I'm not sure what this has to do with HN, though, so I flagged it. Sorry, Bill! :|
Whenever I hear of the police reaction to being recorded, I find myself wondering if they are thinking of Rodney King. Keep in mind that the whole Rodney King thing would not have happened without a video recorder.
I find the discussion on this topic interesting--law and technology, but I can see why many might not.
HN Guidelines:
"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."
Regardless of whether you're right or wrong, for an old hand, tptacek, not impressed...
Hacker News is notorious for loving this kind of stuff so I'm not so sure why something like this is not relevant. Specially since Obama and Holder have many times not been on the same side as us. i.e. copyright, Is kind of surprising to see them protecting civil liberties when lately I've felt they have not been doing a very good job.
Which is fine in my view. Is a lot of fun to read the political points and counter-points of a lot of people. You really learn a lot.
edit: I guess you could say this is not the right forum to discuss politics. Not all the time, maybe. Some of the time I think is fine since politics affects all of us. Unfortunately, right now there is no better place to have intelligent discussion in all types of topics so I do enjoy it when we analyze stories like this. We need to have a diverse diet, I believe.
Specifically: "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."
More to the point, the story wasn't about politics per se (at least not about partisan disagreement). It was about a policy shift (not the same thing) that can have real implications for technology (i.e. Glass, which could be technically illegal in jurisdictions that have misapplied wiretapping laws to limit counter-survailence of the police).
More amusingly, this is a story about over-agressive policing and the push-back it's attracted. You respond with over-agressive policing and get angry with push-back it attracts. See the irony?
What worries me are technologists who not only don't understand this, but think it's appropriate to "flag" discussion about this reality. Seriously, this is like creationists sticking fingers in ears and saying "lalalalala" every time someone whispers "Darwin."