This is sad app that plays into the divisive bias being promoted by the media and special interest groups who benefit from the perpetuation of fear and chaos.
Law enforcement, like the military, is overwhelming staffed by fellow citizens (yes, they are really one of us) who have decided to take on thankless jobs that few others have the physical or mental fortitude to take at the level of risk vs. reward involved. Are there bad apples in the ranks, hell yeah, just like there are in any profession. This whole premise for this app is just feeding the media induced fear mongering that is painting an entire class of professionals with a broad, ugly brush when the bad ones actually represent a very tiny minority of the total rank and file of law enforcement professionals. When has this type of unreasonable and prejudicial classification system ever been justified?
I have no problem with the app itself. I can see where it is very useful to have an app like this to record anything that requires instant streaming to an off-board data collection system. But to frame it up in the way it's being done here is very self serving and divisive, just the kind of thing that keeps organizations who profit from such behavior at the center of public attention.
If people really care deeply about this and want to take it upon themselves to personally influence the behavior of organizations like law enforcement they should try to do it from the inside. I can't think of any job in any profession or vocation, or at any level, where outsiders who think they know how to do the job better than the people who are actually doing the job are justified in their thinking. Until you strap on the shoes you're just an outsider with an opinion. There's no app that replaces experience and living the reality of life.
Although I agree with you that a dialog is needed and the ideal situation would be to try it from within, it just isn't happening and the situation is dire. This app isn't meant to feed the "media induced fear mongering". It's meant for people to safely record ABUSE. It's created and managed by a non-profit organization whose sole purpose is protecting your rights and freedom in accordance with the Constitution.
Police abuse exists... a lot! It's not just about violent abuse and racism, though there's enough of that to warrant some panic. It's about violation of your rights. There are violations of search and seizure. Police departments are stealing people's money and possessions, for example, under the "Asset Forfeiture" premise to use for their own entertainment, in one case, to buy a margarita machine for their department or to pad their budgets. This kind of corruption and ABUSE is unacceptable. You should be able to travel in peace without fear of a cop stealing the money or stuff you have in your car for no particular reason but because he wants it. This happens every day all over the country.
This app is designed so that citizens can have the opportunity to capture ABUSE and send it to the ACLU for analysis before the police take the phone away. Considering the staggering amount of violations throughout the U.S., some fear is understandable and warranted, but that's not what this app is about. This app is about your Constitutional rights, and how a large portion (much larger than we'd like to admit) of law enforcement, including entire departments, has and continues to violate the rights of the citizens they're supposed to serve and protect.
If you knew anything about the ACLU, you'd know they don't "profit from such behavior" or from this app. They'd actually prefer not to have to exist at all. And when such abuse is rampant throughout law enforcement, and it continues with little repair, our public servants need supervision. The police has traditionally protected each other instead of the citizens they serve. Their job is difficult and they're not paid enough, but they chose the job, so they have to do it right and as law enforcement, they have to follow the law. They're not above it. If this app helps the ACLU deal with the abuse cases they get every day, then great. All of us will be better for it, including the police.
As a retired veteran I consider myself worthy to reply to your post.
"the bad ones actually represent a very tiny minority of the total rank and file of law enforcement professionals." While we have tons of great police in different areas this number is definitely not a tiny fraction.
In fact this number becomes quite huge if you happen to be the one caught between their crosshairs. If you have a bias towards segments of the society you swore to protect, and serve, you should quit.
One of the biggest problems is when one officer is a troublemaker his colleagues almost never reel him in (since it's no skin off their backs).
When one officer in a group causes trouble they ALL should be held responsible (that forces them to keep each other in line).
ALL officers who made the murder arrest of Eric Garner should have been tried. The reason why they couldn't land a conviction is due to ALL the police being an accessory to murder. They all pinned this man down so he can be chocked to death, and no one tried to correct this thug behavior.
