NYPD bypassed facial recognition ban to ID pro-Palestinian student protester

This guy was accused of hurling a rock at a protester, it seems we are trying to defend the right to peaceful protest?

Like, this guy was identified off video of him throwing a rock at a protester that hit them in the face. By all accounts this is someone who is trying to violently suppress peoples rights. That he got off on police misconduct in the investigation is a loss to society, no matter how many waxing words try to twist him into being a "protester violated in his rights".

I don't read it as a peaceful protest issue, I read it as police are breaking privacy laws over a Palestinian protestor specifically; as far as we know they aren't doing this to investigate other violent crime in NYC. I agree this is sloppy policework and an unnecessary loss to society as a result.

That's a separate issue. The US is an exception where evidence that is collected illegally (see 'fruit of the poisonous tree' - https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree ) is not allowed in court. Thus, US law enforcements have come up with many creative means (like Parallel Construction - https://restorethe4th.com/our-new-brief-on-parallel-construc... ) to hide the fact that evidence was collected illegally. If you want justice to be done in the US, you want US law enforcement to comply with the law. Otherwise it could result in a miscarriage of justice - the guilty may escape because of police misconduct or innocents may be persecuted by the violation of their rights. This loophole used seems to be the grey area of the law. But loopholes too are slippery slopes in the law and shouldn't exist.

> That he got off on police misconduct in the investigation is a loss to society

There'a a balance though. I think that allowing police misconduct would be a larger loss to society.

When the state loses winable criminal cases because of police misconduct, it should be motivation at multiple levels to avoid such misconduct in the future.

I definitely see both sides in this... it's a bad use of resources, that I'm not completely convinced police should be barred from all access to, if it exists... on the flip side, the context of protecting an a-hole throwing rocks at a protest irks me as well.

I'm actually against parallel construction and feel that is far more dangerous than a lot of other activities in that it literally prevents you from knowing your true accuser in terms of laying out a defense/confrontation in court.

This whole story is just full of bad guys all around to a large extent.

Okay and? They still bypassed a ban to do that. I guess we can just bypass any law, checks and balances whenever we really feel like someone might have committed a crime.

But I don't get the two sides here. From what I understood, the police aren't allowed to use facial recognition. I mean at that point, why not just allow the cops to search without warrants, and do whatever they have to do to catch bad guys?

Like I can totally see the potential debate about if this type of ban should be in place. Sure! But the fact is, that's the current situation. The police can't, and shouldn't, just ignore or bypass rules if they feel like they're too limiting. The police should have basically 0 say (a part from voting) in what the rules they have to follow are.

If I start deciding to ignore laws and rules that I don't like, that would probably be a crime. So why should the police be able to do the same?

I'm not suggesting they should bypass current laws. I do question if it should be against the law to check against an existing data source like facial recognition. One could have put the picture out to the press, and asked, "hey, do you know this person?" type of thing and gotten the same answer.

I get that it's a slippery slope and it is a bit invasive to even establish many of these databases... not to mention the license plate tracking, cell tracking, etc. I also don't like jerks throwing rocks at people.

Worth remembering:

Saying that fruit of the poisonous tree is not admissible is a vast understatement of the complexity of this area of law.

> One could have put the picture out to the press, and asked, "hey, do you know this person?" type of thing and gotten the same answer.

There's no guarantee they would have done this or that they would have gotten the same answer, though, is kind of salient to the point. There's a chance they wouldn't, because you (hopefully) don't want to make someone look like a suspect to their entire community if their chances of being involved in a crime are low. And even if you do, there's a decent chance you wouldn't have gotten a reply -- especially if their loved ones believe they are innocent. And it would've alerted them and they would've had a higher chance to escape. Which is terrible thing for society if they're a genuine criminal, but a good thing when you're persecuting a non-criminal.

Probabilities and collateral damage matter. If you just treat everything that is "possible" uniformly, then you might as well claim that they COULD generate a random number and just happen to identify the person correctly by sheer luck, so who cares if they do anything to optimize that.

Several of the riots leading up to the breaking away of the colonies from the crown would make rock throwing look tame. They were rioting over something much less horrific than what is going on in Gaza. This pearl-clutching, accepting any level of enforcement against the mildest of accusations, I don’t know what to call it except anti-American.