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Comment by Arkhaine_kupo | Hacker News Reader

> what's our actual ROI?

its one of the value function that makes it almost impossible to evaluate.

Lets imagine that catching someone in the Interpol list of wanted terrorists is a huge catch. You would expect the avg catch rate to be almost 0 but once one is caught the avg value of the system becomes very easy to justify.

Its the same idea as having photos of known terrorists in airports and train stations to see if guards recognise someone. But with the added benefit that the facial recognition should not miss them.

If the evaluation function is it costs X to run each day and we caught Y number of criminals who robbed phones worth Z > X then the system will come off pretty badly in terms of ROI.

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That’s not hard to value, it just doesn’t make Flock look particularly good. If these actually work well, you would expect the average catch rate to be nearly 100%. We had decent rates just having humans look, Flock should be clearing those like crazy if it works.

It doesn’t. I had a car stolen, called it in as they pulled away. I live a block from a Flock camera, 2 others apparently captured it. Car wasn’t intercepted, car was never recovered, no arrests were ever made. They could have put up scarecrows and it would have done as much good for a lot cheaper.

> the system will come off pretty badly in terms of ROI.

It’s a bad evaluation function. A lot of the cost of crime isn’t directly the crime, it’s the economic deadweight of trying to deter the crime. Every car needs anti-theft parts, lots of people buy home security systems, armored cars to do bank drops, etc, all this stuff we pay for that exists solely to try to stop crime.

Flock would look great if it worked so well it made armored cars and car anti-theft obsolete. It won’t, but if it did the ROI would be crazy.

That only happens because you’re poor. If you were someone the police would have done more. My friend that is rich, always has an easy with with police when some problem happens.

That’s the good faith model.

In reality, Flock cameras are bought for “law enforcement”, using taxpayer dollars (therefore free to the people making decisions) and enable both feelings of omniscience and the ability to stalk exes.

So ROI is pretty good when the I comes from someone else and the R is and random act of spying that makes the operators feel powerful.

Cynical, I know, but not empty cynicism I hope. All evidence leads me that way.

The question is if the value of the database (to any party, present or future) of all collected data is greater than the value of catching that one guy (or one guy every few years).

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