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Comment by estearum | Hacker News Reader

You don't understand the logic of "there are some crime problems we're willing to accept more intrusions to solve than other crime problems?"

Seems like something virtually everyone believes, and all that changes is where they draw the line of balance between intrusion and safety.

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The problem here is that the law and order politicians world wide pretty consistently follow a pattern that starts by demanding surveillance tools to fight very serious crimes and those crimes only. Once they get that, they eventually start another campaign to allow use of the tools that they now have access to for less serious crimes. After a few cycles of this, you get a massive erosion of citizen rights.

This is called "Salamitaktik" in Germany.

For anyone else interested in reading more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing_tactics

This new technology will improve existing procedures. How can you oppose it?

This new procedure will use existing technologies. How can you oppose it?

>they eventually start another campaign to allow use of the tools that they now have access to for less serious crimes.

Don't forget the part where the useful idiots cheer because "I hate street racers and package thieves" or "I hate cults and drugs" depending on the decade

People aren’t useful idiots for wanting to avoid being victims of crime. They’re rational. Stop trivializing the big negative impact street racing and theft have on people.

They are if they use it to rationalize giving government effectively arbitrary power over them for barely any decrease of crime that victimizes them.

Stop acting like they're using the dragnet in the interest of the citizenry. They're not.

The point is that there is no actual line. There's the premise which then collects the data.

Then the data can be used for other purposes--no line prevents this.

Weird. There's an article right here showing them turning off the cameras when the line was crossed and now that data can't be used the way they don't want.

So clearly we're allowed more nuanced takes than you think.

"There's an article right here showing them turning off the cameras when the line was crossed and now that data can't be used the way they don't want."

Not exactly true. This happened after the arrests and won't affect those arrests. This also doesn't prevent ICE from installing and using Flock cameras on federal properties (like the post offices). I would also bet that they could still comb the existing data if they wanted to, hence the shutdown of the cameras on the fear that they can't keep the data safe.

The Redmond City Council made a recommendation to turn off the cameras on Nov 3rd, two days before the ICE arrests. There had been local concern aired the week prior about feds/ICE possibly accessing Flock camera data. I think it was on its way to being shut down but the ICE activity perhaps hastened it.

https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2025/11/a-preliminary-v...

All of which further confirms that there is in fact a line.

Reactivity isn’t proactively protecting what you belief. It’s reacting to public outcry for the original premise.

Are you proposing everyone make the optimal decision in advance, when outcomes are all speculative, and just be sure to get it right so there’s no need to learn and adapt to circumstances?

I propose we stop letting government do things that are revenue based and pretend they are “in our best interests”.

I would hope so because no we are obviously not turning back the clock to a time when cameras did not exist. Most people kind of find surveillance cameras reassuring.

They're installing them in my mom's apartment complex after a vote.

Did they also vote on giving the federal government or any govermental authorities access to that footage? Did they ask if they want all the neighbors to be able to watch any of it? Did they ask if they would give it to cops to use against residents?

Because im willing to bet a lot of answers would change when they knew the answer to those questions.

Really depends who owns the footage. I’m installing cameras on my house but the NVR is local-only.

"They did the thing and the public got mad so clearly they won't do it again"

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

i will never tire of the irony of a man who owned humans being lauded as a freedom fighter.

Benjamin Franklin became an abolitionist.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Slavery

what that wikipedia article doesn't mention is that Franklin continued to own people for almost his entire adult life, while paying lip service to abolition.

Whatever you're doing at the moment, I'll bet somebody 200 years from now will condemn it.

It might not even take that long, at the rate we're progressing.

i can confidently say that i don't personally engage with any activities that constitute extreme deprivation of another individual's liberties while simultaneously advocating for those liberties, which is what i was specifically talking about. please, if you must, accuse me of something concrete.

And yet every society makes exactly this trade off.

There is no such thing as avoiding this trade off entirely.

"Those (the Penn family) who would give up essential Liberty (money & power), to purchase a little temporary Safety (a veto over a taxation dispute, trying to raise money from the Penn family), deserve neither Liberty (said money & power) nor Safety (the defense that said taxed money would've bought from the present French & Indian wars)"

The context of the original quote doesn't prevent others from finding it more generally applicable or well-put.

It's kind of funny if you think about it. Franklin spent so many years arguing for liberty, low taxes and limited government that when he tried to argue in favor of taxation and federal power he unintentionally still argued in favor of the former.

A lot of our political discussions and systems these days are warped by a failure to understand the ways that state-versus-federal differences have changed over time.

Even today, it's not necessarily hypocritical for someone to argue that states should do more X while the federal government should do less X.

It doesn't, but at that point you're not referencing what a person meant, you're saying something they didn't intend with their words. You might as well make your point with your words, instead of misleadingly quoting someone else.

> Those (the Penn family) who would give up essential Liberty

No, you've got it half-backwards.

He's saying the democratic legislature shouldn't forever give up the citizens' collective Liberty to tax the ultra-mega-rich (Penns) in exchange for a one-time Security payment from those rich near-nobles.

https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

Ironically you're correct, and yet I'm still closer to the original meaning than the typical quotation.

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