Judge rules Seattle media companies must hand over protest images to police

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/judge-rules-seattle-media-companies-must-hand-over-protest-images-to-police/

by danso • 6 years ago

82 57 6 years ago

rcw4256• 6 years ago

If the data exists within US jurisdiction, the US government feels (and, in practice, is) entitled to it. Plan accordingly.

vinay427• 6 years ago

This is true in virtually every country with a system of warrants for evidence collection when investigating a crime. The problem here for many people is the underlying police violence that in part instigated these crimes against the police.

Fjolsvith2• 6 years ago

Unfortunately, this order will prevent the police from using any video evidence of crimes perpetrated by a police officer found in the evidence siezed.

kevindong• 6 years ago

The SPD subpoena seeks media images taken during a 90-minute span in a four-block area between Fourth and Sixth Avenue and Olive Way to Pike Street that day.

For reference, that's a 2 by 2 block centered around Westlake Station.

https://goo.gl/maps/kcJnTW9yw82VE1PLA

dmix• 6 years ago

I've been very vocal against mass surveillance, mostly with the argument that the court warrant system is entirely sufficient for police to do their jobs.

One important thing about warrants and subpoenas is that they are often limited to strictly collecting data related to a specific investigation - not a fishing expedition.

The judge placed some limits on the subpoena. He said police could use the images to identify suspects only in the arson and gun theft investigations. Detectives could not use the photos or video to pursue suspects in vandalism or other lesser crimes — even if police found such evidence.
The subpoena would also be limited to professional camera equipment and would exclude reporters’ cell phone photos and videos.

This seems to fit the criteria - especially since police firearms were stolen.

The only red flag is that they are asking 5x different news organization to hand over journalist's raw recordings. I'd be highly skeptical of this subpoena if I was a judge - unless they could prove the journalists were likely the only ones at the time recording the incident, that they know were present, and it didn't apply to material involved in any specific reporting. Broad footage taken at a public event is always less concerning and less protected.

But at the same time tons of people are recording protests besides journalists and it might just be laziness on the police's part. Although that said, sometimes rioters intimidate people trying to film crimes being committed (as seen here: https://old.reddit.com/r/ActualPublicFreakouts/comments/hu9l...). And the police claim "the department was at a dead end in its investigations." So I'm not sure much outrage is warranted here, but I'd still probably lean on the safe side.

defnotashton23• 6 years ago

Well that and what kind of visibility and process and oversight do we have into this process that the police will truly stay within the judges confinements.

I mean let's be honest. They are going to feed it into facial recognition, identify their targets and then gather whatever additional evidence. They could then potentially present a new case with evidence external to the data collection and construct a narrative around that.

I think it's slippery.

1996• 6 years ago

You are downvoted, but unfortunately I think you are right.

Parallel reconstruction has been documented. There is a risk what you say will happen.

cm2187• 6 years ago

A case against someone peacefully demonstrating? How so?

jacquesm• 6 years ago

What happens once they have the footage is anybody's guess. So even if they receive it with restrictions the only thing that matters is whether they receive it or not.

Xelbair• 6 years ago

The thing is that police is widely known to use parallel construction.

blue523• 6 years ago

"The judge placed some limits on the subpoena. He said police could use the images to identify suspects only in the arson and gun theft investigations. Detectives could not use the photos or video to pursue suspects in vandalism or other lesser crimes — even if police found such evidence."

Do you, in good faith, honestly believe the police won't attempt to use the evidence for any and all means they deem necessary?

It's like the leaks that came out not too long ago, how even the FBI was querying NSA databases when they suspected someone of being a criminal.... I don't even need to say more to demonstrate how abusive the "law enforcement" (blackmail) system is.

beervirus• 6 years ago

Why are we still calling riots “protests?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHb3xVqxcp8

colejohnson66• 6 years ago

Because there’s riots and protests. They’re not one and the same.

jojobas3• 6 years ago

The cops are after evidence on arson and gun theft, not protests, as the headline says.

mola5• 6 years ago

Well the distinction usually depends on the observer. In Israel we have a palamentary system as opposed to a presidential one. PM netanyahu, which is about to be under criminal trial, is trying to pass a law where he will have basically the authority to make any decree without the authorization of the parliament. Making him the defacto.president, minus checks and balances.

Naturally large scale protests are taking place. Israel protests are usually very tame, no looting and practically no violence,atleast when to what you see in French or the US.

The most violent things protesters did was sitting on the road (which was blocked by police) in front of the PM residence. This did not stop media controlled by Netanyahu to pump the notion that these protesters are all rioters and anarchists. While a lot of them are yound middle class educated family people, Led by 60-70 yo without any political aspiration.

So when the person being protested against calls the protesters rioters, I tend to take it with a grain of salt.

disabled• 6 years ago

Because “riots”, “mobs”, and “chaos” are racially charged words that are used in lieu of the proper terminology—protests.

See: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/10/protes...

Also, Jason Stanley’s book, “How Fascism Works” also has a write up on this usage of language too.

lawnchair_larry• 6 years ago

Because “riots”, “mobs”, and “chaos” are racially charged words

No, they’re not. What a ridiculous stretch to further broaden and water down what is considered racism.

ianleeclark2• 6 years ago

You'd be absolutely livid if you found out how your ancestors earned the right to a weekend and a 40 hour work week.

anonmidniteshpr• 6 years ago

I'm trying to recall an incident (19th or 20th c.) where a mine or a factory hired strikebreaker snipers to climb into towers and shoot down into the strikers.

clarkmoody• 6 years ago

The only reason we have days off is because of productivity gains due to investment in capital goods. If we can wean ourselves off of a debt-based economy, then we might be able to whittle that workweek down even further. We seem to have stalled right around 1971 when dollar convertibility was suspended.

salawat• 6 years ago

This is why everyone should be raising hell over things like RealID and the requirement for you to allow the Federal government to get a hold of biometrics for you in order to fly.

This is also why Third Party Doctrine is screaming for reassessment in the wake of expanded capabilities for meta information collection, storage and reproduction.

In the past, your recordings/pictures/artifacts of reporting were physical things that cost time, money, and effort to reproduce. No one would want to ask for anymore than is absolutely necessary due to the inconvenience. Nowadays, with terabytes of data being able to be stored in the palm of one's hand, and copied, moved in minutes, there is a much greater risk for old precedents to turn into dangerous overreach based upon the sheer exaggeration of the capability to get blood from the stone of a photograph.

Get a picture with a partial match in a database of a subject? Spin by their residence with a a Stingray and sniff some IMEI's. Take that to a telco, Google, or a data broker, and geofence. Or look at the latest data dump acquired and see if you can match them with some data point in the area.

In this age, the things we can do with data scare the ever loving bajeezus out of me, and it's not that I don't want LE to be unable to do their jobs, but we really need to get a societal handle on how we treat digital footprint. Otherwise, it's not that far to a world nobody wants to see or live.

barnaclejive• 6 years ago

SPD wants video?, shoulda thought of taking it themselves then. Don't slicken a slippery slope.

blue523• 6 years ago

This is a great example of why a "warrant" is nothing other than an abusive fishing expedition.

A "warrant" can be rubber stamped to exfil all of your internet data, phone records, credit card statements, to raid your home or business...

All gestapo techniques. I'm very glad we have encryption and other related technologies that can prevent this type of tyranny.

With all of the tech I design, privacy is the number one priority. That includes being warrant-proof.

dencodev• 6 years ago

Warrants aren't even needed these days with the Patriot Act

blue523• 6 years ago

You are right, thanks. I don't live there anymore so that atrocity slipped my mind.

Judge rules Seattle media companies must hand over protest images to police

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