Flock is Building a New AI-Driven Mass-Surveillance System [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Flock is Building a New AI-Driven Mass-Surveillance System [pdf]

aclu.org

79 pointsmhb13 comments

Also, see:

> Inside ‘TALON,’ the Nationwide Network of AI-Enabled Surveillance Cameras

> Hundreds of pages of emails obtained by Motherboard show how little-known company Flock has expanded from surveilling individual neighborhoods into a network of smart cameras that spans the United States.

03 March 2021

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvx4bq/talon-flock-safety-ca...

Flock Safety - YC 2017

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety

I noticed my country installed these at a few smaller bridges that cross into other counties. Now I know what they are. Guessing my car gets scanned every time I cross into or out of my county.

Glad to see a YC alum helping governments surveil its people.

https://www.flocksafety.com/products/flock-cameras

the whole world is being turned into one giant psych ward, and somehow we wonder why people increasingly seem to play the part

Well, with the crime exploding, what would they expect? The homeowners associations are jumping on the Flock offering. Also, I thought ACLA was no longer in the “freedom” business and moved on to other causes? I can’t imagine ACLU caring about individual freedom of the drivers. There is got to be some other angle they are quietly pursuing.

What is your source on the explosion in crime? [This](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/10/31/violent-cri...) suggests otherwise based on data from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Violent crime and robbery have steadily declined for decades now.

Perhaps what has exploded is the number of people claiming crime has exploded despite pretty solid evidence to the contrary.

Here's an example reference from September this year that provides more nuance beyond an obtuse rebuttal: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/09/11/united...

As with all things, perception based on locale is crucial in understanding others when they speak about crime they've either witnessed or perceive as being a problem. Is human feces on public walkways a problem for everyone? It's not in Tampa, but it might be for someone in San Fransisco [1] so to dismiss it with national data on the distinct lack of poop on sidewalks is rather obtuse, lacks and ignores nuance.

[1] https://wmmr.com/2019/04/17/someone-made-an-interactive-san-...

I get that - but note that I was responding to someone claiming that crime is “exploding” in a pretty general sense, which it just isn’t.

If someone is being materially impacted by some crime local to them then it’s not unreasonable to advocate for change to mitigate it.

I’d suggest that mitigating crimes like people pooping on sidewalks (or whatever) would better be done through means other than overt video surveillance (to take it back to the OP a bit) and rather that maybe overall things might improve through policies designed to ameliorate the societal conditions that lead to people being in a situation where they end up pooping in the sidewalk (or whatever) in the first place.

  "The survey of 70 responding law enforcement agencies compared crime statistics from the first half of 2021 to the same period in 2022, a time when the COVID-19 crisis had waned, lessening the factors that contributed to violent crime rising nationally in 2020 for the first time in four years."

Take this reporting with a very small grain of salt. For one, it's a survey which admits in the footnotes that it's built on preliminary data. They're comparing preliminary data of 2022 with non-preliminary data from 2021. It's also coming from self-reporting, where MCCA is a politically charged organization with non-independent motivations, considering it's an organization of police chiefs.

Consider that a lot of the police agencies in the MCCA survey have failed to to submit statistics to the FBI [1]. That's back from 2021, but I just had a look at its Q3 2022 data and it's missing Chicago and New York city [2]! It's hard to trust any sort of survey like what came out of MCCA when its largest members consistently fail to report crime statistics data.

And.. police aren't exactly good with data analysis [3]

[1] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/06/14/what-did-fbi-d...

[2] https://s3-us-gov-west-1.amazonaws.com/cg-d4b776d0-d898-4153...

[3] https://www.chicagoreporter.com/chicago-police-arrested-more...

As Andrew said, it depends on the community.

Portland is has been setting records for violence, getting pretty close to a reversion to the 90s. NYC is reverting to mid-2000s levels of crime. All the west coast cities are seeing major public disorder issues.

Organized retail crime is also a big issue now. Linked statistics only show violent crime; property crime is a different phenomenon but similarly problematic for feelings of safety. Stores near me and including in the building I live in have closed due to theft and ongoing vandalism.

https://www.koin.com/news/crime/portlands-homicide-rate-near...

https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/09/23/homicides-sea...

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/11/24/why-its-h...

Crime is a myth/crime has been going down everywhere since the 90s is a very 2019 take that needs to be updated for the new reality, at least in big cities.

Exploding? On average? nahhhhh https://www.bbc.com/news/57581270 . I'm sure some places are experiencing a surge here and there. My neighbor's car was stolen, and that raises my known crimes in my neighborhood by 100%. However, he did leave his keys in the car overnight, so yeah.

Catalytic converter thefts. I would love a panopticon surveillance state if it would solve that problem and only that problem, but it'd probably used instead for voter suppression, general fascism, or stalking the mayor's ex wife or some other thing that benefits someone in power and not me

Yeah the government is just people in power who suffer all the same issues as the rest of us. That's why surveillance and government need to be limited because they always get abused and as power accumulates they just want more power; it's a lot like being rich, you can never be rich enough to assuage your desire for more.

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