[HN Gopher] Online, mug shots are forever - some states want to ...
___________________________________________________________________
Online, mug shots are forever - some states want to change that
Author : danso
Score : 106 points
Date : 2021-05-14 13:04 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.yahoo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.yahoo.com)
| Wistar wrote:
| Perhaps everyone should publish a mugshot portrait of themselves
| so that no one knows which are real and which aren't.
| xkeysc0re wrote:
| Fortunately enough, my own mug shot was taken offline when the
| local news site when bust. It used to be the only thing that came
| up when you searched me. This happened right at the beginning of
| my career so I was terrified of the albatross hanging over me.
| Well, then the pivot-to-video era came and lots of small
| newspapers and local sites got swallowed up by WickedLocal and
| the like. I don't think it hindered my career too much.
|
| For the record, I was found innocent. But that doesn't mean your
| mug shot gets taken down.
|
| Recently I tried to procure a copy of it for my own records (it's
| a pretty funny photo as I'm wearing a ridiculous outfit and have
| a shall we say altered expression) but it's quite a lot of
| paperwork for an individual to get it, at least in my state.
| CecilBDeMilles wrote:
| This simply reinforces the statement that once you're in the
| system that you're always in the system.
| matsemann wrote:
| Why are names and pictures published before one even know if the
| person is guilty? And even if found guilty, why does the media
| use so much personal information?
|
| In my country it's always anonymous in the media, unless it's a
| person the media deems as the public having an interest in
| knowing about (political figure or so).
| moshmosh wrote:
| I think the idea is that making charges & arrests public keeps
| the system transparent, and makes it harder for the government
| to disappear people or otherwise do crazy despotic stuff.
|
| In practice I'm not convinced it was net-beneficial before the
| Internet, and I'm almost certain it's not in an Internet-
| equipped world.
| _jal wrote:
| This is the reason. The US justice system is meant to operate
| in the open, to serve the interests of the public who
| finances it. Same reason it is generally very difficult to
| litigate under seal.
|
| Observations about the difference between theory and practice
| omitted.
| thatcat wrote:
| The justice system forbids individuals recording the judge
| but records and could publish every interaction you have
| with them. That is not operating in a system of openness
| and transparency.
| watwut wrote:
| That don't explain mug shots.
| seoaeu wrote:
| I think that being public about the "who is currently being
| imprisoned by the government?" question is still a net
| positive. No so sure about the rest
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I also think that in the pre-internet world the amount of
| effort to obtain such public information acted as an
| effective filter. You actively had to go looking for this
| information and that involved in-person visits to government
| buildings and filing paperwork. That gave average people a
| reasonable degree of cover.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| It's a dirty little, not so secret, shameful pastime of
| America. For the same reason that we love Dr. Phil, live pd, or
| judge Judy we love feeling better than stupid, ignorant,
| uneducated, abused, neglected, diseased, impoverished, drug
| addicted, poor people the narratives crafted to fit the
| mugshots and clips we see in the news or online.
|
| I highly recommend listening to the latest two parter from
| Behind the Bastards, about Dr. Phil.
|
| Part 1 https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-
| bastards-29236...
|
| Part 2 https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-
| bastards-29236...
|
| The whole darn podcast is great too. I'm not associated, or
| donating, nor do I even listen to the ads, I'm just a satisfied
| listener.
| jollybean wrote:
| I'm wary of the fact that mug shots are made and publicized
| before any facts, objectivity or legal scrutiny, yet they appear
| to make the person 'look guilty'. I suggest they shouldn't be
| public information until sentencing, and then only 'valid' or
| publishable while a person is incarcerated. I think the idea is
| supposed to be if you 'server your time' you get a chance to have
| a normal life again.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| If you think a mug shot makes someone look guilty, do you not
| believe someone is innocent until proven guilty?
|
| Perhaps that the real issue. People don't understand how the
| justice system works. People put too much blind faith in cops.
| paulpauper wrote:
| a lot of people plead guilty too
| pessimizer wrote:
| > If you think a mug shot makes someone look guilty, do you
| not believe someone is innocent until proven guilty?
