These can only be a positive to help police absolve themselves from wrongdoing - until such point wrongdoing is so pervasive that it becomes a net negative for them. then the cameras are a liability.
to quote a line ive often been delivered by police -
“if you didnt do anything wrong, what do you have to hide?”
When transparency to the public is no longer important, it looks like being able to secretly abuse others has become more important for such agencies.
It's back to the public not actually knowing what really happened, except in situations where its recorded by a 3rd party or there is a whistleblower from their own ranks. And we have to hope these people are brave enough to step forward and handle the pressure placed on them because they did, in order for justice to prevail.
I basically agree with you, but also am not sure how to square this with my belief that we are really gathering way too much information as a society (it always leaks).
you smoking a cig in an alley on your 15 minute break? you should have every right and privilege on earth.
you running 10,000 person strong group of people with the legal right to use force against your fellow man fighting to deny people their personal liberties with a long history of corruption? i don't care if there's cameras in the bathrooms.
I think you misread the thread. The posters above weren’t talking about the bathrooms of the DEA. The are talking about the bathrooms of the people the body cam wearing DEA officers encounter.
I didn't misread anything. Poster up top accurately predicted that some cops would say some utter bullshit about protecting people they're recording as an excuse to not have their own actions monitored.
As a person who understands all cops are bastards, I didn't bother to consider for a second cops care about anyone who aint a cop.
If I thought of a more invasive analogy for how much cops should be monitored and untrusted, especially DEA agents, I would have used that.
I guess you can be whatever you want, but the type of language that you and they use is variously so general and insulting that any type of response should be on the table.
For example, do cops participate here? Or people with cops in their families? Yet, we have a person who, in my opinion, seems to struggle with concepts of daily life that is calling them bastards.
Is that opinion moderated? If not, are in-kind responses allowed?
Or perhaps this forum is institutionally skewed to the poster's juvenile opinion.
This forum is skewed towards capitalists, and cops protect property. Its not a juvenile opinion to point out how power works. Its actually my only hobby on this site.
And for people who have cops in their family, its not unknown to me. Its like having family in a gang. Or the mob. They're fine people, you can have dinner and enjoyable conversations. But when the gang comes up in discussion they're gonna protect the colors.
The fellow who responded and then blanked their post I think is European, which with no guns and a socialist safety net I might allow have a different flavor than US police, founded as possibly the town watch instead of slave catchers and immigrant beaters. But this is an article about the DEA, ACAB is very appropriate.
You're arguing against someone with a "belief system" you seem to know, but I don't know who that is. I've displayed a single preference here, which is anti-police. You can expand that to, I don't like people who wield too much power. I don't like gangs. If I was in a country run by a criminal gang, I wouldn't like them either.
If a perfect theocracy arose that imposed moral law perfectly to "protect us poor public," I wouldn't like them either.
You won't see many positive positions from me, I don't tend to believe in many positive things. I do believe making a list of the biggest bastards and working against them, in my time. That list changes, and when I eventually die off, there will be more people like me who do the same, with their own lists. I don't think we have any colors except those we prefer ourselves. There's no one running us, there's no one in charge. And I think over time you might be surprised how effective that can be.
> Yet, we have a person who, in my opinion, seems to struggle with concepts of daily life that is calling them bastards.
> Or perhaps this forum is institutionally skewed to the poster's juvenile opinion.
Cops are as much bastards as criminals are. In an ideal society both should not exist. Nobody should be given the right to use lethal force against whomever they decide at the time to be necessary and it is totally fine to have this opinion and state it in public.
I mean, its not totally fine. It's psychotic (divorced from reality) and immature. I grant you that its not against the law. But see the fact that you have to skew the nature of police force in order to fake your point.
Since you are from a country other than the one in which this site originates, and are asking where I am from, maybe first you should post where you are from.
If your country did not have cops, who would enforce the laws that are enforced?
Would the most powerful gang simply become the new government? Who?
Would you prefer pre-civilization to civilization, wherein there are no laws?
I well know the dynamics of mafia, and how they relate to the Police.
The system is not perfect, but it is the core structure of civilization.
We try to limit police power via the law, internal controls, and hiring moral men.
Some of that is breaking down everywhere. But its not breaking down via the prescriptions of those who designed the system.
Where in your system have the fail safes failed? No judgement, just curious.
Does your country have the potential for law and order, or not? Why not? What would you do differently, which is realistic?
> but also am not sure how to square this with my belief that we are really gathering way too much information as a society
I think a good starting point for squaring this is to examine it in the context of what else the administration is doing (or not doing) to protect the privacy of citizens. This move has an enormous deleterious effect on police accountability in exchange for a fairly small increase in citizen privacy, so if the administration is ignoring more effective ways to improve the citizenry's privacy you can safely infer what really motivated their decision to back away from body cams.
