Social Media a Threat To Undercover Cops 252
angry tapir writes "Facebook has proven to be one of the biggest dangers in keeping undercover police officers safe, due to applications such as facial recognition and photo tagging, according to an adjunct professor at ANU and Charles Sturt University. Mick Keelty, a former Australian Federal Police commissioner, told the audience at Security 2011 in Sydney that because of the convergence of a number of technologies undercover policing may be 'impossible' in the future."
Here's an idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Here's an idea. (Score:5, Funny)
Don't have a public profile and don't go out with friends and have them publicly tag your photos. Just an idea.
But that takes actual communication with your friends, something social networking replaced.
Nowadays it's not hip to have common sense, basic reasoning skills or actually interact with friends any further than surface banter aimed to make you look cool to nobodies.
Also, never be photographed. (Score:2)
As in, never during your lifetime. You see a camera - duck, turn around, and run in the opposite direction.
You should make two whole steps before you run into another camera, if you're in an urban area.
Cause, you know... I can go and tag both Jesus, Elvis AND Mohammed on the photo of an empty wall - regardless if they have a Facebook account or not.
As for face recognition bit - the idea would be that you take a photo of a person, open an account with it and just let Facebook's face-recognizing algorithms do
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That leaves people with facial reconstruction then. If the situation is serious enough, that would be warranted, and solves the problem..
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Nah. Just grow and dye your hair. Grow a mustache and beard. Get coloured contacts. Fake a limp. Wear a hat and something very noticeable in another place (a red chest pocket kerchief).
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Here's a better idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't have secret police in the first place. "Undercover" cops have no place in a free society. Only police states have or need secret police. If social media makes the secret police impossible, GOOD!
As to the cop's safety, being a cop is nowhere near the top ten list of dangerous jobs. A taxi driver or construction worker is in far more danger than a cop.
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Criminal organizations with web-of-trust style group membership?
Well, if they're stupid enough to be on facebook, I don't think infiltration will be very necessary.
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It's not the "organization" it's the girlfriends that get together and social all day. They tag you in some party pics... Then 6 months later a girl in a different case tags you... Facebook "you might be friends with" does the rest and the boyfriend looking over her shoulder connects the dots...
Next up concrete shoes!
Re:Here's a better idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you have the apparatus to infiltrate criminal organizations, you have the apparatus to infiltrate political organizations too [guardian.co.uk].
You CAN do a lot to criminal organizations without infiltration. Infiltration has a high cost, in the form of increased paranoia, tribality and possibly brutality in the infiltrated groups. This worsens crime, and lessens defection.
Also, infiltration has a cost in the other direction - what it does to police departments and infiltrators themselves. When the police get used to betraying people's trust as part of their job, they start doing that in other ways, too. Adopting such means really is a slippery slope.
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If you have the apparatus to infiltrate criminal organizations, you have the apparatus to infiltrate political organizations too [guardian.co.uk].
If you have a hammer, you have an apparatus to bash someone's brains in. We don't ban hammers, we prosecute people who use or try to use them to bash someone's brains in.
I think anyone sensible would agree that infiltrating a nonviolent political organization is a bad thing and shouldn't happen. We should have laws against that and those laws should have teeth. There should be oversight and review to prevent abuse as much as possible and to expose it when it happens.
Re:Here's a better idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone sensible would realize that we can't trust the police to act sensibly. Police regularly shoot civilians in cold blood, and get paid vacation for it. Look how well police oversight works in practice and rethink your post.
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Then you must live in a very safe area. Unfortunately, slashdot skews upper class and upper middle class white suburban; those types have no problem railing against the police because they rarely need their services.
Re:Here's a better idea. (Score:4, Informative)
Poor people tend to be more afraid of the police than anybody else. I don't know where you get your information, but "upper middle class white suburban" people are the most likely to support the police. Most people see any interaction with a police officer as a cause for concern, and this fear is based on previous interactions. The only upper middle class white suburban-ites that fear police are kids who are out getting into trouble. All poor people need fear them every day. In a lot of ways, police consider poverty as probable cause, and in any case, they know they can hassle poor people without fear of being sued, especially if they are illegal immigrants.
Re:Here's a better idea. (Score:4, Informative)
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That's just it though, with facial recognition, tagging doesn't really matter. They can identify who your friends are, make a quick call and find out who you really are. Are all of your friends going to know not to mention that you are a cop when someone calls up saying they are your buddy from the precinct?
