[HN Gopher] Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge ...
___________________________________________________________________
Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage
public record
Author : aranaur
Score : 445 points
Date : 2026-03-02 04:06 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wltx.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wltx.com)
| cj wrote:
| URL is 404'ing. Another article..
|
| > Cameras that automatically capture images of vehicle license
| plates are being turned off by police in jurisdictions across
| Washington state, in part after a court ruled the public has a
| right to access data generated by the technology.
|
| https://www.geekwire.com/2025/washington-state-cities-turn-o...
| altairprime wrote:
| The above link 404's for me, but
| https://www.wltx.com/article/news/nation-world/281-53d8693e-...
| works.
| dzink wrote:
| The link is broken. Here is a working one.
| https://www.king5.com/article/news/community/facing-race/was...
| flexagoon wrote:
| This just redirects me to the king5 YouTube channel
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| This appears to be an informative link;
|
| https://www.everettpost.com/local-news/everett-temporarily-s...
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Great now let's follow suit in all 50 states.
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| _Red states have zero crime, so they don 't need them in the
| first place_. /s
| Ancapistani wrote:
| This isn't a red/blue issue.
|
| Flock is no more populate on the right than it is on the
| Left.
| SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
| Does them removing it simply because it's public record imply
| that they were up to no good?
| timschmidt wrote:
| Well if they had nothing to hide... /s
| SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
| > "We were very disappointed," Franklin said. "That means
| perpetrators of crime, people who are maybe engaged in
| domestic abuse or stalkers, they can request footage and that
| could cause a lot of harm."
|
| No concern over the dozens (or hundreds?) of cases of police
| or government employees themselves doing exactly what they're
| afraid of here. Strange.
| timschmidt wrote:
| Or for what can already be purchased from a data broker on
| the open market.
| sonzohan wrote:
| While I agree with the risks of DA/stalkers getting that
| data, this data is not known for being well protected
| against LoveInt. Quite the opposite it is usually sold on
| grey markets.
| randallsquared wrote:
| > _No concern over [...] government employees themselves_
|
| Three paragraphs later someone else is paraphrased as
| including immigration enforcement agents among the
| problematic users, and in the current political
| environment, federal law enforcement being made more
| effective might be the real problem for state and local
| government.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| State and Local LE are also worrying. It's common enough
| that they use these systems to stalk exes and such.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| They know, but if they acknowledge it it would make some
| people mad. Anyone who works with or it's associated with
| ALPR knows why you have to have audit logging and access
| controls if you give law enforcement access to it.
| chaps wrote:
| They're not removing cameras.
|
| > For now, Everett's Flock camera network remains offline, as
| the debate over transparency, privacy and public safety
| continues in the Legislature. The bill in Olympia that would
| put guidelines on Flock's data has passed in the Senate.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| This is a good article about some of the legal particulars.
| https://www.heraldnet.com/2026/02/24/snohomish-county-judge-...
|
| The defense of the photos not being government business until
| accessed seems shaky. That the physical camera installations were
| purposeful intentions to conduct government business in those
| areas is a reasonable line; this doesn't set precedent for
| Google's information becoming public records because the police
| might do a google search, to use an extreme example.
|
| The proposed legislative amendment that would exclude Flock
| footage from public records (which would make this judgment moot)
| makes sense in the light of red light cameras already being
| excluded by the same legislators. However, I'd like to see a more
| incisive law covering both that would compel a reasonable amount
| of public insight into the footage.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _The defense of the photos not being government business until
| accessed seems shaky._
|
| It's reminiscent of the NSA's argument that data "collection"
| occurs only when a search is performed on existing "gathered"
| data. File under "Stuff that's only legal when the government
| does it."
| dotancohen wrote:
| What should I be reading?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Scott Alexander has a decent article (or rather a guest
| blog post) at https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/all-lawful-
| use-much-more-th... that brings up the subject in the
| context of Anthropic and OpenAI's dealings with the
| Department of War (sic), and how their contracts with the
| DoW might be interpreted with regard to mass surveillance
| of Americans.
|
| Worth checking out. I'm not personally knowledgeable enough
| to vouch for the veracity, though.
| masfuerte wrote:
| An older article was reposted here yesterday:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47210572
| sneak wrote:
| My prediction: "It's not a "search" when an AI looks at the
| stored database and does sentiment analysis, because an
| algorithm doesn't violate your privacy. It's only a "search"
| after it's flagged and an actual human with human opinions
| sees your private chats criticizing the supreme leader."
| hyperific wrote:
| According to the article, the Flock cameras are still in place
| but are "offline".
|
| Why does that not convince me?
| bl4kers wrote:
| Are there cameras pointed at the offline Flock cameras? I sure
| hope so because it would be a shame if they disappeared...
| chkaloon wrote:
| Awesome. I think I'll put in an open records request for the
| cameras down the street in my little Wisconsin town. See what
| happens
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Funny I was thinking of doing that in my little Wisconsin town
| too. Howdy sorta neighborish HN user.
| datahack wrote:
| Wonder if we should coordinate doing it simultaneously in like
| 10,000 cities and towns?
| techdmn wrote:
| And my axe! Let me know if you do. (Also WI)
| N_Lens wrote:
| "The masses/general populace are the enemy" - once you understand
| that this is the fundamental belief at the root of the elites
| behaviour, everything will make sense. Flock cameras and AI
| surveillance is designed to reign in 'the enemy'.
| neverkn0wsb357 wrote:
| I think the person requesting to access the data was doing the
| right thing and I agree with the judge's ruling.
|
| The fact that they're gonna shut it down, implies the scale of
| indiscriminate nature of data capture and the volume of data
| being captured.
|
| These cameras are popping up all over the nation and if people
| realize how much data is being captured and where that data is
| going (or who it's being sold to) and how it's being used by
| government and private entities they would be appalled.
|
| There's been exposes about these cameras, everything from AI
| misidentification of "stolen" (not) vehicles and erroneous
| arrests and police encounters, to analysis of shopping patterns
| being sold back to private entities for better ad targeting. It's
| wild.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The laws need to be updated. CCTV in public used to be fine
| because no one was actually watching it unless there was an
| incident. Now it's possible to have AI watch every camera and
| correlate everything everywhere we need new privacy laws to
| reflect this capability.
| thfuran wrote:
| And the government needs to be restricted from buying data it
| wouldn't be permitted to collect itself.
