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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

Any sane business that has lots of random people coming in will have cameras recording (except in bathrooms/locker rooms). There is too much opportunity for crime, and a camera is cheap. If something happens you pull up the feed from the last month and give the interesting parts to the police; most often you just delete everything after a month. More than one crime has been solved this way.

That said, if there wasn't a crime the camera footage should be deleted.

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The problem isn't having cameras. Its that these cameras should be closed circuit with data residing locally, not being sent to a 3rd party that has full access to the video streams, and who processes them, combines them with other parties, resells data from them, or hands them over without a warrant!

Ok, and bear with me, but what if that third party needs to do a sales demo and the client can only be convinced by seeing live footage of stranger’s children in a gymnastics class or at the pool in their swimsuits?

I really don’t see how we can avoid having our cities hand over this data sight unseen to a company with a history of enabling stalkers and overzealous policing.

I haven’t checked this, but based on the enthusiasm for this technology, I assume that crime clearance rates are near 100% in cities with these cameras.

(/s)

> There is too much opportunity for crime, and a camera is cheap.

The camera doesn't prevent crime. It just displaces it. Even when it doesn't it will not prevent the crime from happening. It _may_ provide you an opportunity to prosecute the person who committed it.

In reality the only real reason to have one is to reduce your insurance premiums.

> crime has been solved

A perpetrator was potentially caught and now has to be tried or negotiated into a plea. I understand we use the term "solve" as a term of art but it's a particularly poor one. It speaks to the need of police to clear their books of negative indicators and not to any first order desirable social outcome.

> That said

That said, if during a demo, you access another customers equipment, I will _never_ do business with you. That's just extremely unprofessional behavior.

> The camera doesn't prevent crime. It just displaces it.

That's why I periodically leave a bunch of bicycles with cheap locks downtown. They act like a kind of criminal sacrificial anode, reducing crime in the rest of the city.

Lol

That's why the police don't enforce drug laws in _particular_ areas.

What you describe is obviously already happening on a much larger scale.

I'm not sure why people have trouble grasping something this basic.

Because many of us who live in cities have experience with police being completely feckless.

I have experienced multiple times when I tell police that I have video evidence of a crime happening as well as evidence of the identity of the criminal and they won’t even look at it. I once had a cop tell me that I shouldn’t bother with a report with witnesses and evidence and a known perpetrator since it would never get investigated. That cop got punished for telling the truth, although they were 100% correct, the detective on the case never even opened the file. The detective was not punished.

Cops don't enforce drug laws in particular areas because wealthy people live there and not only will arresting wealthy people and their kids get those guys a call from their boss, but the courts will never make any money off prosecuting wealthy people that can afford to drop thousands of dollars on a lawyers and the court case. Drug laws are enforced in poor areas tho because poor people can't afford good lawyers or drag the process out for years and potentially cost the court tens of thousands on just a single case, they instead get give a disinterested public defender, or maybe a bottom tier of private lawyer if they can afford it, against a prosecutor who's entire job is to ram cases and plea deals through the system as fast as possible to make a profit and fund the court and local cops. Judges that don't convict enough get the boots, prosecutors who aren't big enough dicks get the boot, public defenders that don't recommend a ton of plea deals or are too good at their job don't get offered as many public defense cases.

When people talk about drug laws going unenforced in a "_particular_ area", they're talking about the Tenderloin, not Beverly hills.

> The camera doesn't prevent crime. It just displaces it. Even when it doesn't it will not prevent the crime from happening. It _may_ provide you an opportunity to prosecute the person who committed it.

And that is worth something in itself, at least in areas where disputes between people are the norm. Gyms in particular suffer from theft to sexual harassment.

> Gyms in particular suffer from theft to sexual harassment.

And is there any evidence that deploying cameras has changed the rate?

Do you want to punish people or do you want to prevent people from being victimized in the first place?

Filming people at the gym is sexual harassment.

Notably, it can serve that purpose without being part of a national network, or being remotely accessible by a sales team for the camera maker.

The founder of Ring cameras is convinced enough cameras will eliminate all crime in neighborhoods

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