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Comment by iinnPP | Hacker News Reader

"One resident was recorded spitting in the hallway"

Im sure this wasn't the only thing used for the eviction but if it was that is clearly over the line. With that being said, the behavior is disgusting and if I was in a building dealing with such, I wouldn't feel bad to see them go.

Having lived in such a situation before, I could find globs of spit, blood, and who knows what else on elevator buttons, door handles, mailboxes, and entry buzzers. It's disgusting and incredibly unhealthy. It's also discrimination towards people with germ related phobias or disorders.

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You can still figure out who spit on something without a dragnet of ai and facial recognition being applied to every resident. That way you don’t have to hassle a blind lady to formally explain why someone bringing her groceries is using her key fob.

To find the guy who spits, you can just rewind the tape.

It is overzealous. Imagine if every minor crime or social faux pas you've ever committed was logged, stored to disk, and accessible to various for profit 3rd parties. Little bit dystopian. Middle and upper class people can pay the fines and fees. It's the lower class who end up in prison or homeless.

How many people are spitting in the hallway of the place they live or visit?

I certainly could pay any fine that would be assessed, because that fine would be assessed zero times.

If you’re in a living situation where neighbors are regularly spitting in the common areas, I can understand the appeal of a system that would bring that to an end.

How many kids played ding ding ditch as a kid? How many teenagers stole a pack of gum as a dare? How many drunk college kids peed on a tree in a public place? Should that kid get a citation? Should that kid end up in small claims court? Should that student be a sex offender and serve time as such? We all agree these things are crimes and people shouldn't do them. But people do stupid crap all the time and US already incarcerates more of it's people than any other country in the world. It's a slippery slope in my mind.

Can't reply to the post below me. But yea I am not on the side of child abuse ie "kicking a child's shit in" or for mass incarceration or mass surveillance...

It is pretty easy to correct the behavior if they are still kids. In fact, that’s how you prevent spitting adults, by disciplining kids so they can grow up to not so that kind of thing. This culture of just letting kids do whatever they want without consequence is why things are just more messed up today.

But ya, peeing college students shouldn’t registered as sex offenders, urinating on a tree when there are no open bathrooms around, even the cops understand that kind of thing happens sometimes.

Even if there are no bathrooms around it's not like the law allows that. Saw a video where a cop arrested a fire man for stepping several inches over a line while putting out a fire. Literally handcuffed and thrown in the car. Also saw some cops arrest a woman for having a stroke in a hospital lobby, she died minutes later on her way to jail.

I wouldn't put too much faith on human judgement of criminality. I'd put even less faith in corporate views of similar matters. Even less in machine learning models. And I'd put the very least in corporate run mass surveillance fed machine learning models.

> I certainly could pay any fine that would be assessed, because that fine would be assessed zero times.

ah the "if you have nothing to hide" approach.

people that occupy this perspective never withstand the level of scrutiny they espouse - i am 100% certain that if i observed you for a ~1 week i would find punishable offenses. and then you would wilt and say "well i didn't mean those things". yes that's the point - systems like this are aimed at a particular category of offenses and blind to another.

The poster only mentioned spitting, not every little offense.

The article mentioned a case of loaning someone their key fob to get groceries for them. The offender in question was a blind person being helped by an assistant.

So, yes, EVERY little thing.

The poster specifically mentioned spitting and said nothing about the other scenario.

They were commenting on an article that mentioned the blind person that got swept up by the same technology.

Spitting in public areas is bad, algorithmically threatening blind people with eviction for getting help is, in my view, an order of magnitude worse.

this is just more of the same thing that i'm pointing out - people who claim these kinds of retorts refrains have no imagination and/or have never been the victims of similar systems. yes, trust me (and absolutely everyone that rages against this), they do and will and must inevitably target every little offense.

The second example regarding the woman and the keys was rectified with minimal incident.

Your point about not experiencing these systems may be valid for the poster, but certainly not for myself. I do acknowledge that I don't speak for everyone though.

