A walking tour of surveillance infrastructure in Seattle (2020) | Hacker News Reader

A walking tour of surveillance infrastructure in Seattle (2020)

coveillance.org

415 pointseustoria318 comments

I think this is just the new normal.

My car was stolen in Seattle and it was found with the person driving it when he was pulled over by police. In the car he had paperwork with his name on it, a weapon, and his work uniform in the trunk with a name badge (he was a security guard - lol) along with a neighborhood witness.

Despite a mountain of evidence, the prosecutors declined to press charges because without direct video evidence of him stealing the car, they would not get a jury to convict, because jurors in Seattle have become accustom to thinking that the only way to overcome reasonable doubt is to have it on video. And even that often isn't enough...

You know, sometimes, you just gotta get to work and the busses just aren't going to get you there in time. /s

I was in a jury pool not in Seattle for a guy that already pled guilty for GTA, so it was just the sentencing part. The defense attorney asked if I thought it might be possible to sentence the minimum. I said yes. The prosecutor asked if I thought I could give the the maximum sentence of 99 years. I said for stealing a car? I was bounced from the pool. So maybe juries in Seattle have had their fair share of prosecutorial shenanigans as well???

I thought jurors don't decide the sentence length, just the (not) guilty verdict.

Are you implying they were testing whether you're willing to let the judge use the entire span of sentencing available in law? Otherwise I'm not sure what you mean that you were bounced from the jury because the defense lawyer wanted you to be fine with 99 years in prison for his client.

Nope. The jury was to give the sentence. This depends on jurisdiction when the jury does the sentencing. Capital murder cases are a famous example. I guess I was lucky that my local jurisdiction said GTA was worth of a jury sentencing??

The defense attorney was looking for jurors sympathetic to giving his client the least time possible. The prosecutor was looking for people to throw the book at the defendant and be open to maximum sentencing. Because I was not, he struck me.

It seems that the selection process optimizes for either liars or dumb people who are easiest to emotionally manipulate. If you appear very reflective and capable of complex thought, you're a risk.

You could've said, you're open to whatever sentence, you make no prior commitment and will decide for whatever sentence is appropriate based on the court proceedings and the law as given by the judge. But they would have called bullshit on that too, they are good at seeing who is a difficult person to work with from their POV.

It's a very broken system and I'm glad to live in a civil law country. The power imbalance is huge. The lawyers are incredibly well prepared regarding tricks around jury psychology but the jury are selected for being the most naive people possible. If you seem too much of a smartass to them who knows their tricks, you're out.

> It seems that the selection process optimizes for either liars or dumb people who are easiest to emotionally manipulate.

It does. Having expert knowledge is a deal breaker too. I actually want to serve on a jury but because I am unwilling to lie to a judge I’ve been bounced everytime when I am asked if I would believe the police testimony and I reply with “that would depend on if they were a Brady cop”

I once saw the livestream of jury selection in a big trial and read up on the whole thing and it seemed like such an obviously weak point of the whole process. The whole language around the concepts that underpin it seem totally ignorant of human psychology and pretend that humans are great at self reflection, won't hide their motivations etc. Like asking whether you're able to put aside X and Y from influencing your judgment, and if you say yes, that's good, if no, you're out.

Of course it's impossible to look into people's minds, but it's clear that the kludge is a result of historical push and pull of interests and a kind of truce and compromise they could arrive at that people still find convincing enough in the end, but also practical for the lawyers. Like, I understand this isn't easy, you don't one one highly qualified person dominate everyone else, even if just subconsciously. You want to encourage all jurors to feel that they have an equal input into the process. It's certainly not a system that's engineered for finding truth, and much more concerned with pretense in favor of the appearance of truth. A realist retort would be that pursuing a truth-finding system is only possible in utopia idealized situations, so going with the adversarial system is the best bet we have for getting some acceptable balanced compromise.

The jury system works because there’s 12 and people are generally honest.

In many cases as the defendant you can opt for a bench (judge) trial. Jury’s usually a better gamble overall.

so cameras are useless, but everywhere

Right, just the worst of all possible worlds. Computer generated video is going to make this mess a whole lot worse too.

This anecdote may be true, but is certainly not representative of current life in America.

Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

Millions in prison, massively disproportionate to the rest of the world.

If jurors in Seattle have become skeptical of the claims that police and prosecutors make without evidence, the blame should fall squarely on decades of innocent people being sent to jail and minor infractions sending people to prison for years due to police lying, fabricating evidence, destroying evidence and prosecutors filing charges for far more severe crimes than what really occurred.

You're fortunate that your only experience of the failure of policing in America is in the most recent awakening against the unreliability of police and prosecutors. For many families, their lives have been destroyed after watching their loved ones be brutalized in prisons because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were victimized by the police and prosecutors.

It's a large country with subtle differencies across the states but this story came to mind immediately https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48249747

The majority of people in prisons in the US are incarcerated for violent crime. 64% of violent criminals are rearrested compared to 40% of nonviolent criminals. It really looks like the US is being somewhat efficient here and just has a lot of crime.

In my hope that violent criminals serve longer sentences than nonviolent criminals, perhaps there is a correlation between time-served and recidivism..?

Living in a workingclass neighborhood, many of my most-favorite neighbors are felons of the nonviolent variety – nobody wants back in to their old prisonplanet – just keep looking forwards.

Theres obviously going to be a correlation, but it may be because the state effectively gives more evil criminals longer sentences

Yeah, the longer you're in, the less employable you are, and are more likely to reoffend. Our prison systems do fuckall for rehabilitation because in general, the public sentiment is "lock them up and throw away the key, I hope they get raped, prison isn't supposed to be fun". Our prison systems are basically set up amplify crime. It's good for the for profit owners, and conservatives eat up the dehumanization of it all.

Very few US prisons are for profit.

Like I said in my other comment, some are more likely to reoffend because their prison time, but other were already more likely to reoffend, especially multiple felons who commit an extremely high percent of all crimes.

>Very few US prisons are for profit.

Just under 10% – which is certainly a minority, but still enough value that Michael Bury (Big Short investorguy) once had an entire fiscal quarter where his only net-increase positions were in for-profit prison operators.

Lots of money and facilities in private prisons, particularly in This South.

> conservatives eat up the dehumanization of it all

One could argue that's really dehumanizing is the callous disregard the system displays for the victims of such repeat violent offenders.

One such violent repeat offender wrote a book about his experience helping build Leavenworth Fed while serving time at Leavenworth State – he would eventually serve additional time at this newly-constructed facility.

Warning, I am not linking to the book (it's on Amazon) because no amount of #TriggerWarning can prepare you for the mind of P - A - N - Z - R - A - M [the name of the non-fiction collection of this prisoner's personal letters].

When Mr. P was asked what made him such a monster, he wrote honestly and practically about the upbringing of a serial-killing rapist. Mr. P's EVIL puts JWGacey in the safehouse.

> Millions in prison, massively disproportionate to the rest of the world.

I recall a comparison that was done between incarceration in the US versus the UK, and the defining difference was length of sentences. The rates were otherwise similar, but the US justice system gives out sentences something like twice as long on average.

> This anecdote may be true, but is certainly not representative of current life in America.

I live in Baltimore, where people have very negative attitudes towards police because of everything you describe.

Nevertheless, the perception here is that it's impossible to get police to act on nuisance crime, or really anything short of murder, even with video evidence. There's also a perception that it that this is a recent shift and represents the police retaliating after being prosecuted for the murder of Freddie Gray.

I rather doubt the point of all this stuff is that kind of crime.

Then which kind? If you mean political resistance, that's easier to surveil from phones and chat apps and gps, not cameras.

Why not all of them?

It would be easier not to build Prism but they did that didn't they

It was just a little baby GTA

My state recently passed a law (similar to Texas') which allows people to defend with lethal force certain property (beyond just their vehicle, which was already allowed).

Tennessee-wide, it goes into effect July 1st – and is long-overdue. I live in a working-class neighborhood and we do whatever we can to keep the trouble elsewhere (i.e. not here). Wish guns didn't exist, but until they don't stay safe thugz.

What's your hypothesis on why Texas has a much higher auto theft rate than Tennessee, given that they long had the policy you seem to believe is a remedy?

Eh, texas gets all that borderly goodness the liberal north dishes out so freely, but avoids for itself ?

I'm just wondering why this Wild West stuff seems to be neither effective, since Texas has auto theft rates well above national averages, nor necessary, considering that Florida lacks the statute and has auto theft rates well below national averages.

