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Cops Use Old Brink's Truck to Shame Suspects
- patio11 17y agoSeems that it is probably less to shame and more to threaten the suspects with surveillance of their criminal activities. I don't have any particular issue with it, but I suspect civil libertarians might. (In particular, "We pretend to watch them, to scare them into thinking we really are watching them, and thus to control them without exerting effort" is called the "panopticon" in academic literature, and is widely despised by anybody who has ever said the word "panopticon".)
- jsteele 17y agoWho are "civil libertarians"? People who value their civil liberties? People who are willing to do something to protect them? Whatever they are, you say you're not one. Interesting.
- patio11 17y agoWho are "civil libertarians"? People who value their civil liberties? People who value civil liberties are civil libertarians in the same sense that people who value women are feminists. Whatever they are, you say you're not one. Correct. I am also not a feminist.
- calcnerd256 17y agoThat analogy is so right, as far as I can tell. I think there is a big difference between falling under a label and self-identifying as it.
- jsteele 17y agoYou didn't answer the question.
- Semiapies 17y agoThere's no intention of answering it, just demonizing "civil libertarians" - i.e., anyone who disagrees with him and thinks this violates civil liberties - in order to pretend to have the high ground.
- calcnerd256 17y agoWhile posting another reply, I just saw that the abortion-stance euphemisms make the same appropriate analogy here as the analogy you chose. People who value life are pro-life in the same sense that people who value choice are pro-choice in the same sense that people who value civil liberties are civil libertarians in the same sense that people who value women are feminists.
- calcnerd256 17y agoI think the label suggests that they self-identify about it in an obnoxious way. Kind of like how "card-carrying member of the ACLU" is sometimes used as an insult, even though everyone wants their own civil liberties defended.
- jsteele 17y agoExactly. And I find it lazy to use such loaded terms to denigrate an argument one doesn't agree with instead of confronting its (lack of) merits. Obnoxious != wrong. Actually, I find it strange that the initial commenter only suspects that "civil libertarians" might have a problem with the surveillance that s/he thinks is fine. The sentence seems to me a gratuitous pot shot at people who might think of themselves as "civil libertarians". Why? HN deserves better rhetoric. Otherwise, there's always Slashdot.
- Semiapies 17y agoBecause parking an armored camera-truck in front of the place darker-skinned people not accused of any crime live doesn't involve the "civil liberties" a lot of HN commentors care about. It's not about DRM, the GPL, when stuff goes out of copyright, or whether whitehouse.gov uses tracking cookies - the "big stuff". It's just some people, somewhere, seeing a big-ass police vehicle parked in front of their home with cameras pointed directly at them. To a lot of HN folks, that doesn't seem terribly important; after all, they're probably drug dealers - at least, the police say so!
- calcnerd256 17y agoThere's a difference between all-else-equal and uber-alles when it comes to a positive thing. This is why the abortion debate has cute euphemisms that are both pro-something-the-other-side-is-also-in-favor-of.
- Kadin 17y agoI consider myself a "civil libertarian," in the sense of caring about the preservation of liberty -- but I don't have a problem with this. Well-placed targeted enforcement and surveillance are good things; without them, as people start to feel more and more threatened by crime, you start to get more demands for everpresent surveillance and UK-style CCTV. Using targeted surveillance on a case-by-case basis seems like an excellent way to head that off. Also, I think it's good that having cameras pointed at your house still carries a strongly negative connotation. When people stop caring that they're being watched all the time, that's when you know you're heading down the road to a surveillance society.
- grandalf 17y agoI do have a bit of a problem with it. Suppose if rather than a truck it were a giant scarecrow with cameras, placed facing the house of people suspected of having committed a crime. Is the average person allowed to own a vehicle with cameras and park it outside the home of someone they don't like? It seems like blatant harassment.
- tedunangst 17y ago"Is the average person allowed to own a vehicle with cameras and park it outside the home of someone they don't like?" Yes.
- grandalf 17y agoI know parking there is legal, but I suspect if the vehicle had cameras trained on the house it would be considered harassment.
- sokoloff 17y agoWhile I don't necessarily condone it, I don't see how parking in a public place taking camera pictures of things in plain public view would actually be harassment. Google street view mapping of public roads and views accessible from same is perfectly legal, right? (and perfectly reasonable, right?) Why would this not be legal?
- absconditus 17y agoMy main issue with this is that drugs are illegal.
- jpwagner 17y agoSo they shame people before they've proven they've committed a crime? They are putting the neighborhood under surveillance? I appreciate the ingenuity, but this is big brother-ish.
- bonsaitree 17y agoTechnically speaking, the residence is being accused of an infraction, not a crime. It's akin to a parking ticket. As I've noted in my earlier comment, the "jig" is up with this procedure the minute the infraction is fought in court and a single precedent is established in case law.
