Boston policemen complain about new plan to watch their movements | Hacker News Reader

Boston policemen complain about new plan to watch their movements

arstechnica.com

84 pointsshawndumas79 comments

This makes me really wary of ever gaining the attention of a police officer in Boston. Police car GPS tracking technology is surely coming to my state (after all, the city buses already have it), and it will be welcome here. Minnesota peace officer vehicle dashboard camera videos are often used in investigations, including investigations of officer misconduct, and everyone expects the video to be available any time a police vehicle is involved in an interaction with the public. It has been mandatory in my state since the 1980s for all custodial interrogations by police to be videotaped from beginning to end, and the videotapes can become part of the court record any time police conduct in a case is in dispute.

Law enforcement is better when law enforcement officers are subject to the law. It's really that simple. If we know what police officers are doing, we know whether or not they are doing their taxpayer-funded jobs and whether accusations against them are true or false. Every law-abiding police officer should be glad to be on record about what happened while on patrol.

>>If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.<< I don't agree with this statement, however I do feel that someone who is being paid to do a job slips into a slightly different category. It's not that I feel an employer should be able to watch those on the clock, but the relationship with privacy changes. And when the employee is in a job which includes monitoring of, let alone policing of behaviour - absolutely monitoring is appropriate. How else do you resolve the he said, she said situation?

Indeed, that statement only makes sense in a world that is maximally accepting, tolerant, forgiving, and fair-minded.

That is not our world, not by a long shot.

Deleted comment

No. Public actors acting on the public in public should have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

I agree, for the most part. No right of privacy on duty, but they should have a reasonable expectation of discretion. For example, if there are two officers driving a beat somewhere, and they're wearing a recording device of some sort, if they choose to discuss family matters with each other, that has no reason to make it to the public record. However, if in the middle of their conversation, they spot someone doing a purse-snatching, all of the events surrounding that crime should be available for the record. I would expect someone from the court to make the sensible decision as to what goes into the record.

I understand why your call for discretion sounds like a good idea, but the only conceivable implementation will be cops (either those cops themselves, or other employees of the police force) deciding which stuff is irrelevant personal stuff and which stuff is public record. And there's no reasons to believe that discussion of their own misconduct would ever make it to the public record.

Could you clarify for me - are you saying that monitoring of police is a good thing? You start by saying "No", but I believe monitoring police interactions with the public is a good thing?

Sorry to be unclear; the deleted parent wonders if loss of privacy for police is a yet another step in our surveillance state, to which I say, no-- it is a different class of interaction.

I support general monitoring/documentation of police interactions with the public.

I mean, I agree with you, but just because you are 'on duty' doesn't mean that you become an automaton of the state. You are still a person with privileges, rights, and responsibilities. If anything, since your responsibilities increase, your privileges should as well. Cops, no matter how corrupt or bad, are still people just like you and me.

EDIT: I should explain myself more. Cops are people too. That we have a system that automatically prioritizes their word above all others is that problem here. Dashcams and monitoring every trip to the doughnut shop is a symptom of that. Maybe we should treat the root cause, not the symptoms. Maybe the system is in need of some TLC, not more rules and exceptions.

If anything, since your responsibilities increase, your privileges should as well.

I would argue the opposite. The unique powers given to cops (the ability to detain people and use violence) should come with significant hurdles to using those powers and increased oversight.

Indeed, turning the phrase around leads to what you are referring to, and makes sense; If anything, since your privileges increase, your responsibilities should as well.

The whole point of a police officer is to have individuals with extra privileges that are trusted to work for society. Without the responsibility to use these privileges as they were intended, the position has no meaning.

I agree with you, thank you.

Ok, so then do peace officers have that responsibility? Are they the ones responsible and no-one else? Why?

"a person with privileges, rights, and responsibilities"

I don't actually think that privileges bear any relationship to rights or responsibilities.

If you had suggested that their rights increase in line with their responsibilities, that is something I could get behind. The question is what the recordings are used for. If they were automatically backed up and stored out of police hands - only to be used in the event of a court case. If the additional responsibility of being constantly recorded was attached to the right for that recording to be used only in court - this would be reasonable. If they are going to look at the recordings as part of, say, performance reviews.. not so good.

What if google wants to use their videos as part of real-time traffic? In such a case, shouldn't public servant's data, no matter the cause of the service, be allowed to be used for public good? What about when a cop makes a friendly but racist joke at a co-worker or friend? Should that be allowed? What about when the officers are having a fight with their boyfriends or in-laws. Just because the fight is occurring 'on-duty' doesn't mean that they can avoid it nor does it mean that they loose the right to have an argument with loved ones privately.