It doesn't work but it does let people fantasize about being allowed to shoot someone to death legally.

Well there are working alternatives to that:

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

Yes, I suppose we could in fact do corrupt bargains with criminal groups and then throw a bunch of people in jail without worrying too much about whether they're guilty or not. Bukele isn't the first person in the world to think of that. Mussolini had a similar approach.

I have actually killed, before. Given similar circumstances: would, again. I am a free man, walking among you; they let me carry a gun, still.

Self defense ought'a be allowable, and is a deterrent (even if only "statistically" ... which it is). Recent enhancing legal protections represent the shifting tides as our economy wavers into "survival" mode – ¿perhaps a Depression 3.0? – certainly it's bleak here in the workingclasshood.

Do you have any questions for your reality shaping, this morning?

I can't say someone gleeful and proud of having killed is exactly changing my mind.

Any parent would have been proud of what I've accomplished.

Do you actually have any questions, or just angry?

No, I don't have any questions, nor did I ever claim to. Fishing for questions was your idea.

I have a question for you: were somebody about to abduct your [hypothetical?] child/wife, would you consider use of lethal force to prevent such aforementioned tragedy (whether by yourself, or by a third-party [e.g: police])?

Florida is surrounded by ocean and you can’t drive stolen cars to Cuba.

Texas is bordered by Mexico and you can drive stolen cars to Mexico.

Also if we’re talking gundefend shouldn’t we be comparing carjacking stats?

After adjusting for socioeconomic factors auto theft in the US is pretty much a straight gradient based on "how quickly can it be in mexico"

Arizona, New Mexico and Socal have pretty high auto theft rates as well.

So do Washington, DC and Colorado but those don't really seem to fit your theory.

This would be my answer, having grown up in Texas just hours from the border.

----

Now that I live 1,000+ miles-more, inland, I definitely keep more of these opinions to myself – but decades of Texceptionalism (indoctrination, the Tejas way) definitely affects one's opinion on proximity to Mexico.

Well, for one Texas has a port and a border with Mexico. Car theft is almost exclusively for export to other countries, particularly South America and Africa.

You can see how seriously stopping that crime is being taken by the anecdote I'm replying to, can't you?

Your forgetting the nonsense a defense attorney will conjure.

How do you know he didn't buy the car from the thief?

We had a similar issue with the hit and run of my grandfather: even though video evidence found the car and later saw the suspect leave the car, the detectives worried a defence attorney would argue someone else may have been driving at the time the accident (e.g his wife), and therefore "beyond reasonable doubt" might be questioned.

In the end, the detectives managed to collect enough evidence to seek a conviction, and the experience taught me a lot of "unreasonable" doubts are often considered "reasonable."

Bank records are readily available, large cash transactions as well.

Need a subpoena/warrant for those records. Don't know the intricacies of that, but I doubt a judge would grant the warrant unless they had the person dead-to-rights and were going after a bigger fish higher up on the chain.

Warrants were never hard to get for a good-faith case and increasingly ignored for others.

Well then he's in possession of stolen property, which is also a crime.

> How do you know he didn't buy the car from the thief?

If you're caught with stolen property, particularly a vehicle that has a title, I think the burden is on you to prove you thought you bought the car legitimately. Show a bill-of-sale, signed title, or any other evidence of a transaction. Particularly when that evidence includes identifying information of the seller.

This is a misunderstanding of the American justice system at the most basic level. The burden is never on the defendant to prove their innocence. If the prosecution can’t prove that you stole it or knew it was stolen when you bought it, you aren’t guilty.

> The burden is never on the defendant to prove their innocence.

False. Look up "affirmative defense".

That's separate and has no bearing on the burden of proof, which is ALWAYS on the prosecution. It is legitimately shocking that educated Americans can be ignorant of the most basic tenet of our justice system, the presumption of innocence.

I guess no crime can ever occur then, since you can never prove it wasn't consensual?

Oh you were caught in 4k walking down the street smashing every windshield with a crowbar. But how can they prove all the car owners didn't pay you to do that for a film project?

I have no idea what you want me to say. The presumption of innocence is the most basic, fundamental, indisputable element of the US justice system, it dates to the Anglo-Saxons, and it's part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: https://www.prosecutorintegrity.org/innocence/cornerstone/

The prosecution has the burden of proof to establish the basic accusation, and the defendant is always entitled to offer the negative defense of "I didn't do it". For instance, if I'm accused of killing Paul, I can always say "I didn't kill Paul" and the prosecution has the burden of proof to say that I did. On the other hand, if my defense is that I killed Paul in self defense, the burden of proof is on me to show that my actions satisfied the legal definition of self defense in my state.

The property is subject to forfeit ('caveat emptor' in law), but you have to be proven criminal beyond any reasonable doubt.

> Your forgetting the nonsense a defense attorney will conjure.

> How do you know he didn't buy the car from the thief?

How is that nonsense? Possessing stolen property doesn't prove you stole it. That would among other issues ruin the 2nd hand market.

Because most people can’t map their idea of obvious to the various levels of proof different courts have, and “beyond reasonable doubt” is a much higher standard than the colloquial English means.

This is why you also charge possession of stolen property, and not only theft

My brother bought a stolen motorcycle once. He checked with California DMV before purchasing it, and IIRC, the DMV issued him a title. Several months later, the local PD came over, asked him a lot of questions, took the motorcycle and let him go. Of course, he couldn't get in touch with the seller again, so he was just out the money.

Stolen property doesn't come with a sticker indicating it's stolen.

Doesn't carfax help with this? Ensuring the person it's registered to is the one who's selling it?

Checking with the title registration agency (California DMV) would have seemed to help, but it didn't. Not sure engaging a 3rd party service would help either.

Carfax on an old enough car seems pretty silly too, I dunno.

How did that happen?

The thieves stole the car, got a replacement title, and then officially transferred it to your brother?

I’ve bought and sold a couple of cars when I was younger and more foolish. Not even sure had contracts, just remember an exchange of cashier check and signed title, followed with a form to the state that the vehicle was purchased.

Man, never going to do that again!

I guess yeah. I never heard about it again, after the PD picked up the bike.

Maybe there's a stolen vehicle registry to check now... If it wasn't stolen recently, anyway.

I wonder if you can sue him in civic court, could teach him a lesson.

The lesson would be that you spend a great deal of money upfront, go through a tremendous amount of stress, end up with a judgment against someone who doesn't have the money to pay it anyways?

Small claims maybe to recoup towing/recovery fees, but a civil case? No way. That shit will make you go gray quick.

How do you know it was a Honda?

We should let the thieves off the hooks so they'd vote for us again and again.

-- politicians

> because jurors in Seattle have become accustom to thinking that the only way to overcome reasonable doubt is to have it on video.

Who serves on a jury frequently enough to become accustomed to anything? I've only been mailed for jury duty a few times, and every time when I check the night before I'm waived out.

I think a more accurate way to phrase this is that potential jurors in Seattle have grown to believe etc.

How does that happen? Television. They see the police pulling up surveillance videos or using high tech lab technologies on television shows and assume that these fictional techniques are the norm. See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect

Television courtrooms are half of it, the other is social media. Tiktok and Youtube and Facebook will show you videos all day long with notable events that were pulled from security cameras, or uploaded by bystanders with cell phones, or found in the background of videos that were intended to capture something else.

The other side of the equation is that surveillance infrastructure is already nigh omnipresent, as described by the attached article. A juror who gets alerts every day from their Ring doorbell, who drives a Tesla with an integrated dashcam, and parks in a lot covered by their apartment's security cameras, can be easily persuaded that camera surveillance should be the standard of proof.

Ok, so, what was the evidence he was the one who stole the car?

If you're wondering what is being discussed in the meetings about whether or not more surveillance should be deployed, at the city and county levels, this is it.

Crime isn't being prosecuted, the criminals know it, and this breeds more crime (and more criminals). Even when they are imprisoned and incarcerated, they're probably in jail for somewhere between 24 hours and a few weeks. They know pretty much everyone else in jail, so it's almost like going to a camp reunion for them.

There used to be BOLO "be on the look out" lists with grids of mugshots passed around various informal circles so that businesses and organizations can better protect themselves from crime. But, mugshots are no longer public, so they can't even do that anymore. It ends up creating more profiling of a person based on their appearance.

And... more surveillance.

Honest question, do we know why crime isn’t being prosecuted anymore?

