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I think the person requesting to access the data was doing the right thing and I agree with the judge’s ruling. The fact that they’re gonna shut it down, impli

I think the person requesting to access the data was doing the right thing and I agree with the judge’s ruling. The fact that they’re gonna shut it down, implies the scale of indiscriminate nature of data capture and the volume of data being captured. These cameras are popping up all over the nation and if people realize how much data is being captured and where that data is going (or who it’s being sold to) and how it’s being used by government and private entities they would be appalled. There’s been exposés about these cameras, everything from AI misidentification of “stolen” (not) vehicles and erroneous arrests and police encounters, to analysis of shopping patterns being sold back to private entities for better ad targeting. It’s wild.

deleted 7mo ago
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Gigachad 7mo ago
The laws need to be updated. CCTV in public used to be fine because no one was actually watching it unless there was an incident. Now it’s possible to have AI watch every camera and correlate everything everywhere we need new privacy laws to reflect this capability.
- thfuran 7mo ago
  And the government needs to be restricted from buying data it wouldn’t be permitted to collect itself.
  - throwawayqqq11 7mo ago
    Yep, ban collection and pruchase of such data for everyone. Exceptions usually mean private companies hop in to offer the "service". I think the current insane development are surveilance capitalists, trying to rush their panopticon to solidify their power. Guess that means no reasoable privacy law for the US, even under hypothetical president newsom.
  - bilbo0s 7mo ago
    Meh. If the government is only restricted from buying the data, then they'll just have someone else buy it. Palantir is not the government. So they can buy the real time feed, analyze it in real time, and give the real time results of that analysis to the government without issue. Restricting the government from buying that data does nothing. If you want to stop the government taking advantage of the data, then you would have to outlaw the collection of the data altogether. So that the initial collection of the data by anyone, is illegal. Personally, I don't think that's gonna happen. There's way too many people making way too much money telling the government who hangs out with who, who cheats with who, and so on and so forth.
    - thfuran 7mo ago
      >give the real time results of that analysis to the government without issue. Presumably they’re not doing this for free.
      - direwolf20 7mo ago
        It's a free charity service, and the hundred million dollars per year the taxpayers pay the same person for some other excuse has nothing to do with it, honest
  - atoav 7mo ago
    No. Everyone should be restricted from buying (or better: collecting) it, otherwise you just created the business model for evil corp that does the job and collects your tax dollar to do the same thing.
    - direwolf20 7mo ago
      How can an evil corp that isn't the government tax you?
      - atoav 7mo ago
        Easy. If you ban the government to buy that data, but evil corp is allowed to buy it, you now created a business model where evil corp is paid by your government for some compiled version of said data as a service with hefty additional fees on top. And if you think that is unrealistic you may need to do some research into who pays the bills of Palantir et al. So if the goal of the ban is to prevent government overreach, you need to ban collection for everybody, except maybe well documenter scientific applications and specific private areas.
- achierius 7mo ago
  It was not fine then -- what we have now is simply even worse. We do not need to make concessions to our oligarchs: none of this is OK.
- fc417fc802 7mo ago
  I don't mind a local AI on an airgapped security camera network monitoring a camera and issuing an alert to a security guard. The issues are internet connectivity, data retention/mining/sale, and non-local processing (ie handing stuff off to a third party that does who knows what and probably doesn't take security seriously).
  - ben_w 7mo ago
    Even with that, I do mind. Just as two trivial examples, even though neither affects me personally: The estimated number of heroin users in the UK exceeds the total prison population. The number of class-A drug users in the UK is estimated to be so high that if they actually followed the minimum sentencing guidelines for possession, it would cause a catastrophic economic disaster both from all the people no longer working and also all of the people who suddenly had to build new prisons to hold them. I'm not interested in drugs (and I don't live in the UK, but I assume the UK isn't abnormal in this regard). Another example is road traffic law. Even just speeding offences, I think you probably catch everyone who actually drives in the UK, often enough that after a month the only people left allowed to drive would be people like me who don't even own a car. The entire legal system has to be radically changed with far less punishments for almost everything if you have perfect, or even 30% of the way to perfect, surveillance.
    - fc417fc802 7mo ago
