In Oak Park, Illinois, we ran into a rhyming version of this problem: the only control we had about what technology OPPD deployed was a spending limit ($15K, if I'm remembering right), above which they had to ask the board for an appropriation. Our pilot deployment of Flock cameras easily went underneath that limit.
I'm not reflexively anti-ALPR camera. I don't like them, but I do local politics and know what my neighbors think, and a pretty significant chunk of my neighbors --- in what is likely one of the top 10 bluest municipalities in the United States (we're the most progressive in Chicagoland, which is saying something) --- want these cameras as a response to violent crime.
But I do believe you have to run a legit process to get them deployed.
OPPD was surprised when, after attempting to graduate their pilot to a broader deployment, a minor fracas erupted at the board. I'm on Oak Park's information systems commission and, with the help of a trustee and after talking to the Board president, got "what the hell do we do about the cameras" assigned to my commission. In conjunction with our police oversight commission (but, really, just us on the nerd commission), we:
* Got General Orders put in place for Flock usage that limited it exclusively to violent crime.
* Set up a monthly usage report regime that allowed the Village to get effectiveness metrics that prevented further rollout and ultimately got the cameras shut down.
* Presented to the board and got enacted an ACLU CCOPS ordinance, which requires board approval for anything broadly construed as "surveillance technology" for policing, whether you spend $1, $100,000, or $0 on it.
Especially if you're in a suburb, where the most important units of governance are responsive to like 15,000-50,000 people, this stuff is all pretty doable if you engage in local politics. It's much trickier if you're within the city limits of a major metro (we're adjacent to Chicago, and by rights should be a part of it), but still.
I cannot imagine a scenario where I'd want those in my neighborhood. Glad you like them, but I hope they don't make it to the west suburbs where I live.
This is very helpful information, thanks for sharing. Vegas is unlikely to be an outlier here, especially given the involvement of Horowitz. I expect that many cities and towns will face similar moves to do an end run around citizen's rights and knowledge.
This is all well and good, but the problem is that those systems leak left and right. No amount of politics can stop that.
Back in the day when first ALPRs went into operation (I don't remember, was it 10 or 15 years ago) it took about two weeks for the data to appear on darkweb.
Then the same happened to citywide face recognition.
The only way to stop abuse is to not collect the data : ban the systems entirely.
The money being a red herring is a convenient excuse to say “surveillance capitalism is fine because there’s already a legal path to this dystopia and this idea fits right in”. These capital interests have shown even if there is a legal path to stop they will ignore it and try to circumvent it. So the money isn’t a red herring because the money is being used to bypass the legal pathway to stop the deployments.
Why is the money a red herring? Just like in Oak Park, the police in Vegas are required to follow a democratic process for large purchases, and they were only able to avoid that with the money.
> Metro funds the project with donor money funneled into a private foundation. It’s an arrangement that allows Metro to avoid soliciting public comment on the surveillance technology
It doesn't matter whether the cameras are a good idea or not, the police should not be able to use a "donation" (from a guy who's going to profit from the donated equipment) to pretend they haven't done anything the public needs to know about.
The money is the main issue here, without it the public would have had a chance to discuss all the things you're talking about, and maybe reject them or put in some limitations. I would object to any secret arrangement like this, even if it was something completely innocuous like pencils for schools. There's no reason for significant acquisitions to be secret, and even if the government is acquiring something good and necessary, I don't want public services to be dependent on the generosity of some random dude without public discussion.
This is why gifts to government are problematic. They are never gifts, they are end-runs around accountability and should have exceptionally high scrutiny. It is hard to say they should be outright illegal since participating in government often blurs the line between gifting government and just normal participation. This though is clearly just an end-run around democracy.
This particular gift is also problematic because Horowitz is an investor in Flock, and Horowitz's family foundation is spending money on Flock that will in turn increase its value, which benefits him as an investor. Of course lawyers will have looked at all this to make sure it doesn't run afoul of self-dealing rules, but that just means the rules verge on uselessly weak.
So if I understand the totality of the situation here: mans donates cameras from company he invested in, gets tax break for doing so, helps portfolio co, furthers own self-interest and propels us towards surveillance state?
I think the money is a red herring here. ALPR firms can come up with any number of different pilot/licensing/financing programs to keep deployments under purchasing thresholds for police departments.
The issue is that Las Vegas, like most major metros, doesn't appear to have ordinances preventing their police department from deploying cameras without the consent of the city council. That's fixable! There's model ordinances for this.
Flock was valued at $7.5 billion last year, and it's probably worth more now. It's absolutely one of YCombinator's success stories.
YCombinator's goal is to make a lot of money by causing there to be more startups, and therefore more successor startups. "Make the world a better place" is not one of their success metrics. They're investors, not altruists.