- pbhjpbhj 17y agoYeah, if there are reports of criminal activities the cops should stay away and not look at what's going on, dam those meddling cops stopping criminals from doing their deals. </sarcasm> Presumably you'd like patroling officers to be fitted with blindfolds to avoid them surveilling people from the street?
- moscoso 17y agoSeems another version of the "caveirão" we have here in Rio.
- kragen 17y agoI think there's a big difference between killing people indiscriminately and putting a camera in front of their house.
- aplusbi 17y agoReminds me of the NYPD SkyTowers, which from what I've read are generally unmanned and the footage is never reviewed: http://www.ny1.com/Default.aspx?ArID=64500&SecID=1000 http://www.ny1.com/Default.aspx?ArID=64500&SecID=1000
- silentOpen 17y agoGovernment CCTVs everywhere, now! Deterrence, hooray! The Armadillo is somehow less offensive as its range is lower and it operates in a lower density area. On the flip side, the SkyTowers don't target anyone whereas the Armadillo is very targeted. Is it fair to publicly shame a person or group of people for a crime they are still presumed innocent of? What about mistakes? What about the police chief's daughter's boyfriend?
- bonsaitree 17y agoIt's a nice niche solution for non-violent "nuisance" issues, but it will only scale to the point where the cost of temporary criminal activity shutdown and/or location movement is less than the risk/cost of dirt-cheap anti-materiel sabotage actions against the truck. A very, very low bar to hurtle. Examples: Thermite + Firecracker Ignition against an axle, Short-range "spray painting" of camera portals w/ heat-set epoxy, Long-range shooting of camera portals with suppressed sub-sonic ammo or high-powered air rifles. Additionally, the very minute a reasonably well-educated/funded home-owner brings a case against the "nuisance" claim to court, any further use of the truck would be limited to the local municipality's statutory limits on mere infractions (non-crimes)--typically no more than 24 hours. To enable the truck to loiter any longer, the local prosecutor would have to file formal criminal charges and declare the particular residence a "crime zone".
- movix 17y agoMore than 900 people have been followed and filmed by Greater Manchester Police as part of a pilot project to prevent crime. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/8164697.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/8164697.stm They can arrest you before you've even THOUGHT of committing a crime. Not as a 'civil libitarian' but as an ordinary human I find this disturbing. I don't know how you solve the problem of these mostly 'low level' criminal activities, but maybe they should park those trucks on the doorstep of some major international banks. Isn't this where the real harm to society is being done?
- Semiapies 17y agoJudging by the comments here, a lot of HN commentors would welcome surveillance, especially if targeted at poor, minority neighborhoods. The kindest thing I can think to say is that when the cops get the address wrong, they only intimidate the Hell out of the people inside and maybe scare them into moving, as opposed to the usual practice of smashing down their doors, assaulting them, and sometimes shooting them. Considering the ridiculously flimsy pretenses narcotics officers can use to get warrants to raid homes, the fact that police would resort to something like this when they can't justify arresting someone should be a waving, neon-red flag.
- pbhj 17y ago"They can arrest you before you've even THOUGHT of committing a crime." You arrest (halt people from continuing in their normal activity) in order to determine if a crime has been committed or to determine if the person halted is prima facie guilty and accessory or privy to information about a known crime. It's almost a truism that the police should arrest those who are not able to be proven guilty or are not guilty of any crime. When I've been stopped, yes it makes me nervous, but it also affirms to me that the police are actually taking part in tracing criminals and attempting to reduce crime.
- mrshoe 17y agoMy college roommate's dad worked with microfinance companies in India. Every month, a representative from the company would go from town to town collecting monthly payments from the borrowers. Sometimes the borrower would claim that they could not pay. In that case, the collector was instructed to just sit down and wait for them to pay. The shame of having the collector sitting in their village was overwhelming, and payments were usually made within the hour. A lot of people try to get away with bad stuff because nobody they know is watching. I'm glad that there are no Anonymous Cowards on HN. It's always interesting to see how differently people behave when their peers' focus is turned on them.
- dan_the_welder 17y agoYou can still be an Anonymous Coward here if there is nothing in your user:about.
- calcnerd256 17y agoor if you have a spare openId lying around
- electromagnetic 17y agoThat doesn't just work with debters, I've done it to electronics retailers who've jerked me around. I was told my phone had water damage when it was in fact over heating, and then they somehow managed to lose it when I asked for it to be returned. I sat in the phone store for about 3 hours watching the guy, and the store front was about 20sqft with a bench. I got a brand new replacement phone out of that one. I've also sat on the line with my cell phone operator for near an hour because they wiped my credit early. I got a full refund and they extended my top-up time by two weeks. People willingly stress themselves out, staying relaxed and using this to your advantage can help you anywhere.
- Semiapies 17y agoA thoughtless person might think there's a difference between being harmlessly stubborn with someone who owes you money and the cops parking a brightly marked armored vehicle in front of someone's house because of supposed offenses.