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Deflock Casa Grande

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Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#61

Post by Zigurd »

vlod wrote: post #49
moshun wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only question is why you didn’t believe police could/would do this in the first place? My default perspective is that this is exactly what law-enforcement and other government officials would use this technology to do, especially if there are no guardrails or laws preventing them from abusing it.

I kinda expect the s/w engineer who wrote this would create an audit log. i.e. police-id, licence-place-id. Well that's the way I would write it.

I'm sure there is an audit log. But because, you know, computers, they'll probably charge you a few thousand dollars to process the FOIA request. If you could get the time cards and GPS tracks from police departments, how much detail and overtime fraud do you think you would find?

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#62

Post by telesilla »

collabs wrote: post #22

I know this is preaching to the choir but from the article on the person holding the skimmer > Police can also use the cameras to surveil protestors and stalk ex-lovers—or strangers they find attractive. I didn't believe police actually did this until a roommate's new classmate told me her story. She has recently moved in to the neighborhood (an HOA at that). She was walking her dog one evening when a police officer…

Check out the new Netflix doc, A Toxic Love Story. US Marshall at the center of it all (no spoiler).

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#63

Post by bigyabai »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #34
infinite_spin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to gauge the sincerity of these beliefs, and even harder to tell if you've actually tested these beliefs against the reality of mass surveillance, especially when it's been used to arrest and stalk innocent people. https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/georgia-cops-keep-get... https://cambridgeanalytica.org/surveillance-privacy/police-f... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/the-cop-investigating-a...

Well, we need laws and oversight to stop these actions. Do you realize that people use phones to stalk innocent people? And yet you probably have a phone. Why is that?

We have laws and oversight surrounding phone surveillance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception

Just like you say, it still gets abused both within and outside the government (eg. Salt Typhoon) because surveillance inherently threatens society.

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#64

Post by mc32 »

collabs wrote: post #22

I know this is preaching to the choir but from the article on the person holding the skimmer > Police can also use the cameras to surveil protestors and stalk ex-lovers—or strangers they find attractive. I didn't believe police actually did this until a roommate's new classmate told me her story. She has recently moved in to the neighborhood (an HOA at that). She was walking her dog one evening when a police officer…

That’s the sad part. There was a nationwide trend to ignore misdemeanor theft so much so that now there is a new baseline and most police have taken this to heart and don’t even pretend to put an effort into misdemeanor theft -yes, I know many or perhaps most departments are understaffed but still. It’s irritating.

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#65

Post by Zigurd »

EA-3167 wrote: post #41
collabs wrote: post #22

I know this is preaching to the choir but from the article on the person holding the skimmer > Police can also use the cameras to surveil protestors and stalk ex-lovers—or strangers they find attractive. I didn't believe police actually did this until a roommate's new classmate told me her story. She has recently moved in to the neighborhood (an HOA at that). She was walking her dog one evening when a police officer…

I was with you up until the very last line. Why do people imagine that the police are in the business of property retrieval? Once your stuff is stolen in almost all cases it's long LONG gone! Cars are sent to be broken down for parts, tools are sold to fences and so on. The typical thief isn't some mastermind who carefully holds on to what they stole, they rush to their nearest fence or dealer to trade it for what th…

With a few exceptions, like mob run baggage theft rings at big airports, criminals are not very smart and have pretty poor opsec. Solution rates could be a lot better than they are.

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#66

Post by computably »

mooreds wrote: post #27

I learned about this site from the 404 media article: https://www.404media.co/casa-grande-arizona-flock-city-counc... An excerpt: > “I've spent the last several months talking to people all over Casa Grande, and one thing keeps coming up: Safety. So, today I'm excited to announce a new company called Shepherd Safety,” he said. “Our mission is simple. Keep government officials and their families safe.” It would be no…

Why, what a fantastic idea! Maybe a certain trillionaire would be interested...

