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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
alpr.watch
reboot_boom wrote 19 hours 0 min ago:
Similar but different project: [1] > Surveillance under Surveillance
shows you cameras and guards — watching you — almost everywhere.
[1]: https://sunders.uber.space
avipars wrote 20 hours 34 min ago:
There are some false positives, [1] Mentions "flock" when referring to
a flock of turkeys - not flock cameras
[1]: https://cityofmidlandmi.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_1021...
rhgraysonii wrote 21 hours 6 min ago:
Is the site open source?
I see some issues in the map display I would like to fix.
ponker wrote 21 hours 30 min ago:
For an alternate perspective on these drones, see this interview with
rapper "DreamLife Rizzy" where he talks about how these technologies
have made it impossible for him and his associates to do crimes in San
Francisco
[1]: https://nypost.com/2025/12/11/us-news/sf-rapper-dreamllife-riz...
olliem36 wrote 21 hours 41 min ago:
Surveillance of the surveillants to prevent the surveilled
sneak wrote 1 day ago:
Many metros, including Las Vegas and LA, have rolled out thousands of
facial recognition traffic cameras above the signals at intersections.
The ALPR situation is trivial by comparison. Transportation privacy is
a historical oddity. You can’t drive down the road in a major metro
or walk down an airport concourse without being identified and tracked
by your facial geometry.
The US federal government seems to be entirely hellbent on accumulating
facial biometrics on the entire population.
csmpltn wrote 1 day ago:
The goal is to intimidate criminals, and mitigate crime. What’s wrong
with that?
3D30497420 wrote 1 day ago:
It does not take much imagination to see how use of these tools can
be easily abused.
There are already stories of abuse, here are a few: [1] (Many more
can be found with a quick Google search.)
[1]: https://www.aclu-wi.org/news/what-the-flock-police-surveilla...
petargyurov wrote 1 day ago:
You aren't the one deciding what is a crime and what isn't.
calcifer wrote 1 day ago:
Honestly, "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry
about" is a juvenile take in a post-Snowden world.
elwell wrote 1 day ago:
I, for one, welcome surveillance.
unkulunkulu wrote 1 day ago:
I believe a reasonable push back to this surveillance increase should
be “incresing law precision”, like “fines for making a really
dangerous maneuver vs driving fast on an empty road”
“really scaring someone on a bike vs driving on a sidewalk in
general”
spencerflem wrote 1 day ago:
I would pay a hundred thousand dollars to get a 24/7 video feed of
Peter Thiel
BimJeam wrote 1 day ago:
We need that for Europe, too.
schoen wrote 1 day ago:
When I was working at EFF I would complain about people creating
"persistent unique identifiers", and particularly ones that someone can
passively log. Many governments probably have classified databases that
are more intrusive than the ALPR databases, based on electronic
surveillance means, which engineers might have been able to mitigate
through more cautious protocol design.
I've thought that license plates themselves are such a persistent
unique identifier, but one that we sort of didn't notice until the
recognition and storage technologies got cheaper.
The original motivation for license plates seems to be about enforcing
safety inspections of cars (maybe also liability insurance?). Nowadays
we also have a lot of other uses that have piled up. The top two I
think are very popular: allowing victims of crimes involving motor
vehicles to identify the vehicles reliably, and allowing police to
catch fugitives in vehicular pursuits. Maybe these were actually even
considered part of the original motivation for license plate
requirements. Below that, still fairly popular, you have allowing
non-moving violation citations such as parking tickets; allowing police
to randomly notice wanted persons' vehicles that happen to be nearby;
and allowing government agencies another enforcement lever for other
stuff by threatening to cancel previously-issued plates. (Oh yeah, and
nowadays also paying for parking online!)
I could imagine more modern approaches that would put more
technological limitations on some of these things, but I guess any
change would be controversial not least because you're intentionally
taking some data away from law enforcement (which I think is a normal
thing to want to do). The one that's really hard is the "victims of
crimes easily identifying vehicles". If you replace license plates with
something that's not easily to memorize or write down, the reporting
gets a lot harder.
Maybe we could try to have license plates change frequently using
something like format-preserving encryption ( [1] ) so they still
appear like existing license plate formats, and then prevent law
enforcement agents or agencies from directly receiving the decryption
keys, so they have to actively interact with the plate issuer in order
to answer specific investigative questions about specific vehicles. If
police receive a report of a crime they can ask to find out what the
involved vehicle's displayed plate will change to on specific dates.
This would have the problem that a partial or mistranscribed or
misremembered plate would be pretty useless (you couldn't easily search
for, or detect, a partial plate match). You could add some error
correcting codes to the plate numbers, but I don't think existing plate
numbers are long enough for that. Also, if the plate numbers didn't
change very frequently, you could probably partially deanonymize ALPR
datasets based on recurring patterns of locations over time.
The best lesson is probably that, if you make a new technical system,
you should be very cautious about the identifiers that go into that
system, as they may still exist decades later, and used for new kinds
of tracking and new kinds of surveillance that you didn't anticipate.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Format-preserving_encryption
shinhyeok wrote 1 day ago:
As a Korean, this is hilarious
mnau wrote 1 day ago:
Why? Is Korea at UK-level dystopia nightmare?
stackedinserter wrote 1 day ago:
Why aren't those flock cameras being destroyed all the time in the US?
In our city people vandalized speed cameras all the time, so eventually
government gave up and just banned them in the whole province. I'm not
sure they did that because of being vandalized, but at least there was
direct actionable push back.
LazyMans wrote 18 hours 48 min ago:
I'd probably think people getting bills for hundreds in the mail is a
good catalyst to take action on a speed camera. A camera that is used
for serious crimes, not speeding, is not going to be nearly as
inflammatory.
jmward01 wrote 1 day ago:
I'm all about monitoring privacy related things, but I think the bigger
piece here is the monitoring of city counsels for this kind of data.
Wow! I just hadn't thought about doing that before. This is a massive
trove of information and building a strong, more generic platform
around it could yield huge insights to enable fast action as
municipalities start implementing things. I have actually built some
code to review local city counsel meetings by transcribing them and
downloading meeting packets but opening this up at a larger scale could
be a massive thing.
throwaranay4933 wrote 1 day ago:
[1] pulls city council transcripts from YouTube etc
[1]: https://www.civicsearch.org/
phildini wrote 1 day ago:
Hi there! I've built the beginnings of this platform at [1] and [2] .
We track City Councils, Boards of Supervisors, really any
municipality we can get our hands on. I'm very open to how to make
this better!
[1]: https://civic.band
[2]: https://civic.observer
jmward01 wrote 21 hours 58 min ago:
Thanks! I'll give it a look
Verlyn139 wrote 1 day ago:
The state of this thread lol, buch of trump bootlickers, i hope he go
to hell soon
bichiliad wrote 1 day ago:
Genuine question: I’m someone who hates the centralization of data
with companies like Flock. I also want safer streets. I have liked
things like speed cameras and bus-mounted bus lane cameras specifically
because they target the problem without the need for police
involvement. How do you get the latter without ALPRs? Or do ALPRs
indicate cameras specifically collecting license plates independent of
active enforcement?
moleperson wrote 1 day ago:
Right next to my apartment building is a crosswalk that crosses a
fairly busy street. The crosswalk is well-marked, and it has a sign
in the median specifically stating that stopping for pedestrians is
required by law. In the time I've lived here I've nearly been hit by
cars several times on this crosswalk, and I've witnessed countless
people almost get hit here as well. Once I saw a pedestrian yell at
the driver, and the driver yelled back that they didn't have to stop
because "I don't have a stop sign".
I noticed recently that the city installed a flock camera pointed
directly at this crosswalk, and while I'm generally opposed to this
kind of surveillance, and I wish they would implement other measures
to make this safer, I really would love nothing more than for drivers
speeding through here and not stopping for pedestrians to get
ticketed. It's unclear still whether that's actually happening (and
not that it matters once you're dead), but I'm finding myself
empathizing with the argument for more surveillance for the first
time in my life.
squigz wrote 1 day ago:
I wish opponents would realize this more - that there are very
legitimate use-cases for stuff like this, to be actually helpful
and used to improve society.
What I wish proponents would accept is that it won't just be used
for those use-cases.
It's not an easy situation, especially when you consider the myriad
other issues that feed into this.
