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Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

watchthewatchers.net

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Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#61

Post by ashwagary »

Ralo wrote: post #12
gleenn wrote: post #3

I wonder how hard it is to download the whole database from this source. Would be cool if they released a straight sqlite file or something to do analysis.

The site doesn't seem to be thrown together very well, you can dump the entire DB by searching for a space character [0] (assuming every officer should have a space in their full name). It dumps as a nice JSON format with all the details. All the headshots can easily be extracted by appending " https://watchthewatchers.net/headshots/ " to the values from the "imagePath" value in the JSON dump. [0] https://watchthewat…

Code quality and potential security issues aside, I don't think the creators would mind any member of the public having a full copy.

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#62

Post by haswell »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #60
cs02rm0 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know (I'm just a Brit watching from afar), but I'd assume the LAPD have databases full of information on citizens, of course not shared with the public web, only shared with police forces, mostly. The public web though is how citizens share information with each other, I'm not sure excluding police officers would make it better. Seeking an equivalence here also strikes me as a false equivalence - the power ba…

So how would you feel if there was a database of tech employees? Tech companies have absolute power over people’s lives and a huge amount of private information used for malicious purposes. Would you be happy if it said “Here are tim and james, here is where they live, make them accountable!”?

> Tech companies have absolute power over people’s lives

The kind of power wielded by tech companies is not the same kind of power wielded by the police.

Comparing them directly in this way runs into some major false equivalence problems.

I still see major potential for abuse of such a database and I’m not claiming it is without issue.

But logging an interaction with an armed public servant who has the power to detain/arrest you, who works for an organization that has a worrisome tendency towards shooting civilians, and whose role is to be a sworn servant and protector of the public - cannot be casually compared with some vague notion of “big tech has your data”.

For sale of argument, if we did dignify that comparison, the first problem is that the vast majority of workers in tech have no such power at all. The rank and file are generally powerless. Opportunities for abuse are generally concentrated to a small number of people with access. The same cannot be said about the police force.

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#63

Post by smcl »

drekk wrote: post #58
diordiderot wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... To a certain extent they do. You're not gonna rob a store if there's a cop standing outside

I love that the American solution to fire is... fire? We tried putting grown-ups with guns in schools after Columbine, and somehow more guns hasn't solved the violence problem. I don't think putting a cop outside each store will stop theft, especially when wage theft alone represents a larger loss than all larcenies, burglaries, and auto theft combined. [0] > in the first 24 days of 2015, police in the US fatally sho…

I don't think diordiderot is claiming more cops = better. They're giving one example of how police could stop crime, but one that is self-evidently not scalable. One cop per storefront would cause the number of police to explode, and even then only covers a specific subset of crime (i.e. I think they'd agree with you).

It is a common complaint that the police tend not to prevent crimes but instead just show up afterwards and at best shrug and move on (at worst they do pretty gruesome stuff like sexually harass the victim or shoot the person who called them in). So I'd agree that more police or more guns probably won't cure the causes of crime.

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#64

Post by wongarsu »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #60
cs02rm0 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know (I'm just a Brit watching from afar), but I'd assume the LAPD have databases full of information on citizens, of course not shared with the public web, only shared with police forces, mostly. The public web though is how citizens share information with each other, I'm not sure excluding police officers would make it better. Seeking an equivalence here also strikes me as a false equivalence - the power ba…

So how would you feel if there was a database of tech employees? Tech companies have absolute power over people’s lives and a huge amount of private information used for malicious purposes. Would you be happy if it said “Here are tim and james, here is where they live, make them accountable!”?

> if there was a database of tech employees

You mean kind of like LinkedIn?

Of course LinkedIn has the whole consent thing going for it, people make their accounts there willingly (if we ignore the whole address-book farming they do/did). On the other hand the typical LinkedIn profile contains way more information, about people who are way less critical to public safety. But neither this LAPD database nor LinkedIn tell you where people live.

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#65

Post by smcl »

drekk wrote: post #54
localplume wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what an insane take. police has existed in every form of society and it is necessary for a civilized society to function. its like being against roads, or hospitals, or public transportation. the dichotomy of LA crime being out of control and LA people being so anti-cop will never fail to amuse me.