I’ve noticed where I live this definitely seems to be the case and has a two fold effect, police aren’t even bothering to enforce laws because when they do the city/county refuses to prosecute and then criminals are getting wise to this and escalating their crimes. Previously where I live there would be violent crimes but generally in the early hours (2-4am) but in the last 5 years those same crimes have been happening more and more during the normal daytime hours (8am-7pm)

There's a lot here to unpack - and it's incredibly nuanced.

Crime in most countries is on the decline, there have been "blips" or "spikes", but the reality is that crime is decreasing.

When people talk about communities not being policed, there's also multiple things at play - partly it's perception, which is subjective, and not very reliable (back in my dayyyyyy), and partly it's about focus.

As for prosecution - most countries are realising that prosecution leading to incarceration is counter productive - as the GP touched on, prison becomes a University for criminals, as well as a record being prohibitive in getting individuals "on the right track" - that is, they become more isolated and excluded, leaving them with fewer choices when it comes to behaviour.

I'm middle aged, and for my entire life, the same drum has been beaten - crime is rising, children don't respect their elders, youth are getting away with crime, there should be harsher punishments, and so on.

But the hard facts have shown otherwise (as to /why/ crime is dropping, that's a genuine subject for debate, for example the removal of lead in petrol is now thought to be one of the key reasons that violent crime is dropping)

Crime statistics are on the decline. It's harder to tell whether actual crime is on the decline.

Anecdata isn't going to get us any closer.

Statistics gathered the way the are is all we have

Are the statistics accurate?

Jeff Bezos said, "I have a saying, which is when the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right."

https://lexfridman.com/jeff-bezos-transcript/#chapter6_amazo...

I have a saying - if you think the data is bad because it doesn't match your narrative, go out and prove you have better data collection methods.

Anecdata is well known to be problematic.

> Anecdata is well known to be problematic.

Show me the data that backs that claim.

It's always been that way for me... is that not enough, you want actual data?

If its not true, then my anecdote that its true should suffice to make it true, no data required Q.E.D.

But.... you can get statistics on anything you like, if you are prepared to fund (or defund) them. If you pay to see the relation between crime and how many cats there are in a neighbourhood, you can get that! Ie statistics themselves are part of the game.

So, we believe nothing?

Or, we demand evidence that what you assert about this set of statistics is accurate

Given that you can just throw money at the solution you want to engineer, and create the illusion of science, perhaps believing nothing is a better position to be in. At least you're not buying into what is essentially just another avenue of corporate or governance marketing.

And sorry for bringing information to your attention. Just wait till you hear about how corporates fund law.

How do we know that your cynicism isn't funded by corporates in an attempt to undermine the real science?

You don't. How do you know your trust in corporates isn't an understandably conditioned response, given 13+ years of education?

That's weird - where can you point to me having any such trust?

I'm presuming that is the case, because you are questioning my straightforward and obvious suggestion that funding by corporations can provide whatever statistics you like. Feel free to explain your actual position if you want.

Thank you for admitting your logic has no basis in fact - which was clearly your approach when looking at your rejection of data.

Let me know when you are actually interested in science, facts, or logic.

You are putting words in my mouth. And not answering anything.

I made a statement, have defended it, asked your position, and in order to sign off with a bad faith message you put words in my mouth (that I admitted my logic has no basis in fact).

I presumed based on your complete and utter disregard for facts, logic, and scientific data, that it was all you understood, and it appears i was correct.

"Presumed". Awesome, dude.

"I'm presuming that is the case" - Veri lami

> the reality is that crime is decreasing

This is the problem with assuming stats == reality. The ground reality often does not match the overall stats.

Overall, crime seems to be decreasing. But this doesn’t help in areas like mine, where the population is growing, taxes are increasing, and crime is rising, yet budgets for adequate LE/justice resources seem to be decreasing or not keeping pace with crime growth. This seems to be fairly common in growing areas of the western US.

I'm not qualified to answer, but I regularly hear the following in the US:

- Not enough (LE|DA|jail) funding or staffing or space.

- "We want to focus on violent crimes". I have a whole rant about this, watching violent criminals/rapists going through revolving doors.

- Use of diversion and "restorative justice" programs, which clearly do not work for certain classes of criminals with very long rap sheets, but here we are.

> Use of diversion and "restorative justice" programs, which clearly do not work for certain classes of criminals with very long rap sheets, but here we are.

But they clearly work on others, so they’re probably fine.

> Not enough (LE|DA|jail) funding or staffing or space

This is a solvable problem if you’re willing to pay taxes on it. I think it’s a good thing because newer facilities and more staff probably leads to more humane treatment of prone in jail. We could also stop routinely jailing people who are awaiting trial, too.

> Not enough (LE|DA|jail) funding or staffing or space.

How is it possible that there isn't enough funding/staffing? Budgets have increased, ballooned beyond inflation in many cases they are the biggest line item in a city's budget.

The popularity of the ACAB meme did not exactly endear the local populace with the local police in more liberal cities.

Perhaps the police should not have earned the label if they didn't want it applied.

The problem is the police and the State are allies in the end, and the State under liberal democracy is supposed to be the mechanism by which the police are reformed / reigned in. Now you get insanities like governors sending in police and national guard to support a federal invasion force to defend a concentration camp the locals are protesting against.

https://truthout.org/articles/new-jersey-governor-acquiesces...

It's intentional on the part of the prosecutors, and the billionaire who funds their campaigns. I don't know what their actual motivations are--probably some combination of ideological derangement and ulterior motive. They just don't believe in prosecuting most ordinary criminals.

So you're saying that the government engineers the situation (more crime) in order to justify the solution (more surveillance) that they already intended. Once the surveillance is in place, they would then clear the blockage (start prosecuting crime again) which will be a big win for their solution (more surveillance).

So the whole thing is actually about greater control of the law-abiding (not decreasing crime), and how to engineer the circumstances to get the public to accept the unacceptable.

My wife was on a murder jury in Baltimore that convicted on the strength of video evidence. She was surprised at just how much of it there was.

The amount of resources brought to bear on a murder is way above what will be brought for a stolen car.

For those they likely won’t even have a cop call the local businesses.

The stolen property in the story in the above comment was recovered. I don’t see how this justifies more surveillance that is likely to be abused.

Do you think if stolen property is eventually recovered, in some condition, it's "no harm, no foul?" Or, maybe it would be beneficial for society if theft didn't happen in the first place?

This is such a strange reactionary take to blame Seattle jurors for this.

I agree that this should have resulted in charges, but every cop in Seattle wears a body camera. Even if your theory was correct (it isn't), they would actually have video evidence of this person driving your car without an explanation after you reported it stolen.

I suspect that there is more to this story that either you don't know, or you aren't telling us, because your logic here is very flawed.

That's footage of them driving it, not footage of them stealing it.

I don’t understand how video evidence from a mass surveillance network would have helped here. They found your car without it! Shouldn’t your issue be with the prosecutor, and thus your ineffective local government?

Otherwise, what’s to stop them from just telling you video evidence isn’t enough, because jurors have become accustom to thinking that video evidence can be faked by vindictive cops?

It’s political. The same thing is happening with marijuana. A state legalizes it and then functional junkies show up from conservative states to smoke it in doors. Places like Colorado have laws to regulate it but they don’t. Police and judges follow suit because mayors don’t want to create a precedent that would scare potheads. This keeps the drug money coming in and crime stats low. It’s crazy because regulation is a liberal practice but they’re just not being enforced and no new explicate regulations are being written which is a conservative tactic. All of this emboldens criminal use of marijuana under the pretense of preventing persecution of drug addicts by dressing them up as medication recipients.

If the state legalized it then it’s not a crime as far as the state is concerned. The feds still have it illegal but states are not required to enforce or even help federal law enforcement to enforce their own laws. They can choose to do so but it’s not an obligation.

Your comment is coming from the perspective that they are criminals because you don’t like the activity, not because they broke the law. Lobby your state representatives and run an activist campaign to make it illegal again if that’s how you feel.

Even if a state legalized marijuana it’s still illegal to possess a lot of it, to sell it without a license, and can violate tort, municipal, state and federal laws about drug smoke outdoors or indoors. It’s not my opinion, it’s regulation based on scientific evidence to protect public health. A lot of this is understood in California but cash poor states with huge budge problems look the other way. Potheads know this, they use these facts to pressure cities and states to take their dirty money. Since the revenue from taxing marijuana isn’t going to K-12 schools a lot of locals are getting tired of the bad money coming from pot. It’s a trade off like legalizing gambling but with no benefits. Smokers make up a fraction of the total population so you’re going to see pushback very soon.