Police abuse exists... a lot! It's not just about violent abuse and racism, though there's enough of that to warrant some panic. It's about violation of your rights. There are violations of search and seizure. Police departments are stealing people's money and possessions, for example, under the "Asset Forfeiture" premise to use for their own entertainment, in one case, to buy a margarita machine for their department or to pad their budgets. This kind of corruption and ABUSE is unacceptable.
Considering the staggering amount of violations throughout the U.S., some fear is understandable and warranted
Where is the evidence in support of the statements? The media focuses on a handful of cases to push forward a certain narrative that gets an emotional response from people. Killings are all documented:
The media puts out news articles that say things like more civilians have been killed by cops than people killed in 9/11 or Americans killed in the war since 9/11. This is over a period of 14 years and is about 5,000 people. It sounds like a lot but the population is over 300 million and look at the list of people killed. 'Civilians' implies innocent people but it's either felons or people engaged in criminal activity.
Another narrative the media likes to push forward is that more black people are killed by white cops when the facts show that more white people are killed by cops by almost 2:1. It mismatches the population ratio but so does the amount of crime being committed. The media deliberately leaves out race descriptions when it's not white on black violence because it doesn't fit their preferred narrative.
When it comes to civil forfeiture, this is used to seize assets from drug lords and fraudsters like Bernie Madoff:
"Last year, forfeiture programs confiscated homes, cars, boats and cash in more than 15,000 cases. The total take topped $2.5 billion"
That's an average of over $160k per case. If you're seizing $2.5b from 15,000 cases, this doesn't fit the narrative that cops are stopping and frisking poor innocent civilians and taking whatever spare cash they have on them.
There are going to be incidents of abuse and some have been recorded on video and the video helped but they can also be one-sided. Often times people only film or keep portions of video that again deliver the narrative they want. The following case shows a police officer beating a homeless woman:
The police officer had pulled her out of oncoming traffic and she had resisted. She was mentally disturbed and off medication. She wouldn't stop and so he tried to make an arrest. It was overly aggressive but he must have been on his own because a bystander had to come over and help him arrest her. She was awarded $1.5m.
The arrest could have gone smoother but how many people will try to start some violence by resisting arrest to get a payout like that? Look at the following woman interfering with police:
[VIDEO]
The police told her to stop interfering and to step back and she just kept on nagging at them that it was her right to film them, on and on until a cop just smashed up her phone. I'm not saying it's right that they smashed up her phone but they need to be allowed to be aggressive with criminals and in dangerous situations, bystanders should stay out of the way. They're wearing bulletproof vests loaded up with firearms and she's standing there like she's filming at a party.
If you get in trouble and some criminal is attacking you, who are you going to be calling for help? The Youtubers with their smartphones? No, you'll be calling the exact same police and I bet your phone call won't consist of 'hey, f* the police'.
Pushing forward the narrative that a huge majority of police use excessive force, are happy to steal from civilians, are racist and need to be filmed every minute of the day is not going to have a positive outcome. There is no way for the police to tell the opposite side of the story because they can't describe every one of millions of cases that were conducted appropriately and I guarantee no Youtubers are going to be filming appropriate arrests and no news organisation will cover them. The cases where they behaved inappropriately should be treated as individual cases and the people involved dealt with.
There are going to be instances where a cop stepping outside the law is for the greater good. You see this portrayed in movies where the cop just turns off the camera to deliver some real justice where the courts would knowingly fail the victims and the audience feels good that justice has been done. That's the ultimate goal that everyone wants - a form of justice that makes people feel safe and protected and where criminals are punished. Every day there are criminals who have dozens of convictions going in and out of prison. Do people want drug lords or rapists getting multi-million dollar payouts because a cop went too hard on them during arrest? No and civilians don't want to be subjected to police brutality either but how often are police targeting innocent civilians?
If police brutality was as out of control as the media likes to suggest then people wouldn't be talking on social media about a handful of cases, millions of people would be on social media saying 'this happened to me'.
liberty |?lib?rt?| noun (pl. liberties) 1 the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views: compulsory retirement would interfere with individual liberty.