|
| The US justice system, at least, officially does not believe
| that, or else pre-trial detention wouldn't be punitive. When
| jail starts looking like a college dorm, I'll be convinced
| otherwise.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It doesn't matter what you believe. A significant chunk of
| people will just assume guilt and repeat/propagate the
| information, whether through naivete or malice. Having a
| large number of people saying 'X is a criminal' based _solely
| on the existence of the mugshot_ is a problem.
|
| Some people do it because it fits a political agenda, other
| people are credulous fools who believe they can see evil by
| looking at the eyes in a photograph, and of course mugshots
| are like passport photographs in that they have unflattering
| direct lighting/straight on posture, subjects are discouraged
| from smiling etc.
| jollybean wrote:
| It's not so much the assumption of guilt as a kind of
| 'bias'.
|
| 'It doesn't make you good look good', or it 'kind of makes
| you look guilty'.
|
| I think most people recognize that it doesn't imply guilt,
| but it's a strong signal in that direction.
|
| A person who gets a mugshot, and is subsequently let off
| the hook ... doesn't really recover from the stain of bad
| PR.
|
| A mugshot could ruin a CEO's career for example, in law
| there is exoneration, but in populism there often isn't. Or
| not like that. They'd have to hire a PR firm to do a public
| reparation of their image.
|
| For those who are actually guilty of course it's less
| relevant.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Think the original idea for releasing this information was to
| prevent the police from secretly disappearing people, which has
| happened quite a bit around the world. The police know, if they
| take someone into custody, that it will be part of the public
| record for all to see.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Which is fine when it's just the police making that
| information available on a short-term, need-to-know basis.
| When you have third parties (like "mugshot sites")
| republishing that information in a more lasting and public
| form, it becomes a problem.
| [deleted]
| dfxm12 wrote:
| What are the forces at play here? People don't want to be
| embarrassed by their mugshot vs people don't want to be
| discriminated against because of a mugshot vs the transparency of
| who cops are arresting and why.
|
| I don't know if laws should care about someone being embarrassed.
| I'm kind of surprised about this anti-transparency rhetoric
| coming someone who started a Libertarian think tank (but maybe I
| shouldn't be).
|
| I can sympathize with those who think having their arrest record
| publicized will lead to discrimination, but I don't think hiding
| mugshots will have much of an effect on that. Plus, if that's an
| issue we want to solve, then make laws that actually target
| discrimination because of arrest record & laws that otherwise
| protect the rights of those accused of crimes.
|
| I think most importantly, arrests need to be publicly available.
| We have a right to know who the cops are arresting and why, lest
| people start disappearing or jailed for mysterious reasons (or
| for looking a certain way). In general, I think our government
| isn't nearly transparent enough...
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > I think most importantly, arrests need to be publicly
| available. We have a right to know who the cops are arresting
| and why
|
| That's a good point, but on the other side there is the (very
| important) presumption of innocence. If I'm arrested, but not
| convicted of any crime (or possibly not even charged), why
| should that be a public record that will haunt me forever?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The question is why/how is it haunting you? See my 2nd point.
|
| If our culture treats the accused poorly, that's not the
| fault of nor is it caused by public mugshots.
| itake wrote:
| How do you correct the problem of our culture treating the
| accused poorly?
|
| If you're arrested under false pretenses (just google
| search "cops planting drugs" to see countless videos), how
| do we prevent life-long impact of innocent people?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I suppose one step we can take is to not put so much
| blind faith in cops. They get arrests wrong. I do think
| politicians, cops and the media all have a role to play
| though.
| itake wrote:
| "we can take is to not put so much blind faith in cops."
|
| Unfortunately, we can't just tell everyone "stop trusting
| arrest reports" because that just isn't how the world
| works.
|
| The problem is companies will compare 2 equal candidates,
| but one with an arrest record. The one without the arrest
| will get the job.
|
| Do you have any other ideas?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| There are already laws that protect certain classes of
| individuals in situations like housing and employment.
| It's not hard to apply these laws to other classes.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Except... how do you enforce this? Afaik that's also a
| problem with the existing laws.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| It _is_ enabled by public mugshots though. You can ban
| public mugshots, but you can't ban "the culture treating
| the accused poorly".
| 1_person wrote:
| I think you actually have that backwards. You can't ban
| public mugshots and have a free and open society. If
| arrests can be secret then there is no executive or
| judicial oversight.
