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Comment by jhonovich | Hacker News Reader

Saying these are DHS spy cameras is misleading. DHS and other government agencies (like the DoJ's COPS Program) provides grants to lots of police departments so they can buy technology, like video surveillance.

That police cruisers can access municipal cameras (whether funded by local businesses, local tax revenue or federal subsidies) is a common and well known implementation.

Beyond that, what is the real concern here? Unless you are simply objecting to any publicly owned and managed cameras, which is something much more fundamental.

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"Beyond that, what is the real concern here?"

I am concerned about any expansion of police power, including local forces. One of the protections we have against unjust laws is that they are unenforceable, but that protection is eroded when the police get expanded budgets. Whenever the police become better equipped to enforce the law, the citizens suffer because of it. We have a lot of unjust laws on the books; giving the police more ways to enforce those laws is harmful to our society.

>One of the protections we have against unjust laws is that they are unenforceable.

"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly." --Abraham Lincoln

> "The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly†." --Abraham Lincoln

†may require working democratic process, ability for regular people to affect policy change, lack of special interest groups with opposing positions, and a congressional representative who will actually do something about the issue for you. restrictions apply, including but not limited to: population of those disaffected is too small; population of those disaffected is discriminated against by the population at large; population of those disaffected is too poor and focused on survival to work at policy change; congressman disagrees; congressman doesn't care; policy is remotely controversial; policy can be associated with incendiary buzzwords such as socialism, government spending, and "big government"; and more.

see: "the war on drugs"

Well it sure as hell is never going to change so long as your only solution is to declare you won't vote because both parties are the same.

You want to change the system? Learn how it works first and stop throwing the problem into the too hard basket.

Yes. Americans keep complaining about their government, yet every election they keep on voting for the same party they voted for last time, the same one that already did what the didn't like - or they don't bother. Where I live, people complain that they can't influence politics, they can't even complain about the government online without getting arrested. They don't have voting rights to do anything about it. Americans do! No amount of lobbying can force you to vote for someone you don't want.

Your logical fallacy here is that you have no evidence whatsoever that the people complaining are not voting for a third party every time. Perhaps they are, and in fact, it is as ineffectual as they claim.

Its not about voting for a third party - which is ineffectual. It's about remembering that you have way more elections then just who the president is.

All the important ones (President, Congress) seem to be based on bipartisan politics. What is left? Voting on propositions?

even ignoring the issues i raised in my original post, another huge problem is the success of propaganda and the polarization of the political landscape. even if the system worked perfectly, a large portion of the population would continue to vote against their self-interest due to propaganda and social conditioning. and the polarization makes it so you can't get people to entertain different views, as they feel that they're getting attacked and "losing the fight" if they change their stance.

The police already selectively fail to enforce many laws they could otherwise arrest and charge people for. So if that's all you're worried about your worst fears came true decades ago, if not earlier.

They are referring to ... "including the controversial Homeland Security-run Fusion Center," -- http://fixyt.com/watch?v=jgZzRrTo5r8

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