The article takes a hand-wavy attitude towards abuse and negligence, with little attempt to counter-balance it with transparent accountability. If we can't address that in good faith, I see no reason to give the other 98% of the article weight.
I understand the problem is privacy, but I don't understand why people choose the solution that basically throws the baby out with the bathwater. Clearly there are benefits of ALPR's in terms of reducing crime. Would it not be better to implement some measures to prevent privacy violations by the cops and also toughen the penalties for doing it instead of taking the path of least resistance (and an easy idea to sell) and simply ban the cameras?
It's not the path of least resistance to get the cameras banned. It's been a highly resistant path and that's what most people want.
Flock took the path of least resistance setting them up often skirting any normal discussion that should have taken place with the community before they were installed.
We could also just hire a lot more cops. The US is underpoliced in relation to Europe and there’s decent evidence that it’s a major contributor to the higher crime rate in the US.
But better-trained, less militarized, beat cops for the most part, who can interact with the public as though they are public servants and not an occupying force.
Who among those who fit that description would take the job?
All around the world, and certainly in developed countries, having power over other people is the biggest draw for joining the police.
This is of course also true in Europe. The reason European cops (usually) don’t just randomly kill people is that they (usually) can’t get away with it, not that they wouldn’t want to.
People join the police so they can rule over people, not so they can “serve” them.
It's funny because having visited America I assumed it was vastly over policed with it being not uncommon to see 3 or 4 apparently different agency vehicles (highway patrol, sheriff's office, etc) on a relatively short journey.
I was quite surprised to find that the figures don't back that up. I'm not sure how to account for it. Perhaps the fact that every mall security guard is given a mock police uniform, a gun and a huge SUV contributes to the feeling.
As a person who suspects to have been a victim of Fl*cks central database, and its access to a growing wave of narcissist pranksters aka abusers, I gift the following design for a de-centralized Fl*ck like system into the public domain:
1) homeowner / business owner installs their own cameras.
2) open source camera server software, analyses said video using any
number of plugins, and categorizes said video / issues alerts.
3) results of video analysis are OPTIONALLY made available in a
queryable manner, in a radius selected by the camera operator.
4) victims of crime and investigating officers in an area, can search for video/analysis that might help, and contact the owner of the video directly.
5) camera operator could OPTIONALLY charge a small fee for the service of providing the video, to recoup camera / system operating costs.
At no time does the system upload any video or analysis not expressly approved by the operator of the camera.
Because each camera operator has control over their own video and analysis/events, and can retract them at different times, the history of any individual as they go about their business is fragmented, and by design not made available in a centralized database form.
This was spitballed. Tear it apart. Fill the cracks with bondo. Paint over it. Make it shine. V
If you believe ubiquitous cameras (dunno why that was censored) is creating a surveillance state then what does it being de-centralized accomplish here?
National/state authorities could already do this with the current software and systems in place... the only additions the software proposed is adding are around privacy protections and distributed control, which the government wouldn't want anyway.
Stop trying to develop shit society clearly can't be trusted with. Government will pick up any decentralized solution, and centralize it*. See Skype for precedent.
There is an upper bound on "top down efficiency" one wants built into a government system, because anything too effective draws corruption to it like no one's business, probability 1.
2.5) Said open-source camera software and hardware will likely be packaged up by commercial vendors, who will happily store your data in the cloud and resell it (I mean Empower Law Enforcement) on the side. This will probably be the majority of installs.
3) Queryable in what way? If the query reveals presence/absence of a person, they already have the info they need - if it doesn't, users won't know who to pay.
4) It's easy to pretend to be a victim of crime. Stalkers can easily abuse this to find their victims. Cops are also highly-trusted by a lot of the public, and also can use this to stalk people.
5) Morally, seems bad to charge a person looking for their lost child. Less bad if it's a fixed fee, rather than deciding what to charge after hearing the request - but that goes a little against the idea of point 4 to be able to approve/deny certain requests.
6) Ubiquitous surveillance is probably still bad even when decentralized.
Well, my intention was not to completely prevent law enforcement access, for evidence gathering, so empowering victims of crimes was part of my design.
I was spitballing an idea to prevent abuse, via a centralized database of video and history, on a national level, by a corporation.
This would have been more like, a collection of villages thing. aka internet vs mesh. ( in my head anyway ).
if Flock was solving felonies, especially violent crime, every statement about it would open with all those stats
Except they don't, which means it doesn't
Give us the prosecution numbers, how many violent felons were taken off the streets?
