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I'm a San Diego resident that was falsely accused of a serious offense a few years ago. Surveillance footage from a restaurant saved me from prosecution. I kn

by MurMan 6y ago

I'm a San Diego resident that was falsely accused of a serious offense a few years ago. Surveillance footage from a restaurant saved me from prosecution. I know that this is a minority opinion, but I'm in favor of cameras in public places. There will always be the potential for abuse even with strong restrictions, but I think the benefits are worth it.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
I assume I’m always on camera, as car dash cams and house doorbell cameras become more and more common.
tolbish 6y ago
The idea that more authoritarianism will keep us safe is an enticing idea. After all, if you have nothing to hide, why should you care? As mentioned elsewhere, there are better ways to reduce criminality than a "guilty until proven innocent" view that comes with rising mass surveillance and authoritarianism.
fiter 6y ago
I agree with you. If we could have this technology in the same context as warrants, I'd be happy.
- brandmeyer 6y ago
  Unfortunately, warrants aren't a sufficient safeguard against abuse of technology. Law enforcement is well known to use evidence laundering techniques to work around procedural safeguards.
  - fiter 6y ago
    I imagine we could come up with some way to handle this. For example, put the storage as a responsibility in the judicial branch.
- sneak 6y ago
  I offer that if you believe this, perhaps you haven’t read many search warrant applications.
  - fiter 6y ago
    Do you think we should ban search warrants?
    - sneak 6y ago
      I think the determination of probable cause should be audited much more heavily, with a lot more in the way of penalties for judges for clearly wrong answers. I also think the fact that there is essentially no consequence whatsoever for police plainly lying in warrant applications is a major oversight. 100% of the applications for granted warrants I’ve read have had clear factual errors in them, sworn under penalty of perjury (ha!). We don’t even track what percentage of warrant applications contain perjury (~100% in my estimation), much less what percentage of those so swearing face consequences as a result (~0% in my estimation). The system is broken.
      - fiter 6y ago
        If I can summarize: search warrants should not be banned but we should enforce the checks and balances that justify their existence in the first place. I agree with that 100%. I dk believ that is orthogonal to using warrants on public surveillance. Maybe politically it might be a nice lever, though: we will authorize surveillance with this new system in place for all warrants.
kelnos 6y ago
Completely disagree. It's not that there will be the potential for abuse. There will be abuse, full stop. I do not want to live in an authoritarian police surveillance state, thanks. You're lucky that in this case it helped you maintain your innocence, but that use will be in the tiny tiny minority. The actual solution to your particular problem is proper due process and rooting out police sloppiness and prosecutorial overreach, not adding features to our society that make it easy for those in power to violate people's civil rights.
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  There will be both cases of abuse and cases of immense benefit. Your entire comment focuses just on the small likelihood and low incidence of negative outcomes while ignoring the fact that actual criminals will be more likely to be apprehended using this technology. Painting this as a feature to violate civil rights is sheer hyperbole. This solution to identifying and locating suspects is a lot cheaper than the alternative, which is to simply have vastly more police officers on patrol.
- treis 6y ago
  >There will be abuse, full stop Can you give an example of this abuse?
  - darkwizard42 6y ago
    I think the ACLU has a great set of examples: https://www.aclu.org/other/whats-wrong-public-video-surveillance https://www.aclu.org/other/whats-wrong-public-video-surveill... Police databases have been routinely abused so I don't see how the watchers can be trusted with more information when they have zero oversight and ability to manage what they already have :/
    - treis 6y ago
      If we go to the level of one time a cop did a bad thing with this tool then yeah everything will be abused. I'm more interested in cases where the police as a organization abused CCTV.
deelowe 6y ago
Doesn't this presume the government only ever cares about what's right and just? Sometimes what's morally correct and legal are at odds with each other.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  It's not even valid to assume the government cares about what is legal.
loteck 6y ago
We could have public cameras, with a robust public process and oversight by city council. That's possible. If the public wanted that, the ordinance we are working to pass would allow it. Unaccountable mass surveillance without any oversight is just incompatible with our form of government. That's what's getting stopped here.
- jjcon 6y ago
  Thank you. Too many people immediately think all ‘surveillance’ is equally bad which makes things easy but it just isn’t the case. There are kinds of surveillance that can be extremely beneficial and compatible with democratic principles. Surveillance that is heavily regulated with lots of oversight CAN sometimes be a good thing.
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    People are against most types of surveillance because eventually a bad actor will come along and misuse the technology. It's not that they can't be used for good things - it's their potential for misuse.
    - jjcon 6y ago
      > eventually a bad actor will come along and misuse the technology Isn’t that is the entire concept behind separation of power. If we can’t trust democratic principles how can we trust any power or technology? The potential for misuse can apply to all power, big and small.
      - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
        Democracy and separation of powers are not infallible. > If we can’t trust democratic principles how can we trust any power or technology? The potential for misuse can apply to all power, big and small. Exactly, we inherently DONT. That is why we have a constitution and bill of rights - to prevent abuse of the system. Also I'm not buying the "all technology can be misused" argument. It's MUCH easier to be tempted into spying on a political opponent with cameras than it is to nuke them.
linuxftw 6y ago
Minorities are often falsely identified by 'witnesses.' Camera footage is only going to exacerbate this problem. "Looks like him"
fpgaminer 6y ago
Man, I'm so conflicted. I used to be 100% in favor of _responsible_ surveillance technology. Even came up with a few ways to do it that would cryptographically enforce whatever rules we set on it, so that abuse is difficult. I've made a few comments in the past as such. I was very much in the "few bad apples" camp until recently. But the protests have made it abundantly clear that my understanding of the situation was wrong. The last thing we want to do is give more tools of control and abuse to corrupt systems. It's not that I don't agree with you or that I even disagree with my old belief in responsible surveillance technology. But we (America) clearly need to do a _lot_ of work reforming law enforcement and public health first and foremost. Augmenting those systems can only come after.
- treis 6y ago
  >But the protests have made it abundantly clear that my understanding of the situation was wrong. That was revealed by wide spread video surveillance, though.
  - gpm 6y ago
    It was revealed by wide spread video camera availability. This is distinct in that the people present control access to the footage and whether or not the footage is taken instead of some surveillance body controlling access and footage always being taken. Some professor coined this sousveillance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance
Shivetya 6y ago
I am in the camp of all these can benefit society provided we have rules in place governing who can use it, how they can use it, and retention. The same applies to facial recognition. The technology will improve and it behooves us to be making sure that when it does end up in daily life we made sure it does behave in the best interest of all. This means making sure mismatch issues don't get brushed aside or hidden and its all out in the open to see how it works. The next major privacy concern may not have a Snowden type in place with everyone standing outside the doors stamping their feet refusing to play. Don't fool yourself into believing a few cities and even states declaring that it is not allowed, that has never stopped the intelligence community before and certainly won't going forward. Too many will buy into the idea that even a law at Congressional level will do anything but so many exclusions exist and so much is permitted under completely innocent sounding legislation you can never be sure.
justchilly 6y ago
Interesting point. Anecdotally I had a brown friend walk out of my house in SF late one night, walk to the end of the block, and then get detained by police for supposedly stalking/threatening a women. Would have been trivial to prove they had the wrong guy if there were cameras readily available.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Are you confident the "good" video would.be released?
bsder 6y ago
> I'm in favor of cameras in public places. Then turn your own phone on and continuously upload your video and data to a lockbox. If you want to be continuously surveilled, you have the technology to do it to yourself for a fairly cheap price nowadays (see: arrest recording apps). It also has the advantage that it is WAY more likely to exonerate you than some random CCTV that just so happens to be able to provide an alibi. Don't force ME into that situation via government fiat, thanks.

