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San Francisco police can now watch private surveillance cameras in real time

123 points by jkscx 4y ago

happytiger 4y ago
Huh. What could go wrong?
abeppu 4y ago
We should all get real-time access to police body cams. After all they have nothing to fear if they're not doing anything wrong, right?
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  It's not quite that symmetric. The public having real-time access to police body cams mean that criminals also have that, which means they can see where the police are, which means they can be where the police aren't. Whereas police having real-time data means that (at least in principle) they can be where the criminals are. One of those is a sensible outcome; the other is not. Mind you, I'm not saying this police access is a good idea. Just that this rebuttal fails.
  - babyshake 4y ago
    So a real-time feed of police body cams with a one week delay should mitigate the effects of criminals watching the feeds.
    - ejb999 4y ago
      A 'real-time feed' with a one week delay? I don't think you know what the word means.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Yes, GP does. That sentence clearly and unambiguously means unedited, continuous, and with a 1 week latency.
      - mikestew 4y ago
        "Real-time" doesn't mean "live", which might be what you're shooting for in your definition policing.
  - abeppu 4y ago
    > Whereas police having real-time data means that (at least in principle) they can be where the criminals are. From the article: > The SFPD will also be able to access private camera footage during large-scale public events such as protests, even if there is no suspicion that a crime has taken place. They explicitly want access in cases where there hasn't been a crime. The EFF posts on this legislation also points out that this is likely to not be particularly effective in addressing crime, if the rules laid out are followed. And members of the police commission even asked for this vote to be delayed. This is not actually about stopping crime. > One of those is a sensible outcome No, the outcome which involves all the non-criminals going about their daily lives inside a panopticon is not sensible.
- peter422 4y ago
  Fyi I've requested body Camara footage in SF and the process was quite easy, the video was delivered quickly and I used it to win my case against the city. I know you are making a facetious point but the footage is quite available.
  - rabuse 4y ago
    Until it's not, due to "lack of funds", or "COVID-19 issues".
    - autoexec 4y ago
      or "we lost it" or "camera malfunction"
- raldi 4y ago
  In all seriousness, the most surveilled room in the city should be the surveillance center. Perhaps on a delay, everything that happens there should be reviewable by any citizen. If something happens there that needs to be struck from the public audit record, they should be required to get sign-off from a judge or have a watchdog official summarize the incident with the minimum possible redaction.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- googlryas 4y ago
  So when I'm detailing to a cop how my ex partner broke into my house and raped me, you think you have a right to that information? Cool man.
soulofmischief 4y ago
“Our residents and small businesses want us focused on keeping San Francisco safe for everyone who lives and works in the City,” Breed said in a statement. “This is a sensible policy that balances the need to give our police officers another tool to address significant public safety challenges and to hold those who break the law accountable.” Oh my god, the mental gymnastics here are mind-numbing. Why not just fix the plethora of existing fundamental crises plaguing the city which are directly to blame for rising crime? Fraud is at an all-time high too, do I get a live feed of the private offices of high-ranking financial executives? I know the playbook, I know this is Police State 101, but are we really so lazy and pathetic that we still accept this answer as citizens? When will we finally remember that police and lawmakers are our public servants and not the other way around? This should be cause for protest across the entire tech industry. We can afford to take off work. What are we going to do about this?
- abeppu 4y ago
  > Fraud is at an all-time high too, do I get a live feed of the private offices of high-ranking financial executives? Given the corruption revelations / charges that have come out of City Hall, SF residents should get live feeds (with audio) of all offices of city officials.
  - soulofmischief 4y ago
    I wholeheartedly agree. I'm trying more and more to live stream my own dev process, they can do the same.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      I was thinking of live streaming my own coding, but I can't think of anything more boring to watch.
      - soulofmischief 4y ago
        What kind of projects are you thinking of streaming? You might have your first viewer right here :)
Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
My understanding of the situation in SF is that many things simply are not illegal and/or not enforced (for example, stealing bellow $950 in value). If that is the case why would police need surveilance cameras if they don't enforce basic laws in the first place? Can anyone from SF or who understands the situation explain?
- aaroninsf 4y ago
