6 ms·

He won’t for long. The backlash is just getting started. Left or right, no one wants their whereabouts subject to constant surveillance. His only advantage is

He won’t for long. The backlash is just getting started. Left or right, no one wants their whereabouts subject to constant surveillance. His only advantage is that the cops are on his side and won’t let go of these cameras without a fight.

mlinhares 7mo ago
Nah, he's just missing a good PR campaign, there's a 30% of the population that will eat whatever their supreme leaders say they should, I'm sure they can sanewash these cameras as well.
- therobots927 7mo ago
  America is pretty polarized around privacy as demonstrated by reactions to the Snowden leaks. So I think that’s a fair point.
  - hrimfaxi 7mo ago
    That was over a decade ago. I wonder if it has gotten better or worse since.
    - zulux 7mo ago
      It's gotten worse: I'm so tired of rampant crime that I'm up for a little surveillance. And I used to donate to the ACLU before they went crazy.
      - estebank 7mo ago
        > And I used to donate to the ACLU before they went crazy. When was that? Because in 1977 they defended Nazi's free speech to demonstrate in a town that had jewish people as half its population so it tried to block them, and I don't recall them doing anything nearly that controversial since. https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/the-skokie-case-how-i-came-to-represent-the-free-speech-rights-of-nazis https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/the-skokie-case-how-i-...
        selectodude 7mo ago
        Yeah that’s when they actually defended free speech. They now take sides on what speech should be allowed. That’s crazy.
        nxm 7mo ago
        [flagged]
        triceratops 7mo ago
        It's always been an activist organization. Even defending Nazis' free speech is activism. You just don't like their current activities.
        ceejayoz 7mo ago
        Gosh, the ACLU? Activists? Say it ain't so!
        ceejayoz 7mo ago
        > They now take sides on what speech should be allowed. Alternative framing: Given limited resources and lots of things to care about, they pick the specific cases that best improve the freedoms they're interested in protecting. In the case of the Second Amendment, they decided to let the NRA handle it, as that seems to be working just fine.
        CamperBob2 7mo ago
        A disingenuous take. The ACLU has actively published anti-2A literature in the past, arguing (as all such arguments must) that only the police, government, and military forces should have access to effective weapons.
        ceejayoz 7mo ago
        I mean, the ACLU is allowed to say they don't interpret the Second the individualist way you do. That's their First Amendment right, yes? The Second is probably the amendment least in need of defending by the ACLU. It's well covered, and pretty much a third rail of American politics.
      - mothballed 7mo ago
        Ha ha ha, you think it'll be used to help you? A hit and run drived totaled my car at an intersection with cameras, the cops would not even show up even though it was all on camera. When I called insurance they didn't bat an eye, the claims person pretty obviously was used to this happening all the time and didn't even question why I wasn't able to get a police report.
        FireBeyond 7mo ago
        Happened with my step daughter. Traffic light at intersection. She said she had a green light, so did the other driver. Cops -did- show up. "Did you have a green light" "I did." Less than 30 seconds of questions. Goes to the other driver, same, is back in under a minute. "Well, he said he's absolutely sure he had a green light, so I'm citing you for failing to obey a traffic signal". There were no cameras in the area, no witnesses, just the two drivers. But the other driver was a 50 something male, and my step daughter was 17 and upset because it was our car. So the cop took his word and cited her. Hmm, vehicle black box? If that showed that she had come to and been at a stop, and then accelerated, that would at least imply she had been at a red light, and gone when it turned green, as she said. No, no interest there. Even the insurer (fine, whatever), said "unless we're facing a six digit payout, we're not pulling the black box". Don't even start me on the fact that after our insurance denied liability, the other driver sued her in small claims court for $10,000 for a car that had a KBB of $1,450. And the small claims judge noted that he technically couldn't sue a minor in small claims, but required us to go to mandatory arbitration, where the arbitrator said, quote, "I don't understand why, as a decent human being, if insurance will pay out, you don't just accept the claim." (Yeahhhh, filed a complaint about that, too. And here I stop, because I feel my blood pressure rising lol).