Unfortunately, as much as I empathize with your position, as long
as there is so much potential for abuse, and so long as trust in
public institutions continues to erode, I cannot support stuff like
this.
nielsole wrote 1 day ago:
In Shanghai there's lots of strobe lights on major intersections to
presumably take clean license plate pictures of people driving
against traffic after an illegal turn. Pretty plausible it
significantly increases compliance.
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
ALPRs are generally just cameras that create searchable timestamped
databases of identified vehicles, private or public. But they're only
really useful for public entities, because they're the only ones who
can in the general case do anything with a tagged car (look up who
owns it, curb it, &c).
owlninja wrote 1 day ago:
> Authorize Execution of a Public Right-of-Way Use Agreement Granting
Flock Group, Inc. a License to Install and Maintain Non-Police
Department Flock License Plate Reader Cameras on Public Rights-of Way
and Establish Fees for Permitting, Inspection, and Usage
This is on my town and seems like strange wording. What the heck are
private flock cameras?
>The City and Flock have negotiated a Right-of-Way Use Agreement, which
will grant Flock a non-exclusive license to install and maintain
certain
private cameras within the City's ROW. The agreement is for a period of
twenty (20) years and may be renewed for up to two (2) successive five
(5) year terms. Flock will be responsible for paying the permit and
inspection fees for existing private cameras within the City's ROW and
for any
newly installed private cameras within the ROW as well as for an annual
ROW usage fee on a per camera basis for the right to install cameras
within the City's ROW.
20 years...
gsibble wrote 1 day ago:
If you think privacy exists in any real capacity anymore, you're a
moron.
atymic wrote 1 day ago:
Clicked a random one and it's a document about a flock of ducks :-)
[1]: https://www.gtwp.com/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_10222025-1...
lukeinator42 wrote 1 day ago:
that was quite the wild read, haha. Looks like they're going to have
further meetings about the ducks but the conclusion of this meeting
is that: "There was consensus among the Zoning Board of Appeals that
the applicant has demonstrated emotional support ducks are necessary
but did not come to a consensus on what would be reasonable regarding
the number of ducks, the size and location of the enclosure, and
conditions of approval."
snigsnog wrote 1 day ago:
>Systems marketed for "solving crimes" get used for immigration
enforcement
So for solving crimes.
I'm in favor, then!
bichiliad wrote 1 day ago:
I think you don’t have to look far to find warrantless arrests or
illegal detentions under the guise of “immigration enforcement.”
I also think you’d be hard pressed to point to a crime in those
instances.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
The ideal amount of mistakes is non-zero.
We should compensate those who are improperly arrested and quickly
correct these violations, attempt to prevent them in the future,
reprimand those involved if necessary, but absolutely keep pushing
ahead at full steam on law enforcement efforts otherwise.
Hot take: some small number of unlawful arrests aren't the "neener
neener neener, you can't stop illegal immigration" that folks seem
to think they are.
DANmode wrote 1 day ago:
> The ideal amount of mistakes is non-zero.
I’ve heard this argument in the context of capital punishment,
and I find it incredibly unconvincing.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> I’ve heard this argument in the context of capital
punishment, and I find it incredibly unconvincing.
This is more or less a false dichotomy.
Capital punishment is by definition irreversible, so mistakes
aren't tolerable.
Being arrested is legally and reasonably far more correctable
with few lasting consequences: we can absorb these mistakes in
the rare events they occur.
mnau wrote 1 day ago:
Any law-enforcement also non-reversible. Do false positives
get their years of life back? No. And there is far less
scrutiny on that (see DA deal and all that).
Capital punishment just takes all of them instead of
few-to-tens of percent of a life (often the most valuable
years).
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
"Years of their life back" - I'm confused: how does a
mistaken arrest result in "years of life" being lost in an
immigration enforcement snafu?
You do realize that due process exists after an arrest?
zer0x4d wrote 1 day ago:
Absolutely agree. Mistakes should be corrected immediately,
protocol revised, and those responsible punished, if malicious
acts are found. Otherwise, enforcement should be full stream
ahead. Illegal immigration has hurt the US enormously and it's
time that we enforce our laws.
bichiliad wrote 1 day ago:
> The ideal amount of mistakes is non-zero.
Why? And separately, do you believe that people wrongly arrested
in the US are being compensated accordingly? The justice system
in the US isn’t known for being easy or cheap to navigate, and
I don’t think getting a warrant before detaining people is that
huge of an ask.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
Because these are human systems involving humans: there will
always be mistakes. Advocating for the elimination of 100% of
mistakes is a typical "rules for radicals" method of backdoor
legislation through increased bureaucracy.
I'm not advocating to "move fast and break things," but that
it's very easy and cheap for illegal immigration maximalists to
advocate that society should "move never so nothing breaks."
This type of obstruction is actually a form of conservative
policy, but "it's for the causes I like so it's okay."
> don’t think getting a warrant before detaining people is
that huge of an ask
The law doesn't require a warrant before detaining people - and
shouldn't. This doesn't even make sense: "Hold on Mr. Bank
Robber - I'm not detaining you, but pretty please don't go
anywhere, I gotta go get a warrant first!"
bichiliad wrote 1 day ago:
Hey, I'm all for accounting for human error. But I don't
think what we've been seeing in the news is not "hold on Mr.
Robber, I need a warrant" (also, you don't need a warrant for
that), nor is it "oops I arrested you by accident." It's
people being taken off the street because of vague
determinations about their identity, the types of jobs
they're working, etc. That's not probable cause, and that's
certainly not human error. That's an extrajudicial decision
made intentionally to have a chilling effect.
bequanna wrote 1 day ago:
How are you monitoring the meeting minutes? Would you open source this?
exceptione wrote 1 day ago:
All over the world the bed is being made for the autocrats. The new
generation of wealthy autocrats have tools at their disposal the
previous generations lacked. Like Musk and Vance told the audience,
this was the last time it had to vote.
The defense industry is something of a foregone era. Most capital has
been allocated to surveillance capitalism since last decades, providing
very powerful tools to influence and measure the personal lives of the
population. But things are shaping up for more active forms of control;
as the finance sector is putting all their eggs in the next iteration,
LLMs, which is being accepted by the public as a means for thought
generation. I am totally not surprised to learn that the government now
needs to a) sponsor this business model and b) needs to pull this horse
inside government and executive branches.
Sure, there are positive use cases to be thought of for LLMs. But lets
not be that naive this time, shall we? I mean, Grokopedia anyone?
dkalola wrote 1 day ago:
"Systems marketed for "solving crimes" get used for immigration
enforcement"
What immigration enforcement are you speaking of here? Legal? Illegal?
If the latter, wouldn't this system be solving crime?
Verlyn139 wrote 1 day ago:
average HN respose, bunch of boomers
tkzed49 wrote 1 day ago:
I can only conclude that people in this thread are being
intentionally obtuse.
This isn't a question of ideals; it's addressing the uptick in
illegal actions by immigration officials during the current US
administration. It's addressing the selective application of the law
to further conservative agendas.
Yes, some immigration enforcement is legal. Congratulations.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> addressing the selective application of the law to further
conservative agendas
Does selectively not enforcing immigration law further liberal
agendas?
- House seats (and therefore electoral votes) are determined by
census - which includes illegal immigrant populations.
- If you can waddle across the border at 8.5 months pregnant, you
can birth a citizen with no further requirements.
Ergo, "sanctuary cities" and other intentional lack of enforcement
allow states to pump up their representation in Congress and
increase government handouts.
3D30497420 wrote 1 day ago:
Based on this research, the impact of these populations on the
allocation of representatives is probably not particularly large:
[1] Sure, the House is almost evenly split, so a few seats here
or there would have an impact. But the net result would probably
be further mitigated by gerrymandering, other population shifts,
and so on.
One other thing I appreciated from this article is how it touches
on comments about simply following the law. Just because
something is legal, does not make it morally questionable (at
best). From the article:
> The apportionment of seats in Congress is required by the U.S.
Constitution, which says that the census will be used to divide
the House of Representatives “among the several States
according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number
of persons in each State,” except for enslaved people, who,
until the late 1800s, were counted as three-fifths of a person,
and certain American Indians.
[1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/07/24/how-r...
tkzed49 wrote 1 day ago:
With all due respect, we simply have different views on the
morality of the issue.