  This was my reaction as well. The justification of this is pretty obvioulsy, police love [d-cking around with] Police State surveillance tools, which have as much allure as their military cosplay as well as providing a rich vein of feeding off public funding and associated grift payback and political donation. The actual use case which translates into public safety, especially with respect to property crime and the cluster of adjacent unenforced lifestyle-degrading failures of SF policing, seem to in no way justify the expenditure. And that is 100x as true because plain old community policing consistently proves infinitely better return on value. Not that actual proven return on value ever provokes investment in plain old community and social welfare, in our current dystopia...
- aerostable_slug 4y ago
  Cameras help make up for a lack of police officers & detectives patrolling the streets, in theory. Community policing requires cops, and lots of them. SFPD is hemorrhaging talent, and why wouldn't it? Who would want to work somewhere with a sky-high cost of living, a populace who largely despises you, and an mostly-hostile City Hall? The best officers are lateraling out to better climes and recruitment numbers are falling. Also, it's very true that they don't go after many crimes, but they do spend resources on things like attempted murder, rape, etc. Too bad about your car, though...
- m-ee 4y ago
  It is absolutely illegal to steal less than $950. The were a CA law that reclassified some crimes as misdemeanors instead of felonies, a misdemeanor is still a crime you can and will be arrested for. SFPD is famously reticent to do any work so the fiction that “we can’t arrest people for small crimes because of the government” has been peddled as an excuse for them not doing their jobs. EDIT- To answer your question, SFPD works when they feel like it. When they do they want it to be easy. Local politics means there’s no real accountability that an increase is their power would come with increased expectations, so why wouldn’t they take as much as they can get
tristor 4y ago
This is fantastic news for the residents of San Francisco. Now the police can watch in real time from afar, so they aren't at risk of spilling their donuts and coffee in the car while watching close by as residents packages are stolen, car windows broken, and petty theft runs rampant through no enforcement of the law. We should all be proud of what technology has achieved for society, further reducing the risk of being a police officer. What great benefit to the residents of San Francisco. Many more officers will make it to retirement age to make use of their oversized pensions since they won't even need to worry about possibly being cajoled into action and having to foot chase a thief when they can simply watch crime occur unabated from the comfort of their offices and homes.
- tomschlick 4y ago
  > Now the police can watch in real time from afar, so they aren't at risk of spilling their donuts and coffee in the car while watching close by as residents packages are stolen, car windows broken, and petty theft runs rampant through no enforcement of the law. This is a direct result of the politicians that the residents elected. When you have a DA that doesn't prosecute offenders and releases them after police go through the work of arresting, gathering evidence, writing reports, booking, etc over and over again you'll start to get police that wont do those things because its simply a waste of their time.
  - throwsf123 4y ago
    Do you work for the police department?
    - tomschlick 4y ago
      Nope. Just have been following the /r/ProtectAndServe subreddit the past few years to get a better understanding about their profession and the reasoning behind their decisions and tactics. What I described above is a very common recurring trend from verified officers that work in major cities like SF that have gone soft on crime over the past few years.
oneplane 4y ago
Cameras 'for safety' only work as a scare tactic. A camera doesn't stop anything, it only watches.
- arminiusreturns 4y ago
  My second amendment rights include auto-turrets w/ cams and other sensors. (and a robot army) Too much time in gmod? Maybe?
- zo1 4y ago
  A camera can absolutely stop a whole lot, assuming there is willpower to follow up on what is recorded. If that is the case, the camera will act as a deterrent.
  - oneplane 4y ago
    I camera can't stop anything. Just like laws don't stop anything. Keep in mind that with stopping I mean: blocking an action from being taken. So if I want to deliver a bag of meth to your doorstep, even if you have 99999 cameras on the wall, that bag is not going to be prevented from getting dropped off. Same goes with dropping pipe bombs, stealing packages or breaking in to your car which might also be parked in a place a camera can see. All it can do (like I wrote, and like you wrote) is act like a deterrent, and, after the fact, when the action has already been taken, be used in follow-up activities. Now, granted, some people walk around with a mindset of "If I can get away with it I might do it" and then a camera can be enough of a deterrent, but if we're talking about safety, we're not talking about a subset of potential bad actors. People who are not thinking about consequences or are desperate enough to not care will not be deterred at all by a camera, and some of them might realise that if there are 10000 crimes, small crimes might get less attention than big crimes. Cameras are mostly useful for when you want to do realtime communication, or when you want to see something after the fact. Oh, and for spying, of course, but that sits nicely under the 'realtime' umbrella.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    In that case it's not the camera that is the deterrent, but the threat of enforcement after the fact. Remove that and the camera does nothing. Remove the camera and the enforcement is still the deterrent, just with one less piece of evidence to aid enforcement efforts.
