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Flock wanted to tap dashcams in rideshare vechicles to add to surveillance data

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Re: Flock wanted to tap dashcams in rideshare vechicles to add to surveillance data

#11

For an Amber Alert that could be really helpful.

Kidnapping like how you’re thinking of it (stranger grabbing your kid from the park) is a myth. Non-family abductions are 1% of cases.

Straight from the horse’s mouth: https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/nonfamily

Re: Flock wanted to tap dashcams in rideshare vechicles to add to surveillance data

#12
Part of the backstory here I think is that ALPR cameras are a commodity technology. They're not defensible by themselves medium term; the market will go to whoever ships the cheapest most reliable cameras with the best pre-sales team, which is a tough space to compete in. For Flock to defend a growth-stage startup valuation, it needs to come up with value-adds.

For a while it looked like that was going to take the form of single-pane-of-glass fusion products (think: Grafana for public safety orgs), but post-AI that seems pretty hard to defend too; Axon doesn't need deep roots in SFBA tech culture to compete on that anymore.

So I guess expect a lot of wacky ideas.

Re: Flock wanted to tap dashcams in rideshare vechicles to add to surveillance data

#14
post #5

Fitting the typical stereotype of a villain company, the greed with no ethics isn’t surprising, what’s surprising that it’s backed by “hacker” news.. shouldn’t HN be backing the counter efforts against such company not the other way around?

Flock is a Y Combinator alumnus. It’s not backed by Hacker News, scare quotes or no.

Re: Flock wanted to tap dashcams in rideshare vechicles to add to surveillance data

#15

The CEO of Flock said his mission is to "completely eliminate and eradicate crime in America". I think I saw that movie, it was called Minority Report.

To eliminate only very specific types of crime, to be clear.

Re: Flock wanted to tap dashcams in rideshare vechicles to add to surveillance data

#17

Hm, two questions: - Who is paying for surveillance? - To whose benefit is it used?

Police departments until the constitutional aspects are settled, then they'll be cut down en masse.

If the constitutional aspects are settled in favor of people, but current SCOTUS suggests this be unlikely. But.. even it were, then police departments would just buy the data second hand instead via direct contracts.

Re: Flock wanted to tap dashcams in rideshare vechicles to add to surveillance data

#18

The CEO of Flock said his mission is to "completely eliminate and eradicate crime in America". I think I saw that movie, it was called Minority Report.

Sumaritan from Person of Interest is more like what they are aiming for I think.

Re: Flock wanted to tap dashcams in rideshare vechicles to add to surveillance data

#19

The CEO of Flock said his mission is to "completely eliminate and eradicate crime in America". I think I saw that movie, it was called Minority Report.

To eliminate only very specific types of crime, to be clear.

poor people crime, and of course the crime of being poor in and of itself.

Re: Flock wanted to tap dashcams in rideshare vechicles to add to surveillance data

#20

Hm, two questions: - Who is paying for surveillance? - To whose benefit is it used?

Police departments until the constitutional aspects are settled, then they'll be cut down en masse.

well, tax payers. Cops wanted millions extra to hire more cops, and they blow it on start ups instead.
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