Comment by reillys | Hacker News Reader

Comment by reillys | Hacker News Reader

If I or somebody else was the victim of a crime I would 100% support using every available source of information to solve that crime. I think we need adequate controls sure, but mostly we need to increase trust in government and police forces so we know we can trust the relevant people with our data.

There is epic fear in the US about the government. That is the actual problem. Now the US gov is a shady piece of shit, so a lot of that is well founded, but that is the root of the problem. Solve that problem and actually trust the people who are supposed to be responsible and in charge to do the right thing and this data problem stops becoming as much of an issue. And no, building some kind of philosophical zero trust system is not going to solve anything, it is a prison you'll end up living in.

Encourage transparency in Police forces and Government with strong legislation and strong support for whistleblowers and punishment of infractions and you have yourself a system that people can begin to trust.

It's not just the police. How could such a corrupt police exist without corrupt superiors higher up in the government? Fear of governments is justified, they're the most powerful entity in our world. They can get away with murder.

The US is not Iceland, a simple fix that would just make people trust the police is impossible. Also as an aside, the police isn't your only problem. Tesla, Google & co are paving the way normalizing these mobile surveillance units. We'll have millions of them driving around everywhere with HD cameras, microphones, in some cases even LiDAR and radar. Recording constantly. Of course there's a bit of an issue if you are not a fan of mass surveillance. Even if corporations are the only ones in charge of that data. I know for example that the Tesla video feed can be accessed online, because owners can remotely view it with their app. And if they can do this, so can others in theory. All you need is a bug or Tesla servers getting hacked.

Well actually that brings up an interesting piece about how the US is structured. I think the reason your police can be more corrupt is because of the federated nature of policing.

Cops are usually only answerable to the mayor of the city (and sometimes the electorate) rather than higher ups in the government. So there is a lack of authority and control there. If they were answerable to politicians and politicians were actually responsible for their actions you could take very firm political actions against those politicians - but in the states nobody in the Cabinet or Government is responsible for law enforcement.

And I understand why this federated system was originally put in place, but this isn't the 1700s. In communication terms the US might as well be Iceland - you can communicate from one end of the land mass to the other instantly, so we don't need to have localized and federated decision making.

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