      I was a bit unclear. I agree, I don't want the government using AI to identify all violations of the law. That sounds like a very straightforward dystopia. What I don't mind is private companies using AI analysis to support their security guards. I object to any sharing of the data with third parties though. It should be illegal for the data to leave their internal network and it should be illegal to retain it for more than a few days. I don't care if grocery store loss prevention has eyes on every aisle. My concern is data warehousing and subsequent misuse.
    - egorfine 7mo ago
      > Another example is road traffic law. Even just speeding offences, I think you probably catch everyone who actually drives in the UK, often enough that after a month the only people left allowed to drive would be people like me who don't even own a car. You don't have to strip the driving licenses. You should impose a fine and not an extremely painful one for starters. And then probably within less than a year the whole population will drive properly. I think I'm in favor of indiscriminately fining everyone speeding at every camera, but I realize there is no privacy-preserving way to do it today thus I will be against it. (I'm a driver and car lover who is never speeding)
- tremon 7mo ago
  Oh how the public opinion has been moved already. Rewriting your argument to echo the sentiment from a generation ago: > The laws need to be updated. Having police officers monitor public streets was fine because they wouldn't actually recall anything unless there was an incident. Now it's possible to go back and review specific footage and identify everyone on those camera's -- we need new privacy laws to reflect this capability.
- garyfirestorm 7mo ago
  When passive monitoring turns into analytics -> public watching turns into stalking. it’s ok for me to observe a person in public park - it should be ok to watch camera for an activity But if it’s not ok for me to stalk someone I think it should be illegal for a network of cameras to watch my movements too! Slapping AI onto stalking is still stalking.
close04 7mo ago
> the scale of indiscriminate nature of data capture and the volume of data being captured It took a lot of naivete, to put it gently, and head-in-sand attitude to believe otherwise. Flock had everything in place to collect a treasure trove of data but they would decide not to do it? Out of principle? Or even if we take the very charitable interpretation that they don't do it today, but also that they'll never cave in to the pressure to do it in the future?
cucumber3732842 7mo ago
>The fact that they’re gonna shut it down, implies the scale of indiscriminate nature of data capture and the volume of data being captured. Or it implies that the .gov, it's agents and those associated with it are not squeaky clean and that any aggrieved party being able to request footage would be bad for the .gov.
stingraycharles 7mo ago
Yeah, it appears they have a lot of things backwards, for example: > “We were very disappointed,” Franklin said. “That means perpetrators of crime, people who are maybe engaged in domestic abuse or stalkers, they can request footage and that could cause a lot of harm.” The whole point is that they should have been collecting data on perpetrators of crimes only in the first place, not a massive dragnet.
- tclancy 7mo ago
  It feels so in bad faith as there’s a claim ICE could use the footage if it’s public domain. They already can and that’s one of the big arguments against it you clowns.
  - skeeter2020 7mo ago
    beyond that it also implies "but the bad guys could then trawl all this data; only us, the good guys should be able to do that!"
    - tclancy 7mo ago
      Yeah, that's even more important, isn't it. It begs the question, framing the conversation as "Who should have access to this invasive, privacy-destroying footage" rather than "WTF? Stop this."
toss1 7mo ago
The judge is right, and should go even further. This is data collected with public funds — our money — for public purposes. Not only should it be available to any US resident by request, it should be public, as in in an online library, and any US resident without a criminal record should be able to get continuous access, not only a batch of records (yes, keep out anyone with a restraining order or any other crime). It is our tax dollars, any of us should be able to do research on the data. Including watching the watchers. Where do the government employees go and when? Where do the Flock employees go, and when? Or, if that kind of instantly-available stalking of anyone is too much of a risk, shut it down. Hard. All of it. The real-world dynamics of the system is either 1) everybody's motions in public are public, or 2) it is a tool of a totalitarian state. There is no other option, and option 2 is intolerable in a free society.
throwaway85825 7mo ago
Public traffic cams have existed for a while. I don't think anyone would complain as much if the ALPR feed was public. Politicians and government officials want to use surveillance as a means of control not to benefit the public and that's what galls people.
skeeter2020 7mo ago
>> The fact that they’re gonna shut it down If only; they temporarily shut off their cameras, while other jurisdictions look to change their laws removing this data from the public record. Neither of these moves are close to "wins"

