[steviedotboston]

This is really bad for all the reasons that people have mentioned (vigilante "justice" never is a good thing) but people have a misplaced understanding of right and wrong here. Flock cameras have helped solve some major crimes, and people will be glad to have this technology around if they are ever a victim.

[kstrauser]

Police states are great at solving major crimes. And when those are sufficiently solved, to justify their continued existence, they have to solve lesser crimes, repeating until you need enough surveillance to ensure no one's flushing their toilet improperly.

Police states are like autoimmune diseases under the hygiene hypothesis. They'll keep ramping up their sensitivity until they're attacking everything, even when it's benign.

[steviedotboston]

Flock cameras can be helpful in all sorts of crimes. They've been used to solve everything from kidnappings to minor property damage.

There obviously isn't a future without crime. This is just a tool to make it easier for police to do their job and deter criminals somewhat, but that is probably marginal.

There will always be kidnappings, there will always be property damage. Having technology available to make it easier to solve those crimes seems obvious to me.

[1shooner]

I think most opposing Flock have considered and rejected the bargain of trading their freedom for security in this case.

There are other ways to sacrifice your privacy for a sense of safety that doesn't impose your 'understanding of right and wrong' on the entire public.

[goldfish3]

>have a misplaced understanding of right and wrong here.

"Could I be making wrong assumptions? No I'm a hacker, it must be everyone else who is wrong."

[Fargren]

"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape, than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long & generally approv’d"

The amount of damage these cameras have caused is totally disproportional to whatever meager benefit they may have wrought. These are antisocial machines.

[nvesp]

Dude my car was literally jacked up and had the catalytic convertor chopped off in a parking with flock cameras at a hotel before, def never got caught, and according to the hotel security footage they parked right next to my car, got out and did everything real fast. Plus most people using cars to commit heinous crimes are usually stolen and ditched right after anyways, people who use their own car to commit crimes usually end up being lower level crimes like organized retail theft, drugs, etc, you know stuff id rather not trade privacy for security over.

[chasd00]

yeah surveillance doesn't mean secure. A few weeks ago there was a solid 10-15 second run of automatic weapons fire on my street in an intersection. I do a lot of shooting and i could tell from the concussion it couldn't have been more than a couple hundred feet from my bedroom window. My neighbors turned in all their camera footage with recordings of two cars and the gunfire to a detective. When i asked them what happens next the detective just said in an annoyed voice "well i'll ask someone to check around..". Like it was plainly obvious he had zero interest at all.

edit: I live in Dallas so, although we sometimes hear gunshots when the Cowboys score a touchdown, i'm not in an active war zone.

[pixl97]

All fun and good until whatever you are comes under the scrutiny of the police state.

[tclancy]

Always nice to hear from someone completely immune to miscarriages of justice.

[cg5280]

My confusion stems from the fact that mass surveillance is already pretty normal in major cities. Your face is on a dozen cameras anytime you walk through the grocery store. Your precise location is pinged off cell towers multiple times a day. I understand specific qualms with Flock as a company and how they manage the data, but this libertarian demand for total privacy in public spaces has been long lost and the beef with Flock in particular doesn’t even scratch the surface.

Edit: And I don’t even know how to have good faith conversations about this topic in these spaces, because the hive mind has decided that anything but absolute outrage is untenable. I’m getting downvoted for sharing my opinion.

[kstrauser]

We already have mass surveillance, and yet we still have major crimes. It's not working, and I see no reason to believe that removing more freedom will lead to having safer streets. Why are we giving up liberty and getting nothing in return? That's an excellent reason to protest against adding more surveillance.

[toephu2]

If you think USA has mass surveillance you haven't been to Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Etc).

I can drive down highways in most cities in the USA without my license plate being read (Flock isn't on highways). Also Flock as integrated mostly just records license plates. It's not recording video 24/7.

[recursive]

Commonplace does not mean acceptable. Flock is new, and so it is an easier target for concentrated action. Also, Flock seems to be a centralized clearinghouse for surveillance data on a different scale than your local grocer's CCTV system.

[lm28469]

This comment is so naive and full of banalities I don't even know what to say, open a few history and philosophy books, these topics have been at the center of many deep and interesting debates over at least two thousands years and your take isn't even high-school level comprehension of the subject. If the end goal of societies was to stop crime we'd have achieved that a long time ago