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The law enforcement agencies which behaved the way law enforcement agencies always behave and did what anyone with even the slightest familiarity with how law e

The law enforcement agencies which behaved the way law enforcement agencies always behave and did what anyone with even the slightest familiarity with how law enforcement acts thought they would do with the data. This outcome was 1000% predictable even if the details were not. If you're gonna be angry at someone be angry at the people among us were in favor of the creation of this data set because they foolishly thought it would be used to combat mundane property crime or because perhaps they thought that subjecting motorists to an increased dragnet would be a good thing for alternative transportation, or some other cause, think that they have done no wrong despite warnings of the potential for something like this being raised way back when the cameras and the ALPRs were being put up. These things will keep happening until it is no longer socially acceptable to advocate for the creation of data collection programs that are a necessary precondition.

whats_a_quasar 1y ago
Fair enough, but it is also valid to be angry at your local law enforcement if they are acting against the community's preferences. Especially when local law enforcement is breaking state law in the process.
- mc32 1y ago
  But that would put them between federal law vs state law and federal law supersedes state law and state law supersedes local laws.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    There are plenty of things Federal law can't do under the Tenth Amendment. As an example, the Feds can round up marijuana users in California, if they like. They can't require California's law enforcement to help.
    - fooker 1y ago
      Doesn't seem like there was 'force' involved. There's no law prohibiting local agencies helping feds.
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        > There's no law prohibiting local agencies helping feds. The law prohibiting exactly that is linked in the article. "Under a decade-old state law, California police are prohibited from sharing data from automated license plate readers with out-of-state and federal agencies. Attorney General Rob Bonta affirmed that fact in a 2023 notice to police."
        fooker 1y ago
        Apologies, I was responding to the comment about weed
- Dilettante_ 1y ago
  Maybe true, but at a certain point you're just getting angry at the wind for blowing. The system is a scorpion: It cannot, will not go against its nature.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
    They are a political force, not a force of nature. It is certainly reasonable to get angry at a political force even if their politics are predictable.
  - fn-mote 1y ago
    At this point it sounds like you have given up believing in checks and balances in politics. ETA: It’s complicated, but having you give up actually weakens the rule of law even more.
  - standardUser 1y ago
    Politics change, scorpions don't. Throw your hands up in and air and give up if you want, but don't pretend some poor analogy absolves you.
    - const_cast 1y ago
      I don't think he's throwing his hands up in the air, rather he's implying we need more radical change. If we're going to be waiting around for police to become "good", that's not going to happen. We need to force them to become good.
      - AcerbicZero 1y ago
        Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.
        Dilettante_ 1y ago
        This guy gets it.
  - 1y ago
- xyzzy9563 1y ago
  The greater community, i.e. the United States, may have different preferences than San Francisco.
  - FireBeyond 1y ago
    Those officers are employees of the City, County or State, not the United States.
  - p_j_w 1y ago
    Local governments are under no obligation to help the federal government enforce federal laws.
gr8beehive 1y ago
[flagged]
- thfuran 1y ago
  Subsistence farming isn't a great life.
  - gr8beehive 1y ago
    That’s not my point. My point is we have no leverage. A populace with deep and wide skills can be a collective action threat. A bunch of dead eyed screen addicts are just Wall-E background characters. We’ll end up manual workers for the rich through state violence (happening right now to Latinos to free up jobs). Because we can’t threaten to walk away and undermine wall streets grip on agency.
bjornsing 1y ago
> These things will keep happening until it is no longer socially acceptable to advocate for the creation of data collection programs that are a necessary precondition. One or two cops locked up for it can also work wonders. But somehow the western world has come to believe that lots of pretty laws with no consequences for transgressions is a wonderful thing. I think not.
- water-data-dude 1y ago
  *no consequences for transgressions by anyone in law enforcement. Qualified immunity has snowballed into some serious bullshit.
- delusional 1y ago
  > somehow the western world Excuse me. While a minority of rabid Anarchists might agree with you, the vast majority of people in Denmark happen to really like our police force. This is largely an American problem. Don't blame it on "the western world".
  - bjornsing 1y ago
    I’m Swedish. We have plenty of toothless laws that no one follows. Plenty.
- georgeecollins 1y ago
  If you are a district attorney in a city, you depend on the help and cooperation of the police in your daily work. If you became unpopular with the police they can make your work very difficult and you could also become politically very unpopular. I think district attorneys and police want to do what they think is right but its very understandable to me why a DA does not want to prosecute police.
  - roughly 1y ago
    This is evidenced in Oakland, where the recall campaign for Pamela Price began before she took office.
r053bud 1y ago
But, but, but, "I have nothing to hide.........."
martythemaniak 1y ago
[flagged]
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
  The post you're responding to isn't arguing shifting blame. They're arguing that instrumental actions should be included. If you think expanding the scope of accountability dilutes the pool, that's another argument. But at least have good faith. They're not your enemy.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    Drawing this line gets tough. If I build a sidewalk curb, there's a perfectly legitimate use case for it. It can also be used to curb-stomp someone to death. Can't we build the curb and forbid curb-stomping at the same time? Shouldn't that be our right?
    - mulmen 1y ago
      Flock didn’t build a sidewalk. Flock built the stomp-o-tron 9000 with convenient victim loading ramp and mechanical leg. Flock built a surveillance data repository with convenient sharing mechanisms. Someone then used those mechanisms as designed for their intended purpose.
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        Sure. But California forsaw that, and passed a law to prevent that use case. The cops - public servants, in theory - then blatantly violated that law.
        mulmen 1y ago
        Did they? The cops shared with other state agencies who then shared with the feds. From what I understand of the situation the cops didn’t break the law, which is the problem.
delusional 1y ago
