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Comment by Freedom2 | Hacker News Reader

So they say. As we've learnt over the years, what can we truly trust? How can we verify that these promises are kept? I read a good HN comment before, which could be inspiration for a comic or TV series: "Who watches the watchers?"

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Go watch Cuffani's testimony today. The IG is who watches the watchers. He admits he routinely just deleted the text messages on his government phone despite record keeping requirements because 'he didn't do government business on his government phone'. It is also pointed out to him that half of his staff feel it would be unsafe to be whistleblowers. He and his staff are the people that whistleblowers report to. But sure, let's trust them this time. The constitution is the highest law in the land. Government officials regularly break the law and violate our constitutional rights, and all that happens is a 'we'll try better next time'. Routinely break the highest law in the land and nothing happens. Try that with driving with expired tags, try habitually driving with that and respond 'my bad, I didn't realize'. Or try the 'I didn't know it was illegal' defense they use, or the 'good faith' defense they get. All to protect them from any consequence when they break THE HIGHEST LAWS OF THE LAND within the Constitution that all our other laws stem from.

Activity that falls outside of the specified parameters needs to be deemed as illegal. The ultimate way of getting there is people need to vote on sensible privacy laws on what can or can’t be used for prosecution.

If a prosecutor tries to use footage that falls outside of those parameters then it can’t be used as evidence.

It needs to be stronger than that. There ought to be penalties for activities outside the specified scope (preferably criminal in cases that exceed some minimal threshold of severity). Just stopping it at the trial level is inadequate if we want the policy-sketched privacy to be meaningful.

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