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US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

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Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#331

Post by tokioyoyo »

jamiequint wrote: post #232
ggoo wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surveillance tech can alter peoples behavior. I know I'm personally more stressed when I know I'm being filmed, even if I'm doing nothing wrong. https://academic.oup.com/nc/article/2024/1/niae039/7920510?l...

Untrue at a population level, just compare anxiety disorders and self-reported anxiety between USA and China.

I think it’s a cultural thing. On average, people seem to hate cops more in the USA.

Personally I like having little cop boxes in 5 minute walking distances in Tokyo. There are people who are very against it, bring up bad encounters, but net positive, I would say.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#332

Post by kennywinker »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #288
kennywinker wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If the only content of your post is sarcasm, please stick to Reddit. We like to stick to facts and reality here. The sky is blue. See? I posted a fact. My comment is fully valid and you can't say anything about it. Oh? It's irrelevant to the topic? It may be too subtle for you, but I was actually making the point that the surveillance panopticon theory was mostly triggered by the fact that Flock is cloud-based. I'm b…

Replying in a separate comment, since you seem to have responded to my reply by editing your comment.

If you can’t disagree without belittling, maybe stick to reddit?

Either way, a networked array of license plate readers is an issue because it’s low friction and easily abused, with little space for oversight. A non-networked setup? Yeah i’m ok with that. If the gov needs to physically go to each camera and load data off them? Sounds fine to me. But somehow i don’t think that’s what you are suggesting when you say “non-cloud”. Once it’s networked, it doesn’t really matter if the network is a “cloud” based one or not.

But also, most of my comment was actually directed at alex43578‘s remarks, not yours.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#333

Post by chaps »

scottyah wrote: post #329
chaps wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got it, a surveillance missile.

Common missiles go about 900 mph faster...

There's more than one definition of missile. Florida criminal code's just one place where a drone could be considered a "missile".

Florida criminal code:

  "790.19 Shooting into or throwing deadly missiles into dwellings, public or private buildings, occupied or not occupied; vessels, aircraft, buses, railroad cars, streetcars, or other vehicles.—Whoever, wantonly or maliciously, shoots at, within, or into, or throws any missile or hurls or projects a stone or other hard substance which would produce death or great bodily harm, at, within, or in any public or private building, occupied or unoccupied, or public or private bus or any train, locomotive, railway car, caboose, cable railway car, street railway car, monorail car, or vehicle of any kind which is being used or occupied by any person, or any boat, vessel, ship, or barge lying in or plying the waters of this state, or aircraft flying through the airspace of this state shall be guilty of a felony of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084."

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#334

Post by michaelt »

burningChrome wrote: post #313
Cider9986 wrote: post #263

>[1] Would crime go up, down or stay the same if all surveillance cameras were removed? The answer to that is the only one that matters. At least 40,990 [2] innocent people died in the US in 2023, without significant outcry - that is, on the road, in car accidents. People in the US clearly value the freedom of driving over the deaths of innocent people. In 2023, there were an estimated 19,800 [3] homicides in the US.…

FYI when cops arrive at a homicide scene, they don't go looking for the FLOCK camera's, they go looking for people who have RING cameras and businesses that have security cameras. Anything that is within sight of the crime scene is where they start. If you think FLOCK is an issue, you're barking up the wrong tree. You can remove all the FLOCK camera's you want and it won't change the already overwhelming passive surv…

> Also, the passive surveillance has resulted in several high profile killers like LISK and Bryan Kohberger being caught. So as much bad as you think it does, there are clear cases where its helped crack decades old serial killings and put horrifically violent people in jail.

Isn't that true of almost every restraint on the state's power?

A lot of less intelligent people get very emotional about the state quartering soldiers in homes against the wishes of the homeowner. But if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. We may not know who the Zodiac Killer is but I can tell you one thing for sure - he didn't have four to ten infantrymen in his house, keeping track of his comings and goings. Given the obvious security benefits of having soldiers in your home, no rational person would object - unless they've got a meth lab in their basement. /s

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#335

Post by burningChrome »

Krasnol wrote: post #323
burningChrome wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI when cops arrive at a homicide scene, they don't go looking for the FLOCK camera's, they go looking for people who have RING cameras and businesses that have security cameras. Anything that is within sight of the crime scene is where they start. If you think FLOCK is an issue, you're barking up the wrong tree. You can remove all the FLOCK camera's you want and it won't change the already overwhelming passive surv…

> So as much bad as you think it does, there are clear cases where its helped You can "justify" so much with that sentence, that it becomes meaningless. Also, it won't hide the fact that this surveillance infrastructure can cause much much more harm then it prevents. We've seen what it might do in repressive states and we see today that even those states which represented the idea of individual freedom on this planet…

>> "it won't hide the fact that this surveillance infrastructure can cause much much more harm then it prevents."