Its UBIK now. GL with that. (Score:2)
Better just say, don't have friends. Also don't have family either.
I don't think most cops are allowed to have a facebook account, let alone a undercover cop. I'm pretty sure police agencies have a few policies about that.
I know a buddy of mine went to RCMP college and he had to get rid of his account.
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weirdly enough I just noticed the linguistic root connection of police, policies... and just now likely polis. That's odd of me.
Re:Here's an idea. (Score:5, Informative)
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The thing about facebook is that what they do is sell identities. They sell information about you to people who can make money off that information. As such they want to gather as much information as possible and give you as little choice in the matter as they possibly can. It's wrong. But until companies get their noses rubbed in it they won't stop. They have the most hidden system they can legally get away
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If an undercover cop gets killed though it wouldn't be hard to sue facebook for wrongful death.
No, it wouldn't be hard. It would be impossible.
RTFA: "All respondents aged 26 years or younger had uploaded photos of themselves onto the internet." No one to blame except themselves .
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It's the Napster defence?
No idea why you would think that. People are uploading their OWN photos. There is no illegality by any party.
Re:Here's an idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
I would be asking to see the facebook profile of anyone trying to get into the group and if they don't have one or their profile only goes back a few months I would be extremely suspicious.
The police don't just need the ability to stop facial recognition, they need to be allowed to craft entire profiles, with back dated statuses, relationships which can withstand superficial checking etc.
You break the cover of spy by catching the little lies, and facebook gives you a lot of small pieces of information which must all tie to together to avoid suspicion.
Re:Here's an idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
Old hacker's law dictates that any backdoor the police may have to any system will be abused, not only by the police but also by people who are smarter than the average cop who has to use the backdoor.
In other words, if you offer this service to the police, it will soon be abused by people who craft identities for other, even worse, purposes.
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While that is certainly true..
Re:Here's an idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
I would be asking to see the facebook profile of anyone trying to get into the group and if they don't have one or their profile only goes back a few months I would be extremely suspicious.
So you'd only recruit idiots who have a Facebook profile - smart move for a clandestine organisation!
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Looks like y'all followed our example [wikipedia.org] real well
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here in the UK the police seem to spend a lot of time infiltrating such organisations and acting as agent provocateurs from within
Same thing here in the US. Guess that apple didn't fall far from the tree, after all.
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But then you are excluding:
1. Environmental Activists who hate technology and figure it is destroying the planet, and don't want to contribute to it with something so frivolous as a Facebook profile.
2. Environmental Activists who are completely paranoid, ala Jeffrey Goines in 12 Monkeys, and don't have a Facebook profile for that reason.
These are two very dedicated groups... can you really afford to exclude them?
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We've been trying to get them to chage the law [projectcensored.org] for 40 years. Without victimless activities being illegal you don't need secret police.
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Well, a German court (the Bundesverfassungsgericht, no less) recently ruled that alcohol (unlike, say, MJ) isn't consumed for its intoxicating quality, and hence alcohol is legal and MJ illegal.
I pondered this in the presence of ten beers yesterday and, yes, they're right. People sure do it for the great feeling the next day.
Don't look for sensibility in laws concerning drugs, sex or religion. It wastes your time and doesn't accomplish anything. Instead, get a good blowjob from a girl in a nun outfit while
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How did I miss that ruling? Do you have a link? A quick google search only turned up a ruling regarding a prohibition on alcohol in Baden-Württenberg during the night and another ruling regarding the legality of alcohol testing ordered by the police.
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I also found this article: http://everything2.com/title/The+Cannabis+Decision+%2528German+Federal+Constitutional+Court%2529 [everything2.com]
... describing a 2003 decision overturning a lower court's ruling that the punishment for marijuana possession was disproportionately harsh compared to the punishment for alcohol abuse. No mention of the user's motives for consumption, BUT it did say that the states are not required to prosecute for possession of small amounts, and it was up to the states to decide how much constitute
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Victimless crimes are the only crimes that need undercover cops? Where does that logic come from? So the police don't need to infiltrate the Mafia or terrorist groups?
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"What is the process of becoming an undercover cop?"
Instructor: Welcome do the undercover test. Did you ever have a Facebook account?
cop: Yes.
Instructor: Next!
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Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if the Amish start getting recruitment drives for this sort of work.