        cucumber3732842 7mo ago
        So the system worked exactly as intended? It's not just auto insurance. Every government, government adjacent and highly regulated process is just like that. It's not about right and wrong or fairness or making the responsible party pay or saving the children or protecting the environment or preventing sub-prime loans or enforcing building code or or whatever the alleged pretext is. It's about having an efficient process turn the subjective into the quantifiable and/or assign financial responsibility and do so in a manner that's not flagrantly wrong so often that a "large enough to be a problem" amount of people seek recourse outside the system (like smoking the CEO on the sidewalk or armoring a bulldozer or whatever). But of course, marketing the system as though it's about right and wrong or fairness or whatever is what they do as a means toward what the point actually is so it's easy to understand why you think it failed instead of worked perfectly.
      - xhkkffbf 7mo ago
        Yup. Some "teens" can riding down my street with a pellet gun shooting at the cars. They ended up breaking 3 to 5 windows. It probably cost us collectively $3000++. The only problem with the license plate readers is that the "teens" drive cars with fake tags. They deliberately copy the plate numbers from some granny with the same model. Makes it fun when the SWAT team knocks on Granny's door.
        text0404 7mo ago
        So you're saying that a technology: - is trivially defeated by teenagers - is used by police departments as evidence to legally justify violent raids for property damage - whose data is mishandled by law enforcement agencies who don't do due diligence ... should have more widespread adoption and support?
      - georgemcbay 7mo ago
        I am also tired of rampant crime in this country, but unfortunately they aren't installing these cameras in boardrooms or the meeting rooms of politicians, so I don't think they are going to do much to deter the real crimes that are hurting our society.
ses1984 7mo ago
No one wants their whereabouts subject to constant surveillance, except everyone who carries a “normal” cell phone, in other words not a burner.
- therobots927 7mo ago
  Yes but you can always leave your phone behind if you want to drop off the map. Flock makes that borderline impossible.
  - deadbabe 7mo ago
    You can remove your license plate, you will get pretty far before it actually gets you pulled over.
    - Corrado 7mo ago
      Actually, that won’t work. The flock cameras don’t only rely on license plate information. They use “AI” to determine the make model and color of your car as well as any outstanding features, such as bumper stickers or roof racks.
      - deadbabe 7mo ago
        It works if you just add a magnet sticker somewhere when you remove your plate.
    - sophacles 7mo ago
      Leaving a cellphone behind is legal still. Removing a license plate is breaking the law. Drawing an equivalence is foolish.
- hrimfaxi 7mo ago
  Do people who carry normal cell phones do so with the active desire to have their whereabouts subject to constant surveillance?
whimsicalism 7mo ago
I'm very in favor of speed & redlight cameras and don't have a particular problem with license plate trackers. I think we partisan-ize far too many things nowadays, unfortunately.
- snsr 7mo ago
  Maybe you're also in favor of some light reading https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/
  - whimsicalism 7mo ago
    you think speed cameras violate the 4th amendment?
    - mothballed 7mo ago
      No but license plate requirements pretty clearly violate the 4th and/or 1st amendment, IMO. And without being required to have your license plate searched (registration 'papers' forced to be displayed) at all times without even an officer presenting RAS or PC of a crime, these cameras become a lot less useful. I don't see how removing the cameras is compatible with the first amendment, but if you have the right of "speech" to record me in public chasing every place I go in a manner that is the envy of any stalker, I ought to have the right of "speech" not to "say anything" (compelled speech of showing my plate).
      - nemomarx 7mo ago
        It really doesn't seem like the courts agree that you have a right to travel via car without a visible plate.
        mothballed 7mo ago
