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>This seems like a place where more surveilance is actually a good thing. The problem here is the disparity of power. It should be legal for people to record t
by iwwr 13y ago
>This seems like a place where more surveilance is actually a good thing.
The problem here is the disparity of power. It should be legal for people to record the police, but not necessarily for the police to do the same.
- btian 13y agoI don't think there's anything wrong with police recording the streets though. At least in the US, anyone has the right to record in public places. Why shouldn't the police be able to do the same?
- ams6110 13y agoThe police can throw you in jail. Ordinary members of the public cannot.
- btian 13y agoWhat? Police (ordinarily) cannot throw you in jail without probable cause. If you're taped committing a crime, members of the public can just forward the tape to the police, and you'll end up in jail anyway.
- iwwr 13y agoThat's true, but it's not just about doing wrong things. There ought to be probable cause for recording by an authority of the state. It also has to be targeted and not done in a dragnet fashion. The police have significant discretionary powers on their side and the body of law is wide enough to "find something" against just about anyone. If you are in favor of mass surveillance, you should at least argue for a drastic simplification and excision of laws from the books.
- sergiotapia 13y ago>Police (ordinarily) cannot throw you in jail without probable cause LOL. Have you missed the hundreds of stories posted in forums, newspapers and websites?
- DanBC 13y agoWhat do they do with all that video? Dump it out of a buffer? Or store it, and process it with number plate and face recognition software? Living in UK (bafflingly high number of CCTV) cameras makes me gently wary of this kind of surveillance. Having said that I'm in favour of anything that helps prevent abuse by police officers. I used to trust police but recent scandals in UK prove that corruption and blatantly illegal practices are common.
- gerbal 13y agoIdeally, store it for a set amount of time and then delete it. Or keep it in perpetuity and only allow it to be used with a court order.
- LunaSea 13y agoBut now you have a situation where the control of the data is out of you hands in a black box. You never know if the law is applied or not.
- angersock 13y agoSimply put, because you recording your interactions likely only has real utility to you. The police regarding all interactions is something a lot trickier, because they have much broader influence. It's a matter of scale.
- njharman 13y ago> At least in the US, anyone has the right to record in public places. This is untrue in many, many places. Some states require consent (to record another). There are many restrictions around infrastructure and specific events. Police go into private places.
- iamwithnail 13y agoThere's quite a lot of evidence to suggest that always on recording of police does far more to address asymmetry of power than to reinforce it; it's why sousveillance is popular amongst activists. Police brutality flourishes in dark, non visible places. Surveillance generally is bad; this isn't really surveillance in the same way.