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Comment by davidu | Hacker News Reader

Surveillance cameras on the right corners are a really good idea. Excellent way to make policing more objective. I wrote about that here: https://a16z.com/2021/07/13/investing-in-flock-safety/

Turns out, marginalized and minority communities, counter-intuitively, tend to prefer it the most.

As for tracking chip -- we don't do it at birth, because we don't need to. Most people over the age of 15 keep a cell phone on them which provides tracking capability / cellular triangulation. It's used to save lives and apprehend criminals constantly. The privacy issues are actually more marketing based and have nothing to do with the GPS / triangulation issues, and people don't want to solve those, unfortunately.

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Shameful copaganda from a16z. I can see some optimism for crypto but cop tech is just sad to see.

The material effect of this is dramatically extending cop surveillance capability, regardless of the intent. That’s not a non-controversial thing to post neutrally and expect to be celebrated without criticism. Less polite society has a word that describes that called bootlicking.

The “let’s be practical here” attitude of “well we just gotta give the cops more to see them do better” is an endless cycle.

Note that davidu is in his bio anti-anarchist (libertarian), meaning he fights the enemies of the law and the state and the enemies of capital. Common enough around here but want to point out he proclaims a mission of supporting the state and law enforcement. lol. Just want to give Disclaimer to the political mission.

The article is mostly about these trends coming to small-town America, not crime-ridden inner cities. If crime rises to the level where these measures become a necessity in certain areas I can understand that. But normalizing these policies as typical day-to-day operations of officers nationwide regardless of local circumstances is unhealthy, they've been needlessly militarized too much already.

Why would that be counter-intuitive?

Poor, marginalized communities suffer disproportionately from crime — and accordingly tend to promote pro-police policies.

The only people who don’t recognize that are bourgeoisie who associate those communities with crime — and due to their own biases, assume they don’t want more police from a place of (near) total ignorance. Or who have their privileged sensibilities offended by the fact communities which suffer disproportionate crime also have disproportionate criminals — so try to sweep it under the rug with biased enforcement.

But those are luxury beliefs, reinforced with manufactured consent by bourgeois institutions: people actually suffering from crime tend to have considerably more practical beliefs.

I don't have the numbers, but nothing you've said here correlates with my own observations and experiences. And yes, I spent a large portion of my life poor, living in poor and marginalized communities.

Perhaps there are regional differences in play here.

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