Whilst I personally loathe cameras, people who need to record their memories on film or in digital format, and photo taking in general, I could learn to live with Eastman's Demon if only for this:
"...More recently, a New York Police Department officer was thrown off the force — and convicted of filing a false report — because of a video of his actions at a bicycle rally in Times Square. The officer can plainly be seen going up to a man on a bike and shoving him to the ground. The officer claimed the cyclist was trying to collide with him, and in the past, it might have been hard to disprove the police account. But this time there was an amateur video of the encounter — which quickly became an Internet sensation, viewed more than 3 million times on YouTube alone...."
I don't know if someone else has already proposed the idea (probably), but I'll echo an obvious sentiment: the more of this, the better. Film the cops, and spooks, and otherwise faceless bureaucrats, and government tools, and corporate executives, and their lawyers, and accountants - whenever and wherever you can.
Crow's Eye: Maintaining a commitment to Pointless Acrimony™ and Hate Filled Invective™! Also available in corvid mischief and traditional sly dog's mistrust.
8 comments:
Back in the day, a bunch of anarchists on the Lower East Side published a newspaper called "the Shadow", which regularly ran photos of undercover pigs observed in the neighborhood. That's probably outlawed by the Patriot Act by now, though....
Good ideas occur more than once, it seems.
Unfortunately, Jack, not only have people already had that idea, but several states have already started outlawing that idea...
Better that they criminalize it, no? If the authorities "allow it," it'll end up like any other "free speech right," meaning veal penned into legalese, permitted and by that permission constrained, stripped of all transgressive and liberatory worth...
It's a great irony that the Po-Po are installing "security" cameras at traffic lights etc, with which they watch the public... yet the public cannot film or photograph the Po-Po in public in many jurisdictions, as Ethan observes.
Even where it's not criminalized yet, it's risky to try to take video or photographic evidence of Po-Po behavior in public.
I love the double-standard. For the Po-Po's own cameras, "it's public" is sufficient jurisprudential support for the cameras.
What?
It's great living in a town so teeming with cop-huggers that even LA feels sorry for us, lemme' tell you.
:/ I've gotten in the habit of standing outside conspicuously whenever the cops pull somebody over in front of my house;that "somebody" nearly always being a POC. I know enough troublemakers of the law school kind to know that as long as I'm on my own property and say out loud, "I'm here to observe, not to interfere," the Folks In Blue are not officially allowed to run me off.
They never look happy to see me, so that alone always makes it worth my while.
-- ms_xeno
Have also been wondering why dashboard cams don't violate the same laws as civilian videos.
Jack, much appreciate the recent nods. Mahalo.
Power accrues to those who use it, I think, Weldon. That's my theory. I'm probably wrong.
NP, on the nods.
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