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Comment by Jcampuzano2 | Hacker News Reader

> Harpe accepted responsibility for sharing her credentials but argued that firing her was excessive.

> In her appeal, Harpe said her husband was a certified federal law enforcement officer and that every search was conducted for law enforcement purposes.

> “The violation occurred because I gave my husband, who is a certified law enforcement officer with the Department of Homeland Security, access to my Flock account,” Harpe wrote. “Every search he conducted was for law enforcement use only and not for personal gain.”

There seems to be a subset of law enforcement officers who fundamentally don't understand privacy, checks and balances, and responsibility. They believe they should have unrestricted access to everyone else and that they are above us all.

Firing her was not excessive, it is the bare minimum. Officers should be held to a higher standard, not lower. She and her husband should be in a jail cell.

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This was also surprising to me, I'd think the firing would be automatic and then it'd be a legal case about unauthorized access of govt computers, which is generally taken pretty seriously.

You can't make the same argument with financial systems by giving someone at a different bank access to your bank just because you're both "financial professionals", and that's arguably much less sensitive data.

> There seems to be a subset of law enforcement officers who fundamentally don't understand privacy, checks and balances, and responsibility.

This is why two things should be mandatory for new officers: psychological examination and a mandatory law degree from a qualified institution. If you're enforcing the law, you need to actually know its contents and how it works. That would naturally limit the numbers and discourage people who haven't gotten over high school from using their job as a torment nexus.

Photography is one that comes into play a bit (taking photos in public places). There was a Georgia police chief who gave a press conference on the steps of a courthouse having just lost a civil rights case: his officers arrested a photographer and just kept doubling down. His conference had this marquee quote: "We cannot expect our police officers to be constitutional lawyers or know every minute detail".

"We can arrest you even though we're not really sure if you actually broke a law. You, on the other hand, are expected to know the law, and ignorance is not considered an excuse."

> If you're enforcing the law, you need to actually know its contents and how it works.

Not disagreeing but I can’t see how this would be practical. I think any college degree should be the absolute minimum though.

Is it practical to give weapons and combat vehicles to under-qualified but readily-available individuals to enforce laws they don't understand (let alone have knowledge of) like we do now?

It's not. We just accept it as a default because it's easy to dismiss something obviously good (making sure police are mentally stable, law-aware, and held to a level of scrutiny commensurate to the job) because it may require effort.

Someone being handed a gun and told to go "keep people in line" should be held to an almost absurd standard before ever being let on the streets. That we don't already do this speaks volumes about the underdeveloped state of our civilization (despite our hubris to the contrary).

> Is it practical to give weapons and combat vehicles

I get what you mean, but with how easy it is to get a gun (especially in red states), it is practical in the sense that it seems pretty easy to do and there’s no shortage.

But should we? I agree with you, absolutely fucking not.

> I get what you mean, but with how easy it is to get a gun (especially in red states)

Have you tried? I live in Tennessee (aggressively red) and own multiple firearms. Mandatory background checks and a mandatory 3-day wait [1] are the standard. Even online transfers from an FFL require submission of an ATF registration form.

Tangential, but it's not as easy as one would think. Also, there are a shocking number of posers down here. Stars and bars and "don't tread on me" but not a lot of commitment to "the mission." There are far more grown men driving lifted trucks with glow lights on them than serious threats.

[1] https://www.stateregstoday.com/politics/gun-control/firearm-...

> Have you tried?

Just in one of the super blue states. My buddy lives in Texas, he’s got a couple of guns and says is easy to get.

> There are far more grown men driving lifted trucks with glow lights on them than serious threats.

The problem is these guys join ICE or act like they are, and that’s a serious threat. If you brandish Stars and Stripes / Dont Tread on Me, even if you’re a poser I’m not going to take a risk of finding out. That in itself is powerful.

> privacy, checks and balances, and responsibility

In their eyes it goes like this:

Privacy:- why do you need it if you have nothing to hide?

Checks and balances:- you are the balance and I’m here to check you

Responsibility:- it is my responsibility to check you

I want to say I’m being sarcastic but I don’t know anymore. Arguably their motivation is to hunt and jail people, so it feels like “personal gain” on the fringes. No job is so far removed that it’s devoid of personal gain.

Maybe that last part was a smidge too radical.

> There seems to be a subset of law enforcement officers who fundamentally don't understand privacy, checks and balances, and responsibility. They believe they should have unrestricted access to everyone else and that they are above us all.

A large part of law enforcement training is specifically to instill and reinforce this belief. They are officers, you are civilians. You are not the same (in their eyes). They are the thin blue line keeping society from crumbling into anarchy (or socialism). Hell, when push comes to shove, they will close ranks and throw firefighters and paramedics under the bus (arrested on the scene of car accidents for insufficiently respecting the cops "authority"), ER staff (ER nurses arrested for refusing a warrantless blood draw when the cops are desperate to diffuse blame from their off-duty drunk fellow officer who blew a red light and fatally t-boned another car), and so on and so on.

When Batman created his sonar system we cheered because he needed it to fight "the bad guy". It took Alfred to explain this was too much. "The bad guy" has been used for hundreds of years to escuse simple solutions under the premise that we're "the good guys".

> It took Alfred to explain this was too much.

Believe it was Lucius.

>When Batman created his sonar system we cheered because he needed it to fight "the bad guy".

And because it was fiction, and we had suspended our disbelief to enjoy a vision of a different world with guys that are inherently trustworthy, and because there was a confirmed terrorist plot to commit mass murder that literally could only be thwarted with this move.

Don't conflate temporary acceptance of a premise with real-world values, that's like being the guy that responds to the trolley problem with "I would simply remove the one person from the track, saving everyone and refusing to engage with this conversation."

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