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Comment by kbos87 | Hacker News Reader

I hate that this has to be an all or nothing conversation. There is a path where technology can deliver benefits without significant harm to individual privacy.

San Francisco has turned the tide on smash and grab crime through license plate readers and drone response. New Hampshire requires law enforcement agencies to delete unflagged license plate data within three minutes of collection. These two conditions can exist at the same time, in the same place, if we don’t allow the narrative to be pulled toward either extreme. Unfortunately that’s very tough to accomplish in today’s political climate in the US.

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The best deterrent to crime is to make people not want to commit crime in the first place. Education. Social cohesion. Prosperity. Safety nets.

I don’t disagree, but effective enforcement of the law as it is written has to play a role. There is a kernel of truth behind the broken windows theory of policing. When it’s widely known that the law can’t be reliably enforced, crime escalates, and quality of life deteriorates.

Sure, but that takes generations to change, unfortunately

Executed people cannot commit crimes. Educate that theft means repayment or death. The rest follows.

No property on earth is equal to that of a human life. Want to lower property crime? Decrease wealth inequality. It's amazing to me how people who make far more than the average person get so worked up over property crime. I can afford to replace anything of mine that's stolen, it's literally not that big of a deal.

A man has a car. It is stolen. He has insurance, sure. Insurance for others, along with the owner, now go up. That insurance will not pay for the time and energy lost in getting a rental, nor the time and energy loss in reporting the crime. The car is replaced, with what? Hopefully not the one stolen because it is now tainted by damage, ill will, poor operations.

His newer car, which was replaced, now sits and is at once again an object that the previous thief can steal again, and again, and again.

The cycle repeats. The thief, if caught, does not restore the car owner or is even owed compensation. The thief pays in time served, the thief's expenses are paid for by the car owner, through taxes, and the cycle repeats.

End the cycle. End the thief. The value of the human life is set by the thief, not the owner.

The value of human life is non negotiable. Funny to use a car which is one of the worst possible parts of US culture as an example. You solve this problem with public transit and building non-nightmarish, walk-able cities.

Depends on how much you trust the government's ability to restrain itself once the capability for mass surveillance is out there and widely deployed.

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