The opposite of this. Do be angry at the people misusing the systems. Don't be angry at the people building them for good.
- goda90 1y ago
  If someone points out that the system you're building can be abused, and you don't stop and come up with a solid plan to prevent abuse then you're just building the system for abuse.
  - delusional 1y ago
    It's practically impossible to build a system that "can't be abused". If you set the bar there, then you can block any policy forever by simply enumerating increasingly unlikely ways for it to be abused. It's like a child's version of politics. I could go into my car right now and plow through a bunch of people. I'm still allowed to own a car. We've made the actual harmful act illegal, not the thing that theoretically made it possible.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > It's practically impossible to build a system that "can't be abused" For ALPRs? I’d make queries public with a short delay, including with a unique identifier for the cop initiating the query. Data automatically deleted within an interval.
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        > I’d make queries public with a short delay… Won't that likely victimize people who are presumed innocent of crimes until convicted?
        JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > Won't that likely victimize people who are presumed innocent of crimes until convicted? Don’t see why. My plate could be scanned because I’m a criminal, or because I’m a witness or a victim.
panic 1y ago
Also, be angry at those who didn't follow through with promises to severely reduce funding to their police departments in 2020. If an organization consistently behaves in a way we don't like, we should seek alternatives to that organization, not continuously act surprised when they act out and keep giving them more money.
- davrosthedalek 1y ago
  If you defund police, what do you think will be cut first? The control organs and oversight, or the thing they should oversee?
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    > If you defund police, what do you think will be cut first? That's why you don't just go to the cops and say "find $1B in your budget to cut". You give specifics.
  - Ar-Curunir 1y ago
    So you are saying that the police force is a extra-governmental organization that has full control over how they allocate funds? All the more reason to reduce their funding!
    - Geezus_42 1y ago
      Sounds like theft, fraud, and abuse to me! Where's the DOGE team digging into police and military budgets?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > be angry at those who didn't follow through with promises to severely reduce funding to their police departments in 2020 This was tried. It generated a generational backlash against the left as petty crime and visible homelessness rose. To the extent police reform has historically worked, it’s been by rebooting a police department. (Think: replacing the Mets with the NYPD.) Not replacing police with a hippie circle.
davrosthedalek 1y ago
It's a lesson people haven't learned in 80 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Amsterdam_civil_registry_office_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Amsterdam_civil_registry_... For any dataset you collect, think about how it can be miss-used. Because in all likelihood it will. Maybe not by you. But maybe by your successor. Or the hacker.
- yieldcrv 1y ago
  Its noteworthy to me that it took till 1943 for the reality of the threat to be taken seriously for this outcome People making parallels I feel have been inaccurate, as the parallels right now are much closer to Europe's 1933 happenings, and people act like 1945's happenings is what will happen the very next day Not sure what to make of that, just noticing that these particular "resistances" didn't have a prior allegory to watch, and made these choices eventually, and still how late into the story we know that these things occurred
  - chaps 1y ago
    A lot of that is because of the advent of computer systems built by IBM to maintain records. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
    - aspenmayer 1y ago
      IBM also built a calculator for the IRS in the late 1800s. They have been working with the government before nearly anyone still alive. Edit: it was for the 1890 US census, not the IRS. I apologize for my prior error. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine
      - chaps 1y ago
        Friend, are you really conflating a calculator with a system of records knowingly used to enact the Holocaust? I recognize your point, but the valley between the two things is so large that I'm going to assume you're trolling.
roughly 1y ago
Yeah, I think both things can be true: one is that it is absolutely utterly unacceptable to be in the year 2025 advocating for new data collection programs in the name of "fighting crime" - it should be absolutely abundantly clear to even the most naive of us now that A) the cops have absolutely zero interest in pursuing the kinds of crime we're actually interested in - the closure rate on shoplifting, car and package theft, and other property crime is basically zero, and that's not because the cops don't have enough resources, and B) any of these systems will be abused immediately to target whoever it is the feds have decided are the bad guy this week, be it palestine protestors, trans people, immigrants, ex-girlfriends, or whoever else we've decided is outside the circle of protection today. At the same time, it's also absolutely goddamn unnacceptable that we've come to just accept that our LEOs are just going to act like unaccountable criminal gangs, and that that mentality has crept so far into the police forces that a thin blue line punisher sticker is an acceptable bit of kit for a cruiser. There are systems that are intended to hold these groups accountable, and we need to keep pressing until they do, because throwing up our hands and just saying "Boys will be boys" ain't cutting it.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > it is absolutely utterly unacceptable to be in the year 2025 advocating for new data collection programs in the name of "fighting crime" I’m genuinely curious for data on whether these data have been helpful with property crime in San Francisco and Oakland.
- mystraline 1y ago
  > LEOs are just going to act like unaccountable criminal gangs, and that that mentality has crept so far into the police forces that a thin blue line punisher sticker is an acceptable bit of kit for a cruiser. Well, they are unaccountable state-sanctioned gangs. They can legally steal (forfeiture). They can 'smell something' and legally trespass. They can shoot and kill you for basically any reason. But they can fall back and say 'I thought they were reaching for a weapon'. SCOTUS, even with more liberal justices, have repeatedly said they are shielded from 'official capacities', and that they have absolutely no requirement of protecting and serving.
bbreier 1y ago
I think the frog and the scorpion were both wrong
pj_mukh 1y ago
[flagged]
- aprilthird2021 1y ago
  I live in Oakland too, and I hate hate hate that we're enabling masked, unnamed government enforcers to kidnap people off the streets and potentially deport them without even verifying they are who they are thought to be. I also know that we cannot afford to keep letting criminals run this town and destroy public property and kill people on the roads and get away with it
