> 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?