Comment by doctorpangloss
10 hours ago
the more prosaic (the bear case) POV is that physically mounted outdoor street cameras have the same enforcement limitations as most other enforcement support technologies. flock isn't really bringing "number of unseen crimes" down from 1 to zero, he's bringing it from like 1000 to 999. a flock being easy to disable by a lay person, and a street corner not having witnesses - they're the same thing, it just isn't as good of a technology as he says (or people imagine) it to be.
so at the very beginning, the thing that threatens him the most is: simple ideas that sound objective and that make Gary Tan wary of putting $50m instead of $25m.
that said, very few things do that, bring "unseen crime" from N to 0. for example, legalization of something does that! he has found a very successful business nonetheless. it's more interesting to explore why. if he wanted to level constructive criticism at Deflock, i suppose we should wonder: how do they disrupt enterprise sales? flock is just, yet another failed IT project. it shouldn't be too hard. obviously, the best thing you can do is getting elected, and simply putting it in the law to not adopt the technology.
Flock is just, yet another failed IT project. it shouldn't be too hard.
Well I think this is the issue. The value of Flock is not what it says on the tin, it's everything else. Solving petty crimes yeah sure, yadda yadda. Ever had your bike stolen and told a cop about it?
It's the tracking part. That's where the juice is. Well obviously it'd violate the 4th amendment to slap a GPS tracker on your car to see if you're going to [known antifa member's] house - we'd never do that, but gee, this private company just happens to have a database of everywhere every person's car has ever been ...
A sinister aspect of the US' collective paranoia about public transit -- not that there aren't cameras on the train, but i can also wear a mask on the train. "Masking" my car would be illegal on many counts.
> It's the tracking part. That's where the juice is.
how do you figure? everyone already has a perfect tracker carried around with them at all times, a cell phone. and i suppose, if someone is smart enough to not visit a thing with a phone, he'll be smart enough to not use a car, so... do you see what i mean? it still boils down to, "the technology is not really as good as it says it is." i mean i know that you say that it's not, it is. It is all about what it says on the tin.
That's enterprise sales. People have to stop making it about cerebral, academic political stuff. If municipalities understood that Flock is a waste of money, they wouldn't adopt it.