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Comment by smokeyj | Hacker News Reader

I anticipate allowing undercover cops to go unrecorded will prompt police departments to make all cops undercover. To better serve the public of course.

I think any authority that accepts money from the public should be obligated to surveil themselves. Not just cops, but federal, state, and local regulators as well. What you do on the public's dime should be publicly available, with an API to your speech and location.

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In Texas, at least, police can't pull you over in a car that doesn't say "Police". I suppose they could have plainclothes officers drive the "stealth" cars with their decals in reflective light gray, so long as they still would be "undercover" under the wording of the policy/laws.

Houston is way ahead of you. I don't live there anymore, but circa 06-08 they introduced dodge charger cop cars with 'ghost' paint, which is basically only visible if you're parallel with the car. they're primarily used for traffic enforcement, always assumed that it was just to increase revenue at the cost of reducing speeding deterrence, but from your comment it looks like they're threading that loophole nicely.

Pic: http://www.stcofhouston.org/PoliceCarPhotos/Houston_Police_G...

Article: http://m.policemag.com/blogpost/1474/houston-pd-s-traffic-en...

Unrelated: I had no idea police had a magazine.

Does anyone make e-paper/transflective vehicle signage yet? I'm sure it'd pay for itself in seized assets fairly quickly :)

Maybe some very corrupt departments would try to pull this, but it sounds like the cameras are a boon for cops too. Fewer complaints, fewer lawsuits, more cooperative suspects, and less time in court. What's not to like?

Do you like pervasive surveillance?

Honestly, if I'm walking down the street and I see a cop, I tend to ... behave ... better. (Not that I go around looking for trouble or anything.) If there's a cop watching, it doesn't really matter to me whether or not he's got a camera on his glasses; either way, I'm being watched.

If this cuts down on police abuse (and other wasteful crap), then I'd say the pluses outweigh the minuses.

>Honestly, if I'm walking down the street and I see a cop, I tend to ... behave ... better.

If you weren't breaking the law, then that's not what I would call a good thing.

>If there's a cop watching, it doesn't really matter to me whether or not he's got a camera on his glasses; either way, I'm being watched.

Right, at least with the camera, there is less chance for the officer to make a mistake, or lie.

>If this cuts down on police abuse (and other wasteful crap), then I'd say the pluses outweigh the minuses.

I would agree. The point of my earlier comment was to imply that all policemen may not welcome the 'intrusion'.

It's not pervasive if each cop has a camera recording - the cameras are in the same places as cops. Plus if they record only in the case of interactions with members of the public then it's even less "pervasive".

Yes, actually. I know my opinion is unpopular in communities such as HN, but I am actually in favor of mass surveillance. Though I find the lack of oversight at the NSA completely unacceptable.

When I was doing a politics startup and people asked me if we'd make a mobile app, my standard response was that the only mobile app I wanted was something that would continuously track and report politicians' coordinates.

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