11 ms·

The problem isn't that you're visible, or that what you're doing should be private, it's that any cop can access your location history for any reason, at any ti

The problem isn't that you're visible, or that what you're doing should be private, it's that any cop can access your location history for any reason, at any time, with no scrutiny. Cops are known to be abusive, violent thugs, and giving them this ability is definitely a dangerous route. IMO these recordings should be kept by a third party, and cops should need to appeal to that third party to access it. Going before a judge to get a warrant would be preferred.

floatrock 2y ago
There's precedent where it's easier to spend some money and buy it from the third party data brokers. Why go through lawyer hurdles when you can just buy it perfectly legally?
- dylan604 2y ago
  Then don't make the 3rd party a for profit private company. Make it a new branch of the government. Make it part of the DoT or which ever company is responsible for collecting taxes in your locale. Intra agency operations would still be possible while removing direct access to LEOs. If you want your own information, pay your $25 type fees after proving who you are for printing/research/etc that are typical when requesting official gov't records. If you're another gov't agency, provide the warrant granting access to civilian records.
  - hiatus 2y ago
    > Then don't make the 3rd party a for profit private company. Make it a new branch of the government. Who is this directed at? The company wasn't started as a branch of government. What exactly are you proposing? That the government create its own network of cameras for surveillance? Have government-created solutions never been abused by law enforcement in the past?
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    We already do that. Government has strict firewalls to access DMV data, so DMVs sell the stream of data to various parties, and the government buys it back from the third party or any non-police purpose. A company like ID.me basically performs a function that any state government could do itself or through a contractor at lower cost and without the privacy issues of providing the data to third parties. The law has failed us here - privacy attorneys basically focus on providing notification on a “take it or leave it” basis.
    - imtheopposite 2y ago
      [dead]
  - kartoffelsaft 2y ago
    The argument is not that this theoretical 3rd party would be a for-profit company, but that there's already existing for-profit companies that exist and could serve that purpose, and that the new 3rd party wouldn't see much use because of that. They almost certainly are willing to buy hordes of data off of google/facebook/etc.; it's useful data that they're already negotiating to get. Why, then, would they be want to put in the effort for a warrant on cctv footage when the suspect's google search and maps history they're alreaty getting contain the same info and more? At best, your creating a small amount of competition for data brokers, and I question if it's that much.
giraffe_lady 2y ago
I'm a volunteer court observer for DV court and some days it feels like half of the cases are someone misusing state surveillance tools to stalk or abuse women. The victims are almost always women. The abusers aren't always cops, probably a slight majority of them are other workers with access to these systems. I don't find out what happens to them afterwards but I never seem to hear about police getting fired for this.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  There's SIGNIFICANT selection bias at play in such a setting. (not that you're not correct in that the more equal animals never face the same consequences less equal ones do).
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    What's the bias I don't really understand. That I only see the ones that get caught and had a victim willing to show up in court over it? So this is actually probably a much bigger issue than I think it is?
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      Only cases with easy to prove paper trails are worth taking to court, straightforward cases where the result is all but guaranteed get settled outside court, etc, etc.
      - kelnos 2y ago
        Not sure how that refute the GP's point. You're just saying that what the GP has seen is a smaller part of all the bad stuff that really happens. Which they acknowledged.
        potato3732842 2y ago
        My point is don't draw conclusions from what you see in court. Just because probate court is packed doesn't mean most heirs can't figure it out amicably. Just because you're seeing the cases that create prosecutable paper trails doesn't mean anything about what fraction of that type of crime they are.
sebstefan 2y ago
From having worked on systems like this, anything that allows a cop to look into people's whereabouts will have extensive logs of queries being performed because abuses are one of the first problems you run into. They happen _all the time_. They'll look up their romantic partners, an ex's new boyfriend, ... I am of the opinion that automatic gathering of the travel history of a plate should be locked behind judicial approval, and that the data should have a lifetime. But I'm 99.99% confident that the searches are at least logged because we got complaints, like, 1 month in.
- polartx 2y ago
  Access logs are meaningless when police are only accountable to themselves and unions shield them from any disciple of their wrongdoings
  - 93po 2y ago
    and you just get your coworkers to look up your ex for you
- sitkack 2y ago
  Not just judicial approval, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_secret_sharing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_secret_sharing
- awdawda 2y ago
