Subscriber Discussion

Suddenly, NYPD Doesn’T Love Surveillance Anymore

Rogier van der Heide

•Apr 04, 2013

I found this article on Reddit about New York.

They're creating a connection between video surveillance and quality control of the police force. Personally, I feel they aren't quite the same and get a bitter taste in my mouth reading it, but I can somewhat understand what they mean. Judging from the article, which is quite one-sided, the police force does seem to get a bit power hungry.

Personally, I don't see any of this behaviour here in the Netherlands. And honestly, don't expect it anytime soon. Since we got an abundance of Americans on this site, I was wondering what your opinion is about the article, and perhaps have a few personal experiences with these cases.

Ethan Ace

•Apr 04, 2013

I'm an in-betweener here:

On one hand, I think that public surveillance needs extremely well-defined use cases, audits, and penalties for misuse. So, I understand being upset that NYPD might not feel the same.

On the other hand, a lot of folks, from all over the political spectrum, think that we're in a police state with magic technology recognizing our faces everywhere we go and wiretapping the world. That's obviously not true, either.

So it's a fine balance between understanding what's happening today, what capabilities are, and understanding where they could go. Because while I'm ok with things where they are in many cases today, erosion is a hard thing to notice, and we could one day wake up to realize we're stuck with things gone too far.

ALL of the above aside, NYC is a crazy example. The place runs its own intelligence department. Internationally! They basically do feel like they have their own army, by the looks of everything. I'm not sure any other city pushes things quite the same way.

John Honovich

•Apr 05, 2013

IPVM

What's good for the goose is evidently not for the gander.

There's so many great examples of surveillance helping to protect the rights of individuals from the police.