A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations • Hacker News Board

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#121

Post by rocqua » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 10:05 PM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #12

eric_h wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will be footage recorded by those cameras that will drastically impinge on the privacy of civilians should it be shared publicly. It's a nice idea, but I think it has some pretty significant potential for downsides.

I find this idea very toxic. If the state can send an agent somewhere, then that place and the goings-on that were witnessed are a matter of public record. If that isn't so, and isn't sacred, then we're saying that secrecy in policing is normal, and that goes against hundreds of years of progress in the common-law tradition. In order for people to enjoy the kind of privacy you discuss, we need to have non-state suppo…

Police catch a child-rapist in the act. Does that go online? What about a normal rape?

Someone's husband falsely but convincingly accuses them of domestic abuse, later they are cleared of all charges. Does this accusation go on youtube?

Someone attempted suicide, and then called the cops because he didn't want to go through with it.

Someone was inadvertently caught on camera in a gay bar when it was raided for drugs.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#122

Post by Clubber » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 10:10 PM UTC

iamcasen wrote: post #79

irrational wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they don't know. I had a coworker who was recently arrested for child porn. Despite knowing and working with him for years there was no indication that he wasn't "squeaky clean".

People get arrested for CP all the time, even when they are completely innocent. Just being arrested doesn't mean anything. If they are sentenced, and serve time, that's something different. You can get popped for CP just by downloading what you think isn't CP from a torrent client. IMO you should only get arrested for CP if you are paying to access it, or producing it. As it is now, it's just a tool for the police t…

>As it is now, it's just a tool for the police to criminalize whoever they feel like.

There is actually something to this. It's the latest moral justification for around-the-law searches. Last few decades it was drugs. Police can pretty much search anyone if they reasonably believe they have drugs. This can get stretched into anything, such has having a few hundred bucks in cash. This means police can stop and search just about any car.

Next it was terrorism, so police can warranty search anyone or anything at airports, bus stations, train terminals, border crossings, just about anything. These powers aren't limited to terrorist activities either, but terrorism was the justification.

Now, computers yield more information that vehicles, so police need a way to extend their powers to search anyone's computer. Enter child porn.

As a general rule, anytime the government prohibits or extends their power "for the children," it's a huge red flag. Child porn fits into this category. It's hard to object to expansion of power to battle this too. I mean think of the children (ignoring their dystopian future).

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#123

Post by gwern » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 10:11 PM UTC

Rossi's Metallic Laws of social program evaluation ( https://www.gwern.net/docs/sociology/1987-rossi ):

- The Iron Law of Evaluation: "The expected value of any net impact assessment of any large scale social program is zero."

- The Stainless Steel Law of Evaluation: "The better designed the impact assessment of a social program, the more likely is the resulting estimate of net impact to be zero."

- The Brass Law of Evaluation: "The more social programs are designed to change individuals, the more likely the net impact of the program will be zero."

- The Zinc Law of Evaluation: "Only those programs that are likely to fail are evaluated."

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#124

Post by Clubber » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 10:15 PM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #84

eric_h wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hell, when the Mayor of NYC said something about it, at the next event, cops turned their backs on him. > These are not "decent people". I really don't think it's that clear cut. The cops who turned their backs aren't all, necessarily, bad people. The insularity of police culture generates significant peer pressure for cops to cover each other's backs and to protect their mutual perceived safety and self interest.…

An enormous amount of evil that has occurred in this world has involved peer pressure. And all evil has extenuating circumstances. I understand that to prevent evil we should understand the reasoning behind why people do bad things. But this doesn't make the people or acts less evil. Peer pressure or not, protesting accountability for your group after a member committed manslaughter is a bad act.

>Peer pressure or not, protesting accountability for your group after a member committed manslaughter is a bad act.

I believe they were protesting the generalizations he insinuated about the entire police department. I found it distasteful, but the good cops had a reason to be pissed.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#125

Post by Clubber » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 10:19 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #113

eric_h wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hell, when the Mayor of NYC said something about it, at the next event, cops turned their backs on him. > These are not "decent people". I really don't think it's that clear cut. The cops who turned their backs aren't all, necessarily, bad people. The insularity of police culture generates significant peer pressure for cops to cover each other's backs and to protect their mutual perceived safety and self interest.…

You should sprinkle some more "I think" and "I believe" and "I'm under the impression" when stating your opinions, because none of what you say is anything more than speculation and just-so stories.

