he can go to court and ask for the records to be released - which seems about the correct amount of privacy protection for something like this.

ceejayoz 7y ago
I understand the privacy side of things, but I'm suspicious of the motive. We've seen with police body cameras that the cops are quick to release exonerating ones, but "we don't release evidence during a pending investigation, but trust us, the video is exonerating" in cases where the footage is damning.
- steve76 7y ago
  The number one threat vector against nation states is social engineering first responders. Anyone who publically advocates this, yet cannot follow the rules, should prepare for Micro Plumb Island. Micro Plumb Island is when I use highly individualize accoustics to keep you from doing things a toddler knows. Don't walk into the street. I don't care if you die, but you may kill the nice mommy and daddy just driving to by food or medicine for baby. Food and medicine makes baby feel good, I'm a baby, and I want to feel good. This ends with all adolescent fools of all shapes and sizes, ages and ethnicities, blips and blops, flips and flops, being duct taped to a guerney at their local behavioral ward. For you may very well leave the Emerald Palace of Cheshire Borgia, noble wanderer, yet it never leaves you now, does it? At least, all the way ... ... ... A HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
- Ajedi32 7y ago
  Assuming that's true, couldn't that maybe be because exonerating evidence precludes the need for a pending investigation, whereas unclear or damning evidence requires further investigation to build a proper case before the whole thing goes to trial? Our legal system is intentionally biased towards "innocent until proven guilty", so it generally makes sense to not release evidence of criminal activity prior to the case being brought to trial. The same obviously doesn't apply to evidence of innocence, especially if that evidence is strong enough that it likely means the case will never make it to trial in the first place.

BurningFrog 7y ago

Having 911 recordings public is one of the most insane things about this country. Why not make my doctor visits public too?

_jal 7y ago
911 recordings are records generated by public servants, and have implications for the wider public. This is similar to court records, which are also default-public. Unless you're contagious, your health has no wider public implications. And if you are, your wishes are also going to be ignored.
- mruts 7y ago
  I mean it wouldn’t be right to publish a list of all the people with AIDS, right? That could have some implications for the public but it still probably shouldn’t be available.
  - mnw21cam 7y ago
    Thankfully, that particular one is hopefully dealt with by the fact that deliberately infecting someone with AIDS is punishable and hopefully deterred. The whole world doesn't need to know that a person has AIDS for that person to take necessary steps to avoid infecting people.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  > This is similar to court records, which are also default-public It's hard for me to see how the trial of a rapist is similar to a rape victim calling for help. The trial needs to be public so we can monitor the application of justice in the legal system. The details of somebody's worst moments of their life needs to be public because...? If I ever need to call 911, I want to only focus on getting help fast. But as it is, I also need to think about how I'll sound if this call is being played on the news or Twitter.
  - dvtrn 7y ago

hnsocks 7y ago

Going quiet by government by hiding mistakes of police forces.. oh yes. Hide more ..

justin66 7y ago

It's instructive to look at why the ACLU went from supporting to not supporting the statute in RI: Supporters of the bill included the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Steven Brown, the ACLU chapter’s executive director, said the organization’s support was based on the “privacy values in not having these often very intimate types of calls just available to everybody in the public.” But over the years, the interpretation of the law by the courts has been “problematic,” Brown said, because judges have denied access to 911 recordings even when they would serve the public interest. He said the ACLU would support adding a “good cause mechanism” in the law to allow for the release of 911 calls if it can be shown that there is an “important public service in knowing what’s in those calls.”

kdmccormick 7y ago

I think a reasonable compromise would be a sort of "public-by-default after X number of days, but private if requested so by caller". I understand the utility of them being public. On the other hand, I have made 911 calls that I definitely don't want to be publicly available, especially online where voice-recognition tools could be used to find a specific person's calls.

t34543 7y ago
I like this model a lot.
dkural 7y ago
This would protect people making calls based on racial profiling - "man walking in my neighborhood while black".
- kdmccormick 7y ago
  Protect them from what? Public shaming by people who look them up in databases? Being racist isn't illegal. I'm inclined to think that this is less important than protecting the calls of people who had mental health emergencies and the like.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    > Protect them from what? Public shaming by people who look them up in databases? Being racist isn't illegal. Retribution, that was obvious to me. Examples: Physical violence as retribution is illegal, while being kicked off of board seats and other areas of influence isn't. Being 86'd (banned) from private establishments isn't illegal. All is possible.
- ben509 7y ago
  It would also protect people making calls that could lead to accusations of racial profiling.
- wongarsu 7y ago
  I'm fine with that. We want people to feel free to call 911 when they feel threatened. Some people will feel threatened for stupid reasons, and some of those stupid reasons are racist. But it's better to let people call without risk of being shamed and then let the operator decide how to react to a call.