  And I am sure when they are caught the full brunt of the U.S. justice system holds them accountable for their wretched behavior. More likely they just move departments. Logging something is moot if those abusing the power are rarely held accountable for things ranging all the way up to murder.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  I'm not worried about "any cop" I'm worried that YouPeople(TM) (i.e. the reader, HN, some unspecified future group, etc.) will vote in some jerks who will decide that people like me ought to be scrutinized to the full extent of the law. And your cheerleaders will say things like "they shouldn't have broken the law" when it was never possible, by design, to comply with all the laws all the time in the first place.
carimura 2y ago
> Cops are known to be abusive, violent thugs Although I agree with your sentiment on data privacy, I don't know where you live but in the United States this is a gross [and potentially dangerous] overgeneralization of a million+ hard-working officers who committed their lives to your safety in spite of regularly encountering life-threatening situations.
- joshstrange 2y ago
  Being a police officer doesn't even rank in the top 10 most dangerous jobs in America. Loggers, fishers, roofers, and delivery drivers all face higher fatality rates according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The Supreme Court explicitly ruled in Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005) that police have no constitutional duty to protect citizens from harm, effectively nullifying the "committed their lives to your safety" claim. These "million+ hard-working officers" actively maintain the corrupt system by refusing to hold their colleagues accountable. The "few bad apples" theory falls apart when entire departments and unions systematically protect officers who abuse their power. American police have earned their reputation through decades of documented misconduct, militarization, and resistance to meaningful reform. The institution works exactly as designed.
  - banku_brougham 2y ago
    This made me remember a news story out of Mississippi last year of hundreds of graves behind a jail with no accountability of whose body is placed there. It only came to light after much struggle from people searching for missing family members. Basically people in police or jail custody who died were dumped in there under a blanket assumption that no family had claimed them, but no attempts to notify or find family members was made. https://jacksonadvocateonline.com/crump-wants-inquiry-of-215-people-buried-in-county-paupers-field/ https://jacksonadvocateonline.com/crump-wants-inquiry-of-215...
  - dataflow 2y ago
    >> hard-working officers who committed their lives to your safety > The Supreme Court explicitly ruled in Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005) that police have no constitutional duty to protect citizens from harm If a duty isn't constitutional then it doesn't exist?
Ajedi32 2y ago
Generally agree with what you said, but "Cops are known to be abusive, violent thugs" is a terrible thing to say completely unqualified like that. If you don't understand why, consider that crime rates are known to be higher among the black population in the US but generalizing that to "black people are known to be abusive, violent thugs" would be equally wrong and hateful. You can make a point about the potential for abuse without name-calling an entire group of people like that.
- 93po 2y ago
  this is a really poor comparison. mentioning crime rates by race is considered highly racist because it's a dog-whistle to frame it as "this person is more likely to do this because of their race" instead of framed in a socioeconomic context and the result of long-term systemic racism and oppression. cops are not a race. cops have extremely high levels of problematic behavior across all ages, races, etc. it's a good thing to call out the problematic nature of cops as a group since they have a literal monopoly on violence and are massively unaccountable for the use of that violence. the argument "you can't call black people violent, therefore you also can't call cops violent" makes absolutely no sense to me
  - Ajedi32 2y ago
    There's a difference between "black people in x city are y% more likely per capita to commit violent crime" and "black people are violent thugs". One is a statistical reality that can be used in a constructive context. ("Okay, so what can we do to reduce this crime rate? Better education? Community outreach? Etc.") the other is probably just bigotry. The same goes for the difference between "Police departments in the US have y% higher rate of excessive use of force than other countries" and "police are violent thugs".
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      No you are yet again missing the point. No black person chooses to be born black. Casting judgement on any individual black person for the actions of other black people is unethical for that reason. Every single cop chose to be there, chooses to continue being a cop every day despite constant and repeated examples of blatant corruption, bad behavior, literal thuggery, planting evidence, and the Good Ol' Boys network endemic to the institution. They are culpable for that choice. Continuing to be a cop in this environment (specifically where there is zero chance to "reform it from the inside" due to structural problems). Ask any ex-cop why they left. The system is completely broken and designed to empower cops to be thugs without consequence. "Good cops" don't stay cops because they get bullied by literal cop gangs to either become a bad cop and do thuggery or to get the fuck out. There are no Good cops.
banku_brougham 2y ago
Why is it so hard to understand this? Five years ago on HN stories like this would collect comments with general revulsion to this sort of surveillance. Today there is a troubling sentiment that "we can't have a society without unlimited time history of every person's movements available for scrutiny."
- arminiusreturns 2y ago
  [flagged]
- kittikitti 2y ago
