There will be footage recorded by those cameras that will drastically impinge on the privacy of civilians should it be shared publicly.

It's a nice idea, but I think it has some pretty significant potential for downsides.

I find this idea very toxic. If the state can send an agent somewhere, then that place and the goings-on that were witnessed are a matter of public record.

If that isn't so, and isn't sacred, then we're saying that secrecy in policing is normal, and that goes against hundreds of years of progress in the common-law tradition.

In order for people to enjoy the kind of privacy you discuss, we need to have non-state support services that are completely disconnected from the matter of enforcement of th e law.

> I find this idea very toxic. If the state can send an agent somewhere...

if the cops bust into your house because they misread the address of the warrant (something which happens regularly), and they capture some video of you walking around eating cereal naked, do you think that should immediately and irrevocably go up on youtube?

Obviously in a decent society this is a horrific, abhorrent affront.

And yes, I'm fine with the horrific, abhorrent affronts of the state being public if I'm the victim.

How about we stop allowing police to search homes in the first place in 99.9% of cases?

"And yes, I'm fine with the horrific, abhorrent affronts of the state being public if I'm the victim."

Ok. I'm not.

If an agent of the state commits a "horrific, abhorrent affront" against you, you want it to be kept secret? That's what I'm reading here.

That would be a fair interpretation if that's all they did. However, we all know that law enforcement agents do lots of other things that the people involved would rather not be made public. A cop being a first responder to someone having a seizure, or consoling a rape victim, are things that I'm pretty sure those people would not want to be public.

Ok but in that case the state did not commit an abhorrent act.

There is definitely a middle ground somewhere around this. Perhaps the victim must consent (assuming the victim can?)

This is trivial to argue against, though. Officer heads to restroom to help patient that is having seizures. Heck, officer heads anywhere to help citizen having seizures.

(Substitute any of a number of incidents and the argument remains mostly the same.)

Is it public record that it happened? Yes. Should it be shielded from anyone knowing? I don't think so. Should it be publicly broadcast? Almost certainly not.

The underlying question here is: what does enforcement of the public ordinances have to do with medical aid? Why has our society conflated those? Why has our society conflated law enforcement with emergency response at all? What do these two things have to do with each other?

That's the problem. The fact that we're talking seriously about affording public policing a sphere of secrecy is just a symptom of that problem.

> What do these two things have to do with each other?

They are both emergency responses and require tremendous amount of material and human resources to get there very fast.

Police have the fastest cars with the brightest lights that let them go wherever they want the fastest (Bonus if they have a motorcycle, but those they keep to give speeding tickets for some reason). It also means they are the first ones there and might need to do CPR from time to time or help that guy about to jump down the bridge.

>Why has our society conflated those?

We are imperfect humans in an imperfect world. We can't assign every single task to a different human being. We, as a society, accept that.

>The fact that we're talking seriously about affording public policing a sphere of secrecy is just a symptom of that problem.

There is a big difference between secrecy of the police and privacy of the policed.

Go watch Live PD and come tell me seriously they should stop censoring the names, date of birth, addresses, plate numbers, SSN, wardrobe malfunctions of the victims, witnesses and children that appear in the show.

They take the time to protect the privacy of the bystanders, but it costs money and an incredible amount of resource to do so just for a couple of teams for a couple of hours a week and they don't even do a perfect job.

And it is not like an officer is enforcing ordinances at all hours. Nor do we expect them to be. Outreach is a thing. An officer goes in to give a fun speech to a school. Suddenly, kids in the class are being broadcast.

I get it. Most of us are programmers, so we think we can setup a pretty solid set of rules for when something applies. Maybe some of us can. And when that perfect ruleset is found, it will be awesome. However, it is a lot more fluid and discretion is not necessarily a bad thing.

ACLU has written and refined very good rules for proper bodycam use that protects both citizen and police officer privacy.

It's not that black and white but it's not that complex of an issue either.

Act - https://www.aclu.org/other/model-act-regulating-use-wearable..., White Paper - https://www.aclu.org/other/police-body-mounted-cameras-right...

Psst. Kids in class are broadcast all the time on the news. Sometimes they're even identified by name, school, and municipality in recognition for some achievement.

Honestly, privacy is nearly dead anyway. I'm not happy about it but there are databases with enough information on us to steal anyone's identity. With that level of information already existing... it seems kind of silly that what we're most worried about with police cameras basically comes down to embarrassment.

It's also weird how hacker news has forgotten that Google Street View has tons of pictures of naked people with automatically blurred faces. Same for Google Maps/Earth.

Certain kids are. Typically from affluent areas. Distressed schools typically have kids that need extra privacy considerations. They also need more police outreach.

As another poster said, this is solvable. Just will require more than a few rules.

Police often have training in first aid. In addition, they might be much closer than an ambulance, so might be sent to help out in that case. It's not a problem in the least.

In many places, it's already public record, you just have to request it. However, some places are putting rules in after overly broad and onerous requests ("I want to every piece of body camera footage ever taken" for example, which actually happened in Washington state, and lead to a law a few years later). Usually privacy rights are strongly taken into consideration, and the videos have to be edited and reviewed by humans before release.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/washington-s...

Black and white perspectives aren't helpful. When a policing event happens in a private space, a home for example, there are multiple stakeholders whose interests will not always align.

Police catch a child-rapist in the act. Does that go online? What about a normal rape?

Someone's husband falsely but convincingly accuses them of domestic abuse, later they are cleared of all charges. Does this accusation go on youtube?