  - pj_mukh 1y ago
    "and I hate hate hate that we're enabling masked, unnamed government" Sidenote: As per the article, this is already illegal and was a mis-step on the part of SFPD and CHP searching OPD's database (OPD didn't give ICE anything). It sounds like whoever did it will be prosecuted.
- LordDragonfang 1y ago
  I was going to call you out for hyperbole, especially since the (AI) search overview had pedestrian deaths for 2025 at only 4, but previous years at around 10-15, which is pretty bad. https://www.oaklandca.gov/Public-Safety-Streets/Traffic-Safety/Safe-Oakland-Streets/Monitoring-Traffic-Deaths-in-Oakland https://www.oaklandca.gov/Public-Safety-Streets/Traffic-Safe...
  - pj_mukh 1y ago
    The numbers would be much higher if the city had any foot traffic [1]. It's dead, small businesses are dead, it's just not safe to walk around too much, everyone keeps it to a minimum and drives between parking lots in 5000lb tanks. [1]: https://www.unacast.com/foot-traffic-data/oakland https://www.unacast.com/foot-traffic-data/oakland
- myvoiceismypass 1y ago
  I live in Oakland too, and was taken aback at first by calling it a killing field... until I actually admitted to myself that my greatest safety fear here is getting wiped out on foot or bike by some of the most atrocious drivers in the entire bay area with near-zero traffic enforcement.
stouset 1y ago
This same argument is true for every bit of authority we give to law enforcement agencies (and really, the government in general). We expect they'll use those powers responsibly and within the limitations that we've ascribed, but it's always a risk that they're used irresponsibly and in situations we don't approve of. Yes, this is an argument for not giving them more authority than necessary, but it's also an argument for holding them accountable when they do act out of bounds. To this point, any law that gives power to government officials also needs to have explicit and painful consequences for abuse of those powers. Civilians who break the law face punishment and penalties, but government employees are almost never held to account. That needs to change.
rayiner 1y ago
> The law enforcement agencies which behaved the way law enforcement agencies always behave and did what anyone with even the slightest familiarity with how law enforcement acts thought they would do with the data. This outcome was 1000% predictable even if the details were not. It was predictable that law enforcement agencies would... try to enforce the law?
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  > It was predictable that law enforcement agencies would... try to enforce the law? By breaking a different one? I mean, yeah, it's predictable. But it's not great.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    If you think that's bad, you should dig into state agency violations of PRWORA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Work_Opportunity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Wo.... Lot's of illegal conduct going on in blue states.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      What, this? https://www.feldesman.com/hhs-announces-major-changes-to-its-interpretation-of-prwora/ https://www.feldesman.com/hhs-announces-major-changes-to-its... > HHS rescinded its 1998 interpretation of the term (63 FR 41658) and expanded the agency’s interpretation of “Federal public benefit” to include programs, including Head Start and numerous community health-related programs. Yeah, I'm not inclined to view clear and open violations of a law the same as "the Feds said it was fine for 27 years, including Trump's first term". You'll need stronger whataboutism than that.
      - rayiner 1y ago
        There's lots of programs being funded that aren't covered by that HHS guidance.
TechDebtDevin 1y ago
There are mobile survalience cameras systems at my very family friendly park. Everyone has asked the city to tow them away but they refuse. There was no vote on this.
- spauldo 1y ago
  A tire and some gasoline seems to work for the Brits.
- orthecreedence 1y ago
  Spraypaint?
  - TechDebtDevin 1y ago
    Yeah, this is for kids who can't go to prison :P
francisofascii 1y ago
Nah, I think as a society we should be able to set up speed cameras to crack down on speeding, without worrying about how it could be misused maliciously against law abiding motorists. Get angry at the people doing bad things. Otherwise we shouldn't build anything that could potentially be misused.
noracists 1y ago
Sending people back to their home country, especially when 50% are criminals, is not the same as the holocaust. Comparing it to such is disgusting and insulting to the actual victims of Nazi violence. ICE is often operating in a racist and dehumanizing way, but it is nowhere near the level of organized atrocity that it is regularly compared to.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  The Nazis actually openly considered deportation before settling on the Final Solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan The Holocaust involved quite a bit of large-scale deportation to concentration camps. https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/how-and-why/how/deportation-of-german-jews-september-1941/ https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/how-and-why/how/deport... > In the autumn of 1941, approximately 338,000 Jews remained in Greater Germany. Until this point, Hitler had been reluctant to deport Jews in the German Reich until the war was over because of a fear of resistance and retaliation from the German population. But, in the autumn of 1941, key Nazi figures contributed to mounting pressure on Hitler to deport the German Jews. This pressure culminated in Hitler ordering the deportation of all Jews still in the Greater German Reich and Protectorate between 15-17 September 1941.
- tristanb 1y ago
  50% are criminals? Do you have a source for that?
  - fsckboy 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      No; many immigration violations are civil infractions, not criminal ones.
    - myvoiceismypass 1y ago
      Do you consider parking offenders and jaywalkers to be criminals?
everforward 1y ago
> These things will keep happening until it is no longer socially acceptable to advocate for the creation of data collection programs that are a necessary precondition. The root issue here is that the government is no longer able or willing to control and bind their own law enforcement agencies. Agreed that this program was a bad idea, but the wider issue that law enforcement agencies can and do wantonly disregard direct orders from the state. There's the direct issue of impact on people as a result, and the more intangible idea of the questionable legitimacy of a government that is not able to control its own enforcement agencies. This needs to be met with swift repercussions for both the individuals that participated, as well as the agencies that allowed it. Lacking that, it seems a reasonable inference that enforcement agencies are no longer bound by the will of the people and are in fact the ruling government.
- coliveira 1y ago
  The US has a long history of agencies that decide by themselves to do things that are frequently illicit with the excuse that they're protecting the public. From police to 3 letter agencies, they're all operating illegal programs that should be stoped by the public. Whenever someone tries it, they protect their power using the excuse that they're doing this for the "benefit" of democracy or some similar BS.