The problem with that is that Amish teens are encouraged (well, not quite, but pretty close to) to go out and explore the world of the "English" before they join the Church. I would not be surprised if the percentage of Amish youth with Facebook profiles is even higher than that of the general public.
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So, you've completely skipped over the obvious point and made an unfounded supposition.
The Amish are Mennonite which one of the founding tenants is non-resistance. It's like pacifism, except less militant. These days the tenants of mennonism are bent and broken six ways to sunday, but the Amish as a sect are extremely devout and are more likely to hold to them than modern mainstream Mennonites.
As a general rule Mennonites will not own, touch, or allow weaponry into their home that has no legitimate peaceful
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As a born, raised and practicing Mennonite, I am quite familiar with the tenets of the Mennonite Church (and its current shortcomings in living up to those
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no reckless social interaction? yes.
Being a drunken idiot and having friend that think every moment of their life must be on the internet? that's not social interaction. I know plenty of people that go out and have a lot of social interaction and do NOT get their face plastered all over the internet.
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What about the times when the criminals the undercover cop is trying to be buddies with, ask him to friend them on facebook? It's no kiss of death, but not having a facebook page would make them at least think a little harder about the cop's identity. Making up a fake facebook profile be a little difficult since sooner or later it'll have to tie into real people rather than just spam accounts.
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No social interaction whatsoever, then..
Not if you're an undercover police officer, no. Or a spy. Or basically anybody where privacy is important to your wellbeing.
Re:Here's an idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
If "social interaction" means "Facebook", then maybe not.
OTOH people managed to interact socially before Facebook. Weird but true.
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What if the criminals bribe a Facebook employee to acquire a copy of the database, or even just get a list of all the people on the list, etc? It's safer just to not have the profile at all if you are going to do serious undercover work.
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Yes, but who thinks of that when they're 14? Not sure if Facebook can match up a picture of a 25 year old to their 14-year-old self though.
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... yet.
Re:Here's an idea. (Score:4, Informative)
You needn't be part of Facebook to suddenly be profiled. All you need is a friend who's insensitive enough to tag you on their photo gallery.
Re:Here's an idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Here's an idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
The law against facial recognition is a nice idea that will never happen for one simple reason, it's potentially more useful to the authorities than the problems it creates.
That just means that the law will make an exception for cops, just like every other law. Like those laws that let cops film whoever they please (if you aren't doing anything wrong...), but if you film a cop, they get to rough you up, drop your camera a few times then accidentally run it over with a squad car.
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Social interaction is not a problem, but a requirement for the officer is to not have had a facebook login, ever.
It doesn't matter if he has. If any friends or family members have and have tagged photos of him, he is still in trouble.
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Does it even matter if the officer has a Facebook login? I've never had one but there are pics of me on Facebook tagged with my real name. From that point there's nothing technical keeping Facebook from auto-tagging pics of me wherever I appear on Facebook. It could see my face again and apply the same label people have applied to that face in the past.
I was worried about this happening from around 2005, the technology's here now...
Sample Bias (Score:3)
The percentage of criminals who get caught who are "ragingly stupid" is likely higher than in the general criminal population. You just haven't heard about the smart ones. You know; the ones who would do diligent background checks, because they are careful and keep some idiots around to take the fall when things don't work out.
The more you invade our privacy (Score:3)
The less you have in return. Especially for the government, it seems.
Pretty soon, the people you track will know where all of you are, and then it's their game, not yours.
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but Facebook works for them too! (Score:2)
and their image sources will include surveillance cams
so social active criminals will face a tough time.
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It cuts both ways... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Best news I've heard all year... (Score:4, Insightful)
Mis-Tag, False ID (Score:5, Interesting)
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You're trying to poison the well, which is an effective answer to datamining but given the size of Facebook's userbase you're going to need homeopathy for it to be effective.
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Spread it out among many people working together. Join Friends of Privacy [botonomy.com]. :-)
Image processing keeps getting cheaper (Score:2)
I note that these days you can just get a library to do stuff like find elements of a face... it's only a matter of time before recognizing cops from biometrics is feasible. ID them with a webcam at the door. Get someone to grab some photos of the photos of graduating classes for data to stock it with, should be easy since future cops are edumacated at our finest public institutions. Er, I mean, our crappy community colleges.
Wrestling Masks ! (Score:2)
I note that these days you can just get a library to do stuff like find elements of a face... it's only a matter of time before recognizing cops from biometrics is feasible.