Then have pushback, that’s how democracy is supposed to work. If your complaint is that enforcement isn’t 100% perfect then you’ll find most laws are lacking.

I say this as someone who also hates public pot smokers but I’m not talking about them like they are “dirty money”. People commonly want to do something with negative externalities. Enforcing regulation against that is a tradeoff between cost and benefit.

Right, not enforcing laws is criminal. It’s like you’re agreeing with me but you’re depressed and apathetic about it. It’s not just me, you see it all over social media. People are grossed out by potheads. I grew up with hippies and didn’t have a problem with it until normies started abusing it. Legalizing drugs or gambling is a trade off, it’s dirty money. Politicians know this, they have meetings about how high crime will go up afterwards. Again It’s just a fact, it’s not my “feelings” or “opinions”. I’ve studied political science. My observations easily fit within an Isaiah Berlin‘s concept of liberty.

Not enforcing the laws isn’t criminal in the United States, although I wish it was. The police in various jurisdictions have gone all the way to the Supreme Court to confirm that[1][2]

> It’s not just me, you see it all over social media. People are grossed out by potheads.

Cool, but you or anyone else being grossed out by someone’s activity doesn’t automatically rise to the level of criminality. I, and many others, am grossed out by devoutly religious people, do you think they are criminals based on that fact?

> Again It’s just a fact, it’s not my “feelings” or “opinions”.

Your comment included people being “grossed out” by others activity. That is literally your feelings and not objective fact.

> I’ve studied political science.

Oh hey, me too, even got a degree in it. Several of my classmates who studied it failed. Studying the topic doesn’t make you correct, only more likely to be well informed. Since I also have studied it we can remove that as a common denominator between us and stick to arguing our differences.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzale...

Everything you’re saying I’ve heard a thousand times before. People tell me this kinda stuff all the time. I’m just good at predicting things. People talk in circles like you’re doing or laugh and then they see. Good luck.

If you are incorrect, you don’t have to be Nostradamus to predict that everyone else will claim you are also incorrect.

If you go through my comment history you will find that I am fully willing to declare hills I will die on and can respect the energy. All I am asking of you is a logical argument or proof.

Everything you’ve stated so far if presented as an “ought to be” argument is unimpeachable. But you’ve presented it as an “how it is” argument, which is impeachable.

Same, my stolen car was full of PII when it was pulled over (driver fled), and the cops couldn't have cared less. I found the thief and his girlfriend on Facebook, but decided to drop it there.

Wise decision. If you did anything to the thief, odds are the cops would have cared.

Ever think about whether maybe he bought it from someone who stole it and sold it with fake paperwork?

Not saying you don't deserve to get your vehicle back, and I'm sorry that happened to you.

I wonder what they mean by this?

> The camera can have different ways of seeing encoded in it, including kinds of gazes that enforce social agreements about what kinds of behavior and people are considered “normal”

The phrase "kinds of gazes" strikes me as the sort of thing that's only going to make sense to people trained in a very particular and idiosyncratic flavor of ethical critique. What a normal person sees here is, "These cameras can detect if people are acting bizarre and dangerous," which is probably something most people would appreciate. In Seattle, the problem, of course, is that the streets are full of people acting bizarre and dangerous, it doesn't take a camera network to find them, and the police seem to be under strict orders not to do anything about it.

What came to mind is a camera pointed at the cash register tells a very different story than the camera pointed at the ATM, or pointing from the ATM for that matter. Placement and the stories behind them offer interesting perspectives on what the observers are trying to catch or deter.

Do you mean trying to catch employee theft vs theft by externals? Why can't you write plainly instead of in riddles?

You are asking me why I can't write plainly, but I believe you're confusing me for the author, but I'll answer you anyways. "Plain" language removes nuance. Example: "She sat on the chair". The number of ways that action can be described are as innumerable as the ways it can be done, and then some - as different people may describe an act in different ways. Communication in all forms is lossy, but you can convey more than just direct ideas by adding subtext or using language that draws the reader to make comparisons new comparisons. Perhaps the author used gaze to anthropomorphize the camera to add on the layer of judgement or shame that the camera conveys, perhaps to an employee that is not trusted to manage a till.

I asked about your comment that I replied to. The "stories" you see in the camera positioning would need elaboration. To me the concept sounds quite mundane. It's pointed at something they want to see. Cash register: see if someone steals, possibly an employee. ATM: See if it gets robbed. Camera built into the atm: capture photo of robber. Not sure what deeper story or insight lies in it and you gave no example.

The "stories" I reference are the wide ranges of events, decisions, and conversations that went into the camera's placement. Are the cameras just for show? Have they recently modernized? Were there discussions and arguments around employee or patron privacy? Are the videos watched incessantly or left to molder? Cameras are rarely mundane, they are a very visible representation of controls related to trust and privacy.

Thanks, that makes sense.

My best guess would be

[[Surveillance cameras normalize/denormalize behavior in a way that is easily biased and undemocratic.]]

It might e.g. direct the full force of law against a drunk urinating on a tree (easy to spot/classify), while tolerating vicious verbal attacks disguised by somewhat subdued body language (missing data/difficult to detect).

Letting automated surveillance systems judge people will inevitably influence our own collective judgement.

> tolerating vicious verbal attacks disguised by somewhat subdued body language

Two people arguing in public, words only, is close to a legal non-event in the US. So I would hope so?

Until one of them communicates a threat, then it is a criminal matter.

I don't think you're advocating to have our personal conversations continuously monitored whenever outside, but in the context of this thread, that's what it sounds like.

No, in the context of the thread it sounds like they're illustrating myrmidon's point about how the selective enforcement of crimes that are easy to catch on camera means that the police have less time (and less inclination, training, norms) for addressing more serious crimes, like interpersonal violence.

More broadly, they're not saying that we should make the cameras better to catch more crime, they're saying that when you make cameras the main way you catch crime, you shift the social definition of what crime is to "what cameras can catch".

Perhaps, depending on specific intent, credibility, and the nature of harm threatened.

But since this is about surveillance, I hope that detection of verbal threats is not a goal of government surveillance because it's difficult to imagine how that could be accomplished without significant loss of privacy or other liberties.

I can see it in court now. Our AI monitoring system did indeed know about the threat to the building where 800 people died on Sunday.

It says: " Agent: Voice to text detected: I have everything ready - all the XXX chemicals are ready in the van and I'm going to park in the 900 S Crap St now"

Agent: Thread Level HIGH.

Agent: Looking up local codes.

Agent: Mayor signed SB-1238 in 2026 - no surveillance devices may be used for audio threat determination.

Agent: Threat silenced, but logged.

Judge: Oh, that makes sense. Make sure to bag and tag and bill the families for the bags.

City Employee: We also know who parked the van, should we arrest them.

Judge: No it looks like SB-1238 would forbid us from using this data for the purposes of arrest. I guess send them a thank you letter for testing our laws.

This is essentially the Trolley Problem.

Oh, only 800? Maybe you can pick a larger imaginary number to make me feel really guilty about not wanting to give up my rights to live free of surveillance.

I mean yeah, but I don't need to. These cameras ARE already the result of 9/11.

Weird justification since 9/11 was a plane hijacking, not something on the streets.

You forgot the paranoia after it. Along with surrendering anything in the name of anti-terrorist measures. And protecting children.

They wrote a 600 page report about it and it included a ton of recommendations. Not many people remember at this point, but for months and even a few years after, the entire country was on edge about it happening again, in different means (trains, car wrecks on purpose, shootings). There is a reason they have called this a post-911 world ever since. That hasn't ended.

Appreciate the pushback, saltyoldman. Yes, we want to respond to credible threats. And, as always, courts and law enforcement can invade privacy when there's reason to believe someone is worth surveilling. But we're talking here about widespread, extremely cheap, technically easy surveillance of potentially everyone at all times. That's the endgame that some commercial and government interests have in mind.

Would you agree that sometimes an uptick in theoretical safety is not worth a downtick of definite lost liberties?

I used to be that way. However more recently I have come to prefer security over privacy, at least where I live. I do want to make sure human, drug and weapon traffickers are not exiting off my freeway ramp. I do get the issues with what you're saying, but let's think of ways to have both. The existence of a surveillance net with safegards. In other words yes let's have the conversation to make our country secure and also prosecute sherrifs spying on their girlfriends, make sure no API hole exists and some company isn't selling billions worth of data to China.

