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Speaking of racial and class injustice, the war in drugs has incentivized a lot of crime over the years while also brutally punishing poor people who turn to it

Speaking of racial and class injustice, the war in drugs has incentivized a lot of crime over the years while also brutally punishing poor people who turn to it out of desperation. To propose adding another layer of facial recognition that both attempts to strip privacy from people, but also falsely identifies many black people, is in extremely bad taste by Microsoft

bredren 6y ago
The war on drugs is also a way to fund LE using civil forfeiture. So assisting LE with this tech indirectly helps fund the continued war on drugs. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/09/710456736/defining-whats-excessive-in-police-property-seizures-remains-tricky https://www.npr.org/2019/04/09/710456736/defining-whats-exce...
- tech-historian 6y ago
  Sorry, what is LE?
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    Law enforcement
- koheripbal 6y ago
  The thing that always gets left out here is that you can just show up to court and ask for your property back, and 99 times out of 100, the judge will give it to you - because it's still up to the state to demonstrate that the property was the proceeds of a crime. ...but 99 times out of 100, the property owner doesn't show up to court.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    That doesn't appear to be true. Several examples here: ... and here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/08/they-fought-the-law-who-won/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/08/t... > Costello hired a local attorney to get the money back. After making a few calls, the lawyer told him to accept a deal from the government for half of the money. Costello agreed. But his legal fees were $9,000 — leaving him with only about $7,000. > In one respect, Guerrero was lucky. His construction firm paid a small amount to make his legal struggle possible, and Stone had agreed to do much of the work without pay. Given the time involved, the legal bills would have been $50,000, Stone said. But he agreed not to press for his fee from the government as part of the settlement. > He wanted to get his money back, but he had no idea how to sort through the intricacies of the federal civil forfeiture system, an arcane corner of the American legal world. Though he was never charged with a crime, he would have to prove, in effect, that he made the money legally. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/08/how-police-use-a-legal-gray-area-to-rob-suspects-of-their-belongings/495740/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/08/how-p... > In New York, the multi-step process required to get the NYPD to release possessions can be opaque and circuitous. When the Bronx Defenders circulated a questionnaire in 2014 among its clients who had possessions taken from them at the time of arrest, nearly half said they were never even given the itemized voucher that Clavasquin received. > Even with that voucher in hand, petitioning the district attorney’s office for the necessary forms to release items categorized as evidence can be fruitless: More often than not, requests to the district attorney’s office—whether phoned in, written, or emailed—go unanswered, said Adam Shoop, a Bronx Defenders attorney who helped bring the class-action lawsuit against the city. The only reliable way to force a response is to file an administrative appeal, a legal tool that the average non-lawyer almost certainly wouldn’t be able to use on his or her own, Shoop said.
    - koheripbal 6y ago
      Anecdotes that were raised in the media don't prove anything other than that there are exceptions.
      - etherealmachine 6y ago
        When you make a statement like "99 times out of 100" it's up to you to prove that with statistics. My initial belief is that you made up that 99/100 number and evidence of people not getting their money back only reinforces that belief.
        koheripbal 6y ago
        Oh, I agree - someone should do a study like that. ...but anecdotes don't prove anything. The process for reclaiming seized assets is well documented... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States#Contested_seizures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
        ceejayoz 6y ago
        Nothing in that link supports your assertion that just showing up typically suffices. > Victims often have "long legal struggles to get their money back".
        koheripbal 6y ago
        The statistic in the article that 85% of seizures that are kept are the product of people not showing up to court, does indeed suggest that.
        ceejayoz 6y ago
        85% of people not showing up for court does not mean that 85% of people would win immediately upon showing up. As my examples demonstrate, merely showing up can be the first step in a very lengthy and expensive process. If I go see a lawyer and they tell me "it'll take years, you'll get back only some of the money, and most of it will go to paying me", I'd skip court too.
  - wmeredith 6y ago
    Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence. Source? Or are you just making stuff up?
    - bredren 6y ago
      This is not even extraordinary. This has been the case since Regan. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/forfeiture.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special...
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        The extraordinary claim in question is "99 times out of 100, the judge will give it to you".
the-dude 6y ago
War in drugs. Love the typo. From the other side of the pond, the US fixation on wars is ... remarkable. Marking these policies as wars wouldn't fly in the EU. Circling back, the use of 'war' for civil matters normalizes the word, making real war easier to swallow.
- decebalus1 6y ago
  America is a (remote) 'warrior' nation. We don't suffer from a disease, we 'fight' the disease, we 'lose the fight' with cancer, we fight 'wars on poverty' and 'wars on crime'. There's no need to normalize the word in America. Aside from some short periods, we've been fighting an armed conflict somewhere in the world (except the homeland) since forever. This is important. Because Europeans still have some well deserved collective memories about what war means, considering it happened in their backyard. It's harder to swindle the word 'war' around Europe as people know what it means way better than the American collective mind.
  - throwaway91914 6y ago
    Despite the idiotic downvotes you are spot on. In most languages and societies in Europe and Asia people don't use words like "fight", "war", "kill" so easily or as euphemisms.
    - squarefoot 6y ago
      > In most languages and societies in Europe and Asia people don't use words like "fight", "war", "kill" so easily or as euphemisms. Not sure about Asia, but over here in Europe some politicians leaning far right often use the above military words. But that comes to no surprise given the mindset.
- vianneychevalie 6y ago
  Macron declared that France was in a state of war during a presidential speech at the start of the Covid-19 crisis EU also has its share of word over utilization
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deleted 6y ago
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chr1 6y ago
On the other hand it may help the society to understand that the law is wrong and fix it. The fact that police is enforcing poor laws poorly does not help anyone, and instead of trying to ban police from using modern tools, in hope that police will not be able to fully enforce the stupid laws, we need to focus on fixing the laws.

