[Manuel_D]

Right and what if lots of crime happens in a place where there are not many businesses? Hardly an implausible scenario given that crime is bad for business.

The city can set up its own camera for its own use. Is that really that wild of a proposal?

[asveikau]

What if what if what if?

That whole premise of "what if lots of crime happens" -- already false.

Did you know that most places in America are at historically low crime rates in most of our lifetimes? It is garbage to say this needs deep societal focus right now. I don't give a shit about the hypothetical hurt feelings of small town cops whining that they don't have always-on spy equipment.

[chmod775]

What if lots of murders happened in bathrooms?

[glitchc]

We create doors that physically limit access to one person at a time.

[Manuel_D]

The hopefully we'll be able to at least narrow down the list of suspects to the people who entered the bathroom around the time they the murder took place.

Surveillance often doesn't directly capture crime on camera, but is rather used to identify who traveled to and from the crime scene around the time of the incident

[etchalon]

You understand why that's worse, right?

[Manuel_D]

No? If someone broke into your car as stole your luggage, the surveillance camera might not directly capture the thief breaking into your car. But if the camera recorded someone entering the parking garage and then exiting the garage carrying your luggage a few minutes later, that's strong evidence is it not?

[etchalon]

You're missing the part where, for that to work, we have a government with access to a massive surveillance system capable of identifying and tracking the population at scale.

And you're missing that, instead of specifically identifying a specific individual doing a specific thing, this network would be used to place under suspicion, investigation and possible arrest, people who's only documented action was "being somewhere."

Oh, and while your example is "committed a crime", that same network could easily be used to identity and track people who were, say, coming and going from protests. Or libraries. Or voting.

[Manuel_D]

> investigation and possible arrest, people who's only documented action was "being somewhere."

In the example above, the police wouldn't arrest every single person who entered and exited the parking lot. They'd arrest the person who walked out of the lot with your stolen luggage.

> Oh, and while your example is "committed a crime", that same network could easily be used to identity and track people who were, say, coming and going from protests

Again realize that this is legal right? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/charlottesville-doxxin...

There's no right to have your public demonstrations off limits for recording. The whole point of a protest is to be seen. If someone is concerned that they will be associated with some group or cause because of their decision to protest, then they seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what a protest is.

> Or voting

You realize the government already has that information? Voters literally filled out ballots and delivered it to the government. They don't need a camera to know who voted, they have the ballots.

[LocalH]

That is not this, however. This is the city hooking into a private, nationwide surveillance network.

You didn't think these cities actually own these Flock cameras, did you?

[ocdtrekkie]

They pay to have them installed and maintained, they're not different in that sense from subscribing to Office 365 licensing, it's a subscription product.

They key difference is not whether they own their cameras but the automatic data sharing with other agencies and their cameras. Arguably law enforcement does this casually on request anyways but the drastically reduced friction of an automatic system enables easy abuse.

An officer may hesitate to ask a neighboring agency for data on their girlfriend, and would likely be very hesitant to file actual paperwork to request it. But a search in Flock's interface is probably all of the same legal peril in a venue which doesn't feel as intimidating or risky to do and doesn't see the same level of human review or scrutiny.

[etchalon]

In America, yes.

Obviously in other places, no.