- Uehreka 1y ago
  > This needs to be met with swift repercussions for both the individuals that participated, as well as the agencies that allowed it. That’s not going to happen. Cross out that sentence and reason as if we’ve already asked for that and it failed. We’ve heard this song too many times to pretend we don’t know the first verse.
  - guelo 1y ago
    Agree it's never going to happen. The last time people hit the streets for police accountability the political backlash got us a convict in the white house. Democrats are now fully cowed on the topic and Republicans cheer any police overreach. For the powerful in both government and business there is no rule of law anymore. The "law and order" slogan only means a boot stamping on little people's face forever, the powerful can break the law with impunity.
vector_spaces 1y ago
Why not be angry at all of them? As someone who works with sensitive healthcare data, I can tell you that the mere existence of a dataset doesn't guarantee its misuse, nor it does it absolve anyone who interacts with that data of responsibility for proper stewardship. Yes, you are right that we should think carefully before creating a sensitive dataset. If we insist on creating such a dataset, the people involved must put in place guardrails for stewardship of those datasets. But the stewards of that data, past, present, and future, also share responsibility. Of course if the incentive structures don't line up with concern for mitigation of harm to vulnerable people as is the case with law enforcement in the US, then all of that is out the window. Anyway, what you have written implies that we need not think about accountability for those who misuse of datasets after they are created, which is clearly absurd as I and anyone else familiar with healthcare data can tell you.
ourmandave 1y ago
Can't they sue the bejeesus out of them? I heard CA built up a large amount of money anticipating a lot of litigation against Trump 2.0.
slowmovintarget 1y ago
Voters will nearly always fall for "Think of the children!" Trying to point out how bad of an argument that is has only earned me screaming arguments from my wife. Some people do not prioritize liberty, and so, get less as result of their choices.
tonymet 1y ago
if you read the article, this didn't happen.
belorn 1y ago
A lot of people raised similar objections to dna databases, and later when those same databases was used by law enforcement. It did not take very long until law makers and law enforcement made i praxis that such data bases are up to grab for trawling through. Any objection is meet with the handful of cold cases that was closed because that trawling of data. Sadly I dont see a realistic stop to the databases. If there are none, law makers will just dictate the creation of it. If there is one, they will argue terrorism or cold cases to start the process of getting access. If car manufacturers get gps logs, those will sooner or later end up being available to law enforcement. They currently have access to every call, when where and to whom. Every internet use. Every movement mobile phones does. Every payment through a credit card, where and to whom. Mass transports get more and more into personal tickets, and those get logged. I hope we will see unreasonable searches to be expanded/enforcement against trawling of data, but i dont have any hope left to the idea that databases wont be created. Not even gdpr in eu stops law makers from dictating that databases must be created, or stopping law makers from trawling it.
geocar 1y ago
> If you're gonna be angry at someone be angry at the people among us were in favor of the creation of this data set I think it's okay to be angry at public servants for "following orders" too. We didn't let the Nazis get away with that bullshit for a good reason.
ajross 1y ago
> be angry at [...] the people among us [who] foolishly thought it [...] would be a good thing for alternative transportation Yikes. That is one tortuous sentence you needed to construct just to blame this on leftists. I applaud your wordcraft. But no, that's ridiculous. Urban transit hippies are very much not to blame for ICE overreach. Just for the record.
czhu12 1y ago
I'm not sure how to think about this. It doesn't make sense to me that the only alternative is one in which traffic laws get brazenly ignored, and shoplifting and property crime is endemic, to prevent any more data gathering by law enforcement. At some point it seems like we have to trust that governments can act responsibly, in the interest of voters -- in this case local voters, or we should all just pack it in. The other thought: I get the thought that people will always care more about local concerns of car break ins, shoplifting, and quality of life than larger ideas like privacy and law enforcement abuse. It seems to convince people to care about the larger issues, the local things have to be solved, and not just ignored. I've lived in San Francisco for over 10 years now, and it's been disappointing to see the lack on progress on basic quality of life issues.
- chickensong 1y ago
  > At some point it seems like we have to trust that governments can act responsibly Respectfully, I believe you have it backwards.
- const_cast 1y ago
  > It doesn't make sense to me that the only alternative is one in which traffic laws get brazenly ignored, and shoplifting and property crime is endemic, to prevent any more data gathering by law enforcement. The only reason either of these happen is because law enforcement is lazy and dangerous. We pretty much gave up on most traffic enforcement because law enforcement officers can't help shooting people they pull over. That's a problem - if they would just start acting somewhat decent, the PD would stop losing a few hundred million a year in lawsuits. To be frank, I have no idea what law enforcement even does these days. They don't speed trap, they barely respond to calls, they're not pulling people over. Are they just sitting on their asses and getting a check, petrified of public discourse?
  - p_j_w 1y ago
    > Are they just sitting on their asses and getting a check, petrified of public discourse? All while patting themselves on the back and calling themselves heros.
standardUser 1y ago
>If you're gonna be angry at someone be angry at the people among us were in favor of the creation of this data set Perhaps I am gifted, but I contain enough anger within for both guilty parties. However, the bulk of is aimed at the police who unambiguously broke the law and will face no consequences for doing so.
autoexec 1y ago
> If you're gonna be angry at someone be angry at the people among us were in favor of the creation of this data set because they foolishly thought it would be used to combat mundane property crime or because perhaps they thought that subjecting motorists to an increased dragnet would be a good thing Nah, be mad at both the people who enabled the data collection and the agency that abused that data. This should be grounds for laws that limit or eliminate the use of Flock Safety in the state, and laws that meaningfully punish agencies that use that data inappropriately as well as the individuals who authorized it.

