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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

#261

Post by fc417fc802 »

Manuel_D wrote: post #183
aquir wrote: post #27

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

Because most of the American public is not as reflexively anti-Flock as HN would lead you to believe. People acting like cameras recording their activities in public is some sort of grave privacy violation are not the norm. Cameras recording tour activity in malls, and on public roads has been the case since the 90s. Flock became a lightning rod of attention due to ICE, but they don't actually represent any change fr…

> they don't actually represent any change from the status quo.

Only in the sense that the frog has been boiled gradually. The mere presence of cameras in public spaces is not the inconsistency that you seem to think it is. A nationwide centralized aggregator is not even remotely the same thing as a privately owned corner store having a purely private video feed of the front door.

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

#263

Post by microgpt »

EA-3167 wrote: post #135
microgpt wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get to sacrifice your life one or zero times in your life. Surely there are some terminally ill people who would do it?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I suspect most terminally ill people want to spend time with the people they love, not breaking cameras and working their way through the legal system.

When I'm terminally ill one day I will find some good thing to do similar to vandalizing Flock cameras. If they arrest me, I won't care too much.

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

#264

Post by microgpt »

LNSY wrote: post #227
microgpt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Fascism only tolerates one power, that being itself. It can emerge from either the state or corporate side, and necessarily subsumes or destroys the other, just as it subsumes or destroys unions, families, friend networks, communications, and anything else that can establish power. That doesn't mean the merger of two of them is the defining feature.

[dead]

Was he a smart man or was he a fascist?

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

#265

Post by microgpt »

neilv wrote: post #190
nilamo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great point. We should build a network that tracks all cops to make sure they don't get up to no good while off duty.

The police where I live are generally good, and I imagine that's the case many places. Treating police as the enemy, or a punching bag, is unfair and counterproductive. (I can't speak to any places that might have a lot of corruption or ill intent.) Places that aren't too corrupt, you'd be better off encouraging a partnership among citizens, police, lawmakers, and other officials. Which is how it's supposed to be. Ev…

This wouldn't treat them as the enemy. We'd just track everywhere they go, for their safety. Really, we'd be helping them.

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

#266

Post by tr45872267 »

righthand wrote: post #257
tr45872267 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false. Urban areas have the highest rate of crime compared to rural and suburban. For example look at the years 2020 and 2021 from this report:[0] Table 8 Rate of victimization, by type of crime and location of residence, 2020 and 2021 Location of residence Total violent crime Violent crime excluding simple assault Total property crime 2020 2021* 2020 2021* 2020 2021* Urban 19.0 † 24.5 7.7 9.7 158.9 157.5 Sub…

The pandemic years are the exception. Please dont use cherry picked facts to spread FUD.

2022 and 2023 numbers are even worse: https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cv23.pdf

Same with 2024: https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cv24.pdf

Also my second link from my first post showed higher Urban Victimization rates in urban areas in every year from 1995 to 2015.

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

#267

Post by Manuel_D »

davisr wrote: post #235
Manuel_D wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What right is being taken away? Nobody ever had the right to not be recorded in public. Furthermore surveillance isn't just an all or nothing thing. For example, the government can record your activities in public without a warrant, but they can't subpoena your phone calls without a warrant. That degree of surveillance has more checks and balances. How you somehow try to go from recording people in public to "ancestr…

Your language is far too kind for the invasion of privacy and our human expectations of what ought to be permissible. It's not just about being "recorded" in public. It's about having all public excursions recorded, cataloged, and analyzed. What this panopticon of private surveillance is, is way more similar to "stalking" than "recording".

Fundamentally the right to privacy is focused around what people do in private, not things that are publicly visible. If we really think that it's an invasion of privacy to track people's vehicles, the focus should be on abolishing license plates. After all, isn't the bigger problem the fact that cars are all required to display an identifier?

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

#268

Post by Manuel_D »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #261
Manuel_D wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because most of the American public is not as reflexively anti-Flock as HN would lead you to believe. People acting like cameras recording their activities in public is some sort of grave privacy violation are not the norm. Cameras recording tour activity in malls, and on public roads has been the case since the 90s. Flock became a lightning rod of attention due to ICE, but they don't actually represent any change fr…

> they don't actually represent any change from the status quo. Only in the sense that the frog has been boiled gradually. The mere presence of cameras in public spaces is not the inconsistency that you seem to think it is. A nationwide centralized aggregator is not even remotely the same thing as a privately owned corner store having a purely private video feed of the front door.

How do you think ALPR cameras worked during the 90s? Do you think a technician had to go through each camera individually looking for license plates? The data was aggregated and indexed even during the 90s. Some of those databases were national. The same criticisms being levied at flock would also apply to the status quo 20+ years ago.

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

#269

Post by fc417fc802 »

Manuel_D wrote: post #268
fc417fc802 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they don't actually represent any change from the status quo. Only in the sense that the frog has been boiled gradually. The mere presence of cameras in public spaces is not the inconsistency that you seem to think it is. A nationwide centralized aggregator is not even remotely the same thing as a privately owned corner store having a purely private video feed of the front door.

How do you think ALPR cameras worked during the 90s? Do you think a technician had to go through each camera individually looking for license plates? The data was aggregated and indexed even during the 90s. Some of those databases were national. The same criticisms being levied at flock would also apply to the status quo 20+ years ago.

Again you are pointing out the similarities while conveniently ignoring the things that have changed. It has been a continuous gradual slide. The publicized flock examples make clear that the nature and scope of the queries that can be run against modern systems are far beyond what was possible in the 90s. The databases are also far larger.

You are the person arguing that because you're allowed to pick up a pebble it follows that you are permitted to scoop up a handful in a bag thus by extension it's okay to grab a small bucket full thus it must logically follow that filling up the trunk of your car is acceptable therefore no one has any grounds to object to the dump truck and excavator that you've engaged to illegally mine gravel along the side of the road.

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

#270

Post by _DeadFred_ »

sandworm101 wrote: post #93
llm_nerd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The real joke is that the 1984 system was already in place long before flock. We all carry phones. Either from tower records ot google advert tags, private industry already tracked our every movement. Licence plate readers? Why bother when every car now has bluetooth enabled and so is constantly prodcasting its LAP id. (Some cities have tracked cars this way for over a decade, mostly for traffic management.)

Police had to at least play 'parallel reconstruction' and pretend they weren't using Stingrays though. And we all knew it and nodded along, and the lines moved, and the rules blurred a little more, and now we are at the next phase of the erasure of civil liberties.
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