You are delusional... When trust is no longer present, the basis for sentient civilizations is in jeapordy. Living in the world that this technology creates will not be a world worth living in. This will erode freedom. This is a certainty.
When someone is arrested without injury and is dead on arrival at the police station, trust is already eroded. When someone with a magic suit and badge can kill someone with impunity because of a sarcastic remark, trust is already eroded. What freedom do you imagine exists in a society that criminalizes vast quantities of nonviolent behavior that initiates force against no one? Also, it is generally accepted that use of ad hominem in a debate is the same as forfeit & I fail to see how your accusation of being delusional is anything but ad hominem.
The government trust doesn't you and records you, you as a citizen should be able to record in return, turnabout is fairPlay as a TAXPAYER.
You're surely not suggesting that only taxpayers should have this privilege, are you? If so, what does a 'taxpayer' look like? Or better yet, how do the police identify a non-taxpayer?
The iBookstore reviewers are right, this app is so useful, it shouldn't be confined to a few states. And if I read the description right, it needs a few tweaks.
1. Make one app that covers all the states and can be of value overseas.
2. Move all that added 'your rights' information to a different app. Make this one just for recording. All that other stuff can confuse users in a tense situation.
3. Make it stealthy, meaning it doesn't look like it is recording. It should be possible to use it quickly and with front or back cameras and in a pocket or clipped to a belt.
4. Allow audio-only recording. In some situations, a camera just isn't possible or will only create trouble. Often, what matters is what's said, i.e. during a traffic stop.
5. Local storage means the recording could be destroyed. Auto-upload could cost a lot in data charges, resulting in people not recording something that merely might turn bad. Come up with a bulletproof way that allows a user to choose or not choose to upload. One option might be to have a passcode protected delete/save/upload. Deliberately enter the wrong passcode and the video uploads stealthy, i.e. without saying that's what it is doing. Enter the right passcode, and a user can actually chose to delete/save/upload.
6. Make it more versatile, i.e. for recording events like confrontations after car accidents, where there's no ACLU issue involved. The more useful an app it, the more likely people are to install and know how to use it. Make it a quick-record app for any purpose and people are more likely to use it when the ACLU wants them to use it. Keep in mind that those others uses cost the ACLU nothing.
Finally, the ACLU should stress that this app is to see that justice is done not to 'get' any one party in a dispute. That recording establishes what happened and thus who is lying. Sometimes it is the police. Sometimes it's those they're confronting.
The iBookstore reviewers are right, this app is so useful, it shouldn't be confined to a few states. And if I read the description right, it needs a few tweaks.
1. Make one app that covers all the states and can be of value overseas.
2. Move all that added 'your rights' information to a different app. Make this one just for recording. All that other stuff can confuse users in a tense situation.
3. Make it stealthy, meaning it doesn't look like it is recording. It should be possible to use it quickly and with front or back cameras and in a pocket or clipped to a belt.
4. Allow audio-only recording. In some situations, a camera just isn't possible or will only create trouble. Often, what matters is what's said, i.e. during a traffic stop.
5. Local storage means the recording could be destroyed. Auto-upload could cost a lot in data charges, resulting in people not recording something that merely might turn bad. Come up with a bulletproof way that allows a user to choose or not choose to upload. One option might be to have a passcode protected delete/save/upload. Deliberately enter the wrong passcode and the video uploads stealthy, i.e. without saying that's what it is doing. Enter the right passcode, and a user can actually chose to delete/save/upload.
6. Make it more versatile, i.e. for recording events like confrontations after car accidents, where there's no ACLU issue involved. The more useful an app it, the more likely people are to install and know how to use it. Make it a quick-record app for any purpose and people are more likely to use it when the ACLU wants them to use it. Keep in mind that those others uses cost the ACLU nothing.
Finally, the ACLU should stress that this app is to see that justice is done not to 'get' any one party in a dispute. That recording establishes what happened and thus who is lying. Sometimes it is the police. Sometimes it's those they're confronting.
All of these bizarre modifications requested makes me to wonder if you know what the ACLU is all about.
