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Comment by jkhdigital | Hacker News Reader

Your response to point 2 made me gasp. Just watch a few episodes of any of the many true crime false conviction series on Netflix. Unscrupulous prosecutors are not rare, and it does not matter who you are—if you get caught in the crosshairs you could go to prison for a crime you didn’t commit, or be coerced to provide false witness against a friend or loved one for a crime they didn’t commit.

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Netflix is definitely a reliable and objective source for crime data.

Fact is stranger than fiction.

I watched that series and if we were in a ubiquitous surveillance state few if any of those people would have been convicted. They would have had video/phone tracking to verify their alibi and/or video of the crime showing they didn't do it.

That's making a big assumption that everyone has equal access to surveillance data and that most if not all players are fair-mindedly searching for the truth.

If you assume the other way, pervasive surveillance makes a frame-up easier.

I live in a country where the accused has equal access to the evidence.

And your rejoinder doesn't make sense. If you were being railroaded for a crime video showing that you didn't do it cant hurt you.

In many US jurisdictions, the decision over what police body cam footage to release is left to the police themselves. For example:

https://www.denverpost.com/2019/11/18/body-camera-aurora-pol...

> Police Chief Nick Metz said he wants to release body camera footage from the August death of Elijah McClain to lend more transparency to the investigation. But three months later, police still have it — advised by the district attorney’s office to keep it in house.

In many US jurisdictions, the decision over what police body cam footage to release is left to the police themselves

In the UK as well, there have been several cases where the police have chosen only to disclose “relevant” evidence, when the existence of additional evidence becomes known the case collapses.

I said "the accused", not everyone. If you are charged with a crime and if that footage could be evidence then it is required that the state turn it over to the accused.

Only evidence produced in court. Body cameras can "shut off" or "break", the full footage can be destroyed, etc.

> I live in a country where the accused has equal access to the evidence.

Really? Where? Because in most countries with laws requiring that, police and prosecutors regularly ignore said laws with impunity.

For many people in the U.S., overzealous prosecutors are their allies so long as the people they are prosecuting who are "already guilty of bad shit" belong to undesirable demographics. Prosecutors and their selective enforcement efforts are central to suppressing minority votes through felony disenfranchisement, for instance in Florida.

I wonder how the arguments against surveillance capitalism poll across targeted minorities vs. the general population. I speculate that sentiments diverge in the same direction as sentiments towards the police.

I'm sure there are bad prosecutors, but Netflix is hardly a source to look into something like this. They tend to make very compelling, but obviously biased, documentaries.

But I agree with your sentiment otherwise.

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