There is no way to have both. Surveillance is power and it corrupts in the same way as any other form of power. It's not just about patching some individual holes. You can't have too much of it for the same reason why you can't have a cop stationed at every single building in your city. For sure, doing that would make some people feel safer, but it would also make anyone doing something legal but disfavored by their government terrified, increase prosecutions for frivolous infractions and open the door for a future government to swoop in and make great use of all that free power lying around.

Besides, even if it was possible to do both (it's not), do you think this would ever actually happen? When it comes to surveillance, they only take and take and take and never give anything back, further encouraged by a terrified populace that wants more safety in a safer-than-ever world. It's a ratchet that only goes one way because it greatly benefits anyone vying for power in governments and businesses alike. Once you let them have it, you're not getting anything back.

I'm in Seattle and everyone knows exactly where human trafficking is happening and the police are doing nothing about it. Teenagers are being pimped out all along Aurora and literally nothing is happening despite literally years of public outcry.

The pimps get arrested again and again and then released without charges being filed.

Cameras aren't going to make a difference.

The interesting thing is how I was making a very contained point pertaining to cameras, and how cameras, which we were talking about in this thread, seeing a verbal confrontation, could not and should not make a call, because a verbal confrontation is not a legal event. You then took this into a totally different case involving ... what? hypothetical recording of a conversation between two hypothetical terrorists? To prove ... what? My point is that it is not a shortcoming of the camera that it is not making a judgement call on the thing OP was originally talking about. A verbal altercation between two people. I was not talking about a hypothetical bombing. I was not citing a specific law, I was not advocating that there should be a law, I was not advocating anything about whether or not we should ban collection of existing evidence. I was not making any of these moves. I was saying simply: a camera looking at two people in a verbal argument from far enough away that it cannot hear the conversation is not a failure of the technology. Not every negative interaction between two human beings is criminalizable.

You received a straw man and decided to engage it. You fell for the trap, and have already been put into a losing position. How are you supposed to recover from engaging this straw man.

alternatively, it turns out the voice to text ended up picking up on dialog from a movie the suspect was watching, and he opens the door to a SWAT team thinking that's his pizza being delivered.

Pretty much everything is a crime if you do it while blacker or trashier than the local baseline.

> then it is a criminal matter.

In very limited and clearly defined ways only: https://www.law.georgetown.edu/icap/wp-content/uploads/sites...

The threshold for a surveillance system to affect societal norms is not necessarily "legal event", and potentially even lower than any observable reaction (from self-censorship).

Just consider how algorithmic moderation can shape language (=> people using weird constructs like "to unalive", or weird metaphors in chinese), even in contexts where it would technically be unnecessary.

A close US equivalent is the "cant google that, I'll end up on a list" notion. This is all quite undesirable from my point of view.

Seems like a fundamental problem if we dont want the laws we passed to be enforced.

"we" didn't pass them --- i don't think changing the severity of law enforcement alone can achieve what i wish for in society, but the existence of many laws (and severity of their punishment) i disagree with and thus do not want enforced

> tolerating vicious verbal attacks disguised by somewhat subdued body language (missing data/difficult to detect).

Almost all of these cameras have microphones as well. Not as difficult to detect as you may believe

Once you have road noise and a distance of 10+ metres, that audio is unlikely to be useful.

The thousands of viral ring videos, and flock itself, would beg to differ. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flocks-gunshot-detecti...

> acting bizarre and dangerous

The problem with surveillance like this becomes "who gets to decide what is bizarre and dangerous?"

They could at least address that the man and woman on the street would easily identify as people who need to be put in a paddy wagon. Leave the unsure cases alone. Get the obvious ones.

Elected lawmakers and courts.

It’s actually the arbitrary whims of police officers

The ones bought and paid for by billion dollar corporations and industries?

The entire city of Seattle seems to have been bought and paid for by basically 2 - 4 companies. Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, ...Starbucks in year's past maybe?

If that was the case, it seems like those companies would have forced the city to clean up 10th and Jackson.

Why would they? None of the major tech companies have offices in the international district, it doesn't directly impact them. They are however at least partially responsible for the rapid gentrification and cost of living crisis in Seattle and have displaced and priced out local residents causing and continuing to worsen the problem.

Until we have robot police officers, there will always be a human in the loop. But right now, there's a whole category of "drunk and disorderly" / "breach of the peace" kinds of laws that are ~100% up to the discretion of a police officer to enforce. I won't say you CAN'T have it any other way, because I can imagine alternatives like "don't have those laws", but I will say that you don't WANT to have it any other way.

there was a recent case of a lady who spent at least a month in jail because an ai said it was her. She had physical evidence indicating she wasn't and hadn't been to the state at all during the crime. There was a human in that loop too and she still sat in jail and had her life ruined.

>> enforce social agreements about what kinds of behavior and people are considered “normal”

> What a normal person sees here

The post is talking about you.

There's a PG essay related to this: https://paulgraham.com/orth.html

I wonder which opinion inspired him to write this. Given the date, maybe it was something about race politics or coronavirus.

I think it's clear what it means but indeed it's formulated in a critical theory framework (see also "male gaze" in feminist theory) that makes it seem more complicated.

Yes, they take camera images and videos and there is value judgment regarding the behaviors.

Reading between the lines, the authors criticize the approach of law enforcement around drug use and dealing, living on the street in tents etc.

But the language makes it sound like special academic expert language and hence automatically right and high prestige.

Gaze language needed to be fleshed out perhaps

Agreed. I have a read a lot of social/political theory and I am sick of this language. These are academic/philosophical tropes presented as if they were scientific findings. Even when the ideas are interesting, the Theoretical baggage gets in the way and the result is at best clumsy and at worst insufferably pompous.

I try to make a habit of gently reminding academics I know how badly this gets in the way of communication with non-academic people and ends up hindering the transmission of their ideas. To be honest, I think quite a lot of academics wind up communicating this way because they're subconsciously looking for positive feedback from their colleagues and so slip into the abstruse language of the classroom without realizing it.

Reminds me of Winston in 1984 doing his best to look like he doesn't have thought crimes in his head. What are we doing here?

America needs to realize that this is absolutely not the land of the free anymore. The government and big business are in cahoots to screw you out of every cent they can and to make sure you're not about to commit some unspeakable act of terror, like hold up the wrong protest sign.

Edit: case in point by https://www.techradar.com/pro/quote-of-the-day-by-oracle-co-...

Where do you suggest we move to then, China?

I think that's a bit of a false dichotomy. It should be possible to live in the US and resist the surveillance state. Keep fighting.

The countryside. Near-zero public surveillance, near-zero violent crime, and conservative sheriffs and juries who work to keep it that way.

This is only true if you conform to social conservatism. Conservatives embrace authority and condone using it to enforce conformity. They only want less government when it comes to their own taxes & guns.

Everything has a tradeoff

True. But I can get no surveillance and no crime by moving to a nice suburban neighborhood, too, without getting pressured into accepting the right wing attitudes. Nice thing about suburbia is it tends to be purple, there is not much ideology being inflicted by either side.

My goat herding skills are rusty. How do I make a living in the countryside?

You have options. Doctors and nurses clean up, better pay than in a city. Work at a factory (either in the plant or in the office). Lawyers and financial advisors to the farmers who sold out to developers/energy/data centers. Or work remote

"Run to the hills" is a heckuva a way to deal with the breakdown of the rule of law.

I mean it’s what people have been doing for all of civilization. It’s that or war

Democratic responsibilities need reinforcement IMHO - it requires engagement:

* Knowing what rights we, the citizens, most care about

* Knowing how to effectuate change with Voting, Protesting / Discussing (civic attention), and Funding

Or maybe it is the land of the free, and its the ones acting the most unfree (and resigning to their agency and sense of empowerment) and pretending to strongly proclaim everyone else isn't free that are ruining it for others?

For example, you have a right to bear arms.

Peaceful protests, with guns, are a historically great way to remind those in power that the power comes with duty and obligation to protect the people. If that power is abused, there is always the legal right to bear arms and personally as a class of citizens jail and hold citizen justice. It is not just the state, local and federal elected officials, who hold all right to initiate legal process.

    Peaceful protests, with guns, are a historically great way to remind those in
    power that the power comes with duty and obligation to protect the people.

That worked out great for Alex Pretti.

