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Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

engadget.com

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Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#71

Post by dev1ycan »

If a certain group of people think that it should be their right to take others rights away and turn society into a dystopia for perceived security, then for the same reason it should be other individuals rights to assert that their rights should be protected by taking the first group's rights away to install or do whatever they think they can do for convenience/security's sake.

This includes "ancestry tests", security cameras with AI in them, upload IDs to "verify", and even social media where you are allowed to upload pictures with others in them.

And since we "supposedly" live in a democracy, we should be allowed to have a vote to decide on this, the group that wins is the majority, right? I don't understand why we're allowing our rights to erode before we have an informed election about this, in democracies.

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#74

Post by TheRealPomax »

erikerikson wrote: post #9
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #2

Yeah, I'm not a fan of these things. If they were just ALPRs, I could probably give them a bit of slack -if they tightened up their security-, but all the other stuff they do, makes them pretty much untenable. However: > This makes AI powered cameras like Flock's distinct from traditional surveillance or traffic cams, which require someone to manually look over footage in order to find a specific vehicle or individua…

I think there's a limit to how misleading. There's a very important difference between "anyone could walk through my door and steal my stuff" and "this person walked in my door and stole my stuff".

But not so much between "this person walked in my door and stole my stuff" and "I left the door to my house open and then I put my stuff in the doorway."

Flock cameras are roughly that secure.

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#75

Post by arjie »

infecto wrote: post #62
arjie wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m an Indian with a Taiwanese-American wife. I’ve never experienced even the mildest amount of racism in Taiwan. Everyone was kind and friendly to me. And Taiwan is very safe. I’m not going to pretend that an anecdote fully captures a problem but considering I spent over a month there just living a normal life I imagine that if the problem were widespread I’d have many chances to experience it. My elderly parents we…

I don’t know if I would consider a month long vacation as evidence. Taiwan is pretty famous for have lower labor classes that they import from places like the Philippines and while people are friendly, they are still generally looked down upon. Not dissimilar to places like Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. So I think racism is a pretty loaded and broad word and people typically think about it in purely an American con…

Well, certainly my experience on the ground is far more meaningful than someone’s statements without evidence. Just googling around it seems that American policing is generally considered fairly racially discriminatory so performing racism on its own is not getting us less crime. Taiwan doesn’t seem to have that problem as extensively.

And I’m an Indian who grew up in and spent the majority of my life in India as did my parents. I’ve lived in a few countries for years and stayed in many for months. My frame of reference is unlikely to be the American context for racism.

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#76

Post by TheRealPomax »

llm_nerd wrote: post #59
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #2

Yeah, I'm not a fan of these things. If they were just ALPRs, I could probably give them a bit of slack -if they tightened up their security-, but all the other stuff they do, makes them pretty much untenable. However: > This makes AI powered cameras like Flock's distinct from traditional surveillance or traffic cams, which require someone to manually look over footage in order to find a specific vehicle or individua…

What makes Flock bizarre is that it's a private business, and this is precisely how police departments are getting around a lot of traditional gates and checks on this sort of thing. Police setting up a 1984 monitoring system throughout your city, tracking every car, person, activity -- yields lots of questions, oversight, concerns, debate, challenges, etc. Some private business doing the same, and then letting the s…

That's actually the one thing that does make sense: police has always wanted to be able to do this, but they legally can't. But they can reward a private company willing to do it for them, so that they can "ask for the data" without ever breaking the law.

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#77

Post by goatlover »

infecto wrote: post #68
fithisux wrote: post #31

As a voter and taxpayer, I never asked for this.

That’s not how voting and paying taxes work.

Imagine representatives who did what voters actually wanted. There's probably a name for that. Representative democracy or something. As opposed to corporate representation.

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#79

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

icapybara wrote: post #6

We need some way to address the low level crime in the US. If you look at cities in east Asia, they're both much larger than typical US cities and much safer. It -is- possible to have safe large cities. The fact that we don't is a choice.

> much safer

They have severe consequences for criminal behavior and no subculture that elevates criminality.

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#80

Post by maccard »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #2

Yeah, I'm not a fan of these things. If they were just ALPRs, I could probably give them a bit of slack -if they tightened up their security-, but all the other stuff they do, makes them pretty much untenable. However: > This makes AI powered cameras like Flock's distinct from traditional surveillance or traffic cams, which require someone to manually look over footage in order to find a specific vehicle or individua…

What LLM can I get and feed hundreds of hours of video into that will give me the position of a specific vehicle alongside when that happened?

An LLM isn’t going to help you here, but basic Computer Vision and a SQL database has been a solution _if you have the cameras_. I wrote a license plate reader as a university project using OpenCV almost 20 years ago.

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