The police told her to stop interfering and to step back and she just kept on nagging at them that it was her right to film them, on and on until a cop just smashed up her phone. I'm not saying it's right that they smashed up her phone but they need to be allowed to be aggressive with criminals and in dangerous situations, bystanders should stay out of the way. They're wearing bulletproof vests loaded up with firearms and she's standing there like she's filming at a party.
She was standing there, filming and talking. It is clear the officer or deputy came after her to destroy the phone she was filming with and nothing else. You really did nothing but make the case for the app. She was not interfering. She was assaulted because she chose to film the police. It's truly unfortunate if they don't like people watching them work. We live in a free society and the actions of government agents should be open to all types of public review unless there is a compelling reason for them not to be. I am not sure who got it in the heads of law enforcement that it was ok to attack people because they are filming you. It is actually not ok for anyone to do that. There are very few laws that law enforcement are immune to and most of them are traffic laws when they have lights and siren on. They had no more right to destroy that womens phone than I would. Good thing he did not see the person filming from 50 yards away. I am as a big a supporter of law enforcement as their is, but no one can watch that video and see anything except a woman being assaulted by law enforcement because they did not like her filming.
Ah, got it! The hand, and the angle threw me off. Thanks.
...And, being from the US, you know the old saw about assuming, right?
Well, the article is about the American Civil Liberties Union, and the app is only for use in the United States (and specific states at that).
So logic would dictate that the America Civil Liberties Union, in making an app to protect US citizens liberty, would utilize the physically largest symbol of American Liberty as their icon. The flame of the Statue of Liberty.
Know your rights ! And know when they come !! (it isn't from paying taxes)
Fixed that for you.
Sorry, but "No", as this week's Court decision showed.
Border Patrol officer shot a Mexican kid standing across the border (i.e. kid was in Mexico, officer in the U.S.). The family sued but the Appeals Court ruled that Constitutional protections do not apply because he was not in the U.S. nor a U.S. citizen or resident.
Mexican in Mexico - no Constitutional rights for you !!
I'm curious about the app. "...instead of saving the file locally, it automatically uploads the data." and adds geotagging data. I wonder if it includes any information about the individual making the recording?
There IS an app for everyone that does that from what I know about it: Periscope! While it's essentially for live streaming there is some sort of archival function for at least some time period since at least one person I follow has uploaded hers (she does great travel stuff, her main focus being NYC and especially NYC during snowstorms) after the fact to Youtube.
Now it doesn't have the ACLU on speed-dial, but it is an immediate upload off the device.
There IS an app for everyone that does that from what I know about it: Periscope! While it's essentially for live streaming there is some sort of archival function for at least some time period since at least one person I follow has uploaded hers (she does great travel stuff, her main focus being NYC and especially NYC during snowstorms) after the fact to Youtube.
Now it doesn't have the ACLU on speed-dial, but it is an immediate upload off the device.
Other Periscope viewers can't save the video they are viewing. The ACLU app has the important archiving function. If the iPhone is destroyed at least there is a copy kept in their cloud.
Comments
This is sad app that plays into the divisive bias being promoted by the media and special interest groups who benefit from the perpetuation of fear and chaos.
Law enforcement, like the military, is overwhelming staffed by fellow citizens (yes, they are really one of us) who have decided to take on thankless jobs that few others have the physical or mental fortitude to take at the level of risk vs. reward involved. Are there bad apples in the ranks, hell yeah, just like there are in any profession. This whole premise for this app is just feeding the media induced fear mongering that is painting an entire class of professionals with a broad, ugly brush when the bad ones actually represent a very tiny minority of the total rank and file of law enforcement professionals. When has this type of unreasonable and prejudicial classification system ever been justified?
I have no problem with the app itself. I can see where it is very useful to have an app like this to record anything that requires instant streaming to an off-board data collection system. But to frame it up in the way it's being done here is very self serving and divisive, just the kind of thing that keeps organizations who profit from such behavior at the center of public attention.
