Slashdot Mirror
Citizens Spy On Big Brother
An anonymous reader writes "Citizens of the world are striking back at 24/7 state surveillance by pulling out their cameraphones and filming inept officials, deadly healthcare lapses and thuggish cops. So-called Sous-veillance is seeing more and more people posting damning footage of official misdemenours to sites such as YouTube to shame them into action." I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over.
Oh..that's simple...camera mysteriously gets dropped and smashed on the ground (probably while you are being slammed against the car), and you get charged first with obstructing justice...with more charges to follow later as they have time to think them up.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This is great. I just hope people don't stop once it all is made illegal.
Developers: We can use your help.
You might be considered a terrorist if you record the police. Wouldn't be the first time.
Oh, I'm sure they won't care, when they searched for expectation of privacy on Google, they found out there was none.
I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over.
I don't know where you're at, but over here it's illegal to use your (camera)phone while driving. If you're fiddling with your phone when the man steps up to your window, I'm sure he'll give you a bonus for it.
"Good news, everyone!"
"The courts might not work anymore, but as long as everyone is videotaping everyone else, justice will be served."
Marge Simpson
One simple rule for its versus it's
It is perfectly legal to record the police in a public area, right up until the point they charge you with something.
Who watches the watchers? The point becomes moot when everyone is a watcher.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Use a hidden camera - a really small "bullet" camera. If nobody can see the camera, nobody can talk about it, nobody can demand you stop using it, nobody can demand destruction of the footage. Or, use a wireless bullet camera to broadcast the footage to a separate location where the recorder is based. Then, if the camera is found, the recording may not be.
Why oil price increase equals economic trouble (Score: Interesti
On Big Brother Spy On Citizens Spy On Big Brother ...
Ah, The never ending cycle of life.
How can one be a spy when the recording is being done openly?
I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over.
Chances are, they'll pull shit on you because, notoriously, they don't seem to like cameras outside of their "control". Look at all those cases of people getting arrested and/or harassed for videotapping, or otherwise recording cops. "Violation of Federal Wiretapping Laws" sound familiar? One fscked up system we got here.
I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over.
Almost all of them will ask you to stop recording.
Some will physically block the camera.
Very few will try to take your camera from you.
Police (and security guards) will do this with varying levels of anger and threats.
The only two things that matter are:
1. You are on public property
2. You are not filming/photographing something you legally cannot (like a port or inside a mall)
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Everyone the authorities swore did something wrong.
And it gets worse- humans actively remap their memories to make them feel better. 10 years after these incidents, the police probably really DO believe their initial lies.
I've seen it in others and I've seen it in myself and I'm more careful of it than most (or at least I remember that I am! ;) )
Police should be required to video tape everything they do and lack of video evidence should be a strong case against them.
People (not just police) have been shown to lie a lot more than we used to think. We need to change our systems of justice to fit reality.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
"I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over."
Beats me, but apparently it's more fun (and career-lethal) to film him without notification.
Given internet anecdotes, I'd imagine you'd wind up with all your videos and photos deleted at best. At worst you wind up with a broken cell phone and a trip down at the station house.
There are exceptions to this, even the vast majority of cops might have no problem (you usually only hear the instances where they do have a problem)
Chances are it's best not to inform them. I sincerely doubt it's against the law to record them without their knowledge in such a situation.
It's illegal to record audio in Pennsylvania without the permission of everyone involved. A car with two people was pulled over. The policeman noticed the passenger was running his video camera and asked the passenger if he was recording audio as well as video. The passenger was arrested.
Take your camera run over it with a car.
"oops, sorry about your phone, perhaps
you should be more careful".
then you take your real camera to court.
If you're spying on Big Brother, you're doing it wrong.
In some states it is illegal to film a government official.
Not that it will help them once it gets on youtube, but first you have to get it on youtube and not confiscated by the police.
What would you do if you filmed a cop beating someone and they asked for the video camera? If you answered anything but give the camera over, expect to be in pain and most likely jail.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over.
A whole bunch of new laws get passed making it illegal for reasons of public servant safety to take video of any police officer in the performance of his duties. I suspect that we'll also see the first exception to the laws against jamming cell phones being made for public safety types as well. Can't have those evulll hax0rs using the Intertubes to commit identify theft against our Men In Blue, can we?
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
Wonder why they didn't mention Shooting Back?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
UK comedian/activist Mark Thomas had some fun with the Met Police (London) video surveillance team:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-La714aW4U4
Starts at 0:54 after annoying intro.
-- "...I'm a bad guy because I, well, I sing some rock-and-roll songs." M. Manson
If a cop lies in court, he will get away with it unless you have ironclad proof of it. One good video, even if it doesn't result in the cop going to jail, can really stir up public indignation and put the heat where it needs to be put.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King
The other example that immediately springs to mind is the guy getting tasered to death at the Vancouver airport. That may have turned the tide toward preventing every cop from getting a taser. Now the public is really sensitive and taser stories get front page coverage.
The day will come when everyone has a camera attached to them, recording every moment of their lives.
The ramifications will be both amazing and frightening. Fewer disagreements about what was said or what happened. Your life's memories available for replay. Less crime. More overlords.
and its been one and one half years since they turned off my service for being a deadbeat- which had earlier led to me selling my real camera in order to pay for the last couple of months. You know it doesn't take half bad pictures, but what baffles me is where did they put the tripod mount?
I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over.
He says, "Have a good day, sir!" and writes you a fine for $500.
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over.
I'm going to go with "a bunch of the usual" since alot of squad cars have dashboard cameras now.
Chances are it ends up like one of dozens upon dozens of cases out there, well publicized in the media, of cops abusing the hell out of people who record their actions. Doubly likely now since you're their target (unlike in most cases with camera-related incidents), and are acting in a f#$% you way toward them.
I've thought about buying one of these AIPTek camcorders. The things aren't half bad and would be ridiculously easy to carry around in public in case you ever had a good video opportunity.
I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over.
