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Comment by LordGrey | Hacker News Reader

Coincidentally, a nearby county has just announced that they have begun installing new Flock cameras [0].

Their stated reason is: "Along with the cameras being used to reduce crime, the sheriff’s office said they may also be used for public safety concerns, including AMBER Alerts and Silver Alerts."

The cameras are good when we're all on the happy path, but as soon as a bad actor gets involved, all of that surveillance won't look so great. History shows that the odds of that happening are decidedly non-zero.

EDIT: Searching for some info on the grant referenced in the article, it appears that a county must match 20% of the grant amount; one example is [1]. I'm sure this looks like a great deal to county officials.

[0] https://www.ketk.com/news/crime-public-safety/new-traffic-ca...

[1] https://www.beltontexas.gov/news_detail_T11_R1277.php

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Small counties generate huge revenues with traffic cameras.

I think reducing crime and road safety is an excuse.

There are true innovators in the traffic camera space but i think counties often choose vendors who give them best ROI.

Can you elaborate on true innovators? No shade, but I have a hard time conceptualizing what innovation would look like in this space.

Traffic camera along various sensors for emission control, sound and noise control, gunshot detection etc. to name a few.

Seat belt detection, phone detection, lane violations etc. at the application layer.

I can talk about Sensysgatso, where I used to work. They have quite some tech-forward platform.

> Small counties generate huge revenues with traffic cameras.

Whether or not that is true, I suspect it is, the best way to avoid fines for breaking traffic regulations is to not break traffic regulations. They can't make anything from you that way if you do.

Until they start changing speed limits, adjusting the timing on yellow lights, or just saying you ran a stop sign when you didn't and - oops! - they happened to have their dashcam off or their car angled so the actual intersection was just out of view.

If they are that corrupt then you have problems beyond traffic fines. Get your own dash cam and such so you can prove they are lying. No, in an ideal world you shouldn't have to, but if you have a corrupt police force you aren't living in an ideal world.

The odds are 100% that it will be abused.

Because they already are

Can you name just one incident of abuse?

https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article29105...

A Sedgwick, Kansas, police chief used Flock Safety license plate readers to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend’s vehicles 228 times over four-plus months and used his police vehicle to follow them out of town, according to a city official and a report released this week by the agency that oversees police certifications.

Edward Snowden. Everything after that is a no-brainer.

Hell, everything after Room 641A is a no-brainer.

Snowden, a true American patriot.

Before posting that you couldn't Google the Milwaukee cop who got busted for abusing Flock camera access? From just a week ago?

If you want an absolute torrent of abuse search for cops running the IDs of their exes. That's why it's dead certain that Flock cameras will be routinely abused.

So then we need better access controls, and apparently the people who abuse it to stalk exes and such are already being prosecuted.

Doesn’t seem like the technology itself is the core issue here to me.

The only way you could have moved this goal post faster is if you had edited your original comment.

I’m a problem solver.

Police in the US very rarely face accountability for misconduct.

If a technology, backdoor or capability exists, it's not a question of if it will be abused, but rather when, how, and by whom.

Stop being obtuse.

Technophobic take tbh

No, this is an entirely pragmatic take. Show me where it's not been proven correct.

It's in fact an argument in favor of strong encryption, privacy by design, and security by default.

So you think you can solve police accountability and keep the cameras? I admire that level of ambition. Have you got the Nobel prize nominations lined up already?

> Along with the cameras being used to reduce crime, the sheriff’s office said they may also be used for public safety concerns, including AMBER Alerts and Silver Alerts.

Hot take: AMBER alert is a way to keep the public paranoid about child abduction by strangers, an evil but extremely rare act, and turn their paranoia into support for law enforcement. It may not be the intended purposes, but the (real) purpose of a system is what it does.

It is no surprise that Flock, like other parties pushing for the erosion of privacy and personal freedom, are following the same playbook. Don't you want your kid (or your doggo) to get home safe? If you don't let us spy on you your literally supporting child abductors. Checkmate libertarians.

The reality of AMBER alert is they overwhelmingly come from custody dispute cases where the child's safety is not in jeopardy, because they tend to be the only kind of cases where they know enough about the "abductor" to issue an alert that is not just "look for a man driving a white van." The reality of child abuse is you should be infinitely more worried about authority figures dealing with the child — parents, relatives, teachers, pastors, coaches and yes, the police — than strangers driving unmarked white vans.

> the (real) purpose of a system is what it does

I agree with the rest of what you wrote but the quote is an overly cynical tired cliche when applied in a blanket manner. There are specific situations involving bad faith actors where it is directly relevant, and there are also times where it can be a useful observation about the impact of perverse incentives that build on top of unintended consequences.

But the way you're using it there it's no better than other politically charged nonsensical slogans.

> Hot take: AMBER alert is a way to keep the public paranoid about child abduction by strangers, an evil but extremely rare act

I thought they were mostly custody style kidnappings anyway.

They almost entirely are, 90% plus. And they're incredibly rare even including those, which you shouldn't.

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