DoctorOetker 7y ago

This should probably be handled the same way as donating your dead body for science (or profit): make this an individuals own choice. This improves societal cohesion: if the individual allows the release of this private data when it concerns him- or herself, any designated people are free to request this data, and each one of them should be free to share this freely, it's up to the individual to choose discreet people if so desired, avoiding anger between the mourning individuals with respect to the state. It also improves cohesion between individuals and the state in aother way: if the deceased chose to not release such private data, then the mourning individuals will be less angry at the state and more angry with the "poor" decision of the deceased... As with all such systems you get the endless meta-fight of opt-in versus opt-out: as a stoichiocrat, my preferred solution is to provably flip a random coin toss, such that anyone who cares about this setting must explicitly opt-in or explicitly opt-out, those who act careless simply do not care about their setting, and the conundrum of systemic bias in the sense of all opt-in versus all opt-out is avoided. The probability of the coin toss can even be set identically to the fraction of people who explicitly opt-in vs explicitly opt-out (in example if 90% of the populace ignores the setting, and 7% opt for release and 3% opt for privacy after death, then for the 90% without explicitly stated preferencee a random 7 out of 10 people will have the details released and 3 out of 10 will have the details withheld)

hacker_123 7y ago
I haven't heard the label stoichiocrat[1] before, and Google search only finds this HN page. Do you know if many others share these views, and if they've ever been implemented? It's easiest to think of rules in a black and white, opt-in or opt-out way, and I hadn't considered the probabilistic option. [1] Without knowing the words, I think you mean "stochiocrat", which would be related to "stochastic" and probabilistic. Google found one result for this, but it didn't provide good context; I think it was referring to how Venetian Doges were elected [2]. "Stoichiocrat" would be more related to "stoichiometery", coming from a Greek word that can mean "element". [2] https://theumlaut.com/mechanism-design-in-the-venetian-republic-bbedc3a25ea0 https://theumlaut.com/mechanism-design-in-the-venetian-repub...
- 7y ago

born2discover 7y ago

This is sad to read. I understand the will to protect the privacy of the people calling in, but wouldn't the public interest prevail in some cases? What I mean by that is, when weighing between keeping 911 records sealed for the sake of privacy; against releasing them to the public for the sake of public service (for example for performance review, reconstruction of the chain of events ...), shouldn't the public's interest prevail (as in many versus one)?

peteretep 7y ago
> but wouldn't the public interest prevail in some cases? I'm pretty comfortable with a court deciding those cases
darkpuma 7y ago
You're failing to consider the possibility that there is a public interest in maintaining privacy for 911 calls. It could be the case that people are more hesitant to call in something if they know the recording will become public. This could conceivably do more harm to the public at large than keeping the records private would.

gumby 7y ago

Seems like the caller's interest should trump that of the victims' families, and doing so could make the system safer. If you are taking drugs with someone and they look like they are dying it should definitely be safe for you to call 911, even if you are participating, or are somewhere you shouldn't be, or don't have a visa, or whatever. If you break into a building, perhaps to steal, and your companion falls and breaks a limb you should definitely be able to call 911 (bad luck for your companion who will surely be arrested though). A person's heart stops, you call 911, the try CPR and they die anyway (well, they're already "dead" if you're doing CPR). You shouldn't have any liability. Grand juries and review boards could still confidentially review 911 calls for cases like this, where the family fears malpractice by the first responders. == This is no different for why TSA should not screen for drugs or anything but weapons that could threaten a flight; why people not already in the court system should not be arrested in courthouses (or nearby). Why people who are here illegally should get vaccines and drivers' licenses. What seems "unfair" can actually promote the public welfare.

wool_gather 7y ago
> A person's heart stops, you call 911, the try CPR and they die anyway (well, they're already "dead" if you're doing CPR). You shouldn't have any liability. There's already some kind of provision for this in many places; it's known as a "Good Samaritan law". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law
FireBeyond 7y ago
> If you are taking drugs with someone and they look like they are dying it should definitely be safe for you to call 911 In Washington state, this is how it is, and there are education programs, and statutes to this effect, telling kids/anyone "If you call 911 because you think your or your friends life is at risk because of alcohol or drug use, neither you nor they will be arrested for that".

