Activists find camera inside box on power pole near union organizer’s home • Hacker News Board

Re: Activists find camera inside box on power pole near union organizer’s home

#61

Post by throwanem » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 2:27 AM UTC

burfog wrote: post #53

koverstreet wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are democratic organizations that exist to advocate on behalf of their members. Of course they should be involved in politics.

Suppose they were republican organizations. Would you feel the same? Picture this: You take a job writing software for camera boxes on power poles. It happens to be direct employment with a police department, and it isn't management, so somehow you wind up forced to join the police union. Every election, they give millions of dollars to the republican candidates. They supported Bush. This year, they give Trump $42,00…

Not Democratic as in the party, democratic as in the members vote on what the union does.

Re: Activists find camera inside box on power pole near union organizer’s home

#62

Post by metrokoi » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 2:28 AM UTC

koverstreet wrote: post #23

burfog wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That goes the other way too, if not more so: The union should stay out of such political matters; especially if they expect their continued funding to be above political reproach. That funding is a private tax, backed by force of law, imposed on the income of the workers. Via political "donation" a large part of it goes to politicians, ensuring that the politicians continue to allow it. This is deeply corrupt. We hav…

Unions are democratic organizations that exist to advocate on behalf of their members. Of course they should be involved in politics.

Unions often don't represent the beliefs of their members, they usually represent the beliefs and goals of the highest ranking members (and sometimes the people that pay them off, unions are not exempt from corruption). Sometimes the goals of the leaders line up with the goals of the majority, sometimes not. When I was in a union, many items were decided without a vote and no effort was put in to informing new members on how to be represented within the union.

I should also add I don't think unions should not be involved in politics; I think they are used as crutch for democratic representation. The real solution is removing corporate lobbying.

Re: Activists find camera inside box on power pole near union organizer’s home

#63

Post by thunkpad » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 2:28 AM UTC

burfog wrote: post #53

koverstreet wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are democratic organizations that exist to advocate on behalf of their members. Of course they should be involved in politics.

Suppose they were republican organizations. Would you feel the same? Picture this: You take a job writing software for camera boxes on power poles. It happens to be direct employment with a police department, and it isn't management, so somehow you wind up forced to join the police union. Every election, they give millions of dollars to the republican candidates. They supported Bush. This year, they give Trump $42,00…

As discussed above, police unions are a different beast.

And an explicitly partisan union would be a shot in the foot of the organizers. That's not exactly how you build solidarity.

Re: Activists find camera inside box on power pole near union organizer’s home

#64

Post by geofft » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 2:33 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #47

OpieCunningham wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money will only get you so far in your public facing political ambitions if you are politically incompetent (Bloomberg) or devoid of charisma (Steyer). But money got both of them to the stage.

> But money got both of them to the stage. So what? They lost comprehensively. The point of politics isn’t to be heard. It’s to win so you can get what you want done done. If being heard led to political change US politics would be a great deal more libertarian. You don’t just need to be heard you need to persuade people to believe what you believe and to vote for you. Money doesn’t do that. It buys you a bigger mega…

I'm not sure Bloomberg failed. He stepped in because he was afraid that Sanders or Warren would win, which would be bad for him personally. He's fine with Biden. Seems like a pretty effective return on investment to me.

The point of politics is to get what you want done done. You don't have to win to do that. In fact, if you can achieve your goals without spending four years of your life being president of the US, that sounds so much less stressful.

Re: Activists find camera inside box on power pole near union organizer’s home

#65

Post by blinkengus » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 2:33 AM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #56

blinkengus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet 1:1 odds that even if it were, ITS STILL ILLEGAL TO POINT A SURVEILLANCE CAMERA AT A HOUSE WITHOUT A WARRANT.

Chill on the allcaps, and there's quite a lot of precedent that anything visible by the public is fair game. For example, evidence you throw into the trash becomes public property once you put it out on the curb

Apologies, surveillance-state apologists get me worked up. Things done in public or in other locations without "an expectation of privacy" are legally fair game for evidence gathering. Pointing a camera toward a home which may have open windows, etc. is not unless there is a warrant for that kind of surveillance.

Re: Activists find camera inside box on power pole near union organizer’s home

#66

Post by geofft » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 2:40 AM UTC

smabie wrote: post #60

geofft wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a police union demands too much, they don't threaten their employer with going out of business the way private sector unions do. The private sector union is naturally constrained to saying, "We want to help you build a reliable business for the long term; treat us fairly and we will do good work." Sometimes, of course, they do better at this than other times, but it is never in a union's interest to impair the bus…

Aren't police unions similar to other government unions, like teachers unions then?