Also, privileges are part of responsibilities. With further responsibilities come further privileges. Higher ranks in the military are saluted because of their increased duties, they also gain a better mess hall and other privileges as rank improves. Outside of the military, a driver's license is a good example. With the privilege of driving comes the responsibility to maintain safety for your vehicle. The responsibilities of a US citizen are to serve if drafted, to be educated, to serve on juries, to respect the law, to pay your fair share of the taxes, to respect the authority of the government, and to respect the differing opinions of other citizens. With this you gain many rights and privileges that are afforded to you that many people in other countries do not have.

First off, thanks for replying. I don't really understand where you were going with your first paragraph.

My point was there should be a damn good reason, and damn good protections, for the use of public data if it has the potential to transgress into the private boundaries of public servants. I think the additional potential for abuse of position in public service roles certainly forfeits some expectations of privacy. But do not see the public utility in allowing that kind of open data.. if you mean to point out that such a system will be abused, then I fully agree.

My greater point, and the reason I posted, is exactly the opposite of your second paragraph. People often confuse privileges with rights, but they are simply something conferred on you by another. It is not like rights or responsibilities which tend toward a sort of universal human condition. They are given quid pro quo. Just because it may be given in response to exercising your responsibilities, does not mean it has anything whatsoever to do with them.

Also, a driver's license is an interesting example. I generally think I have a right to do whatever the fuck I want as a human, provided I do no harm to others. Theoretically, it is not a privilege the state gives me. A drivers license is a social pact and further, a recognition that I take my responsibilities seriously. In reality, the state has taken away my right to drive, by threat of punishment, and given it back to me as privilege. Power games..

This sort of subtle manipulation of power and privilege makes me think that perhaps privilege is fundamentally morally wrong. Though probably unavoidable, they have a way of corrupting, both those who think they have a right to the power and those who think they have a right to the privilege.

Sorry about the first paragraph, it was late.

Interesting point about privilege being morally wrong. I hear a lot about privilege from minority action groups and was always kinda confused about the meaning of that word in the context of what they are speaking about. I think that your response here allows me to understand better. I have thought that the privileges I enjoy were NOT rights beforehand and that through more responsibility I gained them. Perhaps I have gained them back instead. Hmm, there is a lot to chew on here. Thank you for making me think today.

>I mean, I agree with you, but just because you are 'on duty' doesn't mean that you become an automaton of the state. You are still a person with privileges, rights, and responsibilities.

As a person, sure. But as an on-duty police officer? Even a regular person working at McDonald's or Walgreens or Walmart there are cameras rolling all day.

And why is that a justification? Should McDonalds have cameras on it's employees that the employees cannot access or gain copies of the data within?

Actually there are many benefits to the LEO for having their interactions recorded. The use to the organization when addressing citizen complaints and providing evidence are pretty widely acknowledged. [0] This isn't just about 'catching cops doing bad'. It is also about having more reliable evidence to use if a complaint or a situation of one person's word against another arises. The fact that it can also prove wrongdoing by a LEO should be thought of as a side benefit.

[0] http://www.theiacp.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=5k3IK9SZuz4...

Absolutely. And I have had numerous situations where I have wished there was a record of what I said or did. My interactions with the public would be far easier if they were recorded. Too often there is a difference of opinion, especially when people are stressed out during interactions and miss key instructions or messages. Most recent occasion? A complaint over something that happened yesterday.

Resident of a town near Boston here: I'm fully in favor of a _Halting State_-style mandatory lifecam on every on-duty police officer.

It won't solve police abuses, but it will do more to help than anything else I can think of that doesn't involve the much harder problem of changing police culture.

I agree wholeheartedly. Pilot programs, while not definitive, have shown drastic reductions in complaints against officers, as well as use of force:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/business/wearable-video-ca...

Honestly, it seems like a really positive thing for the "good cops" out there too. No more "he said, she said" complaints.

Of course, if these tapes get conveniently "lost" that presents another set of problems.

"What’s the logic to putting in such a tracking system? It lets dispatchers know where officers are in real time rather than having them wait for a response via radio. Unsurprisingly, some cops don’t like the new change."

I'm baffled that this doesn't exist already. This article feels like it's 20 years old.

I was thinking the same thing. Kinda shocked this isn't standard practice since GPS came to public use in the first place.

