People Staring at Computers

reading through the FOIA document, LEO was very clear about which laws were broken.

No, it still applies. What types of bug fixes and features get prioritized? Are certain features gated? Are there use cases considered too niche to support?

Nothing exists in a vacuum. The "system" isn't just the code — it's also the organization that writes and supports the software.

My cousin does something like this as well. I do not, I'm a full-time engineer, family breadwinner, and a homeowner. We talked about our respective budgets a few months ago...they could not be more different. He doesn't have any of the major line items on my monthly budget, which requires on the order of $2,500/mo at a bare minimum, which is easily met by working for 40 hours a week and drawing a dependable paycheck. He does odd jobs, usually various forms of graphic design with Photoshop or Illustrator - making up new menus for a restaurant, logos or website headers and design elements for a small business, T-shirt design for a church retreat or sports league, photoshopping a portrait for someone's anniversary, anything where you'd want someone 'artsy' but don't know who to call. A job might be between $50 and $500, the jobs and contacts come and go. Sometimes he's busy day after day, sometimes he'll go weeks without a job.

Weeks without a job, I say! How do you survive? Well, he sublets from a couple friends, but isn't on the lease himself; he usually keeps a month ahead of rent but sometimes can't find the money and will 'get behind', they're generally accommodating; moreso than a bank. He has no mortgage, no car, no car insurance, no car payments, doesn't need a line item for gas and car maintenance because he doesn't drive or commute, doesn't have expensive hobbies, has no cell phone bills (uses a prepaid phone that he tops up and uses as needed/as budgets allow), internet is part of his sublet room, has no TV, no garbage/recycling bills, no lawn care or other services, no home insurance...Critically, he has no health insurance - which sucks come tax season and would really suck if he wasn't a 25 year old in fine health who thinks he's invincible. Relatedly to being an invincible 25-year-old, he has no IRA or 401k.

Groceries cost about $200/month, his sublet of one room costs about the same, he doesn't have any other dependents, and if you don't want them there's not really anything else that someone needs to buy. To hire any professional for much of anything costs about $500, in a big city that's basically the minimum price of a day or two of skilled labor. If he can get one job that will pay him that much in any given month, his minimum budget needs are met.

Someday, he says, he'll want to move out and settle down and start on a career progression, but he's tried the 40 hour wage slave model and loathed it, and his lifestyle in the big city is fun for now. If by "big city living" you mean all the budget items you'd expect of a homeowner in a small town, but scaled up to downtown living by means of a 6-figure salary, no, this lifestyle won't pay those bills.

What is CCTV? What is Google Photos?

On YT, there are these public photographers, mostly doing cop watch and or audits of public buildings. They exist in a space where the First Amendment and SCOTUS ruling public photography is a protected activity.

One evening, I binged on some of these out of the usual board, morbid interest and came to the conclusion it's all about having a target.

Being bagged and tagged by a faceless blob, corporate machine, neural network, whatever, is one thing. Kind of goes in to some archive, we know it's there, but we also can't really assign anything other than nebulous intent to the whole affair.

In short, there is not much to respond to. And by that, I mean in the human way, face to face, or mind to mind.

On the other hand, there is some guy holding a camera! Or she is RIGHT THERE with her camera! Now, there is a person, the whole activity gets personified, and intent seems to flow like magic, as do the questions!

People have major boundary issues too. Many confuse standing in a public space while filming private property with actually somehow violating that property. Others do not want to be filmed, and some get it and just move away. Others have control issues and end up the star of the show, despite very clearly not wanting that outcome.

So that is one theory. When a big entity does it, somehow we've got a level of trust or acceptance buffering responses. At the least, we don't have a clear target to engage about it, or assign intent to it.

When a specific person does this thing, we do have that target, and it all being more human brings out more humanity.

Edit: There is also potential guilt, or fear associated with having a specific target.

When a specific person is making a record of our activities on the job, or in a public space, there exists a potential for judgement of some kind. Both by the photographer, and or their audience, somehow. We recognize that person could amplify that which would otherwise go ignored in the noise.

Now, that person could do exactly nothing too, and our actions in response have a lot to do with whatever outcome ends up out there for public viewing. "You are gonna be famous on YT" packs a punch. People worry!

They know they could be the next "Dog Shit Girl" or they worry about something they do, have done, want to do, and whether amplification of that changes risk / reward for it, whatever it is, be it merely inadvisable due to some social norm or other being in play or flat out illegal somehow.