  Most people on HN are highly networked with Big Tech which depends on surveillance data. Without it, their jobs and careers vanish. Defending surveillance doesn't come from a place of reason, it comes from a place of ignorance and fear.
  - jillyboel 2y ago
    It's funny how your, and the other sibling replies, all got downvoted without anyone refuting it. They know you're right, they're just angry about being called out.
- asveikau 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    [flagged]
- try_the_bass 2y ago
  > Five years ago on HN stories like this would collect comments with general revulsion to this sort of surveillance. I'm super skeptical that this is actually true. In fact, I'm pretty sure it isn't, and you're just projecting your own positions on "HN of five years ago".
petercooper 2y ago
it's that any cop can access your location history for any reason, at any time, with no scrutiny Surely that's the problem to resolve? We could make it as ethically unacceptable for the police to look up irrelevant private records as it is for someone in the medical profession to do so, and fire people for misuse of these tools (indeed, in my country police officers do get fired for this sort of thing).
- reverendsteveii 2y ago
  Getting police to act ethically is a non-trivial problem. In fact, it's been a society-defining problem since the beginning of society.
- Inityx 2y ago
  If we haven't managed to stop them brutalizing and killing unethically yet, then I don't think we'll stop them violating privacy unethically any time soon.
somedude895 2y ago
> Cops are known to be abusive, violent thugs Always, before making generalising statements like this, ask yourself: Would I think it's okay if the word was replaced with another, in this case, say "blacks"? And then you'll probably see that you shouldn't talk like that.
- tech_ken 2y ago
  I think this is a pretty terrible litmus test for the "okayness" of a statement. There are plenty of reasons one word might make lots of sense in a statement, while another would absolutely not. For example: estimates of the prevalence of domestic violence perpetrated by police officers in the US range as high as 40%. This is an objectively true statement. Replacing 'police officers' with, say, 'kindergarten teachers' produces a statement which is NOT objectively true.
  - somedude895 2y ago
    Non-whites are 3x more likely to commit violent crimes than whites [0] [0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2782848/#R49 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2782848/#R49 So now do you think it's okay to say "Blacks are known to be violent thugs" because it's "objectively true" according to some data? Just stop...
    - tech_ken 2y ago
      Are you familar with the concept of "omitted variable bias"? This paper only takes it up once (AFAICT), but there's a pretty critical variable that they otherwise generally ignore: > Once socioeconomic status was considered, the results failed to indicate racial differences between the offending but not arrested drivers and the arrested drivers. As far as I've seen, there is not a similar explanatory factor with the statistic I've cited.
      - try_the_bass 2y ago
        You cherry-picked one sentence that supports your position out of an entire paper that repeatedly makes the case (with ample evidence!) that race is a meaningful factor in the rates of various types of crime (mostly violent crime). You also picked the one example that's referring to a non-violent crime (drunk driving), when the GP was specifically highlighting violent crime. The rest of the paper continues to make his point, and it's clearly been examined a large number of ways but a ton of highly-motivated people. The burden of putting forth a better explanation is much larger than "one sentence I picked out of a paper that reviews dozens of papers that contradict my explanation". I don't think this is an "omitted variable bias" thing. This is a "confirmation bias" thing on your part.
asveikau 2y ago
Not to mention we have constitutional restrictions on what law enforcement can do, in recognition that such abuse has been a problem even hundreds of years ago.
BurningFrog 2y ago
If it doesn't already exist, it should be pretty simple to build the software so that a hobbyist can point a cheap camera at the road outside his window and record every license plate passing by. You can ban cops from doing it, I guess, but I think someone will record all public spaces quite soon. I don't love it either...
xanderstrike 2y ago
> it's that any cop can access your location history for any reason This requires the assumption that your location and your car's location are always one and the same. If you care about your privacy consider leaving the vehicle with tracking numbers on it at home sometimes. It's not just cops that have ALPRs and you cannot prevent this technology from existing.
- alwa 2y ago
  I’m sorry, is the proposal here that you remove your legally-required number plates and travel that way (in which case Flock’s “vehicle DNA” feature recognition will quickly reidentify you), or that you buy or rent other cars? I guess starting and ending somewhere other than your home? Or did you have a different mode of travel in mind that compares favorably to wheeled transportation on public streets?
  - xanderstrike 2y ago
    Billions of people all over this planet take trips every day without the use of personal private automobiles. It's fascinating how, to me, my comment was very clearly "don't use a car if you care about privacy" but that interpretation didn't even occur to you. Car dependency runs deep.
    - alwa 2y ago
      While billions of people do operate without cars (I’m one of them!), I feel like there’s a conditionality kind of constraint here: of the set of people who would normally be operating cars on local US arterial roads—that is, of the set of people whose privacy this technology impacts in the first place—what proportion seem likely (or able) to do whatever privacy-implicated things they need or want to do without said cars?

