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The city I used to live in trialed flock cameras for car theft. They caught more car thefts in January of the trial year than the previous year’s total.
by wil421 11mo ago
The city I used to live in trialed flock cameras for car theft. They caught more car thefts in January of the trial year than the previous year’s total.
- hopelite 11mo agoThis is not exactly an unbiased forum to discuss this matter since Flock is a YC backed program, but what do you think will happen in short order? Maybe that car thieves will simply slap on fake license plates to get out of the area? What you’re left with then, is nothing but the tyrannical and even treasonous mass surveillance program to know where you go and when all your life, even when you leave your tracking device phone behind and use a tracking device free vehicle.
- tptacek 11mo agoNobody cares that Flock is a YC company. I'd be surprised if most YC batch members even realized off the top of their head that Flock is YC. YC companies get criticized all the time on HN, including by people who have done YC.
- tptacek 11mo agoWe started hoping that car thefts would be a pressure point for a lot of violent crime (which tends to be committed from stolen cars --- this is the Kia problem). But we caught more innocent drivers with stale entries on the Illinois LEADS hotlist than actual stolen cars. When we OK'd the system after its pilot, it was on the condition that we no longer curb cars based on stolen car reports at all --- we'd only curb them based on stolen license plates (which have no innocent explanation). Maybe other states are different for this, but in Chicagoland, unless you don't care about disproportionately harming Black motorists, using Flock for stolen car enforcement was a flop.
- aerostable_slug 11mo agoThe lesson I keep getting from your experiences is that LEADS needs an overhaul. It turns out other states do have flags for things like "extraditable warrant" vs. just failure to appear warrants (something mentioned in previous discussions), and perhaps something could be done about the LEADS system if attention was given to it. It seems like fixing one's data sources is a great approach vs. tossing the baby out with the bathwater — unless of course that's the intention all along, as it is with many opposed to state-owned surveillance of this nature.
- tptacek 11mo agoWhen you fix LEADS, let me know, and I'll be happy to revisit.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 11mo agoDon't improve anything until you can fix everything! No incremental improvements allowed!
- tptacek 11mo agoI have no idea what this has to say with anything that I said. Did you see me saying "no, don't fix LEADS"?