Baltimore police does need a mass surveillance program - for it's own officers. Remember when they looked at 2 years of body-cam footage for one of their highest earners and came out the other end with 32 counts of assault, false imprisonment and generalized misconduct? [1]
I feel that mass surveillance for law enforcement will not work until public, judiciary and law accept that Police like all people make errors. It shouldn't be a herculean task to reverse a wrongful arrest or file charges for a use of excessive force by law enforcement officer.
Courts should ultimately decide if the officer did this out of malice/incompetence and penalize accordingly.
The American public is already too biased in favor of LEO, to judge by trial outcomes.
Law enforcement should be held to a higher, not lower standard than ordinary people. That will make the job tougher, but if it that makes it too tough for an individual, they don't have to work there.
>Baltimore police does need a mass surveillance program - for it's own officers.
Baltimore is #11 on a list of most violent cities in the world[1]. There are children and good people trying to live in those crime-ridden neighborhoods. The police is not the problem. I feel for the cops there because you can't take one of the most violent cities in the world and expect to police it like Sweden. As such, I wish they maintained their surveillance program because it works and it would result in more perps being taken out of that victimized community.
Allowing cops to commit crimes doesn’t help victim-rights, it creates more victims and more citizens unwilling to assist police.
Did you read the article? Prosecutors didn’t make up the charges against this officer, they have documented video proof. There is no reason to arrest and assault bystanders, none.
I believe the vast majority of cops are doing their jobs legally and honestly. But you have to punish and root out those cops who aren’t, or you will never get the public trust necessary to really make a dent in high crime areas.
> Baltimore is #11 on a list of most violent cities in the world[1].
If the police were better at their job I imagine more people would be willing to look the other way. You don't get to violate people's rights and fail to keep them safe.
Then it needs to secede from Maryland and the whole union so they can use their holistic solutions to policing. Our constitution does not support the way the police act.
Interestingly, there was a three-month extension of the three Patriot Act provisions, included in a House resolution to prevent a government shutdown. It's bad that these things are linked in the same resolution to begin with, and it leads to an unnecessarily hard choice for politicians. Even someone wary of mass surveillance can't just say no to keeping the government open. Often, this is how a lot of this stuff gets passed.
Why are the two disparate things so often tied together in the first place? Similarly today, we see Republicans tying together the repeal of section 230 with the extra stimulus money demanded by the president. It really makes no logical sense why these things are bundled together as one bill, either.
> It really makes no logical sense why these things are bundled together as one bill, either.
It makes perfect logical sense for a majority-government party which wants to quash scrutiny from the opposition, while also ensuring support from its own dissenters.
Why are they tied together? Because someone proposed an amendment to the bill, and enough people voted for it for the amendment to pass. Then politicians don't have to put their name on voting for the extension to the "Patriot" Act. But some of them still voted for this. With some research, they could be named and shamed.
For this to change, more people who share an aversion to mass surveillance have to get involved in politics.
There are lots of people like this, but they are either apolitical, apathetic, hopeless, don't want to get their hands dirty, think politics is beneath them, that their resistance would be ineffectual, or they are too busy with other things.
As one more thing to consider: there's some irony in that running for office isn't exactly privacy-friendly. I sometimes wonder if elected office, if not any and all kinds of public service, necessarily selects for people who don't care too much about their own personal privacy, and what the consequences of that are. There's no way to get there without essentially throwing away whatever dregs of anonymity you've managed to hold on to.
So, while I don't think I'm any of those things you list, and I've often thought that I would love to run for office some day, just glancing at the paperwork required to show up to the race is typically enough to turn me off of the idea for a while.
Given the scope of human experience now encompassed by "politics", that's not sustainable.
Or as someone else once put it:
"130. Technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at many different points at the same time (crowding, rules and regulations, increasing dependence of individuals on large organizations, propaganda and other psychological techniques, genetic engineering, invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and computers, etc.). To hold back any ONE of the threats to freedom would require a long and difficult social struggle. Those who want to protect freedom are overwhelmed by the sheer number of new attacks and the rapidity with which they develop, hence they become apathetic and no longer resist. To fight each of the threats separately would be futile. Success can be hoped for only by fighting the technological system as a whole; but that is revolution, not reform."
It’s hard to reduce crime rates when you constantly manufacture new types of victimless crimes and create lucrative black markets to incentivize participants to use assault, intimidation and murder in the course of business.
This type of surveillance doesn't reduce crime rate, and your vote on the matter is meaningless if the people doing the surveillance are LYING to you about what that surveillance entails.
> The ACLU and local activists are currently suing the BPD in an attempt to prevent the AIR program, which was a six-month pilot, from starting up again in Baltimore or anywhere else.
