ICE will release body cam video only when seen in the agency's 'best interests'

141 points by geox 10 hours ago on hackernews | 72 comments

functionmouse | 10 hours ago

Treason! Hold them accountable!

NDlurker | 10 hours ago

Agreed. This is disgusting.

whatever1 | 10 hours ago

We have election in November, mobilize everyone you can and vote.

nashashmi | 10 hours ago

November is too late. We have courts. Mobilize the courts.

thewebguyd | 10 hours ago

The turnout in my state's primary this week was an abysmal 20%. I hope that's not an omen for November, because we are doomed if so.

fhdkweig | 9 hours ago

Primaries are not for down-the-ticket party voters. I didn't bother to vote in the primaries because I don't really care about the subtle shades of blue or red, I only care about are you any kind of blue or red. Each politician is either for what I want or against it. I will be showing up for November, that's when my vote will matter.

1659447091 | 9 hours ago

Thats pretty average for primaries nationwide.

Texas had a turn out of around ~24% this year that shattered previous turnout; usually hover around 16%.

mcmcmc | 10 hours ago

That’s not treason, just bad governance. They do need accountability though

JumpCrisscross | 10 hours ago

> not treason, just bad governance

ICE is damn close to an organisation of brownshirts. If they fuck with the elections in November, that's an organised effort to use violence to overthrow our Constitutional order. That would be treason.

We're not at the point of treason. But we have leaders credibly threatening to commit it. (I'd say Stephen Miller has commited treason. As in try-him-and-hang-him treason.

mcmcmc | 10 hours ago

Yes it would be, but that hasn’t happened yet.

bulbar | 9 hours ago

And when it happens, you will advocate to bring them to court to judge on their actions a year after it happened? Would be to late then and nobody will effectively be sentenced.

mcmcmc | 9 hours ago

If it happens, it’s 2A time

JumpCrisscross | 8 hours ago

> it’s 2A time

It’s always 2A time. Nutters committing crimes just go on the docket.

krapp | 7 hours ago

Oh. that's the red line. OK. Good to know there is one.

Weird that it wasn't when Trump supporters were kidnapping people and making bomb threats prior to the election or when they stormed the Capitol to try to kill Pence and force the result.

Or even when ICE was being sent out into the streets and kidnapping people and shooting them dead in the street to begin with, and being sent out with National Guard troops to indimidate blue state voters.

Or when DOGE ransacked the government and exfiltrated Americans' data to Palantir, which will make interfering with the elections much easier.

Or when Trump refused to release the Epstein files. Which has nothing to do with election fraud but I feel like the sitting President being a serial rapist and pedophile defying the DOJ to protect himself and a network of pedophiles within the government should be a bigger deal than it is.

If they mess with elections again (because they already tried mind you) then Americans will do something. OK. Good to know.

mcmcmc | 7 hours ago

Yeah I don’t live in the places where that was/is happening. A small benefit of rural small town living. My rep and senator are both blue and acting it. The red line moves up the easier it is to do something about it.

vel0city | 10 hours ago

The interests of ICE should be the same as the public's interest, same as any other domestic policing.

augusto-moura | 10 hours ago

If the public interest is divided, what should be ICE's interest? This applies to other enforcing orgs too. Should it take the majority even if the debate is close to a tie?

In most cases, what wins is the interests of people in power, for all domestic policing

cdrnsf | 10 hours ago

They should stop committing human rights violations, at a minimum.
There is no valid public interest in having secret police.

vel0city | 10 hours ago

If it's about hiding information from the public about domestic police actions, you can't really be arguing that's for the public's interest.

How would ICE being incredibly selective about what to release so it only paints the agency in a positive light be in the public's interest? How can the public make reasonable decisions on what's happening if we're actively hiding the truth?

If ICE is abusing people and murdering innocent people in the street, how is the "public interest" divided? Isn't the public interest to hold those who abuse their authority to commit crimes accountable? How would that go against the public interest?

> what should be ICE's interest?

Like any agency, their primary objective should be to follow the constitution and all the laws.

john_strinlai | 10 hours ago

im not sure why they would even bother with the cameras at that point.

ranger_danger | 10 hours ago

It says why in the article... to make them look better by only releasing positive videos.

john_strinlai | 10 hours ago

right, i read the article, and i disagree that selectively releasing "positive" videos would make them look better.

philipov | 10 hours ago

They don't care what you think. You're not their target audience.

john_strinlai | 10 hours ago

yes, i am aware, thanks.

