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Comment by newbie789 | Hacker News Reader

> Disclaimer3: The police only get ring videos that are forwarded to them from ring users, they have no generic access to ring data. The victims of crime tend to forward videos of the criminals in hopes the police can catch them.

That’s fascinating. How exactly are you so intimately familiar with Amazon’s inner workings? You’re fully confident that this system can’t be abused because of… what experience, exactly?

Edit: yes. I fully and unequivocally support criminals. I figure if a silly cop propagandist is going to respond to this post, that will be the first silly vague salvo against not wanting to give cops full control of society, so skip to rebuttal(2)

Edit:typos

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Because my wife runs the intelligence unit of a police department, and they only get ring videos forwarded to them from victims of crime. And some of those crimes are horrific, like armed home invasion robbery, and those videos have led to capturing those criminals.

So your wife has access to [Amazon surveillance product x], therefore the existence of [trivially producible Amazon surveillance product y] can’t be possible.

Is your wife the head of the police intelligence unit of The World?

> My wife runs a police intelligence unit that catches actual criminals from ring info

Cool, I wasn’t aware that Amazon and regional police were the same organization. I was under the impression that a multibillion dollar corporation could keep secrets from a an HN poster’s wife, but I guess your point that she’s some sort of cop negates that

The point of contention is how amazon and local police interact with each other, specifically what constraints amazon has on its data sharing with local police. Wife of an HN poster or not, testimony from someone who directly works with those constraints on a daily basis should matter, I believe.

The point of contention is indeed how Amazon interacts with local police. I am pointing out that one second-hand example of one police force and their access to one technology does not necessarily describe an entire surveillance apparatus and its possible uses.

Are you of the opinion that it does?

No, I’m not. I mean, it’s just words written on the internet, the whole thing could be made up, right? My opinion is that the police as an institution needs technology to keep up with the world, especially if we want a smaller police force with better training, higher qualifications and accountability. Sensible regulations must be passed and enforced in order to minimize the risk of abuse, which is really where I think the ball is being dropped here. Without governance, corporations bear the burden of figuring out the sensible thing, and people are (rightly) suspicious of their judgement.

> …My opinion is that the police as an institution needs technology to keep up with the world, especially if we want a smaller police force with better training, higher qualifications and accountability…

Do you think that that’s the goal? I personally view “tech that makes cops’ jobs incredibly easier” as a thing that doesn’t lead to “cops quit in droves to support newfound theoretical efficiency”

I don’t believe that people will leave the police force voluntarily, either. But I do think that, now that the idea of sizing down the police force is politically viable, more efficient policing will put extra weight behind the idea by making it harder to justify oversized personnel budgets. Obviously, if we fail to follow through with down-sizing, we run the risk of ending up with a more powerful police, no less corrupt. Well, I think we just need to take that risk and try - most meaningful social achievements require balancing two or more levers at the same time.

What the actual fuck are you talking about?

Police unions (who entirely derive their power from their memberships) will decide that they want less power?

Make policing cheaper, more efficient. Continue pressuring with the ongoing cultural/political shift, cheaper policing adds weight to the argument that we don’t need as many police officers. Less officers, less assholes. If that’s clear enough for you, I’d like to add that I do not owe it to you to come up with a perfectly viable policy to solve policing in the US. You may feel that acting the entitled critic without putting your own ideas on the table gives you an air of superiority, but in the long term, you’ll find that people are increasingly less willing to engage with you in debates.

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