Comment by Cider9986
6 hours ago
>[1] Would crime go up, down or stay the same if all surveillance cameras were removed? The answer to that is the only one that matters.
At least 40,990 [2] innocent people died in the US in 2023, without significant outcry - that is, on the road, in car accidents. People in the US clearly value the freedom of driving over the deaths of innocent people. In 2023, there were an estimated 19,800 [3] homicides in the US. But even if you assume surveillance like Flock could prevent a meaningful fraction of those homicides - and there's little evidence it does [4] - that's still asking people to give up their most sensitive freedom, the right to move without being tracked, for speculative gains. People are not willing to sacrifice their freedom to save 40,990 people from cars, why should our constant locations be monitored?
The abuse isn't speculative. Police have been caught stalking exes, tracking abortions, and innocent people [5] have been held at gunpoint due to a flock misread. The "safety" these cameras provide comes with a surveillance that's already being turned against ordinary people.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/flock-safety-alpr-cameras-mi...
>misreads by Flock's automated license plate readers... resulted in people who hadn't committed crimes being stopped at gunpoint, sent to jail, or mauled by a police dog, among other outcomes.
> People are not willing to sacrifice their freedom to save 40,990 people from cars, why should our constant locations be monitored?
We are all different, and I think where we each land on the security <--> privacy continuum will depend on who we are.
This is also true of constitutional rights. The US constitution was written by a small group of wealthy white men. At the time of its drafting, some people were considered property and had no freedom. Women didn't have the same rights as men and were not allowed to vote. Where the framers landed on the security <--> privacy continuum may have been a very different place than many US residents would land today. Rape, murder, property crimes, etc... even today some groups are much more often victims than others. Safety is a much larger concern for some groups than others.
I just feel like you are painting with a very broad brush when it comes to "people."
> People are not willing to sacrifice their freedom to save 40,990 people from cars, why should our constant locations be monitored?
It's not binary.
People are absolutely willing to sacrifice some of their freedoms to save lives. That's why we have speed limits, seat-belt and helmet laws, automobile safety regulations, DWI laws, etc.
have you seen how anyone online reacts when speeding or red light cameras are installed? or when parking becomes discouraged for sake of pedestrians or residents?
i am somewhat convinced that Americans views on cars is like that of guns, a absolute right that can and will not be infringed no matter how many must die
cars are more of a necessary “evil” than guns so the comparison is a little extreme so i don’t think the infringement of movement to cars is entirely irrational or unmetered, esp when in 99% of this country a car is absolutely required to live
>People are not willing to sacrifice their freedom
Given that we (societally, rather than like, you, I or I imagine most of the people reading this here) seem perfectly willing to sacrifice personal freedoms elsewhere (that flock was ever deployed, the past few years rollout of age gates on websites, etc), how can you conclude that with cars its unwillingness to sacrifice personal freedom rather than entrenched economic interests driving (lol) the lack of change with cars?
> If it can't prevent car beak-ins, how can we expect it to make a dent in homicides.
Im not advocating for these cameras at all, but I dont think this is a very good line of thinking. The drop started before Flock, but that doesnt mean that they arent beneficial and currently helping lower the rate even further.
To rich people, the privacy attack isn't an issue. We already track their private jets, how is this any different?
>We already track their private jets
After the Elon Musk and Taylor Swift outcry rich people can now exempt themselves from being tracked
https://gizmodo.com/congress-just-made-it-way-harder-to-trac...
There are rich people who charter private jets instead of own them. Their personal whereabouts aren't being tracked in the air. (They get to skip the entirety of TSA screening for these charters, too.)
But Flock tracks them on the ground when they get in their big S Mercedes after arriving at their third vacation home in Aspen.
Flock also tracks the wealthy who can't afford charter a jet, but who can afford to buy seats on the fanciest side of the curtain.
Flock tracks the doing-alright folks in business class.
Flock tracks those aspires to reach these levels: It even tracks the temporarily-disadvantaged billionaires who work soulless factory jobs and stuggle to keep up on the lease for their Black Express RAM 1500 Quad Cab, who rail against taxing the people who actually do have money as if that would ruin their own lives.
Flock tracks Joey who manages the sandwich shop down the way.
Flock tracks everyone.
By the time we get down to the point of mentioning that "everyone" includes the subset of people who are criminals, that part almost seems like a bug instead of a feature.
FYI when cops arrive at a homicide scene, they don't go looking for the FLOCK camera's, they go looking for people who have RING cameras and businesses that have security cameras. Anything that is within sight of the crime scene is where they start.
If you think FLOCK is an issue, you're barking up the wrong tree. You can remove all the FLOCK camera's you want and it won't change the already overwhelming passive surveillance that's already in place.
We crossed the Rubicon decades ago when people gave up their ability to move without being tracked for speculative gains when they started using smartphones religiously.
Also, the passive surveillance has resulted in several high profile killers like LISK and Bryan Kohberger being caught. So as much bad as you think it does, there are clear cases where its helped crack decades old serial killings and put horrifically violent people in jail. I think we can both agree we don't want those people out walking freely in our society.
I’m for looking for the existing cameras. I’m against a panopticon where any “trusted” LEO with an account can query and have ring + flock + OnStar + Tesla etc all aggregated to follow anyone. Ring has this now. I would guess some cities have it for traffic cameras. What I’m really against is having it privately owned as an end run around laws restricting government surveillance.
they absolutely positively do both.
> So as much bad as you think it does, there are clear cases where its helped
You can "justify" so much with that sentence, that it becomes meaningless.
Also, it won't hide the fact that this surveillance infrastructure can cause much much more harm then it prevents. We've seen what it might do in repressive states and we see today that even those states which represented the idea of individual freedom on this planet, you are only one election away from madness.
>> "it won't hide the fact that this surveillance infrastructure can cause much much more harm then it prevents."
"can cause much much more harm."
Cars kill way more people than guns per year. Where do you draw the line on something as subjective as this? It has the capability to cause harm but has it to the degree you're talking about? Its debatable.
Also, taking a serial killer who murdered 8 women and dismembered several of them off the streets to me outweighs quite a bit of harm. But that's just me.
1 reply →
> Also, the passive surveillance has resulted in several high profile killers like LISK and Bryan Kohberger being caught. So as much bad as you think it does, there are clear cases where its helped crack decades old serial killings and put horrifically violent people in jail.
Isn't that true of almost every restraint on the state's power?
A lot of less intelligent people get very emotional about the state quartering soldiers in homes against the wishes of the homeowner. But if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. We may not know who the Zodiac Killer is but I can tell you one thing for sure - he didn't have four to ten infantrymen in his house, keeping track of his comings and goings. Given the obvious security benefits of having soldiers in your home, no rational person would object - unless they've got a meth lab in their basement. /s