Comment by aerostable_slug
12 hours ago
In my home county they've arrested car thieves and recovered vehicles due to real-time Flock hits. It is not simply for forensic purposes.
If it was a bad idea it shouldn't have been installed in the first place. Turning it off now because a few loud people assumed things that weren't true (ICE using the system) is idiotic.
It shouldn't have been installed in the first place, but in real life, sometimes people need a concrete example to realize something others figured out from principles.
There is no concrete example. Nothing actually happened. ICE didn't access the cameras. I feel like I'm the only one who read the article.
The article said University of Washington researchers released a report Oct. 21 showing federal immigration agencies like ICE and Border Patrol had accessed the data of at least 18 Washington cities, often without their police departments’ knowing.
What they have, thankfully, is a concrete example of there being such a thing as an uncivil authority, not a concrete example of their mistake leading to irreparable harm.
Ok, and a real-time-only (as in it literally, physically has no onboard or networked storage and only generates data exactly when it hits a plate that's already flagged, or is false/doesn't match the car and the system to flag a plate requires a warrant) flock system would face vastly less opposition than the fishing-expedition-enabler that currently exists. Yet somehow that's never on the table.