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Posted by anjel 6 hours ago

An interactive map of Flock Cams(deflock.org)
477 points | 184 commentspage 4
bigwheels 6 hours ago|
When your car gets stolen, suddenly nobody can access the data.

Are there any coordinated efforts for widespread scrubbing or removal of these parasitic devices?

dylan604 6 hours ago||
When your car gets stolen, even with camera data, the police will not do anything.
bubblewand 4 hours ago|||
I've yet to see an amount of property crime that can get the cops to lift a finger. I've seen them ignore a low-six-figures-stolen string of after-hours break-ins at businesses, captured at multiple location on camera with clear shots of the vehicle, legible plates, and faces of the perps. Just straight-up gave the impression they thought anyone believing they might want to look into it was a moron. And no, given where this happened it wasn't because of that "prosecutors won't charge anyway" thing people complain about some places (it's led me to wonder how much of that is cops just looking to pass the blame on cases they had no intention of investigating anyway).
habinero 4 hours ago|||
The city might call you in a month when it gets towed wherever it was abandoned. The cops aren't going to look for it. That happened to me once.
StayHuman 5 hours ago||
On the "coordinated efforts" front, some anecdata:

Three separate posts on Craigslist in the Community section about Flock Cameras, trying to increase local awareness. Posted to two different cities, various posting iterations (e.g. with links / without, pics / no pics, etc.). All appeared to post fine when entered, but never saw the light of day and were marked as removed within a few minutes.

Any other subject: posts fine.

Try it yourself and see what you get.

tmshapland 5 hours ago||
How do we make this site mainstream? The public would really start to push back if they could so viscerally experience that they are being surveilled multiple times per day.
seniorThrowaway 4 hours ago|
I think you overestimate the public.
superkuh 3 hours ago||
Flock AI cameras run off small solar panels. Having run my own computer systems off small solar panels I know that even a minor shadow or a bit of bird poop on the panel can decrease the output enough the computer eventually cannot run and shuts down. I bet Flock cameras have the same response to a bit of bird poop like substance or shadow.
tonymet 5 hours ago||
[flagged]
Ajedi32 4 hours ago||
Could be wrong but I don't think Flock makes speed trap or red light cameras. These are license plate readers that conduct constant surveillance of everyone at all times, whether or not you've broken any traffic laws.
tonymet 3 hours ago||
plate reading allows police to identify known and unknown suspects. For known suspects (e.g. police have PC, suspect fled), plate reader can help find the suspect without high speed pursuit. For unknown suspect (e.g. citizen report of street racing), plate readers can develop a suspect pool and narrow down candidate suspects for further investigation.
rationalist 5 hours ago|||
> Running reds, extreme speed, escaping police are all common.

How do these cameras prevent those crimes?

tonymet 3 hours ago||
plate reading help police track down suspects without pursuit. video recording in general help police collect evidence necessary to convict reckless driving.
rationalist 3 hours ago||
It sounds like you're talking about solving crimes, not preventing crimes.
tonymet 3 hours ago||
solving crime and convicting criminals has first and n-order effects. For one, a few criminals commit most crimes, so locking people up reduces many crimes. Secondly, convictions are a deterrent.
boelboel 4 hours ago|||
Police just aren't doing their job in the US, who even knows what they're doing at this point. Basically no country had the post-covid driver issue as much as America. Some states basically halved fines lol, make them do their jobs.
dawnerd 4 hours ago|||
Seriously. People run reds in front of cops and they do nothing. I was tboned and the person that hit me had no license or anything to identify and ran a red and still was let go without anything.
tonymet 3 hours ago||
What led to this?
boelboel 3 hours ago||
This is what happens to your country when you don't really care about public services (in many cases they're looked down upon, just look at teachers, federal workers but also police). There's difficulty recruiting and retaining police officers in the US (i'd imagine anywhere but especially the US) because it's not seen as a good job. I'm not a huge believer in IQ but intelligent and capable people just can't be convinced to go into this line of work unless they truly care about their community (very rare). Just way more fun to go to the big city and work in an office with an AC.

I'm sure there's a million other reasons why people don't want this job, but this reflects in how harsh you can be on (new) agents.

tonymet 2 hours ago||
that is a big part of it. Directly, people don't give the police enough respect, and indirectly, they don't encourage politicians to develop policy to support the police.
pesus 4 hours ago|||
The amount of times I've seen cops just sitting in their cars playing on their phones or loitering around chatting and ignoring everything around them is ridiculously high.
habinero 4 hours ago||
> At the same time, the public demands more oversight and constraints on police , which reduces their ability to enforce the law

Don't make excuses for them. If you're legally allowed to kill people on purpose, you (should) get oversight and tight constraints. We don't because of a lot of reasons, but we should

They get paid six figure salaries for not actually doing a whole lot, they can manage.

tonymet 3 hours ago||
To what extent? Do you want infinite oversight and little-to-no crimes convicted? What are your expectations on law and order vs criminality? do you believe people naturally police themselves?
cm2012 5 hours ago||
[flagged]
pwg 5 hours ago|
If you know where some of them are, you can add the data yourself: https://mapcomplete.org/surveillance
cm2012 5 hours ago||
[flagged]
jotux 5 hours ago|||
Maybe you could reach out to Flock directly and ask them to install cameras in your kitchen and bedroom too (for crime reduction reasons).
danny_codes 4 hours ago||||
Enforcement is one way to reduce crime. Another way is to reduce poverty. Which will we choose? One road leads to South Africa. The other, Denmark.
array_key_first 4 hours ago||
These cameras aren't even enforcement, just surveillance.