According to what I've read, Alex stepped in between an altercation with a woman and an agent. He physically inserted himself into a situation with law enforcement; thats different from what I'm saying.

Lots of po-mo art-school language on this site about “encoding ways of seeing” and “gazes.”

The content itself is somewhat interesting but imo plain language would be more accessible.

I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about statements like these which seem to assume the reader is incredibly uninformed and naive, to the point of condescension.

"sends the information to a central storing place (called a database)" TIL what the word database means?

"Amazon can use your purchases to know more about you using patterns." Is this news to someone? Condescending.

"It might be connected to a network (via Internet or radio frequency)" Radio frequency and Internet are not really directly comparable

Also don't like that the site hijacks the appearance of my mouse pointer, which feels similarly disrespectful of the reader.

The way it's written, I wouldn't be surprised if it was meant to be read by/to children (or at least used by a elementary/middle school teacher).

I think these criticisms are unjustified. The article could be aiming for less tech-savvy people. Remember the most tech-savvy people in the world are those who enabled the surveillance infrastructure in the first place. Also if you want any meaningful grassroot change, you need to appeal to the less knowledgeable cohorts. Politics is more or less "which informed people can convince the most uninformed ones."

> Is this news to someone?

Yes, many. xkcd 1053.

A bit of xkcd 2501 going on in this thread as well

Honestly, a lot of critical theory enjoyers who can talk fluently and at length in that academic dialect are astonishingly clueless about non-abstract matters.

Who is the target audience? Obviously not HN. Is it right to criticise someone for not writing for HN?

Radio networks and Internet are both networks. That part is fine. It means surveillance devices either have SIM cards and connect to the cell network, or they have their own isolated radio network.

It's a very strange mix of overexplaining basic concepts and in-depth details. I suspect AI.

I also suspected this to be partially AI, especially when it says the cameras can “change height”?? And the vague images, like the one with the red “hotspots”.

On one hand yeah it's a little over the top.

On the other hand I don't think this was written for our proto-techno-fascist forum...

There are too many technical inaccuracies in this to take it serious (or to try and address them all here). Directionally it is fairly accurate, but the author clearly has very little knowledge of surveillance cameras, their capabilities, or even broadly how to identify ALPR vs. traffic control cameras (and similar nuances).

"The Acyclica device casts a fake Wi-Fi network and tracks phones that try to join"

an incorrect start to a bunch of incorrect/outdated info

https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/Tech/Acyclica_...

They can collect MACs all they want, that's not the half of the scenario which has changed in the last 10 years.

> A probe packet contains the MAC address as well as the list of all the past Wi-fi networks that your device has tried to join before, which can reveal a lot about you!

Generally, most modern devices send broadcast/wildcard probes precisely to avoid leaking the PNL. From what I know, directed probes are only sent for hidden APs.

Correct. All major OSes stopped broadcasting the preferred SSID list by 2017, with Android and Linux being the last. Apple stopped in 2014. Windows by 2009.

And most modern devices randomize MAC addresses ("Wi-Fi addresses" in Apple-ese, for probably obvious reasons) between networks, and even between broadcasts/connections to the same network.

I think this is only true for mobile devices? I'm curious how one would configure Linux to randomize MAC addresses by default.

In Linux changing the MAC address can be done simply on the command line, so I'd probably just write this functionality into a bash script that I'd call before ifup.

https://fedoramagazine.org/randomize-mac-address-nm/

macOS rotates MAC addresses between networks by default, and between connections to the same network unless it's password-protected. (It's under System Settings -> "Details..." or three-dot menu by a network -> "Private Wi-Fi address.")

Windows also randomizes by default as long as your network controller supports it.

It sounds like Linux requires some textual configuration that depends on your distro.

I don't like needless surveillance either but we have people (and kids!) getting shot all over the city, and juries and judges that won't do anything without video or photographic evidence of the crime. I am literally willing to trade some of my liberty for safety in this case. When crime is under control, let's discuss getting rid of them (which I know is farfetched).

this cat's never going back in the bag. i will be shocked if the end of this road leads to anything other than a dystopian surveillance state abused by a few people at the top that the law doesnt apply to.

There are a multitude of ways to significantly curtail crime that don't rely on this paradigm of spying on everyone. That's like saying "I can't get to work on time, we need to keep making the highway wider".

Guns and weapons have existed for much longer than mass video surveillance.

There is no reason why we cannot prosecute people for shooting, stabbing or robbing people because there isn't a 4K60FPS stream for the incident. We need investigators to start doing their job again..

I still feel so conflicted on things like the Flock cameras. On one hand I understand that they have the capability of incredibly enhancing the ability for police departments to solve more crimes. Especially things related to vehicle theft, they could likely track down your stolen vehicle very quickly especially if they have a wide network of cameras.

However, my concern is always about the possibility for misuse. Even if I trust the current government, it doesn't mean I will trust a future one. What if they use the technology to track/monitor people like investigative journalists? We've already seen a recent state passing bills that would make it harder for investigative journalism to happen. So it's not even out of the realm of possibility for this technology to get used in ways that even would be deemed "legal" as they can simply expand the laws to use it unreasonably in the future.

There is also the other obvious concern which is surrounding things like data breaches or other unauthorized access issues. There have already been many people exposing some large security flaws in a lot of the devices currently out there.

Where I am stuck is how do we balance the huge set of benefits that can come from this kind of tech, with the tradeoffs? Ultimately this tech is unlikely to stop being implemented as governments and even most of the population is largely unbothered by mass surveillance. I almost don't even bother bringing up discussions on these topics with non-tech people as I have yet to find someone who seemed to care at all about this. If anything they are very in support of this technology being implemented as they seem unable to understand the tradeoffs due to it often requiring more technical knowledge. They just see all the positives it can give, and don't grasp the negatives.

Ultimately people usually desire safety, and these cameras definitely can give people more safety. Is it possible to balance safety with proper privacy safeguards?

What's that quote about essential Liberty and temporary Safety again...

When you get a gun pointed at your face, or your home violated, or your car stolen, you tend to rebalance your principles a little. The cameras are a symptom of bigger problems.

This is the main issue. People aren't going by what may be the best solution long term, they are going by what they feel and experience in the moment. Right now people feel unsafe and they feel these systems increase their safety and seem unphased by the privacy ramifications. I personally still am not sure how I feel as I do value my privacy, but at the same time I also understand how this can be a useful tool. Many tools the police have also invade my privacy as well to some degree.

It's so hard to draw a line of what is good or bad, and it seems like the majority are okay with this technology. Which I think means the conversation should shift from should we allow these cameras at all, to instead, how can we allow them to be implemented in a way that minimizes privacy risk as much as possible while still remaining a valuable tool to solve crimes.

You also rebalance your principles when you rot your brain with vast quantities of fearmongering slop on your screens, and that’s way more common.

It's a bit of a protection racket isn't it? The police extort me for money and claim it will be used to protect me from the situations your present. Yet they do none of those things, because they can't be there in that moment. The police are not the solution. Spying on me is not the solution.

It’s a pretty unhelpful quite imho. You can use that quote to oppose anything beyond pure anarchy!

Yes the police can be abusive tyrants. But a society with no rules and no rule enforces is not a prosperous society. And yet if you lived in total anarchy you could oppose anything beyond pure rules and any rule enforcement with that quote.

Clearly the slope is very very very <breathe> very very slippery. And yet the ideal, dare I say necessary, point is not at the far end cap.

Can you show me the contract I signed that shows I agree to adhere to those rules? This is forced upon us with no choice by the individual other than to not participate and live in destitute conditions or in jail. The police are enforcers of rule, and for that I will always oppose them.

Keep quoting it and people will continue to ignore it

Look around.

99% of people couldn’t care less about privacy and are begging to give over their whole personal life data for (insert corporation) “points/rewards/discounts”

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin

But as we all know in context Franklin was talking about the Penn family wanting to literally purchase temporary safety from native American raids privately (rather than being taxed) and weakening the ability of the PA General Assembly to govern.

I'm guessing he'd probably be pro privacy, though.

My understanding of Franklin is that if he were alive today he’d probably spend most of his time on Onlyfans.

On one hand I understand that they have the capability of incredibly enhancing the ability for police departments to solve more crimes.

Do they?

There are millions of these cameras all around the country, yet when pressed about their value, Flock and cops can only point to one or two crimes prevented/solved at a time. And they're usually things like "caught a burglar after the fact," or "stopped someone from dumpster diving."

