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Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

newyorker.com

121–130 of 534 posts

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#121
post #46

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…

There is not generally an expectation of privacy in public. Things in public can be recorded without consent. Filming a car on a street and giving that video to the government is not the same as me giving private information to a third party, and then them giving it to the government such as Carpenter v United states covers. Edit: Note that this is not an endorsement, rather stating that recent supreme court cases ma…

Flock goes far beyond that, they allow the government to retroactively string together a person's history of movement. Prior cases establish that continuous and retrospective tracking like that violates a reasonable expectation of privacy and requires a warrant.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#122

I’ll get on board with mass surveillance just as soon as every single elected and unelected leader, business executive, politician, celebrity, oligarch, Capitalist, all board members, all C-Suites, and every single VC has a live, uninterrupted, 24/7 publicly-accessible feed of their lives as they live by example and demonstrate the benefits of such a regime. Which is to say I will never, ever be on board with mass su…

Hah. Europe's Chat Control proposal would exclude politicians from being monitored. Because of course it would.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is not generally an expectation of privacy in public. Things in public can be recorded without consent. Filming a car on a street and giving that video to the government is not the same as me giving private information to a third party, and then them giving it to the government such as Carpenter v United states covers. Edit: Note that this is not an endorsement, rather stating that recent supreme court cases ma…

Private citizens filming in public and police forces setting up arrays of surveillance cameras in public somehow don’t seem equivalent. I’m not a lawyer so I can’t properly articulate what the legal difference is. And if there isn’t one then the law needs change. Clearly the majority of citizens agree with me. Is it legal for US citizens to all put cameras on their cars and set up a network where we can all see where…

already happening and it seems it is legal https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/citizens-are-tracki...

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#125
post #57

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).

You seem to be missing a basic fact about how the world works: there are two classes of people, those who make the rules, and those who are expected to follow the rules. These classes are largely disjoint.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#127
post #104

The political left has really decided to go nuclear over Flock, but I'm not understanding the fundamental principle from which this view arises. Libertarian sorts don't like it either -- but that's entirely consistent with their entire existence. Is this a broad-based phenomenon on the left, or are sections perfectly fine with it? Some of the other comments here seem to endorse full on 1984-style surveillance, so per…

My understanding is that broad state power to the benefit of the people, Scandinavia style, is not the same as broad state power to monitor and/or control the people.

Arguably those two types of power are in conflict in terms of desired outcomes.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#128
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could I come and spray paint the front of your house? In protest of course.

As long as it's a mostly peaceful prostest, you're also allowed to set a few cars on fire and loot local businesses.

When I put the two sides on the scale - the things being protested and the damage done by protesters - typically it's very easy for me to write off a couple burned cars or broken windows, even if I'm not a fan of broken windows or burned cars. Because typically these protests in the US are over things like reckless killings.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#129
post #19
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has been a surveillance state for decades. Heck you can’t even watch television without going on a register and inspectors coming to your door verifying your TV paperwork is in order. Imagine trying that in the US! This sort of thing is just starting more broadly in the US and Americans are not happy about it. It’s the new political hot potato where behind the scenes they’re pressured to support it but publicl…

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...

Why not? The UK has been a police state for decades. They have a long history of mass surveillance and of cracking down on protests.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#130
post #79
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reasonable regulation, focusing on personal freedom, would just forbid building such a network in the first place.

How would you specify this regulation? 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 u…

The GDPR is far from perfect, but it does cover this. It talks about acquiring and storing information that can be used to identify people. It doesn't specify what counts, so now that face recognition is pretty, it automatically applies to images.

It also talks about uses cases where such things are allowed to be recorded, and forbids all others.

> IMO it is much more practical to regulate and penalize the activity of using such a network than to preempt its creation.

Hard disagree. If such a network is created, foreign adversaries (or domestic ones that don't abide by the laws) can hack them. Has happened quite a number of times.

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