DesiLurker 4y ago
WTF! All other cities in america can do their f*king jobs without erecting this giant panopticon and monitoring every our moment of any slip-up then why cant they? instead of fixing the fundamental issues with policing they keep lowering the baseline expectations & then ask us to sacrifice more liberties. this is a massive overreach and needs to be stopped in its tracks.
- throwaway743 4y ago
  Not all. NYPD pretty much has this and has partnerships with private companies to assist in their surveillance. But I share your sentiment
WalterBright 4y ago
I don't know why the police need this, as they don't arrest anyone anyway for crime in SF, even when caught on surveillance video.
justaka 4y ago
What's the use? California is one of the worst run states with a toothless police and very low conviction rates. We are witnessing the downfall of a society.
kodah 4y ago
> The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) will not have continuous access to the cameras but will be able to tap into the network under certain conditions, such as during the investigation of crimes including misdemeanors and property crimes. The SFPD will also be able to access private camera footage during large-scale public events such as protests, even if there is no suspicion that a crime has taken place So, they basically have real-time access all the time, specifically during protests. Keep in mind the board of supervisors is voted in by the citizens of San Francisco. This is what the citizens here want. I used to be angry at the police for wanting such things. Then I realized that at my job I like things being efficient. Someone else has to keep the police at bay. I also used to get mad at committees, like the board of supervisors, because they have the power to dole out power. But, like the police, what motivates them is what voters want. That last leaves the voters. A persons position on crime really depends on how they interpret the data this dashboard: https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crime-dashboard https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim... The citizens of San Francisco chose, based on their perception of this data, that giving more power to police surveillance was a tool they needed. I have no solutions. Everyone will see that dashboard in a different light. Rather, the only solution I can provide is a boundary: the job of the police should be hard. If it is not, there is a hack in both your enumerated and perceived rights.
- rahimnathwani 4y ago
  > A persons position on crime really depends on how they interpret this dashboard Imagine asking SF residents to tell you: In the past 24 months, I have: A) seen the SFPD Crime Dashboard. B) been the victim of at least one property or violent crime and/or have witnessed a crime being committed in broad daylight. C) read a frightening account of a nearby crime on NextDoor, Twitter or Facebook. I think (A) would get the fewest votes. People form opinions based on their personal experience (what they see on the streets) and the narratives of others (what friends and neighbours write). Some folks look at stats. Fewer understand them. Even fewer use them to inform their opinion (rather than to support their existing opinion).
  - kodah 4y ago
shtopointo 4y ago
I'm not even sure what dystopia to place this in – if they were actually tough on crime, then this would make more sense... but like this, when they don't do anything with ample video footage?
- autoexec 4y ago
  Seems like it's going to be used to identify protesters. I certainty wouldn't assume that just because arrests aren't being made nobody will be doing anything with the footage.
- StanislavPetrov 4y ago
  It is the same as the recent announcement that NYC was adding cameras on the subways. If criminals aren't going to be arrested and jailed, what good is it filming them while they commit their crimes?
kaycebasques 4y ago
> a one-year pilot program that will allow police to monitor footage from private cameras across the city with the camera owners’ consent. The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) will not have continuous access to the cameras but will be able to tap into the network under certain conditions, such as during the investigation of crimes including misdemeanors and property crimes Does anyone here know the details of how this consent works and what specific cameras are part of this program?
StanislavPetrov 4y ago
