The truth can hurt, law doesn’t victimize someone for being held accountable.
Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings
41–50 of 83 posts
Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings
#42I don't understand the correlation here, why does having to release the footage mean that the cities are shutting down the systems? It seems like they could simply comply with the requirement that footage is public and they can/must share that footage as part of the FOIA process, I don't see much of a downside there and it seems like something which most police departments and municipalities are already doing with fo…
Or as Thomas stated elsewhere in this thread, they can follow Illinois and just exempt ALPRs from FOIA reach. ALPR FOIAs have the potential problem of abuse by stalkers and others wanting to track someone (imagine “Hollywood” personæs.) It’d be a bad precedent to follow, but they could. I wonder what Tiburon will be doing. They’ve had ALPRs since forever as they only have one road in and one road out, so it’s easy fo…
> ALPR FOIAs have the potential problem of abuse by stalkers and others wanting to track someone (imagine “Hollywood” personæs.)
the stalker is gonna be a cop with full access to that data though. if its good enough to be in cops hands, who are utterly unaccountable to anyone, its safe enough to be in the general public's too.
Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the local governing body is too small to handle the requirements of governance, what then? Laws can be broken just because there are too few clerks?
Even big cities (and companies!) do this all the time. “Oh, sorry, we are dealing with unusually high wait times. The current wait time is 8 hours” type stuff. Malicious compliance isn’t just for individuals!
My city of 200K provided me with redacted bodycam video a month after the defendant's sham trial. The police are just too busy you see.
Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings
#44I don't understand the correlation here, why does having to release the footage mean that the cities are shutting down the systems? It seems like they could simply comply with the requirement that footage is public and they can/must share that footage as part of the FOIA process, I don't see much of a downside there and it seems like something which most police departments and municipalities are already doing with fo…
Maybe think about it narrowed down to an individual level - maybe you installed a camera or two around your property for whatever useful reasons like monitoring your children, and then later you find out that you are required to share all of your footage with some other entity (e.g. the police) in a way you did not sign up for. Would you choose to release your footage, or would you take the cameras down?
Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings
#45You can find installed Flock cameras around the world with this site: https://deflock.me/
This is missing the Lowes and Home Depot security cameras.
Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings
#46Here in Sweden, the use of license plate scanners has become the norm for basically all parking houses, bridge tolls and road tolls. Even if you don't install the app or become a "member" of whatever system they are using, the license plate scanners is still used to detect when you enter or leave, and in some cases they automatically look up your home address to send you the bill with zero interaction with the driver…
Looking for context here: how do Swedes view their government? Do they feel represented by, it, trust their governments etc.? My perception as a USian in a coastal, progressive state, is that trust in government is quite low. Municipal and county governments do OK, but federal and to some degree state governments seems to have priorities that are wildly divergent from our own.
First actual swede to reply here it seems!
It's not a very simple question to answer, but I'll do my best. In general terms, most Swedes trust the government and all government agencies to do their job in a fair and just way, barring the occasional case of incompetence. When a Swede say they don't trust the government, in my experience, they typically mean that they disagree with the current government on matters of policy, not that they suspect it of corruption.
I myself don't trust the current government, in that I think they will likely make the wrong decisions on important matters, I think they have the wrong priorities, and their argumentation is often insincere. I do not, however, suspect them of anything more nefarious than engaging in right-wing populism(by Swedish standards, our default is considerably further left than America's)
A coup attempt by a government official in Sweden, such as we have seen in the USA and Brazil among other places recently, seems to me about as likely as our current prime minister turning out to be a literal lizard-man.
Do note that I'm speaking rather broadly here, and only about my perception of the majority of Swedes. I have ties to northern Sweden and Stockholm, but very few to the south, so regional variance might also be a factor to consider. Most Swedes live in the south, where my connections are few.
Hope this sheds some light for you!
Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hockey is a game, governing is not.
If the local governing body is too small to handle the requirements of governance, what then? Laws can be broken just because there are too few clerks?
winners bell SFX
I seem to recall FOIA provides pathways for overloaded clerks in situations where there's mass requests. But, it only grants an extended period in which to respond (eg, 14 days instead of 48hrs). But, you can take escalate with the State government like you can with denied requests.
This is tinted with my knowledge of my Locaal (long a), and the areas I've made FOIA requests with.
And, turns out if you want to affect change- you have to make the bureaucrats care- Not the officials.
Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings
#48Here in Sweden, the use of license plate scanners has become the norm for basically all parking houses, bridge tolls and road tolls. Even if you don't install the app or become a "member" of whatever system they are using, the license plate scanners is still used to detect when you enter or leave, and in some cases they automatically look up your home address to send you the bill with zero interaction with the driver…
My last job paid for parking in one of these places. When the CEO stopped paying (long, very stupid story) without telling us, the parking company sent me, personally, to collections despite having zero responsibility to or interaction with these people.
Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looking for context here: how do Swedes view their government? Do they feel represented by, it, trust their governments etc.? My perception as a USian in a coastal, progressive state, is that trust in government is quite low. Municipal and county governments do OK, but federal and to some degree state governments seems to have priorities that are wildly divergent from our own.
I'm in Chicagoland (in Oak Park, directly adjacent to the west side of Chicago) and it literally depends on which suburb you're in. Oak Park is hostile to ALPRs. Berwyn, our neighbor to the south, and River Forest, to the west, are carpeted with them. They're there because people want them.
Found this amazing redlining map. I think I've highlighted Berwyn. I don't have knowledge to contextualize the map but I'm curious if any patterns from the HOLC map are strongly present in your area now.
https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map/IL/Chicago/a...
Re: Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are they not allowed to charge a service fee?
If they actually don't have the staff to do it, like I can imagine in small municipalities, then a fee wouldn't help either unless it allows for surge pricing that actually reduces the demand.
FOIA allows for "reasonable costs." For example requesting a copy of Obama's birth certificate is something like $20.
There's a real problem though- anybody (might need to be a US citizen) can FOIA any document anywhere in the US that's not excluded. When they can punt you to the paywall and then reply with a generic reply to a birth cert it's one thing.
When you have to actually find people to do the work of reviewing ALL video footage as $small_fraction of 200million people request every second of recorded footage from every camera... You're(as a city) kinda screwed. If they claim privacy they have to be able to prove it but can charge slightly more. But, if they don't then they have to provide the specific request (possibly a little more- say 1hr segments) at a cost representative of the labor involved... Which doesn't include the cost of trying to staff a FOIA center larger than your city.