floatrock 2y ago

There's precedent where it's easier to spend some money and buy it from the third party data brokers. Why go through lawyer hurdles when you can just buy it perfectly legally?

dylan604 2y ago
Then don't make the 3rd party a for profit private company. Make it a new branch of the government. Make it part of the DoT or which ever company is responsible for collecting taxes in your locale. Intra agency operations would still be possible while removing direct access to LEOs. If you want your own information, pay your $25 type fees after proving who you are for printing/research/etc that are typical when requesting official gov't records. If you're another gov't agency, provide the warrant granting access to civilian records.
- hiatus 2y ago
  > Then don't make the 3rd party a for profit private company. Make it a new branch of the government. Who is this directed at? The company wasn't started as a branch of government. What exactly are you proposing? That the government create its own network of cameras for surveillance? Have government-created solutions never been abused by law enforcement in the past?
- Spooky23 2y ago
  We already do that. Government has strict firewalls to access DMV data, so DMVs sell the stream of data to various parties, and the government buys it back from the third party or any non-police purpose. A company like ID.me basically performs a function that any state government could do itself or through a contractor at lower cost and without the privacy issues of providing the data to third parties. The law has failed us here - privacy attorneys basically focus on providing notification on a “take it or leave it” basis.
  - imtheopposite 2y ago
    [dead]
- kartoffelsaft 2y ago
  The argument is not that this theoretical 3rd party would be a for-profit company, but that there's already existing for-profit companies that exist and could serve that purpose, and that the new 3rd party wouldn't see much use because of that. They almost certainly are willing to buy hordes of data off of google/facebook/etc.; it's useful data that they're already negotiating to get. Why, then, would they be want to put in the effort for a warrant on cctv footage when the suspect's google search and maps history they're alreaty getting contain the same info and more? At best, your creating a small amount of competition for data brokers, and I question if it's that much.