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| Yep, ban collection and pruchase of such data for everyone.
| Exceptions usually mean private companies hop in to offer
| the "service".
|
| I think the current insane development are surveilance
| capitalists, trying to rush their panopticon to solidify
| their power. Guess that means no reasoable privacy law for
| the US, even under hypothetical president newsom.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Meh.
|
| If the government is only restricted from _buying_ the
| data, then they 'll just have someone else buy it. Palantir
| is not the government. So they can buy the real time feed,
| analyze it in real time, and give the real time results of
| that analysis to the government without issue.
|
| Restricting the government from buying that data does
| nothing. If you want to stop the government taking
| advantage of the data, then you would have to outlaw the
| collection of the data altogether. So that the initial
| collection of the data by anyone, is illegal.
|
| Personally, I don't think that's gonna happen. There's way
| too many people making way too much money telling the
| government who hangs out with who, who cheats with who, and
| so on and so forth.
| thfuran wrote:
| >give the real time results of that analysis to the
| government without issue.
|
| Presumably they're not doing this for free.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| It's a free charity service, and the hundred million
| dollars per year the taxpayers pay the same person for
| some other excuse has nothing to do with it, honest
| atoav wrote:
| No. _Everyone_ should be restricted from buying (or better:
| collecting) it, otherwise you just created the business
| model for evil corp that does the job and collects your tax
| dollar to do the same thing.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| How can an evil corp that isn't the government tax you?
| atoav wrote:
| Easy. If you ban the government to buy that data, but
| evil corp is allowed to buy it, you now created a
| business model where evil corp is paid by your government
| for some compiled version of said data as a service with
| hefty additional fees on top.
|
| And if you think that is unrealistic you may need to do
| some research into who pays the bills of Palantir et al.
|
| So if the goal of the ban is to prevent government
| overreach, you need to ban collection for everybody,
| except maybe well documenter scientific applications and
| specific private areas.
| achierius wrote:
| It was not fine then -- what we have now is simply even
| worse. We do not need to make concessions to our oligarchs:
| none of this is OK.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I don't mind a local AI on an airgapped security camera
| network monitoring a camera and issuing an alert to a
| security guard. The issues are internet connectivity, data
| retention/mining/sale, and non-local processing (ie handing
| stuff off to a third party that does who knows what and
| probably doesn't take security seriously).
| ben_w wrote:
| Even with that, I do mind.
|
| Just as two trivial examples, even though neither affects
| me personally:
|
| The estimated number of heroin users in the UK exceeds the
| total prison population. The number of class-A drug users
| in the UK is estimated to be so high that if they actually
| followed the minimum sentencing guidelines for possession,
| it would cause a catastrophic economic disaster both from
| all the people no longer working and also all of the people
| who suddenly had to build new prisons to hold them. I'm not
| interested in drugs (and I don't live in the UK, but I
| assume the UK isn't abnormal in this regard).
|
| Another example is road traffic law. Even just speeding
| offences, I think you probably catch everyone who actually
| drives in the UK, often enough that after a month the only
| people left allowed to drive would be people like me who
| don't even own a car.
|
| The entire legal system has to be radically changed with
| far less punishments for almost everything if you have
| perfect, or even 30% of the way to perfect, surveillance.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I was a bit unclear. I agree, I don't want the government
| using AI to identify all violations of the law. That
| sounds like a very straightforward dystopia.
|
| What I don't mind is private companies using AI analysis
| to support their security guards. I object to any sharing
| of the data with third parties though. It should be
| illegal for the data to leave their internal network and
| it should be illegal to retain it for more than a few
| days.
|
| I don't care if grocery store loss prevention has eyes on
| every aisle. My concern is data warehousing and
| subsequent misuse.
| egorfine wrote:
| > Another example is road traffic law. Even just speeding
| offences, I think you probably catch everyone who
| actually drives in the UK, often enough that after a
| month the only people left allowed to drive would be
| people like me who don't even own a car.
|
| You don't have to strip the driving licenses. You should
| impose a fine and not an extremely painful one for
| starters.
|
| And then probably within less than a year the whole
| population will drive properly.
|
| I think I'm in favor of indiscriminately fining everyone
| speeding at every camera, but I realize there is no
| privacy-preserving way to do it today thus I will be
| against it.
|
| (I'm a driver and car lover who is never speeding)
| ben_w wrote:
| That's covered by "system has to be radically changed".
| UK driving licences give you room for 12 "penalty points"
| worth of mistakes before you risk being banned from the
| road, of which speeding costs you at least 3:
| https://www.gov.uk/penalty-points-
| endorsements/endorsement-c...
| Angostura wrote:
| Indeed. 4 strikes and you are out seems fine to me (as a
| UK driver). You can also opt to take a speed awareness
| course in leu of the points, I believe
| ben_w wrote:
| 4 strikes today with current speed enforcement is fine; 4
| strikes in a hypothetical where 100% of infractions are
| caught, I aver will catch (almost) everyone who actually
| drives within a month.
| tln wrote:
| If notice of the infractions is a envelope delivered days
| later and sitting on on end table for a week, typical
| drivers are going to rack up 4 strikes before seeing the
| first one!
|
| Perfect enforcement has to come with immediate feedback
| ralferoo wrote:
| Where I live almost every main road now has average speed
| cameras, leaving only the small residential streets
| without, and they are generally short enough that few
| people are speeding anyway. In general I approve,
| especially in residential areas, although the surrounding
| area has gone through a process of downgrading speed
| limits for no obvious reason, such that it seems their
| only intent is to annoy drivers so that they want to stop
| driving. Almost all the country roads in the county I
| live adjacent to were downgraded from national speed
| limit to 50mph about 10 years ago. It didn't seem to be
| anything to do with safety, just seemingly out of spite.
| I heard rumours that they were also trialing drones to
| spot offenders (and presumably with sufficiently good
| cameras to read the plate from up high). Recently, many
| residential places have dropped from 30mph to 20mph
| pretty uniformly, again seeming nothing to do with safety
| as it's entire suburbs (but not all suburbs in the city),
| even on long straight roads with excellent visibility
| that would have been safe with limits above the original
| 30. Doing 20 on these seems completely unnecessary and
| it's hard to see it as anything other than a revenue
| generation tactic.
| nine_k wrote:
| If speeding is not something that happens constantly,
| then a radar could detect the instances of speeding, and
| only turn on a camera when a speeding car is nearby. This
| would keep the majority of passing cars from being
| recorded, and would record the fewer cars the fewer
| drivers would be speeding.