Not quite the same situation, but my fiance was in NYC recently and around midnight, stumbling around drunk, her and her sisters came across a cop sleeping in his car. Thinking it was funny, they snapped a few pictures with her phone. What they didn't notice was two other police on foot patrol who saw the girls taking pictures. They came over and forced my fiance to hand over her phone over so they could delete the pictures. The two cops then woke up the sleeping one and reminded him to get back to work.
Not a really interesting story but it's proof that with some intimidation, big brother can force you hand over your legal surveillance footage.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
It is so rare, that, when it happens, they put it on YouTube...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC7b9zLlK_4&feature=related
I was catching a bus from Walthamstow Bus Station, part of a busy transport interchange in East London. On my way I saw the police kicking the living crap out of someone. I went up to start filming, and was told by a "Community Support" officer not to take pictures. I asked what law I was violating, and was met with the witty answer of "the law that says you can't film that over there". Right then. Seeing no point in continuing this conversation while the man continued to be smashed around by the Metropolitan Police, I went to the other side of a toughened glass barrier, stood on some chairs and started filming from there. It was at this point that I was grabbed by two officers and stopped and searched under the terrorism act, 2004. Unfortunately, as I shut the shutter on my K800i, all footage was lost :(
They're actually allowed to arbitrarily search anyone in London under this law, arbitrarily, as it's designated a zone of terrorist threat or somesuch. The mistake the officer searching me (whos full details I do have) claimed that I had been filming covertly. Standing on a chair holding a camera above my head, I'd not felt this to be covert, so I submitted the "stop and account" slip to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, who handed the investigation back to the local force, who stalled the investigation for long enough that the CCTV had been erased!
The rest is history, I'm afraid. There are wranglings going on with my MP regarding this, but should I be in such a position again I'll be damn sure to make certain that the footage is saved.
citizens with cameras is an idea that destroys the outdated orwellian dystopian fantasy so many posit as their philosophical starting point when evaluating trends in the modern world
"big brother" as a viable concept is dead. "1984" is pure fiction. it will never come to pass. the citizens merely use the government's own tactics and technology against them
long live "little brother"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
FTFA:
"Sous-veillance might transform political engagement due to its ease of use, by engaging even the time-poor majority and extending citizenship beyond the usual special interest groups."
Now, what definition of 'Citizenship' is the group using? Are they using it as a code-word for enfranchisement? I'm very confused.
What is the world coming to when our hardworking police men and women can't beat up innocent civilians and charge them with assault without the fear of some scumbag with a camera letting the whole world know the truth?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
busting your average "joe blow" cop won't do anything. another will just take his place.
now if we could use cameras to track union officials and political party advisors and administration officials, we would really have something.
"I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over."
Well, the cops I know pull out their own cameras and start recording you, your car/property and may inquire more into the situation. This tends to make the citizen even more nervous since they are already being approached by a police officer.
Recording anyone while on the job makes someone nervous, being recorded when pulled over by a police officer makes anyone nervous. Police officers don't like being recorded any more than the citizens.
I was once hanging out on a front porch of a friend's house. We saw a cop pull up and park down the street, and he started pulling over and questioning every car that drove by. So my friend Patrick ran in side and grabbed a broken camcorder and stood in his front yard aiming the defunct camcorder at the cop until he got paranoid and left (which didn't take too long).
This happened several years ago when we were making a political broadsheet newspaper called The Fourth Estate, at the time we were publicizing the killing of black kids by cops in Kansas City, KS. We got KCKPD to change their escalation of violence procedures, and we forced Nick Tomasic, the D.A. of Wyandotte County for 32 years, to resign for exonerating police officers without investigations into their killings. After all the town hall meetings of angry black folk in the basement of churches questioning local government officials about the killings (with KBI, Chief of Police, Mayor's council, and community representatives on the panel), and after people were forced to resign and retire, we got a few visits from local mobster-types, and we were told straight-up, "There's plenty of dirt in Kansas City to write about, you've focused enough light on KCK, you're done writing about Strawberry Hill."
So we closed the newspaper and opened a multi-purpose all-ages club called The Stray Cat; but, of course, another gangster crime family (operating as the Cordish Company) came in and condemned our historic 3-story 100-year-old building (built by D.D. Swearengen, a Texas cattle rancher tied to Ellis Albert Swearengen) to make way for The Sprint Center Arena and the Kansas City Live! (white-)Power & Light(-skin) entertainment district.
-=/\- Jizzbug -/\=-
The smaller cameras get, the more common this is going to become.
Security guards and such get all bent out of shape if you try to take a picture inside of a mall. Cops get all bent out of shape when you record them being cops. But when the camera is so small that it can't be easily spotted...
Thomas Galvin
Does nobody else remember? http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/22/220254
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Forget Sousveillance, you want Seussveillance. You have to wear a big long stripey jumper and speak in rhymes.
'Excuse me officer, would you mind,
would I be fined, maligned or confined,
if I were to tape your daily grind?
Sir, I'd like to believe,
that you and me we've
both come to perceive
That your job affords you - the responsibility to be true!
(I couldn't conceive of a way you'd
deceive me my friend, aggreive or bereave!)
A hasty repreive!; My hypothetical weave
does you an injustice. (And speaking of justice)
Enough of confession: let's return to my question.
I got impression of obsession with oppression.
Is this a true fact, or idle digression?
Would recording your good self be found a transgression?
Am I a free man?
or need I grab my tape, my cape and escape?'
Why aren't the 'good cops' turning in their corrupt, violent and evil coworkers?
Sorry, until I see more exposure of bad cops from within their departments, I'm lumping the 'good cops' in with the bad cops.
Sympathizers you know? Kinda like how we bomb the houses of people who help Iraqi Insurgents, even if they aren't actually insurgents themselves.
Aiding and abetting the enemy: abuse of authority.
Blar.
I filmed a copy by Rock Springs, Wyoming who pulled over my buddy. He was as nice as could be. It was "Yes, sir. Thank you sir. How are you today sir?" I even started laughing and said "He's gotta be nice now", but he didn't even respond. So basically it was like any traffic stop, except the copy was nicer than usual, but he did everything by the book and ticket us for exactly how much over we were instead of giving us a few mph brake as they usually do.
