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This suit in part deals with the surveillance technology company Flock Safety (https://www.flocksafety.com/ https://www.flocksafety.com/)

heywire 2y ago
These have been popping up all around my town in southwest Ohio
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Someone1234 2y ago
Let's discuss this: > 100% Homicide cases cleared in Cobb County, Georgia and Riverside, California with the help of Flock* > *As of March 2023 Cobb County PD in Georgia reports, “Over the last two years... we’ve had 62 homicides and solved 100% of those homicides.” I'm sure people's initial gut reaction is "100% murder solves is awesome!" because, well, yeah. But we need to quantify what a "solve" is: You charge someone with murder; the secondary concern is if they did it. When you read extremely high figures like 100% solves in 62 murders over two-years, one has to wonder if this is the most effective detective work ever, or they're finding any warm bodies to charge to pump the stats. As the article about this says, the national average is closer to 50%, and even that is known to contain wrongly charged and or convicted people. Do people really believe that a couple of hundred cameras in fixed public locations really improved the solve rate that much? I'm extremely skeptical. And: > 90% Michigan freeway shootings resulted in arrests with the help of Flock* > * As of July 2023, Michigan State Police reports using Flock in 90% of the freeway shootings having an arrest in all of them. So now we're using arresting people (not charges, or convictions) as our yard stick? So we're rewarding police departments for going out and finding anyone who may be loosely connected, taking away their civil liberties, in order to look better on paper? That's outright gross. Major red flag. Let's just say for the sake of argument that "Flock Safety" helps police find/arrest/charge legitimate suspects. There must be better ways of showing it. Also someone needs to look into Cobb County PD in Georgia for the quality of their murder charges, because that stat is more indicative of abuse than competence.*
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  There's no doubt in my mind that this sort of technology and omnipresent surveillance helps the police solve crimes. That is obviously beneficial to the rest of us. However it gets back to the old argument over trading liberty for safety. It's long been established that you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy when moving about in public. However that precident was established at a time when tracking people en masse was technically impossible. An individual, or a place could be surveilled, but not everyone, everywhere. To my mind, such mass surveillance databases, given that they are now possible and do have some clear beneficial uses, must be protected in ways that were not necessary in the past. Warrants should be required to access the data for specific places at specific times, at minimum. And the governments that contract for these services should own the data, not Flock or other vendors.

heywire 2y ago

These have been popping up all around my town in southwest Ohio

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Someone1234 2y ago

Let's discuss this: > 100% Homicide cases cleared in Cobb County, Georgia and Riverside, California with the help of Flock* > *As of March 2023 Cobb County PD in Georgia reports, “Over the last two years... we’ve had 62 homicides and solved 100% of those homicides.” I'm sure people's initial gut reaction is "100% murder solves is awesome!" because, well, yeah. But we need to quantify what a "solve" is: You charge someone with murder; the secondary concern is if they did it. When you read extremely high figures like 100% solves in 62 murders over two-years, one has to wonder if this is the most effective detective work ever, or they're finding any warm bodies to charge to pump the stats. As the article about this says, the national average is closer to 50%, and even that is known to contain wrongly charged and or convicted people. Do people really believe that a couple of hundred cameras in fixed public locations really improved the solve rate that much? I'm extremely skeptical. And: > 90% Michigan freeway shootings resulted in arrests with the help of Flock* > * As of July 2023, Michigan State Police reports using Flock in 90% of the freeway shootings having an arrest in all of them. So now we're using arresting people (not charges, or convictions) as our yard stick? So we're rewarding police departments for going out and finding anyone who may be loosely connected, taking away their civil liberties, in order to look better on paper? That's outright gross. Major red flag. Let's just say for the sake of argument that "Flock Safety" helps police find/arrest/charge legitimate suspects. There must be better ways of showing it. Also someone needs to look into Cobb County PD in Georgia for the quality of their murder charges, because that stat is more indicative of abuse than competence.*

SoftTalker 2y ago
There's no doubt in my mind that this sort of technology and omnipresent surveillance helps the police solve crimes. That is obviously beneficial to the rest of us. However it gets back to the old argument over trading liberty for safety. It's long been established that you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy when moving about in public. However that precident was established at a time when tracking people en masse was technically impossible. An individual, or a place could be surveilled, but not everyone, everywhere. To my mind, such mass surveillance databases, given that they are now possible and do have some clear beneficial uses, must be protected in ways that were not necessary in the past. Warrants should be required to access the data for specific places at specific times, at minimum. And the governments that contract for these services should own the data, not Flock or other vendors.