Why would they? There’s no “pro-social” enforcement in their funding terms, so they’re just as “morals aren’t applicable to profit” as any off-the-shelf C-corp is. If they required their startups to found B-corps then I’d understand trying to apply human ethical concerns to them, but they don’t, so human morals simply don't apply.
Technically it should be covered as not just illegal, but by virtue of being the pinnacle of capital crimes, inherently treasonous through the violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause… but abiding by the Constitution is just so lame and old. We need to move fast and break things.
gotta feel bad for snowden's naivete that he thought his big disclosures would resonate with the public at large. All we got in the years since was more surveillance and for him, a life in exile.
It sure wouldn't have been hard to create a digital deadman that released his information while he stayed in the country leveraging whistleblower protection. Or, he could have found his version of deepthroat and told his story. Or, he dumps everything on 4chan or on the Tor network and let someone else expose it... if all he actually cared about was exposing the moral ineptitude of the US.
Alas no, he was much more interested in the attention and TV interviews.
He lives in exile because he wasn't interested in whistleblowing.
This is the type of self-interested philanthropy that gives tech non-profits a bad name. Whatever happened to giving without the expectation of return?
I wish people would get more thoughtful, because fascism is the last thing any of this is, it’s something brand new and way worse, something from some sci-fi story of a tech-dystopian ruling class with suffocating and smothering domination over the masses. I think you would have to mash together a couple different novels and movies to accurately capture what this is.
Just alone note that not a single tyrant of the past could have even dreamt of the power and control over society that even just currently exists, let alone what is in the pipeline.
Do you remember Minority Report? That seems to be approaching things, but even that did not include many things that even already exist. Frankly, I think authors and directors didn’t include many aspects of things, simply because audiences of the past would have probably not found it believable that even just current things existed, because how could they, it would seem so utterly crushing and depressive that it would break the suspense when you can’t see any prospect for survival/success.
> surveillance technology, which critics worry could be co-opted to track undocumented immigrants
They're worried that the system could be co-opted to enforce the law on law breakers? Isn't that the job description of a cop?
This is how toxic American political discourse has become. Instead of pointing out that mass surveillance is evil because of the potential for abuse, they're saying it's bad because cops could do their jobs.
Genuine question, why does Flock get so much bad press in the US compared to other, much more infringing surveillance tech?
Your mobile provider knows your exact location at any point in time, and the NSA probably has access to most big tech data. Those tell you much more than a license plate reader.
In much of Europe, it is quite normal to see cameras everywhere both for traffic enforcement and for crime prevention. They are generally popular with the public, eg. in the UK with a >80% approval rate. In many cities, essentially every corner has CCTV.
Is it because Flock Safety also markets to private businesses, whereas in Europe CCTV and ANPR are state-run? Or is it a cultural thing, eg. because Americans value freedom or prefer driving over the speed limit, and Flock may end that?
> Your mobile provider knows your exact location at any point in time, and the NSA probably has access to most big tech data.
I can choose whether to carry a cell phone. I can control what data I share with big tech (very little here since I use free software and self-host everything).
I cannot do anything (that isn't illegal) if some bureaucrat decides to place a camera down my street to identify me or my car anytime I pass nearby.
tptacek|6 days ago
In Oak Park, Illinois, we ran into a rhyming version of this problem: the only control we had about what technology OPPD deployed was a spending limit ($15K, if I'm remembering right), above which they had to ask the board for an appropriation. Our pilot deployment of Flock cameras easily went underneath that limit.
I'm not reflexively anti-ALPR camera. I don't like them, but I do local politics and know what my neighbors think, and a pretty significant chunk of my neighbors --- in what is likely one of the top 10 bluest municipalities in the United States (we're the most progressive in Chicagoland, which is saying something) --- want these cameras as a response to violent crime.
But I do believe you have to run a legit process to get them deployed.
OPPD was surprised when, after attempting to graduate their pilot to a broader deployment, a minor fracas erupted at the board. I'm on Oak Park's information systems commission and, with the help of a trustee and after talking to the Board president, got "what the hell do we do about the cameras" assigned to my commission. In conjunction with our police oversight commission (but, really, just us on the nerd commission), we:
* Got General Orders put in place for Flock usage that limited it exclusively to violent crime.
* Set up a monthly usage report regime that allowed the Village to get effectiveness metrics that prevented further rollout and ultimately got the cameras shut down.
* Presented to the board and got enacted an ACLU CCOPS ordinance, which requires board approval for anything broadly construed as "surveillance technology" for policing, whether you spend $1, $100,000, or $0 on it.
Especially if you're in a suburb, where the most important units of governance are responsive to like 15,000-50,000 people, this stuff is all pretty doable if you engage in local politics. It's much trickier if you're within the city limits of a major metro (we're adjacent to Chicago, and by rights should be a part of it), but still.
