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Comment by shortstuffsushi | Hacker News Reader

I would think the natural follow on would be that police have a relative expectation to be photographed and recorded by the public, their actions being public record - they're acting on behalf of the government, FOIA and all that sort of thing applies, right?

Isn't this effectively outsourcing body cams? The frequent stated reason for lack of which is "we would but our department can't afford it :'( anyway check out this new armored vehicle we bought!"

"Tracking" on duty cops doesn't seem unusual, though I think a different argument could be made for their off duty time.

* Edit: this is Canada, so my feelings likely don't apply to their laws.

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While this doesn't apply to Canada, an American law professor (who leans very conservative politically) has argued that the public has the right to record the police doing their jobs, based on the due-process clause of the U.S. Constitution rather than on the First Amendment. (EDIT to clarify: he's not arguing that there isn't a First Amendment right to record the police, he's saying that besides the First Amendment, the due-process clause also gives citizens a right to record the police doing their jobs). You can read the 2012 paper "A Due Process Right to Record the Police" at https://ir.law.utk.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1460&cont...

I have only skimmed the paper myself, so if it contains any mistakes I'm likely to have missed them. But his argument seems good to me.

> Isn't this effectively outsourcing body cams?

I think its equivalent to putting a tracker in everyone's car and giving the police access to it.

Surveillance is also firmly in pre-crime territory. People being stalked when they haven't (yet) done a crime.

But in the inverse, right? It's like putting a tracker on every cop's car and giving the public access to it.

You're right--I was addressing Flock (et al) at scale, which is what I'm more worried about.

I believe the American Supreme Court explicitly ruled against that in the past ~10 or so years. Except it was one GPS tracker on one car, done without a warrant.

I don't know why that decision, explicitly founded on "making warrantless surveillance too easy violates the intent of warrants" is being used as toilet paper.

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