giraffe_lady 2y ago

I'm a volunteer court observer for DV court and some days it feels like half of the cases are someone misusing state surveillance tools to stalk or abuse women. The victims are almost always women. The abusers aren't always cops, probably a slight majority of them are other workers with access to these systems. I don't find out what happens to them afterwards but I never seem to hear about police getting fired for this.

potato3732842 2y ago
There's SIGNIFICANT selection bias at play in such a setting. (not that you're not correct in that the more equal animals never face the same consequences less equal ones do).
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  What's the bias I don't really understand. That I only see the ones that get caught and had a victim willing to show up in court over it? So this is actually probably a much bigger issue than I think it is?
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    Only cases with easy to prove paper trails are worth taking to court, straightforward cases where the result is all but guaranteed get settled outside court, etc, etc.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      Not sure how that refute the GP's point. You're just saying that what the GP has seen is a smaller part of all the bad stuff that really happens. Which they acknowledged.
      - potato3732842 2y ago
        My point is don't draw conclusions from what you see in court. Just because probate court is packed doesn't mean most heirs can't figure it out amicably. Just because you're seeing the cases that create prosecutable paper trails doesn't mean anything about what fraction of that type of crime they are.

sebstefan 2y ago

From having worked on systems like this, anything that allows a cop to look into people's whereabouts will have extensive logs of queries being performed because abuses are one of the first problems you run into. They happen _all the time_. They'll look up their romantic partners, an ex's new boyfriend, ... I am of the opinion that automatic gathering of the travel history of a plate should be locked behind judicial approval, and that the data should have a lifetime. But I'm 99.99% confident that the searches are at least logged because we got complaints, like, 1 month in.

polartx 2y ago
Access logs are meaningless when police are only accountable to themselves and unions shield them from any disciple of their wrongdoings
- 93po 2y ago
  and you just get your coworkers to look up your ex for you
sitkack 2y ago
Not just judicial approval, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_secret_sharing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_secret_sharing
awdawda 2y ago
And I am sure when they are caught the full brunt of the U.S. justice system holds them accountable for their wretched behavior. More likely they just move departments. Logging something is moot if those abusing the power are rarely held accountable for things ranging all the way up to murder.
potato3732842 2y ago
I'm not worried about "any cop" I'm worried that YouPeople(TM) (i.e. the reader, HN, some unspecified future group, etc.) will vote in some jerks who will decide that people like me ought to be scrutinized to the full extent of the law. And your cheerleaders will say things like "they shouldn't have broken the law" when it was never possible, by design, to comply with all the laws all the time in the first place.

carimura 2y ago

> Cops are known to be abusive, violent thugs Although I agree with your sentiment on data privacy, I don't know where you live but in the United States this is a gross [and potentially dangerous] overgeneralization of a million+ hard-working officers who committed their lives to your safety in spite of regularly encountering life-threatening situations.

joshstrange 2y ago
Being a police officer doesn't even rank in the top 10 most dangerous jobs in America. Loggers, fishers, roofers, and delivery drivers all face higher fatality rates according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The Supreme Court explicitly ruled in Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005) that police have no constitutional duty to protect citizens from harm, effectively nullifying the "committed their lives to your safety" claim. These "million+ hard-working officers" actively maintain the corrupt system by refusing to hold their colleagues accountable. The "few bad apples" theory falls apart when entire departments and unions systematically protect officers who abuse their power. American police have earned their reputation through decades of documented misconduct, militarization, and resistance to meaningful reform. The institution works exactly as designed.
- banku_brougham 2y ago
  This made me remember a news story out of Mississippi last year of hundreds of graves behind a jail with no accountability of whose body is placed there. It only came to light after much struggle from people searching for missing family members. Basically people in police or jail custody who died were dumped in there under a blanket assumption that no family had claimed them, but no attempts to notify or find family members was made. https://jacksonadvocateonline.com/crump-wants-inquiry-of-215-people-buried-in-county-paupers-field/ https://jacksonadvocateonline.com/crump-wants-inquiry-of-215...
- dataflow 2y ago
  >> hard-working officers who committed their lives to your safety > The Supreme Court explicitly ruled in Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005) that police have no constitutional duty to protect citizens from harm If a duty isn't constitutional then it doesn't exist?

