[nullc]

Wrong metric-- the person caught would have almost certainly been caught absent it, making it easy to overstate the benefit.

When someone with access-- potentially LEO but the access set is much larger-- uses the data to stalk and harass someone you'll usually never know that the ALPR camera was the data source.

So its easy to overstate the contribution and understate the harm.

But if you talk a step back you can see the dramatic change being made to our world: making it impossible to go about your life without being constantly tracked, cataloged, and having your history made available to who knows who, for who knows what purpose, for who knows how long (but probably forever).

[bklosky]

You're making a strong statement about the counterfactual here; how could you know? Clearance rates for most crimes in the US are abysmal, the expected outcome for most crimes is "unsolved."

[Lonestar1440]

Why would they "almost certainly" have been caught otherwise?

This is a load bearing component of your argument and it seems thin.

From my perspective, you are synthesizing a harm while ignoring the clear and concrete contribution.

[lelandfe]

Synthesize no longer: https://ij.org/police-have-reportedly-used-license-plate-rea...

[dghlsakjg]

Your argument cuts the other way too: the article doesn't say anything about the crime being unsolvable but for AI cameras that are part of a private nationwide surveillance network.

In fact, the only mention is via the police PR department, which presumably has an interest in making these cameras palatable to the public. There's nothing to say that a regular CCTV camera couldn't have been just as effective, or that normal police work wouldn't have gotten the job done ("We found him by his license plate" isn't exactly cutting edge applications of an AI panopticon, nor does it require cameras at all.)