Someone attempted suicide, and then called the cops because he didn't want to go through with it.

Someone was inadvertently caught on camera in a gay bar when it was raided for drugs.

You are arrested for murder, rape, or sexual abuse of a domestic pet, following proper procedures, etc., etc.

Video of the arrest goes viral. Hundreds of millions of people across the world see it.

You are later acquited of the charges. But a fat lot of good that does....

Yeah, good idea to have people help everyone. However it would be duplicating loads of state service and, as always, who pays?

I’m not saying it should be live streamed to YouTube, just for incidents that are resolved or public, and need long term storage. Obviously there would need to be some editing, ideally by an independent team.

Today my officers spent hours talking to a victim of rape, looking after her children and dealing with the aftermath.

I'm sure she'd love that on YouTube for all to see.

I don't think this is a compelling argument.

What is the connection between enforcement of statutory code and medical aid / emergency response? Why do these social services need to be delivered by LEOs?

At my college, one of the best things my student government did was first response in cases of rape and sexual assault. We had a phone number that people were able to call and get a response from a peer who had been trained in the next steps of response, allowing the victim to gain composure and support before dealing with the law enforcement apparatus.

We had a similar service for cases of mental health / psychedelic emergency.

There is no reason that law enforcement need to be first responders in cases of medical emergency.

Unless we're talking about walking back the Peelian principles (and arguably all that is good about western notions of liberty), it is a continuing imperative to ensure that police officers can strictly enforce the law and do so in full public view.

Replace talking about a rape with any of many reasons the police might be called and it makes just as little sense to have all these videos public.

Super innocent example: A 14 year old kid breaks their leg and the cops show up to them in agony and crying. Would be very easy for a few people that dislike them to plaster them crying all over social media. Yes, the event was public to begin with, but the chances of one of the bullies walking by and snapping their own photos is almost nil.

A lot of people that are interacting with the police are in a very vulnerable state, it would be asinine to expose that to the world. The thought that it will create "good will" with the public is entirely backwards in my opinion, if I'm in trouble and I know if I get the cops that I may end up all over the internet it may keep me from calling them at all.

> Super innocent example: A 14 year old kid breaks their leg and the cops show up to them in agony and crying.

This seems like the same argument. What does enforcement of the laws have to do with medical aid? Why has our society conflated these two things?

I assert that the state has an interest in injecting law enforcement concepts in all sorts of situation precisely because it opens up uncertainty over its public nature.

Instead, we need law enforcement to be its own discrete activity, and among its norms for it to be entirely public and based on public consent.

Why are we rehashing this almost 200 years after Robert Peel's work?

You used the term "first responders" a post or two up. Police are often the "first responders" to numerous incidents, enforcement or otherwise, simply because they are near the scene and are (rightfully) trained in basic first aid and generally have first aid supplies in their cruiser. Police _should_ be trained to and respond to incidents other than enforcement actions. They are members of our communities, they are employed to protect us (ostensibly).

It is generally the idea that all police do or should do is enforce the law that leads to divisiveness and brutality.

Police are people who are trained to deal with stress, qualified to take witness statements (which insurance often requires), have a level of medical knowledge, can get places fast and can get more help (and possibly better qualified help) quick. Why wouldn’t you want them there?

You don’t want police involvement in rapes?

Edit: nice, you edit the parent and don’t note it.

Have you been involved in responding to rape and sexual assault? I have.

There are worlds of difference between jurisdictions in this regard. And also substantial differences in the specifics of a case.

In the (rare) case of a rapist jumping out of the bushes and tackling someone, and then running away in hot pursuit, then sure, a law-enforcement-first response makes sense.

In the far more frequent date rape / party rape situation, where the victim is left to piece together the episode the next morning, then no, I think that there are far, far better responses than LEO-first.

What a great game of ‘one up’ to play.

Maybe the victim should call whoever they want. Like they can now.

Until you get the separation of concerns that you are arguing would make publishing surveillance footage a non-issue, it is an issue.

Not everyone has the same privilege as a college student here and now.

No thanks. Now anyone with a minor budget can run every single police video through image recognition and get a whole lot of private info on folks you likely don't want getting out.

Happen to be at a party that was broken up due to noise complaints? Drugs were found there? Why were you caught on camera leaving the house when officers arrived? Sounds like you are a liability!

If this actually happened I would give it 6mo before you get a credit agency or something of their ilk providing this data to such agencies for background checks/employment checks/etc. It will take the social media data mining and now include all law enforcement interactions ever.

I, for one, do not want to live in the world where I get to explain every traffic stop to a future employer or my insurance company. I'm sure both would absolutely love that information to use against me.

I think the writing is on the wall on this one though. In my lifetime I fully expect what I describe above to be happening behind the scenes in "public private partnerships". In some cases it already is.

Just yet another way to create permanent second-class citizens like we have with felons, and are trying as hard as we can to extend that into other areas of society.

I feel the same way about 911 calls - it should require explicit consent of the person calling for those calls to be released outside of court.

Having people re-victimized by turning their pleas for help into entertainment is bullshit.

Or maybe on a dedicated reality cable TV channel? Cops 24/7. I'll never be able to get that bad boys song out of my head. Surely there would still be a lot of curation.

Yikes! Maybe this is legal, in the same sense that I can go to the bodega and buy a newspaper of local mugshots... but how unfortunate for the people who have the worst 15 minutes of their life faithfully captured and posted on Youtube.