Verizon was first to do last mile fiber. I have a 75/35 Mbps connection and yes I do actually get those speeds reliably even at peak times. In fact I have gotten up to 100 Mbps on rare occasions. Where I live there are at least two other broadband choices. One who was not a party to this deal. Verizon has no caps and this is the first time they have really started being evil. Comcast wrote the book on evil. Their name is probably there under the dictionary entry. They are a good example of an ISP that no one would choose to go with if there were any other choice, but Verizon has actually been quite okay in my experience. That they chose to make a deal with the devil has somewhat soured them for me, but the other major broadband ISPs will probably be even worse. If things get to be too much for me, I'll just switch to my local broadband ISP that hasn't made any deals with content providers.
Digital theft? What is that? If you had to explain the concept to a person from the 16th century how would you start?
Also this system isn't going to stop anyone from torrenting. It certainly won't stop me. Won't even slow me down. They don't really care about copyright infringement. If they did they would be willing to permanently ban everyone who was caught using the protocol. They aren't going to do that because, like most of us, they like money. They don't want to throw away millions of dollars in lost business.
The piece of candy bar I put in the little cup on the mousetrap has value for the mouse. He just doesn't like what comes with it (a broken neck). If some kind soul were to offer him all the delicious food he could eat without the broken neck I think the food would have a lot more value for him. He also doesn't like it when poison is mixed in with his peanut butter. That doesn't mean he doesn't like peanut butter. A smart mouse (yes, they do exist) doesn't want anything you might want to offer him if it comes enclosed with food rights management in the form of a snap trap or poison.
The bits are out there. In the aether. You just have to reach out and grab them. Downloading a file doesn't stop you from buying the film/game/software as well. It doesn't harm anyone. So I don't see the problem. It's as natural as breathing.
Baking a cake is actually quite difficult. Someone has to spend time mixing flour and eggs and sugar, fill a pan, and place it in a decent quality oven. And after you eat the cake it is gone. No one else can ever eat that particular cake, but lots of people can download the blueprint for doing so and make a copy for themselves.
It's not really about rights. No one 'gave' me the right to download data from the internet. It is something that is within my power to do and I do it. We each have our own sense of right and wrong. Some people think saying "fuck" is wrong. Usually religious people who think an all powerful being will be offended by it. I think murder, rape, theft, and fraud are wrong. I don't think copyright infringement is wrong unless you are making a profit from it. So that's why I download games/software/movies whenever I want.
MAC addresses are trivial to change in software. About the only thing on your list that would mean anything for a tech savvy person is the traffic patterns of the bittorrent protocol. Even when encrypted. I suppose even that could be mitigated with a special client that could create extra (possibly randomized) traffic to disguise the bittorrent pattern.
Well WEP might as well be open as well. Someone I know (not me) steals his internet connection. Has been doing it for years. Not reliable at all but you can't beat the price. And he mostly relies on open WiFi connections.
He noticed that a lot of the people in his area who used to have WEP have switched to WPA or WPA2. Last time I checked the biggest ISPs only officially supported WEP, but maybe that is changing.
Partly because this doesn't have a lot of teeth. A 32 kilobyte/sec connection for a few days? That you can even schedule for up to two weeks away? Seriously? The article says dialup speed, but this is 8 times faster and not that bad for just browsing web sites with adblock and noscript. Not many people are going to drop Verizon for that if it's only a few days per warning. It's not like they are going to get warnings every week. This is just going through the motions to appease whoever they were trying to appease by agreeing to any kind of strikes plan.
Six Strikes? The whole point of using the term 'strikes' is that after 3 of them you're "out", as in fired as a Verizon customer. It looks to me like Verizon execs had some of the same conversations that we have had here about the subject and have decided they aren't about to start actually losing paying customers over this. I just paid my Verizon bill. I couldn't afford to pay the total bill, which was $390. I'll try to pay the rest later this month. Verizon makes a whole lot of money off pirates like me. If we all left they wouldn't go out of business, but they would definitely lose a hell of a lot of money. Not talking thousands, but millions of dollars. And some of us do have other broadband options and they know it.
