[tigerBL00D]

I live in Marin and police in my small town frequently arrest criminals using automatic license plate scanners that guard every road that leads into town. Most of them drive from SF over the bridge after committing various crimes. Our town is a very safe town. I feel safe leaving the front door unlocked or keys inside the car in the driveway. Unfortunately everything changes as soon as I cross the bridge.

So the question is this: if your house got robbed and/or you family got hurt, wouldn't you want technology to be on your side?

[gretch]

I support technology in law enforcement. For example body cams that exonerate officer behavior in extreme situations. Non-lethal restraining mechanisms.

From what I’ve seen of facial recognition technology at this time, I think it’s extremely unreliable and more likely to cause harm to innocent citizens (by way of police) than to protect innocents. This technology can lead to false positives, kinda like Swatting, and then non-criminals (like you) get hurt.

Also, I believe you mis attributed the safety in your town to the technology used. In fact I would wager it’s based on many other factors like, race, socio economics, population density, etc

[wswope]

Your question is a cop-brained false dichotomy. The real world isn’t divided into good guy/bad guy “sides”.

It’s not an either/or - we can and should address crime while also respecting civil liberties.

[burkaman]

Is it on your side? It looks like your already very low crime rate had been going down steadily for many years before these scanners were installed: https://data.marincounty.org/Public-Safety/County-Sheriff-Re.... What do you think changed in the last few months that made the scanners necessary?

I'm sure I'm missing some local context, but from an outsider perspective it looks like there's no evidence the cameras are helpful in reducing crime and pretty strong evidence that they will be used to commit crimes: https://www.aclunc.org/our-work/legal-docket/lagleva-v-doyle....

[Teever]

Yeah, that's a good question.

Another good question is "What if we spent these resources on actually eliminating the cause of this sort of crime instead of further cementing a police surveillance state that may actually paradoxically cause the increase in crime in the first place."

Another good question is "What would nightmare scenarios from the application of this kind of technology look like and how could they affect me personally?"

Imagine what this guy[0] could do to your family if he had access to the kind of technology you're promoting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Holtzclaw

[mistrial9]

what you are asking for is a gated community. If you want that, then you have to pay for your own maintenance.

[creer]

Besides the other remarks, in the case of the fine article, it's a matter of the police going out ot their way to deliberately violate local law. Not ingenuity.

[RockRobotRock]

I wished I lived in a tower as ivory as yours.