Other than the “sorry, we raided the wrong house” situations (which absolutely should out the whole swat team in jail) a judge has to sign a warrant to raid the house, for good reason. The responsibility for the kids being traumatized lies with their parents, committing crimes in the house.
> which absolutely should out the whole swat team in jail
Which doesn’t really happen, I mean cops murder innocent people and it’s a struggle to get meaningful consequences for _that_.
This is part of what ACAB means - the justice system is woefully against the interest of the public. If we hadn’t seen time and again cops get away with literal murder, if there were actually consequences, and if police unions didn’t have the ability to hold a community hostage, maybe fewer people would be ACAB. The fact that we even had to have a Supreme Court case about whether cops have a duty to protect civilians (surprise, it was ruled that they don’t) should be evidence that the system is rotten.
I don’t make commentary publicly on ACAB usually but will share a story. I have had friends and family in law enforcement, but tend to take the view the institution is corrupt and the incentives and profession turns people in the best case scenario to unfeeling instruments of the machine, and in the worst case, turns shitty people into monsters. dunno if that makes me “ACAB” but if I were to take that position I’d say “all cops are bad, bad meaning incompetent, not necessarily evil.”
if you define ACAB in this way and competence defined as protecting the public from crime and maintaining the common good, then yea probably a lot if not ACAB.
I’ll share a story because this one moment in my life I was certain I was milliseconds from death and probably is the closest I ever came to it and it would have been at the hands of a cop “doing their job” with no bad intentions, just doing it poorly.
I worked in public transportation in a small, extremely wealthy community with a police force I’d describe as well funded and is considered highly trained. Part of my job required me to work very late hours into 2-4am. I took public transportation to work and bicycled home.
Unbeknownst to me, there had been some type of home invasion in the area as I was leaving work at 3am, and they shut the area down with roadblocks and set heavily armed officers up at every street intersection. I was riding my bike through the side alleys like I usually did to get home, unaware of the situation.
It’s pitch black except for some street lights nearby. Suddenly I get lit up by half a dozen bright lights in my face with armed officers pointing their weapons and screaming at me to get off my bike and on the ground. i did but had my backpack still on, they screamed to take it off as I did on my knees i saw an officer walk straight forward to me quickly with his hands on his gun aiming directly at my skull. I will never forget the look in his eyes, i felt i was toast. luckily i didnt panic and slowly put the backpack on the ground. then they realized i was a transportation worker and let me go and told me there had been a robbery. I was rattled but left.
The thing that really chapped my ass though and made the situation worse was at the next intersection, almost the exact same thing happened, because the bozos at the first one didnt radio their idiot friends and tell them not to shoot me. so twice in the space of like 5 mins i get guns drawn on me - they figured it out quicker the second time, but i stupidly popped off a little “are you gonna point your guns at me a third time or tell the next guys not to shoot me,” which didnt help the tension and got my bag searched for my trouble.
Experiencing something like that and knowing what a razors edge it could have been to dying for essentially no reason at the hands of a moron that makes more than i ever will with a pension irks me and always probably will.
this is a really odd thing to hear when the premise of DOGE is literally accountability. there is a lot of hyperbole and misinformation around DOGE, but at its root it's elon saying "if you spend millions of dollars you have to, at minimum, write a single sentence as to why"
obligatory trump and elon suck, im not defending them. just pushing back against misinformation
The messaging around doge involves some mention of accountability, alongside many other things like claims of fraud etc. That doesn’t mean that’s what doge actually does. You’re taking them at their word when their actions speak loudly.
what perspective do you have on their actions outside of what corporate media says, which is constantly attacking both of them? if we're going to say "let's look at the actions" then let's look at what they're actually doing instead of the hysterical narrative being spun around it by organizations who have a monetary and political reason to do so
Most of my awareness of doge comes from browsing the resources they’ve released or watching small commentators do the same. I don’t particularly like or trust corporate media as a rule. My top complaints would be
1 - a lack of transparency. They are very public about the small number of cuts that they can make look good to their base while obscuring/not elucidating a clear, extensive list of their actions. It’s not easy to examine the details of cut programs beyond short descriptions of dubious accuracy.
2 - clear political bias. The cuts/“fraud” they do publicize are frequently just things which appear, on their surface, to be ideologically liberal or left, rather than examples of clear waste or fraud. I say surface level appearance because the details of the cut are rarely more than a single sentence description and a monetary amount.
3 - security concerns. Doge isn’t careful enough/lacks the oversight to be handling Americans’ sensitive records. Their approach is very deliberately to behave more like a small startup, but they neglect security far too much as a consequence.
I think a department of government efficiency is a good idea, but I think doge pretends to be such a thing in order to cut government programs for ideological reasons without having to go through the legislature.