I personally, having dealt with the utter bullshit of being poor and in social housing (which isn't even a top 5 problem I have had to deal with), would prefer the cameras with AI powered horseshit over dealing with idiots spewing their spit and other bodily fluids all over public areas of the social housing. You are free to disagree. If you have not actually lived in these places (specifically the very violent ones), then you should stop referring to us as victims. It doesn't help.

The article doesn’t mention what level of difficulty the blind lady had to deal with.

Do you think that maybe, there’s a middle ground where poor disabled people don’t get hassled, but people who do impact the quality of life do get punished appropriately. My guess is that the spitter was a known problem resident, and this was used as an excuse or the final straw to get him out. As bad as spitting is, I wouldn’t want someone to lose their housing for a single incident like this.

What wasn’t mentioned, was how much this ai costs in comparison to how much it might cost to just review the footage when an actual problem is caused.

It isn’t a case of ai surveillance or nothing. The whole issue comes down to under resourced, or plain incompetent management. This is just an expensive bandaid.

This example is chosen because it’s gross. Nobody is pro-spitting.

It’s less “ok” to people if you say “A public venue is banning an individual because she works for a company our company dislikes.”

If you’re in this space at all, you should be concerned about this. If you live in a major area, hundreds of locations are running LPR on your car or have cameras capable of facial recognition. As more entities start exchanging that data, your movements are available to anyone willing to pay.

Once you open the door to this, it’s easy to go awful things in the name of quality of life. Perhaps your landlord doesn’t like your ethnicity or religion, won’t rent to folks who’ve spent time in certain places, for example.

"Perhaps your landlord doesn’t like your ethnicity or religion"

At least in the US, this type of discrimination is illegal.

Good luck proving it. And the poor don't even have the money to access the system to get redress.

How many groups in tech are a single ethnicity or religion managed by that same ethnicity or religion? I bet the number isn't small.

Sure. How do you prove that a landlord determined that your last name didn’t match some list and you’ve spent time in Dearborn, MI?

It's really hard for poor people or even moderately wealthy people to enter legal battles like these against corporations. A corp can delay trial for five yrs. Having a lawyer on retainer for even 4 months would bankrupt most Americans... The law isn't really about what's right, but who can pay to decide what is.

>I certainly could pay any fine that would be assessed, because that fine would be assessed zero times.

You are so well damn so sure of that. Idiot.

I can't recall the last minor crime I committed. Granted I know I must of committed crimes recently due to the state of our labyrinthine system. I don't even jaywalk when I'm out on my 1AM nights walks. I have trouble relating with that sentiment, its not hard to be a good member of your community. As for every faux pas? Well I came to terms with being recorded the moment I step out the door. I would of gladly fought with anyone to stop the encroachment of video surveillance but sadly few cared and now its too late. 3rd parties have probably been using most of that data for years by now. I am taking this article a big heap of salt, we need more accountability in this world not less. Now maybe this isn't the right way to go about it but what's the alternative? We dismantled much of our communities and families, stigmatized shaming people and all the natural human things that keep people following best practices in life have been dismantled or have fallen apart.

You’ve never rolled though a stop? Drove 28 in a 25?

You say you walk at 1AM. Why? Maybe your pattern of walks aligns with when some Nextdoor.com Karen thinks there’s a pervert lurking around scaring her cats.

>I know I must of committed crimes recently due to the state of our labyrinthine system

Well hey good news, the cameras are automated now and they know all the crimes.

You know how much work that is? Especially over a timespan of 3 days for example. If people would behave this all wouldn't be necessary.

Not that hard at all. Check on noon of each day to see if the offending loogie is present or not. Now your search is down to 24 hours where the loogie was not present on noon of one day and was present on noon of the next. Check at midnight, go forward or back six hours as necessary… 3 hours… 1.5 hours. Pretty simple as ping as we’re not using a linear access system like vhs, which we aren’t since it’s 2023 and scrubbing through 72 hours of video is trivial.

