[jvanderbot]

"Online" has become such a trite dismissal.

I'm calling out, specifically, that "A camera capturing an image of a license plate that is openly displayed on a vehicle is not searching for someone's private life. It is recording what anyone standing on the same street could already observe."

... implies that a very absurd and objectionable thing like folks standing around each playground recording children and comparing notes is actually also supported by that defense and that we should consider if that defense is objectionable or not based on what it enables as much as what it is defending.

On this very forum, you can find backlash against geofencing, and here, support for flock cameras? The contradiction is bananas. Automated logging of people in public places is dystopian. You can object with that claim, fine.

[AnimalMuppet]

> On this very forum, you can find backlash against geofencing, and here, support for flock cameras? The contradiction is bananas.

There's more than one person on this forum. Why do you expect consistency? Different people have different opinions. Different people comment on different articles. HN is not a hivemind; don't expect consistency.

[jvanderbot]

Ah yes, this is a fair point.

I should have stated something weaker: There are legitimate arguements, even on this forum, against geofencing, so entertaining arguments against camera-based always-on tracking shouldn't be automatically out of scope.

[AnimalMuppet]

Fair enough. But there are also plenty of people here who yell at those who are against geofencing, so you can also expect plenty of yelling if you advocate camera-based always-on tracking.

[bko]

> Automated logging of people in public places is dystopian

You went from recording license plates on public roads to logging people in public places.

If someone steals my car, I would want to be able to give police my license plate and have them track down the person very easily by all the cameras on public roads. This is not dystopian. This is what an orderly society should look like.

You're talking about children and random stuff that's completely irrelevant. If you can't or refuse to see that, I can't convince you.

[jvanderbot]

> You went from recording license plates on public roads to logging people in public places.

No, man, the argument is in the linked article, the one from TFA, the one I quoted. It is about public spaces and recording "what anyone standing on the same street could already observe".

That is insufficiently restrictive of a criterion because it's overly broad, and therefore can lead to absurd situations we'd never expect. Like kid tracking mafias. Any device that records "what anyone on the street observe" becomes awful creepy real quick, and we shouldn't accept that kind of argument ever.

TFA goes on to say that it breaks down at scale, and I'm trying to call out that, no, it is creepy at local scales too, because recording public activity is a bad precedent to set. I don't know how to make it more clear.

> stolen car

Having a use for an overbroad surveillance tech is only a defense for you, not for me and probably not for the courts either. It's not like they only activate it when there's a car stolen. It records all the time.

We've stated our opinions clearly now, I think the back and forth can end.

[redwall_hp]

If someone steals my car, I can open an app and find its precise geolocation better than some cameras, and deliver that information to the police of my own choice. (Ideally, the car company would be legally prohibited from sharing that information with any other party.)

"Monitor the movements of everyone in case of the minute chance of car theft and astronomical chance of the police caring" is patently absurd. We probably need cameras in bathrooms too, in case someone passes out and needs medical attention.

[bko]

> deliver that information to the police of my own choice

Good luck with that.

I've heard plenty of stories of victims of theft and crime literally leading police to the door of their assailant and they can't get any action because this "privacy" movement has made their efforts pretty meaningless.

You're naive and you obviously have no real experience in this regard. It's just sad that you promote policies that help no one but criminals and you're completely unaware.

[redwall_hp]

> I've heard plenty of stories of victims of theft and crime literally leading police to the door of their assailant and they can't get any action because this "privacy" movement has made their efforts pretty meaningless.

So the police are useless when given a precise location, and you want to give them more invasive tools to continue to be useless? That's not the argument you think it is.

[bko]

Police should do their jobs and do so once empowered. They can't accept "trust me bro" when catching a criminal. Hope that helps

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> You went from recording license plates on public roads to logging people in public places.

This is kind of a misconception about the technology; there is not really much distinction between these things. Firstly, they are cameras which have no means of differentiating between a license plate or a dog or a tree. In addition to that, they are (presumably linux) computers that have software to find license plates in the images the cameras take, both of which (license plates and images) are stored on Flock's servers. That's how the "recording license plates on public roads" bit works.

The point is that the images can still be ran through creepy software written by creepy people to find children to get to "logging people in public places". And let's say, to put it mildly, it does not fill one with confidence to research the security in practice of Flock's image data.