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Your post basically boils down to:

1. You don't trust the police/legal system.

2. You trust our own community more.

Not saying I agree or disagree, but there are a LOT of people who would really disagree with this, and a lot more who would think that someone saying "why involved the actual people the public has chosen to deal with this, we can deal with it ourselves" would be very wrong.

It's hard to imagine how anyone familiar with any part of the police/legal system's pattern of clueless, ham-handed, hierarchy-ridden interaction with technology over the last 30 years could find justification to continue extending them trust.

So what are we supposed to do instead? Rely on self policing by the individuals or the industry? The the police or judicial system is off track, you attempt to correct them, not ignore them and route around them. That may unfortunately end up with injustice for some while the correction is ongoing, but that's the normal state. There's always correction that needs to happen, and there's always injustice, that's the normal state, the point is to try to minimize the injustice as much as possible. Ignoring the built in mechanisms for steering the government in the right direction doesn't yield a better situation in the end.

"So what are we supposed to do instead" and "Do I trust the police right now" are different questions.

I don't like the fact that I trust self-policing by any community (even my own) more than the institution that is supposed to be doing policing. But whether I like it doesn't affect things.

I agree that it is important for us, as a free society, to fix policing. In the meantime, the best way to minimize injustice is not to invoke police when there is no immedate threat that can't be otherwise solved.

This is exactly why I don't think self policing is suitable. If someone broke the law and endangered other people, you or I as possible community members should not be able to decide no police action is involved when others are the people that were actually endangered. Do the people on the road during this situation not have a voice? We are not incentivized correctly to handle this situation suitably.

The police and judicial system sometimes have conflicting incentives as well, but at least they are aligned more with the public good than ours are. There are laws and they are, for the most part, rewarded for enforcing them.

>Do the people on the road during this situation not have a voice?

Of course they do. They can call the highway patrol or 911 and report a disabled vehicle. Let's imagine how that call would go.

  911: 911, What's your emergency?
  Driver: Hi, there was a vehicle travelling slowly on the freeway with its emergency flashers on, I had to switch lanes.
  Pause...
  Driver: Hello?
  911: Sorry, I was waiting for you to finish. Was there any other information? Did the driver or occupants appear to be in distress?
  Driver: I don't think so, he was alone and appeared to be talking to someone, perhaps on hands-free, or maybe On-Star?
  911: 911 is for emergencies only, in the future please report events of this type to local authorities' non-emergency number accessible via 411. Goodbye.

Exactly. In this situation, the people on the road have less information that we do after the fact. People deserve to know if they were put in danger and why. Since this was done on a public highway, anyone that uses public highways has a right to feel upset about the behavior.

I would like to think that a call to 911 with more information (which of course a fellow driver wouldn't have) would be handled differently:

  911: 911, What's your emergency?
  Driver: Hi, someone on the freeway has purposefully disabled their vehicle in a location without shoulders, and is slowing while driving, impeding traffic.  I'm not sure if the power brakes or steering are functioning, but the driver is definitely not in full control of the vehicle.
  911: We've dispatched an officer to your location.  Has there been an accident yet?  Has the driver recovered control of the vehicle?

With other recent news releases about insiders being fired in internal affairs departments for findings against the police, I believe, we must assume that the police are self-policing in their own right.

If an angry bear is terrorizing your campground, then yes, call fish & wildlife so they can shoot it with a tranq dart and haul it off somewhere safe. In the meantime, though, do you go about your life as though nothing is wrong? Hell no, you get the fuck away from the angry bear!

And tossing chocolate bars into your neighbor's campsite in hopes that the angry bear will wreck their stuff is just not cool.

I agree, but I fail to see how that relates to the current context.

Unless the unruly bear is these security researchers, the fleeing campers are other security researchers in the same field, and their fleeing is them correctly assessing that some LEA is going to be taking down any bears nearby that even twitch wrong after this.

Bad actors ruin it for everyone.

It is true that bad actors ruin it for everyone, and that's why it does not make sense to interact with cops if you have any way of avoiding them. You have no way of knowing which ones are the bad actors until it's too late to do anything about it, and you have no recourse once they have decided to mess with you. Furthermore, they have effectively unlimited resources when it comes to making your life difficult.

You seem to think that because the police are theoretically under democratic oversight, that one can safely interact with cops as though the nominal rules of engagement will restrict them, but even if - in the long run - it is possible to rein them in, the law enforcement system we actually have right now is unpredictable, unjust, and unsafe.

If you don't want to interact with the police, you shouldn't do illegal things, or present your actions as possibly illegal.

If you distrust the police to the degree that you think even if your actions weren't illegal you will still have negative consequences from interacting with them, definitely don't do the above.

