[pavel_lishin]

If you want to save yourself six minutes' of video, this is about https://alpr.watch/ and their new feature that can alert you by email if your local municipal officials are going to be discussing Flock in upcoming meetings, based on published meeting agendas.

The video also links you to a wiki with some nice counter-arguments to the standard pro-Flock arguments: https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Common_Questions,_Arguments,_%...

I went ahead and signed up; I live in a pretty dense part of the US, we'll see how many alerts I get in the next year.

[tptacek]

Even in my local community, which is likely among the 10 most progressive in the country (we're either the first or second most progressive in Chicagoland, itself one of the most reliably blue major metros in the country), support for Flock was pretty evenly divided.

I think it's good to engage this way, but I have a lot of thoughts on things to do that are more effective than giving public comment, and a caution that if you have strong opinions about ALPRs and you choose to pay attention to this issue you're going to be confronted with a lot of opinions that may surprise/discomfit you.

[ViscountPenguin]

I strongly suspect that opposition to surveillance technology doesn't manifest along a simple progressive-conservative divide.

In my experience, a sizable chunk of people who are anti-surveilance are pretty staunchly rightwing.

This is bad news in that it means that there isn't a pre-formed anti surveillance coalition, but good news in every other way imo.

[pavel_lishin]

At the last public meeting that someone from our household attended, people screamed and loudly booed during people's time to address the local elected officials.

So, I'm aware that the people I live next to are tremendously rude dipshits who hold awful opinions.