Now, of course, we'll have to wait and see whether GPS data would also develop a habit of disappearing along with dash-cam footage.

I've been baffled by its non-existence for the ~year I've been regularly monitoring local police radio traffic on the other side of the country.

I'm confused why the ACLU is objecting to this. It seems like having police be trackable by their own departments while on duty should present absolutely no privacy concern. And, for what it's worth, I think it's a good idea. At the very least, it will give police departments more data about what their officers are actually doing, and maybe it will prevent a few abuses of power.

I'd agree with the ACLU that this would be totally unconscionable if we were talking about tracking them 24/7, but that's clearly not the intent here.

They're not quite raising an objection, but rather using the opportunity to draw attention (and support) to their cause.

"...That's why we hope police officers will join us in demanding that the state legislature pass forward-looking privacy protections to ensure that if the government wants to track a private citizen—by license plate reader, GPS device, or cell phone—it needs to first get a warrant"

Note that it refers to 'private citizen' not police officers.

The ACLU stands for civil liberty. Civil liberty is about protecting the rights of individuals from the government and other powerful actors. In this case, the privacy of individual officers is being threatened by the government.

One might argue that on-duty police shouldn't have privacy, that society benefits from transparency. But that's not the job of the ACLU. Personally I respect their ideological consistency. It reminds me of Richard Stallman; even when I disagree with him, I'm glad he's out there doing what he does.

The argument that I have heard so far is that up until this point, when police enter a house and make an arrest, the jury doesn't see the accused until his lawyer gets to clean him up, put him in a suit, and get him to shut up. With ubiquitous cameras, the jury will now see the accused and his residence and will have that as their first impression of him.

I imagine that, if necessary, the accused's lawyer could argue that showing such footage would be unduly prejudicial. This would preclude the jury from ever seeing it (unless its probative value outweighed its prejudicial impact).

Such a video would be utterly irrelevant in most cases anyway. If you're in and out to arrest someone on a warrant, the actual events of that arrest have nothing to do with the reason they're being arrested, and would almost never come up in a trial to begin with.

Correct, but that doesn't apply to GPS in police cruisers. All that data can tell you is that the car was at X address at Y time, which is already obvious.

>Departments are going to have to confront the chilling effect this surveillance might have on police behavior.

Honest question - what bona fide police activity could be chilled by GPS tracking their cruisers?

How about your boss tells you to patrol a stop sign all day and count the number of rolling stops vs. full stops. Since you know your cruiser is GPS tracked, you're concerned being seen not moving for 8 hours.

First of all, no one would be assigned on such a contrived detail. Even if they were, they would not likely be there for 8 hours as there are mandatory breaks. And even if they were there for 8 hours, dispatch would know they would be out on a detail at that intersection all day, and would be periodically status checked to make sure they were still alive. And finally, what in the hell would be the problem with being tracked as being exactly where they are supposed to be?!

I am absolutely shocked. Postal vans, delivery trucks and armoured vehicles that deliver money to banks and stores all have GPS trackers fitted to them, heck even most taxi companies have fitted GPS trackers to their vehicles. What is the big deal? It means that a dispatcher can accurately see how far away a police officer is from a call for help. This could save lives and all the while keep some police honest.

Imagine you call 911, the dispatcher immediately sees your location based on your phone number and then based on what service you need, dispatches the nearest police car to you if there is one nearby as opposed to putting out a call over outdated radio technology.

Sounds like a case of police being misguided as to what the motivation is behind such a move. If delivery companies and mail services use the same technology for efficiency and estimates on arrivals, why shouldn't the police?

“If I take my cruiser and I meet [reluctant witnesses] to talk, eventually they can follow me and say, 'Why were you in a back dark street for 45 minutes?'

What's this guy mean? Does he currently spend time meeting witnesses that his department doesn't know about and wouldn't approve of if they did, or that he somehow needs to keep secret from the rest of the department?

what if there are corrupt cops in your department and they review your cars GPS logs?

Then when you anonymously speak to a newspaper you might as well say that, right? Unless he assumes everyone already knows that police officers can't trust each other.

I thought the same: say "I was meeting a reluctant witness". His argument sounded more like evasion than reality. I don't see how it's much different to "Why didn't you check in for 45 minutes today?".

If you think that corruption is a problem amongst your senior staff and dispatchers, then that's something that needs to be addressed, not hacked around.

I am with others, I am surprised it took this long. This actually is safer for officers out by themselves.