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

Gigachad 7mo ago

The laws need to be updated. CCTV in public used to be fine because no one was actually watching it unless there was an incident. Now it’s possible to have AI watch every camera and correlate everything everywhere we need new privacy laws to reflect this capability.

thfuran 7mo ago
And the government needs to be restricted from buying data it wouldn’t be permitted to collect itself.
- throwawayqqq11 7mo ago
  Yep, ban collection and pruchase of such data for everyone. Exceptions usually mean private companies hop in to offer the "service". I think the current insane development are surveilance capitalists, trying to rush their panopticon to solidify their power. Guess that means no reasoable privacy law for the US, even under hypothetical president newsom.
- bilbo0s 7mo ago
  Meh. If the government is only restricted from buying the data, then they'll just have someone else buy it. Palantir is not the government. So they can buy the real time feed, analyze it in real time, and give the real time results of that analysis to the government without issue. Restricting the government from buying that data does nothing. If you want to stop the government taking advantage of the data, then you would have to outlaw the collection of the data altogether. So that the initial collection of the data by anyone, is illegal. Personally, I don't think that's gonna happen. There's way too many people making way too much money telling the government who hangs out with who, who cheats with who, and so on and so forth.
  - thfuran 7mo ago
    >give the real time results of that analysis to the government without issue. Presumably they’re not doing this for free.
    - direwolf20 7mo ago
      It's a free charity service, and the hundred million dollars per year the taxpayers pay the same person for some other excuse has nothing to do with it, honest
- atoav 7mo ago
  No. Everyone should be restricted from buying (or better: collecting) it, otherwise you just created the business model for evil corp that does the job and collects your tax dollar to do the same thing.
  - direwolf20 7mo ago
    How can an evil corp that isn't the government tax you?
    - atoav 7mo ago
      Easy. If you ban the government to buy that data, but evil corp is allowed to buy it, you now created a business model where evil corp is paid by your government for some compiled version of said data as a service with hefty additional fees on top. And if you think that is unrealistic you may need to do some research into who pays the bills of Palantir et al. So if the goal of the ban is to prevent government overreach, you need to ban collection for everybody, except maybe well documenter scientific applications and specific private areas.
achierius 7mo ago
It was not fine then -- what we have now is simply even worse. We do not need to make concessions to our oligarchs: none of this is OK.
fc417fc802 7mo ago
I don't mind a local AI on an airgapped security camera network monitoring a camera and issuing an alert to a security guard. The issues are internet connectivity, data retention/mining/sale, and non-local processing (ie handing stuff off to a third party that does who knows what and probably doesn't take security seriously).
- ben_w 7mo ago
  Even with that, I do mind. Just as two trivial examples, even though neither affects me personally: The estimated number of heroin users in the UK exceeds the total prison population. The number of class-A drug users in the UK is estimated to be so high that if they actually followed the minimum sentencing guidelines for possession, it would cause a catastrophic economic disaster both from all the people no longer working and also all of the people who suddenly had to build new prisons to hold them. I'm not interested in drugs (and I don't live in the UK, but I assume the UK isn't abnormal in this regard). Another example is road traffic law. Even just speeding offences, I think you probably catch everyone who actually drives in the UK, often enough that after a month the only people left allowed to drive would be people like me who don't even own a car. The entire legal system has to be radically changed with far less punishments for almost everything if you have perfect, or even 30% of the way to perfect, surveillance.
  - fc417fc802 7mo ago
    I was a bit unclear. I agree, I don't want the government using AI to identify all violations of the law. That sounds like a very straightforward dystopia. What I don't mind is private companies using AI analysis to support their security guards. I object to any sharing of the data with third parties though. It should be illegal for the data to leave their internal network and it should be illegal to retain it for more than a few days. I don't care if grocery store loss prevention has eyes on every aisle. My concern is data warehousing and subsequent misuse.
  - egorfine 7mo ago
    > Another example is road traffic law. Even just speeding offences, I think you probably catch everyone who actually drives in the UK, often enough that after a month the only people left allowed to drive would be people like me who don't even own a car. You don't have to strip the driving licenses. You should impose a fine and not an extremely painful one for starters. And then probably within less than a year the whole population will drive properly. I think I'm in favor of indiscriminately fining everyone speeding at every camera, but I realize there is no privacy-preserving way to do it today thus I will be against it. (I'm a driver and car lover who is never speeding)
tremon 7mo ago
Oh how the public opinion has been moved already. Rewriting your argument to echo the sentiment from a generation ago: > The laws need to be updated. Having police officers monitor public streets was fine because they wouldn't actually recall anything unless there was an incident. Now it's possible to go back and review specific footage and identify everyone on those camera's -- we need new privacy laws to reflect this capability.
garyfirestorm 7mo ago
When passive monitoring turns into analytics -> public watching turns into stalking. it’s ok for me to observe a person in public park - it should be ok to watch camera for an activity But if it’s not ok for me to stalk someone I think it should be illegal for a network of cameras to watch my movements too! Slapping AI onto stalking is still stalking.

