Show HN: US Routing – Python library for fast local routing in the US (github.com)

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?”

baranul · 12h ago

When transparency to the public is no longer important, it looks like being able to secretly abuse others has become more important for such agencies.

It's back to the public not actually knowing what really happened, except in situations where its recorded by a 3rd party or there is a whistleblower from their own ranks. And we have to hope these people are brave enough to step forward and handle the pressure placed on them because they did, in order for justice to prevail.

tmpz22 · 1d 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 · 1d 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 · 1d 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).

itsanaccount · 1d 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 · 1d 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 · 1d 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.

No comments yet

clipsy · 1d 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.

stuaxo · 1d ago

Can't see them traumatising children.

theoreticalmal · 1d 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 · 1d ago

Committing crimes like registering to vote and being told they could vote?

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/08/florida-voter-fr...

JumpCrisscross · 1d ago

> 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.

owebmaster · 20h ago

One more reason for the cameras to be always on

sjsdaiuasgdia · 1d ago

This administration is allergic to accountability, so this tracks.

93po · 14h ago

this is a really odd thing to hear when the premise of DOGE is literally accountability. there is a lot of hyperbole and misinformation around DOGE, but at its root it's elon saying "if you spend millions of dollars you have to, at minimum, write a single sentence as to why"

obligatory trump and elon suck, im not defending them. just pushing back against misinformation

azemetre · 10h ago

The entire purpose of DOGE is to attack the government while forcing them to use private services.

Don’t believe their lies because they’re just that lies.

Nothing they are doing is efficient because they don’t care. They just want to attack the government.

—-

For something HN relevant please look back at all the stupid comments Musk made after he was forced to acquire Twitter. Comments like there being hundreds of “ghost employees” or wanting devs to print their code changes.

BriggyDwiggs42 · 10h ago

The messaging around doge involves some mention of accountability, alongside many other things like claims of fraud etc. That doesn’t mean that’s what doge actually does. You’re taking them at their word when their actions speak loudly.

jazzyjackson · 9h ago

There is already a government accountability office, www.gao.gov

const_cast · 8h ago

> just pushing back against misinformation

People pointing out that the premise and actions of something are contradictory isn't misinformation. Rather, it's revealing misinformation - the premise.

We can't just believe everything anyone says, especially when their actions are so obvious in contradiction. It feels like I'm being gaslit.

jhp123 · 13h ago

The premise of DOGE is accountability to the personal whims and judgments of Elon Musk ... when we talk about accountability in government we usually mean, accountability to the public

ty6853 · 1d ago

Body cams can be removed at light speed but somehow the process of rescheduling marijuana moves at the speed of molasses.

SlightlyLeftPad · 1d 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 · 1d ago

now they can be carried at option rather than at mandate, thus self serving functions for cams now on the table.

SlightlyLeftPad · 1d 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.

collingreen · 18h ago

How would your honest officer group operate alongside the other group, hypothetically? It seems like the kind of thing that group 2 would stamp out pretty quickly and group 1 wouldn't be able to stop.

qingcharles · 1d 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...)

spauldo · 13h ago

We don't have treaties with half the world mandating body cams.

(I want weed legalized too, but it's a thorny issue.)

mountainriver · 1d 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.