Anecdote from back in the day (well late 90's). A friend I had at school invited me to hang out with one of his "hacker" friends. This guy was into carding and other crap. Anyway, he lived in a small town. So somehow he managed to build small transmitters and attached them to bottom of a few local police cruisers. When those would get closer he got a blinking light on his receiver. Don't know how true it was, I was pretty young, but thought it an interesting idea.

Courts in many instances agreed that one doesn't need an warrant since the movement of one's car is public. Can the same logic be applied to police cars then?

Some countries don't let you advertise the location of speed traps. So radio stations there would for example warn drivers of cars with flashing lights and people in uniform blasting beams of microwave energy at oncoming cars.

Watch the watchers.

This is a good first step, but people authorized by the government to kill citizens at their discretion should be monitored intensively every second that they're on duty. Something as light-handed as GPS tracking on their vehicles, and they're complaining about it? That's something that would worry me if I was deeply corrupt, so it's telling that the Boston PD is complaining.

Police officers are NOT authorized to kill people. They have a right to self defence just like you or I. The state does give them special powers, but they are only justified to kill someone when it is in defence of themselves or others, however their job often puts them in such situations.

This[1] was considered to be a valid use of deadly force. Calling it self defense is a huge stretch, it was basically execution for failing to follow police orders. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/california-poli...

It's the difference between ethics (codified laws) and morals (societies implicit laws). Society (in aggregate through our elected officials) accepts that as self defence for a police officer. Our laws could likely be used to prosecute him for murder (if the society that elected the prosecutor believed he should be).

* I am giving a perspective from how these systems _do_ work, not how they _should_ work in my opinion.

Authorization comes from approval and in most cases the state rarely disapproves of police killings. If the penalty for wantonly taking a life is paid vacation and a poor excuse for an investigation then you can interpret that as approval.

Authorization != { Acceptance, Implicit Approval }

Authorization would mean they have a piece of paper, a verbal order allowing the killing of people, or something to that effect.

The others are simply society's acceptance and approval that their killings are justified because of their job.

It's the difference between ethics (codified laws) and morals (societies implicit laws).

SWEET IRONY! OH IT TASTES SO SWEEEEEEET!!!!!!

The very fact that the policemen complain should make it mandatory. Anything they oppose, they oppose for a reason, and there's really only one conclusion - that the cops would rather hide their movements from those paying them. Google glass will likely make this moot since the other side of public contact will be recorded. People that carry guns and with alarming regularity kill people for the worst reasons should be subject to way more scrutiny than other employes and practically everyone is on camera all day these days. Cops should wear Google Glass and the video streamed to a vault inaccessible to the cops, to be pulled when needed for court (by a third party)

Why, do they have something to hide?

Also, if they're doing things they don't want other people to know, maybe they shouldn't be doing those things in the first place.

Or something.

This should not be controversial. Delivery and freight trucks and numerous other kinds of commercial vehicles get GPS monitored.

Police in cruisers are equipped with rifles, shotguns, one or more pistols, ammunition for all these firearms, plus a Taser, mace, etc. and it's NOT tracked?

Why do they only want to track the policemen and not the policewomen?

Yes please describe how the English language is conspiring against women.

The article doesn't mention gender.

Try reading the title of the article.

Policemen has meant "a member of a police force", regardless if that person is a man or woman, for ages immemorial.

Policeperson, OTOH, is a BS politically correct neologism.

(And who says it stops there? One can conceive of cops --men, women, LGBT etc--, not appreciating being identified as "persons" thus protesting the "policeperson" name too).

The whole discussion is completely infantile, pedantic and not worthy of HN time.

In the UK the correct term is "police officer". Using the term policeman is gender specific.

The internet is not located in the UK.

I hate to say this but:

"first they came for the communists, I didn't ck.plain because I wasn't a communist..."

I don't want them to come for me. Cameras are one thing, it cuts both ways. This is different. (quote: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...)

Perhaps all Boston residents should carry GPS? For public safety of course.

Of course, to disallow people from removing such device and defeating the public safety effectiveness of this measure, the device would be implanted surgically.

And to allow for the identification of bodies, there should be several, just in case a limb gets lost, or a bullet destroy one...

The procedure should be painless (relatively) and should be covered by the Affordable Care Act (we think, we haven't really read the law), so residents that resist such measures could be deemed troublemakers and put into a government database such as the no-fly list, and other such lists, for possible rounding up at the first sign of trouble.

All in the name of public safety, of course.