whats_a_quasar 1y ago

Fair enough, but it is also valid to be angry at your local law enforcement if they are acting against the community's preferences. Especially when local law enforcement is breaking state law in the process.

mc32 1y ago
But that would put them between federal law vs state law and federal law supersedes state law and state law supersedes local laws.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  There are plenty of things Federal law can't do under the Tenth Amendment. As an example, the Feds can round up marijuana users in California, if they like. They can't require California's law enforcement to help.
  - fooker 1y ago
    Doesn't seem like there was 'force' involved. There's no law prohibiting local agencies helping feds.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      > There's no law prohibiting local agencies helping feds. The law prohibiting exactly that is linked in the article. "Under a decade-old state law, California police are prohibited from sharing data from automated license plate readers with out-of-state and federal agencies. Attorney General Rob Bonta affirmed that fact in a 2023 notice to police."
      - fooker 1y ago
        Apologies, I was responding to the comment about weed
Dilettante_ 1y ago
Maybe true, but at a certain point you're just getting angry at the wind for blowing. The system is a scorpion: It cannot, will not go against its nature.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
  They are a political force, not a force of nature. It is certainly reasonable to get angry at a political force even if their politics are predictable.
- fn-mote 1y ago
  At this point it sounds like you have given up believing in checks and balances in politics. ETA: It’s complicated, but having you give up actually weakens the rule of law even more.
- standardUser 1y ago
  Politics change, scorpions don't. Throw your hands up in and air and give up if you want, but don't pretend some poor analogy absolves you.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    I don't think he's throwing his hands up in the air, rather he's implying we need more radical change. If we're going to be waiting around for police to become "good", that's not going to happen. We need to force them to become good.
    - AcerbicZero 1y ago
      Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.
      - Dilettante_ 1y ago
        This guy gets it.
- 1y ago
xyzzy9563 1y ago
The greater community, i.e. the United States, may have different preferences than San Francisco.
- FireBeyond 1y ago
  Those officers are employees of the City, County or State, not the United States.
- p_j_w 1y ago
  Local governments are under no obligation to help the federal government enforce federal laws.

gr8beehive 1y ago

[flagged]

thfuran 1y ago
Subsistence farming isn't a great life.
- gr8beehive 1y ago
  That’s not my point. My point is we have no leverage. A populace with deep and wide skills can be a collective action threat. A bunch of dead eyed screen addicts are just Wall-E background characters. We’ll end up manual workers for the rich through state violence (happening right now to Latinos to free up jobs). Because we can’t threaten to walk away and undermine wall streets grip on agency.

bjornsing 1y ago

> These things will keep happening until it is no longer socially acceptable to advocate for the creation of data collection programs that are a necessary precondition. One or two cops locked up for it can also work wonders. But somehow the western world has come to believe that lots of pretty laws with no consequences for transgressions is a wonderful thing. I think not.

water-data-dude 1y ago
*no consequences for transgressions by anyone in law enforcement. Qualified immunity has snowballed into some serious bullshit.
delusional 1y ago
> somehow the western world Excuse me. While a minority of rabid Anarchists might agree with you, the vast majority of people in Denmark happen to really like our police force. This is largely an American problem. Don't blame it on "the western world".
- bjornsing 1y ago
  I’m Swedish. We have plenty of toothless laws that no one follows. Plenty.
georgeecollins 1y ago
If you are a district attorney in a city, you depend on the help and cooperation of the police in your daily work. If you became unpopular with the police they can make your work very difficult and you could also become politically very unpopular. I think district attorneys and police want to do what they think is right but its very understandable to me why a DA does not want to prosecute police.
- roughly 1y ago
  This is evidenced in Oakland, where the recall campaign for Pamela Price began before she took office.

r053bud 1y ago

But, but, but, "I have nothing to hide.........."

martythemaniak 1y ago

[flagged]

kelseyfrog 1y ago
The post you're responding to isn't arguing shifting blame. They're arguing that instrumental actions should be included. If you think expanding the scope of accountability dilutes the pool, that's another argument. But at least have good faith. They're not your enemy.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  Drawing this line gets tough. If I build a sidewalk curb, there's a perfectly legitimate use case for it. It can also be used to curb-stomp someone to death. Can't we build the curb and forbid curb-stomping at the same time? Shouldn't that be our right?
  - mulmen 1y ago
    Flock didn’t build a sidewalk. Flock built the stomp-o-tron 9000 with convenient victim loading ramp and mechanical leg. Flock built a surveillance data repository with convenient sharing mechanisms. Someone then used those mechanisms as designed for their intended purpose.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      Sure. But California forsaw that, and passed a law to prevent that use case. The cops - public servants, in theory - then blatantly violated that law.
      - mulmen 1y ago
        Did they? The cops shared with other state agencies who then shared with the feds. From what I understand of the situation the cops didn’t break the law, which is the problem.

delusional 1y ago

The opposite of this. Do be angry at the people misusing the systems. Don't be angry at the people building them for good.

