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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30069 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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I just had a horrible “everyone loses” vision of the future where everyone is permitted to conceal carry and kill criminals but they’re required to wear body cameras while in public.

but they’re required to wear body cameras while in public.

Not only is everyone already wearing a body camera in public, but one of the reasons they upgrade to new models is for the better and better cameras installed thereon.

The government is already known to seize any footage taken with such a camera without a warrant, too.

There is a big difference between a smart phone (video on <1% of the time and at your complete discretion) and a legally mandated, always-on body cam.

eh, police bodycameras aren't always on.

I don't know about you, but if any of my footage is ever seized, they'll mostly get a great view of the inside of my pocket, or rarely my feet and the ground immediately in front of me. Maybe my face with the ceiling in the background. That is assuming secret 24/7 camera feed.

"No, yer Honor, I wasn't trying to cause trouble. I just really thought it was important for my doctor to have 24/7 live-feed to the inside of my colon. Honest."

Dashcams have been normalized—why not bodycams? As long as the government can't seize the footage without a warrant, I see no downside.

Remember Glassholes? People have an expectation of "privacy in public" in the way that normal humans aren't perfect memorization machines who could produce exact images of your face complete with biometric identification on command. So when you're recording random dudes it's always very SUS. If we had body cam always with you but only ON when shit goes down, then maybe people would be ok with that.

But this body cam would need a bright hardware led that can't be disabled while the cam is actively recording.

I…don’t remember glassholes, and my experience with Internet shock videos makes me reluctant to search for it.

What was it?

A pejorative term for Google Glass users, particularly those who wore them to public and shared private spaces.

Ha. I remember seeing this comic at the time, but forgot the name.

My first thought was a device like a PiHole, but for ruining video instead of preempting advertising.

I can see many benefits to willingly wearing body cams. Much less confusion around facts of any legal cases, no more false accusations of any kind, and protection against lies from police or witnesses. There are plenty of studies that support the idea that people behave better when they know they are being watched.

But a society where everything you do or say is recorded isn't one I'd like to live in. In the US, there are many state that require two party consent for something to be recorded, I'm sure one could find plenty of strong arguments for why that is the case.

You could argue we already reached this point, certainly nearly anything you do online is recorded, and in public there is no shortage of cameras and recording devices, but I think even just having it be something we can pretend to ignore allows a level of social ease. Once we reach the point of consciously wearing body cams, the cats out of the bag. Now everything you say and do is recorded. Maybe you personally wouldn't be impacted, but I think we're trading off security in exchange for social cohesion. Do you feel more safe in an area that has a million cameras and security forces, or in an suburban town/city that has no cameras because they don't need it. I think there's a reason why there are gated communities, where once you get past the gate you don't see any signs of security, because people don't want to feel like they live in an area they are constantly supervised.

Let's not forget, governments can change, just because the government now might be benevolent and not forcefully seize footages without warrants doesn't that they won't change the process for getting a warrant, or even ignore protocols all together.

Then there's the matter of security on these devices, cameras get hacked all the time and there are people that willingly look for people in embarrassing or sexual situations to share to the greater world.

A dashcam is mostly restricted to the realm of driving and I can accept that. A bodycam is on you always.

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