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

It’s the same basic thing as a spear being the same as a nuclear weapon. “They both kill people!”

Walking around with a photo versus walking around with a hundred million photos and asking everyone simultaneously should not be considered about the basic same thing.

It is very bad to throw spears at people, despite the existence of nuclear weapons.

Yes, but throwing a spear and detonating a nuclear weapon are not equal levels of violating. They're both on the spectrum, but there is still a big difference

I don't see how the spectrum is relevant. Murdering one person is not as bad as murdering 100. Still a murderer.

In the context of criminal prosecution/litigation, there's an enormous difference between "murdering one person" vs "murdering 100". For limitless reasons!

Like, is a victim of life threatening domestic violence who shoots their abuser during an attack a "murderer"? Or is an abuser who killed their spouse in a rage a "murderer"? Obviously these are different and the prosecution/defense hash that out over a very, very long time.

Details matter. Ask any public defender.

Obviously mass murder is worse (and a more severe crime) than murdering one person, but I'm still lost as to what the existence of this spectrum has to do with the actual story. If you throw a rock at someone, being apprehended by the police is not the nuclear option.

Note that we're talking about murder because the comment that set this off tried to pass off "throwing spears" as benign comparatively. No it isn't!

Think of it like gun/taser safety -- even an empty gun is treated as a loaded gun because of the significant risks. These systems have well-documented histories of leading to false arrests and ruining lives and families. When the risks are destroying someone's life, why isn't it treated with similar caution?

The spectrum stuff is about the likelihood of harm was my interpretation. Obviously we shouldn't be throwing spears, but there's probabilistic side of it that doesn't exist with nukes, and there's a spectrum between all of that with various probabilities of extents of harm. So if the harms of using these technologies intrinsically carries similar probabilistic risks (false arrests, elevated charges, etc), why not treat it as a risky object worthy of kicking someone off the range? I'm reminded of situations of waiting for the rangemaster to walk away so you can do something stupid and risky.

Right I'm still commenting on this thread just to make it clear that I think nukes are bad too.