| jen20 wrote:
| This is exactly how non-AI assisted speed cameras [1]
| have worked for almost four decades. You don't even need
| video for it.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatso
| jdechko wrote:
| How long until the AI estimates how fast you were going
| based on the time you were tagged at 2 cameras? The
| system says travel between these cameras should take 3
| minutes. You made it in 2:45. No review, just a ticket in
| the mail.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Several months later, the state changes the speed limit
| on the street without changing the ticket check. Some
| time after, traffic authorities add a bypass road or a
| fast lane to deal with the new traffic problems and
| forget to update the timings. Then it's reported that a
| rural municipality set timing thresholds just below the
| speed limit to cover budgetary shortfalls.
|
| Eventually the camera manufacturers offer "easy setup"
| systems that dynamically adjust based on actual journey
| times. This works fine until the first office holiday,
| when the routine congestion is gone.
| vel0city wrote:
| If their clocks are actually synchronized and can show
| that in court then unless you've got a warp drive and can
| bend space time it can be pretty definitive that one was
| speeding between those two points. Especially if you're
| on something like a toll road which utilizes transponders
| for billing. I'm almost surprised this isn't already done
| in those situations.
|
| You don't even need AI for this. Its pretty basic.
|
| It is similar to how air enforced speed limits are done.
| They just paint two lines on the highway. A plane
| overhead times your car between the lines.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| That's how it actually works in some places
| (https://www.carwow.co.uk/blog/average-speed-cameras-how-
| do-t...). You don't need AI because we already know that
| distance = speed * time. We can calculate to a high
| degree of certainty - with high school math - that you
| had to have 1. been speeding or 2. bent space time if you
| cover the distance between them in too short of time.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _If speeding is not something that happens constantly,
| then a radar could detect the instances of speeding_
|
| And if it is, which it generally is, it means the speed
| limits are not set appropriately. But that point always
| seems to be overlooked.
| clickety_clack wrote:
| The point he's making that people violate the letter of
| the law in many, many small ways, and to prosecute people
| for all of them would be a crippling burden on both
| individuals and the economy.
| bubblewand wrote:
| I dunno. We got car insurance once that had a "put this
| spy device in your car for a couple weeks for a lower
| rate" deal and I felt like I was driving a lot less-
| safely when I was constantly worried about _looking like_
| I was driving safely.
|
| Like, to pick an example that's specifically speed-limit
| related, if more people really tried hard to do 25MPH
| (the marked speed limit on many of them) or under for the
| entire length of an interstate off-ramp, I think we'd be
| spending more money on brake pads and there'd be a lot
| more cars getting rear-ended. Sticking to that speed the
| entire length is silly and not very safe, and things work
| just fine without people doing that. Tons of other edge
| cases like that where you're technically breaking some
| law or another for a little while, but things work way
| better if you do. Plus practically every one of these
| laws has some kind of judgement-call clause that applies
| to modify it, and I don't want the people making those
| judgement calls to know that if they do what _seems right
| to them_ in the moment, there 's a very high likelihood
| they'll be hassled for it.
| egorfine wrote:
| I have to kind of agree with you on all points here.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| I've never seen an interstate off-ramp in the US with a
| 25MPH speed limit (white sign). I've seen 25MPH
| advisories (yellow sign), but those aren't a legal limit.
| Advisory signs are the maximum safe speed for the worst
| possible conditions (road covered in ice).
|
| I otherwise agree.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Even just speeding offences, I think you probably catch
| everyone who actually drives in the UK,
|
| So we have a fucktonne of speed cameras allover the
| place: https://www.speedcameramap.co.uk/ (you need to
| zoom in there are so fucking many)
|
| But we have less redlight cameras than the US. we also
| have hatching cameras (yellow hatched boxes mean no
| stopping, usually at junctions) we _also_ have bus lane
| cameras, where if you drive in a buslane you get a fine.
|
| For the Speed cameras, they are normally put there based
| on evidence of road deaths linked to speeding. I dont
| _like_ speed cameras, but they do serve a purpose.
|
| When you get a speeding ticket, if its your first
| offence, you can take a speed awareness course, and you
| won't get points on your license. otherwise its three
| points and a PS100 fine. The points age out after 3
| years. the maximum you can normally get is 12 points on
| your license.
|
| Its only in extreme cases do you get a ban, or license
| revoked.
|
| The reason why people are still able to drive are
| numerous:
|
| 1) its been a gradual evolution.
|
| 2) we have fairly robust training for drivers (theory,
| comprehensive real world test)
|
| 3) Evidence based placement. Its not like they just shove
| these things where poor people live (or in the US where
| the city has zoned living for people with more melanin
| than others). If there are higher than average road
| crashes, the road is re-made to make it safer, speed
| limits dropped, traffic calming put in place, then speed
| cameras.
|
| 4) You are expected to follow the traffic rules
|
| 5) the traffic rules are actually pretty sensible.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > we also have hatching cameras (yellow hatched boxes
| mean no stopping, usually at junctions)
|
| Weirdly I've never encountered these in the US (only red
| light cameras) and do we ever need them. I'm generally
| opposed to government associated cameras due to concerns
| about turnkey authoritarianism but if we have to have
| cameras at intersections they could at least curb the
| awful self centered behavior.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Most states ban speed cameras and many ban red light
| cameras as 4th amendment violations. You cannot face your
| accuser when your accuser is a robot. As a result, speed
| camera tickets have always used some legal sleight-of-
| hand to nail you into confessing, and this has become
| unpalatable.
|
| If we raised speed limits (almost) across the board to
| the actual safe limits of modern cars, I think a lot more
| people would be ok with speed cameras. There would still
| be a constitutional problem, however.
| p_ing wrote:
| Other states deal with it by making it a civil
| infraction, not a moving violation, bypassing the 4th
| amendment issue.
| saalweachter wrote:
| What are "the actual safe limits of modern cars"?
|
| Data from various states raising their limits over the
| last few decades is that every 5MPH increase in state
| speed limits brings with it an 8.5% increase in traffic
| fatalities on freeways. With the 70MPH speed limit common
| for freeways through most of the US, we're already up 25%
| on road fatalities over the 55MPH that was chosen for gas
| mileage during the oil crisis.