When someone's actions extend to endangering the public to the degree we see here (which I think is obvious once you've watched the video), they are past any good will I would have extended them in not contacting the police for fear of an overreaction. Their clear disregard for public safety is reason enough for me.

Additionally, on the chance that it was entirely intentional and they are counting on the media and possibly even law enforcement response to help make this an issue, they they definitely don't need our restraint, and nor do they want it.

Dude, have you not been paying any attention to the War on Drugs, or the Ferguson thing or really any of the Black Lives Matter stuff? The cops will fuck with you if they want to fuck with you, and they will write up whatever paperwork they need to write up to justify it afterward. The courts will believe their testimony by default. The only way to get around this is to release video afterward showing that the cop lied on the stand, and even then the best you can hope for is an overturned conviction; the officer is extremely unlikely to face any consequences. This is the system we have.

It does not matter that we theoretically have democratic oversight. In practice, what we have is a system where cops can do whatever they think fit and expect to get away with it. They are armed and dangerous; it is not safe to interact with them. It is not a good idea to call them, or to talk with them if someone else calls them, because they - the cops - have a clear disregard for public safety when it is counter to their own interests.

You see, the thing is some of us still believe the the police are staff by people, not some faceless conglomeration of drones that all follow the same horrible behavior, and that while there are some, probably many bad police officers, and many systemic problems, they still serve a purpose, and that life without any form of law enforcement would be a big step back in many, many ways. The amount the media reports on something often has no bearing on how common it is.

If I was robbed, I would call the police. If I saw someone waving a gun around in public, I would call the police. If I saw someone using a car as a weapon, I would call the police. If I see a situation where people are endangering the public and someone might get hurt, I would call the police. Not doing so when I clearly knew I should would make me feel somewhat responsible for any negative outcomes otherwise.

I'm not really interesting in continuing a discussion where the other side's position seems to be "the police are racist scumbags and they will ruin your life with the slightest contact, so don't call them on criminals." You might find that characterization unfair, but then again, you're the one over-generalizing using large media events as evidence instead statistics.

Edit: Removed reference to ad-hominem, which wasn't factually correct.

> you're the one pulling an ad-hominem on the police

While I agree with much of the rest of what you right in that comment, this is not accurate: overgeneralizing a negative stereotype of someone other than the other party in a debate isn't "pulling an ad hominem".

That kind of argument is generally considered to be 'poisoning the well' -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

You're right, so I'll update it to reflect your wording, which I think is clearer, and actually correct.

Have you seen the damage being caused by "hackers" lately? I don't trust the police, but I don't trust my fellow hackers any more, especially when you consider their clueless, ham-handed interaction with the general public over the last 30 years.

Hackers can steal your money. You may be able to get reimbursed, depending on how they did it. The novel thing about this Jeep story is precisely the fact that hackers are demonstrating an ability to do something worse than stealing money.

The cops can wreck your house, break your stuff, take your money, shoot your dog, deprive you of your liberty, and - if they think they can get away with describing you as a threat - shoot you dead. Even if you spend the time and money it would take to prove in court that all of this activity was illegal and unjustified, most of the time you'll fail, and even if you succeed you'll never get anything back.

I don't trust hackers or cops, but I can sure as hell see which one is the bigger threat.

It's not really novel because hackers are having a physical presence, it's novel because hackers are attacking cars. Even then, it's novel because hackers are remotely controlling cars. They've been able to unlock your car and drive away with nothing but their Android phone for years.

Meanwhile hackers can break into the control systems for the power grid and shut down electricity, causing major damage. They can open or close hydroelectric dams, causing flooding and death. They can control hospital systems and kill or injure patients. They can control the airplane you're riding on while sitting in their seat. And all of these have been demoed at security conferences I've been to. I've seen these all in person.

There's a lot of physical harm that hackers can do. Sure, with a cop it's more personal since they're standing there in front of you pulling the trigger and a hacker doesn't even have to see your face.

Love them or hate them, both hackers and cops exist for a reason and are not going anywhere any time soon. One of the reason hackers exist is to point out dangerous security flaws like this. One of the reasons cops exist is because sometimes hackers are just as dangerous as the actions they're trying to draw attention to.

If there's been journalistic licence employed then they should be able to demonstrate that to the authorities since the entire footage was recorded. So there isn't an issue.

It also should be noted (since nobody else has raised this point) that some people within the police force likely read Wired anyway. So complaining about the police involvement for a piece posted to a popular news site is like moaning that your boss reads your Twitter feed.

If only there was some agency or agencies responsible for investigating possible illegal activity, we could have contacted them instead, and then they could investigate the matter with the input of the judicial system, interview the people involved, and come to the appropriate response.

After Alice Goffman, a publication with this kind of journalist involvement has to be seen with a certain suspicion.