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Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

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Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#111

The inaccuracy of our omniscient AI surveillance network isn't why I'm against it. The conclusion of this article is that we need more humans in the loop for a successful police state.

For successful policing*. Which everyone should be for. edit: Every single thing you guys have replied with are policy/law debates, not enforcement debates. I disagree with many laws on the books today. I want the laws changed, not selective/arbitrary enforcement of them.

    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
A fundamental tenet of the US Constitution is that policing should be hard, lest average citizens lose their rights.

While I merely quoted the text of the Forth Amendment, the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth are also arguably limits on policing power, making fully half the original ten amendments about limiting policing.

I invite anyone and everyone to peruse the contents of https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#112
post #9

Why did they need to have guns drawn and that many cops, even if the flag had been correct? A car involved in a homicide investigation doesn't mean it's even being driven by the suspect. It's not a positive ID at all

I am currently in the countryside, outside of the USA. I speak to folks about the USA sometimes, and guns come up. We are known for that. They think they want them. I get it... they do sound cool. I try to explain that in the USA, the ratio of guns to people is far above 1:1. Therefore, if I was a police officer approaching any car, I would assume that the driver had a gun. That reality increases the chances of bad t…

While I agree with need more and better gun control, American police officers are abhorrent for a very simple reason: lack of basic training, discipline, and practically zero screening/qualification process.

Anyone can become a cop in 6 months. Not everyone is temperamentally setup to be a great cop. That, there, lies the rub.

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#113

The inaccuracy of our omniscient AI surveillance network isn't why I'm against it. The conclusion of this article is that we need more humans in the loop for a successful police state.

You mean the humans that are stalking their ex-girlfriend’s and ex-boyfriend’s? You are more of them between AI and us?

If AI isn’t working, why use it at all?

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For successful policing*. Which everyone should be for. edit: Every single thing you guys have replied with are policy/law debates, not enforcement debates. I disagree with many laws on the books today. I want the laws changed, not selective/arbitrary enforcement of them.

Unless we change the law, selective enforcement is the default. Courts have found again and again that cops have effectively no responsibility to even try to do their job. They can enforce what they want, and ignore what they don't. So the question isn't: "Should we take away the tools these cops use to serve the public?" but "Should we give even more powerful surveillance tools to a group of unaccountable thugs who…

When I was younger, in the summer, when I had a (very dark) tan and worked a night job which involved my driving around at odd hours I would get pulled over once or twice each summer for pretty flimsy reasons which equated to me matching the profile of the sort of person the police officer in question felt should be stopped/questioned.

It should be a quick bit of data work for records to be made of such stops based on duty logs (sans personally identifying information) and compare it to actual arrest/conviction rates to verify that at a minimum the perception of the police match reality. If they don't, then the local community should exert a suitable oversight to adjust police procedure.

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#115
post #19

That's not a Flock error. That's a law enforcement error. Flock isn't responsible for a bogus warrant in the system. The woman probably has a good case for damages from the police department for doing it twice. That's sloppy police work.

IDK. This can be a banal point.

Product, technology, implementation, police department, policing method, workflow. These aren't discreet. Incidents involve all of them.

Responsibility is on people.Technologies cannot be "found guilty." But... this isnt' a trial. There are consequences to doing policing any particular way, and that's the subject.

Doing it this way... using baby skynet for command and control has advantages, like response time. It has disadvantages, like false positives. "Law enforcement error" is technically correct, but not informative about the matter at hand. The error

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reason why so called "Swatting" is largely a non-issue outside the US: Police in the US are trained to respond to the hilt by default, and then lower their heavy-handed response later if they warrant it. Contrast that with most other countries, where police are trained to respond and only escalate based on the findings/as the situation unfolds. This training is supposedly for "officer safety." But being a police…

Devils advocate here but your argument is that they should change their safety policy because the job has great safety statistics? What if they change tactics and danger goes up?

Do we take into account the people they handle in those safety statistics? I'm pretty sure we don't.

A guy got shot after being swatted not so long ago and that would be a data point with no injuries for officers, masking the real victims.

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#117
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Do you really want every speeding pull-over to become a wild-west situation? Maybe your kids are in the car!" Why would every speeding pull-over become a wild-west situation? If possessing a gun is a right, then mere possession is no reason to suspect criminality is afoot.

What if you assume 1 in 100 are going to be dangerous? Only rarely does the driver say “I’m not going back to jail!“ when they have warrants out. If you inspect rollercoasters I figure you could probably be pretty lackadaisical on the average inspection. If you don’t take each one deadly seriously though and there’s no way of knowing when it’s important to, maybe it comes flying off the track, so you follow your chec…

When in enemy territory, the military looks at civilian populations as potential enemy combatants. Police are not supposed to view everyone this way as they are in their communities and not enemy territory.

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For successful policing*. Which everyone should be for. edit: Every single thing you guys have replied with are policy/law debates, not enforcement debates. I disagree with many laws on the books today. I want the laws changed, not selective/arbitrary enforcement of them.

Sure, if anyone could agree on a definition of success. Police forces don't even obey legislative bodies where their definition of success and the public's definition of success differs.

Things have drifted since Robert Peel defined successful policing as "Whether the police are effective is not measured on the number of arrests, but on the lack of crime". Civil forfeiture is a good example that would horrify him.

His insistence that "The police are the public and the public are the police" doesn't really hold up in many countries anymore.

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am currently in the countryside, outside of the USA. I speak to folks about the USA sometimes, and guns come up. We are known for that. They think they want them. I get it... they do sound cool. I try to explain that in the USA, the ratio of guns to people is far above 1:1. Therefore, if I was a police officer approaching any car, I would assume that the driver had a gun. That reality increases the chances of bad t…

> I try to explain that in the USA, the ratio of guns to people is far above 1:1. Therefore, if I was a police officer approaching any car, I would assume that the driver had a gun. Except that majority of households (58%) do not have a firearm: * https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts... and when it comes to individuals, it is the majority (70%) that do not own one. The numbers are 'skewed' by…

Uh, if you had a 30% chance of encountering an armed individual as a cop, you'd damn well assume they were armed every time. That's one in three traffic stops, and you probably do a lot more than three as a cop. Keep in mind that number will be a lot higher depending on your locality.

If I'm ever elected God Emperor of the United States I'm going to make beating XCOM 2 a high school graduation requirement just to impart some basic statistical intuition into the population. Everyone needs the experience of having a 99% chance to hit and missing the shot, let alone 70%.

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. A perfect surveillance state is still wrong by design. If you dont accept this, consider the perfect surveillance state under president N, used by president N+1 given the inevitable flipflop in party control.

In the scenario where president n achieves a perfect surveillance state, I don’t see us getting a president n+1.

Also correct!
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