Hacker News Reader

Comment by fusslo | Hacker News Reader

> Flock can make all the promises it wants

They lost me when the CEO lied to a city official in a public meeting. ( https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-c... )

View on HN

That wasn't the CEO, and "lie" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. A non-product person (CISO) was being asked if a specific feature exists and they believed it did not. Should they have said something along the lines of, "as far as I know, no" yes, they should have. It's a mistake, not a lie. Lie would require intentionally having knowledge of it and trying to obscure that fact.

They do not deserve the benefit of doubt. If anything their executives or officers say is not truthful it must be interpreted as being knowing and malicious. Flock's systems have been too easily abused to assume anything else. A company their size can't be so stupid as to allow for the abuse that's happened without everyone in the decision chain being well aware of the possibility and those use cases.

this one felt like lying though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H30Ub6olYL4&t=907s

I think it’s a problem to not clarify what “track” means. Usually people are referring to and afraid of a system tracking their location, building a profile, facial recognition, etc. Yes the camera can recognize what a person is vs another object and if PTZ, will follow them. No it doesn’t do all that other stuff.

As an aside, have you noticed falcons point at the driver now? As in at the face? What's the purpose of this? Especially after lots of open PR that the alprs only capture the rear of vehicles.

I don't quite understand the leap that's made to argue in good faith they don't track people or build a profile.

You can retrieve images with FOIA. You’re not going to see good images with faces.

Some research done by others has uncovered a good bit of how they’re designed to function. They’re aimed to get a good look at plates.

The same cameras can be sold for purely video functionality. Those would be aimed differently. Like at the entrance to a store, etc. Whatever the customer wanted.

This is different, what would be the purpose of having two falcons on one pole. One pointed at the driver, one at the license plate?

They are all over the interstate in my area now. It's to see who's driving obviously, no? These cameras are top of the line with great resolution.

The smaller cameras can serve two product lines. Not at the same time though. One is live video, one is alpr. You will see what looks like falcons aimed at areas with no cars for this reason. Btw, all of this is on their website

Reply on news.ycombinator.com