Get back to me when they find Samantha Guthrie.

I share the parent's internal conflict, but this is an interesting critique that I hadn't considered: The cameras don't actually work. Do we have any data on that? Seems like I hear about stolen cars (and their drivers) getting picked up fairly frequently due to these cameras. Is it marketing or is it true?

I think they are just being intentionally ignorant on the topic due to their dislike of the system overall and I don't think that is fair of them. There is lots of videos even of YouTube via bodycam videos with many police departments making good use of these cameras to aid in solving crimes. I'm sure there are many articles and maybe even research out there which would show this.

I think it's just a way to try and dismiss the cameras without trying to tackle the heart of the problem. When you have to contend with the fact that the cameras have a lot of useful purposes, it makes arguing against them much more challenging. If you can pretend they are not useful, it may be a way to try to stiffle any productive discussion around them.

> Get back to me when they find Samantha Guthrie.

Nancy?

Probably. I don't follow it. All I know is that a high-profile person's mom got kidnapped and in spite of all the billions of dollars spent on surveillance technology in this country, she's vanished into thin air.

Doesn’t that mean we have an insufficient number of cameras?

Or an insufficient number of AirTags installed in Grandma.

As I recall, she lived in a rural neighborhood of the catalina foothills where houses are far apart and set back from the trees, so the surveillance coverage even from Ring cameras was really sparse. In a regular suburban neighborhood or urban area there would probably have been a half dozen recordings of anyone coming or going to her house.

I've already watched many dozens of bodycam videos on YouTube where the Flock cameras we used to help track down suspects of crime, so I feel like this may just be a case of you being ignorant on the topic. You can argue on the other merits of such a system, but I think you're being a bit silly making an argument that these don't help solve crime.

dozens of bodycam videos on YouTube where the Flock cameras we used to help track down suspects of crime

In my country (United States of America), tracking down a suspect isn't the same as solving or preventing a crime. Suspects aren't criminals until found to be so in a court of law, not in the court of social media.

That you think modern surveillance tech keeps people safe because you watch dozens of social media videos doesn't mean that people are safe, it means you got sucked into the advertising.

I'm skeptical as well. Was recently on a jury for a murder case of all things, and while they had a ton of footage from traffic cameras across 3 separate towns, MOST of the evidence that was really damning was a combo of prints at the scene and location data from cell providers and phone extraction.

A lot of European countries manage it just fine. There can be reasonable rules and regulations put in place, but America usually waits until the worst harms have already occurred before regulating. It has already been heavily abused by the government/ICE. Hopefully we still have a functioning electoral system to make the necessary changes.

What if instead of trying to figure out how to catch criminals, we focus on building a society where no one wants to be a criminal? Can we find solutions to what causes crime, like desperation, greed, fear, failure to understand and have compassion for other people, etc?

Unfortunately that's not how society works. I don't think I can think of any society out there where this idealistic model works. Of course I'd love for that to happen, but that's just not where we are at right now, nor would it be something that could happen overnight. We have to live with what we have right now. And right now the majority of people seem to welcome this technology and have no problem with it at all.

My view on the topic has shifted from "how can we stop this?" to instead "how can we make sure it gets implemented in a way that has the proper checks/balances to ensure citizens still have some right to privacy even when in the public?".

Personally, I am actually more concerned about the fact that every big store out there is using technology to track me as soon as I enter the store and likely has a big profile of data on me. I'm more uncomfortable with that reality and it's something that continues to happen with no restriction. Which is why I think I'd be okay with this technology as long as it has proper auditing and is kept fairly specific in when it can be used and who has access.

I guffawed at "proper checks/balances". Since ICE brownshirts have been roaming around with masks and automatic weapons, abducting random people and even shooting some, you're at "checks/balances". What?

I'm not American, I never mentioned America, and these cameras are being installed across the world. Not everything is about America and a single government agency. Sometimes it is about the bigger picture when having discussions. I also disagree with your very biased wording of such a discussion and don't wish to go down this line of unproductive discussion.

The article was about Seattle and the surrounding discussion has been US-centric. I recognize it's a global problem but I don't think it's the same everywhere. We shouldn't just throw up our hands like "oh well."

Yes, but you're arguing against a police agency utilizing a tool to enforce existing laws. Whether or not you agree with enforcing immigration laws is your opinion, but it is a law and that is not personally what my comment is concerned about or addressing. I am referring to misuse, this would not be misuse, it would instead be a law you disagree with enforcing. Which I feel is off-topic from my discussion as it is centered around laws you disagree with, not about the underlying idea of Flock cameras being added.

If you have a problem with police being able to utilize cameras to enforce laws, please make your case about that. But if your problem is about a specific government agency enforcing laws that you disagree with, please move on. I'm not interested in a political debate about that.

It feels like you have not been paying attention at all. There isn't accountability when government stormtroopers shoot law-abiding citizens in the streets. (There hasn't even been an investigation). That's not me "disagreeing with certain laws"--the federal government is blatantly violating constitutional rights--and, incidentally the law. And here you're arguing the surveillance state is going to have "proper checks and balances" and just abide by said checks and balances. You're literally saying "oh they're just enforcing the existing laws" when the current US administration is the most lawless ever and refuses to hold itself accountable for anything. The breakdown in the rule of law is just staggering. They can take their cameras and shove them.

Have a good day!

This is largely because states will not cooperate with ICE to help identify criminals among immigrants. ICE is not an issue in states where the police are cooperating with it.

Good old-fashioned "we can do this the easy way or the hard way" extortion. Why should a state want the federal government to just do whatever it wants within that state?

Reducing poverty only has a minor impact on crime.

I think some Criminals commit crimes because they know they will most likely get away with it, they are bad people

A leading cause of premature death in the US is car crashes. Car crashes are in almost all cases caused or exacerbated by operator negligence. That negligence is not caused by desperation/greed/fear/lack of empathy, but by a confidence that one won't get caught or punished.

I can't imagine a better way to deal with this problem than with cameras that can detect these behaviors and issue citations impartially and consistently.

It's totally possible to implement a system where cameras do this but do not record enough data to amount to consistent surveillance of people who aren't acting negligent (i.e. using radar to trigger them), but as long as the conversation is "cameras everywhere vs no cameras ever" these kinds of compromises seem unlikely.

> That negligence is not caused by desperation/greed/fear/lack of empathy, but by a confidence that one won't get caught or punished.

Greed comes in for the perceived time savings of speeding or ignoring signals or the desire to "have fun" or be perceived as cool. Lack of concern for pedestrians and other drivers/passenger by driving recklessly is the lack of empathy/compassion part.

We have the technology - the government could automatically ticket you a dollar per mile per hour over the speed limit if we wanted it to.

And if nobody sped except in emergencies fatalities would likely be way down (and speed limits would be adjusted up where sane).

For anyone trying to figure out how to build a society where no one wants to be a criminal, I highly recommend When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment by Mark Kleiman.

There are evidence-backed ways of reducing criminality.

One counterintuitive way of reducing crime is to increase the likelihood of being caught, to have small-but-increasing consequences for committing crimes, and to increase the swiftness of sentencing.

For example, if you are caught drinking and driving, you immediately spend 1-2 days in jail.

Long sentences are not very productive at reducing crime or at least are a very inefficient way to do so.

Scott Alexander has a good analysis of these issues:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prison-and-crime-much-more-...

An intuitive way to understand it is imagining that there was a system where if you stole something, you 100% of the time got hit with a charge to your account of the item value + $10. No one would steal again even if the penalty for getting caught was relatively nothing. Because the feedback loop is so short and guaranteed.

No ones life would be ruined over a dumb choice and yet they would change their behavior very fast.

You have to deal with the judgement-proof somehow.

There’s effectively two sets of laws - one for those with something to lose (fines, etc) and one for those with nothing to lose.

It’s still the same. If you steal something and have no money you lose the item and get some small penalty, perhaps a day in jail. If there is absolutely no chance you’d get away with it, everyone quickly realises there is no point.

I think people miss that this is a possibility. Yet it's fairly easy to see that when more people become homeless more bicycles get stolen off the street. Idk about you, but I'd have to be pretty desperate to steal a bicycle. Idk about you, but if I was living on the street struggling you find food, I'd be pretty desperate. I mean FFS you don't even have a stove to cook ramen. And where are you going to get the money to afford a camping stove?

Kind of moot if, when the police allegedly call you to report finding your stolen car, they use misleading caller ID and don't leave a message.