The cop who beat me was getting paid around 7 times what I make. And that night he was making time and a half. Seems like pretty good money for just beating the shit out of a defenseless geek and mainly just standing around a lot.
That does seem plausible, but in my experience cops in a number of other countries are more normal. A much smaller percentage seem to be sociopaths who enjoy hurting people and feel no guilt.
Gun control varies by state. My state has some of the strictest gun control in the country. It is very, very difficult to get permission to own a gun. So your theory doesn't really apply in my case. When cops do run into a civilian with a gun they tend to find something to arrest them for. They hate the idea of anyone who is not a cop owning a gun.
I think it's more of a cultural thing, but I'm not sure. I figured cops were more or less the same everywhere. Until I started living abroad and realized how unusual the US was in this regard. Not that other countries don't have bad cops. It's just on an entirely different scale over here.
How can you be so sure it is only a few? Especially when the many always cover for the few? There is simply no way to know how many cops in a given group are bad and in the end it really doesn't matter. If the cop you encounter is one of the bad ones that is all that matters. If you happen to encounter an honest, non-aggressive, non-sociopath cop count yourself lucky. But your luck will eventually run out. When a large group of them get together it becomes extremely likely that you will directly encounter a bad one.
It is unfortunate that in the US a corrupt cop is usually one that beats and kills people for pleasure. In other countries they usually just ask for a bribe to make your problem go away. I strongly prefer the latter sort of corruption.
Just remember that not all of us support our adventures in overthrowing smaller countries that can't defend themselves. There were huge protests here about some of the wars. Not as big as the protests in Britain maybe, but still big.
You raise an interesting point though. When our soldiers come back from raping and murdering innocent women and children abroad it probably seems only natural for them to continue their 'work' here as police officers. So I guess you could say we get as good as we give. If you think those animals who do that stuff in a war treat us any differently when they get home you are wrong. Guys come back from a place like Abu Ghraib or Gitmo where they learned to enjoy torture and habitual, casual murder. Then they come back here and get a job in law enforcement and do the same to us. Karma. Payback is a bitch.
He wasn't arrested, but many people attempting to film cops do get arrested for it. Of course the charges aren't, "filming a cop". Cops have plenty of contempt of cop charges to throw at you and many aren't above planting evidence for drug or weapon charges either. Annoying or angering a cop isn't officially a crime, but it is quite likely you will be punished. That's why I have so much admiration for those guys who go out and intentionally film cops in places like sobriety road blocks knowing beforehand that they are likely to be arrested as soon as they point a camera at a cop.
I never said it was unprovoked. It wasprovoked. I swore right back at the thing. Are you saying that makes what it did to me okay?
Right after the words left my mouth I knew I was in deep shit. In fact, at the time I thought it might actually be illegal. Only later did I learn that it is perfectly legal (although suicidal) to do so. I had no idea how truly suicidal it was and almost died because of it. I'll also have to live with memory impairment for the rest of my life because of those two words.
I had had very little contact with cops before (mainly lots of speeding tickets) and, although I already hated them and knew they were bullies/thugs I guess I assumed they had at least some respect for the laws they enforced. I watched too much Miami Vice and other cop shows I guess. I knew that stuff wasn't real, but maybe it subtly distorted my view of what real cops were like. Real cops don't have principles, don't care about right or wrong or abstract ideas like justice.
The essential mistake I made was in assuming that they were just regular guys who might think such roadblocks were bullshit. That they were just doing a job. I should never have tried to complain to it in the first place. Now I know that they are not truly human. Not like you and I. They are animals. Just mindless things who understand only violence. Trying to talk to one is like trying to talk to a hungry shark or crocodile. Not a lot of point to it and it's likely to end badly.
