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Comment by policeanman | Hacker News Reader

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policeanman

> This app specifically lists where the police are.

Since when is that a crime?

When news reporters cover a protest in US and show live where the police is, are they committing a crime?

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It’s a crime if it’s being used to physically attack the cop.

The police are phsyically attacking the people, it's quite different. Yes, this app helps protestors, but it also helps the public avoid being treated extremely violently by the police.

I never said what the people were doing was wrong. All I said was that it would be illegal in some places if it’s being used for that.

A friend of mine is a police officer and regularly posts on Facebook about the events he's policing. By your logic, if someone used that information to track him down and attack him he's the one breaking the law?

Incidentally if he posted about a riot in our city (thankfully pretty much unheard of) he'd be carrying out exactly the same function as this app!

No, listing where the police are is not a crime. Attacking the police is a crime. Inciting to attack the police is probably a crime too in most jurisdictions around the world. Neither the app nor the app makers attacked police nor endorsed let alone incited attacking the police.

Not to mention that laws are different in different countries.

This is a fair point. Laws are different, so procedures can be different. Not to mention the city’s situation is critical - protests - violence from both side.

Following US procedures in HK does not make sense. Companies always obey local laws but not laws in another country.

That's why I said Tim Cook should actually spell out what local Hong Kong laws were violated, if any. There actually could be some, but so far I did not see anybody actually pointing out any such laws, neither the Hong Kong government, nor the myriad of journalists covering the story about the app, nor Apple which surely had their in-house counsel and maybe evn external counsel look into this matter.

After that, the next question is if Apple, which even kinda positions itself as the new "Don't be evil" company including fighting some governments e.g. when they get told to subvert their own security tech, should side with such draconian laws or with the app makers.

As would any mapping app or Twitter?

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