Comment by Kevin_Flynn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kevin_Flynn | Hacker News Reader

As a person who suspects to have been a victim of Fl*cks central database, and its access to a growing wave of narcissist pranksters aka abusers, I gift the following design for a de-centralized Fl*ck like system into the public domain:

1) homeowner / business owner installs their own cameras.

2) open source camera server software, analyses said video using any number of plugins, and categorizes said video / issues alerts.

3) results of video analysis are OPTIONALLY made available in a queryable manner, in a radius selected by the camera operator.

4) victims of crime and investigating officers in an area, can search for video/analysis that might help, and contact the owner of the video directly.

5) camera operator could OPTIONALLY charge a small fee for the service of providing the video, to recoup camera / system operating costs.

At no time does the system upload any video or analysis not expressly approved by the operator of the camera.

Because each camera operator has control over their own video and analysis/events, and can retract them at different times, the history of any individual as they go about their business is fragmented, and by design not made available in a centralized database form.

This was spitballed. Tear it apart. Fill the cracks with bondo. Paint over it. Make it shine. V

So something like this?

https://ring.com/support/articles/uds27/Community-request

Yes, I was thinking of the community, but in the case of ring, a for profit corporation still owns and collects a central database.

In my head, the camera operator ( homeowner, business owner, etc ), has their local database, in their local storage, and can allow/disallow searches of what I'm calling events, which would be, the result of plugin processing of the raw video.

Example: vehicle-burglary-detection-plugin ... would process the video of your car, in your driveway, on your driveway camera, and alert you, and you have the option of making that event searchable by neighbors or police.

Because, as much as we see bad actors in our daily clickbait newsfeed hype machines, the police are our neighbors too.

I know, its a bit utopic of an idea. Reality will tear at it some more before a paradigm sticks. V

If you believe ubiquitous cameras (dunno why that was censored) is creating a surveillance state then what does it being de-centralized accomplish here?

I was thinking along the lines of the law that prevented a state or government from collecting and maintaining a list of firearms owners.

Decentralized, private, firearm ownership, strengthens the defense of the entire nation, when said firearm ownership is by responsible law abiding citizens who look out for each other.

Apply that scenario to cameras. That was the concept.

Balance of power. Not only can the cops watch you - you can watch them.

Like many solutions that could work, the problem is often somewhere in adoption.

I'll take the first hammer to it:

Downsides:

1) Same software could be used by national/state authorities, to create their own system, that doesn't follow the above rules.

Major Downsides:

1) See above.

How? Step 1 is kinda problematic for that, no?

They would use the software with their current inventory of state/interstate highway cameras, if that wasn't clear.

Not like, take over your camera, or install their camera on your property.

Stop trying to develop shit society clearly can't be trusted with. Government will pick up any decentralized solution, and centralize it*. See Skype for precedent.

There is an upper bound on "top down efficiency" one wants built into a government system, because anything too effective draws corruption to it like no one's business, probability 1.

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” - Thomas Jefferson, May 27, 1788.

Cameras and ALPRs aren't going away. It's commodity hardware and software at this point.

I'm only spitballing potential solutions for how to manage the inventory.

National/state authorities could already do this with the current software and systems in place... the only additions the software proposed is adding are around privacy protections and distributed control, which the government wouldn't want anyway.

I really do not intend to sound naive, as I know what a monumental effort it is, but, we are government, and ballot initiative, constitutinal amendments, etc might be required to prevent the abuse, ultimately.

So, think of yourself as a member of government. What would you propose ?

My only point was that preventing the government from using the proposed system is not a valid concern, because they wouldn't need the proposed system

Critiques:

2.5) Said open-source camera software and hardware will likely be packaged up by commercial vendors, who will happily store your data in the cloud and resell it (I mean Empower Law Enforcement) on the side. This will probably be the majority of installs.

3) Queryable in what way? If the query reveals presence/absence of a person, they already have the info they need - if it doesn't, users won't know who to pay.

4) It's easy to pretend to be a victim of crime. Stalkers can easily abuse this to find their victims. Cops are also highly-trusted by a lot of the public, and also can use this to stalk people.

5) Morally, seems bad to charge a person looking for their lost child. Less bad if it's a fixed fee, rather than deciding what to charge after hearing the request - but that goes a little against the idea of point 4 to be able to approve/deny certain requests.

6) Ubiquitous surveillance is probably still bad even when decentralized.

Well, my intention was not to completely prevent law enforcement access, for evidence gathering, so empowering victims of crimes was part of my design.

I was spitballing an idea to prevent abuse, via a centralized database of video and history, on a national level, by a corporation.

This would have been more like, a collection of villages thing. aka internet vs mesh. ( in my head anyway ).

Keep ripping it apart. V

> Said open-source camera software and hardware will likely be packaged up by commercial vendors, who will happily store your data in the cloud and resell it (I mean Empower Law Enforcement) on the side. This will probably be the majority of installs.

Anyone can store the data and share it (for free)!

> Stalkers can easily abuse this to find their victims.

I posted a similar proposal in a different thread, and yes, this is one of many downsides. I believe in the end the world will be a worse place with this solution, but I also believe this is the only viable alternative to only the police/government having access to the data.

> Morally, seems bad to charge a person looking for their lost child. Less bad if it's a fixed fee,

The owner can decide who to charge and how much.

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