Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

aclu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 184 posts

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#91

Post by SXX »

What we really need is to journalists and cybersecurity community to use these systems to track few hundred of politicians and publish the results. Just like some crooked cops already used it to stalk their exes.

We know how much some billionares hate their jets tracked even though they have small army of bodyguards and three letter agencies spending budget of small country protecting them.

Lets see how comfortable much less protected US politicians gonna be with a fact that everyone knows what time they leave their house by minute, what routes they take and where their cars gonna be.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#92

Post by thaumaturgy »

urams wrote: post #59
pclowes wrote: post #45

People always want high trust societies. They are incredibly hard to create and incredibly easy to destroy. However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. High trust requires, well, actual trust. You can’t build real trust in a panopticon just a sickly police state facsimile of it. Society and progress moves at the speed of trust. Without it many uniquely human and beautiful things disappear.

> However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. This is directly refuted by Singapore, Japan, arguably the UK, and others. Singapore is very interesting to visit. Externally there's somewhat of a narrative of a harsh police state but when I visited I almost never saw a single police officer and they don't have particularly many police officers on a per capita basis (170/100k vs 440/100k in NY…

There's a glaring lie of omission when Singapore is cited as a "safe society" in a surveillance context without also mentioning that those same surveillance systems are used to aggressively suppress political dissent (https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/sou...).

Super safe society, unless you happen to express disagreement with any part of it. Then, not so safe for you.

So I guess the question is, once America attains a sufficiently pervasive level of surveillance over its citizens, which people are you hoping will be in power forever?

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#93

Post by voidUpdate »

urams wrote: post #59
pclowes wrote: post #45

People always want high trust societies. They are incredibly hard to create and incredibly easy to destroy. However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. High trust requires, well, actual trust. You can’t build real trust in a panopticon just a sickly police state facsimile of it. Society and progress moves at the speed of trust. Without it many uniquely human and beautiful things disappear.

> However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. This is directly refuted by Singapore, Japan, arguably the UK, and others. Singapore is very interesting to visit. Externally there's somewhat of a narrative of a harsh police state but when I visited I almost never saw a single police officer and they don't have particularly many police officers on a per capita basis (170/100k vs 440/100k in NY…

Saying the UK is a "high trust society" is definitely an interesting choice

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#94

Post by abhinai »

I respect ACLU but this article seems a fair bit biased. They're stretching the imagination quite a bit in some of their examples. Seems to me that someone has already made up their mind and are now looking for any example to support their narrative.

I'd love for them to build a case more impartially and drop the activist nature of the language they use.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#95

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nohell wrote: post #51
nikkwong wrote: post #50

Even with all this said, surveillance like this is certainly going to be one of the best ways to catch criminals and reduce crime over the long term. I hope the misgivings that we have around Flock won't close the door to us ever using this type of technology, in some way, in the future.

Catching a few criminals is not worth taking everyone's privacy by force.

> Catching a few criminals is not worth taking everyone's privacy by force

This drifts into truism with "few," "criminals," "everyone" and "by force" left so vaguely defined.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#96

Post by pjc50 »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #52
nikkwong wrote: post #50

Even with all this said, surveillance like this is certainly going to be one of the best ways to catch criminals and reduce crime over the long term. I hope the misgivings that we have around Flock won't close the door to us ever using this type of technology, in some way, in the future.

I spent 3 years in Korea, and that's probably where I will go back to retire after I exit. Crime there is extremely low - partially because of the cameras, but mainly because they're on top of it. They're able to spend time on every criminal, which deters anyone from breaking the law. Contrary to SF, where I've called the police and provided evidence for an open and shut case, and the cops shrugged their shoulders. F…

American police seem to be a uniquely bad combo of false positives and false negatives. Failing to go after actual crime while also capable of using disproportionate violence in incidents that don't warrant it.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#97

Post by anal_reactor »

pclowes wrote: post #45

People always want high trust societies. They are incredibly hard to create and incredibly easy to destroy. However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. High trust requires, well, actual trust. You can’t build real trust in a panopticon just a sickly police state facsimile of it. Society and progress moves at the speed of trust. Without it many uniquely human and beautiful things disappear.

>People always want high trust societies.

Disagree. High-trust can only exist in the absence of class disparity. You're not going to steal from your neighbor if your neighbor has exactly the same things as you do. You will if he's substantially richer. At the same time, you want to be as rich yourself as possible. Can't have both though.

Countries like Japan or Singapore aren't high-trust societies, they're high-enforcement societies. That's different. In my eyes, high-trust society is a society where law enforcement isn't needed because people self-police because they value the collective, not because of fear of punishment.

A friend of mine never locks his car because he trusts that nobody will steal it even though he knows that once the car is stolen, the chance of recovery is zero because the police simply ignore such reports. This is high-trust society.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#98

Post by raxxorraxor »

urams wrote: post #59
pclowes wrote: post #45

People always want high trust societies. They are incredibly hard to create and incredibly easy to destroy. However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. High trust requires, well, actual trust. You can’t build real trust in a panopticon just a sickly police state facsimile of it. Society and progress moves at the speed of trust. Without it many uniquely human and beautiful things disappear.

> However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. This is directly refuted by Singapore, Japan, arguably the UK, and others. Singapore is very interesting to visit. Externally there's somewhat of a narrative of a harsh police state but when I visited I almost never saw a single police officer and they don't have particularly many police officers on a per capita basis (170/100k vs 440/100k in NY…

I don't think this is a refutation. You have narrowed the definition of an admittedly soft term like "high trust society" to be an expression of security or perceived security.

But more to the core of the definition of trust. Singapore isn't using trust, it uses control. Which in most contexts are opposed.

Surveillance isn't even important for the formation of a high trust society. On the contrary, with increased surveillance possibilities, formerly high trust societies seem to have degraded.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#99

Post by raxxorraxor »

DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #54
pclowes wrote: post #45

People always want high trust societies. They are incredibly hard to create and incredibly easy to destroy. However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. High trust requires, well, actual trust. You can’t build real trust in a panopticon just a sickly police state facsimile of it. Society and progress moves at the speed of trust. Without it many uniquely human and beautiful things disappear.

The idea that surveillance undermines high trust societies seems insane to me. Widespread petty crime, lack of shared cultural norms and traditions, lacking of missing social reinforcement of expectations of a society - those are what prevent high trust societies from forming. I consider those things a much worse problem then Flock cameras.

No, we had high trust societies before the shitty surveillance tech. There are quite a few effects that undermine it even and this tech is part of the reason why.

It is part of the problem, not part of a solution.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#100

Post by EraYaN »

abhinai wrote: post #94

I respect ACLU but this article seems a fair bit biased. They're stretching the imagination quite a bit in some of their examples. Seems to me that someone has already made up their mind and are now looking for any example to support their narrative. I'd love for them to build a case more impartially and drop the activist nature of the language they use.

I mean being activist is sort of the whole point of the ACLU? And besides it's not like this would be the first time stuff like this happens. You don't have to imagine it, just learn history.
Post reply on HN