They criticize me for harping on the obvious; if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.

--Calvin Coolidge

and now he's evicted -from public housing- so what do you think the next move here is? My guess is he'll bounce back and forth from jail to the street until he dies.

feels like an extra janitor would be a better solution here rather than a surveillance state.

The easiest solution is not to spit. It's a no brainer, anti-action. It requires no effort, instead it is less effort.

Your guess is probably not correct either.

The cameras may literally save lives. I form this opinion from experience, do you?

The cameras being there sucks. Dying is worse.

Using the footage for petty offenses sucks and shouldn't happen. I just don't think the example invokes any kind of feeling of injustice as seemingly intended. And wanted to point it out that I didn't believe it was the only reason.

Having said all that, a janitor only fixes the one problem. It also introduces new potential problems. A nosy janitor can do a lot more harm to disadvantaged people than a camera. And 24 hour janitorial is more like 4 janitors, not 1. Who is paying for them?

Just don't spit, especially indoors. Simple.

If the easiest action is not to spit, why did he continue spitting?

Let's move on from spitting, as it's a dull example, but into behaviors in general. How do you get someone to stop doing something? Punishment does not work. Telling someone not to do something only encourages them to do it even more. So, like most other solutions, we can instead work off incentivizing positive action. We saw this with smokers, you give them a designated area, a place to put out their smokes, alongside restrictions like not smoking indoors, and you've got a winning combination. Likewise, we need thorough solutions to behavioral problems, not "easy" ones. Easy ones don't last long. Habits remain.

If cameras save lives, why do you not have a camera in every room in your home?

I can't tell you why this specific person spits, nor can anyone. I can only state that as a person who has lived in social housing, cameras were what made it possible. Even with these cameras, the building I was in was responsible for a whopping 50% of homicides in my city for the ~year I was there. Having AI do the work and catching this garbage behavior would have been welcomed by many residents, and unwelcomed by the people spitting on the elevator buttons, doorknobs, entry system, and mailboxes. Which was a daily occurrence.

Punishment does work. It works to get those people out and get people who can be decent human beings in. It is punishment to the other residents to let it continue unabated.

Your camera comment is odd. I know the cameras saved lives. Witnessed it with my own two eyes. You also don't know what cameras exist in my home, maybe I do have one in every room? It is a deterrent that reminds a person who may think twice about their actions because of the increased probability of being punished.

Go walk through some social housing without cameras while wearing expensive shoes and jewelry. Do it daily for a year. That will change your perspective, assuming you are still around to provide it.

Yeah I was pleasantly surprised reading the article that the people managing these public housing complexes actually cared enough about the folks living there to install the cameras. I hope the GP has the empathy to understand why that's important, but judging by the focus on carrots and socially engineering away nicotine usage, I doubt they've ever cohabitated spaces with someone who isn't a tech worker making $300k/year.

I don’t think people are anti camera. People are against using cameras to retroactively police EVERYTHING. No one likes the spitter, but the example of the blind person lending her keys out to someone doing a grocery run for them is where this is stupid and harmful.

A rational human would have seen that a stranger was accessing the building using a disabled person’s credentials with armfuls of groceries and correctly surmised the situation, or made a quick call to confirm that it was authorized. Instead, a formal process was initiated where one possible outcome is that a low income blind person is evicted. That didn’t happen, but it is a waste of resources to have a formal process to have a blind person file a report explaining their shopping needs.

Sometimes I get the feeling personal accountability is becoming bourgeoisie.

“personal responsibility” has always been a refrain of the bourgeois to avoid, ironically, personal responsibility for the oppression of the system they maintain for the exploitation of the proletariat.

The funny thing is that you say it like the bad behaviour here is something that negatively impacts the rich and therefore the rich are punishing it. In reality, the bad behaviour we are discussing here (spitting indoors in public housing common space) negatively impacts the poor far more than the rich, and yet you are still against any accountability for the perpetrator.

Tell me, whose side are you really on?