(that's why i wrote my opinion on a message board, instead of a letter addressed to the director of ice)

philipov | 10 hours ago

They don't want to shake the support of moderates who are already part of their coalition and aren't paying that much attention. Those people won't notice the selectivity, even if they hear about it in passing, as long as they're not constantly confronted with it directly.

cdrnsf | 10 hours ago

Accompanied by childish memes, Bible quotes and the music of artists that loathe them.

stevenwoo | 10 hours ago

This is no different than any other law enforcement agency in the USA historically - it’s a curated source of positive PR that they get taxpayers to fund - it’s never used willingly as a source of truth when law enforcement is in the wrong.

disillusioned | 10 hours ago

Accountability theatre, quite literally.

georgemcbay | 10 hours ago

> im not sure why they would even bother with the cameras at that point.

Lots of data to feed into their Palantir systems to keep track of l̵a̵w̵f̵u̵l̵ ̵p̵r̵o̵t̵e̵s̵t̵o̵r̵s̵ terrorists.

john_strinlai | 10 hours ago

>Lots of data to feed into their Palatir systems

i didnt think of that, actually, and facial recognition training and such actually sounds like a pretty plausible reason.

mcmcmc | 10 hours ago

There they go making “Abolish ICE” sound reasonable again.

glaslong | 8 hours ago

It had stopped sounding reasonable?

mcmcmc | 7 hours ago

When they were just doing their jobs without being assholes, killing Americans and violating civil rights, ICE had a legitimate purpose. There’s no redeeming them now. Obama deported more people than Trump while also passing DACA. There are bad actors who abuse immigration loopholes and evade customs that should be stopped. It’s not an invasion or epidemic, but they do exist.

atmavatar | 8 hours ago

Surely "Melt ICE" would be a catchier slogan.

Krutonium | 10 hours ago

ICE will release body cam video when required by the courts, and FOIA requests.

Just saying, you could FOIA so much video in about 2 months...

JoshTriplett | 10 hours ago

Bets on whether they'll harass people filing such requests?

MertsA | 10 hours ago

How does this square with FOIA obligations? I get ICE sidestepping transparency by avoiding creating the responsive footage in the first place, but once the body cam footage exists, what basis could they use to withhold it other than redacting footage for the typical reasons?

orthecreedence | 10 hours ago

> what basis could they use to withhold it other than redacting footage for the typical reasons?

The basis is "come and take it." A court order doesn't work on the brownshirts.

chaps | 10 hours ago

I mean, ICE is already sidestepping transparency by delaying FOIA requests to the Nth degree. Have a look:

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/list/?page=1&per_page=100&agenc...

> How does this square with FOIA obligations?

ICE doesn't exactly have a track record of following any laws or courts in general. So I wouldn't expect them to answer any FOIA obligation.

This is the fundamental flaw uncovered in the US system by the current administration. Turns out that if one agency decides to go rogue and declare that no laws apply to them, there is no mechanism in place to prevent that.

cdrnsf | 10 hours ago

So, presumably, not when they murder unarmed civilians in broad daylight? Or deploy chemical weapons around schools?

NDlurker | 9 hours ago

I saw videos from my girlfriend's kid's friends. They go to a school near where one of the Minneapolis murders happened, I think Alex Pretti. They had to evacuate some of the dorms because the gas was seeping in. I heard the same thing happened to people's houses who live around there. That's terrorism.

nashashmi | 10 hours ago

Acting like any other police officer at this point

perrohunter | 10 hours ago

How is this a `Hacker` new?

klik99 | 10 hours ago

Anti-authoritarianism is a core part of the hacker ethos, so much so it’s even in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic

accountrequired | 9 hours ago

many users have been tricked into thinking that there is some urgent need for destroying their own civilization within their own lifetime.

exe34 | 10 hours ago

This makes it easy to know when they murdered somebody - just check when they refuse to release the footage.

adverbly | 10 hours ago

Surely the well being of the public is in the agency's best interest! Right? Right guys?

adamrezich | 10 hours ago

Big influx in politicsposting here lately, eh? Wonder what that's all about.

hnthrowawayacct | 10 hours ago

US midterms are coming up in November, politics are being thrust onto every corner of the internet at the moment.