|
| For cities, pedestrians struck at 25MPH are already at a
| 10% chance of death, which reaches 50% at 40MPH.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Nobody goes 70 mph on freeways. They go 80 mph on that
| road because it's the speed of traffic. If you declared a
| "speed limit reset" and raised the speed limit to 80 mph,
| people won't be going 90 mph. They will be going the
| speed limit.
| saalweachter wrote:
| So "the actual safe limits of modern cars" just means
| "the speed everyone is currently driving"?
| vel0city wrote:
| > You cannot face your accuser when your accuser is a
| robot
|
| I don't really get this take though. If one contests the
| ticket, have it go to a manual review where someone looks
| at the tape and confirms the calibration history of the
| equipment, and boom now that person can be the official
| "accuser".
|
| If its the argument that they might not have been the one
| actually driving the vehicle, just make the laws relate
| to the registered owner of the vehicle is ultimately
| responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle. If the
| owner wants to try and prove it wasn't them, they can
| deflect that in court and prove it was actually their
| friend or whoever.
|
| If we had a CCTV of a murder happening we wouldn't just
| go "well that's just a robot not a real person making the
| recording, guess we need to toss that video!" I don't
| understand how we take that kind of position when it
| comes to moving violations.
|
| Also FWIW the 4th Amendment has nothing about facing your
| accuser. Its the sixth amendment that talks about "...to
| be confronted with the witnesses against him".
| ben_w wrote:
| > So we have a fucktonne of speed cameras allover the
| place: https://www.speedcameramap.co.uk/ (you need to
| zoom in there are so fucking many)
|
| Doesn't seem that many compared to what I was describing.
| At the scale of a country, "a lot" != "a high %".
|
| Your point 3 is the biggest divergence between them.
|
| Point 5 is only kinda true, the failure mode is weird:
| there's good reasons why the speed limit isn't enforced
| until you're significantly over it, but that in turn
| means it has to be set lower than physics and reaction
| times dictate, which in turn means people push back
| against them. 20 zones knowing people will do 25, chosen
| because if they were 30 zones people would do 35 and 35
| is too fast, that kind of thing.
|
| People who know that, let themselves go a bit over the
| limit; but a bit over means they get caught some of the
| time because of the same small occasional variations that
| are the reason why the speed limit isn't enforced at x+1
| mph in the first place.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Speeding is a special case, because it's unclear what the
| lawmakers, road designers, and police intend. When the
| speed limit is 65 mph, do they actually intend for
| everyone to go no faster? I don't think so. I think the
| lawmakers, if driving in traffic, want people to go a bit
| faster. Same with the police. And I think the road
| designers design the roads knowing most people will
| speed.
|
| I want to follow the law. But when it comes to speeding,
| it's hard for me to follow the letter of the law, because
| all the parties involved in creating and enforcing the
| law don't want me to follow the letter of the law. So I
| instead follow the intent of the law, and speed up to
| 9mph. When Google Maps pops up a "police ahead" warning,
| I don't slow down at all, because I'm following the
| intent of the law, and that's what police around where I
| live enforce. If I'm driving in other areas of the
| country, I'm less certain what police want, so I'll be
| more likely to follow the letter of the law.
|
| If there was automated strict enforcement of speeding,
| then it would be clear to me that the letter of the law
| is the intent, so I would gladly obey the letter of the
| law. There would certainly need to be a transition period
| with clear warnings that in the future, the letter of the
| law will be enforced, instead of the current status of
| something looser.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| The purpose of a system is what it does. In Australia,
| they want you to go 50. In the USA, they want a reason to
| fine you.
| Thorrez wrote:
| > In the USA, they want a reason to fine you.
|
| In my area of the US, I don't think so. I'll go 9mph over
| the speed limit when I drive by a police car. I've never
| been pulled over.
|
| In some other areas of the US, you're right, which is why
| I'm less likely to speed in other areas.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > When the speed limit is 65 mph, do they actually intend
| for everyone to go no faster? I don't think so.
|
| Where is this supposed ambiguity coming from?
| Thorrez wrote:
| Are you asking (1) why I think what I think?
|
| Or are you asking (2) how we wound up in this situation
| as a society?
|
| (1) I think what I think for several reasons. Basically
| everyone speeds. Probabilistically that includes he very
| lawmakers writing the laws, the police, and the road
| designers. I've also read some articles talking about
| road design, and in it it's mentioned that the designers
| factor in that most people will speed if the road
| conditions are amenable. I've also seen police cars
| driving around without their lights on, passing people at
| higher than the speed limit, and when unable to pass, the
| appear annoyed to me.
|
| (2) I think this situation arose in sort of a
| "normalization of deviance" manner. Police didn't want to
| be too strict, or didn't want to bother fighting tickets
| for people speeding only a little, so only gave tickets
| for people speeding a lot. Then over time many people
| realized that, and started speeding a little. More are
| and more people started speed just to fit in with the
| surrounding traffic, until eventually everyone was
| speeding. Peer pressure. I've heard driving the same
| speed as the surrounding traffic is generally safer than
| driving significantly slower (or faster). Once everyone
| is speeding, that includes lawmakers, road designers, and
| police. And they factor that in when they write laws,
| design roads, and enforce laws.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| There were also fairly contiguous moral panics in the
| late 1960s (teenage boomers crashing muscle cars) 1970s
| (fuel use) and early 1980s (slightly older boomers
| driving drunk) that lead to the regulations being written
| far in excess of what there's popular support to enforce
| which is a huge contributor to why the enforcers and
| judiciary are essentially responsible for dialing it back
| to something that doesn't make the system look stupid.
| jrs235 wrote:
| Some states follow Assumed Maximum Posted Speed (in
| certain places) and others are Absolute Maximum Posted
| Speed. It is not absolute in an Assumed Maximum Posted
| Speed state that driving faster than the posted speed is
| against the law and deserving of a fine, merely it is
| prima facie evidence that you were driving dangerously
| but can be challenged and overturned. For example, in
| Minnesota, outside of municipalities on highways (there
| may a few more qualifiers like posted speed is 55 mph or
| higher and might need to be a divided highway, I don't
| remember 100%) an officer can pull you over and issue you
| a ticket for merely driving faster than the posted speed
| limit. You can even admit you were driving faster (I
| don't recommend this). You can still challenge the ticket
| in court. If you can convince a judge that your speed was
| safe, the judge can let you off. If the weather is dry,
| temperature moderate, visibility great, no other people
| or vehicles around you, you were able to safely slow
| down, and (prima facie evidence) that you posed no risk
| as no one was injured by you driving faster. In Wisconsin
| though they are an Absolute Maximum Posted Speed state so
| if you are found to have been driving faster than the
| posted speed limit, that's enough to ensure you can be
| fined.