> The funny thing is that you say it like the bad behaviour here [...] yet you are still against any accountability for the perpetrator.

I wasn’t addressing anything beyond the generalization offered that “personal accountability is becoming bourgeoisie [sic]”, which was the only claim in the post I responded to. If I want to discuss the specifics further upthread, I’ll respond to something discussing those specifics.

Assuming that I had a message other than what I said which is not reasonably related to either what I said or what I said it in response to is... quite a reach just to have something to argue about. I’m sure you can find someone actually saying something you can argue against, rather than something that requires you to conjure a fantasy point just to get upset and aegue against it.

I also wonder if we are beginning to accept criminality as class elevation. That’s a society I don’t want to be a part of.

I figure your either a Marxist or Communist since it's right out of that playbook to say such a thing. So your take is we can't hold bad actors accountable because you hate capitalism and you think capitalism is the thing to blame, super...I am sure you're the life of the party.

I have been of the opinion that everyone needs to hold themselves accountable. The wealthy and the poor and understand why someone does what they do. Public urination? Are there sufficient facilities available? I live in the US and if I am out and about, finding an appropriate place to use the facilities is quite difficult at times. A disturbing large number of businesses in poor areas block there restrooms and or are "out of order". No, the frequency of them being "out of order" is not realistic. They are intentionally "out of order" to deny having to deal with the issue. The simple of ensuring everyone can live and exist with dignity I do hold the bourgeoise accountable for. Pointing to personal responsibility while not first ensuring everyone can adequately live is a sin.

> A disturbing large number of businesses in poor areas block there restrooms and or are "out of order"

I hear you. I also have empathy for people who clean public bathrooms.

I strongly suspect the “rich” and “upper class” aren’t the ones putting the “out of order” signs on the doors. It’s the workers at the store who are responsible for cleaning them.

I suspect they’re tired of being responsible for cleaning up the stuff that happens in there. Feces smeared on the walls, wads of paper shoved down in the urinal and urine overflowing and flooding the floors. Vomit everywhere.

If I had to hazard a guess, if you personally organized a volunteer group, went around that neighborhood, and provided reliable bathroom cleaning services and repair you’d start seeing more bathrooms.

Next time you walk by one, ask the person at the front desk if they’ll let you clean it.

The wads of toilet paper in the urinal is one i’ve seen most often as somehow deliberate that i just don’t understand (i’ve been to some terrible toilets at festivals, short of the feces on walls most are just not able to cope with volume). I’ve never caught anyone doing the urinal one but it just seems so malicious

I usually see the not able to cope with the volume. I have also seen trap primers and regulators not set correctly so the toilets won't properly flush. I have also never understood why a plunger or a toilet brush was not available in the stall. I keep one in my bathroom so if there is an issue I can address it easily and quickly. Not able to keep up with the volume is more common than in should be.

> So your take is we can't hold bad actors accountable

No, its not.

> because you hate capitalism

I don't hate capitalism any more than I hate childhood; it has its purpose and needs to be moved beyond.

Like feudalism, though, it creates a class that is very interested in preventing that at the expense and who, insofar as they act on that interest, are bad actors and need to be held accountable.

> I don't hate capitalism any more than I hate childhood; it has its purpose and needs to be moved beyond.

> Like feudalism, though, it creates a class that is very interested in preventing that at the expense and who, insofar as they act on that interest, are bad actors and need to be held accountable.

Apologies for the misunderstanding of your position.

The conceit should certainly move uphill.

>My guess is he'll bounce back and forth from jail to the street until he dies.

You're acting as if poor people are inherently helpless and incapable of following basic rules. Most people are going to have friends or family that would rather spare a couch rather than them live off the streets. If not, he can live in a shelter. Either way, he's going to have to learn how to respect other people's property if he wants to stay.

In the meantime, someone else on the wait-list for public housing who is willing to follow rules can move into now-vacant apartment.

Hard lessons, if your parents didn't teach them to you.

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