How Knightscope’s Security Robots Surveil the Public | Hacker News Reader

How Knightscope’s Security Robots Surveil the Public

onezero.medium.com

42 pointstosh16 comments

Knightscope is worth a close study. If they were a consumer facing startup, PR blunders would have forced them to close years ago. Yes, one of their machines ran over a small child[1]. Yes, they had a disastrous “mini-ipo”[2]. Yes, they’re frequently a “look how dumb AI is” counter point to the Boston Dynamics machines[3].

But they’re not consumer facing. They found a market niche as a punching bag for municipal and local spaces (malls, libraries, subways) who treat the users of public space as hostile adversaries.

If dunking on Knightscope worked, they would have been done in already. If one is anti this kind of approach to civic management it’s important to name the community “leaders” advocating for them, the social economics that render $7/hour Knightscope rental more viable than more empathetic solutions, and the investors supporting these dark patterns.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/7/13/12170640/mall-security-ro... [2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1600983/000114420417... [3] https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/17/20697540/boston-dynamics-...

If they made their robots this cute nobody would mind - https://youtu.be/G6fMV1UPzkg?t=62

I believe that it was actually the kid that ran into the robot. But I can't find any followup articles about the incident, only initial reports.

> If they were a consumer facing startup, PR blunders would have forced them to close years ago.

Example of a consumer facing startup that PR blunders shut down?

Imagine the reverse. Point your phone camera at a security robot, and get a list of names, faces, addresses, and current location of its owner, and the CEO and board members of its manufacturer.

As a tax-paying citizen, I feel like this should be required - even if only some of that info.

And their list of political contributions.

Think I read the DJI is making thier next gen of drones to auto spew this kind of info a certain distance from each flying drone, so that anyone with a DJI app can pull the info if they are X amount of feet from it when in use.. or something like that.

Long ago I posted the need for a 'Made where app' that would let you point your phone at products and get a list of where it's it made and components came from, not sure if something like that has come to be yet, I do not experiment with many apps from the play store as I find the lack of transparency about data sharing off putting.

Sounds like the worst of both worlds. If you, a random citizen, buy robots/drones/computers, they will betray you (you, not their manufacturer or its owners), but this functionality will be disabled for corporate clients.

Very useful if you fly a drone over an industrial farm to document how they're polluting the local stream - they'll have your home address and send the cops to seize the footage (and all your computers) within the hour.

How come so many articles on HN are behind registerwall? Can we maintain a reasonable discussion when the subject material is unavailable to a large part of the forum?

This seems to be a trend that is happening on the web broadly. Fresh sessions and cookie removal can be helpful.

Police robots are the ultimate rejection of what the British police hold as the Peelian principles: that policing is done by consent, by all members of the public where no one is better than anyone else, and where some of those members of the public — uniformed police officers with warrant cards to facilitate arrest — happen to be salaried full time employees of the state that perform the duties every citizen should do.

But I’ve also never interacted with a Knightscope enforcement droid. Maybe they have a friendly green button on the front that you press to talk to a rational human?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles

Like the CCTV cameras that infest London?

The municipal ones are indeed objectionable.

Most CCTV in the UK is privately owned though, which is where all the scaremongering “UK CCTV distopia!” statistics come from.

I don’t fear despotism from an isolated system in a corner shop.

Facial recognition cctv, the other day some protesters in South America shot down a drone using lasers, and now this? Clearly the precursor to Ed-209. The future is here I guess. Is it what we wanted?

> the other day some protesters in South America shot down a drone using lasers

They did not; they pointed lasers at a drone while it landed.

https://mobile.twitter.com/matiasojedam/status/1194665625278...

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