However, I would suggest others consider what an evil leftist,
for example, could do with the same technology.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> would suggest others consider what an evil leftist
What are some things that could they do?
Right-leaning policy in 2025 typically leans towards enforcing
the laws as written: in this case, immigration law is being
bolstered by surveillance technology.
Which laws are liberals going to theoretically now start
radically enforcing that conservatives were turning a blind eye
to? Flock cameras don't exactly help the IRS make the rich "pay
their fair share."
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
Yes, but these are laws that "I don't agree with," therefore they can
be ignored. Who will pick our crops!?
zer0x4d wrote 1 day ago:
People love nothing more than selective application of law. In
fact, to most people laws don't apple if:
1. they can get away with it, or
2. they don't agree with it.
almosthere wrote 1 day ago:
I'm all for stationary government surveillance EVERYWHERE (in the
public), just no surveillance ANYWHERE on individual persons. I think
what people do in public should be heavily witnessed and recorded.
mlsu wrote 1 day ago:
Why stop at the public? Crimes are committed in private too, you
know. I have an idea — let’s increase the scope of surveillance
to private activities as well. If everyone is surveilled, then
really, no individual person is surveilled, right? This only works if
we install surveillance everywhere though, with no exceptions.
almosthere wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
Because that's not what I'm for. Goal post shifter. A lot of crimes
people travel to a private location by going through public places.
Perhaps when we have Star Trek transporters we'll need to go in
that direction.
Which is actually a thing in Star Trek - they literally solve
crimes by tracking exactly where people are and check transporter
logs for where people go.
pickledonions49 wrote 1 day ago:
That sets the stage for overreach. If the data is public, and you are
getting stalked, there is nowhere to hide. If
corporations/organizations/agencies want to exploit your emotions for
ads at any given moment of the day because they can see you and
almost everything that happens to you, they can. If a lunatic leader
gets elected who wants to kill off a specific group of people
(nothing lasts forever, including political stability), its now much
easier. With all that in mind, can I ask why?
almosthere wrote 1 day ago:
Everyone seems to suggest the above narratives, but in truth this
is just not the case. Maybe for 0.0000001% of the time it is the
narratives above. But the truth is, if Putin or Jay Jones wants
someone dead he will get the right spy and do it without a massive
surveillance net.
No, the vast majority of the use case is stopping crime that today
we can't stop. I want the crime to stop.
pickledonions49 wrote 19 hours 4 min ago:
I was thinking more along the lines of cultural/opinion
suppression or genocide. This is a very similar type of
infrastructure. [1] The way I see it, there are bad people
everywhere (even in the government). [2] And, in a safe country
like this one (I am in the United States but most developed
countries are pretty safe), if a little petty crime is so scary
to them that they need a mass surveillance network to sleep at
night... I don't see any reason why the public should have to
sacrifice potential freedoms for that weakness.
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/chinese-surveillance-silicon-...
[2]: https://local12.com/news/nation-world/police-chief-gets-...
akudha wrote 1 day ago:
I think what people do in public should be heavily witnessed and
recorded
What for? I don't understand why you want to record some stranger
jogging, drinking coffee, smoking, eating or simply walking and
minding their own business. What am I missing?
SchemaLoad wrote 1 day ago:
Temporarily it's fine. Store it for a few weeks and then destroy.
If something happens to the jogger on their jog we can grab the
video, if nothing happens, it's deleted.
a456463 wrote 1 day ago:
Ring! Please stop Ring cameras.... Ugh!!!
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
This is the United States of America: I'm allowed to report on the
activity going on in public outside of my property, and you need to
amend the Constitution if you'd like to legally prohibit that.
girvo wrote 1 day ago:
It kind of upsets me that while _I_ will never install one, my bloody
neighbours have and it tracks me every time I walk my dog. Gross.
Honestly makes me want to vandalise them (though I will not).
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> Honestly makes me want to vandalise them (though I will not).
Sounds like the cameras are working? Seems like a reason to put up
more cameras: vandals can't take out any two as
easily/simultaneously.
girvo wrote 1 day ago:
No, I could vandalise them easy enough, I don't because I'm not a
criminal who wants to damage my neighbours things, not because
it's a camera.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
Of course you could vandalize them easily enough... and be seen
doing so from multiple angles: ideally leading to your
prosecution and imprisonment or possibly direct kinetic
response from their owners.
The legal system tends to react even more negatively to those
directly attempting to undermine enforcement efforts - such as
vandalizing cameras. You're not just doing "bad," you're
constructively preventing evidence of your misdeeds from being
gathered.
girvo wrote 1 day ago:
> and be seen doing so from multiple angles
No, again that's easy enough to avoid.
But you're being obtuse on purpose (and ignoring the actual
content of my very short comments) obviously because you want
an argument, and this is waste of my time. Have a great life
:)
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> No, again that's easy enough to avoid.
It's amusing that circumvention is your go-to: I watch my
cameras almost every moment I'm awake, vandalizing a $1k+
item (a felony in my state) would be met with immediate
armed response.
Stay safe out there!
mlsu wrote 1 day ago:
You know, I think you may be onto something.
Perhaps we all should just live in a massive prison. The
cameras should be on us 24/7. Society is nothing without hard
rules, by just rulers. Ideally, kinetic enforcement applied
for any misdeeds, large or small.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
My right to place cameras on my private property absolutely
trumps your desire to not be seen or recorded (or whatever
your specific grievance is) in the United States.
This isn't about "hard rules" - make laws prohibiting
government use of privately-obtained data if you like - but
vandalizing or prohibiting a privately-owned Ring camera is
absolutely a matter of my rights being abridged.
Privacy must be created - and is quite expensive.
mlsu wrote 20 hours 21 min ago:
No, I think you're misunderstanding. The only way to be
sure that we are free of crime would be to record
everything, inside and outside the home. It's fair
because not only is your home being recorded 24/7; mine
is too! Let's turn those ring cameras inward -- into the
house! I mean the fact that I'm even contemplating
touching your ring cameras, well that's a bit of a crime
in and of itself, isn't it?
celeryd wrote 1 day ago:
Are these meetings truly constrained to the continental US?
phildini wrote 1 day ago:
Where would you want more detail? I've been working on adding Canada
to CivicBand: [1] I also track Puerto Rico, but only at the Senate
level:
[1]: https://civic.band/sites/sites?_sort_desc=pages&state__in=BC...
[2]: https://senado.pr.civic.band/
guelo wrote 1 day ago:
Missing Oakland. There's no where to submit anything as far as I can
tell.
phildini wrote 1 day ago:
I don't work with them right now but maybe this will help?
[1]: https://oakland.ca.civic.band/-/search?q=flock
MagicMoonlight wrote 1 day ago:
ANPR is used across the UK and solves an incredible amount of crime.
I couldn’t imagine living in a country where you can shoot someone in
the street and drive off, and nobody knows where the car went.
matsz wrote 1 day ago:
I couldn't imagine living in a country where my every move is being
watched.
Privacy is a human right. Sacrificing your human rights just for a
bit of "safety" is just short sighted.
SchemaLoad wrote 1 day ago:
For most people. Your human right to not be shot sits above your
right to drive anonymously.
IlikeKitties wrote 1 day ago:
That means living in a country where the government knows where you
are and where you went to at all times. Want to go somewhere King
Pedo Protector doesn't approve? Enjoy your Police visit and
eventually, arrest.
MatthiasPortzel wrote 1 day ago:
You’re defending a weaker system than the actual system.
The system you’re defending is a list of flagged plate numbers and
a way of comparing seen plates against that list, and a way of
reporting matches to the local police.
The actual system logs all cars seen, saves the information forever,
and reports the data to a third party who can share it with anyone
they want.
LazyMans wrote 22 hours 14 min ago:
>>>reports the data to a third party who can share it with anyone
they want.
This is a pervasive piece of misinformation. False statements only
discredit you and others who choose to repeat it.
padjo wrote 1 day ago:
Does America not have data protection laws that prevent this sort
of sharing?
t1234s wrote 1 day ago:
I think this is how they are going to roll out tax-by-the-mile schemes
across the US.
garyfirestorm wrote 1 day ago:
what is stopping me from putting a bright infrared light on my car
angled in a way causing the camera to not be able to detect my plate?
overexposed? this should be totally legal afaik since nothing is hiding
my plate from any view to a normal human?