| manarth wrote:
| "it's unclear what the lawmakers, road designers, and
| police intend"
|
| In many cases, there's a gap between the original
| intention and the current need.
|
| Many speed limits and policies were established in an era
| of fewer cars, but also much less capable cars with fewer
| safety features - many speed limits were established
| before the adoption of ABS, stability control and
| airbags, and more recent innovations in lane-keeping and
| adaptive cruise control.
|
| Modern cars may be capable of travelling at greater
| speeds with greater safety, but there's a more recent
| recognition of the increase in emissions pollution from
| increased speed. Speed-limits typically remain
| grandfathered in at their original value (which may have
| been set 30, 40, 50 years ago), regardless of the change
| in context.
|
| Then there are some pecularities such as the UK default
| of 60mph for a single-track road, but if you were to try
| that in many rural locations (think Cornwall, Scotland,
| Wales) you would likely find yourself upside-down in a
| ditch.
|
| This post highlights the absurdity of some of the limits!
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/1dng5z9/genuin
| ely...
|
| The UK NPCC (National Police Chief's Council) have a
| published policy where enforcement effectively starts at
| 10% +2mph over the speed-limit (whilst allowing officers
| to use individual discretion if they feel there are
| aggravating factors).
|
| https://library.college.police.uk/docs/NPCC/Speed-
| enforcemen... [PDF]
| jemmyw wrote:
| > UK default of 60mph for a single-track road, but if you
| were to try that in many rural locations (think Cornwall,
| Scotland, Wales) you would likely find yourself upside-
| down in a ditch.
|
| The way the national limit is framed is more limit than
| road speed. It's interesting how we think of the limits
| as drivers: we get frustrated when other people go slower
| than the limit, we don't treat it as a limit, we treat it
| as the speed you should be traveling at.
|
| I live fairly rural in New Zealand (UK expat) and even
| though you necessarily get a lot of speed variation on
| the roads around me, due to being winding, having farm
| traffic, sometimes narrow, you still get idiots who have
| to be going at the exact limit (or over) and tailgate 1m
| behind any vehicle in their way. Including trucks who
| can't really see them when they do that. I enjoy driving
| fast on those roads but I still don't understand the
| impatience.
| criddell wrote:
| > Speed-limits typically remain grandfathered in at their
| original value
|
| That depends on where you are. In Texas, state highway
| speed limits are determined though a traffic study[1].
| The monitor traffic for a while, then set the limit to
| the 85th percentile.
|
| People can use this to get out of speeding tickets. If
| you find that it's been a long time since a speed study
| was done on the road you were on, the judge might throw
| the ticket out.
|
| There are some hard limits though. For example, the
| maximum speed limit that can be set on a road is 85 mph.
|
| [1]: https://www.txdot.gov/safety/driving-laws/speed-
| limits/speed...
| mylifeandtimes wrote:
| In other words, 15% of people are ALWAYS speeding, by
| definition.
|
| So with perfect enforcement (punish everyone over the
| threshold), how do you enable an 85th percentile rule?
| criddell wrote:
| > 15% of people are ALWAYS speeding, by definition
|
| Not necessarily. If the data is heavily clustered around
| a single value, the percentile collapses to that number.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Counterpoint: with mobile devices, and increasingly,
| _control and information features of automobiles
| themselves_ , distracted driving is increasingly a
| concern.
|
| There's also the point that driving capabilities vary
| _wildly_ by individual, and often decline drastically
| with age. Recent case-in-point, an elderly driver in San
| Francisco who killed a family of four (a mother, father
| and two daughters, waiting at a bus stop, not in the
| roadway at all), let off with a minimal sentence, raising
| much public furore:
|
| <https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/sf-west-
| portal-cra...>
|
| <https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/san-francisco-
| west...>
|
| The driver was speeding (70 mph in a residential area),
| and possibly driving the wrong way on the street.
| speleding wrote:
| I'm going to argue the other side: in Chinese cities like
| Chongqing they've seen a drastic reduction in crime after
| blanketing the city with cameras and monitoring
| technology.
|
| Whole categories of crime disappeared. Women and elderly
| feel safe to walk the streets at night. No one locks
| their bike anymore in Chongqing.
|
| I care about privacy, but I think we should be smart
| enough to work out a way to get some of those benefits
| without going full 1984. For example by having
| surveillance that can only be queried by an AI with very
| strong guard rails.
|
| Admittedly, I live in a country with very strong
| democratic institutions, and I trust we would take action
| the moment something gets abused or surveillance
| overreaches. I would probably feel differently living
| elsewhere.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > I trust we would take action the moment something gets
| abused or surveillance overreaches.
|
| The thing about turnkey authoritarian solutions is that
| once something happens it's likely too late to take
| action. However there are often alternative solutions
| that physically constrain the system such that
| substantial abuse is impossible without time consuming
| and expensive physical modifications. The traditional
| speed cameras in the UK for example.
|
| Cameras, AI integrated at the edge, software that can't
| be updated remotely, the full stack publicly audited,
| that only output video data when a suspected violent
| crime is flagged. Something like that might work. I'm not
| optimistic such a solution would see much support though.
|
| You'd also probably want a policy put in place in advance
| to quickly pull them down if certain criteria are met.
| But again, I'm not optimistic about the prospects.
| speleding wrote:
| Well I agree, and my hopes aren't very high of this
| actually happening. Our politicians tend to be clueless
| with anything tech related, their opinions calibrated by
| what they saw in Hollywood movies, where anything tech
| related always turns into "black mirror". (By contrast,
| allegedly over half the Chinese politburo has an
| engineering degree of some kind).
|
| But we could start small, with just one neighborhood, a
| pilot project where the kinks get worked out and slowly
| scaled up. Getting permission for a small scale pilot
| shouldn't be impossible.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| So you want to slippery slope your way into Nazi Germany?
| speleding wrote:
| Everybody made that exact same "slippery slope to Nazi
| Germany" argument when euthanasia was legalized here.
| That was decades ago. There have been several attempts to
| broaden or narrow the scope of those laws and the
| democratic institutions did just what they were designed
| to do, making changes judiciously.
|
| If you are worried about the slippery slope, then you are
| really worried that democracy does not work as intended.
| (And depending on where you live that may be a very
| reasonable worry). By the way, Nazi Germany was not
| really a surveillance state, perhaps you are thinking of
| East Germany?
