[sudo-discuss] This came up on Hackaday

[Jake]

On Fri, 26 Jun 2015, cere.yahoo at gmail.com wrote:

> thought you all might be interested.
> https://hackaday.io/project/4681-reportsafe

thats a really good idea.  I hope they make it carefully though, because 
cops are sadistic assholes who would obsess over revenge if someone 
"snitched" on them.

they should remind submitters that without evidence of some kind, 
reporting other police through a website might not be worth the risk of 
getting caught "snitching".  Also, in court (or anywhere where a cop might 
actually get in trouble) evidence, even videotaped evidence, can almost 
never be used without a human testifying, even if all they say is "I set 
up that camera and this footage came from it"

so basically, the site needs to tell the submitter to prepare for coming 
out of the closet in case there is an investigation.

basically this site needs to be like kickstarter, in the sense that no 
commitment is made by the (anonymous) testifier unless the threshold for 
(and promise of) prosecution is reached.

and it needs to provide securedrop-like anonymity protections for 
submitters with cragslist-like communications so that prosecutors can 
ask questions of witnesses before they go public.

not an easy task, but definitely worthwhile.

seperately, the site should facilitate a bulletin board for the public 
(and police) to post reports of incidents, anonymously and/or with contact 
information in case something is actually done about it.

I wonder why craigslist doesn't have a police interactions category.

-jake