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
Ignoring all of the legal gotchas that aren't very realistically
enforceable or relevant:
I do not believe you will be able to force overexposure of lettered
areas using IR diodes alone. License plates are designed with
intentionally high reflective contrast in the offset areas.
Even if you could put enough energy into that area, these cameras
have switchable IR cutoff filters that are used during the daytime
(making this approach only viable at night.)
Another idea: a visible-spectrum laser + camera on a tracking gimbal?
Absolutely could block (or even destroy!) these types of imaging
efforts on a small scale.
garyfirestorm wrote 15 hours 51 min ago:
I like your idea. I would prefer nondestructive methods of
scrambling their ability to read.
stronglikedan wrote 1 day ago:
good luck with that in some states, like Florida
mikestew wrote 1 day ago:
There are usually laws against making your plate unreadable to plate
readers if the readers are used for tolling. Florida is one example.
phildini wrote 1 day ago:
The question would ultimately get settled in court, I think, but a DA
who was feeling cop-aligned and vicious could try to ding you for
interfering with police operations by _not_ allowing your plate to
get scanned.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
These statutes are typically not written with police enforceability
in mind: they criminalize "doing something" rather than "having
something installed," and a cop isn't typically going to be around
or caring/watching when you move past statically-installed ALPR
cameras.
rcpt wrote 1 day ago:
Can't wait to get out to these meetings and advocate for more speed
cameras and red light cameras.
lo_zamoyski wrote 1 day ago:
There are two extremes that rash people tend to fall into.
The first is the person who has no concern for surveillance. He
believes that if you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to
fear. You see more of these people in older generations, when
institutional trust was irrationally high.
The second is the person who responds rabidly to any form or
application of surveillance. This is the sort of person who believes
that all surveillance is abused, public or private, and if it isn't,
that it inevitably will be. Slippery slope fallacy is his motto.
A reasonable range of opinion can exist on the subject between those
two extremes.
Personally, I have no problem with traffic cameras per se. First, we
are in a public space where recordings are generally permitted. Second,
no one is being stalked or harassed by a fixed camera. Third, there are
problems that only surveillance can reasonably solve (loud cars,
dangerous speeding).
My concerns would have to do with the following.
1) Unauthorized access to accumulated data. You should have to have
some kind of legal permission to access the data and to do so in very
specific ways. For example, if you neighborhood is being disrupted by
loud cars, you can use complaints to get permission to query for
footage and license plates of cars identified as loud. Each access is
logged for audit purposes.
2) Data fusion. You should not be able to combine datasets without
permission either. And when such combination occurs, it should also be
scoped appropriately. Queries should then be subject to (1).
3) Indefinite hold. Data should have an expiration date. That is, we
should not be able to sequester and store data for indefinite periods
of time.
4) Private ownership. The collection of certain kinds of surveillance
data should belong only to the public and fall under the strict
controls above.
The non-specific and general fear of abuse is not a good
counterargument.
p_ing wrote 1 day ago:
> Second, no one is being stalked or harassed by a fixed camera.
Not the camera, no, just the eyes behind it -- namely police officers
who have been caught stalking exes via Flock.
> Third, there are problems that only surveillance can reasonably
solve (loud cars, dangerous speeding).
In many jurisdictions in the US, police must personally witness the
events to intervene. /Traffic/ cameras are one thing -- they only
record those who violate the laws (red light, speeding). But
continual monitoring of all persons passing falls into another
bucket, like a Stringray device would.
> The non-specific and general fear of abuse is not a good
counterargument.
The abuse of this data is already happening. It's not a hypothetical.
Karrot_Kream wrote 1 day ago:
Here's an interesting hypothetical: if we don't trust law
enforcement to operate these things, then consequently we don't
trust law enforcement to enforce laws in a more physical manner
(which is pretty true given 2020 protests against police
brutality), then how do we enforce laws?
(This is a hypothetical because obviously in reality there's no
easy philosophical through line from ideas to policy.)
lo_zamoyski wrote 20 hours 18 min ago:
> if we don't trust law enforcement [...], then how do we enforce
laws?
Indeed.
Abusus non tollit usum.
To elaborate on the general problem, I am not claiming that abuse
cannot occur, or that it doesn't occur, as some people seem to
think I have (and for which I was no doubt downvoted). I am not
naive. My family lived behind the Iron Curtain where the police
were significantly more brutal than what we have in the US. I am
also aware, more than most, how methods of control in democratic
states operate (tl;dr. they need to be more sophisticated,
relying more on information control and psychological techniques
than physical brutality, in order to shape the "consent" needed
to legitimize rule). I am the last to deny that power can be
abused and that it can be an awful thing.
But I do find the liberal tradition of obsessive paranoia
tiresome. Yes, governments can go wrong, and they do. Anyone who
denies that is a fool. But that doesn't mean they go wrong all
the time and it doesn't mean that abolishing imperfect
institutions or rendering them impotent is a solution. Yes, you
must be prudent about such things, but you aren't left with a
better situation through institutional castration or by creating
institutional Mexican standoffs. Justice doesn't just materialize
or emerge magically without intention, because we have created a
separation of powers (a common myth unsupported by the actual
evidence). Justice requires authority, that is to say, the
marriage of justice with power. When authority is abolished, we
are left with naked power. Naked power is what is destructive,
but it is also self-destructive. You need at least the appearance
of authority to keep up that ruse.
We can see how things actually work in the current arrangement.
We have separate institutions (intended to limit institutional
power through some alchemy of opposition), but nothing in
principle prevents them from colluding, and because there is a
considerable gap between institutional interest and personal
interest, what you are actually left with is partisan jockeying
for power.
Instead of operating from some kind of anabaptist or Quaker
presumption of corruption, it is better to presume virtue on the
part of an institution and deal with corruption as it occurs, as
instances of shameful failure. The advantage is that this
presumption sets a norm and an expectation against which the
people in that institution are judged. They stand to disappoint
us, as it were. To quote Baldus, “No authority whether of the
emperor or the senate can make the emperor other than a rational
and mortal animal, or free him from the law of nature or from the
dictates of right reason or the eternal law. Nothing is presumed
to please the emperor except what is just and true." This isn't
some New Right brand of nihilism that believes that might makes
right or that justice is meaningless or merely a mask for power.
No, the presumption of the "emperor's" virtue is just that: a
presumption. That, by itself, is a psychologically and socially
powerful force, as we can see in the examples of Vespasian, Henry
V, or Louis IX, sophistic, dissolute, or ill-tempered in their
youth before assuming the throne.
Lord Acton's famous quip that power corrupts as some kind of rule
is not actually borne out by the evidence. Maybe sometimes it
does, and certainly corrupt people are more likely to seek out
power, but power itself does not systematically corrupt.
dragonwriter wrote 20 hours 7 min ago:
> But that doesn't mean they go wrong all the time
They do, in fact, go wrong all the time, or at least, all the
times that the actors involved are sufficiently confident that
they think they can both gain something and get away with it.
Which is why the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, both to
limit the occurrence of the conditions in which they go wrong,
and to identify and correct the points where that prevention
fails before they become a positive feedback loop.
a456463 wrote 1 day ago:
We don't need hypotheticals when we have enough actuals
p_ing wrote 1 day ago:
> then how do we enforce laws?
We don't! I mean, the police don't do so today. No tabs? OK!
Expired tabs? OK, too! No license plates? Who gives a shit? Not
the police.
And that dives into more impactful crimes such as property theft
which when reported to police nothing comes from it.
Hell, I have dashcam of a cop going home roughly at 11 pm going
80+ on a 60mph highway in his cop Ford SUV. But everyone
routinely speeds, 7+ over post-COVID. The legislature is trying
to do something about it, but no one really cares.
State Patrol is likely the only ones performing any real traffic
enforcement anymore.
Karrot_Kream wrote 1 day ago:
You sound like you're talking about Bay Area politics given the
dialogue around CHP vs local police and property theft that I'm
aware of.
If your solution is to continuously neuter the police because
you perceive them to be ineffective then I'd challenge you to
think of the endgame of that logic. If you think it can't get
worse than it is now, well, we politically disagree.
p_ing wrote 1 day ago:
This isn't Bay Area.