If people really care deeply about this and want to take it upon themselves to personally influence the behavior of organizations like law enforcement they should try to do it from the inside. I can't think of any job in any profession or vocation, or at any level, where outsiders who think they know how to do the job better than the people who are actually doing the job are justified in their thinking. Until you strap on the shoes you're just an outsider with an opinion. There's no app that replaces experience and living the reality of life.
Although I agree with you that a dialog is needed and the ideal situation would be to try it from within, it just isn't happening and the situation is dire. This app isn't meant to feed the "media induced fear mongering". It's meant for people to safely record ABUSE. It's created and managed by a non-profit organization whose sole purpose is protecting your rights and freedom in accordance with the Constitution.
Police abuse exists... a lot! It's not just about violent abuse and racism, though there's enough of that to warrant some panic. It's about violation of your rights. There are violations of search and seizure. Police departments are stealing people's money and possessions, for example, under the "Asset Forfeiture" premise to use for their own entertainment, in one case, to buy a margarita machine for their department or to pad their budgets. This kind of corruption and ABUSE is unacceptable. You should be able to travel in peace without fear of a cop stealing the money or stuff you have in your car for no particular reason but because he wants it. This happens every day all over the country.
This app is designed so that citizens can have the opportunity to capture ABUSE and send it to the ACLU for analysis before the police take the phone away. Considering the staggering amount of violations throughout the U.S., some fear is understandable and warranted, but that's not what this app is about. This app is about your Constitutional rights, and how a large portion (much larger than we'd like to admit) of law enforcement, including entire departments, has and continues to violate the rights of the citizens they're supposed to serve and protect.
If you knew anything about the ACLU, you'd know they don't "profit from such behavior" or from this app. They'd actually prefer not to have to exist at all. And when such abuse is rampant throughout law enforcement, and it continues with little repair, our public servants need supervision. The police has traditionally protected each other instead of the citizens they serve. Their job is difficult and they're not paid enough, but they chose the job, so they have to do it right and as law enforcement, they have to follow the law. They're not above it. If this app helps the ACLU deal with the abuse cases they get every day, then great. All of us will be better for it, including the police.
Just pondering...
As a retired veteran I consider myself worthy to reply to your post.
"the bad ones actually represent a very tiny minority of the total rank and file of law enforcement professionals." While we have tons of great police in different areas this number is definitely not a tiny fraction.
In fact this number becomes quite huge if you happen to be the one caught between their crosshairs. If you have a bias towards segments of the society you swore to protect, and serve, you should quit.
One of the biggest problems is when one officer is a troublemaker his colleagues almost never reel him in (since it's no skin off their backs).
When one officer in a group causes trouble they ALL should be held responsible (that forces them to keep each other in line).
ALL officers who made the murder arrest of Eric Garner should have been tried. The reason why they couldn't land a conviction is due to ALL the police being an accessory to murder. They all pinned this man down so he can be chocked to death, and no one tried to correct this thug behavior.
Where is the evidence in support of the statements? The media focuses on a handful of cases to push forward a certain narrative that gets an emotional response from people. Killings are all documented:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States,_2015
The media puts out news articles that say things like more civilians have been killed by cops than people killed in 9/11 or Americans killed in the war since 9/11. This is over a period of 14 years and is about 5,000 people. It sounds like a lot but the population is over 300 million and look at the list of people killed. 'Civilians' implies innocent people but it's either felons or people engaged in criminal activity.
Another narrative the media likes to push forward is that more black people are killed by white cops when the facts show that more white people are killed by cops by almost 2:1. It mismatches the population ratio but so does the amount of crime being committed. The media deliberately leaves out race descriptions when it's not white on black violence because it doesn't fit their preferred narrative.
When it comes to civil forfeiture, this is used to seize assets from drug lords and fraudsters like Bernie Madoff:
http://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2010/nyfo120710.htm
That one case was $625m. The following article shows numbers for 2010:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512253265073870
"Last year, forfeiture programs confiscated homes, cars, boats and cash in more than 15,000 cases. The total take topped $2.5 billion"
That's an average of over $160k per case. If you're seizing $2.5b from 15,000 cases, this doesn't fit the narrative that cops are stopping and frisking poor innocent civilians and taking whatever spare cash they have on them.
