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Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

ilga.gov

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Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#141

Post by nathan_compton »

screye wrote: post #112

It's sad that the advent of new technology is never viewed as an opportunity to reduce violence. If the police can put themselves out of harms way using a drone, doesn't that help with peaceful de-escalation? A drone opens up options like tasers and pepper spray, that would have otherwise been impossible for police to deploy at a distance. If facial recognition can be done with near 100% accuracy, then what's wrong w…

"Peaceful de-escalation" is a funny way to describe shooting a dude with a drone.

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#142

Post by mulmen »

nathan_compton wrote: post #135
mulmen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the argument for federal laws but honestly I think it is misguided to want state laws promoted to a national level immediately. This is how law in the US evolves. The patchwork is a feature. A federal government with the agility to implement this law at a national level would have far too much power. The system is working.

Doesn't this kind of depend on the law? Do you really think "guns and and facial recognition on drones" is the kind of thing we have to do experiments on? I kind of get where you're coming from in the sense that it is scary for so much power over so many people to be concentrated in such a small place, but, on the other hand, when the case is simple or the moral calculus is clear enough, I think we ought not feel a s…

No, it doesn't depend on the law. I think all laws need experimentation regardless of the subject matter because no law is perfect. I also think a federal government that can quickly enact laws is far too powerful an entity to exist in a country of 330,000,000 people. While some "good" laws might get enacted sooner "bad" laws will as well. Remember we are a country guilty of genocide.

As an exercise try writing down the name of all the politicians you can off the top of your head. Then consider if you like and agree with them or not. Then ask yourself if you really want an agile federal government.

Thinking only the laws you like will make it to a federal law free of unintended side effect is naive fantasy at best. The laboratory of democracy is working. Please, lobby your representatives, get involved, but don't confuse lack of federal law for malfunction.

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#143

Post by ehvatum »

banana_feather wrote: post #119
ryandrake wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It's helpful to remember: for every law you like and want promoted to the federal level, there's another law you probably don't like that someone else thinks would be great to promote to the federal level. Although moving states to flee terrible laws is a burden, it's not as much of a burden as fleeing your entire country. Laws should be as local as practically possible.

> Laws should be as local as practically possible. You guys are every lawyer's dream. Yes, please, continue believing you're following some great American tradition of strong local government by submitting to the whims of your local Boss Tweed and the five judges in your county, I play golf with them once a month. Oh, you have a legal problem and need to navigate the rats nest of weird local laws? Great, you can choo…

[flagged]

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#144

Post by abeppu »

xtreme wrote: post #83
abeppu wrote: post #51

Can we get a federal bill with the same prohibitions? It would be absurd if the right to be free from fear of automated death from the skies is left to a patchwork of state and local restrictions. Irresponsible arguments that I would totally not be surprised to hear to push in the opposite direction: - If law enforcement doesn't have armed drones, we live in a world where only the criminals have armed drones. - Somet…

What are good counters to these arguments?

I'll bite:

The response to "then only criminals will have armed drones" is: Ok, let's give all the cops a lot of drugs and child porn, because it would be bad if only criminals had that stuff, and maybe we can give them anthrax and components for a dirty bomb, because it would be bad if only terrorists had those. Or maybe, that's a broken line of reasoning and law enforcement isn't a war in which enemies must be met with equal means.

The answer to "sometimes police have to use deadly force; isn't it better if their lives aren't at stake is": We live in a world where kids having fun on the internet will have other people 'swatted'. This is only possible because police are willing to arm themselves and suddenly and forcefully enter a situation where they have _no credible information_ about any kind of threat. Until they demonstrate some capacity to consistently identify whether a situation requires deadly force, it's irresponsible to give them more of it.

The response to the "police who use deadly force inappropriately may have felt their life was at risk" is ... all the videos of police killings where an unarmed person is running away, an unarmed person is already effectively restrained, etc etc. Police use deadly force even when there is clearly no threat. Making police safer isn't the solution; the rest of us need to be safe from the police.