Police aren't ineffective, hell they kill unarmed individuals
on a regular basis. That's damn effective to ending any form
of future crime!
deadfall23 wrote 1 day ago:
In my area it's mostly Home Depot and Lowes parking lots. Time to start
shopping online more. I'm looking at options for hiding my LP from AI
cameras.
snohobro wrote 1 day ago:
I had seen an ALPR go up at my local Home Depot. I didn’t know what
it was until this website where I zoomed on my town. I thought it was
a new light or something. Just more anecdotal evidence to back up
what you’re saying.
lapetitejort wrote 1 day ago:
Reading these comments, a common through-line seems to be cars. Hit and
runs, drive by shootings, cars without plates, cars speeding, breaking
into cars, etc. But the concept of disincentivizing cars never seems to
be brought up. Close down urban roads to private car traffic. Increase
public transportation. Remove subsidies on gas. Build bike lanes.
Cars are weapons. They kill people quickly with momentum, and slowly
with pollution and a sedentary lifestyle. We need to start treating
them as such
Karrot_Kream wrote 1 day ago:
There's an asymmetry with cars and traffic calming. You can spend a
few thousand on putting in speed bumps (well, when you can; most
municipalities put in obnoxious restrictions to "justify" a speed
bump), road diets, buffered bike lanes, etc. But you only need one
car to run a red light and hit a pedestrian crossing the street to
kill them.
The rise in enthusiasm for ALPR is mostly a consequence of this
asymmetry. Previously you'd have law enforcement go around patrolling
to keep safety but the number of drivers in the US is growing faster
than the number of LEOs and LEOs are expensive and controversial in
certain areas.
I advocate for traffic calming all the time. But the asymmetry is
real and, honestly, quite frustrating. A single distracted driver can
cause you to panic brake on your bike and fall off and hurt yourself.
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think it's a growth in drivers as much as it is a shift in
policing away from traffic enforcement, something that's only
gradually being unwound as people realize how much they hate lax
traffic enforcement.
Karrot_Kream wrote 1 day ago:
This probably depends on municipality. I think that's part of it
and a hangover from concerns around traffic stops in the BLM
protests. But also I think LEO salaries are getting higher and
VMT is increasing. That and a post COVID norm of not following
traffic laws in general. At least that's what we've seen in our
municipality.
JuniperMesos wrote 1 day ago:
People bring up the concept of disincentivizing cars all the time.
Many activists in local politics in urban areas have ideological
problems with mass car use, and try to advocate for and enact
anti-car, pro-public-transit policies.
The problem is, cars are extremely useful to most people in the US,
public transit has very real inherent downsides, and local policies
that disincentivize car use are very unpopular when actually
implemented. Voting citizens get mad when the price of gas goes up
and demand that their elected officials do something about it (also
electrification of cars, which is proceeding apace, makes gasoline
prices less important for ordinary people and also reduces some of
the real negative externalities of cars).
I have used both urban public transit and cars regularly to get
around, I'm personally familiar with the upsides and downsides of
both, and while I definitely do want public transit infrastructure to
be good, I frankly do not trust the motives of anti-car urbanist
activists. I think they are willing to make the lives of most people
on aggregate worse because they think private car ownership is in
some sense immoral and so overweight the downsides of cars and
underweight the downsides of public transit.
Also using drive-by shootings and car-break-ins as an anti-car
argument is pretty disingenuous. This is a problem with criminals
committing directly-violent crime or property crime against ordinary
people, not with cars per se. Criminals absolutely commit crimes
against people using public transit, and indeed one of the major
problems with public transit is that it puts you in a closed space
with random members of the public who might commit crimes against you
(e.g. the Jordan_Neely incident, the random stabbing of
Iryna_Zarutska, the less-widely-reported random crime incidents that
happen regularly on urban public transit systems). One of the most
important public policy measures that could be enacted to make public
transit better is severe and consistent policing of public order
crimes on transit - and of course more severe policing is also a
potential solution to car drive-bys and break-ins.
gs17 wrote 1 day ago:
> and try to advocate for and enact anti-car, pro-public-transit
policies
If you're lucky. Sometimes you just get anti-car. I'd love to not
need a car at all, but where I am now it would mean Ubering instead
because they've made driving worse while transit isn't expanded to
fit the gap.
ronnier wrote 1 day ago:
I do everything I can to avoid public transportation. It's not worth
the risk or the annoyances with aggressive and dangerous people. If I
lived in Asia (which I did before), I'd love to use public
transportation because the people are not aggressive, won't attack or
kill me. That's not the case in the USA
lapetitejort wrote 1 day ago:
Most of the places within public transportation range are also
within biking range, so I prefer biking. The end result is the
same: one less car off the road.
Now if you say "What about all the crazy drivers??" think about
this: have you ever considered that you might be the crazy driver?
Maybe not 100% of the time, but maybe one day you're stressed so
you speed up to get through a red light, or you really need to read
this text because it's important. You only need to be a crazy
driver for 30 seconds to end someone's life. Something that's
almost impossible to do on public transportation or on a bike.
ronnier wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah I don’t bike for that reason. There’s no way I’ll ri…
a bike around cars and I can’t believe others put their life in
the hands of people texting and driving.
lapetitejort wrote 1 day ago:
But you are okay driving around these crazy people, even though
one of them could cause an accident costing you thousands of
dollars and potentially a source of transportation?
therobots927 wrote 1 day ago:
They could also be easily tracked without cameras.
p_ing wrote 1 day ago:
Sounds great -- if you're an urbanite and not the ~half of the
population [in the US] who doesn't live anywhere near an urban
center.
jimberlage wrote 18 hours 7 min ago:
So half the population would benefit? Half the population is more
than enough reason to do all that and more.
lapetitejort wrote 1 day ago:
Reducing unnecessarily bulky trucks with low visibility, increasing
fuel efficiencies, and removing gas subsidies absolutely helps the
suburban and rural population
sofixa wrote 1 day ago:
It's actually only 20% that live in a rural (not within a metro
area - urban or suburban):
[1]: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-...
p_ing wrote 1 day ago:
Time to re-read what "urban" is defined as. My town, for
instance, is counted as "urban", yet there is a single bus that
will take you anywhere near to true urban center that comes twice
per day. It's six miles (~15 minutes) from the nearest non-shit
grocery store/Starbucks.
My town is "densely developed" (key phrase) residential with
nearly no commerce to speak of. The largest employer is the
school district, which isn't that big.
The nearest city with major employers is 45 minutes away outside
of commute hours.
SilentM68 wrote 1 day ago:
This is a very useful site :)
stuffn wrote 1 day ago:
This isn't said in bad faith but there is a few things that seem to be
unanswered here besides surveillance is bad.
1. You have no expectation of privacy in public.
2. People carry surveillance devices in their pocket.
It is somehow simultaneously bad that the government uses public
surveillance, but completely fine the public does. I don't think it's
acceptable these target "flock". It's completely useless doesn't solve
the greater problem. The greater problem in my eyes is:
1. I can't move around my own neighborhood without being recorded by
200 personal cameras whose data is uploaded an analyzed by various
security companies.
2. I can't go to someone's house without their internal cameras
recorded my every move and word.
3. I can't go outside without some subset of morons, that seem to
always exist, bringing out their pocket government tracking device to
record everyones face, movement, location, and action.
4. I can't say or do anything in public without risking some social
justice warrior recording me, cutting it up, and using it to destroy
me.
The greater problem is the proliferation of surveillance devices in
every day life. Flock is such a small player in the grand scheme of
this. These websites are simply art pieces and do nothing to solve the
actual, pervasive, problem we face.
So do we just stop at Flock and raise the Mission Accomplished banner?
Or do we forget this nonsense and target the real problem.
a456463 wrote 1 day ago:
Just saying, this isn't said in bad faith, doesn't make it so.
caconym_ wrote 1 day ago:
Private entities surveil you to make money off you or protect their
property. Law enforcement surveils you to arrest you and charge you
with crimes. These are not the same, and that's why some people care
more about surveillance by law enforcement.
As an example, see the recent case of the woman who was arrested
simply for driving through a town at the same time as a robbery
occurred. That sort of thing is why people care.
