this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 38 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (10 children)

I agree with that the abusive cops and ice is insane in the US, and it should be stopped. I also believe that the US is a corrupt nation in nearly every place of the government and surrounding instances.

But a question surround this, what if the US wasn't corrupt and the judges would actually follow the law (juries wouldn't be able to exist for most cases) and hypothetical if the US had privacy laws for everything besides businesses wouldn't this be the same punishable offence that would protect citizens?

In GDPR countries (among others) nobody is allowed to do something like this with face recognition because the law works for everybody. (Some people are trying to destroy this in some countries, though).

At the same time, if the government is allowed to use facial recognition and other anti-privacy measures to identify people where there is no ground to, then why shouldn't the people be able to do that?

Edit: I am not from the US and my look on life and trias political situations is different than what the fuck is happening in the US

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 17 points 6 days ago (7 children)

In GDPR countries (among others) nobody is allowed to do something like this with face recognition because the law works for everybody.

IDK the specifics of GDPR (and GDPR is relatively new, so it will continue to evolve for some time...)

In my view: the police are public servants, salaries and pensions paid by taxes. They have voluntarily chosen to serve as public servants. Whole hosts of studies show that police who are actively involved with the communities they police, seeing, being seen, being known by the neighborhoods they work in, those police are more effective at preventing crime, defusing domestic disputes, etc. than faceless thugs with batons and guns who only show up when they are going to use their arrest powers to shut down whatever is going on.

If I were to write "my version" of the GDPR that I think the US should enact, there would be clear exceptions for public servants, including police and politicians. Now, you can get into the whole issue of "undercover cops" which is clearly analogous to "secret police" which may be a necessary evil for some circumstances, but that's not what is going on with OP's website. OP is providing a tool to compare photos to a public database of photographs of public servants - not undercover cops. By the way: performance is spec'ed at 1 to 3 seconds per photo comparison, so 9000 photos might take 9000-27000 seconds to compare, that's 2.5 to 7.5 hours to run one photo search.

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[–] kreskin@lemmy.world 14 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Well, the US Supreme court did explicitely say cops have no expectation of anonymity while doing their job. This is completely legal. Its premised on the idea that cops arent there to be abusive but to uphold the law, which is not always actually true. The root of the problem is cops behavior themselves rather than the recording or identifying of them. Up until very recently cops at least had their names visible and were required to show ID upon request.

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If the police weren't unaccountable invaders, and just, liked, issued annoying tickets or whatever instead of murdering children and doing to crowds of peaceful civilians things that would be war crimes if done to uniformed enemy soldiers literally any tike they assemble, or even if the obes who actually did that stuff were punished literally at all when they did, i don't think anyone would have even thought to do this.

They are abd they do and they don't, though.

[–] jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

The answer is that I don't think it matters because the US or any other society will never reach some utopic standard of privacy. So long as we live in a world where facial recognition is possible - it is better to regulate it strongly than attempt to prohibit it.

In a modern globalized world the old privacy is dead, no matter how you look at it. Going forward something new will need to be built out of the ashes, be it a new privacy or something better/worse.

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[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

the judges would actually follow the law (juries wouldn’t be able to exist for most cases)

A core tenet of the law is the right to trial by a jury of your peers.

Jury trials have a very similar flaw to democracy.

Think of an average person you know, how stupid are they? Now, realize that half the people out there are stupider than that.

An average randomly selected jury is going to be composed of 50% below average intelligence people.

[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Of the US law yes, but that's not the case everywhere.

I personally don't think juries should do more than give extra input to the judge. The judge should follow the law exactly and tif they don't, the average person should be able to file a complaint about them not doing their job and they should be investigated.

(I also work in a field (accountancy) where you can file complaints to be for very cheap if I don't do my job correctly)

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 2 points 6 days ago (10 children)

Curious: how often in your field are people harassed out of work by politically motivated complaints?

Around here, restaurant owners are very vulnerable to that kind of harassment - they can literally be put out of business just by people complaining to the health department, with no real basis to the complaints. Its one thing that keeps restaurant owners out of politics.

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[–] xiwi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

In GDPR countries (among others) nobody is allowed to do something like this with face recognition because the law works for everybody.

Lmao, in france facial recognition is being rolled out all over and we got laws explicitly prohibiting the filming of cops (ofcourse, the only reasonable action to take against the documented brutality of the pigs /s)

[–] tschesky@lemm.ee 2 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I'm not from the U.S. either, so a lot of that is coming from a place of ignorance, so bear with me please. But the way I understand it, is that the website just lets you look up name and badge number - things that police officers (at least in most jurisdictions) are obliged to provide upon request, but often fail to do so in recent U.S. developments. So one could argue that this is more about access to information that should be available anyway, rather than doxxing people for the fun of it, right?

[–] 3laws@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

You don't want the name of the piece of shit that fuck us a traffic stop and shoots your neurodivergent teenager daughter in the face to stay anonymous; not you, or your community, nor anyone wants that.

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[–] dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago

A good time to ask this question after it's used for good and we have politicians in office who aren't against the will of the people, not before

[–] Bloomcole@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

The plebs and the regime never have the same rights, in any country
FR is definitely used in GDPR countries.
For police it's so- called 'tightly regulated'.
For private use forbidden but 'there are exeptions'

[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 2 points 6 days ago (8 children)

Based on trias politcal yes you do.

If your country is corrupt then yes the people with money have power. Not every country is corrupt enough for people to really buy into it.

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[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

(juries wouldn't be able to exist for most cases)

What does this mean?

Edit: read further down that you're in a country that doesn't guarantee jury trials so I'm guessing you're referring to some kind of criteria not being met to trigger a trial by jury

[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

In my opinion you should look at the law objectively, a group of people who aren't fully educated on the law and aren't trained in being objective will not form an objective opinion.

Juries would be fine to give advice to the judge on how the public sees it, but they shouldn't have a real impact on the outcome of the situation. That should be a question of executing the law.

We have no trial by jury in The Netherlands and the international court of law doesn't have a jury either. The just have 15 judges to decide the outcome.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah... As someone who has been on a jury, I have to disagree completely. Putting people's lives into the hands of one (most likely old, straight, white dude in the case of the US) single person is an awful idea. The concept of a trial by a jury of your peers is far from perfect, but it works relatively well.

For an example a single judge being responsible for ruining the lives of thousands of children as a result of outright quid pro quo, look into "cash for kids" scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 1 points 5 days ago

Who say it has to be one man, it doesn't have to be one person.

But as somebody who has studied a couple laws (tax laws, some general laws etc) I can tell you that there is so much going on that somebody who hasn´t studied about it shouldn´t have an impactfull stay in it.

In the article you linked had this in the second sentance:

In 2008, judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella were convicted of accepting money in return for imposing harsh adjudications on juveniles to increase occupancy at a private prison operated by PA Child Care.[2]

Yes, if corruption is rampant in your country than no it doesn't work, but that also means a jury can be bought. Probably harder though, so I guess you have a point. I know the US is a corrupt nation, but I always think of it not being a corrupt country. The absurd legal fees, getting paid for more than the actual damages among other things don´t really help to get a second opinion in terms of a lawsuit which everybody in at least the western world has a right to as far as I know.

In NL we do often have cases with only 1 judge, but for important cases we will have 3 judges.

[–] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago

Next we'll see all US cops wearing masks in their regular day to day activities, like in the Watchmen series.

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