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > If you are worried about the slippery slope, then you
| are really worried that democracy does not work as
| intended.
|
| Not really. That's a well established failure mode.
| People's perceptions can gradually shift as they become
| accustomed to the new way of doing things.
|
| Personally I'd be less concerned about a slippery slope
| and more concerned about abrupt changes in policy. All
| infrastructure should be designed with the worst case
| scenario in mind. It's naive to assume that things will
| never get worse suddenly or that we will have plenty of
| warning or even a meaningful opportunity to react.
| rpdillon wrote:
| There's no way to deploy a system like the one you're
| describing without being abused for authoritarian
| overreach. It's simply a matter of time, and once it is
| deployed for authoritarian overreach, the only way back
| will be paid for in blood.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have a friend that was just fired from a job, driving
| 18-wheelers, because he was being monitored by an AI, and
| the AI malfunctioned, yelling at him for hours to put on
| his seat belt (it was on). He put a piece of tape over
| the speaker, and was fired for that.
|
| One of the best, and most experienced big rig truckers in
| the area. They lost an invaluable employee, and he got
| another job in minutes (truckers are still a valuable
| commodity).
|
| One of the things about computers, is that they can't cut
| you (or themselves) slack.
| naasking wrote:
| > The entire legal system has to be radically changed
| with far less punishments for almost everything if you
| have perfect, or even 30% of the way to perfect,
| surveillance.
|
| Prosecutorial discretion means they can just collect
| evidence and choose not to charge you unless they want to
| leverage you for something. This already happens, but
| universal surveillance means it can literally happen to
| anybody, because everybody breaks the law in some way due
| to how many laws we have.
|
| Discretion is the real problem I think. It seems extreme,
| but maybe discretion should be eliminated: if you commit
| a crime you _will_ be charged. This will at first result
| in way too much prosecution, which will lead to protests
| and hopefully repealing laws and we 'd end up in a better
| place where the law is understandable and predictable by
| mortals.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Speed cameras are a source of income, they are not for
| enforcement or safety.
| eesmith wrote:
| Determining where the cameras are placed and what to alert
| on are also important and unresolved issues.
|
| Simply getting alerts from a camera can cause people to
| believe that the area is a high-crime area, when it's
| merely a consequence of having a camera there.
|
| Poor people are more like to be in public areas than rich
| pedophiles who can buy an island or ranch so they and their
| friends can enjoy wonderful secrets out of the eye of any
| Flock camera.
|
| If the camera alerts on AI facial recognition for wanted
| criminals, and facial recognition causes disproportionally
| higher false alerts for people of south Asian heritage than
| of Anglo-Norman heritage, then systemic racism is built
| into the system, which we should all mind.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I'm not talking about monitoring public spaces or
| searching for criminals. I don't want either of those
| things and I'm generally opposed to the government
| operating cameras. I just don't mind private businesses
| using them to support their existing security guards so
| long as they don't mishandle or abuse the data.
|
| I'd even be in favor of entirely banning the use of
| facial recognition technology in conjunction with
| security cameras. Have them alert on concrete suspicious
| activity.
| eesmith wrote:
| I took your list ("The issues are internet connectivity,
| data retention/mining/sale, and non-local processing") as
| being incomplete. The examples I gave were to give
| examples of additional issues. There are equivalents for
| my examples to private businesses, even putting
| recognition systems to the side.
|
| I personally have noticed that "alert" and "suspicious"
| tends to mean "something unusual", and not "something
| illegal". Increasing alerts results in forced normality.
|
| On the flip side, if the information was there and not
| used, then the security guards are blamed for not
| connecting the dots, so investigating alerts becomes a
| CYA task.
|
| As an example, security guards have harassed people on
| public sidewalks who are legally taking pictures of the
| building they are guarding. They are incentivized to
| investigate the alert, face no consequences (so long as
| that harassment doesn't itself break the law) for a false
| alert, and risk losing their job if the photographs are
| used for nefarious purposes. Adding air-gapped AI may
| help the security guards, while increasing the amount of
| harassment.
|
| Yes, I have had a security guard stand over me while I
| delete a photograph I took of a building while in a
| public park. I think I was not legally required to follow
| request. I wasn't going to risk escalating the
| confrontation over a picture of a neat-looking gargoyle.
| No, I don't want AI enabling more of that harassment.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I just watched _Enemy of the State_ (late 1990s sequel to
| _The Conversation_ [1974]) -- one of the major plot
| elements is _having to physically acquire the footage /tape
| (from isolated witnesses/cameras)_; whereas today,
| everything feeds into one central company [0].
|
| [0] whom then repackages streams and sells to anybody --
| mostly law-enforcement -- with no 4th Amendment protections
| ('cause _it 's a private company brah!_).
| tremon wrote:
| Oh how the public opinion has been moved already. Rewriting
| your argument to echo the sentiment from a generation ago:
|
| > The laws need to be updated. Having police officers monitor
| public streets was fine because they wouldn't actually recall
| anything unless there was an incident. Now it's possible to
| go back and review specific footage and identify everyone on
| those camera's -- we need new privacy laws to reflect this
| capability.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| When passive monitoring turns into analytics -> public
| watching turns into stalking.
|
| it's ok for me to observe a person in public park - it should
| be ok to watch camera for an activity
|
| But if it's not ok for me to stalk someone I think it should
| be illegal for a network of cameras to watch my movements
| too!
|
| Slapping AI onto stalking is still stalking.
| close04 wrote:
| > the scale of indiscriminate nature of data capture and the
| volume of data being captured
|
| It took a lot of naivete, to put it gently, and head-in-sand
| attitude to believe otherwise. Flock had everything in place to
| collect a treasure trove of data but they would decide not to
| do it? Out of principle? Or even if we take the very charitable
| interpretation that they don't do it today, but also that
| they'll never cave in to the pressure to do it in the future?