"Where have all the good people gone?" - Jack Johnson
Pick one.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The biggest issue with filming/photographing/recording is that they can be faked or doctored in some way. We do have methods that detect changes, and as long as those work, citizen spying can work as a deterrent. But what happens when someone creates a way to doctor footage that is undetectable?
This is what happened in Missouri:
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/19/1961.asp
or http://www.libertylounge.net/forums/19812-video-transcript-guy-pulled-over-crazy.html
filming a thuggish cop is the quickest way to get a beat down or arrested. Then they take your camera phone and break it.
Despite their jobs being a matter of public record, they think they are entitled to privacy on the job.
law enforcement is probably most in need of public transparency to protect the public trust.
They're using their grammar skills there.
There are way more accounts of obvious and sanctioned power abuse than there are of people getting justice though there cellphone camera.
Big Brother, Little Brother... It doesn't matter if you can't get justice anyway because the abusive cops are protected by the whole justice and security chain.
Try this in CHINA see what happens!
Indeed, but as the old saying goes: "How do you eat an elephant? In many small bites, taken one at a time."
Politics has become corrupt and inaccessible enough for the "common man" at the federal level, there really isn't much you can do to change it. You get to vote for a president once every 4 years, and you get to plead to mostly deaf-ear turning congressmen and "representatives" to make changes in Washington for you. (If they *do* listen to you, it's usually just coincidence, because people with deeper pockets than you are paying them to do what happens to be the same thing you wanted.)
Where you can STILL make a difference is at the local level. Your individual voice is FAR more meaningful as a member of a local community than as a member of the U.S. citizenry as a whole.
I think change has to "trickle up" from the local and even state levels, so frying all these "small fish" consistently is about as effective a message as one can send.
I can't believe there are no "in Soviet Russia" comments...
is this criminal .
Thank you Mr. Fein
I've often wondered about this... Whenever I call my credit card company, utility companies, etc. the first thing you hear on the call is "this call may be recorded...." Does that give me implicit permission to record the call without notifying whoever I end up talking to? It doesn't say "this call may be recorded by Acme corporation for training purposes but you do not have permission to record this call".
I wonder if such an assumption can be made when it comes to getting pulled over by the police, etc. It seems to be common knowledge that a lot of police cars are now equipped with cameras, so is there any reason I, as a private citizen, couldn't hook up a similar video camera to my dashboard that records video & sound just like a cop car, and not even bother to tell an officer who happens to pull me over.
I thought the guy was puling a gun on me, so i blocked his arm, i apologize that it was a camera instead and it hit the ground and shattered. *case dismissed*
Shouldn't have pulled out a 'questionable' object on a cop during an incident. Feel lucky they don't shoot you instead.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm too much of a anti-consumer neo-Luddite to own a camera phone (I'm waiting for the plain-old cell phone to completely break first, then I'll buy a new one.) So I'll just ask: can the latest-and-greatest ones just stream pictures and video straight to a server, so no matter what Officer Friendly does to your camera, you still got the goods?
http://www.infowars.com/
This is why they have cameras in most cars now, in a sealed box that the patrol officer cant get into.
Hard to fake the evidence when you get get to it. It serves to watch *both* parities for when they end up in court.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
citizens with cameras is completely government than a government with cameras. really
as for busybodies objecting to you jaywalking or peeing off a boat reporting you to the cops... this is something that didn't occur before cell phone cameras? busy bodies will always intrude upon your life, in any time period, in any society, for all history and all time to come. busy bodies are like toe jam. objectionable, but inevitable. you need to learn to cope
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Gentlemen...welcome to Soviet Russia.
The cop is a real d-bag, until he notices the camera. Then, he's just concerned with the driver's safety. http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/19/1961.asp http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/21/madcop.video.ap/index.html Officer Kuehnlein vs. Brett Darrow The officer was fired.
Everyone is spying on everyone else, eh? Are they going to start printing the newspapers in invisble ink? :D
>> I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over.
Why inform the cop? They don't bother to tell us if/when they're filming from their car during a stop.
After fighting and loosing a blatantly ridiculous speeding ticket I've come to the unfortunate realisation you have to treat cops like they treat you... i.e. its a war. Don't make the mistake that cops are any way fair any more, they're not. Use what ever you can.
Don't wave a camera in the cop's face, just have a webcam in your car like they do. In fact you're probably more likely to capture something out of order if the cop doesn't know he's being filmed.
As far as I understand, if you can prove any part of the stop wasn't performed strictly by the book, you've got an automatic get-out.
Where I live, starting salary for a police officer is in the mid-20000s. You do get what you pay for. If you pay next to nothing, you are not attracting the best. Instead, you might end up with low paid people wielding power. How many in the Slashdot crowd would quit their jobs to be a police officer? It is a low paid profession, and therefore you get what you pay for.
I heard something going on behind my apartment complex. I looked out the window, and a cop was beating a guy in the face with a collapsable baton. He continued doing this for a couple minutes, then walked the guy back to the car, face bloody and crying, and drove off like it was nothing. Even at that time I was thinking to grab our family video camera but didn't do it. Knowing what I know now, face strikes are never to be used as they can most often be fatal, he didn't call for any backup, so the man wasn't resisting... Just messed up all around, even if the guy "had it coming". Other than that, I've never had any problems with police and they have been angels (rolls eyes).
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
This is beginning to remind me of the story "The Light of Other Days". In it the technology is discovered to allow anyone to view someone else, no mater where they are (Wormhole CAM). The concept of privacy is completely destroyed.
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data.
...the cops take an extreme dislike to perfectly legal citizens who employ any sort of cop-watch, especially so with cameras. The link below is a video beginning with a citizen filming the abject harassment of two citizens on the street in an upscale part of downtown, ending with the cops confiscating his camera.
http://blip.tv/file/778170
You don't tell the police that they are being filmed. You just quietly film them, and when they do something inappropriate you give the tape to the local TV station and sue the department into the ground. This strategy has three advantages. First, it will be a hell of a lot harder for the DA to charge you with wiretapping when you are a local celebrity. Second, you might get something for your trouble.
