Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Or, are you afraid yet?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A few choice bits from an article in the Detroit Free Press:

Since this is IMHO:

  1. If you’re familiar with law enforcement, do you find this story plausible?

  2. Can you envision this happening in your own locality, or have you heard any stories about it actually happening?

  3. How worried does this kind of thing make you?

  4. Will you be more worried when your local law enforcement implements face recognition software and streetcorner cameras to potentially track any person’s movements?

  5. Have you considered, or might you consider, changing your behavior in light of this? By this I mean how you conduct your personal and professional life (maybe being careful who you talk to and limiting information that could be subject to extortion) and especially how you view and interact with law enforcement.

Thanks for viewing this long OP!

2

Excuse me for the little hijack here, but the title of the OP, does that translate to, “but who watches the watchers”? Haven’t taken a latin course in nine months, and just want to know if I still have a clue.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled post.

3

Eonwe, your translation is close, but I have more often heard it as “Who will guard the guardians”. Same difference, really.

4

I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t happen occasionally. Police are people just like the rest of us.

5

That’s what scares me.

6

I wonder. I always had something of an impression that cops generally tend to be on a bit more of a power trip than the rest of us, and maybe a bit more resentful and vindictive than the rest of us, due to (1) the nature of the job they do, and the people they have to deal with; (2) their perceived lack of appreciation among the public; (3) the kind of personalities that are attracted to that job in the first place; and (4) the sheer power they have at their disposal that’s not available to the ordinary joe shmoe. As noted in the article, if any guy off the street tried to abuse that particular database in the same way that cops seem to be doing every day, then he’d be facing a couple of years in prison.

Nobody’s answering my poll so far. I’ll answer my own questions in hopes that others will do the same, since I’m genuinely interested:

  1. If you’re familiar with law enforcement, do you find this story plausible? I don’t really know any cops, but from my general impression of police (see above), I find it plausible.

  2. Can you envision this happening in your own locality, or have you heard any stories about it actually happening? Haven’t heard anything so far.

  3. How worried does this kind of thing make you? If the problem is widespread, then it makes me very worried.

  4. Will you be more worried when your local law enforcement implements face recognition software and streetcorner cameras to potentially track any person’s movements? Yes.

  5. Have you considered, or might you consider, changing your behavior in light of this? By this I mean how you conduct your personal and professional life (maybe being careful who you talk to and limiting information that could be subject to extortion) and especially how you view and interact with law enforcement. If it turns out that this kind of thing really does happen on a wide scale, I’m going to have to rethink how I deal with society on every level.

7

  1. I’m not that familiar with law enforcement, but it does seem plausible.

  2. This is the first I’ve heard of this.

  3. This makes me concerned, but not much more so than the fact that most anything I do with a credit card is kept in a file somewhere.

  4. Streetcorner cameras would make me very nervous. Unlike other forms of “survalence” we deal with in everyday life (ie, financial tracking, workplace network and e-mail monitoring, etc), video survalence would be practically unavoidable.

  5. Well, I still believe that most people are probably not out to get me, so unless we do have video cameras on every corner, I don’t think I’d change my behaviour. I’m a pretty honest guy, and figure that if I am generally a law abiding citizen and am honest and respectful to law-enforcement and other people in general, I don’t have too much to worry about.

8

Damn. I thought this was going to be a thread about my sig.

9

That was a rather Juvenal comment.

OW! I’ll behave, really!

10

:rolleyes:

11

**1. If you’re familiar with law enforcement, do you find this story plausible? **

Absolutely. When I was a reporter, I worked the cop and court beat. This kind of thing went on a lot and was viewed by many of the cops in many of the departments I covered as a perq. This extent of abuse (in how the information was used) was fairly rare, but many of the guys I knew would run checks on daughters’ boyfriends, people they had run ins with, contractors for personal business (home repairs, etc.), etc.

  1. Can you envision this happening in your own locality, or have you heard any stories about it actually happening?

Again absolutely. Phoenix (actually Maricopa County) has the legendary whack job Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He’s so fanatical he’s been cited by Amnesty International and investigated multiple times by the DOJ for alleged procedural and human rights violations. In the interest of fairness, all DOJ complaints I’m familiar with resulted in “insufficient evidence” findings.

Given the county and city cop feel of “them and us” and the ends justifying the means, I’m sure this is already going on here.

  1. How worried does this kind of thing make you?

Since I’ve been exposed to this kind of thing for more than 10 years, it doesn’t worry me anymore. I’m just jaded about it in terms of “worry.” It enrages me, but it doesn’t worry me.

  1. Will you be more worried when your local law enforcement implements face recognition software and streetcorner cameras to potentially track any person’s movements?

I’ll be FAR more enraged and will probably start wearing a desert-issue balaclava as a protest measure. I’ll also join any Libertarian Party, ACLU and any other group’s lawsuits to stop it.

  1. Have you considered, or might you consider, changing your behavior in light of this? By this I mean how you conduct your personal and professional life (maybe being careful who you talk to and limiting information that could be subject to extortion) and especially how you view and interact with law enforcement.

Hell no. The only way to win against this kind of crap on a day to day level is to ensure your actions after knowing are the same as your actions before finding out. When you get paranoid and/or resigned, you become a subject, rather than a citizen. I still have, and do what I can to maintain, my rights as a human being and a citizen of the US. The first and best way to do this, I think, is to not let oppressive behavior from “authority figures” keep you from doing what you want to do, as long as your activities don’t harm the person or property of anyone else.

12

**In this town, we have a built-in filtering system. The local, small city cops (Manhattan Beach, for example) are fairly laid-back, the LAPD are so anti-“civilian” and generally power mad it’s frightening. If you get pulled over by a non-LAPD, non-Sheriff (I’ve never encountered a Sheriff, despite the fact that I live in an area supposedly patrolled by them) cop, you can expect a warning unless you are just vibrating with bad karma, outstanding warrants, etc. If you merely ask an LAPD cop for help, he’s going to assume you’re tricking or trapping him, and the best you can hope for is that he’ll leave the handcuffs off on the way to the station.
**1. If you’re familiar with law enforcement, do you find this story plausible? **

I’ve had a few cop friends - and been pulled over for a few traffic violations. That’s the extent of my personal experience. I’ve also worked on a number of surveys relating to police behavior and performance - writing, stats, etc. - and the writing and norming of a sergeant’s exam. I don’t know if that counts as familiar with law enforcement. But, yes, I find it plausible, though it isn’t something I see every cop doing. It’s just that there are a lot of cops, and a lot of nuts, and the two do overlap from time to time.

2. Can you envision this happening in your own locality, or have you heard any stories about it actually happening?

Haven’t heard any stories about it. Could see it happening here.

3. How worried does this kind of thing make you?

Very worried, even if it happens only very occasionally, but then I’m something of a privacy nut. I realize in this world we sacrifice our privacy for convenience every day, but it scares me that we are putting powerful privacy-invading tools in the hands of people no better, no more trained, and no more respectful than the common citizen.

4. Will you be more worried when your local law enforcement implements face recognition software and streetcorner cameras to potentially track any person’s movements?

Of course. But I sincerely hope this is an ‘if’ instead of a ‘when,’ although I am not sanguine.

**5. Have you considered, or might you consider, changing your behavior in light of this? By this I mean how you conduct your personal and professional life (maybe being careful who you talk to and limiting information that could be subject to extortion) and especially how you view and interact with law enforcement. **

I’m not sure. I’ll have to think about this last one a bit more.