Or, it's only a matter of time until wearing "Lucha Libre [wikipedia.org]"-style masks on all social occasions, because everybody is just fed up of being publicly outed for anything silly they've done, lose jobs because of party-behaviours while on week-end etc.
That or "programmable tatoo" and/or plastic surgery becoming suddenly infinitely more affordable.
7 years into a known criminal gang???? (Score:3)
7 years into a known criminal gang? what the fuck kind of policing is this, assist & switch? they would have to know that it's a criminal gang to have ethical reasoning for infiltrating - and in that case they certainly wouldn't have good reasons to let it keep going on for seven friggin' years. that's not infiltration, that's living a lifestyle - that's being fabric of the criminal gang, that's giving motivation to the criminal gang if you hang around with them for seven frigging years while they don't get busted, so they're having a part in spurring the crime they're supposed to prevent while messing with peoples lives.
because, suppose that they don't even bust them. they made an artificial, constructed impact on the people they interacted with and that's messed up, peoples political etc motives depend on the people they know so government invented shill persons shouldn't be on the list unless you want to copy STASI.
""If you have someone in the service who is trying to remain anonymous for whatever reason, it is still possible through other relationships to find them," Keelty said. " no shit, it always was. and anonymous isn't the right word here, FAKE person is the right word. but this issue is just highlighting issues that existed in their covert police operations long before this - and that they seemed to prefer guys who never appeared in a yearbook. actually they could fix this by hiring immigrants to police their kids, as they want people who had been invisible and never appeared anywhere.
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7 years into a known criminal gang?
Spying and espionage is a long game. People get the best information by building trust. If the cops can get 1 or 2 moles into every major criminal group in the world they can blow the whistle when any single one of those groups decides it's time to commit a major crime. Small crimes like drug dealing and minor intra-gang warfare are an easy pill to swallow when law-abiding citizens safety is maintained.
what the fuck kind of policing is this, assist & switch?
A mole in The Taliban / Al Qaeda in 1999-2001 would have been a true blessing. You don't get there by
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Gangs typically have membership hierarchies in place that are highly dependent on length of service. New members of the gang won't have anything to do with higher levels until they prove themselves through both time and criminal accomplishments. These measures make it near impossible for the gang to be infiltrated by police. The reason is that the police have to justify expenses and salaries beyond 10 years - with the risk of achieving nothing as a result. As if that wasn't hard enough - undercover officers
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Re:Here's a novel idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
you're missing the point, they can't even associate themselfs with OTHER people using facebook or social media, because if they appear on some wedding photos etc for some family, you know that there's an association there. basically the same sort of stuff that would have gotten them busted before if the bad guys would have hired a private eye to do some digging.
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you're missing the point, they can't even associate themselfs with OTHER people using facebook or social media, because if they appear on some wedding photos etc for some family, you know that there's an association there. basically the same sort of stuff that would have gotten them busted before if the bad guys would have hired a private eye to do some digging.
In other words, the risk has always been there, and therefore this entire story and hype is pure and utter bullshit.
Facebook hasn't changed a damn thing with regards to undercover officers being exposed, save for making it cheaper to expose them. That's about it. If a criminal is hell-bent on doing harm to an undercover officer, they're going to spend money and effort anyway, just as they have had to do in the past. Facebook doesn't change that hardly at all.
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Most problems in life are economic, and criminals are not super-men who have infinite resources. I think the point of TFA is that some countermeasures against infiltration are transitioning from impractical to practical.
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You've never been to a semi-public event where people asked not to be photographed, or asked that photographs not be published? Sometimes even former agents/officers/employees who did work outside the country will avoid being in the publicity photos, stand aside in group photos, etc., because their face might be recognized. It isn't just abused women and witness-protection-program w/ new names trying to avoid getting their pictures published. I guess people like that can't go in bars/public places any mo
Update your profile (Score:2)
Just remove "Undercover cop" from your profile and you're done.
Nice and easy peasy.
Privacy no longer exists. (Score:3)
Sorry coppers, you started this. We now live in a world where constitutional protections of privacy are nothing more than symbolic and viewed by school kids on field trips on an old parchment document of the past.
I don't feel sorry for the undercover cops one bit. In Chicago, where I live we have a saying, What goes around, comes around!
See ya on Facebook!