close04 7mo ago

> the scale of indiscriminate nature of data capture and the volume of data being captured It took a lot of naivete, to put it gently, and head-in-sand attitude to believe otherwise. Flock had everything in place to collect a treasure trove of data but they would decide not to do it? Out of principle? Or even if we take the very charitable interpretation that they don't do it today, but also that they'll never cave in to the pressure to do it in the future?

cucumber3732842 7mo ago

>The fact that they’re gonna shut it down, implies the scale of indiscriminate nature of data capture and the volume of data being captured. Or it implies that the .gov, it's agents and those associated with it are not squeaky clean and that any aggrieved party being able to request footage would be bad for the .gov.

stingraycharles 7mo ago

Yeah, it appears they have a lot of things backwards, for example: > “We were very disappointed,” Franklin said. “That means perpetrators of crime, people who are maybe engaged in domestic abuse or stalkers, they can request footage and that could cause a lot of harm.” The whole point is that they should have been collecting data on perpetrators of crimes only in the first place, not a massive dragnet.

tclancy 7mo ago
It feels so in bad faith as there’s a claim ICE could use the footage if it’s public domain. They already can and that’s one of the big arguments against it you clowns.
- skeeter2020 7mo ago
  beyond that it also implies "but the bad guys could then trawl all this data; only us, the good guys should be able to do that!"
  - tclancy 7mo ago
    Yeah, that's even more important, isn't it. It begs the question, framing the conversation as "Who should have access to this invasive, privacy-destroying footage" rather than "WTF? Stop this."

toss1 7mo ago

The judge is right, and should go even further. This is data collected with public funds — our money — for public purposes. Not only should it be available to any US resident by request, it should be public, as in in an online library, and any US resident without a criminal record should be able to get continuous access, not only a batch of records (yes, keep out anyone with a restraining order or any other crime). It is our tax dollars, any of us should be able to do research on the data. Including watching the watchers. Where do the government employees go and when? Where do the Flock employees go, and when? Or, if that kind of instantly-available stalking of anyone is too much of a risk, shut it down. Hard. All of it. The real-world dynamics of the system is either 1) everybody's motions in public are public, or 2) it is a tool of a totalitarian state. There is no other option, and option 2 is intolerable in a free society.

throwaway85825 7mo ago

Public traffic cams have existed for a while. I don't think anyone would complain as much if the ALPR feed was public. Politicians and government officials want to use surveillance as a means of control not to benefit the public and that's what galls people.

skeeter2020 7mo ago

>> The fact that they’re gonna shut it down If only; they temporarily shut off their cameras, while other jurisdictions look to change their laws removing this data from the public record. Neither of these moves are close to "wins"