Sure, why not? It's not like anyone is saying merely installing the app makes you guilty of anything. It's just a lead. Police chase leads all the time and then abandon when they determine the person isn't involved in the crime.
Well, for starters, to prevent the police from kicking my door in and shooting me or my pets simply because I was placed on a list of people who downloaded an app. Simply "police chase and abandon leads all the time" is not a strong enough rationale to justify the original suggestion to me.
Is it seriously your working model of police that they’re frequently given lists of people who download apps and instructed to kill them? That’s how you believe policing works?
I know the BLM astroturfing had a profound effect on the rest of the internet, but it’s disappointing to see such a skewed version of reality presented here on HN.
I just downloaded the app. Bring on the marauders. If they end up blasting me, you can start a charity in my honor, Vogt.
It is an accurate model that police frequently bust down the doors of people who are suspected of a crime based only on a third party's report, and not because of any investigation or probable cause. It's also accurate that police are trained to escalate extremely quickly, including the use of lethal force. And it's accurate that policing has a culture of unapologetic lethal force.
One would have to have their head in the sand the last couple years to have not heard these kind of stories. I'd hope that people on this site would still be able to infer that legally downloading an app isn't enough to trigger that kind of response in literally any US jurisdiction.
The world is a scary place, cops can be bastards, and terrible things have happened, but it's straight up hyperbole and nonsense to pretend that a random internet nerd is going to get killed by police because they downloaded an app. I downloaded it (it's crap, as expected), so if I'm wrong on this then I'm willing to face the music, yet somehow I think I'll sleep fine at night.
I had a pretty snarky reply that I made and then deleted, because I went to your profile and looked at your Twitter account and honestly, I think we have quite a bit in common and would probably get along on most issues. And also, I really like your music.
Looking back on the wording of my original reply, it was too hyperbolic. My post was not meant as an "ACAB, the police are literally here to kill you on behalf of rich old men". My position is that the fewer opportunities for folks to be thrown into a pile of suspects for the police or any other law enforcement institution like the FBI, the better. I'm in favor of the police being able to subpoena Apple and Google for user data if there's reasonable, articulable suspicion those users committed a crime. To me, simply downloading a publicly available app in the app store does not satisfy that condition.
Of course not. My position is that if one person is wrongly persecuted despite breaking no laws, they should not be considered a suspect. Once police decide "We need the list of everyone who downloaded the app.", those 50,000 people are all suspects.
Here's what I _would_ be in favor of:
-Police bust Catalyic Converter Kingpin in one form or another
-Police learn in the course of investigation that said kingpin was a prolific user of said app
-Police subpoena the usernames of accounts that corresponded directly with the kingpin
There's a compromise to be had here without throwing 50,000 into a digital suspect bin when maybe half were people actually complicit to...wait for it...a crime.
By that logic you're fine with Google handing over all users' location data to the police? Since the police can just determine if you're not involved in crime from it.