SirFatty|6 days ago
rurp|6 days ago
lstodd|6 days ago
Back in the day when first ALPRs went into operation (I don't remember, was it 10 or 15 years ago) it took about two weeks for the data to appear on darkweb.
Then the same happened to citywide face recognition.
The only way to stop abuse is to not collect the data : ban the systems entirely.
righthand|6 days ago
burkaman|6 days ago
> Metro funds the project with donor money funneled into a private foundation. It’s an arrangement that allows Metro to avoid soliciting public comment on the surveillance technology
It doesn't matter whether the cameras are a good idea or not, the police should not be able to use a "donation" (from a guy who's going to profit from the donated equipment) to pretend they haven't done anything the public needs to know about.
The money is the main issue here, without it the public would have had a chance to discuss all the things you're talking about, and maybe reject them or put in some limitations. I would object to any secret arrangement like this, even if it was something completely innocuous like pencils for schools. There's no reason for significant acquisitions to be secret, and even if the government is acquiring something good and necessary, I don't want public services to be dependent on the generosity of some random dude without public discussion.
jmward01|6 days ago
FreakLegion|6 days ago
enahs-sf|6 days ago
Did I miss anything?
roysting|6 days ago
tptacek|6 days ago
The issue is that Las Vegas, like most major metros, doesn't appear to have ordinances preventing their police department from deploying cameras without the consent of the city council. That's fixable! There's model ordinances for this.
willturman|6 days ago
[1] https://www.ycombinator.com
CobrastanJorji|6 days ago
YCombinator's goal is to make a lot of money by causing there to be more startups, and therefore more successor startups. "Make the world a better place" is not one of their success metrics. They're investors, not altruists.
rvz|6 days ago
We should not expect any VC no matter how big or small to care.
john_strinlai|6 days ago
dyauspitr|6 days ago
propagandist|6 days ago
lm28469|6 days ago
altairprime|6 days ago
rusty_rick|6 days ago
irl_zebra|6 days ago
unknown|6 days ago
[deleted]
Spooky23|6 days ago
roysting|6 days ago
drweevil|6 days ago
Also, if someone were to destroy one of these things, the damage caused, by a similar logic, is $0, right? /s
unknown|6 days ago
[deleted]
fantasizr|6 days ago
irishcoffee|6 days ago
It sure wouldn't have been hard to create a digital deadman that released his information while he stayed in the country leveraging whistleblower protection. Or, he could have found his version of deepthroat and told his story. Or, he dumps everything on 4chan or on the Tor network and let someone else expose it... if all he actually cared about was exposing the moral ineptitude of the US.
Alas no, he was much more interested in the attention and TV interviews.
He lives in exile because he wasn't interested in whistleblowing.
klipklop|5 days ago
We are at a weird place right now in the US.
almosthere|6 days ago
LadyCailin|6 days ago
solfox|6 days ago
runlaszlorun|6 days ago
ChrisArchitect|6 days ago
CrzyLngPwd|6 days ago
4d4m|5 days ago
_DeadFred_|6 days ago
bix6|6 days ago
warkdarrior|6 days ago
newzino|6 days ago
[deleted]
xxxx_xxxx|6 days ago
[deleted]
zerosizedweasle|6 days ago
roysting|6 days ago
Just alone note that not a single tyrant of the past could have even dreamt of the power and control over society that even just currently exists, let alone what is in the pipeline.
Do you remember Minority Report? That seems to be approaching things, but even that did not include many things that even already exist. Frankly, I think authors and directors didn’t include many aspects of things, simply because audiences of the past would have probably not found it believable that even just current things existed, because how could they, it would seem so utterly crushing and depressive that it would break the suspense when you can’t see any prospect for survival/success.
Swoerd|6 days ago
[deleted]
xdennis|6 days ago
They're worried that the system could be co-opted to enforce the law on law breakers? Isn't that the job description of a cop?
This is how toxic American political discourse has become. Instead of pointing out that mass surveillance is evil because of the potential for abuse, they're saying it's bad because cops could do their jobs.
n2d4|6 days ago
Your mobile provider knows your exact location at any point in time, and the NSA probably has access to most big tech data. Those tell you much more than a license plate reader.
In much of Europe, it is quite normal to see cameras everywhere both for traffic enforcement and for crime prevention. They are generally popular with the public, eg. in the UK with a >80% approval rate. In many cities, essentially every corner has CCTV.
Is it because Flock Safety also markets to private businesses, whereas in Europe CCTV and ANPR are state-run? Or is it a cultural thing, eg. because Americans value freedom or prefer driving over the speed limit, and Flock may end that?
drnick1|6 days ago
I can choose whether to carry a cell phone. I can control what data I share with big tech (very little here since I use free software and self-host everything).
I cannot do anything (that isn't illegal) if some bureaucrat decides to place a camera down my street to identify me or my car anytime I pass nearby.
Pine_Mushroom|6 days ago
n2d4|6 days ago