These can only be a positive to help police absolve themselves from wrongdoing - until such point wrongdoing is so pervasive that it becomes a net negative for them. then the cameras are a liability.
to quote a line ive often been delivered by police -
“if you didnt do anything wrong, what do you have to hide?”
tmpz22 · 8h ago
Their counter argument will be "the privacy of the people we interact with" i.e. a SWAT team storming a house when a young child is in the bathroom.
dghlsakjg · 8h ago
Having the recording, viewing the recording internally, and releasing the recording to the public are all separate things.
These are solved problems. Hundreds of agencies use body cams now, and this has been dealt with.
bee_rider · 8h ago
I basically agree with you, but also am not sure how to square this with my belief that we are really gathering way too much information as a society (it always leaks).
clipsy · 8h ago
> but also am not sure how to square this with my belief that we are really gathering way too much information as a society
I think a good starting point for squaring this is to examine it in the context of what else the administration is doing (or not doing) to protect the privacy of citizens. This move has an enormous deleterious effect on police accountability in exchange for a fairly small increase in citizen privacy, so if the administration is ignoring more effective ways to improve the citizenry's privacy you can safely infer what really motivated their decision to back away from body cams.
itsanaccount · 6h ago
its about power.
you smoking a cig in an alley on your 15 minute break? you should have every right and privilege on earth.
you running 10,000 person strong group of people with the legal right to use force against your fellow man fighting to deny people their personal liberties with a long history of corruption? i don't care if there's cameras in the bathrooms.
tzs · 6h ago
I think you misread the thread. The posters above weren’t talking about the bathrooms of the DEA. The are talking about the bathrooms of the people the body cam wearing DEA officers encounter.
itsanaccount · 5h ago
I didn't misread anything. Poster up top accurately predicted that some cops would say some utter bullshit about protecting people they're recording as an excuse to not have their own actions monitored.
As a person who understands all cops are bastards, I didn't bother to consider for a second cops care about anyone who aint a cop.
If I thought of a more invasive analogy for how much cops should be monitored and untrusted, especially DEA agents, I would have used that.
mobtrain · 4h ago
> As a person who understands all cops are bastards, I didn't bother to consider for a second cops care about anyone who aint a cop.
It seems you also didn’t bother to consider you are on HN and not Reddit.
stuaxo · 8h ago
Can't see them traumatising children.
theoreticalmal · 7h ago
Other than the “sorry, we raided the wrong house” situations (which absolutely should out the whole swat team in jail) a judge has to sign a warrant to raid the house, for good reason. The responsibility for the kids being traumatized lies with their parents, committing crimes in the house.
macintux · 7h ago
Committing crimes like registering to vote and being told they could vote?
> a judge has to sign a warrant to raid the house, for good reason
We’re arresting and irrevocably detaining folks not only without a warrant, but in violation of court orders.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 8h ago
This administration is allergic to accountability, so this tracks.
ty6853 · 8h ago
Body cams can be removed at light speed but somehow the process of rescheduling marijuana moves at the speed of molasses.
SlightlyLeftPad · 8h ago
So while we’re talking about government overspending, this money was already spent. What is going to happen with these cameras that are now going to be unused?
rolph · 7h ago
now they can be carried at option rather than at mandate, thus self serving functions for cams now on the table.
SlightlyLeftPad · 6h ago
Cool, so since government accountability is now optional, I suspect we’ll get a few camps. At the very least, these two: honest officers who relish constant supervision and scrutiny, dishonest officers who relish violence and brutality above all else.
qingcharles · 7h ago
Aren't a lot of these bodycams provided for free, and in exchange you have to use their cloud to store all the footage until the end of time?
(give the razor, sell the blades...)
vjulian · 8h ago
I genuinely don’t understand why people, even intelligent people, take the US political and governance structure seriously.
delichon · 8h ago
It incarcerates around 1.9 million people and has another 3.6 million on probation or parole. It seizes and consumes more than a third of all production. It demands compliance with about 120 million words of federal rules. It's the greatest military power on earth. It's unserious to not to take that kind of power over our lives seriously.
mullingitover · 8h ago
> For another it consumes more than a third of all production
This is often a positive.
In times of financial panic, which free markets always come around to, the government is a spender of last resort that helps to kickstart production and demand when the free market is in absolute shambles, stashing gold in holes in its backyard.
Furthermore, when it's functioning well, it gives the fattest of the industrialists a haircut and returns that money to the populace where the revenue can actually deliver value instead of sitting in a vault somewhere.
yellowapple · 8h ago
> Furthermore, when it's functioning well, it gives the fattest of the industrialists a haircut and returns that money to the populace
Rarely, and many orders of magnitude less than what we're owed.
theoreticalmal · 7h ago
What makes you think you’re owed the money of another?
itsanaccount · 6h ago
Don't owe it to me, set it on fire (its deflationary lol) but money is a proxy for power and we all are owed the right to be free from tyranny.