goda90 1y ago
If someone points out that the system you're building can be abused, and you don't stop and come up with a solid plan to prevent abuse then you're just building the system for abuse.
- delusional 1y ago
  It's practically impossible to build a system that "can't be abused". If you set the bar there, then you can block any policy forever by simply enumerating increasingly unlikely ways for it to be abused. It's like a child's version of politics. I could go into my car right now and plow through a bunch of people. I'm still allowed to own a car. We've made the actual harmful act illegal, not the thing that theoretically made it possible.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > It's practically impossible to build a system that "can't be abused" For ALPRs? I’d make queries public with a short delay, including with a unique identifier for the cop initiating the query. Data automatically deleted within an interval.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      > I’d make queries public with a short delay… Won't that likely victimize people who are presumed innocent of crimes until convicted?
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > Won't that likely victimize people who are presumed innocent of crimes until convicted? Don’t see why. My plate could be scanned because I’m a criminal, or because I’m a witness or a victim.

panic 1y ago

Also, be angry at those who didn't follow through with promises to severely reduce funding to their police departments in 2020. If an organization consistently behaves in a way we don't like, we should seek alternatives to that organization, not continuously act surprised when they act out and keep giving them more money.

davrosthedalek 1y ago
If you defund police, what do you think will be cut first? The control organs and oversight, or the thing they should oversee?
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  > If you defund police, what do you think will be cut first? That's why you don't just go to the cops and say "find $1B in your budget to cut". You give specifics.
- Ar-Curunir 1y ago
  So you are saying that the police force is a extra-governmental organization that has full control over how they allocate funds? All the more reason to reduce their funding!
  - Geezus_42 1y ago
    Sounds like theft, fraud, and abuse to me! Where's the DOGE team digging into police and military budgets?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> be angry at those who didn't follow through with promises to severely reduce funding to their police departments in 2020 This was tried. It generated a generational backlash against the left as petty crime and visible homelessness rose. To the extent police reform has historically worked, it’s been by rebooting a police department. (Think: replacing the Mets with the NYPD.) Not replacing police with a hippie circle.

davrosthedalek 1y ago

It's a lesson people haven't learned in 80 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Amsterdam_civil_registry_office_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Amsterdam_civil_registry_... For any dataset you collect, think about how it can be miss-used. Because in all likelihood it will. Maybe not by you. But maybe by your successor. Or the hacker.

yieldcrv 1y ago
Its noteworthy to me that it took till 1943 for the reality of the threat to be taken seriously for this outcome People making parallels I feel have been inaccurate, as the parallels right now are much closer to Europe's 1933 happenings, and people act like 1945's happenings is what will happen the very next day Not sure what to make of that, just noticing that these particular "resistances" didn't have a prior allegory to watch, and made these choices eventually, and still how late into the story we know that these things occurred
- chaps 1y ago
  A lot of that is because of the advent of computer systems built by IBM to maintain records. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    IBM also built a calculator for the IRS in the late 1800s. They have been working with the government before nearly anyone still alive. Edit: it was for the 1890 US census, not the IRS. I apologize for my prior error. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine
    - chaps 1y ago
      Friend, are you really conflating a calculator with a system of records knowingly used to enact the Holocaust? I recognize your point, but the valley between the two things is so large that I'm going to assume you're trolling.

roughly 1y ago

Yeah, I think both things can be true: one is that it is absolutely utterly unacceptable to be in the year 2025 advocating for new data collection programs in the name of "fighting crime" - it should be absolutely abundantly clear to even the most naive of us now that A) the cops have absolutely zero interest in pursuing the kinds of crime we're actually interested in - the closure rate on shoplifting, car and package theft, and other property crime is basically zero, and that's not because the cops don't have enough resources, and B) any of these systems will be abused immediately to target whoever it is the feds have decided are the bad guy this week, be it palestine protestors, trans people, immigrants, ex-girlfriends, or whoever else we've decided is outside the circle of protection today. At the same time, it's also absolutely goddamn unnacceptable that we've come to just accept that our LEOs are just going to act like unaccountable criminal gangs, and that that mentality has crept so far into the police forces that a thin blue line punisher sticker is an acceptable bit of kit for a cruiser. There are systems that are intended to hold these groups accountable, and we need to keep pressing until they do, because throwing up our hands and just saying "Boys will be boys" ain't cutting it.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> it is absolutely utterly unacceptable to be in the year 2025 advocating for new data collection programs in the name of "fighting crime" I’m genuinely curious for data on whether these data have been helpful with property crime in San Francisco and Oakland.
mystraline 1y ago
> LEOs are just going to act like unaccountable criminal gangs, and that that mentality has crept so far into the police forces that a thin blue line punisher sticker is an acceptable bit of kit for a cruiser. Well, they are unaccountable state-sanctioned gangs. They can legally steal (forfeiture). They can 'smell something' and legally trespass. They can shoot and kill you for basically any reason. But they can fall back and say 'I thought they were reaching for a weapon'. SCOTUS, even with more liberal justices, have repeatedly said they are shielded from 'official capacities', and that they have absolutely no requirement of protecting and serving.