        The courts have been wrong about many things, sometimes for centuries before they've fixed it. Some things they think they've interpreted correctly now that they'll turn around and interpret some other way later. Trying to interpret viewing and recording the plate as speech but not displaying it as speech is trying to have your cake and eat it too. If the camera can stalk my car everywhere and record it under auspices of 'speech', it's only logical I can hide it as 'speech.'
delecti 7mo ago
> no one wants their whereabouts subject to constant surveillance But sadly lots of people want everyone else subject to it, and some are willing to submit to it themselves to get it. It's not a foregone conclusion.
- Corrado 7mo ago
  I was recently at a "town hall" meeting in my community and spoke with a older woman about Flock cameras. Initially she was not concerned about it and was generally in favor of the idea. I agreed that there could be benefits but that the downside is that they know when and where you go to church, or the grocery, or where you get your hair done, or even when you go on vacation. Her eyes lit up and I she replied that she would have to think about that a bit. I'm not saying that I changed her mind, but that bringing the consequences down to something she could understand was much better than yelling from the rooftops. Mentioning church is especially impactful with a lot of older folks.
  - jkestner 7mo ago
    In talking with many of the older people in my community about Flock, they initially defer to what our police department says it needs. A few things made them reconsider: - This is not about our police. This is about all the outside organizations that can watch us. - Focusing on Flock specifically. Once the cameras are given a name, people can start to form a better opinion fueled by the readily available bad press Flock is producing. - With the focus on Flock, the YouTube videos elsewhere in this topic do a great job of explaining how crappy their security is and how they're lying to their customers about it. Which brings it back to, this isn't about our local police — it's about the company that's an unworthy partner. Good job talking to your community. The first step is that people are aware of the cameras - for my neighbors, most did not know about them, and immediately found it creepy.
anthonypasq 7mo ago
i think politicians have seriously underestimated how much people don't like crime, and most people would take constant surveillance if it could actually improve feelings of safety in urban environments.
- energy123 7mo ago
  Enforcing public safety effectively is one of the most pro-democracy things you can do. Otherwise people use democracy to elect public safety authoritarians like the wildly popular Bukele and Duterte.
  - cucumber3732842 7mo ago
    So we should 1984 the crap out of ourselves because if we don't we'll elect an authoritarian who'll 1984 the crap out of us? Reminds me of this classic: https://static.poder360.com.br/2020/11/2020-11-07-22.31.49.jpg https://static.poder360.com.br/2020/11/2020-11-07-22.31.49.j... Yeah, I'm all for public safety in theory but seems like these days that's just a dog whistle for "go hard on whatever sort of petty deviance I don't like" and so I'm unwilling to support things like that in the default case. It's all just so tiresome.
    - krastanov 7mo ago
      I read OP differently. I thought they said "we should invest in non-dystopian public safety[1] to avoid dystopian populist creating a 1984 version of public safety". [1]: I imagine this includes things like mental heath help, housing, and other related social safety nets.
- eitally 7mo ago
  I think it's also true that many people are wildly out of touch when they think about how "safe" their local municipality is. The Bay Area is objectively safe, for example, yet I constantly run into neighbors in affluent neighborhoods who are afraid of venturing various places, letting their kids play outside or bike to school, or just generally exploring around. I was at a BayFC match last weekend, for example, and ran into the family of an acquaintance from my elementary daughter's school. They have an 8th grader and are trying to get an intra-district transfer approved for high school so she doesn't have to go to the neighborhood school where a student brought a ghost gun on campus 3 years ago (he was arrested and successfully prosecuted, and no one was hurt)... and instead go to the local school where a handful of kids arranged their bodies in a swastika pattern on the football field (and photographed it!) several months ago. My point isn't that either of these crimes is acceptable, but that people tend to be irrational and ignorant of statistical analysis. Both of these are good schools with better than average student outcomes, but families consistently bring their own prejudices into analysis and it creates mild chaos & havoc across the system overall.

