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Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

I have to say this is one area that I actually support the defund the police narrative. Privacy and security should be a sort of digital human right, and rather than have a perverse incentive to not disclose holes (even if it's simply weak handling of an indviduals own data), police should "Serve and protect" by suggesting or even helping secure an individual's privacy and security.

What might that look like? Perhaps every time Accurint is used against a target they should be emailed/mailed/delivered a report that details all the findings? That would help someone be better protected from malicious actors.

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The law just needs to catch up with meat-space laws.

An example, I don't know of a Western style democracy, where it is legal for a cop to walk by your house, notice an open window, and crawl through it...

And then start searching your house, afterwards claiming "It wasn't breaking and entering! And all this stuff was just laying around!"

The law should be 100% the same for digital "stuff", in that, there needs to always, always, always be a justifiable reason, a warrant as well, before even the thought of a search can occur.

No back door usage, no "cyber tools", even if the phone is unlocked, on desk, nope! An open port(al), eg a window, doesn't give any reason for the search to be valid.

In terms of legalized back doors, and in encryption, that is 100% counter to all of the above. Case in point, if you want to know the content of someone's phone?

You can lock them up until they provide access -- after a court order requiring them to. EG, contempt of court, or some such.

(Even if the above doesn't jive in your legal locale, there are ways to enable the same. New tech, new laws, to enable the same concepts, and freedoms, and security, and privacy, our societies have known for centuries...)

> An example, I don't know of a Western style democracy, where it is legal for a cop to walk by your house, notice an open window, and crawl through it...

Police can generally use open doors (and windows?) as “probable cause” to enter in the US.

Police can literally bust down any door they want in the US without warning and just start shooting anything that moves.

Just spotting an open window allows a cop to immediately enter a house? To do what?

Sometimes the US has strange laws, but if you are right (I somehow doubt it or maybe just hope it) then I would find it particulary strange.

It's not correct, see my response to the above post.

No they can't, they're allowed to look THROUGH open doors and windows and use what they SEE as probable cause.

That's a FAR cry from being able to use the EXISTENCE of an open door or window as probable cause ITSELF.

> I have to say this is one area that I actually support the defund the police narrative

"Defund the Police" makes a lot of sense when one actually looks beyond the tagline. It means taking the money from the police state to empower other social services to do their jobs. This helps police, too–most officers are ill equipped to work with the mentally ill, and this sometimes leads to shootings that should've never happened. Nobody wants that.

In a lot of the cases I think defund the police is only the right answer when treated as a zero sum scenario, and there may actually be a bunch of cases where it makes economic sense to do _both_ . (ie the outputs are of greater value than the inputs and progressively increase the pie over time) .

defund the police typically just means reduce their funding. Not abolish it entirely.

Yes, but what I'm pointing out is that with a fiat currency there is always the choice to fund *both* . I actually believe that in some places there will be a net benefit to funding both Social services and policing well because of the increase in asset prices (homes and businesses) . Cities should study this effect and consider increasing taxes to create a communal positive win:win:win (for city, residents, asset holders)

Funding is not binary though. The police are still funded if you allocate some of their budget to something that is not the police. Most police budgets increase every year.

Instead every year, we pass laws moving further and further away from this: "Privacy and security should be a sort of digital human right".

The government does not want you to maintain any privacy.

Last year the Biden White House and the Democratic Congress passed laws lowering reporting requirements of digital transactions to $600 - down from $20,000. So now if you receive >$600 of payments in Paypal/Venmo/etc., they will report it to the IRS. Also, they will demand your SSN because they need it to report to the IRS.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/venmo-paypal-zelle-must-report-...

https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2021-11-04-New-US-Tax-Repor...

I've been exposed to the world of law enforcement a few times in my career. They're mostly good people, with a few bad apples. They're granted extraordinary authority by society and should be subjected to scrutiny from outside agencies and third parties. Defunding the police seems more likely to hurt than help the most at-risk communities. If anything, they should get more funding, and it should be used to raise hiring standards and increase in-service training time particularly around mental health awareness, civil rights (first and fourth amendment law), appropriate use of force, and de-escalation tactics. They're subjected to a lot of job related PTSD but receive almost no mental health counseling or support.

I'd also separate privacy and security (especially privacy) from the debate over funding or defunding the police. The solution to abuses like the Accurint breach is to dramatically reverse the proliferation of sensitive personal data held in the digital ecosystem. If it's not there, it can't be found and exploited.

> Defunding the police is more likely to hurt than help the most at-risk communities.

Citation needed. Policing has been tremendous, irreparable harm to disadvantaged groups. You're completely missing the point of defunding - you're almost there when you say there should be more funding. There needs to be funding around non-police community work.

Also the "few bad apples" phrase doesn't work as you're using it. The point is that a few bad apples spoils the bunch - it makes them all rotten. Which is very true even though you weren't intending it that way. Even if most cops wouldn't directly do something awful, most cops will stand aside and say nothing when they see a fellow cop do something awful. Which is literally how George Floyd died.

to be fair I believe you're also missing a citation showing better than isolated data of defunding creating better long term outcomes for sufficient stakeholders without unacceptable negative outcomes for others.

So it's okay to have ruinous effects on disadvantaged groups so that advantaged groups don't suffer mild negative effects of less policing?

> Which is literally how George Floyd died.

We also could have learned the lesson years earlier such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tony_Timpa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tony_Timpa

Two issues I see with your line: 1. we've been increasing funding consistently for … forever. It hasn't resulted in improved outcomes. 2. cops don't want better hiring standards (sounds like you want to fire some cops? they don't want that), better use of force standards (sounds like you want to give non-cops more ways to prosecute cops if they break a couple too many noses? nope) 3. de-escalation?? sounds like you want to put cops in the line of fire without proper tools. Nope.

Cops will always and forever defend their right to fuck shit up and not suffer the consequences. Cops will NEVER go for the ideas you suggest, and any money you send them for "training" will only turn into luxe contracts for ex-cops and extra overtime for everyone.

Cops love being cops because of what the institution is now, today. The toxicity, the freedom to do shit without consequences, the lucrative overtime, all of it. And cops are incredibly good at agitating when they are threatened – oh you want to make it so we can't shoot people? Okay we're not going to do any work at all for months. Or maybe we send someone's cousin around the way to scare you – you think that's a problem … call the cops!

The problem imo with the "mostly good people" line is that it ignores the fact that in a harmful institution most "good people" will just go along with whatever is happening. Any "good cop" who speaks up against a fellow cop gets their face bashed in (see the current case in SF where they straight up killed another cop in a training exercise …). Good people in shitty situations can make harmful choices and generally don't do the (very difficult and dangerous) work of speaking up to change things.

Defund. We need something new.

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