When writing an opinion piece, at least in formal writing which has higher standards, writers are trained not to do that. At least in the writing classes I took ages ago.

Here's why:

https://preciseedit.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/in-my-opinion-i...

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#126

Post by comicjk » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 10:21 PM UTC

rocqua wrote: post #120

vladislav wrote: post #37

1) The feedback loop is not just being filmed on the job, but the repercussions of being filmed while doing something illegal and being punished for it. It might take time for this to sink in, especially for the bad apples. 2) Having body cams on all police officers simply makes sense, regardless of the immediate effect. Knowing exactly (or more about) what happened when a citizen armed on behalf of the state interac…

There is a decent privacy argument to be made against body cams. Not just for the officers themselves, but also for the people approached by the officers. In many cases, when police need to get involved people aren't showing their best sides. Recordings of that kind of stuff are rather sensitive. You gotta remember that body cams can't just be used against corrupt police, they can just as easily be used against the p…

This seems obvious to me, but maybe it isn't based on the implementations of body cameras I'm hearing about: the police should not have access to the videos! A camera should automatically upload its contents to off-site encrypted servers, with the courts having sole access to the decryption keys. No one should be able to access the data without a court order.

It's strange to me that, when faced with problems of official power vs privacy, people never seem to remember the idea of warrants, which are baked into our legal system and have been used to address privacy problems for centuries.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#127

Post by alexandercrohde » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 10:21 PM UTC

theptip wrote: post #5

TL;DR: Previous sociology research had suggested that filming people makes them more civil. New research on fails to replicate this result in the context of police body cameras. Doesn't seem like a very interesting result to me; I hadn't previously heard of the "calming effect" as a reason to use body cameras. The primary reason to use cameras is to increase accountability, so that police officers are less able to ge…

Exactly.

(How is this at the bottom? I read every single response to this thread waiting to find somebody pointing this out.)

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#128

Post by djrogers » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 10:25 PM UTC

fao_ wrote: post #110

s73ver_ wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be shocked if the unredacted video still exists.

It would be illegal otherwise, wouldn't it? Redaction of evidence

You would have to prove a) that it was evidence of a crime, and b) the police had reason to believe or know it was such.

In the absence of laws requiring full transparency and access to body cam footage, the body cams are just likely to be abused.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#129

Post by EliRivers » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 10:28 PM UTC

frogpelt wrote: post #96

will_brown wrote: post #60

I was recently the victim of an armed kidnapping, escaping only by jumping out of my own car from the driver seat while in gear with the gunman in the passenger seat. By the time the police arrived, my attacker escaped in my car and the first words out of the sergeants mouth was “cut the crap, quit jerking us around, what really happened?” Sure enough I was in a jurisdiction that only two months prior was equipped wi…

How was the case handled? Did they find the gunman? Was he charged? I ask because, honestly, I don't think I care what they police say when they first walk up as long as they solve the crime, catch the perpetrator. The problem we have nowadays is that we get to see "how the (justice system) sausage is made" a lot more than we used to. And it's disturbing. But those guys out there with uniforms on are the ones trying…

It's easy to be an armchair quarterback.

I hear this every time someone with a difficult job has it pointed out to them that they're doing it badly. They don't even pretend that somehow makes it acceptable to do the job badly; I honestly don't know what effect saying it is supposed to have.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#130

Post by gozur88 » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 10:31 PM UTC

s73ver_ wrote: post #105

frogpelt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was the case handled? Did they find the gunman? Was he charged? I ask because, honestly, I don't think I care what they police say when they first walk up as long as they solve the crime, catch the perpetrator. The problem we have nowadays is that we get to see "how the (justice system) sausage is made" a lot more than we used to. And it's disturbing. But those guys out there with uniforms on are the ones trying…

I feel being shocked at how this person was treated is not just "armchair quarterbacking". Given the power and trust we place in police, I don't feel it's unreasonable to expect they treat people with respect.

... and that they're punished pretty severely when they betray that trust.