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Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes Reality of Urban Surveillance

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Re: Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes Reality of Urban Surveillance

#171

Post by tim-tday »

normalaccess wrote: post #30
maerF0x0 wrote: post #24

>Exposes reality of urban surveillance Sounds like they're saying we should be appalled by this usage of drones... IDK, until we have some proof of an truly innocent (found by a court) or no reason to be suspected person (eg profiled, misidentified) having a bad outcome (such as arrest and long detention) without recourse (sue the crap out of the city, dept, or state) ... This article basically reads as "Drones help…

Classic example of the Nothing to hide argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument

Nope. This is a classic example of crimes being committed in public and police using technology to catch the perpetrators.

Passive surveillance would be your example. This program is specifically activated when an active investigation is in progress.

Re: Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes Reality of Urban Surveillance

#172

Post by pandaman »

ceejayoz wrote: post #148
akimbostrawman wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the reality of using patterns and data points such as statistics to determine likelihood of danger? Like you and me do every day even if you don't notice? Would the same have happened if they where two women which are statistically less likely to be a danger than men?

Somehow, when it's dark, black and white motorists commit similar levels of traffic offenses, but when it's light out, there's a disparity. https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/05/veil-darkness-redu... That's a pattern/data point/statistic, for sure, but I'd happily assert it supports my point effectively.

>when it's dark, black and white motorists commit similar levels of traffic offenses

The article you linked does not support this claim. It says the proportion of blacks stopped is less in the dark around 7pm.

Re: Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes Reality of Urban Surveillance

#173

Post by ceejayoz »

pandaman wrote: post #172
ceejayoz wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow, when it's dark, black and white motorists commit similar levels of traffic offenses, but when it's light out, there's a disparity. https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/05/veil-darkness-redu... That's a pattern/data point/statistic, for sure, but I'd happily assert it supports my point effectively.

>when it's dark, black and white motorists commit similar levels of traffic offenses The article you linked does not support this claim. It says the proportion of blacks stopped is less in the dark around 7pm.

Read more closely, especially the bit about how they used daylight savings as a control, as it suddenly changes the written time of the incident but not the actual darkness levels at that time.

Re: Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes Reality of Urban Surveillance

#174

Post by rangestransform »

infecto wrote: post #130
rangestransform wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be no optimization on police resources. When Katz v. USA (no expectation of privacy in public) was decided, surveillance was done by an officer who needed to be paid a middle class salary, maybe armed with a camera and a telephoto lens if we’re lucky. The average city police department barely knew what SIGINT meant. Either the laws need to be updated to have equal friction for the police to do surveillan…

These drones are “piloted” but it can be in a semiautonomous way. Your argument makes sense for Flock cameras but not for this style of drone. I think first response with a drone to an active call is a great use of resources for all parties. Flock cameras constantly tracking every movement, probably not given the severe lack of audits and guardrails.

It’s still far too scalable compared to what was accessible back then. The police should be handcuffed to paying for a full ass helicopter if they want to do surveillance

Re: Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes Reality of Urban Surveillance

#175

Post by pllbnk »

tim-tday wrote: post #166
greenleafone7 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that police misuse every single power they have been given and public trust is very low for years now. I do not want to live in a world where random drones/cameras control my every move, and if your response to that is "I don't understand the problem" then we cannot live in the same society. It has been proven for thousands of years now that more laws do not fix society, and especially the problems we…

The videos in question are full of actual crimes being committed and criminals being arrested. San Francisco used to not investigate or prosecute any of those crimes. Laptop stolen out of a car? Nothing to do. Now they catch video of it happening, follow the license plate, arrest the perpetrators. Catalytic converter stolen? We don’t investigate that. Yes, police have shitty track records of abusing authority and tec…

I think it's an important distinction whether crime stops happening after all criminals are locked up or after preventative measures are taken to prevent criminal activity happening in the first place.

When criminals are locked up, they will get released and many of them don't have anything else to do other than returning to do crimes, with gained experience from the previous failures.

But it's possible to reduce crime by preventing it. Do not let dangerous districts form, build communities, reduce access to weapons and so on.