I may no longer fully agree with what ACLU has turned into in recent years (despite their legendary past of unquestionable defense, which now apparently HAS conditions thanks to the social media whining era, which is sadly unsurprising in 2020), I fully respect what they are doing here.
This sounds like the police were caught in the act and a perfect moment for pro-privacy lawyers to nail them in court.
Does anyone have a link to a article about the use of the 'Persistent Surveillance Systems' to investigate crime in Ciudad Juarez (Mexico), the plane would fly back and forth over El Paso (Texas).
The story was a female Mexican police officer had been ambushed, and with the use of the spy plane, the US was able to back-track the routes of the ambushers, and the routes all led back to (cartel headquarters) house on the outskirts of town.
Because the powers that be get sensitive about things that could allow people to physically attack members of the powers that be. Or, in simpler terms: Because the person hearing the lawsuit is a judge.
There have been countless examples of police organizations using surveillance in ways beyond their initial use -- so certain people like the mayor or judges might think "the police would be too dumb to try to use this against somebody like me", but if the system is essentially a dragnet where they store all the data, then they do actually track the judges and public officials in reality since the data would be stored -- just because they aren't accessing it today doesn't mean they can't in the future -- a FOIA request might be used to request all of the mayor's movements over the past year. Just the request itself may cause the mayor or other officials to want the program to be disbanded because they realize it can be used to mine information about where public officials are moving. What if the mayor threatened to cut funding to the police, so they decide to mine the dataset to see if they can find something in the database that would make the mayor look bad that they can leak to the press, etc. So it should force the issue of saying what data gets stored and the legality of collecting it in the first place on literally everybody vs. particular people of interest. Its only a matter of time before you have something happen like, "hmm, the mayor seems to be spending a lot of time at a random apartment in one part of town... oh look who is this random woman that lives there that is most definitely not his wife... hmmmmm what should we do with this information"..
Sadly, the ACLU today would support surveillance if someone made the argument that it could be used to track “racists and Nazis”. It’s a shame what has happened to the institution. I stopped donating a few years ago because it’s been captured by ideologues whose ideologies incompatible with civil liberties.
Police can't really face any consequences for lying, so why wouldn't they?
On an individual level it doesn't matter even if the lie is in a courtroom for the purpose of turning a murder into justified deadly force! Why wouldn't an organization of police lie even more when they know full well neither the org nor the individual officers will be punished?
Even in this story the truly disturbing part is this:
> A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit eventually ruled in BPD’s favor in the case.
ACLU is appealing the decision, but where are the obstruction / perjury / contempt charges for all the individuals that lied?
The headline says "lied about" but I think it should be updated to "lied to a judge about" - that's perjury! Nothing in the article about them being charged :(
In the current system maybe. All things can change, laws especially.
But there seems to be heavy bipartisan support federally/executively for mass surveillance in the US so good luck with getting your privacy protected nationally.
Your best hope is some local policy changes at the state or municipal level in Baltimore or Maryland. Which may inspire change elsewhere.
Yes -- if you or anyone else is a concerned citizen please look into your local district attorney and your state's attorney general.
Make sure your DA knows that if they aren't willing to indict criminal cops they will be out of a job. We just did this in Los Angeles! No clue how far the new guy will take it, but he definitely understands that this was a referendum on the previous DA's near-absolute refusal to even consider indicting police misconduct.
Things can change, but only in ways that are beneficial to the system. Corporations and governments at every level now have more power over human affairs than they have at any other time in human history.
It seems like the more I read about the police, the more I realize that in their current form, they are unnecessary. For general policing, as in keeping the population safe and dampening crime, they don't need spy planes, they need legs; they don't need pistols, they need communication skills; they don't need body armor, they need to earn the trust of the people that pay them.
If 99% of police encounters don't involve violence, then 99% of police don't need to be equipped for violence. We need 1% of high speed, low drag, well funded SWAT teams, and the rest can just trudge around on foot.
Police should be able to pack heat and use it pursuant to local laws. They should be able to fly whatever planes they want but in compliance with the same laws (including ones about intercepting communications) as everyone else, They are a civilian police force so they should get the same rights as other civilians. The double standards are the root issue.
You aren’t totally wrong, but your view is a recipe for disaster because sooner or later most cops are thrust into that 1% scenario, and they need the ability to defend themselves and you.
The better solution is to eliminate the drivers of friction between honest citizens and cops, especially those traffic create more violent encounters. No knock warrants, the war on drugs, civil forfeiture, vice squads and the criminalization of victimless crimes, the “trafficking myth” war on sex workers, etc.
Readit News
They didn't get that idea themselves, though.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/12/12/an-office...
Courts should ultimately decide if the officer did this out of malice/incompetence and penalize accordingly.
Law enforcement should be held to a higher, not lower standard than ordinary people. That will make the job tougher, but if it that makes it too tough for an individual, they don't have to work there.