If the data collection is performed by a private entity and then sold
to the government, that is government surveillance. I agree that this
is more widespread than Flock and other big names. However, Flock and
its ilk currently stand to do far more damage in practice. They offer
integrated turnkey solutions that are available to practically any
law enforcement, from shithead chud officers in tiny shithole towns
to the NYPD and all its grand history of institutionalized
misconduct, and we are already seeing the effects of that.
See, also, the recent case of a teenager who was arrested because a
Flock camera or similar thought a Doritos bag in his pocket was a
gun. I'll let you guess what color his skin was.
stuffn wrote 1 day ago:
The thing is every thing I listed is also used by law enforcement.
There is nothing stopping them from turning everything into a
dragnet. We already know they use ring cameras, cell phones, tower
data, etc to build a dragnet. Flock is just another player.
To be honest flock seem like the perfect distraction from the
larger surveillance state we live in. I feel like most of the
writing I have seen on this acts like this some new, disgusting,
pervasive thing. The truth is law enforcement has been using
everything available because there’s nothing stopping them from
subpoenaing or straight buying the data.
The larger problem is law enforcement needs to be curtailed (good
luck unless we bust their union which the pro-union left won’t
do), and then cameras need to be removed from phones and homes.
qoez wrote 1 day ago:
We have this in sweden and it works fine. I kinda think the US would be
better off with this since it'd lead to less crime or lower costs to
investigate it
m4ck_ wrote 1 day ago:
asdf
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
We do not in fact have "massive police budgets". In most munis, the
biggest ticket expense, by far, is schools.
a456463 wrote 1 day ago:
Yes. Trying to get the reduced in US, is a joke.
staffordrj wrote 1 day ago:
"We have seen a flock of turkeys walk right along that fence on the
outside, but I have also seen them
jump high enough that they could easily land on the 4ft fence. Just 2
more feet of fence would
stop all of this and give us the sense of security that we have every
right to." [1] first the came for the turkeys...
[1]: https://alpr.watch/m/WPv1PO
phildini wrote 1 day ago:
Search context is legitimately hard, especially since this is
unstructured text data that (ime building CivicBand) needs to be
OCR'd not parsed for best results.
You might be terrified the number of municipalities that are still
posting PDFs of scans of printouts of their minutes, which were
originally a word document, and round and round we go.
Part of why I haven't guaranteed results building CivicObserver is
because of how hard search context is. Maybe making this an MCP
helps, but I'm not actually sure it does.
ZeWaka wrote 1 day ago:
> We have had deer on our ring camera shown jumping over our fence
into our backyard. This is very alarming.
heavyset_go wrote 1 day ago:
Parks & Rec was a documentary
phildini wrote 1 day ago:
This is super important work, and is kind of why I built [1] and [2] ,
which are generalized tools for monitoring civic govts. (You can search
for anything, not just ALPR)
[1]: https://civic.band
[2]: https://civic.observer
tonymet wrote 16 hours 28 min ago:
very cool can you check the login page i'm getting error 405 on [1] I
am interested in monitoring local legislation in Clark County, WA
[1]: https://civic.observer/auth/login
tayari- wrote 1 day ago:
This is incredible, great work and will definitely be using and
sharing this!
Where in the repos can we find the plugin/scraper for given
municipalities to help contribute when they seem to be broken? As
looks like the last meetings and agendas scraped for Cook County are
from March/April of this year
phildini wrote 17 hours 12 min ago:
Hello! The crawlers are not currently public, but I'm happy to take
volunteers behind the curtain.
I also fixed Cook County
mdnahas wrote 1 day ago:
Also missing: Austin, TX
phildini wrote 17 hours 12 min ago:
Fixed Austin TX!
kpw94 wrote 1 day ago:
Very cool! And important for sure, thank you.
Few questions:
- is the stack to index those open source?
- is there some standardized APIs each municipality provides, or do
you go through the tedious task of building a per-municipality
crawling tool?
- how often do you refresh the data? Checked a city, it has meeting
minutes until 6/17, but the official website has more recent minutes
(up to 12/2 at least)
phildini wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks for asking!
- The framework for crawling is open-source. [1] - There is
absolutely not a standardized API for nearly any of this. I build
generalized crawlers when I can, and then build custom crawlers
when I need.
- Can you let me know which city? The crawlers run for every
municipality at least once every day, so that's probably a bug
[1]: https://github.com/civicband
ZeWaka wrote 1 day ago:
Seem to be getting 405s from [1] And 404 from
[1]: https://civic.observer/auth/login
[2]: https://civic.band/why.html
phildini wrote 1 day ago:
Fixed the 404s on civic.band, thanks
Terr_ wrote 1 day ago:
I sometimes imagine local laws/contracts with a provision like: "This
system may not be operated if there is no state law that makes it a
class X felony to violate someone's privacy in any of the Y
conditions."
In other words, the "we're trustworthy we'd never do that" folks ought
to be perfectly fine with harsh criminal penalties for misuse they're
already promising would never happen.
This would also create an incentive for these companies to lobby for
the creation/continuation of such a law at the state level, as a way to
unlock (or retain) their ability to do businesses in the localities.
fainpul wrote 1 day ago:
For years I've thought about doing an "art project" to make people more
aware of the fact they are being observed – but I never actually got
up and did it.
The idea was to seek spots in the city where public web cams are
pointed at, and paint QR codes on the ground at those spots (using a
template), linking to the camera stream. So when curious passerbys scan
the code, they see themselves in a camera stream and feel "watched".
nemo1618 wrote 22 hours 14 min ago:
Years ago there was a YouTuber, "Surveillance Camera Man," who went
around pointing a camera at people with no pretense. Frequently the
subjects were upset by this and became aggressive, even violent. I
believe the intended message was that this is a natural and justified
reaction to being surveilled, and yet there is little outcry because
public surveillance is largely invisible and/or faceless (e.g. just a
CCTV camera mounted on a building, rather than a stranger invading
your personal space).
The YouTube account is no longer around, but you can still watch it
on archive.org:
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20190220131525/https://www.youtu...
xmprt wrote 20 hours 33 min ago:
My take on that is that they're different situations because a CCTV
camera has 1000s of hours of footage to scrub through and will
likely only be looked at if/when something bad happens. Whereas the
guy pointing a camera at me probably only has a couple hours which
means I'm likely relevant to the cameraman (ie, I'll go into that
final video) whereas I'm not that relevant to the CCTV.
I know more recent cameras are using AI analysis to constantly
track and catalog people which is more worrying but the old school
surveillance cameras don't bother me as much.
I like the OP's idea for an art project more because it's showing
your what is really happening (rather than convincing people that
filming someone on a 4k camera is the same as CCTV surveillance) -
CCTV cameras are constantly monitoring and many can be publicly
accessed.
khannn wrote 20 hours 16 min ago:
If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide
Forbo wrote 16 hours 52 min ago:
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because
you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't
care about free speech because you have nothing to say."
-Edward Snowden
xmprt wrote 19 hours 56 min ago:
I don't even think that is the best defense because it takes a
very passive acceptance to it. On the flip side, if someone
steal my bike or assaults me in public, I'd like there to be
some accountability which would otherwise never happen (and
vice versa). In the past, if a white lady were to accuse a
black man of some crime, then it was practically impossible to
fight it. With CCTV, you can prove innocence and guilt a lot
more conclusively.
khannn wrote 19 hours 37 min ago:
Don't worry, a random Ring cam will record everything. Hope
my neighbor likes keeping track of me checking my mail.
imglorp wrote 1 day ago:
There's probably several interesting ways to make a QR code on the
ground with chalk. I'm thinking of a turtle bot loaded with spray
chalk, for starters.
And this post uses wire screen to make a stencil
[1]: https://www.instructables.com/Simple-QR-Code-Spray-Paint-Ste...
rsync wrote 1 day ago:
"... and paint QR codes on the ground at those spots ..."
This is what "Oh By Codes"[1] are for.
Instead of trying to paint a QR code, which is difficult, you can
just chalk a 6 character code.
Further, you can create them on the fly without using a special tool
- just a textarea on a simple webpage.
You can encode up to 4096 characters or a single URL redirect.
[1]: https://0x.co
cinntaile wrote 1 day ago:
You can't scan them like a QR-code, which is kind of the point?
hamburglar wrote 1 day ago:
So 0x.co is tinyurl for strings?
rsync wrote 20 hours 30 min ago:
Oh By is an “everything shortener”.
