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> when the officer flat-out says "yeah you can record, that's fine" (good on him!);

The fact that he plays the copyrighted track is evidence that his statement about "oh, sure, of course you can record ;)" was not made in good faith. I give the officer zero benefit of the doubt here. Transparency is necessary in all police interactions in public, not just the ones that are "bad enough to excuse a little Taylor Swift." Cops can cry me a river about the internet outrage machine.

You are conflating the Court of Public Opinion with the Court of Law.

The Court of Public Opinion is the court that drives teens to suicide through internet bullying, that accused the wrong man of bombing the Boston Marathon, and killing students at Sandy Hook, even suggesting Sandy Hook didn't happen. That's the internet.

The standards for evidence on the internet are low, and tempers are high. Transparency in "all" public police interactions isn't necessary, just like transparency in "all" doctor interactions isn't necessary in order to judge doctor competency. Its an infuriating distraction; it gives you an excuse to be angry about everything. And moreover; media outlets fuel this outrage machine by purposefully omitting context and nuance in order to drive clicks.

You believe you're using a critical eye to analyze these situations. You're not. This is undeniable, because it is difficult even for the people there, at the scene, to analyze a complex situation like these critically, to have all the information, and understand if the right call was or was not made, let alone someone sitting in a dark room in their basement a thousand miles away getting all of their information from Buzzfeed and The Verge.

Its the job of the Court of Law to look past the Taylor Swift; they're held to a higher standard, just as officers themselves are. That doesn't mean mistakes aren't made. But those mistakes are not an excuse to break the system and raise tensions in every police interaction. This will only lead to more violence.

If the goal is to reduce the violence level to the point that only the police are committing violence, then that is not a good goal.

The issue here is that people have justifiable reason to think that the police themselves are breaking the law, in very brazen ways because the system that should hold them to account has broken down. When the system that maintains order breaks down, there is going to be violence, and trying to contain that violence to just the ones with the badges and guns is not a better outcome.

Reducing tensions at this point must begin with police not supporting every single police act of violence, no matter how obvious. Until that happens, anything that people do will be considered "raising tensions". Since the situation is lose-lose for them, you're the one who's going to have to reconsider what outcome you want.

the playing of the song doesn't make the recording of the video any less factual or truthful.

it would just be harder to publish on youtube itself and there are other social medias

I think it’s a little misguided to praise the officer for allowing them to film. It would be illegal for him to prevent them from filming him performing his duties in a public place. I also find it slightly ridiculous for you to characterize citizens recording their interactions with police for their own protection as a “citizen surveillance state.” The citizens are not the state. The police here are representatives of the state and must be held to account in every interaction with civilians. I don’t deny that it’s a high-pressure situation for an individual to be in, and like you I find it hard to personally fault him for his strategy to prevent going viral. AFAIK it’s legally fine, and ethically grey depending on his exact intentions, which we can’t really know. In this case however, it’s more likely to result in a Streisand effect.

Edit: on reading the rest of this thread I’m more convinced of the dubious legality of the cop’s playing music with the expectation that the recording will be made public

> on reading the rest of this thread I’m more convinced of the dubious legality of the cop’s playing music with the expectation that the recording will be made public

You're convinced by angry internet hobby-lawyers sitting in their Aerons taking a quick break from writing HTML? This is precisely the very low standard of evidence that the officer involved here is trying to short circuit.

Note that I said dubious legality. I was just qualifying my earlier statement that it was legally fine. Hopefully we’ll get a legal ruling on this sooner rather than later.

Bad take is bad.

It's not the cop's job to do prevent this video from getting onto YoutTube. We have a whole SLEW of legislative channels that could be used to "protect" cops from people recording them. Don't want videos of cops being posted on the internet? Contact your local representative and have them sponsor a law.

Also, in an environment in which trust with the police has been eroded to the point of rioting because people feel the cops are dishonest and hiding bad behavior, admitting on camera "I'm trying to hide my behavior from scrutiny" is about the worst thing you can do, and will get a national publication to pick you up.

The cop has a police union, qualified immunity, and the entire law enforcement segment of the government to protect him. It's assumed that whatever his report said happened is what happened. Protesters only have cameras to prove their side of the story.

(edited for spelling/grammar mistake)

No one is suggesting that recording the police should be disallowed. I'd argue its a critically important piece of balance between the police and citizens; at worst, it can tell a different angle of the same story, and at best it can fight against corruption which does exist (e.g. not wearing body cams, lying, computer glitch lost the bodycam footage, etc).

The line is drawn where that footage is distributed and used. Unfortunately, that's less a line, and more of a hazy, impossible to legislate boundary.

A courtroom is, undeniably, the best place. This is where this footage should be used; as one piece of evidence in a very long-term narrative about what happened and who is at fault.

A neutral site whose entire purpose is to document encounters with the police in an almost database-like format? Maybe there too. Transparency does matter. Dissemination can matter, especially in instances of extreme police brutality or corruption, which does happen (especially outside developed nations).

YouTube? Facebook? Twitter? No. Stop making YouTube the single place for all internet video. Stop letting the algorithm make you angry. It won't do it for you. It will surface videos which make you angry. You share those videos. Like a virus, the outrage spreads. What's the plan? Be angry? Tear the system down, or let it tear you down? Defund the police? Get him fired? So, Destruction in any form? All that matters is revenge disguised in a veil of "making the world better", but destruction never ends this way.

You believe you can escalate tension because "the police can take it". Its still escalation, and they can take it. Do you want every encounter with a police officer to mean War? Do you enjoy the fact that officers approach cars pulled over for speeding with their hands on their weapon? Do you think this policy actually makes the world safer, or is it self-defense in an unsafe world that actually increases the probability of a negative outcome for citizens? A scale with one pound on each side is balanced; a scale with a hundred pounds on each side breaks.

> Don't want videos of cops being posted on the internet? Contact your local representative and have them sponsor a law.

What would a law look like that would prevent people from posting videos of police officers on the internet while also complying with the First Amendment?

It wouldn't. It's impossible. People want unconstitutional things all the time though, and sometimes they even make them into laws. Then they go to the SCOTUS and lose.

But you can do it.

> People want unconstitutional things all the time though, and sometimes they even make them into laws. Then they go to the SCOTUS and lose.

And there's no penalty for it, either. You get to suppress whatever you want for however long it takes to reach the Supreme Court, and if the law gets struck down, well, at least you stopped those abortion clinics/gun owners/protesters/whatever for 5 years and you can push through another law next month.

My personal "favorites" have been some of the abortion ban laws that know they're unconstitutional but are passed and sit there "pending the overturning of Roe v. Wade".

Like, bro, you made an illegal law and you know it because you said "this law is illegal...for now."

Yeah, I get that cops aren't very popular these days, but this is a very clever hack, and I like to think that the HN crowd is logical enough to appreciate it, regardless of the perpetrator.

It wasn't his idea. We've known about this for months.

And it didn't work. So it was neither original nor effective. There's nothing to laud.

There were people who noted the cleverness of it months ago. This is merely script-kiddie stuff... and ineffective at that.

It is a clever hack, and like other zero days we need to implement a patch immediately. It is simply unacceptable that police can start playing music and prevent their (mis)conduct from being distributed on the most popular distribution channels.

What misconduct?

None in this case, but it's a tactic that can be employed in conjunction with misconduct.