Or rather is it being used to disappear the latina grandmas into an ICE prison for months to suffer until she signs away her rights and "self-deports" to escape the torture?
1) The increased availability of semi-private information about people and how large amounts of "public" data can be used to reveal very private details, along with how just the just the existence of such databases leads to more abuse, based in the simple logic that if they didn't exist they couldn't be abused.
2) The absolutely atrocious behavior of (american) police. It's probably not all that worse than 100 years ago, but these days we have cameras and digital communications so we see every crime they commit.
Frankly it's not even about cops committing crimes (or things that really should be) but the lack of accountability in the form of arrests.
I am continually confused by stories about a cop being caught committing a crime and the end result is they get fired. How is that a sufficient response?
All of this means that people are extremely unlikely to be happy about giving police more power in the form of mass surveillance software.
Flock took the path of least resistance setting them up often skirting any normal discussion that should have taken place with the community before they were installed.
All around the world, and certainly in developed countries, having power over other people is the biggest draw for joining the police.
This is of course also true in Europe. The reason European cops (usually) don’t just randomly kill people is that they (usually) can’t get away with it, not that they wouldn’t want to.
People join the police so they can rule over people, not so they can “serve” them.
I was quite surprised to find that the figures don't back that up. I'm not sure how to account for it. Perhaps the fact that every mall security guard is given a mock police uniform, a gun and a huge SUV contributes to the feeling.
1) homeowner / business owner installs their own cameras.
2) open source camera server software, analyses said video using any number of plugins, and categorizes said video / issues alerts.
3) results of video analysis are OPTIONALLY made available in a queryable manner, in a radius selected by the camera operator.
4) victims of crime and investigating officers in an area, can search for video/analysis that might help, and contact the owner of the video directly.
5) camera operator could OPTIONALLY charge a small fee for the service of providing the video, to recoup camera / system operating costs.
At no time does the system upload any video or analysis not expressly approved by the operator of the camera.
Because each camera operator has control over their own video and analysis/events, and can retract them at different times, the history of any individual as they go about their business is fragmented, and by design not made available in a centralized database form.
This was spitballed. Tear it apart. Fill the cracks with bondo. Paint over it. Make it shine. V
https://ring.com/support/articles/uds27/Community-request
Downsides:
1) Same software could be used by national/state authorities, to create their own system, that doesn't follow the above rules.
Major Downsides:
1) See above.
Not like, take over your camera, or install their camera on your property.
There is an upper bound on "top down efficiency" one wants built into a government system, because anything too effective draws corruption to it like no one's business, probability 1.
2.5) Said open-source camera software and hardware will likely be packaged up by commercial vendors, who will happily store your data in the cloud and resell it (I mean Empower Law Enforcement) on the side. This will probably be the majority of installs.
3) Queryable in what way? If the query reveals presence/absence of a person, they already have the info they need - if it doesn't, users won't know who to pay.
4) It's easy to pretend to be a victim of crime. Stalkers can easily abuse this to find their victims. Cops are also highly-trusted by a lot of the public, and also can use this to stalk people.
5) Morally, seems bad to charge a person looking for their lost child. Less bad if it's a fixed fee, rather than deciding what to charge after hearing the request - but that goes a little against the idea of point 4 to be able to approve/deny certain requests.
6) Ubiquitous surveillance is probably still bad even when decentralized.
I was spitballing an idea to prevent abuse, via a centralized database of video and history, on a national level, by a corporation.
This would have been more like, a collection of villages thing. aka internet vs mesh. ( in my head anyway ).
Keep ripping it apart. V
Except they don't, which means it doesn't
Give us the prosecution numbers, how many violent felons were taken off the streets?
Or rather is it being used to disappear the latina grandmas into an ICE prison for months to suffer until she signs away her rights and "self-deports" to escape the torture?
* https://archive.ph/szKxX
(look at the red line vs green line)
1) The increased availability of semi-private information about people and how large amounts of "public" data can be used to reveal very private details, along with how just the just the existence of such databases leads to more abuse, based in the simple logic that if they didn't exist they couldn't be abused.
2) The absolutely atrocious behavior of (american) police. It's probably not all that worse than 100 years ago, but these days we have cameras and digital communications so we see every crime they commit.
Frankly it's not even about cops committing crimes (or things that really should be) but the lack of accountability in the form of arrests.
I am continually confused by stories about a cop being caught committing a crime and the end result is they get fired. How is that a sufficient response?
All of this means that people are extremely unlikely to be happy about giving police more power in the form of mass surveillance software.