bredren 6y ago

The war on drugs is also a way to fund LE using civil forfeiture. So assisting LE with this tech indirectly helps fund the continued war on drugs. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/09/710456736/defining-whats-excessive-in-police-property-seizures-remains-tricky https://www.npr.org/2019/04/09/710456736/defining-whats-exce...

tech-historian 6y ago
Sorry, what is LE?
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  Law enforcement
koheripbal 6y ago
The thing that always gets left out here is that you can just show up to court and ask for your property back, and 99 times out of 100, the judge will give it to you - because it's still up to the state to demonstrate that the property was the proceeds of a crime. ...but 99 times out of 100, the property owner doesn't show up to court.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  That doesn't appear to be true. Several examples here: ... and here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/08/they-fought-the-law-who-won/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/08/t... > Costello hired a local attorney to get the money back. After making a few calls, the lawyer told him to accept a deal from the government for half of the money. Costello agreed. But his legal fees were $9,000 — leaving him with only about $7,000. > In one respect, Guerrero was lucky. His construction firm paid a small amount to make his legal struggle possible, and Stone had agreed to do much of the work without pay. Given the time involved, the legal bills would have been $50,000, Stone said. But he agreed not to press for his fee from the government as part of the settlement. > He wanted to get his money back, but he had no idea how to sort through the intricacies of the federal civil forfeiture system, an arcane corner of the American legal world. Though he was never charged with a crime, he would have to prove, in effect, that he made the money legally. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/08/how-police-use-a-legal-gray-area-to-rob-suspects-of-their-belongings/495740/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/08/how-p... > In New York, the multi-step process required to get the NYPD to release possessions can be opaque and circuitous. When the Bronx Defenders circulated a questionnaire in 2014 among its clients who had possessions taken from them at the time of arrest, nearly half said they were never even given the itemized voucher that Clavasquin received. > Even with that voucher in hand, petitioning the district attorney’s office for the necessary forms to release items categorized as evidence can be fruitless: More often than not, requests to the district attorney’s office—whether phoned in, written, or emailed—go unanswered, said Adam Shoop, a Bronx Defenders attorney who helped bring the class-action lawsuit against the city. The only reliable way to force a response is to file an administrative appeal, a legal tool that the average non-lawyer almost certainly wouldn’t be able to use on his or her own, Shoop said.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    Anecdotes that were raised in the media don't prove anything other than that there are exceptions.
    - etherealmachine 6y ago
      When you make a statement like "99 times out of 100" it's up to you to prove that with statistics. My initial belief is that you made up that 99/100 number and evidence of people not getting their money back only reinforces that belief.
      - koheripbal 6y ago
        Oh, I agree - someone should do a study like that. ...but anecdotes don't prove anything. The process for reclaiming seized assets is well documented... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States#Contested_seizures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
        ceejayoz 6y ago
        Nothing in that link supports your assertion that just showing up typically suffices. > Victims often have "long legal struggles to get their money back".
        koheripbal 6y ago
        The statistic in the article that 85% of seizures that are kept are the product of people not showing up to court, does indeed suggest that.
        ceejayoz 6y ago
        85% of people not showing up for court does not mean that 85% of people would win immediately upon showing up. As my examples demonstrate, merely showing up can be the first step in a very lengthy and expensive process. If I go see a lawyer and they tell me "it'll take years, you'll get back only some of the money, and most of it will go to paying me", I'd skip court too.
- wmeredith 6y ago
  Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence. Source? Or are you just making stuff up?
  - bredren 6y ago
    This is not even extraordinary. This has been the case since Regan. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/forfeiture.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special...
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      The extraordinary claim in question is "99 times out of 100, the judge will give it to you".

the-dude 6y ago

War in drugs. Love the typo. From the other side of the pond, the US fixation on wars is ... remarkable. Marking these policies as wars wouldn't fly in the EU. Circling back, the use of 'war' for civil matters normalizes the word, making real war easier to swallow.

decebalus1 6y ago
America is a (remote) 'warrior' nation. We don't suffer from a disease, we 'fight' the disease, we 'lose the fight' with cancer, we fight 'wars on poverty' and 'wars on crime'. There's no need to normalize the word in America. Aside from some short periods, we've been fighting an armed conflict somewhere in the world (except the homeland) since forever. This is important. Because Europeans still have some well deserved collective memories about what war means, considering it happened in their backyard. It's harder to swindle the word 'war' around Europe as people know what it means way better than the American collective mind.
- throwaway91914 6y ago
  Despite the idiotic downvotes you are spot on. In most languages and societies in Europe and Asia people don't use words like "fight", "war", "kill" so easily or as euphemisms.
  - squarefoot 6y ago
    > In most languages and societies in Europe and Asia people don't use words like "fight", "war", "kill" so easily or as euphemisms. Not sure about Asia, but over here in Europe some politicians leaning far right often use the above military words. But that comes to no surprise given the mindset.
vianneychevalie 6y ago
Macron declared that France was in a state of war during a presidential speech at the start of the Covid-19 crisis EU also has its share of word over utilization

deleted 6y ago

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deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

chr1 6y ago

On the other hand it may help the society to understand that the law is wrong and fix it. The fact that police is enforcing poor laws poorly does not help anyone, and instead of trying to ban police from using modern tools, in hope that police will not be able to fully enforce the stupid laws, we need to focus on fixing the laws.