[Jaxkr]

This is a perspective I hadn’t heard or considered before.

Often times common crime (petty/violent) is viewed as a totally different area as white-collar crime or corruption. But they’re related.

As someone who’s had bikes stolen and car broken into, I sympathize with the desire for surveillance (especially in San Francisco). But Flock has no safeguards against cops using it to stalk ex-wives or misusing a partial match.

[bluefirebrand]

I think it would be kind of different if people were having cars broken into less often or bikes returned after being stolen

But it's clear that increased surveillance hasn't been leading to stolen property being recovered.

[ryandrake]

Yea, that's the thing: I could almost get behind mass surveillance if it actually solved crime. Probably not, but almost. But it doesn't! Having a camera on every street corner doesn't do anything to solve crime if the police won't look at it and actually follow up. So we get the downsides of mass surveillance without any upside.

Same thing with things like "find my iPhone". Great in theory, but if your phone actually gets stolen and you tell the cops "Hey, my phone is at this exact address, I can prove it with Find My," they still don't give a shit and don't lift a finger to solve it, so the technology is in reality useless.

We need a police force who is actually motivated to solve crime rather than just find black people to beat and show up in force when someone protests something.

[inigyou]

the cops were in the apartment where my phone was stolen when my phone was stolen and had a video recording of it getting stolen clearly showing the person who stole it who was known to the police because it was the person the police were called about.

I said: can you get my phone back? They said: use find my, then come to the police station. I did. The police said: sorry, this location only shows the building and not the apartment, so we can't enter the apartment and get your phone

[DANmode]

> Same thing with things like "find my iPhone". Great in theory, but if your phone actually gets stolen and you tell the cops "Hey, my phone is at this exact address, I can prove it with Find My," they still don't give a shit and don't lift a finger to solve it, so the technology is in reality useless.

This is location-dependent.

[jimnotgym]

Take a lesson from the UK where there are cameras everywhere.

Brothers van parked in London. Window broken, bag stolen off front seat. Right under camera.

He calls police and miracle of miracles they actually attend. Must have been in the area.

Plod:"Shouldn't have left your bag on view"

Bro:"Can you check the CCTV"

Plod:"You watch too much TV mate, we don't have time for that"

But cameras will one day help catch a murderer and suddenly everyone will want them everywhere.

[inigyou]

Tell them someone said "from the river to the sea". They'll drop everything to look.

[iioiio]

This is such a lie. UK arrests people for flying UK flags. Pro Palestinian terrorists get away with assaulting police all the time.

[Tanoc]

The phrase I constantly recite to people at this point is "Mass surveillance is not mass enforcement and the two are separate words and concepts for a reason." People don't seem to get it until there's an effort to point that out.

[cvwright]

Sounds like a mini version of Habermas’s legitimation crisis playing out in real time

[dualvariable]

> As someone who’s had bikes stolen and car broken into, I sympathize with the desire for surveillance (especially in San Francisco).

That isn't what it is being used for. That would still require cops to be investigating petty theft as if they cared about it.

[try_the_bass]

> That isn't what it is being used for.

I'm not sure if you know what you're talking about? Flock cameras have definitely involved in detecting people who come into SF in stolen cars or with stolen plates, who proceed to go on sprees of breaking into cars and stealing things.

I really dislike Flock as a company, but their cameras absolutely do get used in the way they're publicly pitched.

Flock doing bad things does not justify coming into this thread and stating as fact things that are patently false.

[inigyou]

You said it - they only care when it's a spree.

[butvacuum]

and one with a plate that's already reported stolen. trnslation: it's a zero effort publicity project.

[therealpygon]

Plates can be retroactively searched, backtracked, subjects followed back to other cars and tracked back to where they left from, or other cars that are repeatedly in the area prior to cars being stolen before being used for other crimes can be identified and tracked backward. A plate doesn’t need to be flagged prior to a crime. It’s the same way they can tell which tolls and which plate readers a vehicle has passed recently when running a plate, and is frequently used to identify or trip up drug runners.

Translation: you are wrong and seem to be making things up to fit your position, because this is exactly what people have a problem with — that this data is retained regardless of suspicion.

[try_the_bass]

That wasn't what I said at all, and you know this. Please don't deliberately misrepresent me

[DANmode]

Plenty of places this is happening.

I got to teach a Detective the technical limitations of Find My, and also successfully recovered some of my property from a UHaul truck during a stop.

All for bikes - but it contributed to two arrests, and contributed to a larger, interstate theft case.

[therealpygon]

I don’t think that’s true; my understanding is that there are (currently opt in, I don’t it should be) monitoring that flags any such requests for administrative review and a number of officers have been fired because of it. It is no different than a cop running their own or someone else’s license outside of actual police business, which frequently results in administrative reprimands/write-ups because of the same types of monitoring.

You might disagree on the punishments or protections, and that’s not to say it couldn’t happen, but it seems false to say there are no safeguards.

I do not “support” Flock. I would have less issue if there was mandated data retention policies (by law) that limited to thirty days without a court order. Afterward, Flock should be welcome to perform mandated anonymization/obscure biometrics/obfuscate identifiers to retain anonymous data at that point. Either someone is suspected of being a criminal and a judge agreed it warranted access and retention, or they are an ordinary private citizen in public. The government’s position that because the government doesn’t own the company they can get data from at any time, it isn’t government surveillance, is…

Well, I think it’s just lying but that is an opinion.

[Gud]

I’ve been robbed, multiple times, I’ve had my bike stolen… once I was robbed in London, surveillance capital of the world. Do you think the cameras helped? Take a guess.

I don’t sympathise at all with anyone who wants the powerful to surveil the rest of us. It’s just another, powerful, tool used by the wicked people who seek power over the rest of us.

Instead spend that money on educating the poor.