5 ms·

I cannot imagine a scenario where I'd want those in my neighborhood. Glad you like them, but I hope they don't make it to the west suburbs where I live.

tptacek 8mo ago
Who are you talking about who likes the cameras? It isn't me. But if you're in a suburb of Chicagoland, my guess is your neighbors like them a bunch. They won't like Flock, because of the Trump administration and ICE press around Flock, but ALPRs are commodity technology now and you'll likely roll out some other vendor, like the munis surrounding Oak Park did.
- tokyobreakfast 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - tptacek 8mo ago
    This would be a more compelling rebuttal if I hadn't just told you a story about how we obtained exactly the outcome you claim to want in our own municipality.
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
  - SR2Z 8mo ago
    Almost nobody on either side of the aisle likes the government putting up cameras in their neighborhood. It's a reflexive reaction that Americans have to the government stepping on them. They get away with digital surveillance because it's generally well-hidden, but Trump is even changing that.
    - tptacek 8mo ago
      I really don't think this is true. I just watched lots and lots of people in an extraordinarily liberal suburb make impassioned cases for why they wanted these things up.
- halfmatthalfcat 8mo ago
  Hi, Evanstonian here, we got rid of them.
  - tptacek 8mo ago
    Right, you're the 2nd most liberal muni in Illinois after us. But Wilmette still has theirs, just like River Forest still has their ALPRs. I think a lot of munis will drop Flock, because of the bad PR, but they're just going to stand up no-name ALPRs. (For people unfamiliar with Chicagoland, Oak Park borders Chicago to its west and is like our version of Park Slope, and Evanston, which houses Northwestern University, borders Chicago to the North and is like our Westchester County.) I was pretty irritable about us cancelling our Flock contract. We did a metric fuckton of regulation on our cameras; I think we may have had the most sophisticated ALPR regulation of any ALPR in the country (granted, that's a statement about how little regulation there is of them, but still). We could have disabled our cameras but kept the contract, kept our standing as a municipality that uses Flock, and then shopped our ordinances and police general orders to the neighboring municipalities. Instead, we performatively cancelled our contract, while remaining 4.5 square miles surrounded on all sides by totally unregulated ALPRs.

tptacek 8mo ago

Who are you talking about who likes the cameras? It isn't me. But if you're in a suburb of Chicagoland, my guess is your neighbors like them a bunch. They won't like Flock, because of the Trump administration and ICE press around Flock, but ALPRs are commodity technology now and you'll likely roll out some other vendor, like the munis surrounding Oak Park did.

tokyobreakfast 8mo ago
[flagged]
- tptacek 8mo ago
  This would be a more compelling rebuttal if I hadn't just told you a story about how we obtained exactly the outcome you claim to want in our own municipality.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- SR2Z 8mo ago
  Almost nobody on either side of the aisle likes the government putting up cameras in their neighborhood. It's a reflexive reaction that Americans have to the government stepping on them. They get away with digital surveillance because it's generally well-hidden, but Trump is even changing that.
  - tptacek 8mo ago
    I really don't think this is true. I just watched lots and lots of people in an extraordinarily liberal suburb make impassioned cases for why they wanted these things up.
halfmatthalfcat 8mo ago
Hi, Evanstonian here, we got rid of them.
- tptacek 8mo ago
  Right, you're the 2nd most liberal muni in Illinois after us. But Wilmette still has theirs, just like River Forest still has their ALPRs. I think a lot of munis will drop Flock, because of the bad PR, but they're just going to stand up no-name ALPRs. (For people unfamiliar with Chicagoland, Oak Park borders Chicago to its west and is like our version of Park Slope, and Evanston, which houses Northwestern University, borders Chicago to the North and is like our Westchester County.) I was pretty irritable about us cancelling our Flock contract. We did a metric fuckton of regulation on our cameras; I think we may have had the most sophisticated ALPR regulation of any ALPR in the country (granted, that's a statement about how little regulation there is of them, but still). We could have disabled our cameras but kept the contract, kept our standing as a municipality that uses Flock, and then shopped our ordinances and police general orders to the neighboring municipalities. Instead, we performatively cancelled our contract, while remaining 4.5 square miles surrounded on all sides by totally unregulated ALPRs.