So due to all those faulty assumptions, when it called me an asshole I swore right back at the thing just like I would if anyone else swore at me. I simply would never have imagined in my wildest dreams that it would try to kill me just for saying two words to it. And then file false charges against me as if the strangling and beating I received were not sufficient punishment. I had never before met another human being that was quite that twisted and evil and violent. It was a tough lesson. I would never treat a cop like a human being ever again and avoiding contact with them at any cost is my priority.
I've been arrested a ton of times, I have NEVER been beaten by a cop. Why? Because I know better then to talk shit when they have the upper hand. That gets you nowhere, except beaten or dead.
Yeah. I realize that now, but I didn't know it at the time. I'm just an aging, overweight computer geek. I didn't have that kind of street wisdom. The way I thought about cops seems to be pretty common here on slashdot. It's a result of ignorance, movies, and a lack of real exposure to cops.
I see the same ignorant assumptions all the time here and after my experience I made a decision to try to at least give some prior warning to other geeks like me who may not realize how indistinguishable real life cops are from the most violent criminals. So I try to make at least one post in every police brutality thread I happen to notice so other isolated computer geeks can at least hear about the truth of what cops are really like. They may not believe the warning, but at least they have the chance to avoid what happened to me.
When I spent the night in jail after being arrested I noticed everyone else in the holding cells referred to the cop jailers as "sir". That gave me pause. When I thought about why they would do that and what they might know that I didn't know it definitely worried me. AFAIK they were all just drunk drivers (and yeah, they were really drunk). So I'm not sure how they came about this wisdom, but I respected it. Although I couldn't bring myself address them this way myself. I was terrified of them. All of them. But I just couldn't bring myself to call them "sir".
Exactly. I have no doubt there is a significant correlation between sociopathy and police officers. Female police officers would do a bit better, but on the whole those guys have about as much empathy as a rock. Eyes like dolls' eyes. Either no emotion at all, or just uncontrolled anger. Not the slightest hint of remorse no matter what they do.
It would make a very interesting psychological/sociological study and/or documentary. I might consider filming such a documentary myself except that I am too terrified of cops to have any voluntary contact with them at all. Also, I suspect sociopathy would be high in prison guards as well. I couldn't help noticing that Charles Graner was a prison guard before joining the Army and getting shipped to Iraq, where he would become famous (mostly due to the astonishing photos Lynndie took for him).
In what way is he a jerk? His intentions seem good. If the police broke any sort of law, if they hurt the individual in any way, that video would be the difference between being able to sue or not being able to sue. If the individual were accused of a crime against the police that video would provide evidence that at the very least the suspect's face was bloody and that he wasn't resisting arrest etc.
In any circumstance where you have the police involved with an injured person videotaping it is the kindest thing you could do. If someone had videotaped the police brutality that I was a victim of I would have been grateful beyond words.
I probably will leave eventually. I've lived in a number of other countries as an expat already and I like nearly all of them better than the US. But living on tourist visas and having to make visa runs every 3-6 months is a big PITA in the long run, and I would have difficulty getting a work visa in most places. This is still the only country where I have an actual right to live. Although with the rise of the DHS/TSA and the rest of the creeping police state I suppose that is more of a privilege than a right these days.
Good 'suicide by cop' strategy though. Especially nice if you happen to find a cop who really is breaking the law. Use hidden cameras that immediately upload to a server. Not a bad way to go I think.
Making it legal to video tape them will only make it worse on them.
It is legal to videotape them. Confirmed by state supreme courts in at least 49 out of 50 states now. I believe Massachusetts and Illinois were among the last, but it is most definitely legal to video record the police while they perform their duty of beating the shit out of suspects. Or just tasering or pepper spraying them if they are one of the few less violent ones.
In certain states you do have to be careful that your video equipment is visible and not hidden. That requirement should definitely be removed because as this case shows police can and will just confiscate and erase your recorder if they see it. And then charge you with all kinds of contempt of cop charges as well.