|
| But you can make charged and convicted statuses a
| protected class, and ban its consideration in any context
| as has been done for other protected classes. After all,
| if we believe that the process of justice rectifies
| wrongs, then the matter should be closed when the process
| has been completed. If we do not believe that the process
| of justice functionally rehabilitates and fairly
| rectifies, such that consideration of history beyond the
| closure of a matter is necessary, then what exactly is
| the aim of that process?
|
| We could also educate the public about the purpose of the
| justice system, moral complexity in the assignment of
| responsibility in the light of
| historical/social/environmental/economic factors,
| psychology of criminality and rehabilitation, and the
| frequency of successful rehabilitation and subsequent
| significant contribution.
|
| Pixels aren't the problem, the behavior of dehumanization
| is the problem.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| The way I see it, you can either pass a law "banning the
| pixels" or try to change human nature. Which will be
| easier and which one will address the issue sooner?
| 1_person wrote:
| Either way you're ignoring human nature. The other human
| nature is the nature of power to corrupt, ignored in
| reducing the transparency of the judicial and executive
| processes. I can't think of a single historical or
| contemporary example of government secrecy which has
| produced morally consistent outcomes. I do not think such
| things can exist without eventually corrupting the
| process they serve.
|
| As I said below in another thread, banning discrimination
| on the basis of judicial and criminal history would
| immediately and obviously "change human nature" because
| the practice of discrimination on the basis of these
| histories occurs openly as a best practice under standing
| precedent in almost every area of society.
|
| It's literally on application forms -- how can you NOT
| think that requiring "the question" to be absent from the
| form would change the conversation about this kind of
| discrimination?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| You can still have this information be publicly available
| without it being easily accessible on the internet.
| That's the key. I think we need to return to a system
| where this information is accessible on request, but not
| something that's easy to find online.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _but you can 't ban "the culture treating the accused
| poorly"_
|
| You can ban treating them illegally though. There's a
| difference between embarrassment and discrimination.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >If our culture treats the accused poorly, that's not the
| fault of nor is it caused by public mugshots.
|
| Not sure how that works. Another person taking action
| between a cause and effect does not remove the cause from
| being responsible for the effect. For example, if I file a
| false police report and someone is arrested, I can't claim
| it isn't my fault because the police should've done a
| better job checking the report before arresting. The police
| were part of the cause, but so was my false report.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| Can someone more clearly explain to me how the transparency
| laws actually improve transparency in practice? Why would a
| police department, who would act in a way malicious enough to
| disappear people, suddenly start adhering to the requirement
| of publishing a mugshot of a person they want to disappear?
| admax88q wrote:
| > Plus, if that's an issue we want to solve, then make laws
| that actually target discrimination because of arrest record.
|
| Do you honestly think such laws would be effective?
| 1_person wrote:
| Considering that the status quo is currently that literally
| asking the individual and querying the source of truth to
| confirm the history of an individual directly for the purpose
| of discrimination are ubiquitous practices... yes, I think
| such laws would be very effective in reducing discrimination
| on the basis of criminal and judicial history.
|
| If we have not even said that it is wrong, then it's going to
| happen. Saying that it is wrong and should stop happening is
| the first incremental step in reducing its rate of
| occurrence.
| jawzz wrote:
| These laws exist. You're not allowed to discriminate based
| on criminal or arrest record unless it's relevant to the
| job (e.g. someone applying to be a delivery driver with 3
| DUIs).
|
| The problem is that between two equally qualified
| candidates, if one has a record and the other is clean, it
| can be pretty easy to justify just throwing the first one
| out. And pretty hard to prove that that's why you were
| rejected.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I don't have such a defeatist attitude. I think it would
| contribute overall to lessening the stigma of being _accused_
| of a crime. Politicians, cops and the media all have a part
| to play in this, though.
| nradov wrote:
| "Ban the box" laws have proven effective in reducing
| employment discrimination in several states. These laws
| prohibit employers from asking job applicants for most types
| of jobs about prior arrests or convictions.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| That is an interesting point. One of the the reasons for the
| Florida Man meme is due to the state's sunshine laws, which
| makes nearly all government records and proceedings, those
| dealing with arrest, public. That leads to a lot of
| embarrassing stories about rednecks molesting alligators, but
| it also allowed for the uncovering of a massive Minority
| Report-tier scheme of police officers continually harassing
| citizens marked by an algorithm as a "potential future
| criminal"
|
| https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/p...
