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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

> That is why we have a constitution and bill of rights - to prevent abuse of the system.

Right exactly, and the powers those guard are far greater than the sorts of surveillance being discussed here.

I vehemently disagree. Surveillance at its very core can be argued to already violate the fourth amendment.

And now in this age of social media, any seemingly meaningless activity can be used against anyone - because surveillance can be cut and devoid of context.

If you want to keep setting up strawmen and argue with yourself, be my guest.

What Strawman? That is the logical conclusion from the premises you set up. If you can’t defend it, maybe it is time to rethink your position?

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.

> 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.

> 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.

>There will be abuse, full stop

Can you give an example of this abuse?

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 :/

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.

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

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.

> 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.

>Because the first goal post was meaningless.

You're the one that placed it there.

Not really. They said abuse. I took that to mean abuse by the police as a group. Not abuse by any individual cop.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

>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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I imagine we could come up with some way to handle this. For example, put the storage as a responsibility in the judicial branch.

I offer that if you believe this, perhaps you haven’t read many search warrant applications.

Do you think we should ban search warrants?

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.

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.

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

> 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.

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.

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

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.

Are you confident the "good" video would.be released?

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