AnEro | 10 hours ago

I've personally completely avoided the USA because of ICE, not because of principle of border policies purely from unpredictable treatment of people in custody with no recorse. Even if mistreatment are edge cases I've got no faith in the system to correct the wrong within itself. I've seen too many stories of legal americans and travelers not even getting bare minimum due process, or just being locked away for days no contact. I present and am read as a woman, if I get sent to male holding facility I'm just chum in the water. Which that decision could be made completely at the whim of the officer and the areas commanding officer, regardless of local laws.

xyzelement | 10 hours ago

Where are you from?

AnEro | 9 hours ago

Canada, I've turned down opritunities even in blue states over this being 100% honest. My Job used to involve myself traveling through the mostly the south. I'm lucky they are accomidating and shifted those responsiblties around but still pre-covid and a little 'post'-covid I was basically living month or so at a time in the south without issues.

xyzelement | 9 hours ago

I think likewise millions or people live in the south without issues?

water-data-dude | 9 hours ago

Sampling bias. Most of those millions of people are white, cis, straight folks who present as the gender they were assigned at birth. The odds of something horrible happening are much higher if you don't check all of those boxes.

It's still rare, but so are most horrible things that can happen to a person. "There's a pretty low risk of you getting into a car accident, so why wear a seatbelt?" because the risk, while low-ish in absolute terms, is still unacceptable - so you do what you can to mitigate it.

AnEro | 7 hours ago

As a trans woman, that is a priviledge often conditional on being well above average income as well

jancsika | 9 hours ago

> if I get sent to male holding facility I'm just chum in the water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_people_in_prison

AnEro | 9 hours ago

>V-coding is the practice of assigning trans women placed in men's prisons to cells with aggressive cisgender male cellmates as both a reward and a means of placation for said cellmates, so as to maintain social control and to, as one inmate described it, "keep the violence rate down".[170] Trans women used in this manner are often raped daily; and this process has been described as so common that it is effectively "a central part of a trans woman's sentence"

NDlurker | 9 hours ago

Oh my God. That's a blatant rights violation.

glaslong | 8 hours ago

Yup. Many such.

josefritzishere | 8 hours ago

Sorry America is in the bad place right now.

gumby | 7 hours ago

When has it not been?

xyzelement | 10 hours ago

What I got from reading the article - but not the headline or the comments.

- ICE is moving to start using cameras (currently not using them) so this move overall increases the amount of footage that exists and can be released.

- Their stayed approach is analogous to other law enforcement approaches already in use.

So the headline should be "ICE to start using body cameras". I suspect this is in general good news for ICE - most police departments that once felt "forced" to use body cameras have found that the cameras have been good for their image. Incidents that could have previously been trumpeted as an unjustified police action now have the context of what the suspect was doing just prior that justify the action. I think ICE is betting on the same and the "look what our agents have to deal with" footage may get public airplay into their favor.

We'll see

altcognito | 10 hours ago

Yes, I too benefit from controlling the publicity, messaging, narrative and history surrounding my actions.

Freedom2 | 9 hours ago

Agreed, I hope the moderators here editorialize this headline to try and spur more neutral discussion. It's worth waiting to see what the outcomes of this would be.

pbnjeh | 10 hours ago

Jail, jail, jail. Nothing less will stop these Gestapo-esque thugs.

And if you’re waiting for the mid-terms, you’re already acquiescing to their plans.

Also, it says something — to me, at least — that I have to think seriously before posting this. All I’m calling for is timely criminal prosecution of what I think and believe are crimes. I.e. for a lawful process. Yet doing so puts me at risk of an overbearing, unaccountable response?

This is some serious sh-t.

the__alchemist | 9 hours ago

All enemies, foreign and domestic.

techblueberry | 10 hours ago

Not a good look. I don’t think that in a free society, the government has “interests” that are different than the people’s.

josefritzishere | 8 hours ago

This feels illegal.

git-nebulous | 8 hours ago

This is why in almost all things the solution is less, not more, power to the State. That includes the violent, the legislative, and the judicial arms. Your favorite person or political position may be represented now but will not always be.