>Civil liberties groups such as the EFF and ACLU were strongly critical of the new measure, which they argue will increase the surveillance of already marginalized groups within the city. Why can't this measure just be opposed because it is oppressive and authoritarian? Why the need to emphasize "marginalized groups"? It very much reminds me of the "stop and frisk" debate that happened years ago here in New York. "Stop and frisk" was clearly an unconstitutional practice that violated 4th Amendment protections against search and seizure. Instead of opposing it on those clear grounds, "civil liberties" groups and courts focused only on the racial aspect. It was ultimately stopped not because it was unconstitutional, authoritarian overreach, but because the "impact was disparate". Why must every issue in our society be somehow shoehorned into a matter of race?
- autoexec 4y ago
  > Instead of opposing it on those clear grounds, "civil liberties" groups and courts focused only on the racial aspect. It was ultimately stopped not because it was unconstitutional, authoritarian overreach, but because the "impact was disparate". This is just plain wrong. People went after new york's stop and frisk laws for being unconstitutional. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_v._City_of_New_York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_v._City_of_New_York) It's not surprising that civil rights groups will focus on civil rights violations. That's not "shoehorning something into a matter of race" When our rights are violated it's often "marginalized groups" that are disproportionately impacted because people who want to weaken our freedoms often start by attacking marginalized groups specifically because fewer people care about what happens to them and those groups often have fewer means to fight for their rights and tend to experience poorer outcomes within the legal system. One reason why civil rights groups keep such a close eye on "marginalized groups" is that the abuses we allow to happen to them today will be the abuses we all suffer under tomorrow. Keeping an eye on how they are treated will tell us how the rest of us will be treated. Stopping those abuses before they become entrenched and normalized is critical. It's not that nobody cares about unconstitutional practices unless they are happening to marginalized groups, but marginalized groups are where unconstitutional practices most often occur and when people fight back against them they absolutely do it because they are oppressive and authoritarian and violate everyone's rights. If you care about your own freedoms, you should care deeply about the freedoms of everyone else, especially the most vulnerable. It's really not some conspiracy to "make everything about race". All of that being said, the vast majority of society these days does consider it to be pretty uncool to be a huge racist, so pointing out when people are being racist does get some additional media attention to your cause, and can motivate people who don't want to be seen as enabling clearly racist practices to act against them. That does factor into things as well, although I struggle to see how that's a problem either.
rizoma_dev 4y ago
Gotta love a police state aided by unscrupulous technology companies
Animats 4y ago
Does "with the camera owner's consent" mean "signed up for Amazon Ring"?
- phendrenad2 4y ago
  No.
anm89 4y ago
So they can make sure they know about all the crimes that they no longer arrest people for? 2 years from now, after the real estate bubble is 30% off it's highs and all of the big companies have drastically reduced their presence their and it's clear that SF is insolvent, it is going to get apocalyptic there. And I'm not going to lie, I'm going to enjoy watching it unravel.
swiley-gin 4y ago
The invasion of privacy compared to the degree of crime in SF is incredible. Will people question the principles that led to this or do they still think there's some inconsistency at the top? Personally I'm glad I gave up on living in an urban place and left for the hills last year.
prpl 4y ago
Living in the east bay, all I want right now is that people get pulled over for missing/mismatched license plates. They probably should have camera at on and off ramps of the freeways and around the major roads, and at least trigger on missing license plates or vehicle color mismatches. Police should be pulling people over like crazy for violating it. I'm well aware of broken window fallacy and once upon a time I'd have felt like this was a violation of liberty, but it's utterly trivial to steal or carjack a car, replace or remove the license plate, commit a few other crimes (anywhere in the bay area), then dump the car - it's basically GTA out there.
- eurleif 4y ago
  >I'm well aware of broken window fallacy You seem to be conflating two different things here. The broken window fallacy, or parable of the broken window (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window), is an idea in economics about how destructive actions don't produce a net benefit. The broken window theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory) is an idea in criminology that small crimes, like broken windows, produce larger crimes. While there is of course debate about how accurate the latter idea is, it's not generally described as a fallacy, and its only connection to the former idea is the similar name.
  - prpl 4y ago
    err, yeah, broken window theory fallacy :)
atdrummond 4y ago
I was literally left bleeding at the KFC/Taco Bell in the tenderloin by not one but two separate patrol vehicles. Thank god an ambulance had just finished a call and happened to drive by; otherwise I might be far more worse for wear today. In short: count me skeptical that seeing crime “better” is going to change anything with such a passive police “force”.

