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Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

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Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#61
I haven't read the transcript yet but are there no "human in the middle" loops here?

Surely we could just get a pair of eyeballs on everything flagged and if it's not 100% crystal clear what's going on, then it gets flagged for a senior pair of eyes to look at?

I'm against the Minority Report kind of stuff but a system (AI Flock cameras in this case) flags up , surely it should then go into a queue for humans to look at! Flock can add in a certainty score and the human must verify!

It could still increase efficiency this way.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#63

I am absolutely biased, but there is a lot of attempt to shift or at least share the blame here and not a lot of accountability. Flock themselves mis-translated the plate, plain and simple, and should not be being used in production for alerting authorities on very serious matters. We are already very aware that the police overreact and make plenty of mistakes. The obvious here being that even if this was the exact p…

I wish Garrett had been asked about his attitude towards false positives and negatives. He's previously said that he feels false positives are a better option than negatives.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#64

This is such an evil company; they should be regulated out of existence.

The swiftness with which this company went from "We are setting up cameras in neighborhoods where we were invited by HOA, representing the homeowners" to "We set up cameras on public highways all over the country putting everyone in a dragnet" is exactly why you don't let the camel's nose under the tent.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#65

I can't deal with the ads on this page on mobile

use firefox and ublock origin. Use dns with ad blocking. You shouldn't see ads on mobile.

Also, Brave Mobile, by default, seems to block most ads.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#66
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we should give guns to children then because it’s just a tool to defend themselves right? Or a more common metaphor, if you give chimpanzee’s a gun… The police have no actionable method of abuse if you take Flock cameras away. They wouldn’t be acting on flagged random license plates if you took away the dragnet and surveillance system that’s randomly flagging people. This is 100% fault of Flock.

Flock can be a terrible unconstitutional company and this particular incident can have nothing to do with that and not be Flock's responsibility in any way. Acting like anyone who understands how true legacy ALPR systems work and how police officers track plates and search for stolen vehicles are by extension somehow supporting or excusing Flock is ridiculous. Nearly the exact same thing could have happened with trad…

Nope! Traditional ALPR systems follow the law and do not give out access like candy and do not automate flagging and tracking individuals. Traditional systems are not a dragnet.

This is 100% the fault of Flock.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#67
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if I ever serve for jury duty over a case like that, they didn't do it. Now you're bending facts. You can decide they are not guilty of a crime, but you can't make them have not done it.

If you really want to nitpick, juries are what settle questions of facts.

You can agree that the person did the act yet still find them not guilty. The fact is still the fact. As someone else stated, not guilty does not mean they did not do it. It just means they do not want to say they are guilty. There's only two options. If if you do not choose "guilty" the only option remaining is "not guilty".

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#68

What a coincidence, John Oliver just talked about this company [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnBPhelCdWE

It was good but I feel like he missed the point somewhat. These tools are inaccurate, sure. But even if they weren’t we should still oppose this type of surveillance. Even if these cameras stopped all crime. He touched on more ideological grounds briefly but wish he spent more time there. There’s nothing in the Constitution that makes me think warrantless (mass) surveillance should be legal.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you of course, people should be ethical. But if every human exists on a spectrum of evil good, and we can't change this, then regulation/law serves a critical function. Proper legislation should at least create an effective floor for what's possible to profit off of. Otherwise we're pretty much at the mercy of the least scrupulous capitalist - and let me tell you, they will always exist. For AI the argum…

I agree, we do need regulations on this. We do need to also hold our elected representatives accountable. They're literally asleep (or in the alzheimer's ward) while on the job. And we also need to hold our police and other organizations who are actively abusing these tools that are already deployed. But we should also be holding the groups building these tools accountable for what their tools are doing, especially s…

> They're literally asleep (or in the alzheimer's ward) while on the job

No. They're being bought off.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#70
post #49

I am absolutely biased, but there is a lot of attempt to shift or at least share the blame here and not a lot of accountability. Flock themselves mis-translated the plate, plain and simple, and should not be being used in production for alerting authorities on very serious matters. We are already very aware that the police overreact and make plenty of mistakes. The obvious here being that even if this was the exact p…

> Flock themselves mis-translated the plate, plain and simple, and should not be being used in production for alerting authorities on very serious matters. I am anti-Flock to the point that my friends and family roll their eyes when the topic comes up, but saying that because the image recognition software did not achieve 100% accuracy it can't be used under any circumstances is just silly. I agree Flock shouldn't be…

It wasn't accuracy, it was recognizing the type of plate. It was a weird plate.

  34  DTM
    manufacturer
here's the article with pictures:

https://www.thedrive.com/news/how-flock-cameras-wrongly-trac...

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