mlinhares 7mo ago

Nah, he's just missing a good PR campaign, there's a 30% of the population that will eat whatever their supreme leaders say they should, I'm sure they can sanewash these cameras as well.

therobots927 7mo ago
America is pretty polarized around privacy as demonstrated by reactions to the Snowden leaks. So I think that’s a fair point.
- hrimfaxi 7mo ago
  That was over a decade ago. I wonder if it has gotten better or worse since.
  - zulux 7mo ago
    It's gotten worse: I'm so tired of rampant crime that I'm up for a little surveillance. And I used to donate to the ACLU before they went crazy.
    - estebank 7mo ago
      > And I used to donate to the ACLU before they went crazy. When was that? Because in 1977 they defended Nazi's free speech to demonstrate in a town that had jewish people as half its population so it tried to block them, and I don't recall them doing anything nearly that controversial since. https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/the-skokie-case-how-i-came-to-represent-the-free-speech-rights-of-nazis https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/the-skokie-case-how-i-...
      - selectodude 7mo ago
        Yeah that’s when they actually defended free speech. They now take sides on what speech should be allowed. That’s crazy.
        nxm 7mo ago
        [flagged]
        triceratops 7mo ago
        It's always been an activist organization. Even defending Nazis' free speech is activism. You just don't like their current activities.
        ceejayoz 7mo ago
        Gosh, the ACLU? Activists? Say it ain't so!
        ceejayoz 7mo ago
        > They now take sides on what speech should be allowed. Alternative framing: Given limited resources and lots of things to care about, they pick the specific cases that best improve the freedoms they're interested in protecting. In the case of the Second Amendment, they decided to let the NRA handle it, as that seems to be working just fine.
        CamperBob2 7mo ago
        A disingenuous take. The ACLU has actively published anti-2A literature in the past, arguing (as all such arguments must) that only the police, government, and military forces should have access to effective weapons.
        ceejayoz 7mo ago
        I mean, the ACLU is allowed to say they don't interpret the Second the individualist way you do. That's their First Amendment right, yes? The Second is probably the amendment least in need of defending by the ACLU. It's well covered, and pretty much a third rail of American politics.
    - mothballed 7mo ago
      Ha ha ha, you think it'll be used to help you? A hit and run drived totaled my car at an intersection with cameras, the cops would not even show up even though it was all on camera. When I called insurance they didn't bat an eye, the claims person pretty obviously was used to this happening all the time and didn't even question why I wasn't able to get a police report.
      - FireBeyond 7mo ago
        Happened with my step daughter. Traffic light at intersection. She said she had a green light, so did the other driver. Cops -did- show up. "Did you have a green light" "I did." Less than 30 seconds of questions. Goes to the other driver, same, is back in under a minute. "Well, he said he's absolutely sure he had a green light, so I'm citing you for failing to obey a traffic signal". There were no cameras in the area, no witnesses, just the two drivers. But the other driver was a 50 something male, and my step daughter was 17 and upset because it was our car. So the cop took his word and cited her. Hmm, vehicle black box? If that showed that she had come to and been at a stop, and then accelerated, that would at least imply she had been at a red light, and gone when it turned green, as she said. No, no interest there. Even the insurer (fine, whatever), said "unless we're facing a six digit payout, we're not pulling the black box". Don't even start me on the fact that after our insurance denied liability, the other driver sued her in small claims court for $10,000 for a car that had a KBB of $1,450. And the small claims judge noted that he technically couldn't sue a minor in small claims, but required us to go to mandatory arbitration, where the arbitrator said, quote, "I don't understand why, as a decent human being, if insurance will pay out, you don't just accept the claim." (Yeahhhh, filed a complaint about that, too. And here I stop, because I feel my blood pressure rising lol).
        cucumber3732842 7mo ago
        So the system worked exactly as intended? It's not just auto insurance. Every government, government adjacent and highly regulated process is just like that. It's not about right and wrong or fairness or making the responsible party pay or saving the children or protecting the environment or preventing sub-prime loans or enforcing building code or or whatever the alleged pretext is. It's about having an efficient process turn the subjective into the quantifiable and/or assign financial responsibility and do so in a manner that's not flagrantly wrong so often that a "large enough to be a problem" amount of people seek recourse outside the system (like smoking the CEO on the sidewalk or armoring a bulldozer or whatever). But of course, marketing the system as though it's about right and wrong or fairness or whatever is what they do as a means toward what the point actually is so it's easy to understand why you think it failed instead of worked perfectly.
    - xhkkffbf 7mo ago
      Yup. Some "teens" can riding down my street with a pellet gun shooting at the cars. They ended up breaking 3 to 5 windows. It probably cost us collectively $3000++. The only problem with the license plate readers is that the "teens" drive cars with fake tags. They deliberately copy the plate numbers from some granny with the same model. Makes it fun when the SWAT team knocks on Granny's door.
      - text0404 7mo ago
        So you're saying that a technology: - is trivially defeated by teenagers - is used by police departments as evidence to legally justify violent raids for property damage - whose data is mishandled by law enforcement agencies who don't do due diligence ... should have more widespread adoption and support?
    - georgemcbay 7mo ago
      I am also tired of rampant crime in this country, but unfortunately they aren't installing these cameras in boardrooms or the meeting rooms of politicians, so I don't think they are going to do much to deter the real crimes that are hurting our society.

ses1984 7mo ago

No one wants their whereabouts subject to constant surveillance, except everyone who carries a “normal” cell phone, in other words not a burner.

therobots927 7mo ago
Yes but you can always leave your phone behind if you want to drop off the map. Flock makes that borderline impossible.
- deadbabe 7mo ago
  You can remove your license plate, you will get pretty far before it actually gets you pulled over.
  - Corrado 7mo ago
    Actually, that won’t work. The flock cameras don’t only rely on license plate information. They use “AI” to determine the make model and color of your car as well as any outstanding features, such as bumper stickers or roof racks.
    - deadbabe 7mo ago
      It works if you just add a magnet sticker somewhere when you remove your plate.
  - sophacles 7mo ago
    Leaving a cellphone behind is legal still. Removing a license plate is breaking the law. Drawing an equivalence is foolish.
hrimfaxi 7mo ago
Do people who carry normal cell phones do so with the active desire to have their whereabouts subject to constant surveillance?

whimsicalism 7mo ago

I'm very in favor of speed & redlight cameras and don't have a particular problem with license plate trackers. I think we partisan-ize far too many things nowadays, unfortunately.

