[steviedotboston]

This is really bad for all the reasons that people have mentioned (vigilante "justice" never is a good thing) but people have a misplaced understanding of right and wrong here. Flock cameras have helped solve some major crimes, and people will be glad to have this technology around if they are ever a victim.

[kstrauser]

Police states are great at solving major crimes. And when those are sufficiently solved, to justify their continued existence, they have to solve lesser crimes, repeating until you need enough surveillance to ensure no one's flushing their toilet improperly.

Police states are like autoimmune diseases under the hygiene hypothesis. They'll keep ramping up their sensitivity until they're attacking everything, even when it's benign.

[steviedotboston]

Flock cameras can be helpful in all sorts of crimes. They've been used to solve everything from kidnappings to minor property damage.

There obviously isn't a future without crime. This is just a tool to make it easier for police to do their job and deter criminals somewhat, but that is probably marginal.

There will always be kidnappings, there will always be property damage. Having technology available to make it easier to solve those crimes seems obvious to me.

[kstrauser]

Yes, I can see how they would be helpful in solving crimes down to minor property damage.

I do not want to live in a society where police are watching everything I do in the name of solving minor property damage. "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is bullshit. I don't do anything illegal in my bathroom, but I do not wish to have a camera in there, even if it could solve a hypothetical crime.

[steviedotboston]

They aren't watching you in the bathroom. They are recording cars on public streets and analyzing the footage.

[pesus]

Why not? Don't you want to stop all the crimes happening in bathrooms too? That would be a logical step if privacy is always an acceptable tradeoff for security (or at least the illusion thereof).

[cg5280]

The difference is that public streets are public spaces. You necessarily have a limited expectation of privacy in public spaces. The government likewise already deploys cameras in public places to maintain a reasonable level of order on them.

If you want to put a camera in your personal toilet you absolutely can.

[1shooner]

I think most opposing Flock have considered and rejected the bargain of trading their freedom for security in this case.

There are other ways to sacrifice your privacy for a sense of safety that doesn't impose your 'understanding of right and wrong' on the entire public.

[goldfish3]

>have a misplaced understanding of right and wrong here.

"Could I be making wrong assumptions? No I'm a hacker, it must be everyone else who is wrong."

[Fargren]

"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape, than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long & generally approv’d"

The amount of damage these cameras have caused is totally disproportional to whatever meager benefit they may have wrought. These are antisocial machines.

[nvesp]

Dude my car was literally jacked up and had the catalytic convertor chopped off in a parking with flock cameras at a hotel before, def never got caught, and according to the hotel security footage they parked right next to my car, got out and did everything real fast. Plus most people using cars to commit heinous crimes are usually stolen and ditched right after anyways, people who use their own car to commit crimes usually end up being lower level crimes like organized retail theft, drugs, etc, you know stuff id rather not trade privacy for security over.

[chasd00]

yeah surveillance doesn't mean secure. A few weeks ago there was a solid 10-15 second run of automatic weapons fire on my street in an intersection. I do a lot of shooting and i could tell from the concussion it couldn't have been more than a couple hundred feet from my bedroom window. My neighbors turned in all their camera footage with recordings of two cars and the gunfire to a detective. When i asked them what happens next the detective just said in an annoyed voice "well i'll ask someone to check around..". Like it was plainly obvious he had zero interest at all.

edit: I live in Dallas so, although we sometimes hear gunshots when the Cowboys score a touchdown, i'm not in an active war zone.

[dylan604]

I'm in Dallas as well, and I hear gun shots daily. New Years/4th July absolutely sound like a war zone. I found a slug next to my trash can after a 4th celebration a couple of years ago. Not a shell, the actual slug. I keep it on my desk as a reminder. My fur babies are not allowed outside on those nights.

[chasd00]

curious to know where you are in Dallas if you don't mind. I'm in Oak Cliff in the Winnetka Heights neighborhood. This past New Years and July 4th were especially bad, people were double parked on I30 on the bridge to downtown, and the gunfire and fireworks were nonstop. DPD has basically given up, there's going to be a tragedy on day and everyone is going to be like "how could have this have happened!?".

[dylan604]

I’m in far east Dallas just north of pleasant grove.

Everyone that shoots their gun like that have come to the conclusion they vastly outnumber the police and know they are very unlikely to have anything happen. The cops are just holding their breath that nobody else recognizes this too

[rkomorn]

> although we sometimes hear gunshots when the Cowboys score a touchdown

Must be pretty quiet all year 'round then.

[pixl97]

All fun and good until whatever you are comes under the scrutiny of the police state.

[tclancy]

Always nice to hear from someone completely immune to miscarriages of justice.

[cg5280]

My confusion stems from the fact that mass surveillance is already pretty normal in major cities. Your face is on a dozen cameras anytime you walk through the grocery store. Your precise location is pinged off cell towers multiple times a day. I understand specific qualms with Flock as a company and how they manage the data, but this libertarian demand for total privacy in public spaces has been long lost and the beef with Flock in particular doesn’t even scratch the surface.

Edit: And I don’t even know how to have good faith conversations about this topic in these spaces, because the hive mind has decided that anything but absolute outrage is untenable. I’m getting downvoted for sharing my opinion.

[kstrauser]

We already have mass surveillance, and yet we still have major crimes. It's not working, and I see no reason to believe that removing more freedom will lead to having safer streets. Why are we giving up liberty and getting nothing in return? That's an excellent reason to protest against adding more surveillance.

[cg5280]

Our public surveillance is actually limited relative to other developed countries because it makes people here uncomfortable for cultural reasons. You’ll also note that our crime rates are pretty high, especially relative to the surveillance happy countries in East Asia.

Regardless, I’m happy to take a results oriented approach here. Does tracking license plates make it easier to catch criminals? Does it make it easier to track stolen vehicles? I suspect cities wouldn’t be signing these expensive contracts if they didn’t see any benefits.

And finally, surveillance of public spaces is not inherently at odds with personal freedoms. Your mobility is not restricted at all, your core rights have not been touched. And you are always welcome to go live in the woods off the grid.

I firmly believe that living in dense urban areas with millions of others requires a reasonably limited expectation of privacy in public spaces.

[toephu2]

If you think USA has mass surveillance you haven't been to Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Etc).

I can drive down highways in most cities in the USA without my license plate being read (Flock isn't on highways). Also Flock as integrated mostly just records license plates. It's not recording video 24/7.

[cg5280]

I actually touched on this in another comment below yours, using Asia as a specific example. Our crime rates are also much higher than those countries.

But while our surveillance is not as widespread as other developed nations, it is still quite commonplace. There are cameras everywhere and recording license plates seems like such a tiny and justifiable expansion.

People in the US also get angry at speed cameras or red light cameras, yet I personally think both are very rational things to want in busy areas!

[recursive]

Commonplace does not mean acceptable. Flock is new, and so it is an easier target for concentrated action. Also, Flock seems to be a centralized clearinghouse for surveillance data on a different scale than your local grocer's CCTV system.

[lm28469]

This comment is so naive and full of banalities I don't even know what to say, open a few history and philosophy books, these topics have been at the center of many deep and interesting debates over at least two thousands years and your take isn't even high-school level comprehension of the subject. If the end goal of societies was to stop crime we'd have achieved that a long time ago