[rudimental]

Flock seems like it could help solve some crimes, but at a huge cost - privacy. You can't opt out, unless you live nearby and register with the company. "Residents of monitored neighbourhoods can opt-out of being tracked - but visitors, or people passing through, cannot."

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41008141

Do people like law enforcement collecting license plates and keeping them in databases indefinitely? How about random people? (Flock says it deletes data after 30 days, users have it beyond 30 days). What if their users had a database with pictures of faces, not just license plates? Facial recognition seems to be in their roadmap.

For context, it's presumably legal in California to collect licenses plates, and pictures of people's faces, if they're in public spaces.

A quote from the founder on privacy: "We don’t want into get into the business of making decisions about privacy and how this technology is used beyond the original use case."

Aren't there better ways to solve the problem(s) this product solves?

[sumoboy]

Alot of cities have camera's at intersections which could potentially do the same thing before a stolen car reached my neighborhood. The police dept. in my city is asking now people to register there webcams with police so they can ask for video I guess when crimes occur, but I can see scenarios where that could wrong. Even with home webcams, criminals have no issues just walking and stealing UPS boxes right off the porch and there face clearly identifiable. HOA's are pretty stingy about increased neighborhood costs, I'd tend to think this be targeted to cities and justify it less police manpower needed. The smarter criminal will figure out ways around a camera anyways.

[garrettlangley]

Hey sumoboy, you are right. Just having a picture of a suspect's face is rarely enough to prosecute. We constantly hear from Police that a license plate is the trick to start building a case.

Re: Pricing -- hard to put a price on something that can actually solve crime. In addition, most of our customers/prospects see more benefit to the technology than just solving crime (i.e., speeders).

[garrettlangley]

Hey rudimental, Garrett (co-founder of Flock), we built this product because there wasnt a better way to solve crime in our neighborhoods.

Police are only able to solve 13% of cases due to lack of evidence. We are simply trying to provide the police with the evidence they need to do their job.

We believe this type of technology is inevitable (look at our highways and major city roads already). We believe the data should be owned by the community and not the government.

We care deeply about privacy which is why we (a) sell to neighborhoods and not the government, (b) only focus on cars/license plates and (c) allow residents to opt-out if they want to.

[Balgair]

> We believe the data should be owned by the community and not the government.

> ... sell to neighborhoods ...

> ... allow residents to opt-out ...

(emphasis mine)

I'm not a linguist or a political scientist, but I don't think you have a very clear understanding of the word 'own' or what a government really is.

[avs733]

no.

You care deeply about YOUR privacy and the privacy of those you know. You care very little for the privacy of 'others' and feel comfortable with neighborhoods, which are public spaces unless otherwise noted, making privacy choices for others based on a perceived threat and fear of the unknown 'other'

You are creating a market and product off of fear of those you don't know, the same attitudes that are used to harass people of color and the same attitude that caused the death of Trayvon Martin amongst may others.

[coolswan]

Isn't driving a public activity?

Supposedly they're selling to HOAs; not sure how public/private those streets are. But I imagine you have a huge degree of control over that.

[garrettlangley]

Generally speaking, only gated communities are on private streets. Otherwise, every street is public and managed by the local city/county.

[imaginenore]

You can't opt out while being in public. That's unreasonable.

[matt4077]

"That's unreasonable" isn't an argument. What's reasonable is decided by society. New technologies may change what's possible, and make something that was ok before the means to achieve something entirely new.

If, for example, these gadgets, or existing security cameras started to pool their data, run (accurate) face-detection on it, and start publicising everyones' location history online, I'm pretty sure most people would object to that–even those that previously had no problem with their image being recorded by the CCTV at the gas station, or the tourist taking a photo that included them.

[imaginenore]

It is an argument, what a "reasonable person" thinks is a standard judicial system consideration

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person

You have no expectation of privacy in a public space, and the courts have agreed with that many times

https://www.wired.com/2010/09/public-privacy/

[jforman]

That's far more simplistic than what the law actually says (where "law" is the collection of statutes and judicial interpretations).

As an example:

http://resources.uscannenbergmedia.com/2016/08/videotaping-a...

"Remember, even if you’re in public, you cannot record conversations between two people unless you have their permission. This includes conversations that you’re one of the parties to. If one person in the conversation can reasonably expect his or her conversation to be confidential, this standard applies."

If you're having a private conversation in a public park, then it is probably illegal for somebody else to record you.

Driving is a different question. Personally I think since a license plate is literally meant to publicly identify your car, a reasonable person should expect it to be recorded. But my guess is this will go to SCOTUS at some point, since privacy is increasingly being invaded in unanticipated ways by private companies.

[nhaehnle]

That's not really a response to matt4077's argument, which is that what a "reasonable person" may think can change based on changed circumstances such as development of new technological possibilities.

[garrettlangley]

each neighborhood owns their data and they would have to opt-in to any type of data sharing between neighborhoods.

our goal isn't to build a big-brother system. we believe that if you are on a public road there isn't a perceived expectation of privacy.

[kuschku]

Depends on where you live. In Germany any CCTV recording of a public place is automatically illegal. There’s a handful of exceptions (for example, for the parliament), but generally, this holds true.

Opt-in is what’s legally required, and should be the default.

[alexro]

How can all the people passing before the camera to opt in?

[moron4hire]

That's rather much the point, they can't. Therefore the service would be illegal in Germany.

Sometimes things are illegal and you can't get around it. Just because the company spent a lot of effort on it doesn't mean anything.

[garrettlangley]

Alexro, there are clear and large signs about the cameras at the entrance to our neighborhoods.

Our neighborhoods are not large public roads, they are typically 100-400 home communities. You would never have to enter the community.

[kuschku]

Exactly. That’s why you don’t put up cameras in the first place.

[Danihan]

So only the government can record what's happening, and if private citizens or companies do so they are shamed and jailed?

[kuschku]

The government can’t do that either, they’s the point (except for a handful of rare exceptions).

The police can’t even film protests to identify protestors.