I know that this is a minority opinion, but I'm in favor of cameras in public places. There will always be the potential for abuse even with strong restrictions, but I think the benefits are worth it.
Unaccountable mass surveillance without any oversight is just incompatible with our form of government. That's what's getting stopped here.
It's not that they can't be used for good things - it's their potential for misuse.
Isn’t that is the entire concept behind separation of power. If we can’t trust democratic principles how can we trust any power or technology? The potential for misuse can apply to all power, big and small.
> If we can’t trust democratic principles how can we trust any power or technology? The potential for misuse can apply to all power, big and small.
Exactly, we inherently DONT. That is why we have a constitution and bill of rights - to prevent abuse of the system.
Also I'm not buying the "all technology can be misused" argument. It's MUCH easier to be tempted into spying on a political opponent with cameras than it is to nuke them.
Right exactly, and the powers those guard are far greater than the sorts of surveillance being discussed here.
And now in this age of social media, any seemingly meaningless activity can be used against anyone - because surveillance can be cut and devoid of context.
You're lucky that in this case it helped you maintain your innocence, but that use will be in the tiny tiny minority. The actual solution to your particular problem is proper due process and rooting out police sloppiness and prosecutorial overreach, not adding features to our society that make it easy for those in power to violate people's civil rights.
Can you give an example of this abuse?
Police databases have been routinely abused so I don't see how the watchers can be trusted with more information when they have zero oversight and ability to manage what they already have :/
You're the one that placed it there.
I think that's debatable. If an individual can abuse the system in a way that undermines the intent of the system, we need to think carefully about what it is that we're actually building.
> we can't even give cops sticks because at least one of them is going to beat an innocent person with it.
Considering the debate around police violence in America right now, I think it's amusing that we're using this as an example of a ridiculous proposition. Maybe not sticks, no, but the level to which our police are armed is definitely under scrutiny.
What's your data source for this prediction? Are you saying that wrongful arrest and prosecution is a negligible problem?
> The actual solution to your particular problem is proper due process and rooting out police sloppiness and prosecutorial overreach, ...
Easy for you to say. Proper due process would have cost me a year or more of hell plus a lot of money. As for "police sloppiness and prosecutorial overreach", that's pounding on the table and has nothing to do with this discussion on cameras.
> ... not adding features to our society that make it easy for those in power to violate people's civil rights.
Cameras show when civil rights are violated.
This is the REAL problem and not the camera.
"Innocent until proven broke" needs to be fixed.
I was very much in the "few bad apples" camp until recently. But the protests have made it abundantly clear that my understanding of the situation was wrong. The last thing we want to do is give more tools of control and abuse to corrupt systems.
It's not that I don't agree with you or that I even disagree with my old belief in responsible surveillance technology. But we (America) clearly need to do a _lot_ of work reforming law enforcement and public health first and foremost. Augmenting those systems can only come after.
That was revealed by wide spread video surveillance, though.
This is distinct in that the people present control access to the footage and whether or not the footage is taken instead of some surveillance body controlling access and footage always being taken.
Some professor coined this sousveillance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance
As mentioned elsewhere, there are better ways to reduce criminality than a "guilty until proven innocent" view that comes with rising mass surveillance and authoritarianism.
The same applies to facial recognition. The technology will improve and it behooves us to be making sure that when it does end up in daily life we made sure it does behave in the best interest of all. This means making sure mismatch issues don't get brushed aside or hidden and its all out in the open to see how it works.
The next major privacy concern may not have a Snowden type in place with everyone standing outside the doors stamping their feet refusing to play.
Don't fool yourself into believing a few cities and even states declaring that it is not allowed, that has never stopped the intelligence community before and certainly won't going forward. Too many will buy into the idea that even a law at Congressional level will do anything but so many exclusions exist and so much is permitted under completely innocent sounding legislation you can never be sure.
I also think the fact that there is essentially no consequence whatsoever for police plainly lying in warrant applications is a major oversight.
100% of the applications for granted warrants I’ve read have had clear factual errors in them, sworn under penalty of perjury (ha!).
We don’t even track what percentage of warrant applications contain perjury (~100% in my estimation), much less what percentage of those so swearing face consequences as a result (~0% in my estimation).
The system is broken.
I agree with that 100%. I dk believ that is orthogonal to using warrants on public surveillance. Maybe politically it might be a nice lever, though: we will authorize surveillance with this new system in place for all warrants.
Then turn your own phone on and continuously upload your video and data to a lockbox.
If you want to be continuously surveilled, you have the technology to do it to yourself for a fairly cheap price nowadays (see: arrest recording apps). It also has the advantage that it is WAY more likely to exonerate you than some random CCTV that just so happens to be able to provide an alibi.
Don't force ME into that situation via government fiat, thanks.