71–80 of 482 posts
At the very least they need to make public accessible all data collected about all employees and owners of Flock, and everyone in government agencies that contract with Flock. This means we can see all photos and videos of these people, every trip they make, etc. All searchable with AI, with no audit trail (just like it is for government agencies).
Good. It helps solve crimes, and can even resolve general anti-social behaviour. I'd rather have the cameras than have family members die to drugged up drivers, or robbers get away with their crimes.
What makes you think flock would prevent those crimes?
I was surprised to learn that many countries have what amounts to a flock equivalent. UK for instance has a National ANPR Service w 12k fixed cameras and 90-100m plates read a day. They also store it much longer. Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-anpr-ser...
I’m an American living in Japan, I’ve always felt a great sense of liberty because of how safe it is here; I can live a lifestyle that would get me robbed pretty much immediately in the USA. While crime rates have always been relatively low here; part of that is because Japan got tough on crime around the turn of the century, and one part of that was pervasive rollout of automated license scanners used for reconstructing vehicle movement, like Flock. I suspect that Japanese people didn’t accept this because they don’t care about privacy - they absolutely do - but instead because they have a healthy enough social context to be able to consider the tradeoffs, and a government responsive enough to design around those tradeoffs; rather than immediately flying into a rage and vandalizing their cities like some angry Americans are doing now.
The same thing plays out for other things that would pretty clearly be a good thing, like having a real secure national ID instead of relying on social security numbers for identity verification (terrible). Can’t do it, people (as well as criminals) value the liberty of being difficult to trace far more than the liberty of not being defrauded regularly, or having a civil service that is able to do basic functions like authenticating you for benefits efficiently. Sigh…
Good. It helps solve crimes, and can even resolve general anti-social behaviour. I'd rather have the cameras than have family members die to drugged up drivers, or robbers get away with their crimes.
I was surprised to learn that many countries have what amounts to a flock equivalent. UK for instance has a National ANPR Service w 12k fixed cameras and 90-100m plates read a day. They also store it much longer. Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-anpr-ser...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never thought of UK as a police state. How about Netherlands w a similar program? Non watchlist plates are kept for 28 days compared to most flock implementations that keep for 7 https://www.politie.nl/informatie/waar-staan-anpr-cameras.ht...
The funny thing is that countries commonly called “police states” aren’t, while countries not thought of as such are. Most Western countries have 2-3 times as many police officers per capita as China and Russia. Many people in China have had not a single encounter with authorities in their lifetime (other than basic administrative tasks). Meanwhile, in some EU countries, you need government approval to add a roof win…
And that's not to even speak of your lived experience if you're an ethnic minority in China. Tibetans don't self-immolate out of boredom.
Can't speak about Russia, the Russians I know personally all left before the Putin era really got going and isn't reflective of the current state of affairs over there, but what you said is the opposite of truth regarding China.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>China, which is a country with very little street crime, grafitti, vandalism etc And very little ability for anyone or any group of people from any walk of life to resist getting screwed by the government if the government chooses to screw them. The long term cost of putting locks on doors and bars on windows and all the other things that need to be done to deter small scale crime is peanuts compared to the cost of…
> And very little ability for anyone or any group of people from any walk of life to resist getting screwed by the government if the government chooses to screw them. There isn’t, and has never been, a nation in human history where regular people have meaningful recourse against random targeting by the government. This is as true in Sweden as it is in China. The best you can hope for is that a court eventually rules…
Truly spoken like someone who lives in neither.
It's pretty clear to be that governments shouldn't be able to 'subcontract' their way out of the limits placed on them via the constitution. Thankfully the supreme court seems to agree here in two ways: 1) Just because a third party (Google in Chatrie case but Flock here) collects the data and the government requests it from them, doesn't mean that that isn't a 'search' which requires a warrant ("obtaining someone's…
Primary example:
U.S. government officials pressuring social-media platforms through intermediaries to suppress constitutionally protected speech.
It's pretty clear to be that governments shouldn't be able to 'subcontract' their way out of the limits placed on them via the constitution. Thankfully the supreme court seems to agree here in two ways: 1) Just because a third party (Google in Chatrie case but Flock here) collects the data and the government requests it from them, doesn't mean that that isn't a 'search' which requires a warrant ("obtaining someone's…
A reasonable regulation, focusing on personal freedom, would just forbid building such a network in the first place.
It’s very hard to regulate outcomes when the component steps are legal. Not saying we shouldn’t try, just saying that path is well-trodden and rarely works. See: media consolidation, etc
IMO it is much more practical to regulate and penalize the activity of using such a network than to preempt its creation. Heck, BitTorrent can be seen as a surveillance network. But intent and usage make it obvious it’s not.
It's pretty clear to be that governments shouldn't be able to 'subcontract' their way out of the limits placed on them via the constitution. Thankfully the supreme court seems to agree here in two ways: 1) Just because a third party (Google in Chatrie case but Flock here) collects the data and the government requests it from them, doesn't mean that that isn't a 'search' which requires a warrant ("obtaining someone's…
I'm sure we're a golden statue or private jet away from the supreme court having a change of heart there.