| scythe wrote:
| A mug shot does not provide publicly relevant information. It
| is very much the opposite: a direct invasion of an individual's
| privacy. I didn't consent to that picture being next to my
| name. Frankly, it's crazy that any mug shot is ever available
| on the Internet, unless it's on some kind of "wanted" list.
| agogdog wrote:
| You are vastly underestimating how judgemental people are. I
| know someone with a mugshot up for a non-violent drug use
| offense and she still struggles with it when background checks
| come up over a decade later.
|
| I agree that we need to be able to check this stuff to hold
| police accountable, but there's got to be a better way that
| doesn't involve public shaming.
| novok wrote:
| Mugshots are a form of punishment without being convicted of a
| crime. The government and police keep plenty of info private
| before court days, so it can make sense to keep this private
| too.
|
| I think the main reason why they are public is so the police
| cant just disappear someone when they were arrested for
| potentially political reasons, and their political supporters
| can start responding when it happens, same with why court cases
| are publicly accessible.
| pintxo wrote:
| I don't understand the mechanics of this, making arrests
| public prevents secret detention? Do we expect a police force
| who would like to illegally arrest people would care about
| adhering to the administrative process of publishing such
| arrests?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Yeah, I'll grant it's worth considering not making them
| public until a court date. There are people arguing many
| different things, including barring the release of the photos
| to the public totally.
| errantspark wrote:
| I wonder in the discussions surrounding these sorts of things
| (Right to be Forgotten, etc) if the issue isn't that there should
| be a right to be forgotten but rather that culturally we should
| be far far more tolerant of people fucking up. It feels like the
| perception of how much the average member of society transgresses
| its rules is totally out of sync with reality, though this may be
| by design to create space for exploitation.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| A problem with mugshot sites is that they often detail the
| charges, and sometimes the charges just aren't something people
| are going to be tolerant of.
|
| For example, I know a young man who traded nude photos on his
| phone with a girlfriend who was just below the age of consent,
| got caught, and was arrested and charged with "sexual
| exploitation of a minor". Once in court, those charges were
| easily plea-bargained away, but the mugshot and charges will
| probably be findable on the web for years and years, and
| changing the public's kneejerk reaction of disgust and hatred
| at those charges (after all, the actual context isn't there for
| them to read) isn't something that I would be optimistic about.
| deftnerd wrote:
| One of the other issues that your comment shines a light on
| is that police often book someone under multiple charges. A
| safe one that the person is likely to be able to be convicted
| on, and multiple charges that probably don't apply to the
| situation.
|
| This is common because it gives prosecutors the power to
| "offer" to drop the higher charges in exchange for accepting
| a plea bargain to the lower, and likely more appropriate,
| charges.
|
| The result of this is that booking information, with the
| photos, from a drunken bar fight might show the person was
| charged with assault with a deadly weapon when the final
| charge will end up being something like disorderly conduct.
| duskwuff wrote:
| If anything, that feels like an argument in favor of
| restricting what can be published about arrests and unproven
| charges in general -- not just the mugshots.
| CecilBDeMilles wrote:
| I never thought of it this way before. These mugshot landing
| pages don't exactly have a lot of subtlety to the outcome
| about the charges.
| mLuby wrote:
| we should be far far more tolerant of people fucking up.
|
| Absolutely. And the Law is not perfect, not perfectly applied,
| nor unchanging.
|
| I'd say we can demonstrate our collective tolerance through
| efforts like the right to be forgotten and disallowing criminal
| record questions. It feels like the
| perception of how much the average member of society
| transgresses its rules is totally out of sync with reality.
|
| Are you talking about everybody speeding, or something else?
| rhacker wrote:
| Well in general there are 3 strike laws... I mean it seems
| reasonable that people that break rules 3 times need to be
| separated off from the people not doing that.
| jsight wrote:
| Well, my issue is that these are issued on arrest because that
| news feed is considered newsworthy. Their later conviction or
| lack thereof often doesn't gather nearly as much press.
|
| It can be pretty horrible for a person when a Google search
| primarily finds articles, along with a mugshot, about a crime
| that they didn't commit.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > culturally we should
|
| The problem with that is that such a "should" doesn't change
| the "are", and that it's unlikely to change any time soon. So
| we need to acknowledge reality and try to find a fix that works
| within that reality.
