How Can People Say This Stuff With A Straight Face?

Joane Hayes-White has no shame:

San Francisco's fire chief has explicitly banned firefighters from using helmet-mounted video cameras, after images from a battalion chief's Asiana Airlines crash recording became public and led to questions about first responders' actions leading up to a fire rig running over a survivor.

Chief Joanne Hayes-White said she issued the order after discovering that Battalion Chief Mark Johnson's helmet camera filmed the aftermath of the July 6 crash at San Francisco International Airport. Still images from the footage were published in The Chronicle.

Filming the scene may have violated both firefighters' and victims' privacy, Hayes-White said, trumping whatever benefit came from knowing what the footage shows.

"There comes a time that privacy of the individual is paramount, of greater importance than having a video," Hayes-White said.

Any 5-year-old can figure out here that this has nothing to do with victim privacy -- this is all about shielding her organization from accountability from future screw-ups.  Somehow we have ended up in a completely backwards world where surveillance is aimed at private citizens doing private things but is banned for public officials doing public things.  Ms. Hayes-White is obviously just a puppet for the firefighters union, and she be treated with contempt.

6 Comments

  1. aczarnowski:

    I'm somewhat encouraged to see this kind of thing. For too long the heat was being turned up slowly enough that most didn't notice. Somewhere along the way the heat got turned up too fast, the frog's are finally starting to notice, and the cooks don't appear to know what to do. I think. I hope.

  2. Vitaeus:

    wow, at least they could have said it was "for the children" or "Terrorism".

  3. fearandloathing:

    Joane Hayes-White is a moron, because the camera also clearly showed that the victim was all but invisible in the foam. Imagine what it would have been like if there was no camera.

  4. Sam L.:

    How, your ask? Practice!

  5. B Cole:

    I take it further...is there a reason why there is no webcam in every mayor's office in America?

  6. rxc:

    Good catch. I seem to remember Al Gore using this story to describe global warming. Turns out he was really describing the progressive modus operandi.