The Police Data Accessibility Project

Post by thephyber » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 1:33 AM UTC

genghisjahn wrote: post #12

linsomniac wrote: post #3

Someone told me the other day that they had investigated the Minneapolis police blotter, after the reporting that the majority of people arrested were from out of state. That investigation turned up that the blotter didn't agree, and shortly after it was revealed the police issued an apology. Denver made a similar report, but have not made their arrest records public, for some reason...

Is there a link to this or is the some one that told you, like, totes trustworthy?

Post by thephyber » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 1:40 AM UTC

abellerose wrote: post #57

thephyber wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds similar to the "right to be forgotten" concept in EU law where citizens can complain to Google to have their records removed from the search engine, but there is no way to delete all data about the incident. I don't want to trivialize the pain a wrongful arrest ad bullying caused, but I think the solution to the underlying problem is more sunlight, not less. Without being able to see how many wrongful/unf…

Oh my life was ruined at the time and I had to leave for another university. So I like to think you're not trivializing it. Happened in the USA and so no way to have the right to be forgotten. I ended up changing my name.

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 1:59 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #44

toomuchtodo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I unaware of any legal authority one could use to remove public information from GitHub, even after expungement of the public record itself. These are not works covered under copyright that a DMCA takedown notice would apply to. You’re still correct that datasets such as these might need to be globally distributed, instead of hosted with a single commercial provider.

Criminal records are owned by the jurisdiction which served the case. These are governed by state and federal laws. You are also subject to severe defamation lawsuits and anyone contributing to this repo can be held personally culpable. This is not about copyright. EDIT I'm not going to do your legal homework for you, but this is South Carolina, for example. As stated above, each of the 50 United States has various l…

Post by chaps » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 2:12 AM UTC

dogman144 wrote: post #66

chaps wrote: post #53

Okay, so some PROBABLY BAD THINGS about this project. I'm 100% convinced that this group is an astroturfing project, but I don't know to what end. 1. This group believes that police officer names should be redacted from all police documents. They also think that Court case IDs should be redacted because it might be PII. 2. The owner of the group is accepting police officers into their ranks, and suggestions of inviti…

Copy and pasting from a related reply within the group: ``` 1) There's been no decision on redactions. We're still standing up proj mgmt tools after 1000 members in 4 days, much less "this will be in it, this will be in it" 2) Someone else, not the owner, was largely advocating for police inclusion b/c of the impact of the data. Again, no decision made here about "no cops/yes cops" 3) Law professor is the legal lead,…

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 2:41 AM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #21

toomuchtodo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What law would be violated? What law would one use to infringe freedom of speech to continue to publish these records as a private citizen? Failing all else, one can host outside the jurisdiction.

It’s not always about flexing our rights when it comes at the expense of others. Sometimes it’s about treating others the way you would like to be treated. Even if you’re under no obligation to treat them kindly. Even if you’re entitled not to treat them kindly. Surely there is a way to achieve the stated goal of the project without the collateral damage of exposing information that individuals might, for whatever re…