| infogulch wrote:
| Agree that we should aim to fix problems that have possible
| real-world solutions today. I think we should also consider
| how to fix the underlying causes of those problems. These
| aren't really 'either/or' but 'both', though they are clearly
| at different stages of the solutioning process and need
| different kinds and quantities of resources.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The reality is that one is innocent until proven guilty. I'm
| not interested in weakening this fundamental right to
| accommodate people who are uncomfortable admitting the
| fallibility of the police or our justice system.
|
| That people think if the cops arrest you, you're no longer
| innocent is the way bigger issue here.
| powersnail wrote:
| > The reality is that one is innocent until proven guilty.
|
| The *principle* is that one is innocent until proven
| guilty.
|
| The reality is that not every person adheres to that
| principle in every situation when it comes their own
| internal judgement of people.
|
| > I'm not interested in weakening this fundamental right to
| accommodate people who are uncomfortable admitting the
| fallibility of the police or our justice system.
|
| The problem is that they aren't asking you to accommodate
| them. They already are there, perfectly accommodated, in
| the state of prematurely judging people's innocence.
|
| The reality is that any policy has to work by improving
| this not ideal situation.
| infogulch wrote:
| Perhaps the problem is that most people are left unexposed
| to the reality of ridiculous arrest charges.
|
| A fight-fire-with-fire strategy might be that the
| government should aim to arrest all citizens at least once
| before age 25 and charge them with something ridiculous
| before dropping the charges. Ok after thinking about it for
| two seconds that may be a very stupid idea, but still...
| akomtu wrote:
| I'm sure most males at the age of 20 can be sent to
| prison for dating underage girls (17.5 years old is
| underage). All you need is to pull them over for
| speeding, start an argument about something, arrest them
| for arguing with police, get their phone searched and
| find evidence in their whatsapp. Bro, in just one year
| we'll have 25 millions in prisons making big money for
| the private prison industry.
| errantspark wrote:
| Absolutely agree with this, I'm not saying we shouldn't have
| a right to be forgotten, it seems like an easy kludge to
| implement right now. I'm just musing.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| >we should be far far more tolerant of people fucking up
|
| Absolutely. Even politicians.
|
| Perhaps that will happen over time given the ever-increasing
| opportunities for record keeping inherent in databases, the
| internet, and ubiquitous surveillance devices in everybody's
| back pocket.
|
| But, as that ain't happening anytime soon, maybe this is mostly
| a lesson in the importance of financial freedom and self-
| employment. If your future includes FAANGs or the .gov, or any
| other sizable employer, hewing to the hivemind becomes ever
| more important.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I wonder in the discussions surrounding these sorts of things
| (Right to be Forgotten, etc) if the issue isn't that there
| should be a right to be forgotten but rather that culturally we
| should be far far more tolerant of people fucking up. It feels
| like the perception of how much the average member of society
| transgresses its rules is totally out of sync with reality,
| though this may be by design to create space for exploitation.
|
| That's "perfect being the enemy of the good" logic. Your
| solution might be more ideal in some sense, but it's also not
| realistic to implement. It's not too much different than saying
| the real issue is that we have crime in the first place. After
| all, if we didn't have crime, we wouldn't have police nor
| mugshots being albatrosses for some people.
| whatshisface wrote:
| You can change the law, but there's no plausible path towards
| making people less judgemental. It's like saying, "speed limits
| are misguided, what we really need is a culture of safe
| driving."
| cortesoft wrote:
| There are plausible paths to changing behavior and morality.
| Prohibition was a failure, but we have had great success
| reducing the number of nicotine users over the years through
| public health campaigns.
| jrockway wrote:
| I think the speed limit thing is actually something that
| traffic engineers think about. You can design roads such that
| people drive a certain speed. Think about how uncomfortable
| you'd be driving down a narrow windy road at 60mph, versus
| the same speed on a multi-lane divided highway. If you want
| people to drive 20mph, make it hard to navigate at 30mph.