Our modern system of policing traces its roots to slave patrols and is a few hundred years old, at most. For the overwhelming majority of human history it was an ad-hoc community organization more akin to a watch. We get police from the Greek polis (city or polity) by way of the Latin politia (citizenship). The US idea of a civil force salaried and charged with deterring crime is something we inherited from England w…

Minor nitpick, the agency infamous for gangs is the LASD which is separate. The LAPD is infamous in other ways though, Rodney King is going to stick in many people's minds for a long time, and there's an enormous "Corruption and misconduct" section in their wikipedia page that is full of some really awful stuff.

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#66

Post by jackstraw14 »

smcl wrote: post #59
atoav wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police forces in many other nations can more or less be trusted to provide somewhat accurate data. When they don't, it often becomes a scandal. In the US them not providing accurate data seems more or less the rule. I once wanted to compare the numbers of bullets fired during service between different nations. There are nations where every single bullet that has been fired during service is accounted for and categori…

> If I were a LAPD official I would see this as a sign that the public doesn't trust my numbers and I would try my best to figure out a way to change this I 100% believe you, and if I was an LAPD official I would feel the same way. However police themselves probably won’t react like this. I don’t think the existence of this tool in and of itself will scare them into behaving better - they’ll probably just try their b…

>I don’t think the existence of this tool in and of itself will scare them into behaving better - they’ll probably just try their best to work around it

they pretty much certainly will not behave better. the LAPD will always exist as long as LA does, and it will always have the power.

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#67

Post by distant_hat »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #60
cs02rm0 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know (I'm just a Brit watching from afar), but I'd assume the LAPD have databases full of information on citizens, of course not shared with the public web, only shared with police forces, mostly. The public web though is how citizens share information with each other, I'm not sure excluding police officers would make it better. Seeking an equivalence here also strikes me as a false equivalence - the power ba…

So how would you feel if there was a database of tech employees? Tech companies have absolute power over people’s lives and a huge amount of private information used for malicious purposes. Would you be happy if it said “Here are tim and james, here is where they live, make them accountable!”?

I don't remember the last time some tech company employees got together to beat someone to death and the companies mounted a defense for those employees.

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#68

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

distant_hat wrote: post #67
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how would you feel if there was a database of tech employees? Tech companies have absolute power over people’s lives and a huge amount of private information used for malicious purposes. Would you be happy if it said “Here are tim and james, here is where they live, make them accountable!”?

I don't remember the last time some tech company employees got together to beat someone to death and the companies mounted a defense for those employees.

Facebook employees triggered a genocide in Myanmar, does that count?

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#69

Post by briandear »

haswell wrote: post #62
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how would you feel if there was a database of tech employees? Tech companies have absolute power over people’s lives and a huge amount of private information used for malicious purposes. Would you be happy if it said “Here are tim and james, here is where they live, make them accountable!”?

> Tech companies have absolute power over people’s lives The kind of power wielded by tech companies is not the same kind of power wielded by the police. Comparing them directly in this way runs into some major false equivalence problems. I still see major potential for abuse of such a database and I’m not claiming it is without issue. But logging an interaction with an armed public servant who has the power to detai…

A tendency towards shooting civilians?

Here’s every officer involved shooting in Los Angeles for 2022:

https://da.lacounty.gov/reports/ois/2022

When reading the reports it seems that those shootings were not unreasonable given the circumstances.

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#70

Post by vuln »

haswell wrote: post #62
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how would you feel if there was a database of tech employees? Tech companies have absolute power over people’s lives and a huge amount of private information used for malicious purposes. Would you be happy if it said “Here are tim and james, here is where they live, make them accountable!”?

> Tech companies have absolute power over people’s lives The kind of power wielded by tech companies is not the same kind of power wielded by the police. Comparing them directly in this way runs into some major false equivalence problems. I still see major potential for abuse of such a database and I’m not claiming it is without issue. But logging an interaction with an armed public servant who has the power to detai…

> The kind of power wielded by tech companies is not the same kind of power wielded by the police.

Police and Law Enforcement salivate at the data and control Social Media/Tech companies have.

One could look to the twitter files to see how much the US government attempted and successfully controlled a public company to push narratives of the current regime and or censor dissenting views.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files

Some tinfoils out there belief the Facebook (now Facebook) was originally LifeLog.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog

The US gov and LEO have made social media a _national security issue_ which gives the government inferred power to abuse the data collected by these companies.

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