Baltimore is #11 on a list of most violent cities in the world[1]. There are children and good people trying to live in those crime-ridden neighborhoods. The police is not the problem. I feel for the cops there because you can't take one of the most violent cities in the world and expect to police it like Sweden. As such, I wish they maintained their surveillance program because it works and it would result in more perps being taken out of that victimized community.
Victim-rights trump criminal-rights.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate
Did you read the article? Prosecutors didn’t make up the charges against this officer, they have documented video proof. There is no reason to arrest and assault bystanders, none.
I believe the vast majority of cops are doing their jobs legally and honestly. But you have to punish and root out those cops who aren’t, or you will never get the public trust necessary to really make a dent in high crime areas.
If the police were better at their job I imagine more people would be willing to look the other way. You don't get to violate people's rights and fail to keep them safe.
Sorry, working a tough beat does not excuse the malfeasance endemic to the Baltimore PD.
Interestingly, there was a three-month extension of the three Patriot Act provisions, included in a House resolution to prevent a government shutdown. It's bad that these things are linked in the same resolution to begin with, and it leads to an unnecessarily hard choice for politicians. Even someone wary of mass surveillance can't just say no to keeping the government open. Often, this is how a lot of this stuff gets passed.
Why are the two disparate things so often tied together in the first place? Similarly today, we see Republicans tying together the repeal of section 230 with the extra stimulus money demanded by the president. It really makes no logical sense why these things are bundled together as one bill, either.
It makes perfect logical sense for a majority-government party which wants to quash scrutiny from the opposition, while also ensuring support from its own dissenters.
There are lots of people like this, but they are either apolitical, apathetic, hopeless, don't want to get their hands dirty, think politics is beneath them, that their resistance would be ineffectual, or they are too busy with other things.
That has to change.
So, while I don't think I'm any of those things you list, and I've often thought that I would love to run for office some day, just glancing at the paperwork required to show up to the race is typically enough to turn me off of the idea for a while.
Given the scope of human experience now encompassed by "politics", that's not sustainable.
Or as someone else once put it:
"130. Technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at many different points at the same time (crowding, rules and regulations, increasing dependence of individuals on large organizations, propaganda and other psychological techniques, genetic engineering, invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and computers, etc.). To hold back any ONE of the threats to freedom would require a long and difficult social struggle. Those who want to protect freedom are overwhelmed by the sheer number of new attacks and the rapidity with which they develop, hence they become apathetic and no longer resist. To fight each of the threats separately would be futile. Success can be hoped for only by fighting the technological system as a whole; but that is revolution, not reform."
Except crime rates are at their lowest points in decades[0].
[0] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/amer...
I may no longer fully agree with what ACLU has turned into in recent years (despite their legendary past of unquestionable defense, which now apparently HAS conditions thanks to the social media whining era, which is sadly unsurprising in 2020), I fully respect what they are doing here.
This sounds like the police were caught in the act and a perfect moment for pro-privacy lawyers to nail them in court.
The story was a female Mexican police officer had been ambushed, and with the use of the spy plane, the US was able to back-track the routes of the ambushers, and the routes all led back to (cartel headquarters) house on the outskirts of town.
Was this all a dream?
Edit: Found the article: Persistent Surveillance Systems https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-s...
On an individual level it doesn't matter even if the lie is in a courtroom for the purpose of turning a murder into justified deadly force! Why wouldn't an organization of police lie even more when they know full well neither the org nor the individual officers will be punished?
Even in this story the truly disturbing part is this:
> A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit eventually ruled in BPD’s favor in the case.
ACLU is appealing the decision, but where are the obstruction / perjury / contempt charges for all the individuals that lied?
But there seems to be heavy bipartisan support federally/executively for mass surveillance in the US so good luck with getting your privacy protected nationally.
Your best hope is some local policy changes at the state or municipal level in Baltimore or Maryland. Which may inspire change elsewhere.
Make sure your DA knows that if they aren't willing to indict criminal cops they will be out of a job. We just did this in Los Angeles! No clue how far the new guy will take it, but he definitely understands that this was a referendum on the previous DA's near-absolute refusal to even consider indicting police misconduct.
A better way to say it is that there aren’t enough honorable police departments firing enough dishonest cops.
And in this case they will argue that misleading != lying.
If 99% of police encounters don't involve violence, then 99% of police don't need to be equipped for violence. We need 1% of high speed, low drag, well funded SWAT teams, and the rest can just trudge around on foot.
The better solution is to eliminate the drivers of friction between honest citizens and cops, especially those traffic create more violent encounters. No knock warrants, the war on drugs, civil forfeiture, vice squads and the criminalization of victimless crimes, the “trafficking myth” war on sex workers, etc.