snsr 7mo ago
Maybe you're also in favor of some light reading https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/
- whimsicalism 7mo ago
  you think speed cameras violate the 4th amendment?
  - mothballed 7mo ago
    No but license plate requirements pretty clearly violate the 4th and/or 1st amendment, IMO. And without being required to have your license plate searched (registration 'papers' forced to be displayed) at all times without even an officer presenting RAS or PC of a crime, these cameras become a lot less useful. I don't see how removing the cameras is compatible with the first amendment, but if you have the right of "speech" to record me in public chasing every place I go in a manner that is the envy of any stalker, I ought to have the right of "speech" not to "say anything" (compelled speech of showing my plate).
    - nemomarx 7mo ago
      It really doesn't seem like the courts agree that you have a right to travel via car without a visible plate.
      - mothballed 7mo ago
        The courts have been wrong about many things, sometimes for centuries before they've fixed it. Some things they think they've interpreted correctly now that they'll turn around and interpret some other way later. Trying to interpret viewing and recording the plate as speech but not displaying it as speech is trying to have your cake and eat it too. If the camera can stalk my car everywhere and record it under auspices of 'speech', it's only logical I can hide it as 'speech.'

delecti 7mo ago

> no one wants their whereabouts subject to constant surveillance But sadly lots of people want everyone else subject to it, and some are willing to submit to it themselves to get it. It's not a foregone conclusion.

Corrado 7mo ago
I was recently at a "town hall" meeting in my community and spoke with a older woman about Flock cameras. Initially she was not concerned about it and was generally in favor of the idea. I agreed that there could be benefits but that the downside is that they know when and where you go to church, or the grocery, or where you get your hair done, or even when you go on vacation. Her eyes lit up and I she replied that she would have to think about that a bit. I'm not saying that I changed her mind, but that bringing the consequences down to something she could understand was much better than yelling from the rooftops. Mentioning church is especially impactful with a lot of older folks.
- jkestner 7mo ago
  In talking with many of the older people in my community about Flock, they initially defer to what our police department says it needs. A few things made them reconsider: - This is not about our police. This is about all the outside organizations that can watch us. - Focusing on Flock specifically. Once the cameras are given a name, people can start to form a better opinion fueled by the readily available bad press Flock is producing. - With the focus on Flock, the YouTube videos elsewhere in this topic do a great job of explaining how crappy their security is and how they're lying to their customers about it. Which brings it back to, this isn't about our local police — it's about the company that's an unworthy partner. Good job talking to your community. The first step is that people are aware of the cameras - for my neighbors, most did not know about them, and immediately found it creepy.

anthonypasq 7mo ago

i think politicians have seriously underestimated how much people don't like crime, and most people would take constant surveillance if it could actually improve feelings of safety in urban environments.

energy123 7mo ago
Enforcing public safety effectively is one of the most pro-democracy things you can do. Otherwise people use democracy to elect public safety authoritarians like the wildly popular Bukele and Duterte.
- cucumber3732842 7mo ago
  So we should 1984 the crap out of ourselves because if we don't we'll elect an authoritarian who'll 1984 the crap out of us? Reminds me of this classic: https://static.poder360.com.br/2020/11/2020-11-07-22.31.49.jpg https://static.poder360.com.br/2020/11/2020-11-07-22.31.49.j... Yeah, I'm all for public safety in theory but seems like these days that's just a dog whistle for "go hard on whatever sort of petty deviance I don't like" and so I'm unwilling to support things like that in the default case. It's all just so tiresome.
  - krastanov 7mo ago
    I read OP differently. I thought they said "we should invest in non-dystopian public safety[1] to avoid dystopian populist creating a 1984 version of public safety". [1]: I imagine this includes things like mental heath help, housing, and other related social safety nets.
eitally 7mo ago
I think it's also true that many people are wildly out of touch when they think about how "safe" their local municipality is. The Bay Area is objectively safe, for example, yet I constantly run into neighbors in affluent neighborhoods who are afraid of venturing various places, letting their kids play outside or bike to school, or just generally exploring around. I was at a BayFC match last weekend, for example, and ran into the family of an acquaintance from my elementary daughter's school. They have an 8th grader and are trying to get an intra-district transfer approved for high school so she doesn't have to go to the neighborhood school where a student brought a ghost gun on campus 3 years ago (he was arrested and successfully prosecuted, and no one was hurt)... and instead go to the local school where a handful of kids arranged their bodies in a swastika pattern on the football field (and photographed it!) several months ago. My point isn't that either of these crimes is acceptable, but that people tend to be irrational and ignorant of statistical analysis. Both of these are good schools with better than average student outcomes, but families consistently bring their own prejudices into analysis and it creates mild chaos & havoc across the system overall.