1. https://www.doge.gov/savings this seems like incredibly transparency for a brand new government initiative that's like 100 days old. and in the ways it doesn't provide enough info, it acknowledges that, and says they're working on it, which i believe.
2. i agree that there is a lot of highlighting of stuff that is cut that is aligned with leftist ideology, e.g. money spent on programs that are gender affirming or involving trans/LGBTQ issues. i am LGBTQ/trans myself and I am massively in support of all initiatives to make the world a more loving, kind, accepting place. but i can also empathize that government attempts to do so are probably rampant with fraud and abuse and theft and waste, and it's not clear to me to what extent our government should be funding things surrounding social issues like this at all.
3. again i think this is a sentiment based on hyperbolic media reporting and is hard to substantiate with concrete evidence other than "MSNBC had an anonymous source that said so". it's also hard to know how much the claims, if true, are misaligned with "business as usual" in the government. if doge has access to personal information to help reduce social security fraud, is that really unusual? it seems like it's necessary if you're going to audit fraud and catch things like a 9 year old getting veteran benefits or whatever.
i think doge is definitely framing cuts in ideological ways for political points. and i believe they are specifically looking for and cutting DEI related stuff, because they've plainly stated as much. but problematic framing and motivations aside, i do think it's a massive net benefit, and especially if their work helps weed out and cut off people who systemically commit fraud and waste for years and for millions/billions of dollars.
The entire purpose of DOGE is to attack the government while forcing them to use private services.
Don’t believe their lies because they’re just that lies.
Nothing they are doing is efficient because they don’t care. They just want to attack the government.
—-
For something HN relevant please look back at all the stupid comments Musk made after he was forced to acquire Twitter. Comments like there being hundreds of “ghost employees” or wanting devs to print their code changes.
People pointing out that the premise and actions of something are contradictory isn't misinformation. Rather, it's revealing misinformation - the premise.
We can't just believe everything anyone says, especially when their actions are so obvious in contradiction. It feels like I'm being gaslit.
The premise of DOGE is accountability to the personal whims and judgments of Elon Musk ... when we talk about accountability in government we usually mean, accountability to the public
you're using somewhat inflammatory language which i think is a bit further along the troll spectrum than me simply stating my perspective without attacking anyone. you could say the same thing without the attack.
you can look at my post history - i do routinely push back against things that i consider factually not true that are both trump and elon related, but i have also very frequently and loudly voiced my concerns and opinions about the ways they have hateful and problematic behaviors
my post history is also extremely, extremely left. i am very anti-capitalism and pro progressive causes, and i'm also trans. i have no desire to support the agendas of two people who don't respect me as a human being
i push on misinformation because i think there are real, meaningful things to attack these two people on. and i think the hyperbole of everything they do is literally what hitler would do distracts from the real issues.
i want to talk about ending wars, making sure everyone has basic access to housing and healthcare, that people can feel safe living their lives in ways that has literally no impact on anyone else. i want to end massive income and wealth inequality. and trump and elon are massively fucking those things up. i want to focus on that harm, and not the stuff people are making up
i also want to shed light on the problematic things that trump does that other presidents have also done. obama also had kids in cages. this isn't "whataboutism", it's an attempt to highlight that the problem isn't republicans versus democrats, though i recognize republicans are uniquely harmful. they both really, really suck, and cause millions of deaths a year. i want to highlight that voting blue isn't usually solving the biggest problems while acknowledging that it does solve some of them
So while we’re talking about government overspending, this money was already spent. What is going to happen with these cameras that are now going to be unused?
Cool, so since government accountability is now optional, I suspect we’ll get a few camps. At the very least, these two: honest officers who relish constant supervision and scrutiny, dishonest officers who relish violence and brutality above all else.
How would your honest officer group operate alongside the other group, hypothetically? It seems like the kind of thing that group 2 would stamp out pretty quickly and group 1 wouldn't be able to stop.
It incarcerates around 1.9 million people and has another 3.6 million on probation or parole. It seizes and consumes more than a third of all production. It demands compliance with about 120 million words of federal rules. It's the greatest military power on earth. It's unserious to not to take that kind of power over our lives seriously.
> For another it consumes more than a third of all production
This is often a positive.
In times of financial panic, which free markets always come around to, the government is a spender of last resort that helps to kickstart production and demand when the free market is in absolute shambles, stashing gold in holes in its backyard.
Furthermore, when it's functioning well, it gives the fattest of the industrialists a haircut and returns that money to the populace where the revenue can actually deliver value instead of sitting in a vault somewhere.
At the very least, I am owed dividends (or equivalent public services) due to my ownership of far less than my equal share of my country's total land value, as is every other person in said situation. The owners of that land did not create it; it existed for billions of years before them and (barring a literal Earth-shattering catastrophe) will exist for billions of years after them. It is therefore a natural resource to which every sapient being on Earth is equally entitled.
