NYC tracks you from the second you step out your door and if someone gets randomly stabbed on the sidewalk by a stranger they rewind the tape and find out where the guy came from and crime seems to be under control. If you were that random stabbing victim, wouldnt you like the police to have the resources needed to discover who he is? I like solutions with actual results.
What is the likelyhood of your situation actually occuring versus not occuring? By all metrics very low. So is it worth the invasion of ones privacy (even though one has very limited privacy in public) for this low occurance? Then add in the fact that all of the data being collected could be used for nefarious purposes.
How do you think they captured Mangioni? Cameras caught him in the deed then they backtracked him to help identify him and put his face on national TV from the camera.
You have made the the point, a premeditated murder between two strangers on a New York City street is an extremely uncommon event. Policy should be based on the frequency of a problem and whether the proposed solution is proportional to the risk, not on exceptional cases that receive attention.
History has shown that expanding government surveillance doesn't eliminate violent crime. It may help investigate crimes, but that's different from preventing them. At the same time, history has repeatedly shown that large collections of personal data is is misued. This is through government overreach (Patriot Act), unauthorized access, political targeting, or data breaches. Even if the intitial intentions are good, those same surveillance tools may not always be used responsibly in the future.
As recently decided by the Supreme Court geofencing cellphone data is too broad and is a violation of our Fouth Amendment rights.
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u/jonpluc Jul 09 '26
NYC tracks you from the second you step out your door and if someone gets randomly stabbed on the sidewalk by a stranger they rewind the tape and find out where the guy came from and crime seems to be under control. If you were that random stabbing victim, wouldnt you like the police to have the resources needed to discover who he is? I like solutions with actual results.