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#67

Post by cortesoft »

charcircuit wrote: post #36
collabs wrote: post #22

I know this is preaching to the choir but from the article on the person holding the skimmer > Police can also use the cameras to surveil protestors and stalk ex-lovers—or strangers they find attractive. I didn't believe police actually did this until a roommate's new classmate told me her story. She has recently moved in to the neighborhood (an HOA at that). She was walking her dog one evening when a police officer…

Why don't they instead push for making abuses of law enforcement access illegal? That way we can both catch criminals and missing people along with avoiding abuse.

Those things are illegal, but it still happens because it is so easy and they usually aren't caught. We only hear about the rare instances where something actually happens to the cop doing it, most of the time it is never reported.

This isn't because police are inherently horrible people, it is because they are normal humans.

We all know people who would abuse the ability to track anyone they want. And we also have all seen times at work where employees ignore or cover for another employee breaking the rules, for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes because the coworker is a friend, sometimes because of peer pressure, and sometimes just because we don't want the hassle and paperwork and stress of reporting someone for what seems at the time like a minor infraction. And then the next time it happens with a slightly worse infraction, you think, "Well, I didn't report them when the did X, and this isn't that much worse, so ill just keep my mouth shut"

That is just human nature, and it is why sometimes making something illegal isn't enough. You have to make it impossible.

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#68

Post by rsoto2 »

rsoto2 wrote: post #59
charcircuit wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't they instead push for making abuses of law enforcement access illegal? That way we can both catch criminals and missing people along with avoiding abuse.

They will investigate themselves? Police do not prevent crime and rarely catch criminals, in fact they are often _involved_ in crime. There are scientific approaches to solving crime and larger budgets for more cameras and police tanks is not it.

Also, he and Flock recently boasted on LinkedIn that they are not shipping face-tracking in some cities. Wow this makes them so much more secure and private right? No it's likely because most people are looking at their phones and they can more easily identify you via the way you walk, the clothes you wear, and the places you visit.

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#69

Post by jameslk »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #24

I do find it very funny how over the past couple of decades US has been talking about how awful Chinese government is wrt surveillance, but now doing exactly the same but through private industry contracts instead. I hold a semi-middle ground view to CCTVs/plate readers, and understand how it can deliver improved QoL to most citizens. But a bit weird how a core American "surveillance = big no no" belief was thrown ou…

> But a bit weird how a core American "surveillance = big no no" belief was thrown out in a few years.

I can't speak for China since I'm not as familiar with that culture, but as for the US, the culture has not changed, as you can see by protest campaigns like this and many similar types of protests (e.g. public destruction of Flock cameras). The culture in the US was founded on minimal government interference based on those trying to escape persecution elsewhere at that time, and that thread is still baked into many facets of US politics.

What has changed is the state. Surveillance has been growing constantly, to much of the disapproval of those who live in the US (e.g. Edward Snowden's revelations were very damning and the revealed surveillance was very much protested against, and likewise after the Cambridge Analytica leaks). But it's a bit of boiling frog syndrome for those experiencing it: the state can grow more controlling of our lives slow enough not to be perceptible, or to spin surveillance under manipulative politics, which is for example what led to bipartisan support of the Patriot Act. This makes it difficult to stop. Technology is especially a double edged sword for making this worse.

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#70

Post by happytoexplain »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #34
infinite_spin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to gauge the sincerity of these beliefs, and even harder to tell if you've actually tested these beliefs against the reality of mass surveillance, especially when it's been used to arrest and stalk innocent people. https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/georgia-cops-keep-get... https://cambridgeanalytica.org/surveillance-privacy/police-f... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/the-cop-investigating-a...

Well, we need laws and oversight to stop these actions. Do you realize that people use phones to stalk innocent people? And yet you probably have a phone. Why is that?

This is like the "why drive if it's so dangerous" fallacy. We trade cost for value, downsides for upsides, risk for reward. Cars and phones are highly valuable to normal people. Virtually all people do not experience immediate, constant, concrete benefits from public camera surveillance. And this is not even to mention that Flock cameras are more abused than phones (although scale makes that subjective, it's kind of apples-to-oranges right now).

Analogies are distracting. They are rhetorical junk food. Make an argument directly supporting Flock cameras - don't just say "it's like phones".

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