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#145

Post by DonaldPShimoda »

piperswe wrote: post #35
DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The title confused me a bit, Illinois isn't prohibiting weapon recognition on drones, it's prohibiting putting weapons on drones. This is normal title style for a news headline and has been for a very long time; the comma here is short for "and".

"weapons" should be missing the "s" to reduce ambiguity in that case. Right now it reads like (weapons) and (facial recognition). "weapons recognition" doesn't quite sound right to me.

> Right now it reads like (weapons) and (facial recognition).

That's because that is what it says. The parent comment's confusion was due to both parsing the comma as a list separator instead of a conjunction as well as not recognizing the implication of the "s" at the end of "weapons".

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#147

Post by dpratt »

abeppu wrote: post #51

Can we get a federal bill with the same prohibitions? It would be absurd if the right to be free from fear of automated death from the skies is left to a patchwork of state and local restrictions. Irresponsible arguments that I would totally not be surprised to hear to push in the opposite direction: - If law enforcement doesn't have armed drones, we live in a world where only the criminals have armed drones. - Somet…

There is no way this would ever even pass initial consideration at the Federal level, in that there is no incentive for the Federal government to limit the weaponry available to it's law enforcement apparatus. They would see such a law as containing no upside for the government itself, and therefore it will be, at best, laughed out of committee and more likely any Congressman or Senator who proposes it will mysteriously find that a lot of his or her donors are suddenly turning on him.

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#148

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

abeppu wrote: post #51

Can we get a federal bill with the same prohibitions? It would be absurd if the right to be free from fear of automated death from the skies is left to a patchwork of state and local restrictions. Irresponsible arguments that I would totally not be surprised to hear to push in the opposite direction: - If law enforcement doesn't have armed drones, we live in a world where only the criminals have armed drones. - Somet…

>> Can we get a federal bill with the same prohibitions? It would be absurd if the right to be free from fear of automated death from the skies is left to a patchwork of state and local restrictions.

>> - Sometimes law enforcement must be able to use deadly force. Isn't it better if in those situations, officers aren't also putting their lives at risk?

What about drones that can be used to deploy non-lethal weapons?

For example, if police need to employ riot control gas (https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/riotcontrol/factsheet.asp) to disperse a violent mob, a drone could fly over the mob and drop the gas.

Should that be permitted?

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#149

Post by some_random »

ehvatum wrote: post #143
banana_feather wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Laws should be as local as practically possible. You guys are every lawyer's dream. Yes, please, continue believing you're following some great American tradition of strong local government by submitting to the whims of your local Boss Tweed and the five judges in your county, I play golf with them once a month. Oh, you have a legal problem and need to navigate the rats nest of weird local laws? Great, you can choo…

[flagged]

You guys are every esthetician’s dream. Yes, please continue believing you’re following some great skincare tradition by submitting to the whims of your local sephora and the five skincare instagram influencers in your local county, I play volleyball with them once a month. Oh, you want a tattoo and need help to navigate the lawyers nest of weird local tattoo parlors? Great, you can choose from one of three instagram tattoo artists that know the local tattoo regime as it applies to your section of skin. I play volleyball with them too, and (coincidentally) we all bill $110 an hour.

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#150

Post by throwbadubadu »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #148
abeppu wrote: post #51

Can we get a federal bill with the same prohibitions? It would be absurd if the right to be free from fear of automated death from the skies is left to a patchwork of state and local restrictions. Irresponsible arguments that I would totally not be surprised to hear to push in the opposite direction: - If law enforcement doesn't have armed drones, we live in a world where only the criminals have armed drones. - Somet…

>> Can we get a federal bill with the same prohibitions? It would be absurd if the right to be free from fear of automated death from the skies is left to a patchwork of state and local restrictions. >> - Sometimes law enforcement must be able to use deadly force. Isn't it better if in those situations, officers aren't also putting their lives at risk? What about drones that can be used to deploy non-lethal weapons?…

Nope, "violent mobs" are something that if it exists and rich enough modern democratic societies (and others) that is effect of some cause that needs immediate fixing, even beating them just down is maybe too much - I know I'm a bit too idealistic and romantic (:

But no, please let us not starts with robots/machines fighting our own society but fix it, drones in warfare are already enough of an ethical problem..

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