You're forgetting a key point - the hardware must be used within 1 year of receipt by the department. Something to consider when departments are getting free grenade launchers.

No silly, you sell the guns to the saudis at a nice low price. They'll provide the guns to terrorists, which will be used as a point requiring larger budgets for the military, the military purchases even more guns, more of those guns go to the police, and the cycle continues. Isn't the military industrial complex great??

Self-deletion is a very bad idea. Statutes of limitations on crimes are upwards of 5 years all the way to forever (in the case of murder). Everything that camera records is evidence. Letting it delete itself is the same thing as intentionally deleting. They need to set up retention systems to store that data for at least 5 years. Suppose officers assault someone to the point where they're hospitalized. That person is comatose for weeks, only to come out of it and find out that the video has been deleted? Bad results.

Yep. Another step they could take to deter rioting is respecting the state's sunshine laws about disclosing information. Violating state law by making up non-existant loopholes to try and protect the officer from having his name get out shows a lot of ineptitude. 1 man being scared for his life is a significantly smaller issue than an entire town terrified that there is a kid killer on the loose and that the police are protecting his identity. Remember, if this goes to trial, it's going to be an affirmative defense. The shooter won't deny he killed the kid, he'll argue he was justified in shooting the kid. The public has a right to know who is a killer and who isn't.

You'd be looking at more than that I think. A decent sized force will have hundreds of officers, each generating 8-12 hours of footage a day. Every day. There would likely also need to be retention planned for over 5 years, potentially much longer, since that is the statute of limitations on most crimes. Footage from something where someone died would have to be kept for life, because there is no statute of limitations on murder. That's not to say it couldn't be archived some way, but a single NAS isn't gonna cut it.

It shouldn't be a metal box. Metal boxes are very good at blocking signals. I do agree though, they must NOT have access to it, and there needs to be data retention laws put in place with stiff penalties if the department cannot produce the evidence during discovery of a trial.

I hate to say this, but given the past, this is a good possibility. In Philadelphia, a police officer punched a woman in broad daylight, on a crowded street. There were scores of witnesses. All charges were dropped, and the judge ruled that "she fell into his fist." 1 month ago, NYPD officers killed a man using a chokehold which has been ruled illegal since the 1980's. Old Dominion police in June trespassed on a man's property, assaulted him, maced his entire family, all because he was standing on his porch recording them with a video camera. In Chicago, Skokie police refused to discipline an officer who was caught on film throwing a woman face first into a concrete holding cell bench, crushing the front of her skull. It wasn't until the DA stepped in that he saw charges. The police department refuses to admit wrongdoing.

This is exactly it. If the police had A) chosen not to selectively enforce their state's sunshine laws in an attempt to protect the cop over protecting the community, B) shown up to facilitate peaceful protest instead of showing up armed to the gills, the protests would have gone on relatively calmly. The issue of rioting sprang up when the police did neither, and instead chose to dedicate not only all of their local resources, but resources from several other police departments solely on the protesters. That left a lot of opportunity for rioters to take advantage of dips in enforcement elsewhere.

Too many. 2 work phones, 2 personal phones, 1 ipad, 1 mac mini, 3 macbooks, 1 pc laptop, 1 dd-wrt router acting as a wireless bridge, 1 ps3, 1 wii, 1 smart TV. I'm sure more will be coming in the future.

GOODBYE

Honestly, I thought they had proven that light diffuses too quickly for this to happen without a lens to concentrate it. Not that it's real science, but they tried to build the ancient "death ray" multiple times on Mythbusters and while they were able to get smoke, they weren't able to ignite anything. Maybe they're not so much "setting the birds on fire" as they are cooking them?

So, the majority of the articles I've read about this eruption, have potential dangers all along the scale. From "some ash" to effects similar to the eruption of Tabora (which caused crazy weather fluctuations as far west as north america, where it seeded clouds, was able to drop temps from 85 degrees to below freezing in hours, etc). It's getting hard to find real facts from FUD. If it's as big as Tabora, I would understand governments trying to mute the possibility because it would cause widespread panic. Any geo-geeks out there who can provide some hard facts?

I agree, but reddit has a big issue with stalking downvoters. If you post an unpopular opinion on one sub, it's not uncommon to see days of downvotes afterwards on completely beneficial, completely unrelated, helpful posts on entirely different subs. It's an acknowledged issue with the system. Basically, there needs to be a limitation on the number of downvotes a user can receive from a particular source. The hard part is doing this in a way that lets people rebuke someone who is being a genuine jackhole, but also prevents people from harassment.

It's a shame you posted that as AC, because "Humans are not rational creatures - they are rationalising creatures." is an EXCELLENT sig-worthy quote.

This is a pretty normal sociological phenomenon. Outside of tribal culture, people usually find some group that they best fit in with based on any number of demographic/sociological attitudes. I'm pretty sure there is a doctoral thesis in here somewhere for someone who's feeling squirrely. It's pretty fascinating.