2 ms·

I don’t know. Whenever I see those amber alerts to be on the lookout for a grey Nissan with license plate number something, I think isn’t that a great opportuni

I don’t know. Whenever I see those amber alerts to be on the lookout for a grey Nissan with license plate number something, I think isn’t that a great opportunity to use at least OCR or something. Or be on the look out for some kidnap victim kid who looks like other kids, asking people to do what technology can already do much better sounds dumb. Machines are going to come up with false positives, but so will human beings who are asked to be on the lookout for some kid of some redacted race in a hoody.

ghaff 2y ago
The amber alert stuff seems useless. Maybe I’m a bad person but I just have that disabled. The emergency weather warnings are also pretty high false positive with respect to things like flash flooding but at least worth being aware of.
- r2_pilot 2y ago
  Oh it is quite useless where I am. Before I disabled it, I would routinely get ear-shriekingly loud alerts at 4:30 in the morning for events happening hundreds of miles away. Worst waste of resources that are mandatory on phones, ever, except for the presidential alert.
int_19h 2y ago
The difference here is that people are asked to be on the lookout at some specific moments when a crime is known to be occurring, while cameras can - and are, per TFA - being used for straight up fishing expeditions. That said, yes, it would be nice if there was a way for my car to automatically scan car plates around, linked to my phone so that when an amber alert comes in and I explicitly choose to enable the scanner at that point, it would report matches for that particular number automatically. But we all know that's never going to happen. Well, the automatic plate scanners in every car will probably happen eventually - it's too easy technologically for someone to not come up with a bright idea to mandate them "for safety". But they will be enabled and effectively controlled by law enforcement 24/7.

ghaff 2y ago

The amber alert stuff seems useless. Maybe I’m a bad person but I just have that disabled. The emergency weather warnings are also pretty high false positive with respect to things like flash flooding but at least worth being aware of.

r2_pilot 2y ago
Oh it is quite useless where I am. Before I disabled it, I would routinely get ear-shriekingly loud alerts at 4:30 in the morning for events happening hundreds of miles away. Worst waste of resources that are mandatory on phones, ever, except for the presidential alert.

int_19h 2y ago

The difference here is that people are asked to be on the lookout at some specific moments when a crime is known to be occurring, while cameras can - and are, per TFA - being used for straight up fishing expeditions. That said, yes, it would be nice if there was a way for my car to automatically scan car plates around, linked to my phone so that when an amber alert comes in and I explicitly choose to enable the scanner at that point, it would report matches for that particular number automatically. But we all know that's never going to happen. Well, the automatic plate scanners in every car will probably happen eventually - it's too easy technologically for someone to not come up with a bright idea to mandate them "for safety". But they will be enabled and effectively controlled by law enforcement 24/7.