|
| There is probably an art to this, and it's not as easy in
| practice as the popular books I've read on it claim. My
| neighborhood in Brooklyn is part of the "neighborhood slow
| zones" project. That means they put a speed bump midway down
| the street, which is a popular way to bypass some traffic
| lights on the way to the BQE. People drive 90 miles an hour
| right up until the speed bump, slam on the brakes, and then
| accelerate back up to maximum cruising speed. It doesn't
| really serve much purpose. (Meanwhile, if you got rid of the
| curb, and people's lawn furniture / outdoor dining started
| impinging on available space, it would be impossible to drive
| more than 5mph. But, there's no political will to block the
| street like that -- what if a fire truck got stuck and people
| died in a fire! So it will never ever happen.)
|
| But, like tolerance, it's something we can work on if we
| choose to.
| ksdale wrote:
| I think something like gay rights provides a great example of
| hundreds of millions of people becoming drastically less
| judgmental over just a few decades. Of course it involves
| changes in the law as well, but massive cultural shifts do
| happen!
| laurent92 wrote:
| We shouldn't describe the past as extremely one thing.
| Because when I discovered there was a gay street and plenty
| of gay clubs in Berlin up to 1934, I started to entirely
| distrust a lot of things I had been taught about the past.
| The wedge got driven even further when I learnt Archimedes
| didn't say Eureka, Galileo didn't say "E pur se mueve!" to
| the pope (so... was he ever imprisoned? did Christians even
| question the round earth?) and the ILO 1930 treaty against
| slavery included all humans... except men. Until 1957.
| Which quite relativizes the narrative about women's
| suffrage.
|
| It's dangerous to transform History into storytelling for
| one cause, because it makes people distrust it profoundly.
| ksdale wrote:
| Yeah for sure, that's not to say it was always a certain
| way or that it's an inevitable march towards anything,
| just that massive shifts in culture do happen (and I
| think as your comment illustrates, cultures changes much
| faster than we think!).
|
| We tend to think it's easier to change the law than to
| change how people feel, and that's not always true.
| akudha wrote:
| It is both. Speed limits work because majority of the people
| respect them. Cops can't control the entire population, if
| majority choose to misbehave. This is what it feels like
| online. People seem to relish in posting other's misfortune,
| mistakes etc with little consequences. They do things online
| that they wouldn't dare to do in real life.
|
| If the attitude doesn't change, no amount of laws would help
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >It is both. Speed limits work because majority of the
| people respect them. Cops can't control the entire
| population, if majority choose to misbehave. This is what
| it feels like online.
|
| Have you never driven on an interstate highway outside of
| rush hour?
|
| People go the speeds they deem reasonable for the
| conditions. Sometimes this is in the ballpark of the speed
| limit. In many situations it is much faster. People don't
| follow unenforceable rules unless they agree with them.
|
| If "the majority are misbehaving" the definition of
| "misbehaving' needs to be adjusted.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Good idea.
|
| I'd also like to see a law making it criminal for a site to post
| such information without also obviously posting that charges are
| dropped. You have one week to either take it down entirely or
| clearly mark it as dropped. If neither is done the post will be
| considered extortion.
|
| A very minor burden on news sites that have to update old
| articles. A big burden on the extortionist websites. And by
| making it a criminal matter it doesn't matter if the site is
| hosted offshore.
| nradov wrote:
| Such a law probably wouldn't be Constitutional. Speech can't be
| compelled.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Can't it? Apparently the US government can compel you to act
| as though your website's records haven't been seized - which
| includes publishing your weekly "our records haven't been
| seized" notice.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I 'd also like to see a law making it criminal for a site to
| post such information without also obviously posting that
| charges are dropped. You have one week to either take it down
| entirely or clearly mark it as dropped. If neither is done the
| post will be considered extortion._
|
| Not only should it be criminal, but people should also be able
| to file civil suits for damages against businesses that are
| willing to expend resources to dig up and publish criminal
| charges and arrest records, but refuse to expend any resources
| to follow up on their published claims.
|
| It's one thing when tabloids parade around dirt on public
| figures, it's another thing entirely when the same is done to
| private individuals.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| I realize this may be a cynical take, but what if the goal is to
| prevent us from recording the cops?
|
| Today the law is a nice friendly "dont put mugshots on the
| internet" and within a few years the actual practice of the law
| is you can no longer film a cop abusing his power because "perp
| hasnt been convicted, put your phone away"
|
| I guess I have absolutely no trust. Any law our government passes
| is just part of long con to take away our liberties.
