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Comment by robhawkes | Hacker News Reader

I just hate to see technology lying around doing nothing when it could genuinely help the situation. We have the data, we have the technology. Let's put the two together and actually help the situation, rather than sitting around moaning.

The police cannot use these methods, I believe, so if the public can do it for them to help narrow down inquiries, then surely that's a good thing.

I think it's important to point out that a system like this would be to close the net, not to be used as evidence.

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Just sent you an email.

So you're saying use technology to treat the symptoms and ignore the cause? Retribution rather than prevention?

Help your neighbours, not the police, then shit like this wouldn't happen. People are so ready to delegate responsibility for everything to technology and a "higher authority" that they forget their own moral responsibility.

As for using it to identify people for questioning, it is strictly against the DPA to collect this information privately without consent and supply it to the police without a data controller and disclosure policy.

Are you being serious? This is nothing about the cause. Sorting that out is a much deeper issue that needs to be carefully analysed and considered.

You're effectively saying that we shouldn't bother to help bring people to justice.

Also, I would love to see further information about what you say about the DPA (any links?). We're not wanting to bend the law here, we want to work legally. If it turns out that this kind of work is completely unfesable by the law then we will be forced to abandon it.

Please don't turn this into a moral debate between you and myself, I appreciate that not everyone will see the use of technology in this way as a good thing. At the end of the day I'm trying to do something to help here, rather than moan and argue online about it.

What I'm saying is that we should not have let society descent into this chaos by our own ignorance and greed and now we are suffering for it. It's a kind of apathetic karma. And now we're jumping up in the air calling for justice. It's just hypocrisy.

Read this thoroughly, then register as a data controller:

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/data_protection/the_...

You will be recording and maintaining a database of individual details. You need to provide access to this under DPA SAR regulations to individuals. If you misrepresent the individual, you can and probably will be sued.

Sometimes, doing nothing is better than doing something bad or dangerous.

Oh and if I find out this is going ahead, I'll be ethically required to report you to the ICO.

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