There are going to be incidents of abuse and some have been recorded on video and the video helped but they can also be one-sided. Often times people only film or keep portions of video that again deliver the narrative they want. The following case shows a police officer beating a homeless woman:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2768962/Woman-punched-California-Highway-Patrol-settles.html
The police officer had pulled her out of oncoming traffic and she had resisted. She was mentally disturbed and off medication. She wouldn't stop and so he tried to make an arrest. It was overly aggressive but he must have been on his own because a bystander had to come over and help him arrest her. She was awarded $1.5m.
The arrest could have gone smoother but how many people will try to start some violence by resisting arrest to get a payout like that? Look at the following woman interfering with police:
[VIDEO]
The police told her to stop interfering and to step back and she just kept on nagging at them that it was her right to film them, on and on until a cop just smashed up her phone. I'm not saying it's right that they smashed up her phone but they need to be allowed to be aggressive with criminals and in dangerous situations, bystanders should stay out of the way. They're wearing bulletproof vests loaded up with firearms and she's standing there like she's filming at a party.
If you get in trouble and some criminal is attacking you, who are you going to be calling for help? The Youtubers with their smartphones? No, you'll be calling the exact same police and I bet your phone call won't consist of 'hey, f* the police'.
Pushing forward the narrative that a huge majority of police use excessive force, are happy to steal from civilians, are racist and need to be filmed every minute of the day is not going to have a positive outcome. There is no way for the police to tell the opposite side of the story because they can't describe every one of millions of cases that were conducted appropriately and I guarantee no Youtubers are going to be filming appropriate arrests and no news organisation will cover them. The cases where they behaved inappropriately should be treated as individual cases and the people involved dealt with.
There are going to be instances where a cop stepping outside the law is for the greater good. You see this portrayed in movies where the cop just turns off the camera to deliver some real justice where the courts would knowingly fail the victims and the audience feels good that justice has been done. That's the ultimate goal that everyone wants - a form of justice that makes people feel safe and protected and where criminals are punished. Every day there are criminals who have dozens of convictions going in and out of prison. Do people want drug lords or rapists getting multi-million dollar payouts because a cop went too hard on them during arrest? No and civilians don't want to be subjected to police brutality either but how often are police targeting innocent civilians?
If police brutality was as out of control as the media likes to suggest then people wouldn't be talking on social media about a handful of cases, millions of people would be on social media saying 'this happened to me'.
What exactly does the app's icon depict? Aside from the "beaming", that is.
No offense intended (really!), but a silhouette of one of these is the first thing that came to mind...
(Yes, I know it's wrong, on so many levels. Someone set me straight.)
I am assuming you are not a US citizen if you do not recognize Lady Liberty's torch.
The ACLU has spent its entire existence fighting for the pursuit of liberty in the US- this app is quite apropos.
“So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we’ll be called a democracy.” -- ACLU founder Roger Baldwin
https://www.aclu.org/about-aclu
liberty |?lib?rt?| noun (pl. liberties) 1 the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views: compulsory retirement would interfere with individual liberty.
You're surely not suggesting that only taxpayers should have this privilege, are you? If so, what does a 'taxpayer' look like? Or better yet, how do the police identify a non-taxpayer?
Your rights don't come from you being a taxpayer.
They come from you being a person.
Know your rights ! And know when they come !! (it isn't from paying taxes)
Fixed that for you.
Quote:
Looks like the hand of the Statue of Liberty to me, with WiFi radio waves emitting from it
Ah, got it! The hand, and the angle threw me off. Thanks.
I am assuming...
...And, being from the US, you know the old saw about assuming, right?
Right. Because property is much more important than the lives of citizens. . . How very Christian.