IAmBroom wrote 20 hours 22 min ago:
Well, it's a lookup table, limited to 6^N, where N is the
number of legal characters (printable ASCII?).
achierius wrote 1 day ago:
But people's phones will scan a QR code from the camera: they're
much more likely to do that then type in a URL while walking.
rsync wrote 1 day ago:
That's certainly true - hence the extremely (almost minimally)
short '0x.co' URL.
It's certainly not for every use-case ...
hopelite wrote 1 day ago:
Joke's on you... even most EVs watch everyone and everything that
they pass/passes them. Walking through the parking lot ... face
recognition.
Welcome to prison planet, the silly conspiracy theory that only
weirdos believe in 1990.
DANmode wrote 1 day ago:
…wait, what about 1990?
IAmBroom wrote 20 hours 15 min ago:
I don't think it's that year in particular, but lots of spy
movies from that era include bits like "Show me the feed from
cameras in that area... OK, zoom in on that guy in the black
hood... ID him!". In real time.
And then the agents run out of the office and get to that part of
the city in a couple minutes, as if they were in Mayberry instead
of NYC.
calvinmorrison wrote 1 day ago:
A better "art project" would be a alpr that detects police and
municipal vehicles and reports them to a map criminals and citizens
alike can see
basch wrote 1 day ago:
I see a meeting tonight in a neighboring city with a council
recommendation of approve. Timely
tefkah wrote 1 day ago:
damn that’s a good idea
iris-digital wrote 1 day ago:
I'd like to start a standard marking of some sort to call them out.
A hot pink arrow drawn with spray paint on the pole is the first
thing that came to mind.
allenu wrote 1 day ago:
Not exactly the same, but Massive Attack had some facial recognition
software running in the background during a concert to illustrate how
pervasive modern day surveillance is:
[1]: https://petapixel.com/2025/09/17/band-massive-attack-uses-li...
renewiltord wrote 1 day ago:
That's not face recognition. That's face detection. It just detects
faces and sticks a label from a pre-selected list. Come on, this
doesn't even pass the basic smell test. "Facial recognition" my
ass. It doesn't recognize anyone. I could build this in a cave with
scraps. There's a huge difference between the two: recognition
means you have found a known person, detection means you found a
person.
That's about the difference between eating sodium chloride and
eating sodium.
marcellus23 wrote 18 hours 10 min ago:
You're right but I don't understand why you're so hostile about
it. At any rate, it's still making the same point regardless.
renewiltord wrote 17 hours 26 min ago:
This kind of privacy slop is overly popular in tech circles.
Each participant just posts uninformed garbage and then they
link to each other with “citations” for sources that are
wholly made up. It’s really reducing the quality of
information on this website that it’s now full of junior
engineers and interns.
Those guys always obsess over CVEs and privacy and they’re
always wrong about everything but have learned to mimic the
language of people who know stuff. “There’s some
evidence” / “here’s a source”. Ugh. Can’t sta…
p_ing wrote 1 day ago:
I had thought about creating a larger roadside banner with the faces
(pulled from voters guide) of the city council members who approved
Flock, along with the face of the Sheriff with something along the
lines of "These people want to know where your wife and daughter are
at all times - deflock.me" and place it right next to the Flock
camera.
Gotta tag some political organization on the banner which makes it
illegal to remove.
edot wrote 1 day ago:
The issue is, a lot of people wouldn’t mind the sheriff knowing
where their wife and daughter are at all times. What if one of them
gets kidnapped? It would be good if law enforcement could track
them. That’s the logic some people have …
IAmBroom wrote 20 hours 24 min ago:
It's not illogical to say that more cameras would lead to more
arrests of kidnappers, and other violent criminals.
I don't think many of us would object to video surveillance
actually doing that. So, it's not even an immoral thought to many
of us.
The problem is LE using it for almost any other purpose
whatsoever.
ejplatzer wrote 13 hours 10 min ago:
This would be a potential point of conversation if the research
didn't show that more ALPRs doesn't lead to reduced crime or
more arrests - except in the very narrow slice of automotive
theft.
arijun wrote 1 day ago:
I wonder if it’s legal to modify the images to look more
sinister. Otherwise, someone passing by might not read the text,
making it free advertising for council/sherrif.
afavour wrote 22 hours 55 min ago:
Feels like a dishonest approach, to be honest.
rvloock wrote 1 day ago:
Belgian artist Dries Depoorter has something that comes close, where
he tried to match public webcams against Instagram photos. See [1] .
[1]: https://driesdepoorter.be/thefollower
geoffeg wrote 1 day ago:
Could use projectors to display the feed directly onto the ground or
a building wall, in some ways that may be more impactful. You'd have
to stay with the projector and power source, but easier to move to
the next location, and less of a chance of getting in trouble for
defacing public property, etc.
FelipeCortez wrote 1 day ago:
I remember seeing an art project in the UK ~10 years ago where they
had actors enact a short film but everything was filmed using street
cameras, which IIRC everyone could request access to with little
bureaucracy.
FelipeCortez wrote 1 day ago:
found it!
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faceless_(2007_film)
jdthedisciple wrote 1 day ago:
What, are those streams publicly accessible?
I'm only aware of boring rooftop weather webcams where obv you can't
see yourself.
Any examples for what you speak of?
fainpul wrote 1 day ago:
I don't mean these Flock cameras, I mean what you refer to as
"boring rooftop weather webcams". Some of those show people fairly
close up and even if you can't recognize your face in the stream,
you will recognize the place and realize that it's you, standing
there right now in that video stream.
Just search for " webcam" and see what you can find.
gs17 wrote 1 day ago:
Some places have them available. For example, every highway camera
in California (and in some places like Oakland there's plenty of
cameras that show crosswalks): [1] Quality isn't great, but you
could likely see yourself recognizably.
[1]: https://cwwp2.dot.ca.gov/vm/iframemap.htm
peaseagee wrote 1 day ago:
Many are! I live in NY and 511ny.org has a great view of all
traffic cams in the state (and some beyond it, but I don't
understand how they got on the list...)
maccard wrote 1 day ago:
[1] You can even take a selfie with them!
[1]: https://trafficcamphotobooth.com/
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
Does anyone else find it painfully ironic that the one CO cop said "You
can't get a breath of fresh air in or out of that place without us
knowing," [0], in light of the George Floyd BLM rallying cry "I can't
breathe!" and the common metaphor describing surveilance states as
"suffocating"?
Like what are we doing as a society? Stop trying to build the
surveilance nexus from sci fi. I don't want to live in a zero-crime
world
[1]. It's not worth it. Safety third, there is always gonna be some
risk.
[0] [1] Edit to add: if this raises hackles, I encourage folks to think
through what true zero crime (or maybe lets call it six-nines
lawfulness) entails. If we had literal precrime, would that stop
99.9999% of crime? (hint: read the book/watch the movie)
[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/flock-cameras-lead-color...
jandrese wrote 1 day ago:
While true, I think you have missed the bigger story. If you talk
with kids today their mentality is very different from kids of 20-30
years ago, and it's not the cop cameras all over the place. Nobody
pays those much mind. It's the fact that damn near everybody over
the age of 10 is carrying around a high quality camera all day long
and the means to publish that footage worldwide in an instant. It
doesn't help that people with an agenda sometimes call for other
people to be "cancelled" over even a single video, even a 30 year old
video from when they were freshmen in college, and are can be
successful in getting that person's life ruined.
We're living constantly in the scene from Fahrenheit 451 where the
government asks everybody to go outside at once and report any
suspicious activity. We have made it potentially not OK for kids to
push boundaries or make mistakes.
cons0le wrote 1 day ago:
> I don't want to live in a zero-crime world
That's about the worst, most inflammatory way possible to make your
point. I agree with you 100%, but I am begging you to learn to frame
your ideas better, in order to get people on your side. If you say
that to any voters you will lose them instantly
immibis wrote 1 day ago:
Zero-crime means zero things that are banned ever becoming allowed.
Things usually become allowed after they are illegal first, but
people do them anyway, and then people wonder why we bother
punishing them. Think of marijuana legalization. If nobody ever
tried to illegally smoke weed, it would never be legalized because
there would be no perceived benefit to doing so because it would be
obvious that nobody wanted to do it.
artifaxx wrote 1 day ago:
Didn't lose me, but point taken about gathering more support. How
about: the costs of implementing a zero-crime world are far greater
than the crime. Or attempting to trade freedom for safety will
result in losing both.