123 points by jkscx 4y ago

Huh. What could go wrong?

We should all get real-time access to police body cams. After all they have nothing to fear if they're not doing anything wrong, right?

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
It's not quite that symmetric. The public having real-time access to police body cams mean that criminals also have that, which means they can see where the police are, which means they can be where the police aren't. Whereas police having real-time data means that (at least in principle) they can be where the criminals are. One of those is a sensible outcome; the other is not. Mind you, I'm not saying this police access is a good idea. Just that this rebuttal fails.
- babyshake 4y ago
  So a real-time feed of police body cams with a one week delay should mitigate the effects of criminals watching the feeds.
  - ejb999 4y ago
    A 'real-time feed' with a one week delay? I don't think you know what the word means.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Yes, GP does. That sentence clearly and unambiguously means unedited, continuous, and with a 1 week latency.
    - mikestew 4y ago
      "Real-time" doesn't mean "live", which might be what you're shooting for in your definition policing.
- abeppu 4y ago
  > Whereas police having real-time data means that (at least in principle) they can be where the criminals are. From the article: > The SFPD will also be able to access private camera footage during large-scale public events such as protests, even if there is no suspicion that a crime has taken place. They explicitly want access in cases where there hasn't been a crime. The EFF posts on this legislation also points out that this is likely to not be particularly effective in addressing crime, if the rules laid out are followed. And members of the police commission even asked for this vote to be delayed. This is not actually about stopping crime. > One of those is a sensible outcome No, the outcome which involves all the non-criminals going about their daily lives inside a panopticon is not sensible.
peter422 4y ago
Fyi I've requested body Camara footage in SF and the process was quite easy, the video was delivered quickly and I used it to win my case against the city. I know you are making a facetious point but the footage is quite available.
- rabuse 4y ago
  Until it's not, due to "lack of funds", or "COVID-19 issues".
  - autoexec 4y ago
    or "we lost it" or "camera malfunction"
raldi 4y ago
In all seriousness, the most surveilled room in the city should be the surveillance center. Perhaps on a delay, everything that happens there should be reviewable by any citizen. If something happens there that needs to be struck from the public audit record, they should be required to get sign-off from a judge or have a watchdog official summarize the incident with the minimum possible redaction.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
googlryas 4y ago
So when I'm detailing to a cop how my ex partner broke into my house and raped me, you think you have a right to that information? Cool man.

soulofmischief 4y ago

“Our residents and small businesses want us focused on keeping San Francisco safe for everyone who lives and works in the City,” Breed said in a statement. “This is a sensible policy that balances the need to give our police officers another tool to address significant public safety challenges and to hold those who break the law accountable.” Oh my god, the mental gymnastics here are mind-numbing. Why not just fix the plethora of existing fundamental crises plaguing the city which are directly to blame for rising crime? Fraud is at an all-time high too, do I get a live feed of the private offices of high-ranking financial executives? I know the playbook, I know this is Police State 101, but are we really so lazy and pathetic that we still accept this answer as citizens? When will we finally remember that police and lawmakers are our public servants and not the other way around? This should be cause for protest across the entire tech industry. We can afford to take off work. What are we going to do about this?

abeppu 4y ago
> Fraud is at an all-time high too, do I get a live feed of the private offices of high-ranking financial executives? Given the corruption revelations / charges that have come out of City Hall, SF residents should get live feeds (with audio) of all offices of city officials.
- soulofmischief 4y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree. I'm trying more and more to live stream my own dev process, they can do the same.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    I was thinking of live streaming my own coding, but I can't think of anything more boring to watch.
    - soulofmischief 4y ago
      What kind of projects are you thinking of streaming? You might have your first viewer right here :)

Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago

My understanding of the situation in SF is that many things simply are not illegal and/or not enforced (for example, stealing bellow $950 in value). If that is the case why would police need surveilance cameras if they don't enforce basic laws in the first place? Can anyone from SF or who understands the situation explain?

