Privacy doesn't mean quite as much to Russians. Direct civilian oversight of the police, which they see as crucial to deter and prevent corruption and abuse of authority, is much more valued.
Another good of example of this are those dashboard cameras most drivers there have in their cars
People have them for insurance purposes, for accidents and such.
You can find compilations of crazy driving and road rage incidents in Russia, thanks to those.
Hell, when a meteor fell from space near the city of Chelyabinsk in 2013, scientists were able to study it's trajectory from all the dash cam footage
[video=youtube;EhNL-YJFxOM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhNL-YJFxOM[/video]
But, most importantly, these cameras are the people's powerful tool and weapon against bad traffic cops
This is a fight that has gone on for years over there. The DPS, the traffic police authority, has long attempted to prohibit drivers from filming their personnel. And the drivers have just as long maintained that it is their right. It was fought all the way to the Supreme Court, which sided with the drivers. And then the Internal Affairs Ministry, which is in charge of all police, also reaffirmed that people are entitled to film their interaction with DPS.
DPS are notoriously crooked, corrupt, always demanding bribes on the roads. They are not all bad, but, majority are...
Just this year, for example, dash cam footage captured and exposed this DPS cop in Voronezh region, I believe
He physically assaulted the civilian driver, and then drew his pistol on the unarmed man, when he fought back. Thanks to the footage, he was fired and faced criminal charges for his conduct!
It always had fascinated me, overall, as I pointed out in this
thread, Russians, despite having essentially no history of real democracy or liberty, but rather one of warlords, Mongol domination and slavery, and more slavery under serfdom, and more terror and subjugation under Lenin and Stalin, etc, coming from that, from GULags and all that crap, they are FAR less likely to put up with crap for their police than are Americans. They do not, majority, like their police, perhaps because of the extensive history of incarceration and such, they have an ingrained dislike and distrust of anyone in uniform. And they are far less afraid to challenge cops than we are over here...
I see a lot of (conservative) posters here automatically jumping to defend police, when they shoot black people or something; and it disgusts me precisely because I see folks over there, under dictatorship, and they are not afraid; and here you are, in the free world, being a fucking bootlicker...
I don't know,
maybe I am wrong...
