[burkaman]

Ok maybe this is just a semantic issue, but I'm still not understanding your argument that money has nothing to do with it. In your case, instead of having the founder donate the cameras, the company itself essentially donated them, I assume for a limited time. How is that not a money issue? When you said "a minor fracas erupted at the board", why did the board have a say at that point? Was it because the police now had to spend money, triggering public oversight?

It seems like the main problem you identified in your original comment is "I do believe you have to run a legit process to get them deployed." What is currently preventing this from happening? The only barrier I'm seeing is Ben Horowitz and Flock finding creative ways to temporarily let their customers not pay for their services.

[tptacek]

I don't know how to more clearly say that the purchasing thresholds for police departments are not the actual issue with ALPR deployment. What you need is affirmative consent from the board/council before they're deployed, regardless of cost. If you rely on cost thresholds, ALPR vendors will make arrangements to get deployed in ways that fit under those thresholds. That's exactly what happened to us.

I think maybe one thing that's happening here is that people thing literally the only possible control against unwanted ALPR deployment is expenditure rules. But this is a story about one way a large metro got around expenditure rules. Meanwhile: there are model ordinances you can adopt that completely moot the price/gift issue. Pass them!

The point of my comment is "here is something you can do besides yelling on message boards about how much you don't like surveillance".

[burkaman]

I think proactively passing a model ordinance is a good idea, but installing cameras is obviously not the only objectionable thing a police department can do. It isn't practical to make them get public approval for every acquisition regardless of cost, and it also isn't practical to brainstorm every possible bad thing they might ever try in the future and pass ordinances covering all of them.

I agree that the concrete bad thing that happened here is that cameras were installed without public consent. You are responding by saying "well the public should have predicted that and passed an ordinance before the police had a chance to try it". I am saying the police should be forced to consult the public when they make any significant acquisition, in any area, not just surveillance.

Perhaps the cost threshold could be amended to apply to the value of the good or services received, not the amount paid for them.

You also are not addressing the issue of government dependency on a private individual. Let's say Vegas has a public debate and decides they are in favor of cameras with no restrictions. Great, so is it now ok that Horowitz is donating them? No, it's still bad, because he might decide to stop being generous at any time, and then what happens? Vegas either suddenly loses an important service they depend on, or is forced to immediately pay whatever exorbitant price Flock/Horowitz comes up with.