Schneier on Filming the Police | Hacker News Reader

Schneier on Filming the Police

schneier.com

77 pointsNatsu17 comments

Who watches the watchers?

I see an article about this come up every couple months and I find it plain frightening.

Funny how some defend laws and privacy by saying "well if you aren't doing anything wrong, you shouldn't worry about it." but the same is not true for those who serve and protect?

Privacy is your right and so is protecting your rights. If it's in public, well, it's not private! And if you are using something as an insurance of protecting or monitoring the governing of your rights, well it is unjust to make that illegal.

Once again: it it perfectly legal to audio and video record in officer in MA as long as the officer knows you're going it (and presuming that the act of recording doesn't interfere with the officer's duties). You can videotape (without audio) an officer (or anyone) without their knowledge, but you cannot audio record an officer (or anyone) without their knowledge. In any case, you do not need consent, that just have to be notified that the recording is taking place.

Yes, Simon Glik was arrested but the charges were dismissed. The applicable law is here: http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/272-99.htm

What's the so special about audio recording compared to video recording? Also, if the video recording is good, someone could do lip reading.

As I understand it, it's just an old MA law that was implemented in the 1960's (or early 1970's) audio recording was commonplace but video recording was not, and was never updated to account for video recording.

The other issue with making secret video recordings is it's use in security applications.

Probably this has something to do with wiretapping telephones or something like that.

Basically, audio recording is older tech and therefore has been around long enough and has been abused often enough to have specific laws drafted. The vast majority of the wiretapping laws and regulations about recording various events in public and private are explicit about how they apply to any and all forms of audio recording.

> You can think of your existing power as the exponent in an equation that determines the value, to you, of more information. The more power you have, the more additional power you derive from the new data.

so P = (i + I) ^ p

where

p = previous level of power

i = old level of information

I = new additional information

P = new level of power

Is that right? How does this even make sense? Does this work out to be a super exponential function? Lets try some numbers

Starting out with power = 2, information = 2 and sequentially increasing i by 1 gives

(2+1)^2 = 9,

(3+1)^9 = 262144

(4+1)^262144 = some really big number

You get the idea. Also note that if you drip feed yourself the information in smaller increments (say 0.1) then your power grows much faster.

By this reckoning it is amazing that some entity hasn't already irrevocably taken control of the entire world. You can see how ones perspective would be pretty messed up if you thought the relationship was actually like this. Gives me new insight into the thinking of Schneier.

Seriously nobody else can see that this blows a gapping whole in his reasoning in the second part of the article? This is the mental model he is using to argue that sharing information leads to a massive increase in power imbalances and is therefore too risky. That little brother can never really win against big brother in a world of increasing information.

Though I agree with what Bruce is saying, I thought he did a very poor job of presenting his argument in a compelling way. Who would ever change their mind on this issue based on that example? There's got to be a better way to convey it.

You do understand that even if it's made perfectly legal by the supreme court, cops will find some other excuse, valid or not, to arrest you for taking a photo/video of them.

There's zero punishment to them for abusing authority - I mean they can even shoot/kill someone and often get away with it, including receiving pay while not working or being on trial.

Citizen review boards with full authority to punish/fire cops are the only answer.

I agree that it certainly should be legal to record public servants in their duties, but let's get a grip here.

There's zero punishment to them for abusing authority - I mean they can even shoot/kill someone and often get away with it, including receiving pay while not working or being on trial.

This is an absurd statement. Officers are held to a much higher standard of conduct than you or I. They're also placed into situations demanding much greater responsibility than you or I, and under far greater pressures than you or I face. They make bad calls and mistakes just like anyone else, but by and large they are held accountable for these mistakes. Departments vary, but in my area the bar is very high.

Citizen review boards with full authority to punish/fire cops are the only answer.

These exist. They're called, broadly, "the judicial branch", or in practice, "courts". They're not run by the police.

Gosh, it's almost as though the standards of police conduct and the typical quality of police officers vary from place to place.

I don't know where you live, but in the US it's quite common for police officers to be held to a lower standard. I have relatives on the force, and if they're speeding and get pulled over, the arresting officer will let them go. Similarly, a cop can force you to pull over and stop what you're doing for any reason at all and even physically abuse you if you are even slightly uncooperative, but interrupting or resisting a cop will get you arrested, and you're out of your mind if you expect a police officer to be as accommodating to you as you must be to them. You can't even hold a cell phone in their presence.

