So it sounds like you’re saying there’s no reason to post home addresses.
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I have no problem identifying specific officers by name, especially since their identities should always be public knowledge.
OTOH, I also agree with others who want to draw the line at home addresses, given the not insignificant chance that it may not be the cop’s current address.
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I haven’t even taken a pro-doxxing position period, but jman says posting the name is fine, but refuses to participate on a forum where his address is posted.
Stupid, huh? Or bad faith.
I forgot what episode of hardcore history it was but I remember Dan Carlin talking about how all civilizations or humans have it in them for genocide. Or how we are never that far away from it. It is not unique to certain people.
I forgot the exact sentiment but it reminds me of this conversation.
@zarapochka is right about war and killing being bad. I hope she doesn’t overlook things like 2 million people in prison (more per capita than any country in the world except maybe NK and China) and police killing 1000 people every year.
@Sabo posts a lot about non-violent actions that aren’t just parades.
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Hmm are they though? I’m legit not sure if this is true! At least not in the context under discussion here.
Back in the old days, after I got out of the Army, I worked for a while at the phone company GTE, one of the baby Bells. I’ll let y’all look that up, it’s an outdated term and I won’t bore you with the details. Anyway, the company used to publish this thing called a “phone book,” which I guess you young folk nowadays might accurately call a “doxxing book,” because it had the name and address and telephone number of everyone in town who had a telephone. We also wore an onion on our belts which was the style at the time.
Anyway if you didn’t want your information published in this “phone book,” that was fine we wouldn’t put it in there, but you had to PAY US EXTRA MANIES $$$ 
in order to be kept out of it. Cool racket huh! Except cops did not have to pay the extra fees. If you identified as law enforcement you were automatically left out of the book no questions asked and also could not be found via “directory assistance” which is like the doxxing book except there’s a live human you call and she doxxes the person for you over the phone (it was usually a “she” anyway, I’m not being sexist that’s just how it was back in the olden times). Now I’m not sure if cops got this special treatment because of legal reasons or if it was just Ma Bell policy, but if it was legal? Then maybe cops aren’t necessarily “supposed to be easily identifiable?”
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I guess it’s up to everyone to decide what forums they want to participate in. maybe the way jman is going about it is a little dramatic, but he certainly wouldn’t be the only poster on this board to overdramatize their position.
That’s not responsive/irrelevant. Of course he’s free to decide whether doxxing is his line in the sand. But he’s not free to decide whether posting the name vs the name plus the result of a Google search of the name is materially different.
I think this is about reading between the lines. Posting addresses is essentially encouraging violent action against the individual while I don’t think posting the name has the same implications. We can argue about whether it’s right to encourage violence, but I don’t think its unreasonable to draw a distinction between two types of information and their implications.
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In Maryland, at least, every criminal defendant’s address is listed on the judiciary case search website, which is free to the public. Oh and even if you’re found not guilty or charges are dismissed, that info will stay up unless you pay like 45 bucks and file an expungement request.
I assume you can petition the court to shield it, but let’s not pretend like we don’t currently do this exact thing to countless people every day.
That’s not a good point imo. It’s not like logically obviously wrong, but imo:
The cop in that video is: John R. Smith
Carries exactly the same level of menace as posting the address. Everyone knows googling the name is trivial. If a white pages listing pops up, posting that adds nothing.
And as for my personal opinion on the matter: I would prefer the British model where everyone shuts the fuck up about it until the end of the trial to ensure the accused gets a fair trial; but that’s not how our Constitution works and idk how to get to that point without an amendment so this is where we are.
And where we are is…it’s scummy and skeevy for randos like us to doxx someone on a message board, but when a newspaper does it, it’s called “journalism” and when Google does it, it’s called “being a search engine” so 
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Yeah, I think you’re just convincing me that there’s no real point to posting names in situations like this. I mean if the name is already well known like Chauvin or the Buffalo officer in question, I don’t see a lot of harm. But the real point of identifying someone’s name is to report them to whatever authority we want to investigate them, and just posting the name to UP doesn’t really serve that purpose.
“We” especially being the police and their coworkers.
I never said there was a point. Are you going to quit posting here because some pointless post was made?
Except it doesn’t. The news will post the names of officers that use deadly force but they don’t post the address.
So you’re saying posting the name does not serve the purpose of identifying their name? Ok. I take that to mean you don’t think the name should be posted. Ok. Irrelevant to the rest of our exchange and to jman’s needle threading, but ok.
I don’t think calling his supervisor or the DA or the mayor would have done anything in this case absent public outrage though. You may think differently about that.
So? If the address comes up in a Google search it’s the same. If the address were actually a secret and someone found it, that would be different.
Like what do you think happened here? It seems like the governor and mayor and other officials called the Police Commissioner and told them to sort this out. It wasn’t random internet posters that suspended him.
And the reason they did this is because there is video of the incident, not because the internet figured out the officer’s name. If the same thing happened but there was no video, the officer likely wouldn’t face any consequences even if we had his SSN. (It’s another subject altogether whether the consequences will be appropriate.)
So your criteria for being pro doxing is if their address comes up on a google search it’s ok?
I just googled my name for shits and giggles and I found a list of old address plus a bunch of addresses I never lived at. I think they might be relatives (I have relatives that live in those cities but don’t know the exact address).