Axon makes false statements to town that bought its police bodycams, threatens to tase their credit-rating if they cancel the contract

boing
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I had a similar thought - the camera determines how long the cop gets paid for that day (with appropriate allowance for meal and bathroom breaks).

Only have 4 hours of coverage? - only get paid half a day.

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I am reminded of Zersetzung – “(German for ‘decomposition’) … a psychological warfare technique used by the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) to repress political opponents in East Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. Zersetzung served to combat alleged and actual dissidents through covert means, using secret methods of abusive control and psychological manipulation to prevent anti-government activities.”

The active, malicious reverse of transparency.

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I think the alternative to infinite regress is a Mexican Standoff.

I speak no Latin, but we could have the watchers themselves watch the watchers’ watchers’ watchers’ watchers. Collusion and regulatory capture are still obvious failure modes, so you’d have to find a way to make catching abuses really high-status and well-rewarded. I think that last bit is where most regulatory schemes fail, really.

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This is terrible!
I had had no idea this was a thing. None of my [West] German relations spoke of this.

Thanks for teaching me.

This part:

… makes me fear for my own country. Ye gods…

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matrix_standoff

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You are welcome.

I first learned about Zersetzung in 2017 via Boing Boing:

Since then I have been relentlessly mentioning it in hopes of inoculating my culture against it.

“Baron Zersetzung” (sometimes “Colonel Zersetzung”) is the top-level fictional villain (think Satan as spymaster) in my Gnomon Chronicles:

http://gnomonchronicles.com/wiki/Baron_Zersetzung

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