bbreier 1y ago

I think the frog and the scorpion were both wrong

pj_mukh 1y ago

[flagged]

aprilthird2021 1y ago
I live in Oakland too, and I hate hate hate that we're enabling masked, unnamed government enforcers to kidnap people off the streets and potentially deport them without even verifying they are who they are thought to be. I also know that we cannot afford to keep letting criminals run this town and destroy public property and kill people on the roads and get away with it
- pj_mukh 1y ago
  "and I hate hate hate that we're enabling masked, unnamed government" Sidenote: As per the article, this is already illegal and was a mis-step on the part of SFPD and CHP searching OPD's database (OPD didn't give ICE anything). It sounds like whoever did it will be prosecuted.
LordDragonfang 1y ago
I was going to call you out for hyperbole, especially since the (AI) search overview had pedestrian deaths for 2025 at only 4, but previous years at around 10-15, which is pretty bad. https://www.oaklandca.gov/Public-Safety-Streets/Traffic-Safety/Safe-Oakland-Streets/Monitoring-Traffic-Deaths-in-Oakland https://www.oaklandca.gov/Public-Safety-Streets/Traffic-Safe...
- pj_mukh 1y ago
  The numbers would be much higher if the city had any foot traffic [1]. It's dead, small businesses are dead, it's just not safe to walk around too much, everyone keeps it to a minimum and drives between parking lots in 5000lb tanks. [1]: https://www.unacast.com/foot-traffic-data/oakland https://www.unacast.com/foot-traffic-data/oakland
myvoiceismypass 1y ago
I live in Oakland too, and was taken aback at first by calling it a killing field... until I actually admitted to myself that my greatest safety fear here is getting wiped out on foot or bike by some of the most atrocious drivers in the entire bay area with near-zero traffic enforcement.

stouset 1y ago

This same argument is true for every bit of authority we give to law enforcement agencies (and really, the government in general). We expect they'll use those powers responsibly and within the limitations that we've ascribed, but it's always a risk that they're used irresponsibly and in situations we don't approve of. Yes, this is an argument for not giving them more authority than necessary, but it's also an argument for holding them accountable when they do act out of bounds. To this point, any law that gives power to government officials also needs to have explicit and painful consequences for abuse of those powers. Civilians who break the law face punishment and penalties, but government employees are almost never held to account. That needs to change.

rayiner 1y ago

> The law enforcement agencies which behaved the way law enforcement agencies always behave and did what anyone with even the slightest familiarity with how law enforcement acts thought they would do with the data. This outcome was 1000% predictable even if the details were not. It was predictable that law enforcement agencies would... try to enforce the law?

ceejayoz 1y ago
> It was predictable that law enforcement agencies would... try to enforce the law? By breaking a different one? I mean, yeah, it's predictable. But it's not great.
- rayiner 1y ago
  If you think that's bad, you should dig into state agency violations of PRWORA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Work_Opportunity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Wo.... Lot's of illegal conduct going on in blue states.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    What, this? https://www.feldesman.com/hhs-announces-major-changes-to-its-interpretation-of-prwora/ https://www.feldesman.com/hhs-announces-major-changes-to-its... > HHS rescinded its 1998 interpretation of the term (63 FR 41658) and expanded the agency’s interpretation of “Federal public benefit” to include programs, including Head Start and numerous community health-related programs. Yeah, I'm not inclined to view clear and open violations of a law the same as "the Feds said it was fine for 27 years, including Trump's first term". You'll need stronger whataboutism than that.
    - rayiner 1y ago
      There's lots of programs being funded that aren't covered by that HHS guidance.

TechDebtDevin 1y ago

There are mobile survalience cameras systems at my very family friendly park. Everyone has asked the city to tow them away but they refuse. There was no vote on this.

spauldo 1y ago
A tire and some gasoline seems to work for the Brits.
orthecreedence 1y ago
Spraypaint?
- TechDebtDevin 1y ago
  Yeah, this is for kids who can't go to prison :P

francisofascii 1y ago

Nah, I think as a society we should be able to set up speed cameras to crack down on speeding, without worrying about how it could be misused maliciously against law abiding motorists. Get angry at the people doing bad things. Otherwise we shouldn't build anything that could potentially be misused.

noracists 1y ago

Sending people back to their home country, especially when 50% are criminals, is not the same as the holocaust. Comparing it to such is disgusting and insulting to the actual victims of Nazi violence. ICE is often operating in a racist and dehumanizing way, but it is nowhere near the level of organized atrocity that it is regularly compared to.

ceejayoz 1y ago
The Nazis actually openly considered deportation before settling on the Final Solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan The Holocaust involved quite a bit of large-scale deportation to concentration camps. https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/how-and-why/how/deportation-of-german-jews-september-1941/ https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/how-and-why/how/deport... > In the autumn of 1941, approximately 338,000 Jews remained in Greater Germany. Until this point, Hitler had been reluctant to deport Jews in the German Reich until the war was over because of a fear of resistance and retaliation from the German population. But, in the autumn of 1941, key Nazi figures contributed to mounting pressure on Hitler to deport the German Jews. This pressure culminated in Hitler ordering the deportation of all Jews still in the Greater German Reich and Protectorate between 15-17 September 1941.
tristanb 1y ago
50% are criminals? Do you have a source for that?
- fsckboy 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    No; many immigration violations are civil infractions, not criminal ones.
  - myvoiceismypass 1y ago
    Do you consider parking offenders and jaywalkers to be criminals?

everforward 1y ago

> These things will keep happening until it is no longer socially acceptable to advocate for the creation of data collection programs that are a necessary precondition. The root issue here is that the government is no longer able or willing to control and bind their own law enforcement agencies. Agreed that this program was a bad idea, but the wider issue that law enforcement agencies can and do wantonly disregard direct orders from the state. There's the direct issue of impact on people as a result, and the more intangible idea of the questionable legitimacy of a government that is not able to control its own enforcement agencies. This needs to be met with swift repercussions for both the individuals that participated, as well as the agencies that allowed it. Lacking that, it seems a reasonable inference that enforcement agencies are no longer bound by the will of the people and are in fact the ruling government.

