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Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests

seattletimes.com

401–410 of 470 posts

Re: Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like the general mantra that's currently being adapted to justify all sorts of power grabs and expansions of surveillance all over the world. "We would really rather not do this, honestly! But the crisis is just too pressing, and has been left unaddressed for too long. You all just couldn't behave, and now we're going to have to do it the painful way. This is just what is needed, it's the natural outcome."…

Of course, it's the same political class that allowed the crisis to become pressing.

you forgot to put "crisis" in quotes :)

Re: Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests

#402
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the light never turned green you'd bet your butt that plenty of people would run the light.

Sure, then don't complain if you get into a crash and your insurance finds you at fault. Actions have consequences.

This is the problem with leaky analogies. The US immigration system is more like a train tunnel in a Wile-E Coyote cartoon that Roadrunner can run through but Wile-E slams into.

Re: Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the best way to handle it because if the company presses charges they just look ridiculous.

Honestly, feels like the company is within their right to press charges here? Dude is disabling the equipment that they use to turn revenue, no? Don't agree with the company, but I don't find a suit here ridiculous. If my job put up cameras, and my form of protest was to deface and disable them, I'd get fired. This isn't a job, it's government, but it's similar in my head. The people with the authority to do somethin…

I don't think this counts as property damage or vandalism because nothing is damaged or vandalized.

Part of putting shit in public is that it now has to interact with the public. If you want your stuff pristine, I would think you should not put it in public.

Maybe the law disagrees with me here, and it probably does because this country bends over backwards for companies, but that's how I see it.

Re: Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are probably unaware of the telemetry on their vehicle. But this is a good point, people get upset when government is perceived to screw them over and not upset enough when the private sector does it. In practice, the private sector screws over the public quite a bit.

If millions of people are being tracked by GM and haven’t noticed, how is it a problem?

Because doing something evil and then lying about it isn't any better than doing something evil and being honest.

Everyone with even a quarter of a brain can recognize that the extreme data collection is a ticking time bomb. This WILL be leaked. This WILL be used to deny people's rights. This WILL lead to financial loss for people.

It's only a matter of when.

Re: Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The security cameras deployed in Lowe's and Home Depot parking lots are Flock. All the better to track your movements, citizen.

I don't understand if flock deployment in Lowe/Home Depot is because margins are so low it is the only way to survive, or margins so high that they can afford such a program just to eek out a tiny bit more sales from the collected consumer info. Either way it doesn't make sense to me why hardware stores are the biggest private use case.

Neither. It’s because Home Depot/Lowes loses billions of dollars a year due to theft, both organized and petty. Just like they have security cameras in the store, they have security cameras in the parking lot.

Re: Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests

#406
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only this does good to society in the obvious way, but also creates jobs as someone needs to clean those. Kudos to the guy, who single-handedly doing what almost all politicians miserably fail at.

Is it good for society to disable traffic cameras? Here in Sweden, traffic camera is used exclusively to reduce traffic speed on roads where the maximum speed is too fast for installing traffic bumps, with an expected effect of reducing traffic speed by around 20-30%. They are generally only installed on 60-90km/h roads, around road maintenance/construction sites, and in tunnels. They active when the radar detects sp…

When the cameras become a revenue stream for a city it is not a good thing.

Cameras have been installed to fine cars running red lights. The city then reduces the length of the yellow to catch more people and offset the high cost of the cameras. The shortened yellows cause increased crashes and fatalities.

Net-net the track record in the states is not great.

One example https://www.koaa.com/news/news5-investigates/news-5-investig...

Re: Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And at the very least - why can't you search the Transparency Portal? You have to try each and every agency name. Was it different in the past? It seems like it'd be beneficial to Flock and their customers to make obtaining this information as obtuse as possible, while maintaining the vaguest appearance of "transparency". If they could charge you $10 per search, they probably would. As an aside - can I ask why you…

> As an aside - can I ask why you left Flock? I assumed that the people who would've wanted to work there would be fully invested into the idea. What changed your mind? The Flock of my recruitment process would be a lot less problematic. There was discussion of the obvious, the surveillance "state". But everything was a high ground of ethics and legality, ideas were supposedly run through groups to discuss "not just…

Flock model:

Evidence -> Crime -> Suspect

DoJ model:

Suspect -> Evidence -> Crime

Ideal model:

Crime -> Evidence -> Suspect

Re: Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who wants policing to be effective and cares about crime / public safety would like them to have the best tools. This depends on what the “cost” is for this “safety,” no? "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

The public safety issue has been ignored and denied (and "defunded") to the point where measures like this now appear necessary.

makes sense… like NYPD has 11 billion dollar budget and NYC is the safest place on the planet Earth, we just need the same model in the entire USA and we good. Local/State taxes should be raised to something reasonable like 25-30% - it is public safety after all :)

Re: Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The security cameras deployed in Lowe's and Home Depot parking lots are Flock. All the better to track your movements, citizen.

I don't understand if flock deployment in Lowe/Home Depot is because margins are so low it is the only way to survive, or margins so high that they can afford such a program just to eek out a tiny bit more sales from the collected consumer info. Either way it doesn't make sense to me why hardware stores are the biggest private use case.

I always assumed they were just a deterrent given the flashing blue lights and audio “this area is being monitored”, and less of an actual threat.

Re: Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's apparently against Washington state law for local law enforcement to assist immigration enforcement: https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=10.93.160 Specifically interesting is the section "State and local law enforcement agencies may not provide nonpublicly available personal information about an individual..." which puts police in a bind with Flock data: if the data is public, anyone can request it (inc…

That law isn’t really enforceable since it would violate a local government’s first amendment rights.

The government does not enjoy constitutional rights. Constitutional rights ensure that the federal government cannot take certain actions against individuals.
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