As for the rest were you under the impression that video taping someone in public without their permission was against the law? Well it isn't. Except under very rare circumstances and never in the context of a police officer murdering or beating the shit out of their victims in public.
It wasn't just the one officer who beat me and nearly killed me. Who may even have intended to kill me. It was the other cop who agreed to cover for him right in front of me while I was lying on the ground in severe pain, bloody, and barely able to move.
And it was the other 15-20 officers standing within 20 feet of me (it was a sobriety checkpoint) who watched the whole thing and did nothing and allowed the violent thug-cop to charge me with beating him up in addition to a long list of other charges including assault with a deadly weapon (later dropped by the DA: there was no weapon).
Before that, although I knew that cops had a tendency to be grown-up schoolyard bullies, I had not had realized what they were really like. Growing up I have encountered many bullies. Guys for whom being tough and kicking ass are their most important priorities in life. But those guys nearly always had limits. They may not have been the kindest and most empathetic people around but there were lines they would not intentionally cross. They wouldn't habitually murder people who disrespect them or even put them in the hospital. Cops are like those guys except that for them there is no line. Because they know they can do whatever they want and their fellow cops will cover for them and they will never face even the slightest punishment.
What brought all of that wrath of vengeance upon me? What provoked the sociopathic murderous cop? I calmly, quietly and deliberately said, "fuck you" to him in response to him calling me an asshole. He called me an asshole because I was complaining to him about how I thought suspicionless road blocks were wrong and unconstitutional. I was complaining while waiting them to find their breathalyzer. Although they tried to charge me with DUI I tested 0.0 on the breathalyzer test every time. So the DA dropped those charges. I don't drink alcohol. Nor do I smoke pot or take any illicit drugs. The cop tried to imply in his report that I may have been high and that red eyes were the reason they sent me to secondary. Even if I wanted to smoke pot I couldn't due to existing lung problems. The real reason I was sent to secondary is that I was trying to stand up for my rights. I refused to be interrogated. I didn't answer their questions at the initial stop. Standing up for your rights can be quite dangerous in the US.
Now I simply stick to back roads on Friday and Saturday nights and holidays after say 8pm. Needless to say, I am also terrified of cops. If I ever had another encounter with them I would probably assume the cop in question was another psycho and run for my life.
Has a cop ever personally protected you from some violent criminal? It has never happened to me. I don't think they protect anything except themselves and their fellow cops. They are no different from any street gang in that some members will be angry and violent and unpredictable and some will be normal. The only difference is that the cops don't have to worry about getting caught because they are the police.
If 1 cop in 20 is a serial killer the other 19 will still do anything and everything in their power to prevent him from being prosecuted. They are not about justice. At best they are about collecting a paycheck, getting satisfaction from how much power they have over most people, and protecting the cops who are corrupt from facing any consequences. Knowing that you can literally get away with murder is also one of the perks.
In my state there was a recent case where a man was murdered while in custody at a sobriety checkpoint. He allegedly had some marijuana in his possession. But he must have pissed off the wrong guy and he was beaten to death. His family was able to sue the state and won a lot of money, but the guy is still dead. And the murderer will never be revealed. It's important to remember that in my state sobriety checkpoints often have 20-40 police officers on duty at the location. So that was indeed a very large conspiracy to protect the murderer(s) among them. So much for justice. So much for 'protecting' the public. Are all police violent murdering sociopaths? I doubt it, but in the end it doesn't matter. Because the ones who are are not disciplined in any way and remain on the force you have to pretty much assume that any particular cop you encounter is one of them. All of them can murder you in cold blood with witnesses and face not the slightest punishment for it. When you are a cop there are never any consequences to your actions. If you get off on hurting others there is no better job.
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You actually believe this will fight piracy? I hear there's a bridge for sale in New York. It's really big and it could be all yours...