aaroninsf 4y ago
This was my reaction as well. The justification of this is pretty obvioulsy, police love [d-cking around with] Police State surveillance tools, which have as much allure as their military cosplay as well as providing a rich vein of feeding off public funding and associated grift payback and political donation. The actual use case which translates into public safety, especially with respect to property crime and the cluster of adjacent unenforced lifestyle-degrading failures of SF policing, seem to in no way justify the expenditure. And that is 100x as true because plain old community policing consistently proves infinitely better return on value. Not that actual proven return on value ever provokes investment in plain old community and social welfare, in our current dystopia...
aerostable_slug 4y ago
Cameras help make up for a lack of police officers & detectives patrolling the streets, in theory. Community policing requires cops, and lots of them. SFPD is hemorrhaging talent, and why wouldn't it? Who would want to work somewhere with a sky-high cost of living, a populace who largely despises you, and an mostly-hostile City Hall? The best officers are lateraling out to better climes and recruitment numbers are falling. Also, it's very true that they don't go after many crimes, but they do spend resources on things like attempted murder, rape, etc. Too bad about your car, though...
m-ee 4y ago
It is absolutely illegal to steal less than $950. The were a CA law that reclassified some crimes as misdemeanors instead of felonies, a misdemeanor is still a crime you can and will be arrested for. SFPD is famously reticent to do any work so the fiction that “we can’t arrest people for small crimes because of the government” has been peddled as an excuse for them not doing their jobs. EDIT- To answer your question, SFPD works when they feel like it. When they do they want it to be easy. Local politics means there’s no real accountability that an increase is their power would come with increased expectations, so why wouldn’t they take as much as they can get

tristor 4y ago

This is fantastic news for the residents of San Francisco. Now the police can watch in real time from afar, so they aren't at risk of spilling their donuts and coffee in the car while watching close by as residents packages are stolen, car windows broken, and petty theft runs rampant through no enforcement of the law. We should all be proud of what technology has achieved for society, further reducing the risk of being a police officer. What great benefit to the residents of San Francisco. Many more officers will make it to retirement age to make use of their oversized pensions since they won't even need to worry about possibly being cajoled into action and having to foot chase a thief when they can simply watch crime occur unabated from the comfort of their offices and homes.

tomschlick 4y ago
> Now the police can watch in real time from afar, so they aren't at risk of spilling their donuts and coffee in the car while watching close by as residents packages are stolen, car windows broken, and petty theft runs rampant through no enforcement of the law. This is a direct result of the politicians that the residents elected. When you have a DA that doesn't prosecute offenders and releases them after police go through the work of arresting, gathering evidence, writing reports, booking, etc over and over again you'll start to get police that wont do those things because its simply a waste of their time.
- throwsf123 4y ago
  Do you work for the police department?
  - tomschlick 4y ago
    Nope. Just have been following the /r/ProtectAndServe subreddit the past few years to get a better understanding about their profession and the reasoning behind their decisions and tactics. What I described above is a very common recurring trend from verified officers that work in major cities like SF that have gone soft on crime over the past few years.

oneplane 4y ago

Cameras 'for safety' only work as a scare tactic. A camera doesn't stop anything, it only watches.

arminiusreturns 4y ago
My second amendment rights include auto-turrets w/ cams and other sensors. (and a robot army) Too much time in gmod? Maybe?
zo1 4y ago
A camera can absolutely stop a whole lot, assuming there is willpower to follow up on what is recorded. If that is the case, the camera will act as a deterrent.
- oneplane 4y ago
  I camera can't stop anything. Just like laws don't stop anything. Keep in mind that with stopping I mean: blocking an action from being taken. So if I want to deliver a bag of meth to your doorstep, even if you have 99999 cameras on the wall, that bag is not going to be prevented from getting dropped off. Same goes with dropping pipe bombs, stealing packages or breaking in to your car which might also be parked in a place a camera can see. All it can do (like I wrote, and like you wrote) is act like a deterrent, and, after the fact, when the action has already been taken, be used in follow-up activities. Now, granted, some people walk around with a mindset of "If I can get away with it I might do it" and then a camera can be enough of a deterrent, but if we're talking about safety, we're not talking about a subset of potential bad actors. People who are not thinking about consequences or are desperate enough to not care will not be deterred at all by a camera, and some of them might realise that if there are 10000 crimes, small crimes might get less attention than big crimes. Cameras are mostly useful for when you want to do realtime communication, or when you want to see something after the fact. Oh, and for spying, of course, but that sits nicely under the 'realtime' umbrella.
- autoexec 4y ago
  In that case it's not the camera that is the deterrent, but the threat of enforcement after the fact. Remove that and the camera does nothing. Remove the camera and the enforcement is still the deterrent, just with one less piece of evidence to aid enforcement efforts.