Finally, and most importantly, it will force the police to behave as if they were being filmed all of the time because they just won't know who that one tinfoil hat dude is until they are being fired for beating him.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
Ubiquitous personal surveillance technology was one of the driving themes in David Brin's novel Earth.
Anyone interested in the impact of technology on society should read this. (With a grain of salt of course, it's background in a sci-fi novel.)
Even more interesting is the relevance of this other background events and technology to the post Y2K world we live in.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Q. I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over.
A. The case of Brett Darrow, Missouri:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2715792117793977759&
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5591813350444656353&q=source:010563705515560372049&hl=en
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2007/100907Motorist.htm
Any other questions?, I got a whole folder dedicated to "official" ABUSE.
Related:
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/174096756/m/128000201931?r=261000401931#261000401931
~hylas
Please MOD UP. The problem is that the police are above the law, the typical US police model is that they are a "paramilitary" force, and we are purposefully filling the police departments with dumbshits. Gone are the days that the police are community stewards.
"Rodney King"
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
The Eye-Fi products will help anyone in a situation where pictures are attempted to be deleted from a camera. By buffering images then transmitting pictures to the internet via WiFi, you can effectively remove the ability for people to confiscate film or memory cards.
All you need is a near-by wifi station... Which isn't too hard, but it would be awesome if WiFi devices (phones) had client that could receive as well. You and your friend could embed in a crowd and if the photographer is discovered, your friend's cell phone could be the backup. With the iphone, and other phones you could then automatically email images to others in near-real time...
The eyefi also somewhat supports GPS tagging too, which may help with authenticity.
(I am not affiliated with Eye-fi in anyway, other than having one on my wish-list)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Chris Rock - How not to get your ass kicked by the police:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8
"With great power comes great responsibility."
I'm glad that we're beginning to watch the watchers.
Your brain is not a computer.
A camera with a wireless CF card. Let the cops have their fun smashing the camera but the photos or video have already escaped into the air.
"I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over."
Simple: the officer in question politely requests that you turn over your cell phone/camera, stomps it into tiny pieces, THEN beats the living shit out of you.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
if you want to talk that nebulously, everything is the same, nothing is different, and you have no point
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that a lot of our public servants -- and I stress the term *servant* -- believe that they are beyond scrutiny. Well, the actuality is that they are no different than ordinary citizens and thus it is perfectly acceptable for the surveillance to be turned on them as well.
This will not come easily, however. Many will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into this bold new world -- but let 'em kick and scream. Eventually they will succumb and things will be better for us all.
A new requirement for selection will have to be a willingness to be observed while on the job. Store clerks don't mind, so why should the police? Why should any public servant?
but you can't get it because the system is broken
ok
well little brother is the tool with which you use to fix the broken system
"Big Brother, Little Brother... It doesn't matter if you can't get justice anyway"
yes, it does fucking matter, there is a huge fucking difference, and you can get justice
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Today we have a media that feeds on salicious gossip. We have YouTube and other web sites that host any video you care to upload.
What this means is that if I take pictures of someone being arrested for some socially-unacceptable crime (child molestation, for example) it will certain make the local news and can be posted to YouTube and others just for laughs. Of course their being arrested has no bearing on their real guilt which might take a trial months later to really decide. But by the mere fact of their being arrested we can destroy their lives. People for the most part are very reluctant to give up the notion that you have to be guilty to get arrested.
Did you consider that randomly recording police actions will often lead to this sort of thing far more than "catching" the police in some sort of abusive actions? No, of course not. All cops are corrupt weasles that just want to abuse their power over ordinary people and every interaction between a police officer and ordinary citizens will result in some kind of abuse.
The reason that "professional" photographers have stayed away from perp walks and photographing arrests is because doing otherwise is clearly abusive. Sure, some people will do anything for a picture that sells. And think how much a video of some celebrity getting arrested will sell for...
I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over.
Forget trying to hide your camera. This guy has a big $8,000 camera he tries to get into court. The bailiff doesn't know if he has sworn an oath to any constitution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6ETi2HZtp0
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
There are a lot of authoritarian fuckwits who can't stand it when people stand up to authority. They are small minded bullies who worship power, think humans are basically evil, and must be beaten into civility. The idea of these 'evil' humans refusing to take their beatings frightens them, because a human who hasn't been beaten into submission is a free and therefore dangerous human.
I'm being a little harsh here, as authoritarianism is actually a mental virus. If you've ever mentally beaten yourself up for a perceived failure instead of simply noting it and refocusing on how you want to be, you are very likely infected with it yourself. People infected with the virus do not need to coordinate their actions consciously, yet work together to spread the virus through abuse and fear mongering.
Always try to be impeccable with your words and thoughts and do not use them to harm yourself or others. Use reward, not punishment, to motivate yourself and others to behave in positive ways. Punishment will never create new and positive behaviors.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
is one of the worst things to happen to America in the last 30 years.
Officers have evolved from civil servants who lived among and knew their fellow citizens to body-armor-wearing, machine-gun toting soldier wannabes. One of the most poignant examples of this was the image of Elian Gonzalez with the masked, helmeted, body-armored SWAT officer pointing his MP3 at a nine-year-old boy.
This shift from policing to a sort of "assault" mentality dries a lot of these issues. Officers no longer consider themselves part of the civilian population and generally seem to believe that they are "above" everyone else. Part of this is the idea that it's them against the world, which means that someone filming them is an "enemy"
I don't know what portion of the law enforcement establishment is corrupt. I know a couple of police officers (and one FBI agent) and they're nice enough folks in their non-work persona. But the shift to us-against-them is unhealthy (and probably irreversible)
Posting AC for obvious reasons.
I own a Uniden BC-996 scanner. I monitor fire fighters and police activities in my area across several trunking systems. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's scary. And sometimes it's sad.