I think the reason we ought to be making a society at all is to make the lives of those within it better, and moving resources from some to others within that society is, if done right, able to push things in that direction.
>>> For another it consumes more than a third of all production
>This is often a positive.
>In times of financial panic
Do you mean, for example, the credit crisis of 2008 ? That crisis that was actively encouraged by the US govt, that poured the gasoline with govt loan guarantees, insane macroeconomic policy and low interest rates ?
Are we saying we want to pay for arsonists, to work as firefighters ?
I just finished reading Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation. It didn't even get to the 2008 GFC, but it covered many other bubbles.
The market almost always uses the government to inflate their bubbles by giving stock to officials and other various schemes. The answer isn't to not have a government, it's even tighter regulation (which, since that requires the existing batch of officials to make less money on speculation themselves, is difficult to pull off).
Probably because the removal of thousands of dollars from my paychecks over the course of every year is a serious matter, as are many of the functions which those involuntarily-paid dollars support.
The US has worldwide, actually interplanetary taxation. Even if you leave you'll be under US tax net. If you renounce, again, that doesn't stop it because renouncing also costs a tax of ~$2000 and possibly an exit tax.
But this in any case all presumes not leaving = consent, which is flimsy on even a superficial inspection, and has some harrowing downstream deductions.
You are voluntarily remaining in-country because you are permitted to repatriate to a country that has no taxation. The existence of taxes in the US is not a secret, it's not a surprise bill every year.
You also don't have to leave! You can simply declare yourself sovereign and let the foreign country engulfing your independent domain decide how it wants to conduct foreign policy with you.
You were caught in a lie about being able to leave to end your forward tax obligations to the US, and now you are doubling down. Or you still don't understand -- the US still taxes you after you leave the country, for income earned outside the country, completely independently of anything involving the USA.
Lol no you're choosing to interpret "leave the country" as "become and expat". You ignored the equally-valid interpretations "repatriate" and "renounce citizenship". So that's on me for not being specific and on you for failing to follow the HN rules of choosing the most generous version of the other person's statement.
Let's be extra generous and assume you meant leave and renounce.
Now let's talk about those harrowing deductions, which you are somehow ignorant of.
So it is decided you have to do X, otherwise leave, but actually leaving isn't enough. You have to show up at my special location (embassy), outside the country, using the passport I may or may not issue you (if you owe me lots of tax, or child support, you do not get it -- even if you need to leave the country to earn more money) -- pay me $2350, possibly an exit tax, and deal with setting up appointments and probably returning a couple times when I say with bureaucrats.
And so by not doing all those things, you have given consent. Even though many people paying taxes don't even have $2350 to their name, so they can't even buy a passport from the people taxing them let alone pay the renunciation fee.
You would definitely not be comfortable with this definition of 'consent' for anything sexual, for most things financial, and for anything involving your personal effects. It is a bastardized version of consent using mental acrobatics specially for taxes.
----
PS
>You also don't have to leave! You can simple declare yourself sovereign and let the foreign country engulfing your independent domain decide how it wants to conduct foreign policy with you.
This plan doesn't work. The only reliable way available to renounce is to leave the country and show up in a country with consular access (embassy normally). Declaring your own country wouldn't allow you to renounce because you would have no consular access to renunciation without going back into US land/airspace to go into another country.
What are you talking about? Just walk, swim, boat, or drive (travel) outside of the country. No one in the US is going to stop you. Air travel and passports are expedited methods that use government services. You can avoid those!
> declaring your own country wouldn't allow you to renounce because you would have no consular access
You are again thinking within the system. It doesn't matter what the US thinks if you have exited its control. Just declare independence. If they fail to respect that, you are a sovereign person who can force them to respect it. Plenty of nations have no diplomatic relations with others.
I mean you can walk into Mexico without documentation. But that's beside the point that dude is free to leave the country and therefore consenting to the terms of living here.
I thoroughly sympathize with even more callously cynical views, but what all good people should remember, daily if able, are the unsung work horses that have ploughed through endless, self healing bureaucratic rot mires and festering heaps of wriggling legalese to preserve the creaking vestiges of liberty and dignity that we take for granted. If not for those who take such initiative and toils, we'd be in an alternate reality. A terrible one.
Maintaining a semblance of justice and fairness is an overtime job. The ravenous hovering ghouls of corruption make alpha vultures seem blind and sessile.
The DEA has been caught doing some incredibly sketchy things in the past. Considering most drugs should be legalized or at least decriminalized, they provide little benefit and are now allowed even more freedom to exert their unnecessary power.
I didn’t know Biden had issued an executive order on this. That’s exactly what we needed.
to quote a line ive often been delivered by police -
“if you didnt do anything wrong, what do you have to hide?”