Verizon was first to do last mile fiber. I have a 75/35 Mbps connection and yes I do actually get those speeds reliably even at peak times. In fact I have gotten up to 100 Mbps on rare occasions. Where I live there are at least two other broadband choices. One who was not a party to this deal. Verizon has no caps and this is the first time they have really started being evil. Comcast wrote the book on evil. Their name is probably there under the dictionary entry. They are a good example of an ISP that no one would choose to go with if there were any other choice, but Verizon has actually been quite okay in my experience. That they chose to make a deal with the devil has somewhat soured them for me, but the other major broadband ISPs will probably be even worse. If things get to be too much for me, I'll just switch to my local broadband ISP that hasn't made any deals with content providers.
Digital theft? What is that? If you had to explain the concept to a person from the 16th century how would you start?
Also this system isn't going to stop anyone from torrenting. It certainly won't stop me. Won't even slow me down. They don't really care about copyright infringement. If they did they would be willing to permanently ban everyone who was caught using the protocol. They aren't going to do that because, like most of us, they like money. They don't want to throw away millions of dollars in lost business.
The piece of candy bar I put in the little cup on the mousetrap has value for the mouse. He just doesn't like what comes with it (a broken neck). If some kind soul were to offer him all the delicious food he could eat without the broken neck I think the food would have a lot more value for him. He also doesn't like it when poison is mixed in with his peanut butter. That doesn't mean he doesn't like peanut butter. A smart mouse (yes, they do exist) doesn't want anything you might want to offer him if it comes enclosed with food rights management in the form of a snap trap or poison.
I doubt many people are going to pay the $35. That's a lot of money just to prevent a few days of slow internet service.
The bits are out there. In the aether. You just have to reach out and grab them. Downloading a file doesn't stop you from buying the film/game/software as well. It doesn't harm anyone. So I don't see the problem. It's as natural as breathing.
Baking a cake is actually quite difficult. Someone has to spend time mixing flour and eggs and sugar, fill a pan, and place it in a decent quality oven. And after you eat the cake it is gone. No one else can ever eat that particular cake, but lots of people can download the blueprint for doing so and make a copy for themselves.
It's not really about rights. No one 'gave' me the right to download data from the internet. It is something that is within my power to do and I do it. We each have our own sense of right and wrong. Some people think saying "fuck" is wrong. Usually religious people who think an all powerful being will be offended by it. I think murder, rape, theft, and fraud are wrong. I don't think copyright infringement is wrong unless you are making a profit from it. So that's why I download games/software/movies whenever I want.
MAC addresses are trivial to change in software. About the only thing on your list that would mean anything for a tech savvy person is the traffic patterns of the bittorrent protocol. Even when encrypted. I suppose even that could be mitigated with a special client that could create extra (possibly randomized) traffic to disguise the bittorrent pattern.
Well WEP might as well be open as well. Someone I know (not me) steals his internet connection. Has been doing it for years. Not reliable at all but you can't beat the price. And he mostly relies on open WiFi connections.
He noticed that a lot of the people in his area who used to have WEP have switched to WPA or WPA2. Last time I checked the biggest ISPs only officially supported WEP, but maybe that is changing.
Partly because this doesn't have a lot of teeth. A 32 kilobyte/sec connection for a few days? That you can even schedule for up to two weeks away? Seriously? The article says dialup speed, but this is 8 times faster and not that bad for just browsing web sites with adblock and noscript. Not many people are going to drop Verizon for that if it's only a few days per warning. It's not like they are going to get warnings every week. This is just going through the motions to appease whoever they were trying to appease by agreeing to any kind of strikes plan.
Six Strikes? The whole point of using the term 'strikes' is that after 3 of them you're "out", as in fired as a Verizon customer. It looks to me like Verizon execs had some of the same conversations that we have had here about the subject and have decided they aren't about to start actually losing paying customers over this. I just paid my Verizon bill. I couldn't afford to pay the total bill, which was $390. I'll try to pay the rest later this month. Verizon makes a whole lot of money off pirates like me. If we all left they wouldn't go out of business, but they would definitely lose a hell of a lot of money. Not talking thousands, but millions of dollars. And some of us do have other broadband options and they know it.