DesiLurker 4y ago

WTF! All other cities in america can do their f*king jobs without erecting this giant panopticon and monitoring every our moment of any slip-up then why cant they? instead of fixing the fundamental issues with policing they keep lowering the baseline expectations & then ask us to sacrifice more liberties. this is a massive overreach and needs to be stopped in its tracks.

throwaway743 4y ago
Not all. NYPD pretty much has this and has partnerships with private companies to assist in their surveillance. But I share your sentiment

WalterBright 4y ago

I don't know why the police need this, as they don't arrest anyone anyway for crime in SF, even when caught on surveillance video.

justaka 4y ago

What's the use? California is one of the worst run states with a toothless police and very low conviction rates. We are witnessing the downfall of a society.

kodah 4y ago

> The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) will not have continuous access to the cameras but will be able to tap into the network under certain conditions, such as during the investigation of crimes including misdemeanors and property crimes. The SFPD will also be able to access private camera footage during large-scale public events such as protests, even if there is no suspicion that a crime has taken place So, they basically have real-time access all the time, specifically during protests. Keep in mind the board of supervisors is voted in by the citizens of San Francisco. This is what the citizens here want. I used to be angry at the police for wanting such things. Then I realized that at my job I like things being efficient. Someone else has to keep the police at bay. I also used to get mad at committees, like the board of supervisors, because they have the power to dole out power. But, like the police, what motivates them is what voters want. That last leaves the voters. A persons position on crime really depends on how they interpret the data this dashboard: https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crime-dashboard https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim... The citizens of San Francisco chose, based on their perception of this data, that giving more power to police surveillance was a tool they needed. I have no solutions. Everyone will see that dashboard in a different light. Rather, the only solution I can provide is a boundary: the job of the police should be hard. If it is not, there is a hack in both your enumerated and perceived rights.

rahimnathwani 4y ago
> A persons position on crime really depends on how they interpret this dashboard Imagine asking SF residents to tell you: In the past 24 months, I have: A) seen the SFPD Crime Dashboard. B) been the victim of at least one property or violent crime and/or have witnessed a crime being committed in broad daylight. C) read a frightening account of a nearby crime on NextDoor, Twitter or Facebook. I think (A) would get the fewest votes. People form opinions based on their personal experience (what they see on the streets) and the narratives of others (what friends and neighbours write). Some folks look at stats. Fewer understand them. Even fewer use them to inform their opinion (rather than to support their existing opinion).
- kodah 4y ago

shtopointo 4y ago

I'm not even sure what dystopia to place this in – if they were actually tough on crime, then this would make more sense... but like this, when they don't do anything with ample video footage?

autoexec 4y ago
Seems like it's going to be used to identify protesters. I certainty wouldn't assume that just because arrests aren't being made nobody will be doing anything with the footage.
StanislavPetrov 4y ago
It is the same as the recent announcement that NYC was adding cameras on the subways. If criminals aren't going to be arrested and jailed, what good is it filming them while they commit their crimes?

kaycebasques 4y ago

> a one-year pilot program that will allow police to monitor footage from private cameras across the city with the camera owners’ consent. The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) will not have continuous access to the cameras but will be able to tap into the network under certain conditions, such as during the investigation of crimes including misdemeanors and property crimes Does anyone here know the details of how this consent works and what specific cameras are part of this program?

