251–260 of 423 posts
I do wonder though if the data retention should be restricted at all. This brings up a very good point that even old data (months or more) can be vital to cases or to the defense, but is there any downside to it that would make it worth restricting? And how long?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That’s the disparity at issue. However there’s no law from you putting up your own camera, pointing it at a public street and publishing the details of every car that drives past and highlighting any interesting once’s, like the mayor, police chief, etc. Yes, and I keep thinking an organized, crowd-sourced effort like people do for capturing ADSB data or weather stations would be tempting. Setting up the hardware w…
A number of states already have laws preventing individuals from setting up ALPR. I can't image state or government officials that don't lready have those restrictions in place would allow the public to set up tracking of their movements for very long if someone did try to set up something crowd-sourced or easily searchable. e.g.: Arkansas: https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-12/subtitle-2/ch... > Except as p…
A license plate is already publicly displayed information (and is in most jurisdictions not private property), and you're operating in a public space. I know it's unpopular but I went from not supporting these sorts of systems to embracing them after seeing the positive effects in China. For crimes that depend on anonymity, theft, assault, hit-and-runs, vandalism, illegal parking, etc., surveillance changes the calcu…
Mass Surveillance deters crime and makes the job of law enforcement easier. I'm happy to live with Mass Surveillance because I don't think the drawbacks of having it aren't that bad, there are some benefits to me, and I trust institutions to implement safeguards.
Now replace Mass Surveillance with any of the following, and I think the your argument is the same:
- Warrantless Searches
- Giving Police the ability to convict in the field
- Permanent and mandatory position tracking for all citizens
- Required public identities for all online activityEarlier quoted context omitted.
Because the ability to scale up a bunch of officers sitting around writing down literally everything they see is limited in comparison. It can only be so invasive and “always-on” everywhere. Throwing up a few dozen flock cameras costs a fraction of that and scales incredibly quickly.
It is a curious ‘small government’ instinct that wants government capabilities to be restricted from ever becoming efficient or scalable, even though the population and economy and complexity of the world the government is tasked with regulating scales up. But often the inverse argument is used in respect of private corporations. Obviously it would be unreasonable to expect Google to vet every ad and YouTube video up…
I am actually not so sure that’s obvious. I am slowly coming around to the controversial opinion that if they can’t vet what is going up, they shouldn’t be allowed to have an infinite number of uploads/hosted content.
They constantly alternate between “don’t worry, we have perfected our algorithms and can catch all of the stuff” and, when they fail, “well you can’t expect us to go over all this stuff. But don’t worry, we pinky promise it’ll be different now.”
If I owned 10,000 apartment buildings and one of them collapsed because of negligence, I don’t simply get to go “my real estate empire is too big for you to expect me to follow the law. Shit is just going to collapse sometimes, deal with it.”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have never heard anyone try and argue that video evidence is not effective. That’s a pretty big stretch. There is nothing reversed with Flock. There is a crime scene, they see who was entering or leaving and work from there. Without plate readers it takes a team of people many hours, that’s the difference. You can’t know who had anything to do with the crime without investigating, that’s the definition of the word!…
Is it OK to install a GPS tracker on your car if you only drive on public roads? You seem to think that would not compromise your privacy in any way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not about scale, it's about oversight. A warrant puts a lock on the data until the request is approved. Leaving it wide open is the reason we have constant news stories about police being arrested for stalking people. Nobody wants to limit the police's ability to investigate crimes, but we do want them to use their power to investigate crimes, not to stalk their baby mama, crush, rival, etc. I fully understand a…
> Nobody wants to limit the police's ability to investigate crimes. This is not true of privacy advocates, they do want to limit the ability to fish for circumstantial evidence that targets innocent people and causes suspicion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't understand why a police cruiser can sit in a public space (or even a private one) and write down licence plates and descriptions of passers-by with pen and paper, or record everything around them with dashcams and bodycams for later use, but when it comes to cameras on a pole this would require a warrant. Scale actually matters. Things that are generally OK at a small scale become problematic at larger scal…
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Either it needs a warrant or it’s fully open and people can start creating websites showing the movements of local politicians. This middle ground that municipalities try to carve out where it’s fully open to police without a warrant but not subject to FOIL laws doesn’t appear tenable for much longer. There’s been too many cases of police officers stalking exes, poking around the data for fun and such so it’s clear p…
I don't understand why a police cruiser can sit in a public space (or even a private one) and write down licence plates and descriptions of passers-by with pen and paper, or record everything around them with dashcams and bodycams for later use, but when it comes to cameras on a pole this would require a warrant. Going back through police officers' notes or cruiser dash cam videos and tracking a car's movements by it…
A COMPUTER
CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE
THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION
-IBM, 1979
A license plate is already publicly displayed information (and is in most jurisdictions not private property), and you're operating in a public space. I know it's unpopular but I went from not supporting these sorts of systems to embracing them after seeing the positive effects in China. For crimes that depend on anonymity, theft, assault, hit-and-runs, vandalism, illegal parking, etc., surveillance changes the calcu…
The idea that these are needed, and deployed to address a crime problem is false. For example, Irvine, CA has been one of the safest large cites in the US for decades. Why did they need flock?