The cop who beat me was getting paid around 7 times what I make. And that night he was making time and a half. Seems like pretty good money for just beating the shit out of a defenseless geek and mainly just standing around a lot.
That does seem plausible, but in my experience cops in a number of other countries are more normal. A much smaller percentage seem to be sociopaths who enjoy hurting people and feel no guilt.
Gun control varies by state. My state has some of the strictest gun control in the country. It is very, very difficult to get permission to own a gun. So your theory doesn't really apply in my case. When cops do run into a civilian with a gun they tend to find something to arrest them for. They hate the idea of anyone who is not a cop owning a gun.
I think it's more of a cultural thing, but I'm not sure. I figured cops were more or less the same everywhere. Until I started living abroad and realized how unusual the US was in this regard. Not that other countries don't have bad cops. It's just on an entirely different scale over here.
How can you be so sure it is only a few? Especially when the many always cover for the few? There is simply no way to know how many cops in a given group are bad and in the end it really doesn't matter. If the cop you encounter is one of the bad ones that is all that matters. If you happen to encounter an honest, non-aggressive, non-sociopath cop count yourself lucky. But your luck will eventually run out. When a large group of them get together it becomes extremely likely that you will directly encounter a bad one.
It is unfortunate that in the US a corrupt cop is usually one that beats and kills people for pleasure. In other countries they usually just ask for a bribe to make your problem go away. I strongly prefer the latter sort of corruption.
Just remember that not all of us support our adventures in overthrowing smaller countries that can't defend themselves. There were huge protests here about some of the wars. Not as big as the protests in Britain maybe, but still big.
You raise an interesting point though. When our soldiers come back from raping and murdering innocent women and children abroad it probably seems only natural for them to continue their 'work' here as police officers. So I guess you could say we get as good as we give. If you think those animals who do that stuff in a war treat us any differently when they get home you are wrong. Guys come back from a place like Abu Ghraib or Gitmo where they learned to enjoy torture and habitual, casual murder. Then they come back here and get a job in law enforcement and do the same to us. Karma. Payback is a bitch.
He wasn't arrested, but many people attempting to film cops do get arrested for it. Of course the charges aren't, "filming a cop". Cops have plenty of contempt of cop charges to throw at you and many aren't above planting evidence for drug or weapon charges either. Annoying or angering a cop isn't officially a crime, but it is quite likely you will be punished. That's why I have so much admiration for those guys who go out and intentionally film cops in places like sobriety road blocks knowing beforehand that they are likely to be arrested as soon as they point a camera at a cop.
In some states they could prosecute you for the hidden listening device under surveillance laws. It might work in some states though.
I never said it was unprovoked. It was provoked. I swore right back at the thing. Are you saying that makes what it did to me okay?
Right after the words left my mouth I knew I was in deep shit. In fact, at the time I thought it might actually be illegal. Only later did I learn that it is perfectly legal (although suicidal) to do so. I had no idea how truly suicidal it was and almost died because of it. I'll also have to live with memory impairment for the rest of my life because of those two words.
I had had very little contact with cops before (mainly lots of speeding tickets) and, although I already hated them and knew they were bullies/thugs I guess I assumed they had at least some respect for the laws they enforced. I watched too much Miami Vice and other cop shows I guess. I knew that stuff wasn't real, but maybe it subtly distorted my view of what real cops were like. Real cops don't have principles, don't care about right or wrong or abstract ideas like justice.
The essential mistake I made was in assuming that they were just regular guys who might think such roadblocks were bullshit. That they were just doing a job. I should never have tried to complain to it in the first place. Now I know that they are not truly human. Not like you and I. They are animals. Just mindless things who understand only violence. Trying to talk to one is like trying to talk to a hungry shark or crocodile. Not a lot of point to it and it's likely to end badly.