I think we all know even with the best technology in the world the police aren't gonna get off their lazy asses if your car gets stolen. This is just a way to burn money.

ssl-3 5 hours ago|||
Can you elaborate upon the kinds of crime reduction that these systems provide?
cm2012 5 hours ago|||
Isn't it obvious?

> License plate is reported to police associated with a crime.

> Cop looks up plate number

> Flock Camera shows general status and location of that license plate.

> Cops find the car involved with the crime, preventing further criminality.

ux266478 4 hours ago|||
So they're useless for crimes not involving a reported license plate? Sounds like a pretty worthless marginal gain. The Chinese have done it better since their mass surveillance apparatus isn't contingent on reported license plates, or even the involvement of a vehicle. Start a fight on the street and they'll find you. Is America really this incompetent that they can't match a 10+ year old system?
baggy_trough 4 hours ago||
No, that's just one of the things you can search on.
ssl-3 4 hours ago||||
So what you're saying is that I can report your[1] car as being associated with a crime, and the police will show up wherever you and/or your car is and treat you like a criminal?

I love this for you!

[1] the literal you, as well as the figurative

baggy_trough 3 hours ago||
No, the comment is not saying that. You appear to have invented it.
ssl-3 3 hours ago||
If you think there's something wrong with my interpretation, then please explain what that is to me. I'm not seeing a problem with it.

(I may, in fact, be an idiot. Help me out here.)

rationalist 5 hours ago|||
We're policing future crime now?

I think they made a movie about that.

baggy_trough 5 hours ago|||
[flagged]
avsavani 5 hours ago||
love this , give me more cameras please , fuck those criminals.
unethical_ban 5 hours ago|
Coming 2028: Dissent is a crime
baggy_trough 5 hours ago||
This is great, we can see where more cameras need to be added around the neighborhood!
renewiltord 3 hours ago||
This is pretty cool. I think I'd want a few more on my block. Can an individual request and fund one?
whimsicalism 5 hours ago||
Much prefer camera driven enforcement to cop-on-beat driven enforcement.
saxonww 4 hours ago|
Flock cameras aren't enforcing anything. They collect your license plate and distinguishing details of your car. It's just car X with plate Y detected at location Z at time T.

Notably, they are not used for speed detection or 'good driving' detection.

You might think that having a constantly-present, objective, impartial camera enforcing a law is better than a sometimes-present, subjective, often not impartial beat cop doing that. But that's not what Flock does. Flock just turns that 'sometimes-present' beat cop into an 'always-present' beat cop, without addressing any of the other beat cop problems.

jacquesm 2 hours ago||
And automatically makes you a suspect in case any crime is committed in the area and you happened to be there.
stri8ted 3 hours ago|
It's clearly true there have been abuses as a result of this technology. And its also clearly true criminals have been caught as a result of the cams, that otherwise would not have been.

If you believe the costs of the the abuses, and potential abuses, exceed the benefit, then at least be honest about the trade-off, because there are real benefits.

Personally, I believe the costs, on net, are worth the benefits. And in so far as the costs can be further reduced, without loosing most benefits, then great. This is not right or wrong. It's just a question of values, and how you weight the costs vs benefits.

Don't down-vote this all at once.

pseudalopex 1 hour ago||
Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

cm2012 2 hours ago|||
I strongly agree with this take.
Forgeties79 3 hours ago||
My question to you is: how are you assessing the costs? Do you know how many crimes have been stopped as a result of these cams? Do you know the extent to which our privacy is being lost and our data is being used against us or others?
stri8ted 2 hours ago||
I take into account publicly available information (news articles), factor in personal anecdotes, and reason about human nature and incentives. I know the extent of reported abuses, and I do my best to extrapolate. It's not perfect, but such is life.

To be clear, even if we all agreed on the data, I still would not expect everyone to take the same position. There are subjective differences in values.

Forgeties79 1 hour ago||
I get that but at the very least one should demand evidence to their efficacy
stri8ted 1 hour ago||
Flock has put out a report claiming 10% crime in the US is solved using their technology. There are of course counter argument, that claim this is not valid.

https://www.flocksafety.com/customers/how-many-crimes-do-aut...