"can cause much much more harm."

Cars kill way more people than guns per year. Where do you draw the line on something as subjective as this? It has the capability to cause harm but has it to the degree you're talking about? Its debatable.

Also, taking a serial killer who murdered 8 women and dismembered several of them off the streets to me outweighs quite a bit of harm. But that's just me.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#336

Post by ultrarunner »

Sharlin wrote: post #274
xracy wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his comment about "why dogs might provide actual neighborhood safety" is a good reminder that the thing that makes communities safe is "knowing your neighbors." You don't get safety by building a castle with a moat and a million cameras. You get safety by building a community with context that can respond without having to just "react" to the 6s version of "what happened".

Many may find it unintuitive, but one of the best things you can do for the actual security of a neighborhood is to design it for pedestrian and "loitering" friendliness.

This is extremely salient. Check out Phoenix, AZ sometime in street view. It's a brutalist grid of wide roads (even in "residential zones") where every property is lined in a six-foot block wall. As a result, sight lines are excellent for drivers (encouraging high speeds) but terrible for homeowners. Kids can't reasonably roam free, neighbors rarely meet, and everyone is viewed with suspicion. Most of my neighbors are really decent people, but I see them so rarely we might as live in different cities.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#337

Post by [deleted] »

burningChrome wrote: post #313
Cider9986 wrote: post #263

>[1] Would crime go up, down or stay the same if all surveillance cameras were removed? The answer to that is the only one that matters. At least 40,990 [2] innocent people died in the US in 2023, without significant outcry - that is, on the road, in car accidents. People in the US clearly value the freedom of driving over the deaths of innocent people. In 2023, there were an estimated 19,800 [3] homicides in the US.…

FYI when cops arrive at a homicide scene, they don't go looking for the FLOCK camera's, they go looking for people who have RING cameras and businesses that have security cameras. Anything that is within sight of the crime scene is where they start. If you think FLOCK is an issue, you're barking up the wrong tree. You can remove all the FLOCK camera's you want and it won't change the already overwhelming passive surv…

[deleted]

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#338

Post by [deleted] »

bnjms wrote: post #326
burningChrome wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI when cops arrive at a homicide scene, they don't go looking for the FLOCK camera's, they go looking for people who have RING cameras and businesses that have security cameras. Anything that is within sight of the crime scene is where they start. If you think FLOCK is an issue, you're barking up the wrong tree. You can remove all the FLOCK camera's you want and it won't change the already overwhelming passive surv…

I’m for looking for the existing cameras. I’m against a panopticon where any “trusted” LEO with an account can query and have ring + flock + OnStar + Tesla etc all aggregated to follow anyone. Ring has this now. I would guess some cities have it for traffic cameras. What I’m really against is having it privately owned as an end run around laws restricting government surveillance.

[deleted]

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#339

Post by caycep »

xracy wrote: post #245
gorgonical wrote: post #21

Musician-turning-tech anarchist (?) Benn Jordan is making a very interesting series of videos about Flock cameras, their poor safety, and their gray-area interfacing with local governments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMIwNiwQewQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ I recommend them.

I think his comment about "why dogs might provide actual neighborhood safety" is a good reminder that the thing that makes communities safe is "knowing your neighbors." You don't get safety by building a castle with a moat and a million cameras. You get safety by building a community with context that can respond without having to just "react" to the 6s version of "what happened".

this reminds me of this article https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-end-of-gangs-los-angele...

I feel like nowadays with all the political FUD about "crime and safety" here in LA, this should be required reading

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#340

Post by wahnfrieden »

turtlesdown11 wrote: post #325
loeg wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have empirical evidence that we "habitually coddle criminals"? In this context, we're talking about SF, not the US at large. Yes, SF is well known for coddling criminals. This is, obviously, a qualitative characterization -- it cannot be proven empirically. But we can point at characteristic examples: https://ktxs.com/news/nation-world/san-francisco-ends-5m-alc... https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-s…

> We (the US) have more criminality than many peer nations Do you have any empirical evidence to support this claim?

No
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