1. Make one app that covers all the states and can be of value overseas.
2. Move all that added 'your rights' information to a different app. Make this one just for recording. All that other stuff can confuse users in a tense situation.
3. Make it stealthy, meaning it doesn't look like it is recording. It should be possible to use it quickly and with front or back cameras and in a pocket or clipped to a belt.
4. Allow audio-only recording. In some situations, a camera just isn't possible or will only create trouble. Often, what matters is what's said, i.e. during a traffic stop.
5. Local storage means the recording could be destroyed. Auto-upload could cost a lot in data charges, resulting in people not recording something that merely might turn bad. Come up with a bulletproof way that allows a user to choose or not choose to upload. One option might be to have a passcode protected delete/save/upload. Deliberately enter the wrong passcode and the video uploads stealthy, i.e. without saying that's what it is doing. Enter the right passcode, and a user can actually chose to delete/save/upload.
6. Make it more versatile, i.e. for recording events like confrontations after car accidents, where there's no ACLU issue involved. The more useful an app it, the more likely people are to install and know how to use it. Make it a quick-record app for any purpose and people are more likely to use it when the ACLU wants them to use it. Keep in mind that those others uses cost the ACLU nothing.
Finally, the ACLU should stress that this app is to see that justice is done not to 'get' any one party in a dispute. That recording establishes what happened and thus who is lying. Sometimes it is the police. Sometimes it's those they're confronting.
All of these bizarre modifications requested makes me to wonder if you know what the ACLU is all about.
She was standing there, filming and talking. It is clear the officer or deputy came after her to destroy the phone she was filming with and nothing else. You really did nothing but make the case for the app. She was not interfering. She was assaulted because she chose to film the police. It's truly unfortunate if they don't like people watching them work. We live in a free society and the actions of government agents should be open to all types of public review unless there is a compelling reason for them not to be. I am not sure who got it in the heads of law enforcement that it was ok to attack people because they are filming you. It is actually not ok for anyone to do that. There are very few laws that law enforcement are immune to and most of them are traffic laws when they have lights and siren on. They had no more right to destroy that womens phone than I would. Good thing he did not see the person filming from 50 yards away. I am as a big a supporter of law enforcement as their is, but no one can watch that video and see anything except a woman being assaulted by law enforcement because they did not like her filming.
I sometimes wonder about the type of people I associate with in this forum.
Quote:
Ah, got it! The hand, and the angle threw me off. Thanks.
...And, being from the US, you know the old saw about assuming, right?
Well, the article is about the American Civil Liberties Union, and the app is only for use in the United States (and specific states at that).
So logic would dictate that the America Civil Liberties Union, in making an app to protect US citizens liberty, would utilize the physically largest symbol of American Liberty as their icon. The flame of the Statue of Liberty.
Your rights don't come from you being a taxpayer.
They come from you being a person.
Know your rights ! And know when they come !! (it isn't from paying taxes)
Fixed that for you.
Sorry, but "No", as this week's Court decision showed.
Border Patrol officer shot a Mexican kid standing across the border (i.e. kid was in Mexico, officer in the U.S.). The family sued but the Appeals Court ruled that Constitutional protections do not apply because he was not in the U.S. nor a U.S. citizen or resident.
Mexican in Mexico - no Constitutional rights for you !!
I'm curious about the app. "...instead of saving the file locally, it automatically uploads the data." and adds geotagging data. I wonder if it includes any information about the individual making the recording?
The subtext in many of the posts is simply scary.
I sometimes wonder about the type of people I associate with in this forum.
Concur.
There IS an app for everyone that does that from what I know about it: Periscope! While it's essentially for live streaming there is some sort of archival function for at least some time period since at least one person I follow has uploaded hers (she does great travel stuff, her main focus being NYC and especially NYC during snowstorms) after the fact to Youtube.
Now it doesn't have the ACLU on speed-dial, but it is an immediate upload off the device.
Other Periscope viewers can't save the video they are viewing. The ACLU app has the important archiving function. If the iPhone is destroyed at least there is a copy kept in their cloud.