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If we are to maintain our liberty, the vast power such a surveillance apparatus should either not exist or only be accessible through an adversarial court system (i.e. a search warrant).
(1) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/how-cops-are-using-flo...
(2) https://local12.com/news/nation-world/police-chief-gets-caug...
(3) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flock-safety-and-texas...
Everyone wants "privacy" but nobody is willing to give up the government's ability to cheaply go after whatever class of petty deviant they personally hate to get it. So we get this stupid situation where the sum total of the political will is enough to keep these programs alive even if the cumulative result is indefensible.
The HN demographics are a prime example. They'll complain about data dragnets in the ICE thread and coo about how savvy the IRS or the EPA or whatever other agency they like are for using their own data haystack to comb for deviants. Now multiply by every other demographic and every other issue. That's why this stuff sticks around.
If people had some goddamn principals and said "this is wrong even if causes I care about are advanced by it" over time politicians would get elected in part by pandering to those people and at the margin some amount of shit would get done. But they don't, so it doesnn't.
This would move society in a positive direction.
Making the data itself a Taboo, just to avoid jailing bad cops, does not.
We are truly creating the chains that will bind us by allowing these kinds of tools to exist. And for what? We managed for generations to do policing without LPRs. Are we so drowning in crime that we should create universal surveillance as a solution?
Not only are we not drowning in it, virtually all crime is at historic lows. The world has never been safer, the problem is every bad thing now is reported on every major news feed and shot across every social media algorithm. People have paradoxically never been safer, and never been more terrified.
And none of this is helped at all by greaseball politicians who use fear of the Other to line their pockets and increase their power.
Cops, who commit domestic violence that rate at least twice that of the general public, misuse ALPR's to stalk women.
But I will accept an example of any punishment for any misuse as a sign that such punishment could actually happen.
just say you're not being serious and save us the time.
Cops are not going away. And we're not going to hide from them through Cyber-Libertarianism.
We can either accept the status quo or, yes, push for more accountability from the agents of the state.
Like we did for over 230 years? I'm not entirely sure why you choose to call that period before vast ALPR networks "cyber-libertarianism", I'm not a serious historian as perhaps you are but that's a label for the first few centuries of American history I haven't encountered before. But it sorta feels like we somehow made it through it and in fact did pretty well in much of it? Despite us simply forbidding cops from using certain tools or techniques. So what precisely do you think has changed such that if we don't enable an unaccountable panopticon, it'll mean things will be worse? And have you maybe considered that we should pursue your noble dream of "more accountability from agents of the state" first, and see success BEFORE we give them vast new powers? Like, how about the new powers after that works?
(1) Entities creating these data sets should require licenses to do so. (2) Creation of real-time location data sets would itself be a criminal offense without a license. (3) Data would need to be encrypted and stored according to a set of best practices. Failure to do so would be a criminal offense. (4) Access to data would be available through a court, ideally with the judge literally controlling access to the cryptographic keys. (5) Accessing the data without permission would be a criminal offense. (6) You would probably need to add civil penalties not subject to sovereign immunity. Otherwise cops would just ignore the law about unauthorized access and then also fail to prosecute themselves.
Or you know we could just make them illegal altogether (including the ones the cell phone company creates for advertisers). Much simpler!
Whether there is an expectation of privacy can't be what matters, what matters has to be whether the total effect allows a level of control that is dangerous or might have chilling effects on speech or on participation in things that are controversial.
That's not what the killed legislation did, though.
Along a similar line, speed limits should be reduced to 35mph maximum for non-emergency traffic, it would save thousands of pointless deaths every year.
But the small harm of time wasted in traffic is -worth- the. sacrifice of thousands of lives, as it turn out.
Nor when I pass a flock camera.
You are boxing with phantoms, I think.
You are not, or at least, you think you are not.
How far removed are we from the federal government revoking the passports of everyone who attended a No Kings rally, anywhere in the country?
Many trans people have already had their passports revoked, for some there is no path to obtaining one again, and it is deeply unsettling to me.
Do you think it is Courts and the looming Midterms; or are they just flummoxed by the lack of good surveillance data?
It's really a fantasy and a silly Taboo.
Our Democracy will live or die by politics, not silly rules on data collection at the margins.
Not a fantasy and the taboo has already been broken.
While losing access to global entry without due process isn’t the same thing as revoking a passport, it’s awfully close.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-30/minnesota...
Mass surveillance at scale is not a trivial problem to solve, but Flock is both making it happen and making it clear that they are fine with enabling bad actors to take advantage of it.
Like maybe the "cheap cameras everywhere" part is novel + important, but "central data store" truly is not.
Slippery reasoning like this is how silly taboos get perpetuated.
Plus, data in FBI custody is nominally subject to laws and oversight in a way that privately held data is not.
At this point, the only way to preserve democracy would be to mostly dissolve the federal system, leaving states as democracies without the heavy hand and massive financial leverage from above.
States are closer to the right size for democracy to be resistant, but I think we’d need city-states of the metropolises, and big states like California would possibly need to subdivide.
Yet. The jewish people had no problem that the government had detailed lists including the religion. It helped the Nazis killing many jews. Total surveillance will always be abused like every other invasive law.
First it’s against child abuse and terrorist, then organized crime, then crimes like theft, then littering and jaywalking, then swearing in public
Or was it the Genocidal Intent?
The first mass killings, on the Eastern Front, made no use of such sophistication and had no need of it.
It's always Politics.... Terrible ones in the case of WW2 Germany.
You‘ll never know when the next group with bad intent get access to surveillance data.
Every crime organization would be glad to have the opportunity to find witnesses in witness protection. Was a lot harder back then.
In places where the germans had access to identity information survival rates among jews was much lower. The Danish government refused to provide data about Jewish citizens to the occupying germans, and simply didn't comply in general with anti Jewish efforts. 99% of Danish jews survived the war.
In the Netherlands, where there was initially a policy of compliance, the occupying germans got their hands on the lists of jews and only 25% of Dutch jews survived.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
— Benjamin Franklin
And yes, I will wave to the SF speed cameras I pass today.
Would also help prevent and solve crimes. No privacy on public roads.
There is also something like proportionality.
Of course we have to strike a balance. We just disagree on where "cameras on a public road" fall on the scale.
If someone proved he can’t handle a car you wouldn’t give him a truck, would you?
This would indeed be the best outcome. A framework of accountability we all trust and modern tools to do their job.
When someone with access-- potentially LEO but the access set is much larger-- uses the data to stalk and harass someone you'll usually never know that the ALPR camera was the data source.
So its easy to overstate the contribution and understate the harm.
But if you talk a step back you can see the dramatic change being made to our world: making it impossible to go about your life without being constantly tracked, cataloged, and having your history made available to who knows who, for who knows what purpose, for who knows how long (but probably forever).
This is a load bearing component of your argument and it seems thin.
From my perspective, you are synthesizing a harm while ignoring the clear and concrete contribution.
In fact, the only mention is via the police PR department, which presumably has an interest in making these cameras palatable to the public. There's nothing to say that a regular CCTV camera couldn't have been just as effective, or that normal police work wouldn't have gotten the job done ("We found him by his license plate" isn't exactly cutting edge applications of an AI panopticon, nor does it require cameras at all.)
This is a clear violation of the 4th amendment.