The entertainment value is there. Even my very non-geeky wife turns it on to listen.
However, many people can't take these scanners with them in their cars. Many state laws prevent them from doing that UNLESS they have permission from the state police to monitor from a car, or you happen to have a federally significant reason, such as possession of a ham radio license.
Rodney King's beating wasn't just a matter of a video tape. There were people who monitored the MDT traffic between the various cops involved. Oh, and by the way, MDT monitoring is illegal now, even from your home.
If you want to offend a cop, drive around with a scanner in your car, configured for the trunking system the local cops are using. They do not like it when people demonstrate their ability to monitor them.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Damn, that's two Transparent Society stories so far today.
I can't wait for cheap Internet goggles, so I never have to go offline...
Some of the suggestions in this thread are related the to technical measures you could take to prevent the authorities from destroying evidence of their misconduct.
This approaches the problem from the wrong end. Just as DRM has failed to prevent music copying in any meaningful way, so do these naive, technical fixes fail to address the central problem:
Furthermore, its not enough to simply monitor the behavior of the police because this does nothing to change the power-imbalance between the state and the citizenry. There was a good example of this in 2006 where a videographer in San Francisco was imprisoned for 8 months for refusing to turn over all the raw video footage he shot of a demonstration.
As this case demonstrated, simply "getting the truth out there" won't prevent a grand jury from digging through your life and certainly won't keep out of jail. If you want to monitor the police without martyring yourself, you're going to have to change the law.
And in this country, that means changing the politics.
-S
Arstechnica now has a much better writeup of the situation:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080731-opt-in-or-opt-out-street-view-case-echoes-privacy-debate.html
Everyone is spying on everyone else, eh? Are they going to start printing the newspapers in invisble ink? :D
I demand the cone of silence!
Bow-ties are cool.
Whenever I hear "This call may be recorded...", I note that there are two potential meanings. It could mean "there is a chance that this call will be recorded", but it could also mean "we permit recording of this call". Of course, be sure that your purpose fits within the listed permissible reasons, if any. Regardless, the permission is not implicit; it's explicit.
Now, if they want to say "But,... but,... that's not what I meant!", my response would be that they would be well served by considering their terms more carefully in the future. ;)
I don't like the idea of society becoming a panopticon.
see for yourself http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/12/2050212
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I have to wonder how many folks realistically have met bad cops. I'm a visible minority where I live and I've never had any problems with cops. I've been stopped once at a drunk driving checkpoint in my life but that's it. Yes I was sober, and they were polite. Maybe it's the one bad apple symptom where it takes only one or two bad cops to give everyone a bad name. I still believe that in general most cops are good and do their job. Otherwise why in the world would we continue to support them financially. I also suspect the comments are somewhat exaggerated, people get nervous around cops (even for no good reason), it's probably more natural to say nasty things about them than good.
You're lucky you weren't stopped in the vicinity of Rawlins.... your body still wouldn't be found!
Ya, I was a little scared to see the cops reaction, but there was two of us, and we were almost at the Colorado border south of Rock Springs. I don't think the cop wanted to mess with us alone out there. Especially considering that I may be small for a roughneck, but my buddy is a monster. Nice guy though. We both didn't like the hell hole that are the rigs (and we don't use drugs or drink heavily), no matter the pay, and no matter how many calls I get that say "Tired of making nothing, ready to come back?"
"Where have all the good people gone?" - Jack Johnson
If the cop's smart:
They'll wish you well with that recording. Then, entirely within the law, they'll take a walk around your vehicle and find all of the little things that they would have likely waived if you were being cooperative.
Your tire tread's looking a little low. I'm sorry, your car's not safe to drive, I'll have to get it towed. Oops, did I leave your 4x4 in gear and blew your transmission? I'm SO sorry, but legally not liable.
Your front windows are tinted... Hmm, that'll be another ticket. Wiper bottles empty (this one's a pentalty point in the UK)? Could you check your brake lights for me?
Even better, in California, they duck under your vehicle to check VIN numbers. You don't have a camera pointing under there? And, what a shame, your VIN number's scratched off in one place (we'll just ignore the cop's keys have metal flakes all over them now). Looks like this car has stolen parts. I'm sorry, we have to tow and destroy. It's the law, you know.
Quite legally, unless you're meticulous about vehicle upkeep, they can find a whole bunch of minor annoyances for you. Questionably legally, they can likely find a few ways to get your car towed and damaged in the process. With only a little faking of evidence, they can come up with ways to have it destroyed.
Yeah, some of them are dicks. Some of them are dicks who break the law - and catching them on camera is a nice victory. The smart ones are dicks who know how to stay within the law while doing no end of harm to you perfectly legally.
Why would the police care which linux distribution you run?
So looking at something with squishy biological eyes and storing the image in your squishy biological brain is alright, but upgrade the hardware and suddenly it's illegal?
there is no god but truth, and reality is its prophet
Except I wouldn't call it a virus, more like a genetic disorder.
For more info ... follow my sig. Warning: scientific content!
The thing about kids is you can't make it all about them. If they think the only one they're hurting when they misbehave is themselves, they calculate the cost/benefit.
Once a kid is a little older, if you play it so they're not the only one benefiting and losing, they start to realize that other people are depending upon them to do what's right. Kids want more than anything to fit in socially...even if the social group is their parents (especially when young).
The problem is that many parents don't see why they should be inconvenienced by someone else, even if it is their own kid, so they isolate the negative consequences to the child. But that doesn't give the kid a sense of his effect on his local environment...or it mitigates it somewhat, so the kid learns that his negative behavior only affects himself (the same is often true of good behavior—parents naturally want their little angel to get all the credit when they do the right thing, so they try to direct all the benefit that way).
Example: A kid is acting up in a restaurant. Hopefully, the parent did the right thing in getting the child excited about going to the restaurant as a kind of plus, so just being there is a fun experience. The parent should: (1) tell the child once that if they don't settle down, they'll pay the bill and leave immediately, food or no food and then (2) do it. Most parents won't follow through without a big to do, because they themselves want the meal. But this isn't the right answer—the right thing to do is get up and go, and suffer the consequences of your kid's bad behavior with them. Make sure they know your skipped meal is no fun either, but they had the chance to fix it and there's no going back.