coliveira 1y ago
The US has a long history of agencies that decide by themselves to do things that are frequently illicit with the excuse that they're protecting the public. From police to 3 letter agencies, they're all operating illegal programs that should be stoped by the public. Whenever someone tries it, they protect their power using the excuse that they're doing this for the "benefit" of democracy or some similar BS.
Uehreka 1y ago
> This needs to be met with swift repercussions for both the individuals that participated, as well as the agencies that allowed it. That’s not going to happen. Cross out that sentence and reason as if we’ve already asked for that and it failed. We’ve heard this song too many times to pretend we don’t know the first verse.
- guelo 1y ago
  Agree it's never going to happen. The last time people hit the streets for police accountability the political backlash got us a convict in the white house. Democrats are now fully cowed on the topic and Republicans cheer any police overreach. For the powerful in both government and business there is no rule of law anymore. The "law and order" slogan only means a boot stamping on little people's face forever, the powerful can break the law with impunity.

vector_spaces 1y ago

Why not be angry at all of them? As someone who works with sensitive healthcare data, I can tell you that the mere existence of a dataset doesn't guarantee its misuse, nor it does it absolve anyone who interacts with that data of responsibility for proper stewardship. Yes, you are right that we should think carefully before creating a sensitive dataset. If we insist on creating such a dataset, the people involved must put in place guardrails for stewardship of those datasets. But the stewards of that data, past, present, and future, also share responsibility. Of course if the incentive structures don't line up with concern for mitigation of harm to vulnerable people as is the case with law enforcement in the US, then all of that is out the window. Anyway, what you have written implies that we need not think about accountability for those who misuse of datasets after they are created, which is clearly absurd as I and anyone else familiar with healthcare data can tell you.

ourmandave 1y ago

Can't they sue the bejeesus out of them? I heard CA built up a large amount of money anticipating a lot of litigation against Trump 2.0.

slowmovintarget 1y ago

Voters will nearly always fall for "Think of the children!" Trying to point out how bad of an argument that is has only earned me screaming arguments from my wife. Some people do not prioritize liberty, and so, get less as result of their choices.

tonymet 1y ago

if you read the article, this didn't happen.

belorn 1y ago

A lot of people raised similar objections to dna databases, and later when those same databases was used by law enforcement. It did not take very long until law makers and law enforcement made i praxis that such data bases are up to grab for trawling through. Any objection is meet with the handful of cold cases that was closed because that trawling of data. Sadly I dont see a realistic stop to the databases. If there are none, law makers will just dictate the creation of it. If there is one, they will argue terrorism or cold cases to start the process of getting access. If car manufacturers get gps logs, those will sooner or later end up being available to law enforcement. They currently have access to every call, when where and to whom. Every internet use. Every movement mobile phones does. Every payment through a credit card, where and to whom. Mass transports get more and more into personal tickets, and those get logged. I hope we will see unreasonable searches to be expanded/enforcement against trawling of data, but i dont have any hope left to the idea that databases wont be created. Not even gdpr in eu stops law makers from dictating that databases must be created, or stopping law makers from trawling it.

geocar 1y ago

> If you're gonna be angry at someone be angry at the people among us were in favor of the creation of this data set I think it's okay to be angry at public servants for "following orders" too. We didn't let the Nazis get away with that bullshit for a good reason.

ajross 1y ago

> be angry at [...] the people among us [who] foolishly thought it [...] would be a good thing for alternative transportation Yikes. That is one tortuous sentence you needed to construct just to blame this on leftists. I applaud your wordcraft. But no, that's ridiculous. Urban transit hippies are very much not to blame for ICE overreach. Just for the record.

czhu12 1y ago

I'm not sure how to think about this. It doesn't make sense to me that the only alternative is one in which traffic laws get brazenly ignored, and shoplifting and property crime is endemic, to prevent any more data gathering by law enforcement. At some point it seems like we have to trust that governments can act responsibly, in the interest of voters -- in this case local voters, or we should all just pack it in. The other thought: I get the thought that people will always care more about local concerns of car break ins, shoplifting, and quality of life than larger ideas like privacy and law enforcement abuse. It seems to convince people to care about the larger issues, the local things have to be solved, and not just ignored. I've lived in San Francisco for over 10 years now, and it's been disappointing to see the lack on progress on basic quality of life issues.

chickensong 1y ago
> At some point it seems like we have to trust that governments can act responsibly Respectfully, I believe you have it backwards.
const_cast 1y ago
> It doesn't make sense to me that the only alternative is one in which traffic laws get brazenly ignored, and shoplifting and property crime is endemic, to prevent any more data gathering by law enforcement. The only reason either of these happen is because law enforcement is lazy and dangerous. We pretty much gave up on most traffic enforcement because law enforcement officers can't help shooting people they pull over. That's a problem - if they would just start acting somewhat decent, the PD would stop losing a few hundred million a year in lawsuits. To be frank, I have no idea what law enforcement even does these days. They don't speed trap, they barely respond to calls, they're not pulling people over. Are they just sitting on their asses and getting a check, petrified of public discourse?
- p_j_w 1y ago
  > Are they just sitting on their asses and getting a check, petrified of public discourse? All while patting themselves on the back and calling themselves heros.

standardUser 1y ago

>If you're gonna be angry at someone be angry at the people among us were in favor of the creation of this data set Perhaps I am gifted, but I contain enough anger within for both guilty parties. However, the bulk of is aimed at the police who unambiguously broke the law and will face no consequences for doing so.

autoexec 1y ago

> If you're gonna be angry at someone be angry at the people among us were in favor of the creation of this data set because they foolishly thought it would be used to combat mundane property crime or because perhaps they thought that subjecting motorists to an increased dragnet would be a good thing Nah, be mad at both the people who enabled the data collection and the agency that abused that data. This should be grounds for laws that limit or eliminate the use of Flock Safety in the state, and laws that meaningfully punish agencies that use that data inappropriately as well as the individuals who authorized it.