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Open what up? This event isn't about finding some needle in a hackstack, but about power structures using unaccountable "AI" to create chilling effects on the freedom of speech. The public having a go-to list of journalists who committed wrongspeak about Israel wouldn't particularly change much, beyond facilitating the extension of this authoritarian dynamic into the corporate world in a uniform way.

I once had a firepit conversation with the Floc coordinator of a small US city's PD. A big part of the value he saw in Floc was being able to query the data within some window (maybe 30 days?) then no longer being responsible for it. If the government had the data, then they'd need to respond to FOIAs for the data. Not only would that be an administrative cost, but it would also show the public how invasive the mass surveillance is. He clearly was not concerned about civil rights, he just wanted the convictions.

He was also proud of paying more for some kind of exclusive license to the data, that Floc wasn't going to sell his surveillance data to other entities. I never really believed that.

> If the government had the data, then they'd need to respond to FOIAs for the data.

Respond to, yes. Disclose, not necessarily. I believe ALPR data are exempt from disclosure in some - perhaps many, and maybe even most - states.

his surveillance data?

Surely it's Floc's surveillance data, if they're the ones storing and handling it? Did he really believe he (or the city) actually owns that data?

I don't recall the details, but I think he was explaining that the city paid more to avoid Flock reusing the data. Of course governments use third party vendors to store and handle their data all the time, that doesn't necessarily grant license or ownership of the data to those vendors.

My main counterpoint in that conversation was that the public was simply not well-informed enough about these kinds of data ownership and usage agreements to give consent to this scale of surveillance, and from what we're seeing Flock pivoting to, I feel my concerns were well-grounded.

> why should only private actors have that data?

I'm not sure if you consider governments and police to be private actors?

I spoke with a sophisticated ANPR city-wide tracking vendor recently at a conference. From their video showing the system following vehicles in real-time, with detailed movement tracking, speed measurement, lane position, estimating model, age, demographic etc. when they couldn't see the registration plate, from all sorts of vantage points, it looked to me like they would know where basically everyone who drives is at all times as they moved around.

So, as a privacy advocate, I asked them about tracking and knowing where every driver is all the time, and they assured me: "It's ok. We send all this data immediatel;y to the police. The police are responsible for keeping the data safe. They only use it when they decide it's appropriate."

I was there interested in privacy and traffic monitoring, but there was almost nobody to speak with who seemed to think about privacy, except in a checkbox sort of way, e.g. "when you're in public there's no legal right to privacy" and "our systems are fully compliant with data protection".

It is a crime to stalk people. When we catch people doing it, we should stop them.

I was taught many, many times growing up in the U.S. that people had a right to privacy, to free speech, to being considered innocent until proven guilty.

When governmental organizations police the speech of individuals for things that are critical of the regime, we lose our right to free speech.

When they download the contents of your phone when you travel, you lose the right to privacy.

When people are denied a writ of habeas corpus, when they are trafficked to countries that are not from and have never been to, we are considered guilty unless we have people "on the outside" who are capable of fighting for our return.

They aren't even trying to make an argument for this, outside of the cult of personality of the current regime, the belief that He can do no wrong. If you "both-sides" this you allow the trends to continue.

Agree, I would prefer this were not even a thing.

> to be sure there's an argument to made though since you are technically "in public" when driving — your privacy protections might be on shaky legal grounds

I'm curious to hear this argument. When I'm walking around a city, I'm in public as well. But I don't have to tell everybody who I am, and I would find facial recognition cameras spread around the city as a privacy violation.

That's a good point. I am only going on the "expectation of privacy" clause — but perhaps that's only applied to (audible) conversations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_expectation_of_priv...

Biggest abuse would be home burglars. Pick a juicy target, wait till all vehicles are away and strike.

see the novel kiln people and the transparent society essays by David Brin