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Comment by qmr | Hacker News Reader

Cameras are great. Especially with diverse ownership.

Police can walk about, ask or order (warrant) for footage.

A network of AI powered cameras linked to the hive mind controlled by real life super mega evil corp inc run by real life super villains... not so great.

Also the 4th amendment is a thing. Mosaic theory is a thing.

Enough of these flocking cameras.

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I don't think that police should be allowed to ask camera owners to voluntarily hand over footage, even if they would be willing to. That just allows them to privatize the mechanism of surveillance, similar to using data brokers to get around warrant requirements. Instead, I think that even where camera owners would willingly hand over footage, the state should still be required to obtain a warrant for said footage in order to preserve legal safeguards around evidence collection.

I’m okay with them asking private citizens. I own my own cameras, and that video lives on my own NVRs, and all of that is 100% on my own property. And I get to choose if I want to share that with them, presumably to help solve a crime that has affected one of my neighbors. But they need to come ask me and talk to me in person.

I’m not okay with them using the third-party doctrine and going to a company like Amazon and having them do a dragnet for them.

And I’m really not okay with having a company like Flock make all that information publicly available to any bozo with a friend at a law enforcement organization who wants to make a little money on the side.

> And I get to choose if I want to share that with them

Are you sure about that?

Not sure where you are what laws specifically apply, but I believe you could be compelled to hand over footage, and jailed for obstruction or destruction of evidence if you didn’t.

Just a thought - you may have less control than you think.

> you could be compelled to hand over footage

If they need to get a court order signed by a judge to recover material that is directly relevant to a legally justified criminal investigation, then there's significantly less scope for abuse than what cops are doing with the flock mass surveillance system, where some have literally written "LMAO" in the form field describing the reason for their search, and where they've been using the searches to stalk citizens who are not suspected of any crime.

Oh absolutely. Non-cloud cameras are far less prone to abuse. But to say you control the footage isn’t entirely true. For instance, if the government wanted to build a case against you for something you’ve done they didn't like…

This is the current status quo and has been generally reasonable in the past, but with dragnet surveillance becoming the norm I would vastly prefer that a judge review and authorize any police interest in my footage. I don't think we can trust that the state is being forthright about their reasons for wanting the footage or that the investigation for which the footage requested is legitimate, and the state has extreme latitude to lie to people in order to further its interests.

The problem is that you cannot trust the judges either. Most are former prosecutors, so they have a natural predisposition to believe all of the lies coming out of the mouths of the police. At the point, I view the government as a bonafide terrorist organization.

There’s definitely no way a group of police officers could… encourage you to hand over your video over a period of time.

Do your camera’s film anything outside your property?

Why not? If I see a crime being committed, should I be allowed to report it to police without a warrant? There's no difference with my private camera, it's even better cause the barrier for false/mistaken reporting is higher.

You shouldn't need a warrant to report a crime being committed, but you should need a warrant if you're specifically looking through a neighbour's window waiting for them to commit a crime.

What if I'm sitting on my porch and waiting for the crime to be committed?

Private doorbell cameras (and most flock cameras for that matter) point at mostly, or entirely, public space. Or in case of the former also my own property.

Frankly if I sit on my porch and see thru the window across that my neighbor is beating his wife, should I need a warrant to report it? That sounds ludicrous to me.

Exigent circumstances.

Ah, so the camera reporting crime in realtime is ok? Or since I should be able to tell a chasing police officer "I saw him run that way!" a camera reporting suspects movement is also ok.

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