Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

abcnews.go.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 117 posts

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#31

Post by Groxx »

sophacles wrote: post #24
Groxx wrote: post #4

There's just something massively wrong with "public servants" claiming they can't be photographed while performing a public service. Bullshit. There would be no complaints if some of them weren't incriminating abusive cops. Notice how many of the cases against photographing are in potential (or blatant) police-abuse situations. The public and the government should be applauding citizens for helping to maintain contro…

Yes, there would be complaints. Once they adjust to the video taping they will forget the tapes are there and act as they would anyway. The big difference comes because the douches would get caught sooner, as everyone would know a complaint would actually have merit. The cynic in me worries that it would work out this way instead tho: As video of the cops being douches becomes commonplace, people just come to accept…

I fear that as well, but if there's enough pressure, the "always on tape" mentality might win out, and good cops could get the recognition they deserve, as well as significantly more evidence (and more accurate - witnesses are pretty bad) for many crimes. If nothing else, it's better than the alternative; when it's your word vs a cop, who's going to be trusted? Disallowing this would encourage abusers.

Honestly, I see this as a publicly-run oversight committee. It should be hard to be a cop - a lot of power and respect goes with the title (typically). And if there are fewer abusers, that's likely to increase.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#32

Post by steiger »

Groxx wrote: post #4

There's just something massively wrong with "public servants" claiming they can't be photographed while performing a public service. Bullshit. There would be no complaints if some of them weren't incriminating abusive cops. Notice how many of the cases against photographing are in potential (or blatant) police-abuse situations. The public and the government should be applauding citizens for helping to maintain contro…

I agree completely. Taping and photographing policemen actions during service is a GOOD thing. Helps to control police abuse.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#33

Post by arethuza »

politicalist wrote: post #17
buzzblog wrote: post #8

These prosecutions aren't just wrong, they're un-American. How police and prosecutors sworn to uphold the law can abuse it to this extent boggles the mind.

The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, so it unfortunately looks very American. (If "American" refers to the US alone.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...

Good grief - that's almost 1%. I thought the UK rate was rather high but that's about five times more!

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#34

Post by flatline »

Groxx wrote: post #4

There's just something massively wrong with "public servants" claiming they can't be photographed while performing a public service. Bullshit. There would be no complaints if some of them weren't incriminating abusive cops. Notice how many of the cases against photographing are in potential (or blatant) police-abuse situations. The public and the government should be applauding citizens for helping to maintain contro…

On the other hand, the plethora of police abuse videos is causing them to have much less impact. How many riots have we seen like the Rodney King incident? Even the response to the BART incident last year was relatively quiet. The issue around the individual's right to photograph the cops has garnered more attention.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#36

Post by DanielBMarkham »

CodeMage wrote: post #28
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #2

I wish I had ten upvotes for this. Or a hundred. I love devil's advocate, so I'll say this just as a way of keeping things in perspective: not a lot of folks would want people videotaping everything they did at work and putting it on YouTube (along with criticisms) I know it would drive me nuts. Society as a whole is going to have to go through some major contortions as people get their heads wrapped around the idea…

Society as a whole is going to have to go through some major contortions as people get their heads wrapped around the idea that everything -- and I mean everything -- is going to be digitized and recorded. That is precisely one of the things that give me the shivers about the society today. I understand Mr. Graber's motivation. I also agree wholeheartedly that the "reasonable expectation of privacy" rule has to be ap…

Don't sound like a nut-job to me.

It's insane the degree to which people are willing to record and distribute every little bit of their lives. And by insane, I don't mean a good thing.

The techno-wonks will tell you that it's all evolving to some kind of wonderful singularity nirvana.

But do we really want to become The Borg? Because either we either fiercely keep our lives and thoughts private and personal, or we share everything. Right now there's middle ground, but it's eroding quickly.

Seriously. I don't think most people have a clue to how they are giving up their personalities and inner lives or what impact this is going to have on the world.

It's like boiling the frog. Each year we share more and more -- first blogs, then tweets, then FB status updates, then location-aware tweets. Soon it will be lifetime webcams that you wear. Each little step folks come out and try to say something like "gee! It's getting hot in here! The water is going to boil!" but then they get shot down with a variation of 1) it's just a small change, and 2) it does more good than harm.

Water's going to boil soon, folks. Hope you like it that way. 'Cause there is no stopping it.

(It's like if we all got super-powers over the space of 50 years. People think super-powers would rock, but in reality the world would go into the shitter. People would be flying all over the place, knocking of banks, etc. It would be a catastrophe. But it would happen so slowly that there wouldn't really be a moment that you could point your finger at and say there! There is the place where we crossed the line. It's always little good, little bad, works for some folks, sucks for others, etc)

It may be a great thing that we're moving towards. But it's not going to be human.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#38

Post by arethuza »

The UK equivalent:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/21/police-search...

According to the Terrorism Act you aren't allowed to take pictures of police if the pictures might be of use to a terrorist - which seems to have been translated into a blanket ban on taking any pictures.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#39

Post by rmc »

BrandonM wrote: post #30
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't thought about videotaping interrogations. Interesting. Perhaps the question is: what parts of police activity shouldn't be videotaped and published, and why? Undercover busts maybe. You can't spend five years growing a policeman into what looks like a drug dealer only to have him outed on YouTube in ten seconds. Or do we get rid of all undercover police work? Need to think about that some more.

Stop making the consumption of drugs illegal, and it's no longer necessary to have a policeman that looks like a drug dealer.

Even if you make drugs legal, we still need undercover operations to deal with criminal organisations. What about the groups that kill people for money, or extort 'protection money', or groups that rob banks? Unless you want to make murder, arson and theft legal, you need to go undercover in these groups.
Post reply on HN