> you can film the police but you can't post it online as they as individuals have a right to privacy as well
This is perverse. What "privacy right" do police officers have when they are on duty or acting under color of law? I think no public official should have a right to privacy while they are actively performing their duties as public officials (this would not apply to their personal life, which is why there should also be very strict restrictions to ensure that all public work is done in public). I also count police officers in this, since they have extra-legal rights compared to the rest of us, being the very embodiment of the state's "monopoly on violence".
If a police officer is doing something heinous, why should they deserve any privacy at all outside of their personal life, where they in theory don't have the right to use their police powers?
Your baby/bathwater filter seems to be on the fritz.
If, as in the common case, a police officer is performing their duty correctly, why should they as a private individual be singled out, maligned, their personal safety be threatened, etc. etc?
If you’re coming at this from e.g. the US perspective where the situation with police is a very stylized us/them, this may feel odd.
If they're performing their duty correctly, a video of their work should not be harmful to them at all.
Situations like this are the only time I feel the saying "if you don't have anything to hide, you'd let people look" is appropriate, when concerning people with power "over" common folk. This wouldn't apply to officers doing plainclothes or undercover work, as there would be no reason for a bystander to assume they were a police officer being abusive or doing their job incompetently. This would apply to uniformed officers going outside of the bounds of what is reasonable. It's not a perfect solution, no, but it's a lot better than "uniformed officers have a right to privacy while uniformed and officering, and it is morally wrong to film them in the process of wrongdoing".
There must always be strong checks on authority, lest it be abused. Perhaps the US is up there in the list of offenders, but then again they're not the worst offender in the world by far. Any modern democratic nation is susceptible to authoritarians and fascists wresting control if they don't institute strong protections against it happening.
There are other reasons to protect someones privacy. An office may be doing everything to the book but accidentally shit his pants due to what he had for lunch. Having a video of this circulate in public and being the laughing stock of the town is why we have these laws. With the internet something like this would haunt a person for their entire life.
Everyone deserves the right to privacy and misconduct should be dealt with by the appropriate superiors/agencies and not by public shaming.
This is perverse. What "privacy right" do police officers have when they are on duty or acting under color of law? I think no public official should have a right to privacy while they are actively performing their duties as public officials (this would not apply to their personal life, which is why there should also be very strict restrictions to ensure that all public work is done in public). I also count police officers in this, since they have extra-legal rights compared to the rest of us, being the very embodiment of the state's "monopoly on violence".
If a police officer is doing something heinous, why should they deserve any privacy at all outside of their personal life, where they in theory don't have the right to use their police powers?