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| >The fact that they're gonna shut it down, implies the scale of
| indiscriminate nature of data capture and the volume of data
| being captured.
|
| Or it implies that the .gov, it's agents and those associated
| with it are not squeaky clean and that any aggrieved party
| being able to request footage would be bad for the .gov.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Yeah, it appears they have a lot of things backwards, for
| example:
|
| > "We were very disappointed," Franklin said. "That means
| perpetrators of crime, people who are maybe engaged in domestic
| abuse or stalkers, they can request footage and that could
| cause a lot of harm."
|
| The whole point is that they should have been collecting data
| on perpetrators of crimes only in the first place, not a
| massive dragnet.
| tclancy wrote:
| It feels so in bad faith as there's a claim ICE could use the
| footage if it's public domain. They already can and that's
| one of the big arguments against it you clowns.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| beyond that it also implies "but the bad guys could then
| trawl all this data; only us, the good guys should be able
| to do that!"
| toss1 wrote:
| The judge is right, and should go even further.
|
| This is data collected with public funds -- our money -- for
| public purposes.
|
| Not only should it be available to any US resident by request,
| it should be public, as in in an online library, and any US
| resident without a criminal record should be able to get
| continuous access, not only a batch of records (yes, keep out
| anyone with a restraining order or any other crime).
|
| It is our tax dollars, any of us should be able to do research
| on the data. Including watching the watchers. Where do the
| government employees go and when? Where do the Flock employees
| go, and when?
|
| Or, if that kind of instantly-available stalking of anyone is
| too much of a risk, shut it down. Hard. All of it.
|
| The real-world dynamics of the system is either 1) everybody's
| motions in public are public, or 2) it is a tool of a
| totalitarian state. There is no other option, and option 2 is
| intolerable in a free society.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| Public traffic cams have existed for a while. I don't think
| anyone would complain as much if the ALPR feed was public.
| Politicians and government officials want to use surveillance
| as a means of control not to benefit the public and that's what
| galls people.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> The fact that they're gonna shut it down
|
| If only; they temporarily shut off their cameras, while other
| jurisdictions look to change their laws removing this data from
| the public record. Neither of these moves are close to "wins"
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Somewhat related discussion on Redmond Washington & Flock
| cameras: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45879101
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| Anyone can tell, why were those cameras installed in first place?
| Some company just said "lol for the fun" or what? Who paid for
| them?
| sonzohan wrote:
| A mix of public (city councils) and private (think HOAs that
| then donated access/equipment to the city) contracted with
| Flock in the past few years. The questions of exactly who,
| when, and why, are very muddy especially with the HOAs who
| operate rather privately.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| Thanks. I don't live in US and this subject is quite unknown
| to me
| jmward01 wrote:
| I might be good with legal guarantees, meaning jail time for
| those involved, that the only place images on these devices went
| was local to the municipality collecting them and that they were
| only accessed for very well defined reasons by very specific
| people.
|
| The core issues are that aggregation and exfiltration of this
| data means that privacy is dead and the AI world allows analysis
| for almost no cost. We need an idea in our laws that puts back
| the limited scope that technology has removed. If the police have
| to expend one person's worth of time to listen to a wiretap then
| it really isn't possible to get out of control. We need that
| level of cost associated with ALPR and all surveillance so that
| the abuse of these systems doesn't get out of control. Make it
| appropriately hard and it won't be a problem.
| sneak wrote:
| Then the feds come in with a national security law and bypass
| all those state/local protections and slurp it all up into an
| AI-powered Palantir database, the very existence of which is
| classified. Suddenly you're the victim of parallel construction
| and don't even know it.
|
| The database CANNOT EXIST SAFELY. Why don't people who "might
| be okay with this IF..." understand that?
|
| Collect the data and it WILL be misused, eventually, with 100%
| certainty. Has nobody read Snowden's book? They even have a
| name for intel agents casually spying on their
| partners/crushes.
|
| The law does not apply to everyone equally. The intelligence
| agencies get to break any laws they want without consequences,
| by longstanding tradition (remember 007's "license to kill" or
| the CIA's famous heart attack gun?). There are NO legal
| safeguards that can prevent abuse, no matter how you word them,
| because there will always be some animals who are "more equal
| than others" to whom they do not apply ("national security
| carve-out", "LEO exception", etc).
|
| Sadly, those to whom they do not apply are now coordinating
| with the new wannabe SturmAbteilung in what are called "fusion
| centers".
| bsder wrote:
| > The database CANNOT EXIST SAFELY. Why don't people who
| "might be okay with this IF..." understand that?
|
| You have to point out the Jews in Amsterdam. They had nothing
| to hide--until they did.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Amsterdam_civil_registry_.
| ..
|
| Or Martin Niemoller: a good Protestant German pastor who
| viewed the anti-theist attitudes of the Socialists and
| Communists as more threatening than Nazis. And then the Nazis
| put him in a concentration camp.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| There is another looming threat of modern day surveilance:
| previously hidden correlations.
|
| The data you found benign sharing in the past might allow
| unpleasant conclusions in the future _and might not even come
| from you personally_. Think about what toys you bought for your
| kids, or in what college milieu your worldview developed.
| Terr_ wrote:
| "Using metadata to find Paul Revere", a what-if of the
| American revolution.
|
| https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-
| metad...
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| This is a myth that continues to be propagated. Using
| previously unobservable correlations is a bedrock concept in
| Federal investigations in the US
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
| xethos wrote:
| And making it easier, better, faster, and more common isn't
| going to be a good thing. Reminding us that this already
| happens in smaller scale isn't really adding anything
| helpful considering the entire goal is to prevent it
| happening more in the future.
| sneak wrote:
| I am less worried about Flock ALPR (which are aimed in the
| direction of traffic flow to read rear number plates) as I am
| about the THOUSANDS of facial recognition cameras installed in
| the last year in all four directions at nearly every intersection
| in southern Nevada and many many cities in southern California
| (LA notably excepted). These are mounted above the stoplights and
| aimed _against_ traffic at stoplights to read faces.
|
| I mention these locales specifically only because I have directly
| observed them. I would be surprised if this isn't also happening
| in many other US metro areas, given how eagerly DHS/TSA/CBP/ICE
| are mass collecting facial geometries at every available
| opportunity.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| > I would be surprised if this isn't also happening...
|
| "I wouldn't be surprised if this is also happening..."
|
| Only the second sounds correct to me.
| jen20 wrote:
| I believe both to be correct but "would be surprised if this
| isn't happening" to be a stronger statement than "wouldn't be
| surprised if it were".
| filoeleven wrote:
| Flock cameras are advertised as ALPR but have
| facial/vehicle/etc recognition systems running on them as well.