Re: Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes Reality of Urban Surveillance

#176

Post by tavavex »

tim-tday wrote: post #170
josefritzishere wrote: post #106

I'm sure this wont be misused frequently with total impunity, right?

I have a healthy mistrust of authority and surveillance and police. As far as I can tell this program is addressing a real crime problem in SF, it is getting real criminals off the streets and helping police do their jobs. If some policeman abuses his authority and misuses the tech we should 100% prosecute them for that crime. There is as yet no report of a police officer misusing that tech. There are however thousan…

I strongly disagree. For one, people don't just have an issue with individual cops abusing that power, it's just one of the easiest things to point to and one of the most common types of misuse that occurs in real life. The bigger issue is that drones are extremely cheap, and there is nothing limiting their use to actual crimes. It starts as cautiously testing the waters by using the drones to assist people in hunting down actual crime, but there is nothing to prevent it from being scaled into a precrime mass surveillance machine. Much the opposite, this would make the job of the police a lot easier, so if drone surveillance is fully entrenched in our societies, they will start incrementally pushing for it. Do you not see the issue?

But let's also come back to the individuals misusing drones argument - something that's a lot more immediate and perceptible. Whenever there's arguments about expanding police powers, proponents always hand-wave these concerns by suggesting that some systematic or technological changes be made. But neither the police nor the government above them have an incentive to do these things beyond the shallowed need for good PR. Police would like the least restrictions and oversight on their actions to 'increase efficiency', governments would like the same to squash 100% of crime. There's no mechanism that moves the ratchet back. You know these measures will not be implemented. The only method to prevent this that seems powerful enough seems to be denying them the power altogether.

Most importantly, it frustrates me that in these arguments, it's always presented as a two-choice space. Either you get the status quo, or the incredibly dangerous new mass surveillance tech. Crime waves have existed in the past. How did cops manage to deal with them without a thousand eyes quietly recording everyone doing everything? In many places, crime has been going down well before any mass surveillance doodads could even have existed. Don't you think there's other actions that can be taken to improve things outside of just allowing them whatever they want?

Re: Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes Reality of Urban Surveillance

#177

Post by Neil44 »

nozzlegear wrote: post #72
Neil44 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it essential liberty to be able to run around doing crime without being surveiled?

This article literally documents several times SFPD used drones to surveil people who weren't committing any crimes. They sent their drones to spy on a guy who was sitting on a roof listening to music, and in another instance they sent drones to follow "suspicious individuals" who were just going to a basketball court to shoot hoops. This is done despite the department's drone policy stating that "drones can only be…

How would this be different to following a suspicious car to see what it's intent is?

Re: Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes Reality of Urban Surveillance

#178

Post by Neil44 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #23
Neil44 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it essential liberty to be able to run around doing crime without being surveiled?

Sweet, you've invented pre-crime.

Nobody's being punished, only (briefly) surveiled.

Re: Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes Reality of Urban Surveillance

#179

Post by inigyou »

stavros wrote: post #98
maerF0x0 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we'd rather a high speed chase, crashes, danger to cyclists and pedestrians? I'd rather a drone follows the car until it stops and the police arrive to retrieve it and give a hand slap to the offender. I know this is lagging, and American culture will take decades to accept it, but the better our police are the lighter the sentences can be. Part of why a big hard sentence was seen as a deterrent was sort of the ER…

I agree with you 100% if the number of average drone surveillance incidents per year stays the same as the average number of high speed chases per year that took place before drones.

It won't, obviously.

Re: Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes Reality of Urban Surveillance

#180

Post by pandaman »

ceejayoz wrote: post #173
pandaman wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>when it's dark, black and white motorists commit similar levels of traffic offenses The article you linked does not support this claim. It says the proportion of blacks stopped is less in the dark around 7pm.

Read more closely, especially the bit about how they used daylight savings as a control, as it suddenly changes the written time of the incident but not the actual darkness levels at that time.

Can you just quote the part of the article that says something to the effect of "when it's dark, black and white motorists commit similar levels of traffic offenses"?
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