And if that means making sure no single person or small group of people have too much power (money), then taking their money is what it takes.
Maybe we arent even owed, as its a responsibility shared by all.
jodrellblank · 5h ago
What makes you think the wealthy are owed all of a country's money and resources, simply because they took it by hook and crook?
IG_Semmelweiss · 7h ago
>>> For another it consumes more than a third of all production
>This is often a positive.
>In times of financial panic
Do you mean, for example, the credit crisis of 2008 ? That crisis that was actively encouraged by the US govt, that poured the gasoline with govt loan guarantees, insane macroeconomic policy and low interest rates ?
Are we saying we want to pay for arsonists, to work as firefighters ?
yellowapple · 8h ago
Probably because the removal of thousands of dollars from my paychecks over the course of every year is a serious matter, as are many of the functions which those involuntarily-paid dollars support.
cosmicgadget · 2h ago
It's voluntary as you choose to remain in the country.
ty6853 · 1h ago
The US has worldwide, actually interplanetary taxation. Even if you leave you'll be under US tax net. If you renounce, again, that doesn't stop it because renouncing also costs a tax of ~$2000 and possibly an exit tax.
But this in any case all presumes not leaving = consent, which is flimsy on even a superficial inspection, and has some harrowing downstream deductions.
eth0up · 8h ago
I thoroughly sympathize with even more callously cynical views, but what all good people should remember, daily if able, are the unsung work horses that have ploughed through endless, self healing bureaucratic rot mires and festering heaps of wriggling legalese to preserve the creaking vestiges of liberty and dignity that we take for granted. If not for those who take such initiative and toils, we'd be in an alternate reality. A terrible one.
Maintaining a semblance of justice and fairness is an overtime job. The ravenous hovering ghouls of corruption make alpha vultures seem blind and sessile.
mountainriver · 8h ago
The DEA has been caught doing some incredibly sketchy things in the past. Considering most drugs should be legalized or at least decriminalized, they provide little benefit and are now allowed even more freedom to exert their unnecessary power.
I didn’t know Biden had issued an executive order on this. That’s exactly what we needed.
to quote a line ive often been delivered by police -
“if you didnt do anything wrong, what do you have to hide?”
These are solved problems. Hundreds of agencies use body cams now, and this has been dealt with.
I think a good starting point for squaring this is to examine it in the context of what else the administration is doing (or not doing) to protect the privacy of citizens. This move has an enormous deleterious effect on police accountability in exchange for a fairly small increase in citizen privacy, so if the administration is ignoring more effective ways to improve the citizenry's privacy you can safely infer what really motivated their decision to back away from body cams.
you smoking a cig in an alley on your 15 minute break? you should have every right and privilege on earth.
you running 10,000 person strong group of people with the legal right to use force against your fellow man fighting to deny people their personal liberties with a long history of corruption? i don't care if there's cameras in the bathrooms.
As a person who understands all cops are bastards, I didn't bother to consider for a second cops care about anyone who aint a cop.
If I thought of a more invasive analogy for how much cops should be monitored and untrusted, especially DEA agents, I would have used that.
It seems you also didn’t bother to consider you are on HN and not Reddit.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/08/florida-voter-fr...
We’re arresting and irrevocably detaining folks not only without a warrant, but in violation of court orders.
(give the razor, sell the blades...)
This is often a positive.
In times of financial panic, which free markets always come around to, the government is a spender of last resort that helps to kickstart production and demand when the free market is in absolute shambles, stashing gold in holes in its backyard.
Furthermore, when it's functioning well, it gives the fattest of the industrialists a haircut and returns that money to the populace where the revenue can actually deliver value instead of sitting in a vault somewhere.
Rarely, and many orders of magnitude less than what we're owed.
And if that means making sure no single person or small group of people have too much power (money), then taking their money is what it takes.
Maybe we arent even owed, as its a responsibility shared by all.
Do you mean, for example, the credit crisis of 2008 ? That crisis that was actively encouraged by the US govt, that poured the gasoline with govt loan guarantees, insane macroeconomic policy and low interest rates ?
Are we saying we want to pay for arsonists, to work as firefighters ?
But this in any case all presumes not leaving = consent, which is flimsy on even a superficial inspection, and has some harrowing downstream deductions.
Maintaining a semblance of justice and fairness is an overtime job. The ravenous hovering ghouls of corruption make alpha vultures seem blind and sessile.
I didn’t know Biden had issued an executive order on this. That’s exactly what we needed.