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Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage public record

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Re: Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage public record

#131
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If speeding is not something that happens constantly, then a radar could detect the instances of speeding, and only turn on a camera when a speeding car is nearby. This would keep the majority of passing cars from being recorded, and would record the fewer cars the fewer drivers would be speeding.

How long until the AI estimates how fast you were going based on the time you were tagged at 2 cameras? The system says travel between these cameras should take 3 minutes. You made it in 2:45. No review, just a ticket in the mail.

If their clocks are actually synchronized and can show that in court then unless you've got a warp drive and can bend space time it can be pretty definitive that one was speeding between those two points. Especially if you're on something like a toll road which utilizes transponders for billing. I'm almost surprised this isn't already done in those situations.

You don't even need AI for this. Its pretty basic.

It is similar to how air enforced speed limits are done. They just paint two lines on the highway. A plane overhead times your car between the lines.

Re: Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage public record

#132
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with that, I do mind. Just as two trivial examples, even though neither affects me personally: The estimated number of heroin users in the UK exceeds the total prison population. The number of class-A drug users in the UK is estimated to be so high that if they actually followed the minimum sentencing guidelines for possession, it would cause a catastrophic economic disaster both from all the people no longer wo…

> Another example is road traffic law. Even just speeding offences, I think you probably catch everyone who actually drives in the UK, often enough that after a month the only people left allowed to drive would be people like me who don't even own a car. You don't have to strip the driving licenses. You should impose a fine and not an extremely painful one for starters. And then probably within less than a year the w…

I dunno. We got car insurance once that had a "put this spy device in your car for a couple weeks for a lower rate" deal and I felt like I was driving a lot less-safely when I was constantly worried about looking like I was driving safely.

Like, to pick an example that's specifically speed-limit related, if more people really tried hard to do 25MPH (the marked speed limit on many of them) or under for the entire length of an interstate off-ramp, I think we'd be spending more money on brake pads and there'd be a lot more cars getting rear-ended. Sticking to that speed the entire length is silly and not very safe, and things work just fine without people doing that. Tons of other edge cases like that where you're technically breaking some law or another for a little while, but things work way better if you do. Plus practically every one of these laws has some kind of judgement-call clause that applies to modify it, and I don't want the people making those judgement calls to know that if they do what seems right to them in the moment, there's a very high likelihood they'll be hassled for it.

Re: Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage public record

#133
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it appears they have a lot of things backwards, for example: > “We were very disappointed,” Franklin said. “That means perpetrators of crime, people who are maybe engaged in domestic abuse or stalkers, they can request footage and that could cause a lot of harm.” The whole point is that they should have been collecting data on perpetrators of crimes only in the first place, not a massive dragnet.

It feels so in bad faith as there’s a claim ICE could use the footage if it’s public domain. They already can and that’s one of the big arguments against it you clowns.

beyond that it also implies "but the bad guys could then trawl all this data; only us, the good guys should be able to do that!"

Re: Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage public record

#134

> Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin said the city disagrees with the ruling and is concerned about who could obtain the footage. “We were very disappointed,” Franklin said. “That means perpetrators of crime, people who are maybe engaged in domestic abuse or stalkers, they can request footage and that could cause a lot of harm.” These people are fooling themselves if they think that keeping the cameras but not allowing th…

this is not an honest argument, it's just a variation of the "think of the children" strategy.

Re: Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage public record

#135
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If speeding is not something that happens constantly, then a radar could detect the instances of speeding, and only turn on a camera when a speeding car is nearby. This would keep the majority of passing cars from being recorded, and would record the fewer cars the fewer drivers would be speeding.

How long until the AI estimates how fast you were going based on the time you were tagged at 2 cameras? The system says travel between these cameras should take 3 minutes. You made it in 2:45. No review, just a ticket in the mail.

That's how it actually works in some places (https://www.carwow.co.uk/blog/average-speed-cameras-how-do-t...). You don't need AI because we already know that distance = speed * time. We can calculate to a high degree of certainty - with high school math - that you had to have 1. been speeding or 2. bent space time if you cover the distance between them in too short of time.

