[dave78]

Isn't the most likely outcome here that the city will simply stop allowing public access to the camera feeds?

This feels like it has the potential to be a "this is why we can't have nice things" outcome even though I don't think the app author is doing anything wrong.

[autoexec]

What's the point of making a thing avilable to the public online if you're only going to pull it offline as soon as regular people start using it? I'm sure there are corporations and data brokers quietly collecting info on us using every scrap of publicly avilable data including traffic cams, but the moment regular folks start getting in on the fun and they post a pic of themselves being surveilled on twitter suddenly it's time to shut everything down?

If it's a problem as soon as the average American starts using something, it's probably better if those resources stop being made available period.

[academia_hack]

The data collection isn't even quiet. There's an entire cottage industry of companies that scrape these traffic cam feeds, store everything for x numbers of months in low-cost cloud vaults (e.g. glacier) and then offer lawyers/clients in traffic disputes access to footage that may have captured an accident for exorbitant rates. It's a remarkable little ecosystem of privatized mass surveillance.

[gruez]

>but the moment regular folks start getting in on the fun and they post a pic of themselves being surveilled on twitter suddenly it's time to shut everything down?

There's a pretty big difference between using it for its intended purpose (ie. monitoring traffic), and the alleged behavior that the department of transportation was opposed to.

>Office of Legal Affairs recently sent a cease-and-desist letter to Morry Kolman, the artist behind the project, charging that the TCP "encourages pedestrians to violate NYC traffic rules and engage in dangerous behavior."

[try_the_bass]

> What's the point of making a thing avilable to the public online if you're only going to pull it offline as soon as regular people start using it?

Regular people have been using it for decades, though? Scrolling through the comments here are plenty of people who have discovered and put these cameras to use in their daily lives.

Something being freely provided does not inherently grant consumers the right to do with it whatever they please. The producers, being the one freely providing the things, seem well within their rights to set limits on its usage, no? Sure, sometimes things are freely produced with the express point being that they can be used without limitations, but this isn't an inherent property of the thing being freely available.

I mean, why else do we have so many different open source licensing models?

[TeMPOraL]

> If it's a problem as soon as the average American starts using something, it's probably better if those resources stop being made available period.

Average American probably won't be using it.

This seems to be the hole in Kant's categorical imperative[0] - plenty of useful things fail the test of universality, because there isn't one class, or two classes, but three classes of people: those who find some use for a thing, those who don't and thus don't care, and then those who have no use for the thing but don't like it anyway. And in the past century or so, thanks to the role of mass media, that third class is ruling the world.

And so...

> but the moment regular folks start getting in on the fun and they post a pic of themselves being surveilled on twitter suddenly it's time to shut everything down?

Yes, it is. It's how this has been playing out time and again - once the attention seekers, and people with overactive imagination wrt. dystopias, and maybe the few with some actually reasonable objections join forces, it's better to shut the thing down as soon as possible, to minimize the amount of time your name can be found on the front pages of major newspapers. At that point, there's little hope to talk things out and perhaps rescue the project in some form - outraged public does not do calm or rational, and if you somehow survive the first couple days and the public still cares, you're destined to become a new ball in the political pinball machine. With your name or life on the line, it's usually much easier to cut your losses than to stand on principle, especially for something that's inconsequential in the grander scheme of things.

One by one, we're losing nice things - not as much because they're abused, but mostly because there's always some performative complainers ready to make a scene. We won't be getting nice things back until our cultural immunity catches up, until we inoculate ourselves against the whining.

See also, [1] and [2].

--

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative

[1] - Cardinal Richelieu's "Give me six lines", though the (apparently) more accurate version from https://history.stackexchange.com/a/28484 is even better: "with two lines of a man's handwriting, an accusation could be made against the most innocent, because the business can be interpreted in such a way, that one can easily find what one wishes." More boring than malevolent, and thus that much more real; it reads like a HN comment.

[2] - Disney's Tomorrowland is, in a way, a commentary on this phenomenon; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42405210 is, in a way, a commentary on that.

[euniceee3]

That is what happened to the local feed for the city I live in. Their mapping data was trash. I went through fixed the GPS, found the typical focalized center of frame, built a basic frontend, and then they shut it all down.

I found the dude that ran it and emailed back and forth with him for a few years. They made excuses about how it is an IT issue.

[7speter]

> They made excuses about how it is an IT issue.

An ego issue

[alufers]

A bit tangential, but in Poland we also had such traffic cameras with public access (it wasn't a live feed, but a snapshot updated every minute or so). It was provided by a company which won a lot of tenders for IT infrastructure around roads (https://www.traxelektronik.pl/pogoda/kamery/).

What is interesting to me is that the public access to the cameras has been blocked a few months after the war in Ukraine started. For a few months I could watch the large convoys of equipment going towards Ukraine, and my personal theory is that so did the MoD of Russia. I haven't seen any reports about that, just my personal observation.

[avh02]

Would have been a good opportunity to inject misinformation after they noticed (assuming it's what happened)... Convoy passing by? Quick, splice in alternative footage that has equivalent traffic/weather conditions. (Or an infinite convoy to scare them)

Or just block it i guess.

[zulban]

If you cannot harmlessly use it publicly then it never was a "nice thing we had".

[blackeyeblitzar]

Why does NYC even care? This tendency to govern in a controlling way is not just weird but plain unethical. I hope this goes viral and embarrasses them.

[Spooky23]

NYC government is peculiar, in that its size and scope is like a US state, but it also subsumes the functions of US cities and counties. The closest comparison in the US is probably LA County.

Thinking about it in terms of technology — during the pandemic the schools bought a million iPads. They also run a giant hospital system, the largest police and fire departments in the country, etc.

The net result is administration of a vast, sprawling (both horizontal and vertical) bureaucracy is complex, and the cogs in the wheel of that bureaucracy are simultaneously in your face and detached from reality. So you have a group of attorneys who see a threat in people posing in front of a camera.

[dave78]

Agree in spirit, though again if it does go viral and they become embarrassed the most likely thing is they'd shut down public access to the cameras - which would be a lousy outcome for everyone.

My county has traffic cameras available online, though it's only static images updated once a minute or so. It's not that great but I still appreciate it, especially during winter weather. Every now and then if the weather seems bad I check the cameras to see what the roads look like before I head out. It's not a big deal, but I'd be a little annoyed if they took away public access because someone was trying to make some sort of statement or game out of them.

[noprocrasted]

This is an opportunity for bullshitters (in a "bullshit jobs" sense) to be seen as "doing something" and get pats on the back without significant effort - at least less effort than doing other, actually valuable things.

[highcountess]

The response to that should be filing lawsuits to force the government to make public resources like that publicly accessible.

[lostlogin]

A you request footage of yourself at a specified place and time?

Having a semi automated way of doing that would be far more irritating for them.

[kayo_20211030]

> "this is why we can't have nice things"

Of course, it'll be used, but that's just a bad, bad argument at any level.

[try_the_bass]

It really isn't, though? The Tragedy of the Commons is a real thing that affects real resources every day?