| You can see one panning up to track other people near the end
| of this Benn Jordan video on the cameras.
|
| https://youtu.be/vU1-uiUlHTo
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| The statute in Washington that allows these to be used to
| enforce speeds and signals also prohibited photographing the
| driver using another or the same camera.
| sneak wrote:
| *Flock (YC S17)
|
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety
| zombot wrote:
| The fact that they shut it down to avoid it becoming public
| record proves that light is still the best disinfectant against
| vermin.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin said the city disagrees with the
| ruling and is concerned about who could obtain the footage. "We
| were very disappointed," Franklin said. "That means perpetrators
| of crime, people who are maybe engaged in domestic abuse or
| stalkers, they can request footage and that could cause a lot of
| harm."
|
| These people are fooling themselves if they think that keeping
| the cameras but not allowing the public to see the data will stop
| domestic abuse or stalkers. We've already seen these cameras used
| to stalk people and it wasn't random members of the public doing
| it, it was police officers. As long as this data is being
| collected it will be abused. If not by the public, then by
| police, or by Flock employees, or by hackers. The only way to
| protect people is to not gather the data at all. Anyone who keeps
| these cameras doesn't actually care about the public's safety.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Cops and DV. And crash coverups.
| schiffern wrote:
| The mayor is making a great argument for not blanketing your
| city in a surveillance dragnet.
|
| Policymakers were warned about precisely these dangers ahead of
| time. They went ahead anyway, and now they want to play
| blameless and are trying to shift the blame on anyone but
| themselves.
| techdmn wrote:
| Two such instances of police using Flock to track current or
| former romantic partners:
|
| * https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-
| government/article29105...
|
| * https://www.fox6now.com/news/milwaukee-police-officer-
| charge...
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| this is not an honest argument, it's just a variation of the
| "think of the children" strategy.
| DrScientist wrote:
| I always think that the best way to get stuff regulated is make
| those in power feel the risks.
|
| So if people started using something like flock to embarrass
| politicians, business leaders, or newspaper leader writers then
| suddenly privacy might become a big issue.
| toofy wrote:
| don't worry, normal people will never ever see this data to use
| it against the powerful.
|
| our public data can only be seen by billionaires and cops, not
| us.
|
| it can be used against us, but never the other way around. the
| faster we realize this, the faster we can move out of our
| "divisive" phase and get back to making billionaires dreams
| come true.
| DrScientist wrote:
| Indeed - but as compute costs come down, it doesn't have to
| be that way - ultimately there are 8 billion eyes out there.
|
| There are also public data examples - for example the public
| data on charter flights or ship locations had people like
| Elon Musk bleating about privacy.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| So whenever these cameras could actually be used by the public
| (potentially for good), the government is allowed to just shut
| them down?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| For reasons I have been unable to articulate, I have believed
| that if license plate readers are a thing, someone should open-
| source one that the general public could share.
|
| When a comment comes back that someone malicious will use the
| tech to stalk someone I really have no answer for that. That is
| indefensibly a bad thing.
|
| Of course the tech exists nonetheless (not open source as far as
| I know) and it could be argued it is even being used maliciously
| --or at least without the kind of judicial oversight we assumed
| would be in place. But one actor behaving badly does not justify
| the use of the tech by everyone.
|
| I read about the citizens of Minneapolis using decidedly low-tech
| means to track ICE vehicles prowling their community and it
| suggested a scenario where an open license-plate-tracking
| solution could "balance the scales" a bit (that is if you believe
| the scales to be imbalanced).
|
| I imagined not a license-plate reading dragnet but rather
| software where you had first to enter in very specific strings of
| ASCII characters and the software would only announce when there
| was a specific string match from the camera.
|
| To that end I vibe-coded an app for iOS in about 15 minutes using
| iOS's Vision framework and the built-in phone camera. Anyone
| could do the same.
|
| Nonetheless I only tested it with "HELLO" and "WORLD" using
| scraps of paper in my kitchen and never tried it outside as the
| craziness in Minneapolis seemed to have quieted down.
|
| I moved on to other projects.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| There had been a fairly decent open APLR library called
| OpenALPR. It used to be updated fairly regularly, but then was
| "acquired" and now sits abandoned for almost a decade without
| any updates, while the company that acquired it (REKOR) has
| commercialized it and extended it as a closed source API and
| platform.
|
| ALPR is fairly trivial now days, and a modern CPU can process
| thousands of plates per second (dozens of plates per frame,
| hundreds of frames per second coming multiple cameras pointing
| at different lanes of traffic).
|
| The "product" around all of these is linking the plates
| traveling together, tracking routes through various cameras,
| identifying common travel patterns, and more disturbing travel
| patterns that are outside norm for a given plate or route (i.e.
| do they normally drive these 3 cameras M-F, but this Th, they
| went a different route and stopped somewhere for a while).
|
| All that used to be done by the police/detectives/investigators
| on their own. Now the AI is automating this, and that is truly
| terrifying, especially for how often misreads occur.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| Ive wanted to know this for a long time. Why isn't there some
| package I can download to a raspberry pi with a camera, and
| contribute to a public website that shows things like, oh I
| don't know real time positions of government vehicles...
| cmckn wrote:
| Please contact your representative in Olympia and tell them to
| kill the bill that would exempt this footage from public record
| requests. It passed the Senate on Feb. 6.
|
| This is the bill:
| https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary/?BillNumber=6002&Chamber=...
|
| Find your reps: https://leg.wa.gov/legislators/
|
| Washington State Legislative Hotline: 1-800-562-6000
| siffland wrote:
| My issues is with false arrests due to people blindly following
| AI. People pulled out of their cars are gunpoint due to the AI
| misreading a single letter on the plate, the lady who was
| arrested for stealing amazon packages just because flock saw her
| enter and exit a neighborhood and she had to get doorbell camera
| to prove her innocence.
|
| Also i think it should be public record about every single point
| of data flock collects and retention period. I am not saying they
| have to release the data itself, but I want to know what my tax
| dollars are collecting, how long they are keeping it, who can
| access it and who they are selling, er i mean sharing it with.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The government's power over its citizens should mainly derive
| from its legitimacy in the eyes of citizens, not from its
| technological and military superiority over the people.
|
| This kind of ubiquitous surveillance is so dangerous to democracy
| and the ability of the citizens to do _anything_ without the
| government knowing.
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