If the local governing body is too small to handle the requirements of governance, what then? Laws can be broken just because there are too few clerks?
If they can’t afford to provide the service, then they can’t afford to provide the service. In this case, they simply can’t afford to video anything that would require redaction for FOIA requests. Stanwood joining with Camano Island or Marrysville, it’s still a rural area that can’t afford it.
I really don't know, it's a difficult question. In this case I agree with most people here on HN that these sorts of mass surveillance tools are not desirable but the reason why is not "because the city is too small to handle FOIA requests".
For another example, some rural localities want to restrict drone usage, but actually enforcing that is expensive and difficult. What's the solution? I really don't know.
I think this is where the conversation is from theoretic vs practical limits. Most folks don't care about government overreach until it affects them or theirs personally. And because of costs, government overreach has been theoretical versus practical. And even when practical, it's more whiteglove treatment.
First example is that most folks don't care about police checkpoints, simply because they are rare, and when they do happen they are over pretty fast. You do have some that care and think they are an infringement of rights, but they are a loud minority, and even those that do have issues with them, just bite the bullet and provide them their license and tell them where they are going.
Some things we don't care that much about is simply because they can't be abused that much. For example, majority of the population doesn't care too much that the NSA is hoovering up all traffic including encrypted traffic, because there's no way to practically decrypt it a mass scale.
But if quantum computing or some other method makes it cost effective and allows them to effectively decrypt this traffic, we would see a lot more people calling their lawmakers complaining of government overreach.
Another current example is that most people never cared about the fact that ICE or border patrol can require ID and have warrantless stops within 100 miles of a border simply because the stops weren't front page news.
I seem to recall FOIA provides pathways for overloaded clerks in situations where there's mass requests. But, it only grants an extended period in which to respond (eg, 14 days instead of 48hrs). But, you can take escalate with the State government like you can with denied requests.
This is tinted with my knowledge of my Locaal (long a), and the areas I've made FOIA requests with.
And, turns out if you want to affect change- you have to make the bureaucrats care- Not the officials.
Using invasive surveillance tech to govern is not needed then. If you can't handle the full service (on both ends) of the technology, then you can't deploy it and have to use regular old police work or legacy techniques to enforce it.
Using this tech is not mandatory to have governance.