StanislavPetrov 4y ago

>Civil liberties groups such as the EFF and ACLU were strongly critical of the new measure, which they argue will increase the surveillance of already marginalized groups within the city. Why can't this measure just be opposed because it is oppressive and authoritarian? Why the need to emphasize "marginalized groups"? It very much reminds me of the "stop and frisk" debate that happened years ago here in New York. "Stop and frisk" was clearly an unconstitutional practice that violated 4th Amendment protections against search and seizure. Instead of opposing it on those clear grounds, "civil liberties" groups and courts focused only on the racial aspect. It was ultimately stopped not because it was unconstitutional, authoritarian overreach, but because the "impact was disparate". Why must every issue in our society be somehow shoehorned into a matter of race?

autoexec 4y ago
> Instead of opposing it on those clear grounds, "civil liberties" groups and courts focused only on the racial aspect. It was ultimately stopped not because it was unconstitutional, authoritarian overreach, but because the "impact was disparate". This is just plain wrong. People went after new york's stop and frisk laws for being unconstitutional. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_v._City_of_New_York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_v._City_of_New_York) It's not surprising that civil rights groups will focus on civil rights violations. That's not "shoehorning something into a matter of race" When our rights are violated it's often "marginalized groups" that are disproportionately impacted because people who want to weaken our freedoms often start by attacking marginalized groups specifically because fewer people care about what happens to them and those groups often have fewer means to fight for their rights and tend to experience poorer outcomes within the legal system. One reason why civil rights groups keep such a close eye on "marginalized groups" is that the abuses we allow to happen to them today will be the abuses we all suffer under tomorrow. Keeping an eye on how they are treated will tell us how the rest of us will be treated. Stopping those abuses before they become entrenched and normalized is critical. It's not that nobody cares about unconstitutional practices unless they are happening to marginalized groups, but marginalized groups are where unconstitutional practices most often occur and when people fight back against them they absolutely do it because they are oppressive and authoritarian and violate everyone's rights. If you care about your own freedoms, you should care deeply about the freedoms of everyone else, especially the most vulnerable. It's really not some conspiracy to "make everything about race". All of that being said, the vast majority of society these days does consider it to be pretty uncool to be a huge racist, so pointing out when people are being racist does get some additional media attention to your cause, and can motivate people who don't want to be seen as enabling clearly racist practices to act against them. That does factor into things as well, although I struggle to see how that's a problem either.

rizoma_dev 4y ago

Gotta love a police state aided by unscrupulous technology companies

Animats 4y ago

Does "with the camera owner's consent" mean "signed up for Amazon Ring"?

phendrenad2 4y ago
No.

anm89 4y ago

So they can make sure they know about all the crimes that they no longer arrest people for? 2 years from now, after the real estate bubble is 30% off it's highs and all of the big companies have drastically reduced their presence their and it's clear that SF is insolvent, it is going to get apocalyptic there. And I'm not going to lie, I'm going to enjoy watching it unravel.

swiley-gin 4y ago

The invasion of privacy compared to the degree of crime in SF is incredible. Will people question the principles that led to this or do they still think there's some inconsistency at the top? Personally I'm glad I gave up on living in an urban place and left for the hills last year.

prpl 4y ago

Living in the east bay, all I want right now is that people get pulled over for missing/mismatched license plates. They probably should have camera at on and off ramps of the freeways and around the major roads, and at least trigger on missing license plates or vehicle color mismatches. Police should be pulling people over like crazy for violating it. I'm well aware of broken window fallacy and once upon a time I'd have felt like this was a violation of liberty, but it's utterly trivial to steal or carjack a car, replace or remove the license plate, commit a few other crimes (anywhere in the bay area), then dump the car - it's basically GTA out there.

eurleif 4y ago
>I'm well aware of broken window fallacy You seem to be conflating two different things here. The broken window fallacy, or parable of the broken window (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window), is an idea in economics about how destructive actions don't produce a net benefit. The broken window theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory) is an idea in criminology that small crimes, like broken windows, produce larger crimes. While there is of course debate about how accurate the latter idea is, it's not generally described as a fallacy, and its only connection to the former idea is the similar name.
- prpl 4y ago
  err, yeah, broken window theory fallacy :)

atdrummond 4y ago

I was literally left bleeding at the KFC/Taco Bell in the tenderloin by not one but two separate patrol vehicles. Thank god an ambulance had just finished a call and happened to drive by; otherwise I might be far more worse for wear today. In short: count me skeptical that seeing crime “better” is going to change anything with such a passive police “force”.