by MurMan 6y ago

lotsofpulp 6y ago

I assume I’m always on camera, as car dash cams and house doorbell cameras become more and more common.

tolbish 6y ago

The idea that more authoritarianism will keep us safe is an enticing idea. After all, if you have nothing to hide, why should you care? As mentioned elsewhere, there are better ways to reduce criminality than a "guilty until proven innocent" view that comes with rising mass surveillance and authoritarianism.

fiter 6y ago

I agree with you. If we could have this technology in the same context as warrants, I'd be happy.

brandmeyer 6y ago
Unfortunately, warrants aren't a sufficient safeguard against abuse of technology. Law enforcement is well known to use evidence laundering techniques to work around procedural safeguards.
- fiter 6y ago
  I imagine we could come up with some way to handle this. For example, put the storage as a responsibility in the judicial branch.
sneak 6y ago
I offer that if you believe this, perhaps you haven’t read many search warrant applications.
- fiter 6y ago
  Do you think we should ban search warrants?
  - sneak 6y ago
    I think the determination of probable cause should be audited much more heavily, with a lot more in the way of penalties for judges for clearly wrong answers. I also think the fact that there is essentially no consequence whatsoever for police plainly lying in warrant applications is a major oversight. 100% of the applications for granted warrants I’ve read have had clear factual errors in them, sworn under penalty of perjury (ha!). We don’t even track what percentage of warrant applications contain perjury (~100% in my estimation), much less what percentage of those so swearing face consequences as a result (~0% in my estimation). The system is broken.
    - fiter 6y ago
      If I can summarize: search warrants should not be banned but we should enforce the checks and balances that justify their existence in the first place. I agree with that 100%. I dk believ that is orthogonal to using warrants on public surveillance. Maybe politically it might be a nice lever, though: we will authorize surveillance with this new system in place for all warrants.

kelnos 6y ago

Completely disagree. It's not that there will be the potential for abuse. There will be abuse, full stop. I do not want to live in an authoritarian police surveillance state, thanks. You're lucky that in this case it helped you maintain your innocence, but that use will be in the tiny tiny minority. The actual solution to your particular problem is proper due process and rooting out police sloppiness and prosecutorial overreach, not adding features to our society that make it easy for those in power to violate people's civil rights.

