But why? For most people all they'll find out is "this guy commutes to work, goes to Costco, and has an affair". Big tech knows about the affair from text messages already.
There are already numerous examples of Flock misidentifying citizens as suspects of crimes and them being arrested or otherwise harassed by law enforcement.
You can say that these are individual problems rather than systemic problems, but with the US' gradual descent towards authoritarianism and being a militarized police-state I do not see how this technology will be used to make a positive impact on the lives of everyday citizens (which IMO has been happening since the 80s at least before you just imply I don't like the current administration).
I am personally willing to incur a higher risk of being the victim of a crime if it means government/police/private companies/etc. are not able to violate my privacy every waking moment of my life.
This is it precisely. Thank you for stating this so clearly.
And I am not. Practically speaking, invasion of privacy from the government or private companies affects me not at all. Petty crime does make daily life unpleasant. And before you say "but you don't know how that'll turn out" - we do. There is China, there is Russia, there is Dubai. These are places where a female can walk around safely in the middle of the night.
Who is "they"?
Flock collects data which is given/sold to police departments or other entities. Regardless of how you feel about law enforcement having this data, how do you feel about Flock being a middle-man who controls the flow of the data? How do you feel about knowing Flock is VC-driven and will be making decisions based on ROI, not societal benefit?
There are many many many examples of abuse, both in the short term (flock gymnastics pedophiles, cop loveint, cross state abortion suspicion tracking) and long term (the "red scare", the administration performing loyalty tests). There are also plenty of discussions outlining how everyone should support privacy because some need it more than others and we're all on the same team.
Pretending people who are against flock or government illegal surveillance care more about criminals then their families is so bad faith it makes them an asshole (not you but a comment above).
And yeah, there will be bad apples. On the balance, I think these bad apples are better than the ones they replace.