Don't be stupid. (Score:2)
Facebook has proven to be one of the biggest dangers in keeping undercover police officers safe, due to applications such as facial recognition and photo tagging
You want an undercover cop? Change his face. We /do/ have that technology, you know.
Do you hear that? (Score:2)
Technology Giveth and Taketh (Score:2)
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Not all cops do that. And in some cases undercover cops can very well be providing an alibi for you too, so it cuts both ways.
In any case - undercover cops aren't cost effective for catching small time criminals.
Best is to not commit any crimes.
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"In any case - undercover cops aren't cost effective for catching small time criminals."
Ever watch Cops, or Police Women of Broward County? They use undercover cops all the time to catch small time drug dealers and buyers, and guys looking for prostitutes. Although social media probably won't hurt them, given that they often expose the undercover cops faces on TV but they're still able to fool people for more than 1 season.
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Best is to not commit any crimes.
This particular strategy doesn't help you if the cops plant evidence to close out a case.
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Not all cops do that.
True, but far too many do. As we found in the 1920s, prohibition of intoxicants breeds corruption.
In any case - undercover cops aren't cost effective for catching small time criminals.
Half of all arrests in the US are for misdemeanor marijuana possession. THAT's what the secret police are for -- to catch pot smokers. You can't catch armed robbers with secret police.
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What if the law becomes a tool to criminalize those that dare to stand up against an unjust regime?
People who follow the law, no matter what this law may be like, is what makes dictatorships possible in the first place. There were not many people who liked that Nazi ideology. Or the Commie one, for that matter. There were rather few who were die-hard supporters. There were just many who don't give a shit how they're governed and who just follow the rules, without questioning whether those rules are just and
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Isn't that what NSA, TSA, FBI, CIA and DHS are doing?
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You have a very jaded view of your police force.
Re:Take that copper (Score:5, Interesting)
Most cops are corrupt. Here in Lake County, California we finally got a Sheriff who actually wants to change things. Here is an article on him being cleared of certain wrongdoings [record-bee.com]. Because our police force is so very corrupt (with ties to meth production and such) he did not inform them of a bust the sheriff's department was conducting. The cops found out anyway and showed up to point guns at them just to fuck up the whole operation, because the bust was against one of their cronies.
Why do I say most cops are corrupt? Because if you're a cop and you cover for a bad cop, you are precisely as bad as he is. You are precisely as responsible for his actions, because it is your job to attempt to prevent and to help bring people to justice for these actions. You are instead a traitor to the American people, and I hope you die of ball cancer.
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I personally know at least a half-dozen cops (through various organizations I am involved in) and I can't see a single one of them doing anything like that.
It's amazing that "cops are evil" is about the only FUD that is not only accepted by slashdot, but actively PROMOTED. You people either need to stop getting your information about cops from Fox News or stop peddling meth thr
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It's amazing that "cops are evil" is about the only FUD that is not only accepted by slashdot, but actively PROMOTED.
There is a forest of anecdotes. I was pointing out endemic corruption.
I personally know at least a half-dozen cops (through various organizations I am involved in) and I can't see a single one of them doing anything like that.
Like what?
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I personally know at least a half-dozen cops (through various organizations I am involved in) and I can't see a single one of them doing anything like that.
You can't see them showing up at a bust to disrupt it or you can't see them covering for their friends and colleagues or turning a blind eye?
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Reading the newspaper or living in a bad neighborhood will do that to you. Ironically, in the place where you're in most danger of criminals, even the law-abiding residents fear the police more than they fear criminals.
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Here's another entertaining story. My ex-girlfriend had a minibike in her yard in Kelseyville and this cop stopped by to ask after the price. Thought it was too much. Got stolen that night. The next day, without any police report being filed et cetera, got a call from that cop saying he didn't steal the bike. Really? At minimum, he knows who did.
When I was a kid I mock-punched a big hardwood sign in Library Park in Lakeport. The sign is 2-3" thick and covered with acrylic. When I got through the park I enco
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You aren't fixing the dumb when dumb is a requirement for the police force.
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Could we start with the others. Dumb, corrupt and evil cops sounds a lot better than smart, corrupt and evil cops.
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Man, I always look forward to your posts. You really can't fake that kind of writing. Do you have a blog or twitter feed where I can see more?
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No, the police have always been universally abhorrent.
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An earlier comment put it perfectly: "If they're not doing anything wrong, what have they got to hide?"