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Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

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Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#121

Post by makeitdouble »

nkrisc wrote: post #96

> He characterizes the behavior as rare. He simultaneously identifies it as the most common form of abuse. The tension between those two statements is the problem Flock has left unaddressed. I don’t see how there’s any tension between these statements. The overall occurrence of abuse can be rare while the most common form of the abuse that does occur is of officers tracking people they know.

You're right both can be logically true. Now the tension doesn't reside in the logic, but in the intent of the statements.

First statement minimizes the problem's impact, second argues it's still worth tackling.

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#122

Post by Manuel_D »

downrightmike wrote: post #97
Manuel_D wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the contrary, little of what Flock does would be restricted by the 4th amendment. The cameras are in public, and neither the government nor individual citizens need authorization to film people in public. Many Flock cameras are also privately owned, too.

The government may not purchase services for acts it is not allowed to do itself: Pinkerton Act.

But the government is allowed to track people's license plates. There's nothing against the law for a police officer to stand at an intersection writing down all passing car's license plates with a pen and paper. Flock is the same thing, just much more cost efficient.

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#123

Post by TZubiri »

Big fan of court ordered warrants as a way to limit law enforcement here.

That said, warrants protect law enforcement like searching someone's house. It seems that some less intrusive powers like running someone's plate has been given to the police with lower controls.

And it makes sense right? If every judge needed to approve every potential plate check, it might be too much for daily operations.

So option A, push towards everything being protected under warrants.

Sure, option B, how about protection mechanisms that sit somewhere in the middle? For example, what if some powers were audited (sounds like they are logged already) on a probabilistic basis. What if judges could inspect some fraction of searches after the fact, and ask for justification afterwards. Of course this would have no effect on the actual search, but it would have long term effects on future searches.

Even if 1% of lesser searches are audited, I'm sure most policemen would be much more weary about using them for personal matters like stalking women.

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#124

Post by pinkmuffinere »

arjie wrote: post #120
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the ideal number of unsolved crimes is not zero and the ideal number of crimes committed using state apparatus is also not zero I feel this is an _extremely_ good point, the kind that seems obvious only once you hear it. But i feel there’s an implication that could be made explicit here — we should be looking at the distribution of both apparatus-enabled-crimes and unsolved-crimes when we’re discussing this sort of…

> And if those metrics aren’t tabulated for easy access, they probably should be. I couldn't agree more. They're two different error rates for our society and measuring them accurately would help us go to where we should be on the curve.

Somebody should make a website visualizing the data we do have, perhaps with uncertainty bounds, and a recursive breakdown locale-by-locale… Nose goes!!

Edit: wow I bet this is a project that would be _way_ too difficult to vibe code with AI, with well documented data sources and what not. Sure would be a shame if somebody proved me wrong.

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#125

Post by TZubiri »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #115
arjie wrote: post #30

Ultimately, there’s a sort of homeostasis in people’s tolerance for crime. If you need video evidence for prosecution, those who want it prosecuted will produce video cameras. If you make warrants impossible to produce in a timely manner, the camera search will be warrant exempted. Attempts to damage state power to ensure crime isn’t prosecuted will be likely met with methods that are immune to them. Given the constr…

> the ideal number of unsolved crimes is not zero and the ideal number of crimes committed using state apparatus is also not zero I feel this is an _extremely_ good point, the kind that seems obvious only once you hear it. But i feel there’s an implication that could be made explicit here — we should be looking at the distribution of both apparatus-enabled-crimes and unsolved-crimes when we’re discussing this sort of…

I think there's a bias in public discussion towards idealism, because most discussions will start by the argument that we need to reduce X, or we need to reduce Y. If there is a conflict and there needs to be a trade off, very few discussions and points will be about the tradeoff, but there will be a whole bunch of discussions about just plain reducing X or reducing Y.

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#126

Post by orthecreedence »

mc32 wrote: post #116
rose-knuckle17 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tension is that the abuse is far more likely than any value these cameras bring. And what is commonly rare in a country of 342 million? Prairie Grove, Illinois has 1930 people and he did this to at least 3 people according to the report. .15% of the population. If you extrapolate that out to the national population, its roughly 520k people. Or, the entire population of Sacramento, Ca, being victimized by law enfo…

In a community of 20 people you have one person who commits robbery, that's 5% of the pop being a robbers. One _could_ extrapolate that but we'd fall victim to the law of small numbers.

Either way, I support a world where exactly 0/1 Flock corporations exist.

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#129

Post by bobthebob »

assimpleaspossi wrote: post #94
willis936 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, then pontificate that as a top level comment. Responding to someone saying the 4th amendment should not be circumvented with a refute is a statement about the 4th amendment, not some imagined counter party.

This whole thread represents the imaginary of the internet and it makes me sick. I have to get off the internet. I've spent too much time with it lately.

I’m right here with you. This is a genuinely cool useful technology that helps solve crimes and all we get is pearl clutching.

Most people don’t give AF

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#130

Post by MadnessASAP »

wil421 wrote: post #71
Avshalom wrote: post #12

>>Flock and law enforcement regularly cite documented cases where LPR helped solve violent crimes, recover stolen vehicles, and locate missing persons. Those outcomes are real. My opposition wouldn't change regardless but are those outcomes real?

Yes. Prior to flock, my city trialed LPRs attached to the local power company’s poles. In the first month, they recovered more stolen cars than any prior years total recoveries. I’ve got mixed feelings about Flock, LPRs, and what it allows people and governments to do. I’m 100% sold on the results.

Nobody is questioning the value of unconstrained mass surveillance on solving crimes.

Unfortunately it also enables a good deal of more heinous crimes against the people its supposed to protect, by the people who are supposed to be protecting them.

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