jcoffland 7y ago

The problem is lawyers not privacy. The 911 operators and the state obviously don't want sued.

tialaramex 7y ago
If you don't want a source used in civil courts you can just tell the courts they are't allowed to use it. That's what is done for accident investigation. Accident investigators need to understand what actually happened, not just a bunch of useless backside covering as everyone tries to avoid getting sued. So, their evidence just isn't admissible in civil courts. An investigation by, say, the NTSB or analogous organisations in many developed countries produces a public report, but you can't take that report into a civil court because it says in the law and on the report that it can't be used that way. It would probably take more effort to ensure this was effective in the revenge-hungry United States of America than in countries where the mainstream zeitgeist incorporates the understanding that hurting somebody else doesn't fix anything, but it could be done.

tzs 7y ago

Similar issues can arise with police body cameras. Seattle's initial attempt to use body cams had to be stopped because all of the footage was available under state open record laws, and someone was filing requests for all of it and putting it up on YouTube. This was a massive violation of the privacy of numerous people caught on those videos. Police go into people's home, often uninvited and on short notice, and can easily see intimate and private details of those people's lives. At first Seattle tried editing the footage before release to redact parts that might violate the privacy of anyone other then the officers and alleged criminals. I don't remember how many officers were involved in the initial body cam deployment, but it was enough that they generated so much footage that they didn't have the budget to edit it. I remember at one point they were even asking hackers for help with automating some of this. A couple years or so later, they resumed using body cams. I'm not sure how they dealt with the privacy issues.

halbgnarf 7y ago
For some morbid reason I love those accounts of random law trolls, thanks for sharing.
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pfranz 7y ago
I wish I had more concrete information, but I remember hearing about one police department treating bodycam recordings in public and in private places differently for this reason. I imagine the officer would tag it when they left their shift or offloaded the footage. In general, I've heard reviewing the footage is a huge undertaking and an unexpected burden. I wouldn't be surprised if, like many backup systems, they're not often tested and found to be insufficient when they go to pull a video...but, then again, they also deal with evidence which has similar requirements.
- 7y ago

rb808 7y ago

No other country in the world makes emergency calls public, I dont see why US calls are.

peteretep 7y ago
American police are absurdly trigger-happy compared with other rich countries[0], maybe this helps counter that? 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
- darkpuma 7y ago
  What happens when you adjust those figures for something like differences in private gun ownership rates between populations? It seems obvious that America has the most guns, and that having so many more guns than anybody else probably causes a dramatic increase in the number of justifiable homicides police are involved in.
cabaalis 7y ago
I don't know about other countries, but it's probably an extension of the overall American feeling of government in general: "Okay, I put you in office and will allow you to run certain parts of my life. But remember that I pay your salary, and that everything you have in that fancy office belongs to me." Recordings held on hard drives fall under that "everything in that fancy office belongs to me" line of reasoning.
- efdee 7y ago
  In almost every company, the person you can talk to when you feel threatened or are for some other reason panicking will very explicitly not automatically pass on this information to whoever is paying his salary. This is a weird reasoning (but I realise you might just be iterating the reasoning rather than agreeing to it).

dev_dull 7y ago

Our litigious society has driven us in two directions: limiting liability and secrecy. Limiting liability by outsourcing important functions to contractors, who can absorb a lawsuit and simply go under. A government has effectively unlimited liability since it can raise taxes, and can't easily go under, which leaves it broadly exposed. And secrecy like this article. Something will have to give or we'll see more and more of these trends.

ardani 7y ago

Charge the requesters a review fee, per minute of footage? That way you can categorize the video on demand, and release it as a public good after. The categorization would need an appeals process. Categorization would be akin to: release now, release in a year (for embarassment), release in 30 years (for crimes) and perhaps never release (murder scenes etc., but let it bitrot in a cabinet for 30 years first). If you're poor you can ask a privacy and open governance charity to buy a block of footage encompassing the footage you need. Perhaps someone could write an RFC for this and send it around police departments. It should be framed as a minor source of income and that it may be a fun occasional distraction to some agents - if the tooling has a sufficiently powerful playback and fast-forward function.