San Francisco Police Illegally Used Surveillance Cameras at George Floyd Protest

There's a framing problem here, on both sides. Notice how the EFF article starts off talking about how the recently enacted ordinance requires the police to get pre-approval permission to use facial recognition. But all that actually happened was the policed looked at live CCD footage from cameras not on the pre-approved list. The article is framing the debate by making the rules seem reasonable and the police seem sinister.

At the same time, presumably the reason you felt the need to qualify "disturbance" is because you recognize that on the other side of the debate are people who try to frame these protests in a negative light, with an insinuation (if not explicit assertion) that they inevitably descend into looting and violence.

Neither narrative is realistic, though in San Francisco the former group absolutely controls the narrative, and likes to play off the counter-framing about inevitable violence. In any event, there's no real debate here: just FUD on both sides.

When several weeks ago Mayor Breed said that the 2019 ordinance needed reforming, one of the drafters wrote an op-ed that said there's no need for it; that it doesn't restrict the police in any meaningfully way, and Breed's claim were groundless. That op-ed likewise tossed around the specter of facial recognition. But not once did they address the most obvious issue, which is that the police are severely limited in their ability to perform real-time surveillance of spontaneous and fluid situations, such as peaceful protests, riots, etc. The 2019 and earlier ordinances basically presume a context of continuous, 24 hour surveillance, access thereto, or after-the-fact evidence gathering. For example, requests to put up cameras on corners with high rates of crime or to deploy license plate scanners on patrol cars.

Activists on the left have lost all credibility, trailing right behind the right. Even the EFF has gone too far. The debate has become unhinged. It's become so adversarial that nobody even tries address the legitimate concerns of the other side, and facts simply take a back seat. There aren't any adults in the room. Perhaps that's because there isn't a room anymore--the entire conversation, even among the elected and professional classes (scholars, journalists, etc), has shifted over to social media, where success simply equates to spreading your memes (i.e. narratives, baseline assumptions, [poor] statistics, etc).

The police simply has to get pre-approved before they can monitor live cameras but they did so without pre-approval.

Note the tell—just 3% of Hispanics and Latinos would describe their group using the term “Latinx.” https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in.... Many actively dislike being called that: https://twitter.com/RubenGallego/status/1467920180135276554. It’s a term popularized by highly educated white people and used by minorities whose peers are mainly highly educated white people.

This discrepancy became starkly apparent to me during the recent spate of hate crimes against Asians. The “activists” on CNN were blaming it on Trump and “white supremacy.” I strongly suspected my Bangladeshi immigrant aunts and uncles would instead have blamed gang bangers, aggressive homeless people, etc. I actually had to quietly reach out to my “raised in Queens” card carrying Chinese friend for a guy check to confirm that, yes, the violence was caused by gang members and homeless people, not “white supremacy.”

Turns out that not only did Asians in NYC end up supporting Yang and Adams, who took a tougher stance on crime, a shocking number voted for Sliwa even after Adams won the Democratic nomination. Matt Yglesias accurately summarized the issue in an article: https://www.slowboring.com/p/yang-gang

> However, I think a more important point about Yang versus the activists here is that it reveals — and not for the first time — that progressive identity-oriented activist organizations often have very little connection to the groups they purport to represent. You can listen to these groups if you want to. But if your purpose in listening to them is to understand how certain communities are thinking about specific issues, you’re barking up the wrong tree.