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Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

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Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#151

Post by malfist »

lisper wrote: post #125
gblargg wrote: 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.

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

— Frank Wilhoit

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#152

Post by harimau777 »

bko wrote: post #92
furyg3 wrote: 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…

So you want the government to recreate the tech and control that flock provides. I don't think this is going to work out like you think it will...

Clearly not, but even that would be better than unaccountable corporations having the tech.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#153

Post by api »

Whenever someone says things like this without at least addressing the "who watches the watchers" problem, I know they're being disingenuous. It's such an obvious problem that if you have no answer, the hidden answer must be "I believe that myself and my cronies will be the watchers" or perhaps the naive and delusional "we will find morally incorruptible magic people to be the watchers."

AI isn't an answer because that really means whoever is running, training, and prompting the AI.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#154

Post by ygjb »

bko wrote: post #45
moritonal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but in that very link it explains how they work with the public to establish some trust? "Any current issues of public concern? It is recognised the extent of the UK network is a privacy concern and the scale of that network is likely to remain so for... The NPCC ANPR lead has established an Independent Advisory Group (IAG) chaired by the Surveillance Camera Commissioner (SCC), with a broad representation from c…

Oh good, there's a government agency to submit complaints and comments to. I was concerned for a second.

So what's the expectation here?

We all know that governments are going to be corrupted. We all know that democracy sucks sometimes or even alot of the time. At least if there is a government agency to communicate with that collects that data and keeps it over time, when the government changes there is the possibility to seek redress.

If the information and systems are held by corporations or other unaccountable third parties who may not be subject to public scrutiny or records keeping requirements, then how do you seek redress and enforcement over time?

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#155

Post by JohnFen »

brookst wrote: post #79
pintxo wrote: 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…

> How would you specify this regulation?

I'd regulate the database side of things.

What makes mass surveillance systems such as Flock, Ring, etc., incredibly objectionable isn't really the cameras. It's the databases they feed into that allow for the unprecedented invasion into our daily lives. That's also true for non-camera surveillance systems. The concentration and correlation of individually innocuous information adds up to an egregious assault on us all. That's the part that needs heavy restriction and regulation.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#156

Post by dbspin »

mrngld wrote: 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…

It's almost as if people can have a variety of opinions, and support institutions and states they don't agree with in every dimension. 'The left' is a wildly broad church, comparing 'the new yorker' with say 'the socialist workers party' adds more heat than light. Similarly 'Europe' is a very big and populous place, as is the subset of it that's in the EU. Most EU citizens very much oppose attacks on encryption, the digital millennium copyright act etc. Those are pieces of legislation pushed by the European Commission - a body that is not democratically elected.

Your line about capitalised 'Antifa' suggest an unserious lack of familiarity with left-wing groups and causes.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#157

Post by EvanAnderson »

someguyiguess wrote: post #99
harporoeder wrote: post #83

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…

The quickest way to get dragnet surveillance banned would be for citizens to collaborate and create a massive publicly-available surveillance network.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#158

Post by elil17 »

gyanchawdhary wrote: post #109

As a non american, can someone explain the Flock story from a US perspective (ideally a reasonably centrist one)? .. i keep seeing them in the news here on HN .. apparently ~178 results in the past month . and it seems to get a disproportionate amount of front page coverage

Here's my understanding (please someone correct me if I'm wrong). Flock sells license plate reading cameras. Lots of cities and states bought these and no one noticed.

Then there were some expose pieces about how the data is routinely used by police to do things like track people's everyday whereabouts (which should require a warrant). There were also a variety of other issues:

- They misidentified someone's license plate consistently, leading to him being harassed by the police.

- There were big security vulnerabilities which meant people could live stream the video from some the cameras and access some of the data.

- They have been used by police officers to stalk people for romantic/sexual reasons.

- They are being used to enforce a lot of laws that people think are unjust (abortion bans, immigration laws, etc.).

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#159

Post by noir_lord »

apexalpha wrote: post #132
gnfargbl wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> users have a private relationship with Google where they elect to let Google track them and retain their information Elect to is a bit strong here. Acquiesce to , maybe, or perhaps suffer to .

You elect to buy an Android and not an Apple I suppose.

While I'd generally agree that Apple is the better of the two on the privacy side it's still a false choice because you pretty much have to pick one as a regular person as things currently stand.

It becomes harder over time to function in society without a smart phone (I know this because I barely use mine and it usually lives at home but my partner runs her life off hers).

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