If you want to assert that they are held to a higher standard, I would like you to support that assertion.

I've been in their shoes, so that's where my arguments are coming from. For context, I'm in Washington state. To address your points:

Regarding speeding: that's a good example. Yes, it seems they're held to a lower standard. However, it's not that clear-cut. The problem with handing out a speeding ticket is that you're introducing an awkward dynamic into the relationship you have with a person who may literally be responsible for your life on an upcoming shift. The counterpoint is that they started the awkwardness by speeding in the first place and should be held accountable. I see both sides - in many cases when you have a close relationship like that a talk is more effective than a ticket anyway. I agree that they should follow the speed limit just like everyone else, but I can understand why an officer would hesitate to hand out a ticket over it. It's the "would you give a speeding ticket to your mother" dilemma. Maybe you would, but probably a talk would be more effective ("You're putting me in a bad position here"), and if someone has no compunction about it at all about handing out tickets to their mother, maybe they've got a messed-up relationship with her in the first place.

Regarding stops: in Washington, at least, an officer can't stop you without "reasonable suspicion", which is a legal term with a specific definition, or actually witnessing a violation. If he does stop you for "no reason", it's grounds for throwing out any ticket or conviction that arises from the stop. (Incidentally, this is where a lot of drug cases get challenged - based on the grounds of the traffic stop where the drugs were discovered.)

Regarding the rest: you have to understand, these people work in an entirely different world. Every person they come into contact with is a potential threat to their life, because you never know whether this guy you just pulled over is actually a felon having a bad day wanting to take it out on you, or whether the cell phone is actually a zipgun (indistinguishable from the outside), or whether this guy with a cell phone is calling some gang buddies to come help him out, or warning off somebody, etc. This does not excuse actual abuses of authority in any way. However, of course we have to be more accommodating to them than they are to us. If they were as accommodating to all the people they deal with day in and day out, they'd either be ineffective or dead.

(Note that, going back to the original topic, I still agree that recording officers should certainly not be an offense in and of itself. That's an "accommodation" that should be made whenever possible.)

As for the higher standard, I've seen a state trooper fired because of photos on his Facebook account of him laughing with friends while waiting for a taxi after drinking (off-duty, not in uniform!) at a bar. Somebody saw the photo, apparently found the idea of a trooper drinking offensive, reported him to his supervisor, and he lost his job, even though he was doing the responsible thing in waiting for a taxi. Are you telling me that's not a higher standard than your job?

Or another example: an officer in this area was fired because of domestic abuse issues he had at home, which amounted to him grabbing his wife's arm during an argument and leaving a bruise. Would you be fired from your job if that happened to you? Probably not.

Even laws treat officers differently. Offhand, IIRC the statute of limitations for most felonies in Washington is 3 years - unless you're an officer, in which case it's 10. Likewise, as a civilian you can defend your home and family with lethal force, but as an officer you'll stand against far more scrutiny if you ever have to because the standards are higher due to "experience and training".

I could go on, but this is way too long already. The bottom line is it's not a perfect system. You can easily find cases of abuse of power and authority. But I think that by and large these are decent people who are sacrificing a lot and doing a tough job as best they can. The vast majority of them are not doing it for the power trip or because they're totalitarian. And they certainly are held to tougher standards than the average civilian.

Er, if they are ignoring the little laws like speeding and parking, they follow through on ignoring the bigger laws too. A cop should be a good example, always or not a cop. Period.

>> an officer can't stop you

"can't" ? I assure you, they will stop you for whatever reason they feel like if they are so motivated. Cops love the fact they can immediately make your life EXTREMELY complicated, make you spend thousands of dollars and many hours/days in court, on just their whim, while they get to go home after their shift, hassle-free. They are going to "teach you a lesson".

> Citizen review boards with full authority to punish/fire cops are the only answer.

Then the question has no answer, because citizen review boards often fail in both ways.

Citizen review boards are useful, but there aren't any silver bullets. (Fortunately, there don't seem to be werewolves either.)

Ultimately technology will make any attempts at preventing the video recording of police in public completely futile. In another few years nearly everyone will have phones capable of recording hi-def video and streaming it to the internet live. At that point it's Canute vs. the tide.

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