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

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

#112
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Imagine what I really meant was that in those areas people largely approve of these cameras and it’s the minority that don’t.

Now of course your narrative is rude and more entertaining but sadly far from the mark. Saying “that’s not what I paid for” is all fine and dandy but it’s cuts both ways.

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

#113
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is why gerrymandering should be unconstitutional, and why corporations should have their rights explicitly curtailed: they're not citizens or the people.

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

#115

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…

And of course, it's compounded by being pooled. Like RealPage, ALPR services like Flock, Axon Fleet Hub, and Motorola Vigilant VehicleManager offer data laundering so that organizations that shouldn't be talking can communicate.

Privacy laws now.

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

#116

Can anybody find trustworthy stats that these actually reduce crime? All I see are occasional anecdotes about how they were used to find one person one time. Skeptical me seriously doubts this is an effective solution for crime. But maybe that's because this country has a history of being willing to do a million expensive and privacy violating things, and only if it's a punitive measure.

I don't have stats, but most police have made it pretty clear that they're used for investigations that would otherwise have very little to go on.

I don't think anyone other than the manufacturers have made claims of cameras reducing crime. You can put all the AI bells and whistles on them, but they're still just cameras.

They're a fallback option, not a dragnet. The police are generally reactive to reports of crime, not proactively trying to piece together the details of everyone's lives and nail them the moment their dog poops on the sidewalk. No AI can even do that anyway and it would be a waste of money.

There are two vocal camps of people on these threads that are eroding HN: fearmongerers and grifters. I don't understand how it got this bad, but that's the real crisis here.

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

#117

There is no expectation of privacy in public. It's really that simple.

There may be no expectation of privacy in the sense someone may see you and take your picture.

There is an expectation you are not constantly tracked everywhere you go by a nationwide surveillance apparatus, that your location is not constantly monitored, indexed and shared. Unless you expect to live in an Orwellian distopia.

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

#118
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in NYC and I don't think it is safe, so there's one person that disagrees with you. Part of the problem in NYC is when you commit a low-level crime the social-justice warriors let the person back out on the street without charging them. This is why when somebody kills somebody in NYC you often hear that the person had been arrested for various things twelve times earlier. Just covering up the "un-safeness" by…

This is a bail reform propaganda. If you feel unsafe because we dont put deoderant thieves in Rikers then move.

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

#119
post #27

I don't get why any of these devices are still intact...

Are you willing to potentially be prosecuted to make a point that will ultimately come down to, "The cameras you destroyed are replaced with newly purchased units"?

The way to beat this isn't vandalism, it's getting them banned from every municipality and county in the country, while fighting at state levels for more bans.

It's also silly talk from kids online, just like "Don't vote, burn your local Wal-Mart" is only meant to impress other online children. The rest of us know that you'll neither vote, nor burn down the Wal-Mart.

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

#120
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally legal. The operating theory of all of these cameras is that anything happening in public sight is by its nature not private. The federal government is dumping millions and millions of dollars into grant programs for municipalities to buy it… It’s a giant federal surveillance program disguised as decisions made by individual police departments. It’s hilarious and depressing to contrast the HN community reactio…

The last 20 years has burned privacy into the ground for a large part of the population.

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