If the kid learns early that there are inflexible rules of the universe, and once you run afoul of them the path is determined and quickly followed, they shape up quickly. If parents don't have the will to pursue the behavior they want and not settle for less, however, in the end no one gets what they want.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
I am not sure if this will help, but I have mentioned it to people in the past as to if it is 'legal' for them to record something.
http://www.callcorder.com/phone-recording-law-america.htm
This varies from state to state. The following is also helpful for noting particular oddities by state:
http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/state-law-recording
http://www.rcfp.org/taping/states.html
If anyone knows if this covers video recording as well and if it doesn't has a link, please let me know. I like keeping a list of such things.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Whistleblowers in a cop shop? Bahahaha!
Making excuses for the abuse of authority? You're a fucking appeaser.
Blar.
This young man had video going of the entire event, even predating it (including a semi-clear shot of his speedometer). How can I rig up my car to do something similar? I'm going to make up a dream-car-surveillance wish list for the ultimate CYA capability:
- Always-on functionality: I'd like footage from the time I unlock the car with my remote to when I lock it as I walk away (and perhaps a few minutes after that).
- Audio: so there's an accounting of things people say to me, or that I say.
- Redundant microphones: One at each window, at least. Multiple sourced-recordings means that it should be harder to claim that it's been doctored.
- Multiple viewpoints: Front (over-driver's shoulder), rear (to see if people rear-end me?), sides. This way, if I am off-camera for one view, I am hopefully in another one.
- Redundant cameras: If one is discovered/destroyed/disabled, I'd like another to be already filming a similar shot. (So, I think that makes something like 8 cameras? Yikes.)
Now, this ensures that any time I am involved in an accident, a traffic stop, or any other Event while I'm in my vehicle, in theory I should have (multiple) recordings of it for reference/evidence after the fact. It could mean footage of the license plate of a hit-and-run, or "proof" of my innocence when disputing a ticket (how admissable would that be?). Heck, if I'm a witness to an accident or other Event, it would help make sure I don't mis-remember what happened.
There are, however, weaknesses which need to be addressed:
- It'll catch YOU doing bad stuff. So, don't break the law, or cause any accidents. ;)
- Local legality: Is it legal to surveill things in your area? Some states allow conversations to be recorded as long as ONE party knows of it, but only a local lawyer can tell you this. I also don't know if it applies to video footage.
- Vulnerability to destruction: If your car is destroyed, or the cameras discovered, it's possible that your in-car storage will be located (esp. if your car is impounded as evidence? do I watch too much CSI? Probably.), and could be destroyed. It's necessary, IMO, to have off-site backup for all footage your car takes. (Thus, I add another item to my Wish List: Automated upload of footage from any major "event".)
- Your next of kin and your lawyer both need to know about this AHEAD OF TIME. If you're killed in an accident, or shot by overzealous police, or tasered into a coma, they need to know that there is/could-be evidence which needs to be preserved/captured.
- You'll need to take effort to ensure that it's admissable as evidence. I don't know what this might entail; a lawyer and/or professional expert witness can probably answer this well. You'll certainly need to make sure recordings are automatically timestamped and organized, and probably automatically checksummed when archived (to help detect modification). If it can't be used in court, it's unlikely that it can actually help you.
- That's a huge amount of data! This is, I believe, the biggest hurdle: if you can't store the data, or it's too much, then you can't actually use it, even if it's legal and admissable. So, especially if we want off-site storage (automated via wireless network? ;)), we need a way to cut this down somewhat.
So, what can we do to reduce the amount of data storage we need?
1) Assume we only need permanent storage in case of an "event". We could have a "start recording" button (which would mark any data from 5 mins before, until "stop" as des
I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over.
You do? Well, if I was that cop and came over such a jerk with an attitude, I would proceed and give you a ticket (instead of just a warning as I had originally planned). Have a good day, punk.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
These are just two incidents from S.C., where I have roots and take notice of such things. In both cases, the most damning evidence against the police is from their own in-car cameras. I'm sure S.C. hasn't cornered the market on thuggish cops.
I think that as a general rule of thumb, if you are filming a police or other law enforcement action and you think the people doing the enforcing may be breaking the law, you don't want to advertise the fact, lest their attention be diverted to you, with potential consequences including loss of the evidence you are collecting. When I was just starting off on my own, my dad (a newspaper man) dispensed this piece of advice: "If you are stopped by a policeman for any reason, say 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir'. Let him be the big man, because he has the badge and the gun, and it will be his word against yours." Basically, if you think there is something that needs to be redressed, write the facts down (badge number, name, etc.) and take it up with the supervisors later, in plain light of day. Being a smart aleck isn't the way to go.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
you can link to a news story on the internet
if you can't, you made it all up
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Actually, I have second-hand knowledge that there is such a rule for the departments in the DFW area. I work security, and some of the people I know are ex-law enforcement with the same story.
It's not written policy, maybe because the press would have a field day, but at the psych review, the department shrink discourages you from joining, saying you would find the work unchallenging and boring. You are then encouraged to apply to one of the federal law enforcement programs, a flattering and more effective variation on "Wouldn't you be happier somewhere else?" If you answer that with "I wanna be a cop more than anything..." they will let you in, but not without trying mightily to talk you out of it.
Funny thing is, both of the guys I know got tired of the nonsense and did quit within a few years.
I grew up on military bases. I've seen MPs do their job with honor, courage and professionalism. Maybe that's because you're never quite sure if that snot-nosed kid you pulled over happens to be your CO's nephew, and military towns tend to be small circles. Maybe it's because of the military tradition that distinguishes the man from the uniform. Maybe it's because when you actually are a certified bad ass, your ego's need to scream "I'm not Officer Dude!" to some little kid on a skateboard goes way down.