|
| I realize this is a pessimistic hot take on what appears at face
| to be a good law.
| andrewla wrote:
| I like that the proposed bills here are not attempts to force
| sites to remove mug shots (which seems like a losing battle) but
| instead just resists posting mug shots at all, which seems like
| something that police departments have complete control over.
|
| Unless it serves a legitimate law enforcement end, either as part
| of a punishment for being convicted of a crime or to aid the
| public in the search for a fugitive, it should simply not ever be
| released to the public in any form. And frankly the former seems
| inhumane for all but the most serious crimes.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _resists posting mug shots at all, which seems like something
| that police departments have complete control over_
|
| Note that these laws originated from a civil rights
| perspective. Requiring the publication of arrests makes it
| harder for the police to disappear people.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is nonsensical; if they're not following the law they
| will simply ... not publish the mugshots.
|
| Besides, the police have no need to "disappear" people when
| they have guns and an almost impossible to challenge right to
| fire indiscriminately into dwellings (Breonna Taylor).
| gnull wrote:
| Some procedures are harder to violate without getting
| caught than others.
|
| Not all cops will cooperate with the corrupt ones. And if
| some of them want you to disappear, they will need to hide
| it from the others; procedures are intended to make this
| harder.
| pmcollins wrote:
| why not give the suspect a choice? would you prefer your
| mugshot be published online, google-able for years, or would
| you rather not, and risk getting 'disappeared' by your local
| police dept without a trace. i know which one i'd choose.
| cyberbanjo wrote:
| What about a mugshot protects you?
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-man-choked-smiling-
| mugshot/s...
| a1369209993 wrote:
| That's actually worse than either option - if the police
| decide to disappeared you they can now claim you opted out,
| while if they prefer to ruin you reputation, they can
| subtly (or not so subtly, if they expect to get away with
| that) pressure you to opt in.
| CecilBDeMilles wrote:
| Scariest f** to even have to talk like this.
| gnull wrote:
| How do you verify that the convict made the choice, and
| that they weren't forced to or tortured?
|
| This is a good reason to make it mandatory to publish
| mugshots.
|
| You can make mugshots visible only to some trusted list of
| human right activist organizations. This is kind of a
| compromise between convict's safety and privacy.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| That would provide no protection against being disappeared,
| and potentially make things more dangerous for people in
| that situation.
|
| Assume police do disappear people. Opting for your record
| to be public would show police that you're willing to cause
| problems for them, making the prospect of getting rid of
| you more appealing. Further, if some associate of yours
| goes to find out what has happened to you, they can just
| lie and say you opted for a private record and send the
| person away.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| First, I don't see a reason why just a name would not be good
| enough as opposed to the mug shot itself.
|
| Second, it seems that this same justification could be used
| to justify a lot of privacy breakdowns. For example:
|
| Question: "Why are the suspects naked in the mugshots?"
|
| Answer: "This is actually a civil rights thing to show that
| they were not beaten up during their arrest. Before, police
| would hit suspects where their clothes would cover the
| injuries, but with naked mug shots published on the Internet,
| they can't do that any more."
| cabaalis wrote:
| > Requiring the publication of arrests makes it harder for
| the police to disappear people.
|
| I see this so much in our society. A reaction to a "bad"
| practice which was actually invented to combat another "bad"
| practice. It leads me to believe there is just no way to
| contractualize human behavior over a sufficiently long period
| of time.
| delecti wrote:
| I think it's just that some solutions are worse than their
| problems, and it's not always possible to know which are
| which beforehand.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I like that the proposed bills here are not attempts to force
| sites to remove mug shots (which seems like a losing battle)
| but instead just resists posting mug shots at all, which seems
| like something that police departments have complete control
| over.
|
| I suppose they could also release future mug shots with a
| license that the images can't be distributed past such-and-such
| a date.
| akomtu wrote:
| That would be a toothless law: some noname image board hosted
| in Somalia won't bother to respect US laws. Even US based
| firms won't care much because who's going to enforce the law?
| DAs on their own initiative? People on the mugshots?
| aspaceman wrote:
| My local police department posts mugshots on their Twitter,
| sends copies to the local newspaper, and types up a detailed
| report for the local radio station for _every_ _single_
| _interaction_.