throwawaysea 6y ago
There will be both cases of abuse and cases of immense benefit. Your entire comment focuses just on the small likelihood and low incidence of negative outcomes while ignoring the fact that actual criminals will be more likely to be apprehended using this technology. Painting this as a feature to violate civil rights is sheer hyperbole. This solution to identifying and locating suspects is a lot cheaper than the alternative, which is to simply have vastly more police officers on patrol.
treis 6y ago
>There will be abuse, full stop Can you give an example of this abuse?
- darkwizard42 6y ago
  I think the ACLU has a great set of examples: https://www.aclu.org/other/whats-wrong-public-video-surveillance https://www.aclu.org/other/whats-wrong-public-video-surveill... Police databases have been routinely abused so I don't see how the watchers can be trusted with more information when they have zero oversight and ability to manage what they already have :/
  - treis 6y ago
    If we go to the level of one time a cop did a bad thing with this tool then yeah everything will be abused. I'm more interested in cases where the police as a organization abused CCTV.

deelowe 6y ago

Doesn't this presume the government only ever cares about what's right and just? Sometimes what's morally correct and legal are at odds with each other.

srtjstjsj 6y ago
It's not even valid to assume the government cares about what is legal.

loteck 6y ago

We could have public cameras, with a robust public process and oversight by city council. That's possible. If the public wanted that, the ordinance we are working to pass would allow it. Unaccountable mass surveillance without any oversight is just incompatible with our form of government. That's what's getting stopped here.

jjcon 6y ago
Thank you. Too many people immediately think all ‘surveillance’ is equally bad which makes things easy but it just isn’t the case. There are kinds of surveillance that can be extremely beneficial and compatible with democratic principles. Surveillance that is heavily regulated with lots of oversight CAN sometimes be a good thing.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  People are against most types of surveillance because eventually a bad actor will come along and misuse the technology. It's not that they can't be used for good things - it's their potential for misuse.
  - jjcon 6y ago
    > eventually a bad actor will come along and misuse the technology Isn’t that is the entire concept behind separation of power. If we can’t trust democratic principles how can we trust any power or technology? The potential for misuse can apply to all power, big and small.
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      Democracy and separation of powers are not infallible. > If we can’t trust democratic principles how can we trust any power or technology? The potential for misuse can apply to all power, big and small. Exactly, we inherently DONT. That is why we have a constitution and bill of rights - to prevent abuse of the system. Also I'm not buying the "all technology can be misused" argument. It's MUCH easier to be tempted into spying on a political opponent with cameras than it is to nuke them.

linuxftw 6y ago

Minorities are often falsely identified by 'witnesses.' Camera footage is only going to exacerbate this problem. "Looks like him"

fpgaminer 6y ago

Man, I'm so conflicted. I used to be 100% in favor of _responsible_ surveillance technology. Even came up with a few ways to do it that would cryptographically enforce whatever rules we set on it, so that abuse is difficult. I've made a few comments in the past as such. I was very much in the "few bad apples" camp until recently. But the protests have made it abundantly clear that my understanding of the situation was wrong. The last thing we want to do is give more tools of control and abuse to corrupt systems. It's not that I don't agree with you or that I even disagree with my old belief in responsible surveillance technology. But we (America) clearly need to do a _lot_ of work reforming law enforcement and public health first and foremost. Augmenting those systems can only come after.

treis 6y ago
>But the protests have made it abundantly clear that my understanding of the situation was wrong. That was revealed by wide spread video surveillance, though.
- gpm 6y ago
  It was revealed by wide spread video camera availability. This is distinct in that the people present control access to the footage and whether or not the footage is taken instead of some surveillance body controlling access and footage always being taken. Some professor coined this sousveillance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance

Shivetya 6y ago

I am in the camp of all these can benefit society provided we have rules in place governing who can use it, how they can use it, and retention. The same applies to facial recognition. The technology will improve and it behooves us to be making sure that when it does end up in daily life we made sure it does behave in the best interest of all. This means making sure mismatch issues don't get brushed aside or hidden and its all out in the open to see how it works. The next major privacy concern may not have a Snowden type in place with everyone standing outside the doors stamping their feet refusing to play. Don't fool yourself into believing a few cities and even states declaring that it is not allowed, that has never stopped the intelligence community before and certainly won't going forward. Too many will buy into the idea that even a law at Congressional level will do anything but so many exclusions exist and so much is permitted under completely innocent sounding legislation you can never be sure.

justchilly 6y ago

Interesting point. Anecdotally I had a brown friend walk out of my house in SF late one night, walk to the end of the block, and then get detained by police for supposedly stalking/threatening a women. Would have been trivial to prove they had the wrong guy if there were cameras readily available.

srtjstjsj 6y ago
Are you confident the "good" video would.be released?

bsder 6y ago

> I'm in favor of cameras in public places. Then turn your own phone on and continuously upload your video and data to a lockbox. If you want to be continuously surveilled, you have the technology to do it to yourself for a fairly cheap price nowadays (see: arrest recording apps). It also has the advantage that it is WAY more likely to exonerate you than some random CCTV that just so happens to be able to provide an alibi. Don't force ME into that situation via government fiat, thanks.