That's not the case on the civilian side of the fence. Your local PD doesn't want the chess geek. They do want ex-high school football players, guys who have been behaviorally conditioned to take a hit and do exactly what they're told. They don't even want men who can understand the law. One of the two guys I'm talking about is technically awesome, but still can't understand why the first and fourth amendments are important. "If I searched your car, it's cuz I knew you had drugs in there, and all the warrant did was let bad guys get away..."
They don't want soul searching. They don't want anyone to grow a conscience. They don't want line officers declining orders because "That's an illegal order, Sir." They want men who will do exactly as they're told, when they're told.
At least, that's how it is down in DFW, and I suspect most of the South. I hope your local PD is filled with Knights of the Round Table.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
It makes me wonder if power corrupts people and turns them into raging assholes or if raging assholes are attracted to that much power.
I'm sorry, all it just takes is a spineless middle unwilling to rock the boat to amplify the effects of a tiny minority of brutal psychopaths.
Any ideas for putting a camera in your car, for example to record when you are pulled over by a cop? Ideally it would be un-noticable.
[[ DmD ]]
Subject says it all... Not sure about tomorrow.
Think Deeply.
...and that's what the SECOND camera is for.
Cops starting out are lucky to make $20k/yr. Competent people can and will take other jobs, so recruiters aren't left with much choice. Base pay should go up a lot. Keep the pay up for awhile and competent people will push out the incompetent, and corruption will go down because it will become a job worth keeping.
Police advance and are rewarded for the number of tickets they write and "criminals" they catch. This encourages a predatory relationship with the public, abuse, and corruption. The rewards are much greater for catching someone committing a crime than for discouraging a crime.
IMHO I'd like to see the word "criminal" banned as hate speech. How is a person who committed a crime supposed to consider a law-abiding lifestyle when they have been permamently branded as a crime-committer. How is society supposed to seriously support their rehabilitation when they've been given this core identity?
Down here in San Diego County an off-duty cop shot a mother and her 8yr old son in a road rage incident. Every piece of dirt on this mother was leaked to the press, she's been charged with child endangerment, and the cop who has been on leave is just now being charged with rather minor crimes. We need real accountability. The incident was recorded. Recording the police is a great start, but doesn't do much good if prosecutors ignore it.
I should say my impression of the SDPD has been fairly positive, especially in the city. I've seen them provoked and they were pretty good about de-escalating the situation. Still think all of the above applies.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
It's good to get an opinion from the police viewpoint.
My guess is camera-smashing is a learned behavior, and specific to particular precincts. It certainly happens, but it's good to hear it there are places that it doesn't.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
confiscate evidence, postpone "investigation" until evidence has been eradicated, commit perjury, and torture/murder anyone they "need" to, extraordinary rendition or ordinary, then hell is the enforced goal.
Long live authority.
R.I.P. rights.
"Ghandi" can not win in the New World Order.
murder is the only god, now, a manmade god..
Reminds me of this quote from bash.org:
<r0y_g3rb1l> police stations are clubs for thick-skulled short dicked racist gun-nuts that took every civil-ass test they could because no one else hires people that put "former nigger beater" on their resume.
was from Northern California who was in SoCAL, had been filming the cops beat the autistic/mentally handicapped guy and slamming him on the hood of the car at the gas station, who then then gave the footage to the news, but the news, cozy with or afraid of LA, didn't want the hot potato, which got aired by an out-of-area studio, and then led to the filming guy being chased halfway back UP Kalifornia because the seething, hissing LAPD (whichever station chief, whatever) suddenly reactivated/prioritized an outstanding (and not really pursuded) bench warrant on the filmer.
There, that is a reason for people to start embedding cameras IN and AROUND their cars. Either it will help the police track down hit-and-run and other incidents/crimes, or it will help the public prosecute ill-behaving public employees and private citizens, or both. Or, if the Law makes it illegal for non journalist-types to film uniformed and unknown non-uniformed officers and/or their vehicles (imagine all those unmarked police vehicles entering and exiting garages, and parked under freeways, their license plates visible for ANY person to see and record, one by one, or en mass (sp?))...
So, I suppose that in the future, after the take-down lights come on and a motorist pulls over forthwith, s/he will be first greeted:
"Hello, sir/ma'am. Do you have any surveillance or recording or audio/video recording and transmissions devices encompassing the surrounding periphery of this vehicle, active or not?"
And if the motorist replies, "Yes/Maybe/I refuse to answer that illegal question due to the risk it poses to my safety should you turn out to a rogue or uncouth person issued a badge, gun, and powers of arrest, accompanied with nearly-guaranteed judge protection..."
The next response will be: "Step OUT UV the VEE-HICK-cul"... followed by, "Dispatch, 4 Adam 7, requesting tow vehicle, Figueroa and..."
Maybe I'm taking literary license here, but let's see how long existing unenforced statutes/laws/provisions remain unenforced...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
All these cameras set up to watch the public.
How many cameras are set up to watch the people watching the cameras?
I want to see footage of the folks who are in charge of storing and archiving and turning the video over for prosecution.
I want direct chain of evidence kept for the video, with serious teeth, so that when the cops "oops, we lost that possibly incriminating video, gosh how unlucky" they get the fucking book thrown at them. What would happen if a judge told you turn over evidence that you are expected to have but somehow lost?
How many videos of police criminality need to come out in a given year before we assume that they are all corrupt? After 500 each year every year, will you need a video to convince a jury that the cops are guilty?
At what point will the morale of the police drop, to the point where good men and women stop joining the force, and stop fighting to root out the bad apples? Leaving us with only sociopath bullies?
When will we all pass laws requiring properly funded locally elected civilian review boards, with the power to effect change? As a child could explain to you why it is important to not allow people to police themselves...duh, that's why we even have police!
After all the rhetoric, far too often police policies conflict with good common sense. But we are too chickenshit to force them to change. (how they use tasers, how they use swat, how they confiscate money and get to keep it, how they testify, how they collect evidence, how they are screened for fitness of duty, how they obey the same laws they are supposed to uphold, etc etc etc)
But like the IRS, there's just too much money and power at stake for them to give up anything.
i know what happens a friends of mine parent got pull over by a cop he was smoking weed and he took a picture of him and took him to court he was arrested and taken to jail for that still haven't gotten to anything in court. apparently is illegal to firm a cop.