Not really sure what this has to do with my comment, it just sounds like you're airing a personal grievance with an individual in a police department.

It's one more anecdote to the anecdata of police being generally useless.

It not "definitely" but rather "definitely possible" that cameras could be used for safety, or that the police could work for the citizenry. But they don't. They're inclined not to share info, including that they're the police when ostensibly they're trying to help you by calling you to tell you that they found your stolen car. So instead what happens is you never get the call (and there's no real proof they called), and the tow company with the City contract gets paid because now you have to go pick it up at the impound lot.

But I have my neighbors to thank for really showing me where their priorities lie: the plague of rabbits which was ignored for three months until it was so bad that they collected over 30 rabbits, the person who threw burnt moulding from inside his house over the fence into my yard before he finally set the house on fire for real but the police didn't want to see the moulding or take a police report and wanted me to go talk to them. Just a couple of highlights.

Still somehow was "impossible" for the Seattle police to recover security camera footage of my bike being stolen under the light rail station security camera.

You made the common error of being common, and not related to the mayor or others in positions of power.

Saying that patterns are dangerous because they can reinforce stereotypes sounds a lot like you are saying the stereotypes are true.

Also the gorilla example from many years ago makes it seem like the author just superficially follows this stuff from the media. It was a single instance of misclassification in a widely deployed photo categorization model, not some reproducible trend with the models.

The problem with stereotypes isn’t their accuracy (they often are inaccurate or outdated but that’s beside the point).

Otherwise you are effectively saying that it’s ok to be *-ist as long as you’re accurate.

The problem is they are unfair, dehumanizing and cruel, and based off categories we usually can’t control.

I don't agree. Stereotypes that are wrong but get reinforced by selective reporting are bad. Let's say a person believes that (to pick an absurd example) all Scottish people are rapists. Every time he reads a headline "Scottish man rapes woman" his belief will strengthen, but when he reads "Irish man rapes woman" it won't weaken. And of course there are no headlines saying "Scottish man does not rape woman".

Ubiquitous surveillance and publication of crimes has the potential to industrialize this process. If there are more rape headlines going around, then of course there will be more where the perpetrator is Scottish and the ratchet advances more quickly.

Especially if you use machine learning which easily reinforces biases. If you train it on lots of Scottish rape cases it'll learn a lower threshold for detecting Scottish people as rapists and then your bias has translated into a real statistical difference in detected crimes and even a difference in arrests and convictions.

Surprisingly milquetoast list given the title

They clearly have an agenda, but also openly acknowledge that public surveillance is a two sided coin, balancing public safety and convenience with privacy. Some of the risks they identify are real, but others are unabashedly exaggerated.

> To do this, your device is shouting to the world a ton of your personal information in something called a probe packet. A probe packet contains the MAC address as well as the list of all the past Wi-fi networks that your device has tried to join before, which can reveal a lot about you!

In the 2010s, maybe. Nowadays MAC address randomisation is the norm and past WiFi networks are not broadcast anymore.

For everyone interested in this topic: with https://mapcomplete.org/surveillance, anyone can easily see and update surveillance camera's in OpenStreetMap

> Each surveillance technology in our field guide includes the following categories to help you “spot” surveillance technology in the wild

One shouldn't trust their eyes alone to spot all the hidden cameras that private property owners love to have covering the streets. For example, it took me months to realize that a tenant in my own building has three cameras pointed down from the windows of their unit and can track my every coming and going if they so wish, and that's an environment I have my eyes on every single day.

I have a modified Olympus OM-D E-M5Ⅱ MFT camera body that I picked up on a whim because it came with a bunch of lenses and batteries and other things I wanted to use with my PEN-F, and it turned out to be amazing for spotting hidden surveillance cameras.

The way it works is that the underlying camera sensor can see IR by design, and an IR-cut filter is installed over it to restrict it to the visible spectrum for photography. The mod simply opens up the camera body and removes that part. Surveillance cameras in dark rooms (or at night on the street) then show up as bright spots, because the modified body can see the ring of IR LEDs they use to illuminate dark scenes for night surveillance.

I don't have any surveillance-spotting images to share, because I usually only do that via the viewfinder live preview (because tbh a photo of an all-black room with a single bright IR blob isn't interesting enough to shoot), but for example here is my IR photo of the Windows XP “Bliss” hill (near the Sonoma/Napa border) both as-shot and after channel mixing:

- https://i.ibb.co/23t4HdrZ/P5160220-1.jpg

- https://i.ibb.co/1Yw8RFLS/P5160220-2.jpg

edit: Fine, link to web store removed at behest of shithead [dead] commenter. Find your own if you want one. If you must know, I got mine from Seawood Photo in San Rafael. How's this for an ad if you're so fucking bothered? – I'm Lammy and this is my favorite camera shop in the San Francisco Bay Area: d(^^ ) https://www.seawood.shop/ ( ^^)b

I've rented modified cameras for using to shoot the night sky multiple times. Without fail, the weather for the dark sky that I've rented gear has been shite overcast, rainy, and one time even flooded the location. It has been a waste of money every. single. time.

One day, I'll actually get to use a modified camera body for purpose I just know it

Many cheap camcorders have a "night vision" mode that is just as effective. Probably because those cheap camcorders and cheap security cameras are more or less the same under the hood.

  Flat black circles on top of traffic signal control boxes, which are large, gray or painted metal boxes, typically found at street corners.

  The Acyclica device casts a fake Wi-Fi network and tracks phones that try to join the network in passing cars. Since each phone has a unique identifier …, different Acyclica installations can track your personal location as you pass them in the city.

Is iOS latest susceptible on default settings? w/“Rotating” “Private Wi-Fi Address“

No.

Oh good, had hoped not, thanks

In the early 2000s after 9/11 there was a guy doing public surveillance tours around New York City using "photocopies of hand-drawn maps".

NY Times archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/20100317184609/https://www.nytim...

This is an example of a political science phenomenon: delegation of authority.

The state itself can't deal with a problem (sky-high nuisance and property crime rates) so people are taking the issue into their own hands. That's also why all this video surveillance startup that shall remain unnamed is still doing quite well: a lot of people WANT cameras to watch every movement in the streets.

What is the fix? Solve the original problem: highly visible property crime by repeat offenders.

Is that the original problem or is it already downstream of something?

Based on context on their site, this looks like it was generated in ~2019 from data gathered before that, and some stuff in it is out of date as other comments mention.

BTW, you can drive around in Seattle with no plates at all and police are not allowed to pull you over ("primary stops" are forbidden[1]).

[1] https://westseattleblog.com/2022/01/heres-what-spd-isnt-like...

I walked around downtown Seattle twenty-five years ago helping my ex-wife make a survey like this, cataloging & photographing surveillance devices for a project she was working on. I wonder whatever came of it. Even then, it was difficult to get very far without passing through the view of some security camera or other.

What’s amazing is that you only see the cameras they want you to see (the whole deterrent thing is such they sell empty cameras).

Actual buildings that care about security in a “government paranoia” way have many more cameras you won’t be able to easily find from the street.

https://github.com/stanford-policylab/surveilling-surveillan...

Why are blue states, cities, and counties obsessed with surveillance? And things like red light cameras, speed cameras, and anything else they can get their grubby hands on?

Isn't any camera with low enough angle good for license plate reading with additional software?

You can have license plate readers at home if you want (years ago I confirmed that everything existed to measure the speed of cars driving past my house using common cameras, image recognition, and software). I never actually put it together and maybe should try with AI now.

The missing link is the easy database to pull it all up in a moments notice as opposed to subpoenaing footage all over the city and digging through it.

This is out of date, Amazon Go has shut down. RIP to some really cool tech.

> Amazon Go has shut down

Good riddance.

(The tech in question: surveillance cameras being monitored live by 1,000 people in India! https://www.fastcompany.com/91483585/amazon-go-closing)

The surveillance mesh of ring cameras sure hasn't, ironically enough.

If the survelliance tech is so great, why post amber alert messages with the license plate numbers all over all highways to help find the car?

The more eyes the better the chances. Obviously it’s not total information awareness the likes one of the previous DNIs dreampt about. We see its imperfection if the fact that a very public case in an Arizona abduction case is basically cold. They basically have zero leads -which is pretty incredible in this day and age.

The Amber Alert system is much older than promiscuous cameras.

99% of the time it’s a custodial dispute, but that’s orthogonal.

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