Ajedi32 2y ago

Generally agree with what you said, but "Cops are known to be abusive, violent thugs" is a terrible thing to say completely unqualified like that. If you don't understand why, consider that crime rates are known to be higher among the black population in the US but generalizing that to "black people are known to be abusive, violent thugs" would be equally wrong and hateful. You can make a point about the potential for abuse without name-calling an entire group of people like that.

93po 2y ago
this is a really poor comparison. mentioning crime rates by race is considered highly racist because it's a dog-whistle to frame it as "this person is more likely to do this because of their race" instead of framed in a socioeconomic context and the result of long-term systemic racism and oppression. cops are not a race. cops have extremely high levels of problematic behavior across all ages, races, etc. it's a good thing to call out the problematic nature of cops as a group since they have a literal monopoly on violence and are massively unaccountable for the use of that violence. the argument "you can't call black people violent, therefore you also can't call cops violent" makes absolutely no sense to me
- Ajedi32 2y ago
  There's a difference between "black people in x city are y% more likely per capita to commit violent crime" and "black people are violent thugs". One is a statistical reality that can be used in a constructive context. ("Okay, so what can we do to reduce this crime rate? Better education? Community outreach? Etc.") the other is probably just bigotry. The same goes for the difference between "Police departments in the US have y% higher rate of excessive use of force than other countries" and "police are violent thugs".
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    No you are yet again missing the point. No black person chooses to be born black. Casting judgement on any individual black person for the actions of other black people is unethical for that reason. Every single cop chose to be there, chooses to continue being a cop every day despite constant and repeated examples of blatant corruption, bad behavior, literal thuggery, planting evidence, and the Good Ol' Boys network endemic to the institution. They are culpable for that choice. Continuing to be a cop in this environment (specifically where there is zero chance to "reform it from the inside" due to structural problems). Ask any ex-cop why they left. The system is completely broken and designed to empower cops to be thugs without consequence. "Good cops" don't stay cops because they get bullied by literal cop gangs to either become a bad cop and do thuggery or to get the fuck out. There are no Good cops.

banku_brougham 2y ago

Why is it so hard to understand this? Five years ago on HN stories like this would collect comments with general revulsion to this sort of surveillance. Today there is a troubling sentiment that "we can't have a society without unlimited time history of every person's movements available for scrutiny."

arminiusreturns 2y ago
[flagged]
kittikitti 2y ago
Most people on HN are highly networked with Big Tech which depends on surveillance data. Without it, their jobs and careers vanish. Defending surveillance doesn't come from a place of reason, it comes from a place of ignorance and fear.
- jillyboel 2y ago
  It's funny how your, and the other sibling replies, all got downvoted without anyone refuting it. They know you're right, they're just angry about being called out.
asveikau 2y ago
[flagged]
- Terr_ 2y ago
  [flagged]
try_the_bass 2y ago
> Five years ago on HN stories like this would collect comments with general revulsion to this sort of surveillance. I'm super skeptical that this is actually true. In fact, I'm pretty sure it isn't, and you're just projecting your own positions on "HN of five years ago".

petercooper 2y ago

it's that any cop can access your location history for any reason, at any time, with no scrutiny Surely that's the problem to resolve? We could make it as ethically unacceptable for the police to look up irrelevant private records as it is for someone in the medical profession to do so, and fire people for misuse of these tools (indeed, in my country police officers do get fired for this sort of thing).