When the culture of a place encourages professionalism, reporting of corruption, etc..., corruption becomes much harder. When the culture becomes "if I report what you're doing, I can kiss any chance of promotion next month goodbye," you get corruption.
Look for the video of the cop who went to arrest the guy for drunk driving, then found out the guy was a cop from a neighboring town. I saw it on TV a while back, but it's probably up on youtube.
In Finland (You know, in Europe) it is legal to record conversations in general that you participate. There are examples where citizens have videotaped cops in their duties and complained about them in court. Supreme court has always thought that it is legal to record or take a video of a conversation that you videotape. The point is that you won't violate other persons privacy. But it is a different thing if you publish the conversation. Then it brings up a different question: will the published video or tape offend the other persons privacy? But answering the question: it is legal to tape or videotape conversation with anyone and it doesn't matter if the other person knows about it or not.
I have a daughter, and I decided that actually participating in the vacations with her is much better than filming them. Recitals/performances are of course of a different nature (though she's only had a few since she's 3 and half...)
This obsession parents have of documenting every step their children make is really detrimental to family interaction...
I'll put aside my past experiences and conceptions about your profession and assume, just this once, that a police officer is speaking here in good faith.
Why do good cops tolerate the bad ones in your ranks? Why do you protect the Joey Williams's and the Salvatore Rivieri's when they choke-slam little kids into concrete? Why to you allow the Patrick Pogan's and Daniel Guzman's to get away with attacking adult bicyclists and news reporters?
Like it or not, as a member of a uniformed service, you not only are a representative of that service; but you also ARE REPRESENTED BY everyone else who wears that uniform. If you don't like that, if you want to protest to the public: "But I'm an individual.", you picked the wrong profession. You lost that right the instant you first dressed in the uniform and strapped on the badge. And it would go a long way toward the rehabilitation of your profession... your uniform... if, instead of closing ranks and protecting abusers like these, you disavowed yourselves of them, cast them out, and saw to it that they were punished every bit as severely* as any normal citizen who committed such acts.
( *And actually, I'm of the personal opinion that abusive and criminal cops should be punished much MORE severely than the general public. Police are entrusted by the public with greater power and authority. And I know it sounds like a comic book cliche and all, but with greater power comes greater responsibility. And if you break your trust with the public and abuse that power, the consequences should be extraordinarily severe.)
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
I'd like to know what world you live in where a bagger/stocker makes more than $36K a year.
Sorry, until I see more exposure of bad cops from within their departments, I'm lumping the 'good cops' in with the bad cops.
Sympathizers you know? Kinda like how we bomb the houses of people who help Iraqi Insurgents, even if they aren't actually insurgents themselves.
I'm sorry, but are you suggesting that bombing the houses of civilians who themselves don't take up arms is a moral and just thing to do?
i.e. "We had to burn the village to save it?"
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
the poor saps have to meet, they aren't all just for traffic violations or the annual seat-belt round-up. For an ambitious officer to advance him/herself they need to make felony arrests which means asking you a series of really dumb questions such as whether you have a gun, knife or weapon (slingshot maybe?) also explosives, IEDs, and grenades (not lumped in with explosives?) and of course narcotics or open containers. Then after you say no they ask to inspect your vehicle... say no, and you look suspicious, they'll call for backup, probably K-9.
As hard as it is for me to believe, especially given the reasons that I listed before, martinw89 provided an example of exactly what you were talking about. I apologize for doubting you, and I hope the people in the area with that police force wake up and demand better from their government. That is truly pathetic.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
After an incident in which a friend was severly injured by policemen for no reason other then insisting they uphold his 4th Amendment rights, I now keep a mini tape recover in my car and if I ever get pulled over I'd switch it on.
However, I would like to see a "black box" product you could choose to buy and put in your car. Not knowing if one were there would surely deter police violations of citizens' rights.
After all, it was anecdotal, you should be suspicious. Thanks, martinw, for producing corroborating evidence.
As for the policy, I'm not sure it's a bad thing, as long as they're taking, say the 80th-95th percentile. I can understand their reasoning for avoiding the top 5. Now, if they are choosing from, say the 40th-70th percentile, and excluding everyone else, I would be concerned.
And I agree, there should be full disclosure to the public they are "protecting" regarding the policy.
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
Whenever I'm in a situation I think it could be handy, I use the record feature on my cell phone. Figure WTF. Why not? If it's not useful, I can always delete it. If pulled over, I'd do the same (haven't had that yet). If there's anything useful on that... it's going on YouTube. And yes, I'd ask the cop what his badge number is... so I have it in the officers voice on the audio. And no, I wouldn't announce that I'm recording it. The officer has a camera in his car recording everything anyway. My audio is just a "backup".
Good. Citizens should use new technologies to keep watch on big brother, it's the only way to go.
"shame them into action"?
You have a state-sponsored organized crime organization with the power to fuck you over five ways till Sunday on a whim and absolutely no oversight, personal responsibility and no consequences for their actions. And the best solution you can think about is to "shame" them???
What a great idea! Why don't you apply it to the rest of your criminals. Murderers? Shame them! Rapists? Shame them!
At the least it will free a lot of space in your overcrowded prisons.
Instead, start contacting your local representatives en-masse and tell them that if they want to be re-elected, they better do something about corruption and abuse of authority.
Learn something from MADD. Whether you you agree with their cause or not, their tactics are quite effective.
Power corrupts. The only thing that will keep people in a position of power (police, politicians, teachers, whatever) from abusing it is knowledge that the consequences -- for them personally -- will be so damaging as to outweigh any possible benefits. Make the risk not worth it.
I *WANT* to respect the police force, I *WANT* to be secure in the knowledge that they "serve and protect" me, but as long as it is possible for them to be corrupt or abusive with impunity, that is not going to happen.