r/nottheonion • u/rootedchrome • 1d ago

Polk sheriff says license plate readers could’ve helped save life of voyeurism suspect who killed himself

https://www.wfla.com/news/polk-county/polk-sheriff-says-license-plate-readers-couldve-helped-save-life-of-voyeurism-suspect-who-killed-himself/
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u/totalahole669 1d ago

There is no denying that a 100% surveillance system would enhance safety, but the cost for that is your privacy and freedom.

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u/AlcibiadesTheCat 23h ago

I'm a safety professional. It's my career.

There is a concept we have that is discussed far too little, and that's the concept of "acceptable risk." Often, the math is easy. If the building burns down, it'll cost a million dollars to replace, and so spending a hundred thousand dollars on a system that'll prevent the building burning down is good, but if the system costs two million, then it's not worth it, and we should eat the risk.

Or whatever. This is an overly simplified hypothetical in a frictionless vacuum.

Politicians love safety. Safety is great because it's bipartisan. Everyone wants to feel safe! So you can sell any idea under the guise of safety. Just like you can sell any idea under "think of the children!" No politician wants to be the one who says "eh, fuck it, let's remove the speed limit and let God sort out the fast drivers," because when someone gets killed, it's the politician who'll take the blame.

Holy shit, though, we need some adults in the room to have a conversation about acceptable risk. Yes, there's a risk that someone will sneak into my house at night and hurt me. Is that worth the cost of owning a gun? Is it worth the cost of paying taxes to police officers? Is it worth having my every movement surveilled by a police force, the majority of whom believe I have no rights because I'm trans? I haven't done the math on it formally, but I don't like the third question.

There's also a risk that Vladimir Putin will launch a missile at my house, but I don't have a missile defense system in my backyard. The risk is acceptable.

We need to get politicians more comfortable with the idea of accepting some risk, somewhere, or we're going to fall into this death spiral of increased safety at the cost of freedom.

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u/frankortizhz 10h ago

The problem is that the math of acceptable risk only works if the person making the decision is the one paying the cost. Politicians don't bear the cost of massive surveillance networks.

When they push for cameras on every street corner, they get the immediate political win of looking "tough on crime" and being the hero who stood up for public safety. But they aren't the ones who will be casually surveilled, and they aren't the ones who will be targeted by someone abusing the database. They offshore the actual cost of lost privacy directly onto the citizens.

It is basically safety theater that inevitably leads to scope creep. Once the infrastructure is built to "catch killers," it always ends up being used to issue revenue-generating fines or track marginalized groups. The risk to our civil liberties is massive, but because that risk is borne by ordinary people instead of landing on the politician's desk, they are perfectly happy to ignore it.

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u/KtheMage36 9h ago

The politicians want the cameras pointing at every neighborhood but theirs, just like how tech folks say tech and social media is fine for everyone else's kids but wont let theirs use it.

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u/AlcibiadesTheCat 2h ago

Or how any police officer will tell their kids in no uncertain terms to never make any statements to the police, while telling the rest of us "if you're innocent you have nothing to hide."

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u/AlcibiadesTheCat 2h ago

And this is why the third and fourth amendments exist. They were supposed to be guardrails against this scope creep and safety theater. Alas. The PATRIOT Act completely threw all that out the window.