This was a voluntary program though. Blocking the police from asking for help is unnecessarily adversarial. You are right about police collecting video from Ring without user involvement, but this was transparent and voluntary.
It isn't like they were pulling videos without consent to send tickets for rolling stops. Although if they did, they could collect enough revenue to fix every road in the country. :lol
A good lawyer got the case dropped pretty quick, but not before she spent a weekend in jail, got fired as a teacher, and spent thousands on legal fees. The police had “video evidence” and therefore refused to drop the case even when the ex retracted the claims, and required months of fighting the legal system.
Beyond that awful freak incident, there’s tons of cases of police planting evidence, police ignoring real evidence, and police using an individual’s voluntary will to help them catch one crime to implicate an innocent person in a petty crime unexpectedly. There’d have to be a pretty big crime for me to voluntarily show the police any video of myself.
I'm fully on board with assisting with a real investigation. But unless they have a warrant, I get to have oversight of what they get.
That's setting aside that this was also all about interior cameras, which are really a different subject from the exterior cameras. There are much stronger arguments for public requests for external camera feeds than interior ones.
"Which do you want for dinner, broken glass or razor blades?"
> True, but nothing about this stops someone from having their own cameras and selecting for themselves.
A lack of a time machine does; the post upthread says "after they broke up". You won't be able to go back in time and install a second set of cameras to provide the cops with the full context.
I feel like my point wasn't clear. Nothing about Ring's decision here stops the bad one from doing what they did in your scenario. If the bad person controlled the cameras (and it sounds like they did), they'd still do the same thing regardless of this policy.
If we were to structure our lives around things that evil people misused good-intentioned processes for, then we would be continually paranoid and society would grind to a halt.
I am certainly in favor of limited police powers, but the conversation you are having is a different one from that.
And that police do bad things, and someone giving them more evidence of their own life is probably not in anyone’s best interest. Because no one can guarantee that the police won’t decide to use it against themselves.
Considering the point I was replying to was someone discussing using cameras to watch for crimes, I think we’ve pierced the topic around paranoia and structuring life around evil people - that’s the whole topic at hand with security cameras.
The corpse of John Adams probably has a smirk.
> government ... people ... as an adversary.
Adams had some interesting views, ones the courts dont share but he did. In his thought, the final check on power was the jury. It did not matter what the LAW said, it matters what the jury thought, that a jury at any point could just choose to nullify a law.
In many places talking about this near courts will get you held in contempt. But at lest one of the founding fathers though "telling the government to stuff it" was the right thing to do.
Also another reminder, for everybody throwing a lasso around everything and hating on it, you're actually upset with the bureaucracy (which contains law enforcement).
Remember folks, the U.S. gov't is split into four parts: 1. Legislative branch (makes laws for the executive branch to approve, and for the judicial branch to possibly overturn, and creates functions within the bureaucracy) 2. Judicial branch (throws away or reenforces work done by the legislative+executive branch) 3. Executive branch (controls the bureaucracy, great filter for the legislative branch) 4. Bureaucracy network (the informal branch of the gov't of employees rendering services for the citizens, most people end up complaining about: law enforcement, department workers, the postoffice and military)
So yes, tell the bureaucracy to stuff it. Telling one of the other three branches to stuff it probably doesn't fly too well.
I mean, in general, there shouldn't be situations that are described as "mistakenly asserting rights". But as you say, the alignment and incentives are opposed, and it's too easy, not better, for companies to choose the path of least resistance, rights be damned.
Also, companies in particular have lawyers whose entire full time job is to know when to tell the government to “stuff it” (though usually in much classier terms). Apple famously did this with the FBI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple–FBI_encryption_dispute
Your comments read as someone who isn't aware of all the terrible stories of cops not doing their jobs correctly and in some cases going after innocent people on the flimsiest of evidence. They should not be trusted by default.
Cut out the person who actually owns the device. And who supposedly owns the recording.
Only for their made-up definition of the word "collecting", which in some cases is "retrieving the data which we have already collected and stored".
This is ridiculous. The default view in a parliamentary democracy should be that government is your employee and that its job is to watch out for you. Where your interests collide with those of your fellow citizens, government or judiciary should be mediating and managing, seeking consensus or compromise, ideally with your involvement.
Yes, this is naive. But it's the core function we should be able to rely on; it should be the measure we use to assess the efficacy of our governments. Anything else and you're replicating feudalism or dictatorship.
If you default to government being your adversary, your system is broken and you should be working to fix it rather than giving up and calling it the enemy. Frankly, this labelling of government as the enemy is exactly what allows opportunists to sieze power.
Would you like datapoints about times the government lied and subverted communities?
Bc I have data points.
Many data points.
From many cultures that were illegally infringed upon hy the government.
And practices
Just say the word.
Please share, if you please.
Jim Crow laws
Nypd use of stingers to violate your privacy then replicate a criminal investigation independent of the stinger information to subvert DoJ processes and the rights of protection against unlawful search and seizures.
internment of US citizens due to their Japanese heritage.
CIA involvement in the Iran Contra debacle fueling the cocaine epidemic
The burning of unarmed civilians at Waco Texas
Would you like more?
I appreciate the Starship Troopers reference, and yes.
I’m not sure what it says about the state of the world or about me that I’m already familiar with all of these things, but I do sincerely appreciate you for taking the time to share them with the rest of the class.
It is a matter of trust of other humans with power. Government can do good but is made of flawed humans. Trusting the government to always be good and stay good is a recipe for disaster. For government to stay trustworthy it requires people to oppose oversteps. It is an adversarial relationship. That isn't a bad thing. It is necessary for everything to work and stay working.
This is never ever going to be the default unless it is legislated. A business has much more to gain by aligning itself with the government than with the general population.