Live data from Hacker News

Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

engadget.com

91–100 of 354 posts

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#91
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

East Asia built a uni-culture by being extremely racist against outsiders. I don't think you can get away with that anywhere else. A friend of mine (white guy) married a Chinese woman and when they visited China they were subject to slurs and dirty looks in public. There's a whole category of videos on social media of Japanese furiously angry at Westerners acting like fools on their subways. They're not happy about i…

I’m an Indian with a Taiwanese-American wife. I’ve never experienced even the mildest amount of racism in Taiwan. Everyone was kind and friendly to me. And Taiwan is very safe. I’m not going to pretend that an anecdote fully captures a problem but considering I spent over a month there just living a normal life I imagine that if the problem were widespread I’d have many chances to experience it. My elderly parents we…

PRC has a demographic issue with missing women that engenders resentment of the foreign devils.

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#92
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These days, anyone can give an LLM footage from any source, and get this kind of information. Is a bit misleading itself, to do this at scale requires all those iffy data centers.

What's an iffy data center?

One that gets built over the public's objection because just maybe the company building it will create an AGI that will take everyone's jobs?

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#93

Yeah, I'm not a fan of these things. If they were just ALPRs, I could probably give them a bit of slack -if they tightened up their security-, but all the other stuff they do, makes them pretty much untenable. However: > This makes AI powered cameras like Flock's distinct from traditional surveillance or traffic cams, which require someone to manually look over footage in order to find a specific vehicle or individua…

What makes Flock bizarre is that it's a private business, and this is precisely how police departments are getting around a lot of traditional gates and checks on this sort of thing. Police setting up a 1984 monitoring system throughout your city, tracking every car, person, activity -- yields lots of questions, oversight, concerns, debate, challenges, etc. Some private business doing the same, and then letting the s…

The real joke is that the 1984 system was already in place long before flock. We all carry phones. Either from tower records ot google advert tags, private industry already tracked our every movement. Licence plate readers? Why bother when every car now has bluetooth enabled and so is constantly prodcasting its LAP id. (Some cities have tracked cars this way for over a decade, mostly for traffic management.)

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#94

Got these installed all over local parking lots for wallmart, home depot, ross, every exit solar panel and camera. Was wondering if there is some sort of quickly blinking infrared light or something that would make it visible to a naked eye of a cop, but not to a recording camera. I bet you would sell millions of those license plate holders in a heartbeat.

Like that paparazzi fabric that saturates the image?

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#95

Yeah, I'm not a fan of these things. If they were just ALPRs, I could probably give them a bit of slack -if they tightened up their security-, but all the other stuff they do, makes them pretty much untenable. However: > This makes AI powered cameras like Flock's distinct from traditional surveillance or traffic cams, which require someone to manually look over footage in order to find a specific vehicle or individua…

What makes Flock bizarre is that it's a private business, and this is precisely how police departments are getting around a lot of traditional gates and checks on this sort of thing. Police setting up a 1984 monitoring system throughout your city, tracking every car, person, activity -- yields lots of questions, oversight, concerns, debate, challenges, etc. Some private business doing the same, and then letting the s…

“Fascism should rightly be called corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.”

- Benito Mussolini

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#96

We need some way to address the low level crime in the US. If you look at cities in east Asia, they're both much larger than typical US cities and much safer. It -is- possible to have safe large cities. The fact that we don't is a choice.

Don't we? Crime rates have been dropping for decades.

https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-crime-rate-in-the-u...

But if the choice is between liberty and safety, then Americans are supposed to choose liberty, that's why America is what it is.

Ben Franklin famously said, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#97
Can anybody find trustworthy stats that these actually reduce crime? All I see are occasional anecdotes about how they were used to find one person one time.

Skeptical me seriously doubts this is an effective solution for crime. But maybe that's because this country has a history of being willing to do a million expensive and privacy violating things, and only if it's a punitive measure.

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#98

We need some way to address the low level crime in the US. If you look at cities in east Asia, they're both much larger than typical US cities and much safer. It -is- possible to have safe large cities. The fact that we don't is a choice.

How much of that is addressed by a strong social-safety net? How are addicts and homeless people handled? How about general poverty (a known driver of crime)?

Re: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US cities are plenty safe. The fact that you think otherwise is propaganda you’ve been successfully served. I live in Nyc and visit other cities often.

[flagged]

[dead]
Post reply on HN