[kelnos]

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.

[MurMan]

> You're lucky that in this case it helped you maintain your innocence, but that use will be in the tiny tiny minority.

What's your data source for this prediction? Are you saying that wrongful arrest and prosecution is a negligible problem?

> The actual solution to your particular problem is proper due process and rooting out police sloppiness and prosecutorial overreach, ...

Easy for you to say. Proper due process would have cost me a year or more of hell plus a lot of money. As for "police sloppiness and prosecutorial overreach", that's pounding on the table and has nothing to do with this discussion on cameras.

> ... not adding features to our society that make it easy for those in power to violate people's civil rights.

Cameras show when civil rights are violated.

[bsder]

> Proper due process would have cost me a year or more of hell plus a lot of money.

This is the REAL problem and not the camera.

"Innocent until proven broke" needs to be fixed.

[treis]

>There will be abuse, full stop

Can you give an example of this abuse?

[darkwizard42]

I think the ACLU has a great set of examples: 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]

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.

[syspec]

You asked for an example, and they provided it. Then you moved the goal post

[treis]

Because the first goal post was meaningless. If that's the level we're looking at then we can't even give cops sticks because at least one of them is going to beat an innocent person with it.

[brendoelfrendo]

> Because the first goal post was meaningless.

I think that's debatable. If an individual can abuse the system in a way that undermines the intent of the system, we need to think carefully about what it is that we're actually building.

> we can't even give cops sticks because at least one of them is going to beat an innocent person with it.

Considering the debate around police violence in America right now, I think it's amusing that we're using this as an example of a ridiculous proposition. Maybe not sticks, no, but the level to which our police are armed is definitely under scrutiny.

[ABCLAW]

>Because the first goal post was meaningless.

You're the one that placed it there.

[srtjstjsj]

I think the ACLU has a great set of examples: https://www.aclu.org/other/whats-wrong-public-video-surveill...

[RobRivera]

That's a red herring. However if you must engage the literal nature of the phrasing which captures the wisdom from experience...what are your thoughts on PRISM?

[option]

people abuse pickup trucks (isis installs machine guns in truck beds). Should we ban pickup trucks?

[throwawaysea]

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.