I don’t think any jury in the world would call clicking on links literally hacking. When I read poking around, that is what I think of. And their point is that if you click on a link that takes you to a secure area because of bad security, it is defined as hacking by the law in some jurisdictions. This is because those laws don’t describe the action, they simply say “accessing” certain data. Which is lame.

So a chess player that exploits an opponent’s weakness is hacking?
A snake that finds an entrance to a gopher burrow is hacking?

“Finding vulnerabilities” is the kind of dangerously overbroad generalization that gave us the DMCA.

In theory, the difference would be intent. If you proceed to inform others of the vulnerability or exploit it yourself to share secrets, the malicious intent is hard to deny.

If you just click around to see what the site has to offer, it becomes harder to prove. Some places have passed laws banning the mere accessing of content that should not be accessible, thereby putting the burden of proof on the defendant to show that they did not know the link would lead to confidential information, made no attempt to extract it, immediately withdrew upon realisation and so on.

On one hand, brief amd harmless access might not be worth legal action anyway, unless actual damage was done, so the expectation is probably that discretion in enforcement would moderate the heavy-handedness of the law. That isn’t exactly unusual: It’s easier to let something slide than to punish a transgression there is no law against.

One the other, trusting the fairness of that system might not be a good idea…

I’m not denying the usage of the footage. Like yes, of course that is the exact example of when it should be used. However, many times, even if not releasing footage seems incriminating to the populace, when it is successfully withheld accountability is lost. Even when the footage is released cops often see no consequences for their actions, so the footage ends up just serving to normalize and broadcast police violence resulting in control via fear not peace via collaboration. But that’s all more anecdotal I fear.

In the end the data pretty much says body cams have a negligible impact on policing, at least according to this PBS article (most of the way through the article for that), but you can also cherry pick quotes from this to support pretty much any stance.

The idealized version of body cams would help with police reform, but I don’t believe in reform, I believe in abolition, so in the end they just look to me like giving them more tech to be twisted for oppression rather than accountability. If police thought body cams would hold them accountable they wouldn’t care about citizens filming them, and the fact people are being prosecuted for doing that says everything it needs to about what the police think about footage of their violence and crimes.

Just my thoughts. If you’ve got better info than my lone article from a source I’m slightly partial to I’d love to read it! I took a class on carceral technology, and I’ll try to track down some of the sources we used!

Never tried myself, but big boys say 1-2km, depending on ambient noise levels, if no major obstacles in the way.

I wouldn’t answer the kind of questions someone would likely ask if they wanted to know what my neighbor does for a living.

But either way there are several echelons of “undercover”. Not every cop who is under cover is in deep covers for years on a RICO case.

And while it’s unlikely they’d be wearing a body cam home, its more likely they might have a police issued taser stashed somewhere. Cops aren’t smarter than your average individual and they absolutely will do things that aren’t in keeping with SOP.

One of my friends works for a police department as a mechanic and their chief literally shot up her own police car by accident. Loaded service pistol in her purse. She was riffling through it and the gun went off (she claims). It’s definitely not outside the realm of possibility especially if they didn’t know.