So due to all those faulty assumptions, when it called me an asshole I swore right back at the thing just like I would if anyone else swore at me. I simply would never have imagined in my wildest dreams that it would try to kill me just for saying two words to it. And then file false charges against me as if the strangling and beating I received were not sufficient punishment. I had never before met another human being that was quite that twisted and evil and violent. It was a tough lesson. I would never treat a cop like a human being ever again and avoiding contact with them at any cost is my priority.
I've been arrested a ton of times, I have NEVER been beaten by a cop. Why? Because I know better then to talk shit when they have the upper hand. That gets you nowhere, except beaten or dead.
Yeah. I realize that now, but I didn't know it at the time. I'm just an aging, overweight computer geek. I didn't have that kind of street wisdom. The way I thought about cops seems to be pretty common here on slashdot. It's a result of ignorance, movies, and a lack of real exposure to cops.
I see the same ignorant assumptions all the time here and after my experience I made a decision to try to at least give some prior warning to other geeks like me who may not realize how indistinguishable real life cops are from the most violent criminals. So I try to make at least one post in every police brutality thread I happen to notice so other isolated computer geeks can at least hear about the truth of what cops are really like. They may not believe the warning, but at least they have the chance to avoid what happened to me.
When I spent the night in jail after being arrested I noticed everyone else in the holding cells referred to the cop jailers as "sir". That gave me pause. When I thought about why they would do that and what they might know that I didn't know it definitely worried me. AFAIK they were all just drunk drivers (and yeah, they were really drunk). So I'm not sure how they came about this wisdom, but I respected it. Although I couldn't bring myself address them this way myself. I was terrified of them. All of them. But I just couldn't bring myself to call them "sir".
Exactly. I have no doubt there is a significant correlation between sociopathy and police officers. Female police officers would do a bit better, but on the whole those guys have about as much empathy as a rock. Eyes like dolls' eyes. Either no emotion at all, or just uncontrolled anger. Not the slightest hint of remorse no matter what they do.
It would make a very interesting psychological/sociological study and/or documentary. I might consider filming such a documentary myself except that I am too terrified of cops to have any voluntary contact with them at all. Also, I suspect sociopathy would be high in prison guards as well. I couldn't help noticing that Charles Graner was a prison guard before joining the Army and getting shipped to Iraq, where he would become famous (mostly due to the astonishing photos Lynndie took for him).
In what way is he a jerk? His intentions seem good. If the police broke any sort of law, if they hurt the individual in any way, that video would be the difference between being able to sue or not being able to sue. If the individual were accused of a crime against the police that video would provide evidence that at the very least the suspect's face was bloody and that he wasn't resisting arrest etc.
In any circumstance where you have the police involved with an injured person videotaping it is the kindest thing you could do. If someone had videotaped the police brutality that I was a victim of I would have been grateful beyond words.
What makes you think it was a mistake at all? Are the false charges against the guy a mistake too?
I probably will leave eventually. I've lived in a number of other countries as an expat already and I like nearly all of them better than the US. But living on tourist visas and having to make visa runs every 3-6 months is a big PITA in the long run, and I would have difficulty getting a work visa in most places. This is still the only country where I have an actual right to live. Although with the rise of the DHS/TSA and the rest of the creeping police state I suppose that is more of a privilege than a right these days.
Good 'suicide by cop' strategy though. Especially nice if you happen to find a cop who really is breaking the law. Use hidden cameras that immediately upload to a server. Not a bad way to go I think.
Making it legal to video tape them will only make it worse on them.
It is legal to videotape them. Confirmed by state supreme courts in at least 49 out of 50 states now. I believe Massachusetts and Illinois were among the last, but it is most definitely legal to video record the police while they perform their duty of beating the shit out of suspects. Or just tasering or pepper spraying them if they are one of the few less violent ones.