Re: Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage public record

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we also have hatching cameras (yellow hatched boxes mean no stopping, usually at junctions) Weirdly I've never encountered these in the US (only red light cameras) and do we ever need them. I'm generally opposed to government associated cameras due to concerns about turnkey authoritarianism but if we have to have cameras at intersections they could at least curb the awful self centered behavior.

Most states ban speed cameras and many ban red light cameras as 4th amendment violations. You cannot face your accuser when your accuser is a robot. As a result, speed camera tickets have always used some legal sleight-of-hand to nail you into confessing, and this has become unpalatable. If we raised speed limits (almost) across the board to the actual safe limits of modern cars, I think a lot more people would be ok…

> You cannot face your accuser when your accuser is a robot

I don't really get this take though. If one contests the ticket, have it go to a manual review where someone looks at the tape and confirms the calibration history of the equipment, and boom now that person can be the official "accuser".

If its the argument that they might not have been the one actually driving the vehicle, just make the laws relate to the registered owner of the vehicle is ultimately responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle. If the owner wants to try and prove it wasn't them, they can deflect that in court and prove it was actually their friend or whoever.

If we had a CCTV of a murder happening we wouldn't just go "well that's just a robot not a real person making the recording, guess we need to toss that video!" I don't understand how we take that kind of position when it comes to moving violations.

Also FWIW the 4th Amendment has nothing about facing your accuser. Its the sixth amendment that talks about "...to be confronted with the witnesses against him".

Re: Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage public record

#137
post #90

I always think that the best way to get stuff regulated is make those in power feel the risks. So if people started using something like flock to embarrass politicians, business leaders, or newspaper leader writers then suddenly privacy might become a big issue.

don’t worry, normal people will never ever see this data to use it against the powerful. our public data can only be seen by billionaires and cops, not us. it can be used against us, but never the other way around. the faster we realize this, the faster we can move out of our “divisive” phase and get back to making billionaires dreams come true.

Indeed - but as compute costs come down, it doesn't have to be that way - ultimately there are 8 billion eyes out there.

There are also public data examples - for example the public data on charter flights or ship locations had people like Elon Musk bleating about privacy.

Re: Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage public record

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another example is road traffic law. Even just speeding offences, I think you probably catch everyone who actually drives in the UK, often enough that after a month the only people left allowed to drive would be people like me who don't even own a car. You don't have to strip the driving licenses. You should impose a fine and not an extremely painful one for starters. And then probably within less than a year the w…

[flagged]

Yeah it's a bit of wishful thinking from my side, I confess.

> exactly why we end up with surveillance states

Hate that. This is why I wrote that it looks like there is no privacy-preserving way to trap ALL speeding drivers, although I have been corrected on that specific part.

What I wanted to say is that I would love for road infractions to be fined all the time so that people would know that there is no free ride.

Re: Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage public record

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another example is road traffic law. Even just speeding offences, I think you probably catch everyone who actually drives in the UK, often enough that after a month the only people left allowed to drive would be people like me who don't even own a car. You don't have to strip the driving licenses. You should impose a fine and not an extremely painful one for starters. And then probably within less than a year the w…

I dunno. We got car insurance once that had a "put this spy device in your car for a couple weeks for a lower rate" deal and I felt like I was driving a lot less-safely when I was constantly worried about looking like I was driving safely. Like, to pick an example that's specifically speed-limit related, if more people really tried hard to do 25MPH (the marked speed limit on many of them) or under for the entire leng…

I have to kind of agree with you on all points here.

Re: Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage public record

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I agree, and my hopes aren't very high of this actually happening. Our politicians tend to be clueless with anything tech related, their opinions calibrated by what they saw in Hollywood movies, where anything tech related always turns into "black mirror". (By contrast, allegedly over half the Chinese politburo has an engineering degree of some kind). But we could start small, with just one neighborhood, a pilot…

So you want to slippery slope your way into Nazi Germany?

Everybody made that exact same "slippery slope to Nazi Germany" argument when euthanasia was legalized here. That was decades ago. There have been several attempts to broaden or narrow the scope of those laws and the democratic institutions did just what they were designed to do, making changes judiciously.

If you are worried about the slippery slope, then you are really worried that democracy does not work as intended. (And depending on where you live that may be a very reasonable worry). By the way, Nazi Germany was not really a surveillance state, perhaps you are thinking of East Germany?

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