|
| "John Doe was pulled over by X police Saturday afternoon for a
| speeding violation. Jane Y was ..."
|
| And every Sunday, the local station plays these. So you know
| every single person who was pulled over. The vehicle they
| drive. Etc. Small towns are a special sort of hell.
|
| You get pulled over and your grandma is on your case about it.
| What's really sad is you get used to hearing "resisting a
| police officer" as their supposed reason for getting brought in
| - you'll get one a month usually.
| swiley wrote:
| It will end up on the feed the court publishes, so it's not
| like it isn't public information.
|
| The police could chill out though and not make a bad
| situation worse.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It will end up on the feed the court publishes, so it's
| not like it isn't public information.
|
| Interactions that don't result in charges will not. (That
| doesn't mean some of it, at least, is not still technically
| public information that would be disclosable in response to
| a sunshine request, but there is a difference between that
| and publicly-advertised information.)
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| There's a difference between the information simply being
| "public" and a social media account blasting out people's
| mugshots on Twitter.
| andrewla wrote:
| I think, importantly, that there is no difference. Once
| the information is out there, it's out there. You can
| attempt to have a "right to be forgotten" but that's just
| relying on people to voluntarily comply. If I have a jpeg
| no force in the world can make me delete it if I want to
| preserve it.
|
| Public "but only available if you go to city hall" is at
| least a little more restrictive until Zillow sends out
| people to start scanning public documents so they can
| build up their data.
|
| Not public is really the best way to go; and here it
| sounds like the town has decided that part of the
| punishment for minor civil infractions is to be put in
| stocks in the town square, which might once have been
| enough to shame people into not stealing horses, but now
| carries a stigma that could last for your entire life.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| This isn't a "small town" thing. This is a "rich enough to
| afford a police department bigger than they need so the
| police can justify spending the man hours on BS" town thing.
| It happens in plenty of medium sized towns and small cities.
|
| If the cops were stretched thin busting meth labs or dealing
| with Real Crime(TM) they wouldn't be doing that.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| It's probably office staff, not the cops, who have the
| Twitter account.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| And who's budget pays the office staff?
|
| It's all under the same municipal umbrella at the end of
| the day. You can't get away with (at least not easily and
| not for a long period of time) wasting man-hours ($$$) on
| stuff that has no positive impact toward whatever metrics
| you are evaluated against (crime stats in the case of the
| cops) when resources are tight.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > You can't get away with (at least not easily and not
| for a long period of time) wasting man-hours ($$$) on
| stuff that has no positive impact toward whatever metrics
| you are evaluated against (crime stats in the case of the
| cops) when resources are tight.
|
| Most police departments are not really evaluated on crime
| stats, they are evaluated against the political
| satisfaction of the locally politically powerful (which
| tend to be the local economic elites.)
|
| _Who_ is hurt by crime (and who gets away with it) is
| usually more important than the _level_ of crime.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Yeah. I considered adding a few sentences to the tune of
| "the politicians won't stick their necks out covering
| this waste unless they think there's political gain for
| them so this is really a reflection of the priorities of
| the people in the town" but felt that would drag things
| toward the direction of nit picking over what the people
| actually want.
|
| That said, at the small town level having less crime than
| the next town over is generally how you please everyone
| so there's a pretty good overlap between what the powers
| that be want the cops to deliver and "less crime".
|
| Police performance is kind of a malleable and hard to pin
| down thing.
| simfree wrote:
| You don't have to have a badge to investigate crime.
| These staff hours are not being effectively allocated.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > for _every_ _single_ _interaction_.
|
| I bet not, and that there is considerable selectivity (both
| based on legal mandates and police discretion) as to which
| interactions are reported and which facts about them are
| reported. Reporting a lot, however, is a good way of creating
| the _impression_ that everything is being reported.
| m463 wrote:
| Yes, a simple traffic stop will not lead to a mugshot.
|
| A severe driving incident and an impounded car might.
|
| As to just reporting incidents, I would imagine reporting
| non-convictions might be illegal. (though the people
| looking for say minority harassment might love the public
| data)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >A severe driving incident and an impounded car might.
|
| E.g. giving the cop attitude after being pulled over for
| the crime of being the only one around to pull over at
| 1am.
| sprite wrote:
| That's crazy.
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