Yes, I think this argument applies to public sector unions as a whole. I think empirically, teachers' unions (and the postal worker's union, and so forth) have not been so, well, inclined to defend illegal and unconstitutional activity as police unions, so I'm not going to advocate as urgently for getting rid of them, but definitely they're also not quite like private sector unions for similar reasons.

(That said, both public schools and the post office have meaningful private-sector competitors, in the sense that the government can decide that they just don't need to fund so many teachers or postal workers anymore, and systems like vouchers for private schools make it look even more like a private-sector market.)

Re: Activists find camera inside box on power pole near union organizer’s home

#67

Post by rhizome » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 2:40 AM UTC

badRNG wrote: post #41

stefco_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how prevalent police unions are, and how incredibly quick they are to raise complaints, you'd hope for more self-awareness/solidarity and less hypocrisy.

There has always seemed to be an antagonistic relationship between police unions and trade unions. Police unions are often disallowed membership in so-called "big tent" unions due to their perceived past and alleged ongoing role in union-busting. Since the early 20th century, there hasn't been a meaningful reconciliation between the movements (and often, the role of police in general is perceived to be inherently ant…

I challenge you to find a sector of society to whom police (and their unions) are not antagonistic.

Re: Activists find camera inside box on power pole near union organizer’s home

#68

Post by eternalban » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

badRNG wrote: post #41

stefco_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how prevalent police unions are, and how incredibly quick they are to raise complaints, you'd hope for more self-awareness/solidarity and less hypocrisy.

There has always seemed to be an antagonistic relationship between police unions and trade unions. Police unions are often disallowed membership in so-called "big tent" unions due to their perceived past and alleged ongoing role in union-busting. Since the early 20th century, there hasn't been a meaningful reconciliation between the movements (and often, the role of police in general is perceived to be inherently ant…

What a fantastic link! This era in America's history is so rich with amazing stories, yet hardly ever touched by Hollywood ..

I followed Mother Jones to Industrial Workers of the World, which necessitated a visit to American Federation of Labor, which led to Knights of Labor and Terence Powderly and the Haymarket Riot:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_Riot

Btw, just from the logos and the titles of AFL and KoL, I got the sense that they were masonic in origin. And sure enough, per wikipedia, "[t]he Catholic Church had opposed the unions as too influenced by rituals of freemasonry. The Knights of Labor removed the words "The Holy and Noble Order of" from the name of the Knights of Labor in 1882 and abandoned any membership rituals associated with freemasonry."

LOL at the hand-shaking execs in the logo of AFL. Life is truly stranger than fiction.

Re: Activists find camera inside box on power pole near union organizer’s home

#69

Post by geofft » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 2:52 AM UTC

burfog wrote: post #53

koverstreet wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are democratic organizations that exist to advocate on behalf of their members. Of course they should be involved in politics.

Suppose they were republican organizations. Would you feel the same? Picture this: You take a job writing software for camera boxes on power poles. It happens to be direct employment with a police department, and it isn't management, so somehow you wind up forced to join the police union. Every election, they give millions of dollars to the republican candidates. They supported Bush. This year, they give Trump $42,00…

Lowercase D, but also, I'm sorry to break it to you, but where you work has an impact on the world whether or not you see union dues on your paycheck, and if you have the luxury to decide between jobs, you should decide based in part on that.

The whole idea of employment (as opposed to being a founder) is that you take a job that is lower risk and lower reward. Instead of taking home every penny (minus taxes) that your software sells for, you take home some fixed number in your employment agreement, and management (or shareholders) take the rest. If it doesn't sell, management's still on the hook for paying you until they lay you off, but if you work hard and do a fantastic job and write the world's most intuitive and reliable and high-fidelity software for camera boxes on power poles and you make them tens of thousands of dollars a year in sales, they keep the profits. Maybe they'll give you a small bonus.

Now, what do they do with the profits that you made them? Several things, but donating to politicians is probably one of them. Go look up your own CEO's donations and tell me if you mind.

Re: Activists find camera inside box on power pole near union organizer’s home

#70

Post by jessedhillon » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 2:59 AM UTC

herpderperator wrote: post #13

The camera in question is a Canon PTZ camera with 20x optical zoom, model VB-H41: https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/de...

They're also using Wago 222[0] style lever nuts, which are not common in the US. In my experience, US electricians use twist-style wire caps instead to create junctions.

[0] https://www.wago.com/us/wire-splicing-connectors/splicing-co...