In certain states you do have to be careful that your video equipment is visible and not hidden. That requirement should definitely be removed because as this case shows police can and will just confiscate and erase your recorder if they see it. And then charge you with all kinds of contempt of cop charges as well.
As for the rest were you under the impression that video taping someone in public without their permission was against the law? Well it isn't. Except under very rare circumstances and never in the context of a police officer murdering or beating the shit out of their victims in public.
It wasn't just the one officer who beat me and nearly killed me. Who may even have intended to kill me. It was the other cop who agreed to cover for him right in front of me while I was lying on the ground in severe pain, bloody, and barely able to move.
And it was the other 15-20 officers standing within 20 feet of me (it was a sobriety checkpoint) who watched the whole thing and did nothing and allowed the violent thug-cop to charge me with beating him up in addition to a long list of other charges including assault with a deadly weapon (later dropped by the DA: there was no weapon).
Before that, although I knew that cops had a tendency to be grown-up schoolyard bullies, I had not had realized what they were really like. Growing up I have encountered many bullies. Guys for whom being tough and kicking ass are their most important priorities in life. But those guys nearly always had limits. They may not have been the kindest and most empathetic people around but there were lines they would not intentionally cross. They wouldn't habitually murder people who disrespect them or even put them in the hospital. Cops are like those guys except that for them there is no line. Because they know they can do whatever they want and their fellow cops will cover for them and they will never face even the slightest punishment.
What brought all of that wrath of vengeance upon me? What provoked the sociopathic murderous cop? I calmly, quietly and deliberately said, "fuck you" to him in response to him calling me an asshole. He called me an asshole because I was complaining to him about how I thought suspicionless road blocks were wrong and unconstitutional. I was complaining while waiting them to find their breathalyzer. Although they tried to charge me with DUI I tested 0.0 on the breathalyzer test every time. So the DA dropped those charges. I don't drink alcohol. Nor do I smoke pot or take any illicit drugs. The cop tried to imply in his report that I may have been high and that red eyes were the reason they sent me to secondary. Even if I wanted to smoke pot I couldn't due to existing lung problems. The real reason I was sent to secondary is that I was trying to stand up for my rights. I refused to be interrogated. I didn't answer their questions at the initial stop. Standing up for your rights can be quite dangerous in the US.
Now I simply stick to back roads on Friday and Saturday nights and holidays after say 8pm. Needless to say, I am also terrified of cops. If I ever had another encounter with them I would probably assume the cop in question was another psycho and run for my life.
Has a cop ever personally protected you from some violent criminal? It has never happened to me. I don't think they protect anything except themselves and their fellow cops. They are no different from any street gang in that some members will be angry and violent and unpredictable and some will be normal. The only difference is that the cops don't have to worry about getting caught because they are the police.
If 1 cop in 20 is a serial killer the other 19 will still do anything and everything in their power to prevent him from being prosecuted. They are not about justice. At best they are about collecting a paycheck, getting satisfaction from how much power they have over most people, and protecting the cops who are corrupt from facing any consequences. Knowing that you can literally get away with murder is also one of the perks.
In my state there was a recent case where a man was murdered while in custody at a sobriety checkpoint. He allegedly had some marijuana in his possession. But he must have pissed off the wrong guy and he was beaten to death. His family was able to sue the state and won a lot of money, but the guy is still dead. And the murderer will never be revealed. It's important to remember that in my state sobriety checkpoints often have 20-40 police officers on duty at the location. So that was indeed a very large conspiracy to protect the murderer(s) among them. So much for justice. So much for 'protecting' the public. Are all police violent murdering sociopaths? I doubt it, but in the end it doesn't matter. Because the ones who are are not disciplined in any way and remain on the force you have to pretty much assume that any particular cop you encounter is one of them. All of them can murder you in cold blood with witnesses and face not the slightest punishment for it. When you are a cop there are never any consequences to your actions. If you get off on hurting others there is no better job.