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Comment by aerostable_slug | Hacker News Reader

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Its a data gathering system. it takes pictures of everything that goes past it so that IF something happens, cops can search back through the system to see if/when a suspect went past that sensor. This sort of thing should be turned off regardless. I don't want my movements recorded and tracked all the time in the off chance someone might do something later. This ICE situation is the perfect example of why these actively passive systems are a threat.

In my home county they've arrested car thieves and recovered vehicles due to real-time Flock hits. It is not simply for forensic purposes.

If it was a bad idea it shouldn't have been installed in the first place. Turning it off now because a few loud people assumed things that weren't true (ICE using the system) is idiotic.

It shouldn't have been installed in the first place, but in real life, sometimes people need a concrete example to realize something others figured out from principles.

There is no concrete example. Nothing actually happened. ICE didn't access the cameras. I feel like I'm the only one who read the article.

The article said University of Washington researchers released a report Oct. 21 showing federal immigration agencies like ICE and Border Patrol had accessed the data of at least 18 Washington cities, often without their police departments’ knowing.

What they have, thankfully, is a concrete example of there being such a thing as an uncivil authority, not a concrete example of their mistake leading to irreparable harm.

Ok, and a real-time-only (as in it literally, physically has no onboard or networked storage and only generates data exactly when it hits a plate that's already flagged, or is false/doesn't match the car and the system to flag a plate requires a warrant) flock system would face vastly less opposition than the fishing-expedition-enabler that currently exists. Yet somehow that's never on the table.

I’d start by being ticked off that my city was burning money deploying a cloud-connected mass surveillance apparatus.

Until someone you love gets abducted, and then you want them to be found right now.

Oh, sure everyone's against the cannibalism of orphans now from the comfort of their arm chair. But just wait until this implausible thing happens, that occurs to a small fraction of people ever. Then you'll all see.

Until the government decides someone you love needs to get disappeared, and then you want to provide no aid to them.

This technology swings both ways and as such is too dangerous to exist. We have plenty of other means to instantly and broadly raise awareness about abductions.

There's a reason we don't have people recently affected by a tragedy write policy regarding that tragedy, in their heightened emotional state.

There will always be a million "what-ifs" that can be used to justify the erosion of personal liberties and privacy.

Flock doesn't fight crime, it documents the travel of people without a reason.

It and other ALPR systems real-time alert on things like stolen cars. In my home county they have arrested and convicted criminals due to this. That is fighting crime, by definition.

If it was such a bad idea, they shouldn't have installed them in Redmond. Turning them off now because some people assumed things that weren't true is idiocy and sets a bad precedent.

Yeah, but. The side-effect of catching criminals and protecting the children is that they also provide a searchable database of everyone's historical travel habits.

It's my opinion that our historical ideas of expectation of privacy when in public spaces are incompatible with the current state of surveillance technology. Sure, everyone should expect that they might be recognized by an acquaintance when out in public, but I don't think it follows that our entire past history should be available at any time in the future.

If we made a mistake, we should fix it.

Sometimes it takes an actual bad outcome for people to realize that the potential problems weren’t theoretical.

But there wasn't an actual bad outcome. Did anyone read the article? It was all a coincidence.

The bad outcome is now a much more real possibility than before, and very front and center.

And AI based "suspicious movements of vehicles".

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