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Comment by HarryHirsch | Hacker News Reader

With a name like that you don't need to wonder what's going on in the CEO's head. Why is such permitted in civilized society?

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Because it's the sort of mentality America was founded on. Not trying to be political, though I'm sure this can be an unpleasant topic. A couple hundred years of, "you're responsible for defending your land and it's your right to defend it," has fascinating and, often, disastrous outcomes.

Add to that a conservatism that treats the constitution like a religious text designed to curtail any kind of societal evolution or transformation as circumstances change.

I would disagree with that pretty strongly.

Big difference between an individual defending his property/family with his own property vs funneling that defense through a corporate crowd-sourced surveillance system.

I agree there is a difference, though I'm not sure it's big. It's a natural evolution of individual efforts to coalesce into a group effort. That's the history of humanity.

Right, but banding together in mobs tends to precede the establishment of a state with laws, due process etc. Hence why we tend to be appalled by vigilantes (even the professionals do a pretty uneven job when it comes to enforcing our laws, letting everyone do it as a hobby is not likely to produce a better result?)

The _existing police_ is a banded together mob.

Citizen and all other private security firms operate under the same laws as any other individual or company. It’s not like these guys went out and started committing violent felonies...

The existing local police is a coalesced group effort. In some regions (like SF) the existing institutions are no longer effective. There is nothing surprising or particularly heinous about an attempt to create alternatives.

The idea of property being defended by an individual is the myth. The reality was that, on the frontier, property was defended by the community. It wasn't just you, standing there with your musket, fending off the hordes of "injuns" and "rustlers" all by your lonesome. It was you and your posse.

I think the vigilantism implicitly endorsed by Citizen is entirely typical of the historical American attitude towards how one should defend their property. Moreover, it speaks to the breakdown of law and order in California that an app that organizes a modernized form of "frontier justus" can find enough traction to get off the ground.

I don't think this speaks much of California given that it was founded in New York years ago. It just so happens that this incident took place in one of the most populous places in the US, but I wouldn't rush to imply causation.

Some people in the US do not consider vigilantism to be antisocial behavior.

For example, in my neighborhood a few people freaked out over a guy going through people's trash cans (trash cans are located in the alley, so not on anyone's property). This involved lots of internet sturm und drang, with people arguing whether or not it's legal to shoot someone going through your trash.

It’s... trash. While it’s not an elegant thing to dig through trash, what’s wrong with someone doing it? You threw it away which means you don’t care what happens to it, right?

It's a rather large privacy violation

It can be but this person was searching for cans not identity theft or stalker stuff. Also: if they were sniffing around for that stuff, killing them on public property when they pose no immediate threat to you or anyone else isn’t the answer.

Your neighbours are sick in the head.

It isn't really permitted. That's why they had to change their name and that's why this incident is news.

He's rich. Rich people do whatever they want in USA.

I dunno, maybe it's because the state itself is not much better? To some degree, if some asshole falsely accuses you, at least you have the grounds for a civil suit where the judiciary is a true neutral party and be recompensed. Whereas when the state via its law enforcement does something bad to you the judiciary isn't truly neutral, the best you can hope for is for it to try to be.

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