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Comment by jrlocke | Hacker News Reader

I'm 23. People younger than me (generally) do not have faith in the police. My parents believe cops do no wrong. Neither belief leads to useful change. This kind of program would moderate these thoughts into actionable ones while bringing accountability into these asymmetric encounters. This seems like a place where more surveilance is actually a good thing.

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>This seems like a place where more surveilance is actually a good thing.

The problem here is the disparity of power. It should be legal for people to record the police, but not necessarily for the police to do the same.

I don't think there's anything wrong with police recording the streets though. At least in the US, anyone has the right to record in public places. Why shouldn't the police be able to do the same?

What do they do with all that video?

Dump it out of a buffer? Or store it, and process it with number plate and face recognition software?

Living in UK (bafflingly high number of CCTV) cameras makes me gently wary of this kind of surveillance.

Having said that I'm in favour of anything that helps prevent abuse by police officers. I used to trust police but recent scandals in UK prove that corruption and blatantly illegal practices are common.

Ideally, store it for a set amount of time and then delete it. Or keep it in perpetuity and only allow it to be used with a court order.

But now you have a situation where the control of the data is out of you hands in a black box. You never know if the law is applied or not.

The police can throw you in jail. Ordinary members of the public cannot.

What?

Police (ordinarily) cannot throw you in jail without probable cause. If you're taped committing a crime, members of the public can just forward the tape to the police, and you'll end up in jail anyway.

That's true, but it's not just about doing wrong things. There ought to be probable cause for recording by an authority of the state. It also has to be targeted and not done in a dragnet fashion. The police have significant discretionary powers on their side and the body of law is wide enough to "find something" against just about anyone.

If you are in favor of mass surveillance, you should at least argue for a drastic simplification and excision of laws from the books.

>Police (ordinarily) cannot throw you in jail without probable cause

LOL. Have you missed the hundreds of stories posted in forums, newspapers and websites?

> At least in the US, anyone has the right to record in public places.

This is untrue in many, many places. Some states require consent (to record another). There are many restrictions around infrastructure and specific events.

Police go into private places.

Simply put, because you recording your interactions likely only has real utility to you.

The police regarding all interactions is something a lot trickier, because they have much broader influence.

It's a matter of scale.

There's quite a lot of evidence to suggest that always on recording of police does far more to address asymmetry of power than to reinforce it; it's why sousveillance is popular amongst activists. Police brutality flourishes in dark, non visible places. Surveillance generally is bad; this isn't really surveillance in the same way.

Is this in the US or do people in many other Western countries share that suspicion? I'm in Australia and whenever I've dealt with police, they've always been very professional and reasonable. Firm when necessary, but accommodating and flexible when someone was trying to explain their actions, for example.

Got pulled over and warned for (barely) speeding in Texas once. Based on US cop horror stories I'd read, I was so nervous I was almost shaking but the guy was perfectly polite and friendly.

I think it's mostly USA and UK where people are afraid of the police by default. I certainly haven't have any problems with them here in Finland.

It's not necessarily fear, it's more that in many areas the relationship between police and the public have become rather strained for various reasons.

There are many places in the US where you will have no issues whatsoever from police while in other areas an encounter may not turn out so well.

I'm sure there are similar issues throughout the world if one bothers to look for it.

I would say one difference in the US that's popped up lately is that the increased use of technology in our daily lives exposes the fact that there are many bad apples in the barrel, which makes the whole barrel suspect.

Plus, for many people, the fact that the police tend to style themselves after the military these days tends to worry and bother people.

Cops in Aus can be pretty alright. They can also be absolutely horrendous. I've experienced both, and i would prefer them to have cameras to fix the latter and allow the public to see the former more often. Win win, IMO.

Perhaps the difference of opinion between your peers and your parents is mostly due to general opinions of authority and the status quo that comes with aging.

Perhaps, but what is important is that neither of those positions reflect reality.

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