reverendsteveii 2y ago
Getting police to act ethically is a non-trivial problem. In fact, it's been a society-defining problem since the beginning of society.
Inityx 2y ago
If we haven't managed to stop them brutalizing and killing unethically yet, then I don't think we'll stop them violating privacy unethically any time soon.

somedude895 2y ago

> Cops are known to be abusive, violent thugs Always, before making generalising statements like this, ask yourself: Would I think it's okay if the word was replaced with another, in this case, say "blacks"? And then you'll probably see that you shouldn't talk like that.

tech_ken 2y ago
I think this is a pretty terrible litmus test for the "okayness" of a statement. There are plenty of reasons one word might make lots of sense in a statement, while another would absolutely not. For example: estimates of the prevalence of domestic violence perpetrated by police officers in the US range as high as 40%. This is an objectively true statement. Replacing 'police officers' with, say, 'kindergarten teachers' produces a statement which is NOT objectively true.
- somedude895 2y ago
  Non-whites are 3x more likely to commit violent crimes than whites [0] [0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2782848/#R49 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2782848/#R49 So now do you think it's okay to say "Blacks are known to be violent thugs" because it's "objectively true" according to some data? Just stop...
  - tech_ken 2y ago
    Are you familar with the concept of "omitted variable bias"? This paper only takes it up once (AFAICT), but there's a pretty critical variable that they otherwise generally ignore: > Once socioeconomic status was considered, the results failed to indicate racial differences between the offending but not arrested drivers and the arrested drivers. As far as I've seen, there is not a similar explanatory factor with the statistic I've cited.
    - try_the_bass 2y ago
      You cherry-picked one sentence that supports your position out of an entire paper that repeatedly makes the case (with ample evidence!) that race is a meaningful factor in the rates of various types of crime (mostly violent crime). You also picked the one example that's referring to a non-violent crime (drunk driving), when the GP was specifically highlighting violent crime. The rest of the paper continues to make his point, and it's clearly been examined a large number of ways but a ton of highly-motivated people. The burden of putting forth a better explanation is much larger than "one sentence I picked out of a paper that reviews dozens of papers that contradict my explanation". I don't think this is an "omitted variable bias" thing. This is a "confirmation bias" thing on your part.

asveikau 2y ago

Not to mention we have constitutional restrictions on what law enforcement can do, in recognition that such abuse has been a problem even hundreds of years ago.

BurningFrog 2y ago

If it doesn't already exist, it should be pretty simple to build the software so that a hobbyist can point a cheap camera at the road outside his window and record every license plate passing by. You can ban cops from doing it, I guess, but I think someone will record all public spaces quite soon. I don't love it either...

xanderstrike 2y ago

> it's that any cop can access your location history for any reason This requires the assumption that your location and your car's location are always one and the same. If you care about your privacy consider leaving the vehicle with tracking numbers on it at home sometimes. It's not just cops that have ALPRs and you cannot prevent this technology from existing.

alwa 2y ago
I’m sorry, is the proposal here that you remove your legally-required number plates and travel that way (in which case Flock’s “vehicle DNA” feature recognition will quickly reidentify you), or that you buy or rent other cars? I guess starting and ending somewhere other than your home? Or did you have a different mode of travel in mind that compares favorably to wheeled transportation on public streets?
- xanderstrike 2y ago
  Billions of people all over this planet take trips every day without the use of personal private automobiles. It's fascinating how, to me, my comment was very clearly "don't use a car if you care about privacy" but that interpretation didn't even occur to you. Car dependency runs deep.
  - alwa 2y ago
    While billions of people do operate without cars (I’m one of them!), I feel like there’s a conditionality kind of constraint here: of the set of people who would normally be operating cars on local US arterial roads—that is, of the set of people whose privacy this technology impacts in the first place—what proportion seem likely (or able) to do whatever privacy-implicated things they need or want to do without said cars?