Of course.

I as an individual don't have the power to stop, detain, and imprison someone. I don't have a "license to kill".

Putting GPS on cars that are paid for by the taxpayer and are used by people with more power than a regular citizen is hardly some far reaching nanny state, it is just good practice.

> Putting GPS on cars that are paid for by the taxpayer and are used by people with more power than a regular citizen is hardly some far reaching nanny state, it is just good practice.

I'd go further and say that it's quite the opposite of a nanny state (or really, a surveillance state). I don't understand where chris_mahan is coming from, as this policy seems to allow the citizenry oversight over the government, instead of the other way around.

My argument is that first the police, then firefighters. Then teachers, then schoolchildren, then all government vehicles, then all government administrators, then all government workers, then a few major corporations, then all major corporations, then small businesses, then all businesses, then students in college, then library patrons, buss-pass holders, then ex-convicts, then children, then people collecting unemployment, then people who are receiving disability payments, then retirees, then... Did I miss anyone?

The slippery slope is called slippery _because_ it is slippery...

None of your other examples have the power to stop, search, imprison other citizens based solely on their word. They are not even functional as counter-examples. How many 'corrupt firefighters' send people to jail for life or shoot someone to death and then get off scott free?

My confusion is that you think there's a slope here to slip down. As mentioned in another comment, the police really are exceptional in both power and responsibility. As stated in a (far) above comment, this actually is a protection for the officer as well. Remember that they are first responders for evidence, and if they do their job well the video evidence will only bolster their credibility. And if not, it will only empower victims of abuse.

None of the other groups have so much responsibility and power where trust is so critical to their functioning.

I've is slippery, too, and it can take you in any direction you fall: how far are you willing to compromise a lack of oversight?

Where "I've" is an example of the sloppiness led from excessive trust in auto-correct. Should be "Ice", a word I clearly slipped up on.

I'd be surprised if any decent corporate fleet (deliveries, taxis, buses, whatever) doesn't have GPS in all vehicles already.

And firefighters 100% need this as well, it's better for dispatching.

What's so slippery? Yes, if you're driving someone elses vehicle on someone elses mission, then it's okay and beneficial to have GPS in it.

Your slippery slope has a very weird angle, given that schoolchildren are hit so early and ex-cons so late.

Mind you, I'm not sure what abuses of power schoolchildren go for, so I'm open to being educated on the matter.

abuse of power? I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about "Society feels it's important to monitor the whereabout of these individuals for reason X".

You realise the slippery slope is also the name of a logical fallacy right?

The difference between the fallacy and the logical device is warrant (the logical chain of events) and lack of reasonable demarcation.

How does watching police lead to watching fire-fighters? The increased safety of the first, the already existing infrastructure, are all reasons that could happen (and may not be a bad idea, if like police, we only watch them during their job).

But how does that translate to teachers. Where is the chain of events that connects them? that makes the argument a logically valid slippery slope as opposed to a fallacy?

Consider gay marriage leading to bestiality and pedophilia. There is a reasonable demarcation point. Two legally consenting adults (humans obviously). Is a reasonable position somewhere along the slope. There is also no warrant. There is no link to gay people marrying and an increase in bestiality or pedophilia. Hence Logical fallacy.

Consider free speech and banning certain types of speech (specifically information and the banning of some types of information (rape porn as an example)) leading to censorship and violations of free speech and privacy. There is warrant here:

* Because we are already filtering for objectionable material, why not also read the information and look for terrorists, oh and criminals. Who reads and filters this data? How do we control it?

* Cryptography becomes illegal, or controlled, so that we can look for objectional material. Removing privacy and making free speech difficult.

* It becomes harder to report crime, since the crime of reading information about other crimes becomes more serious than the crimes themselves.

>You realise the slippery slope is also the name of a logical fallacy right?

You know that "logical fallacies" are BS that have nothing to do with Logic (formal logic and reasoning) and are wrong in thelselves besides, right?

>Where is the chain of events that connects them? that makes the argument a logically valid slippery slope as opposed to a fallacy?

It's called the "Overton Window". Check it out.

Oh, and the "chain of events connecting them" is the all increasing deployment of surveillance since the mid 20th century. An actual "slippery slope" in action, if I ever saw one.

you, sir, are a fucking idiot.

Thanks for the great and intellectually stimulating response, stay classy.

Hey, just trying to stay up to par with the stupid shit just spat out in the parent post <3 Get stupid, stay stupid, friend.

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