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
> the costs of implementing a zero-crime world are far greater
than the crime.
Exactly, I like this. Thanks for helping me rephrase.
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
Noted. But I'm trying to make people think about their cognitive
dissonance.
I'm not a politician. I'm a systems thinker. If someone can't
reason their way through what a "zero-crime world" actually
entails, I doubt my other ideas will get through to them. Zero
crime. Zero. No speeding, no IP infringement, no "just this one
time". Zero.
That's also why I like asking "why stop there?" We've basically
solved surveilance. It's an engineering problem. We have the
capacity to track everyone (who does not make a VERY concerted
effort to stealth) all the time, almost everywhere.
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
Fair warning that this is a deeply unpopular argument in municipal
politics.
TheCraiggers wrote 1 day ago:
I think that's kinda the point?
If public servants funded by taxpayers don't like it, maybe they
shouldn't be forcing it on the populace and breaking the forth
amendment.
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
It's unpopular with residents. Residents do not have the attitude
towards crime reflected in the comment I replied to. It's a very
online thing to say.
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah perhaps it's a bit inflammatory and terminally online of
me to say. But it's true. Zero crime means zero crime. Minority
report levels of surveilance and policing.
What stance would you recommend? You're one of the folks here i
recognize immediatedy and have a wealth of wisdom.
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
I would recommend not campaigning for public policy
interventions on a premise of "some crime is OK".
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
You're 100% correct, and in fact I think you've touched
upon partly explaining why fascism and authoritarianism is
not just on the doorstep, it's got a foot in the door
(without a warrant) and is asking^W trying to force its way
in saying "it's just a quick search, you have nothing to
hide cause you're not doing anything wrong, are you?"
Realism isn't very palatable. Most folks want to stay in
their little rat race lane and push their little skinner
box lever and get their little variable interval
algorithmic treato, and they are content with that. That's
fine. It's just a shame they gotta tighten the noose around
absolutely everyone else for a morsel of safety.
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
I don't agree with basically any of this. I don't think
people who oppose crime, or recoil from arguments
suggesting deliberate tradeoffs involving more crime, are
stuck in little skinner boxes.
vdqtp3 wrote 1 day ago:
Refusing to return escaped slaves used to be illegal.
Inter-racial marriage used to be illegal. Gay marriage
and even gay relationships used to be illegal. Crime is
not necessarily wrong.
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
I'm sure there's a municipality somewhere where
that's a viable argument, but in mine, 2020 called
and wants that one back.
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
I'm probably not doing a great job of getting my point
across, and most of that is on me. Let me try to
clarify.
Every aspect of cybernetics (whether it be engineering,
society/politics, biology) involves deliberate
tradeoffs. In metaphor, we have a big knob with
"liberty/crime" on one side and "surveillance/safety"
on the other. It's highly nonlinear and there are
diminishing returns at both extrema. Everyone
(subconsciously) has some ideal point where they think
that crime-o-stat should be set.
I'm saying don't turn it up to 11, and it's already set
pretty high. It's increasingly technologically
possible, and I think it's a bad thing to chase the
long tail. I'm pretty happy with where we are at the
present, but corporations keep marketing we need more
cameras, more detection, more ALPRs, more algos, more
predictive policing, more safety, who doesn't want to
be more safe? I think it's very precarious.
I reiterate: it's uncomfortable, but I don't want to
live in a world with zero crimes because everyone has
probably committed crimes without even knowing it. The
costs, both fiscal and in terms of civil liberties, of
chasing ever-decreasing-crime are far higher than
finding some stable setpoint that balances privacy and
liberty with measures that justly deter crime. Let us
not let the cure become worse than the disease.
therobots927 wrote 1 day ago:
That depends on the municipality and who decides to show up to
meetings and make a big deal about it. If enough people get freaked
out by these cameras it’s gonna cause real problems for elected
officials who enable them.
tlb wrote 1 day ago:
The people who show up to town council meetings lean heavily to
the side of security over liberty. The most obvious reason is
that it's mostly retired homeowners with busybody personality
types.
Privacy and liberty advocates are unlikely to win in council
meetings by sheer numbers. They get some leverage with campaign
donations, especially recently that Bitcoin made a lot of such
people rich.
therobots927 wrote 1 day ago:
This really depends on where you live. I have no doubt that on
average you’re correct but a lot of those retired homeowners
are pretty upset about how the feds are behaving recently and
believe it or not when your material needs are met some people
actually try to use their privilege to help those most likely
to be victimized by the surveillance state
mothballed wrote 1 day ago:
I live in a very liberty minded county. The kind of place
with no building codes and pretty much no police. All our
cameras on county/municipal property were voted disabled.
So the feds just put their flock cameras anywhere they had a
little piece of federal property, and there is no way to vote
those ones off. They have little patches that cover the
highways and some main thoroughfares. It's everywhere.
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
I don't agree. I watched a concerted effort, involving a good
deal of public comment (which: not a very effective tool for
change; you have better tools in your arsenal), and vanishingly
little of it took the "there's always going to be risk, crime
isn't everything" tack. "This stuff doesn't work and causes more
problems than it solves" is the effective answer, not this George
Floyd stuff.
travisgriggs wrote 1 day ago:
I keep wanting to see the "Rainbows End" style experiment.
The common reaction to surveillance seems to be similar to how we diet.
We allow/validate a little bit of the negative agent, but try to limit
it and then discuss endlessly how to keep the amount tamped down.
One aspect explored/hypothesized in Rainbows End, is what happens when
surveillance becomes so ubiquitous that it's not a privilege of the
"haves". I wonder if rather than "deflocking", the counter point is to
surround every civic building with a raft of flock cameras that are in
the public domain.
Just thinking the contrarian thoughts.
atomicthumbs wrote 1 day ago:
not really, because all the sousveillance in the world doesn't grant
the average joe the power of a single cop
octoberfranklin wrote 1 day ago:
Hrm, I read and loved Rainbows End but must have totally missed this.
What was the experiment?
FWIW, what I want is the non-IME/PSP "¡hecho en Paraguay!" chips
from the book.
EvanAnderson wrote 1 day ago:
I have similar, albeit probably more radical, views.
All dragnet surveillance done by law enforcement or given to law
enforcement by private entities should be public. (Targeted
surveillance by law enforcement is a different thing.)
We should all be able to "profit" from this data collected about us.
There are likely a ton of interesting applications that could come
from this data.
I would much rather independently run a "track my stalker"
application myself versus relying on law enforcement (who have no
duty to protect the public in the US, per SCOTUS) to "protect" me,
for example.
It might be that such a panopticon would be unpalatable to political
leaders and, ideally, we'd see some action to tamp down the use of
dragnet surveillance (and maybe even make it illegal).
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> All dragnet surveillance done by law enforcement or given to law
enforcement by private entities should be public
You can FOIA the cameras outside your local police station today,
if you like. Private company data like Flock's is the new grey
area.
EvanAnderson wrote 1 day ago:
It's doesn't seem like much of a grey area to me. Presumably
Flock serves the useful function of satisfying the third-party
doctrine, making the surveillance they gather immune from 4th
amendment protection (since I "willingly shared" my location with
them by passing one of their cameras). If law enforcement has
access to that data without a warrant it's de facto public to me.
FOIA isn't the same thing as having the data at my fingertips
like LE does. I think the public deserves the same access LE has.
If they can run ad hoc searches so should the public.
Personally I'd rather see all dragnet surveillance just go away.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> law enforcement has access to it without a warrant it's de
facto public
I think the public would be entitled to the specific data that
was purchased or accessed by the government, but absolutely not
the entire corpus of broadly available data. What if law
enforcement were required to "pay per search" a la PACER or
journal subscriptions?
EvanAnderson wrote 1 day ago:
> What if law enforcement were required to "pay per search" a
la PACER or journal subscriptions?
My immediate reaction is that it changes the nature of the
surveillance enough to require further reflection. It would
put a time-bounded window on the ability of law enforcement
to abuse the data (albeit assuming the ALPR companies
actually removing data per their stated policies).
I appreciate your comment, for sure. I'll have to ruminate on
it and see how it meshes with my
more-strongly-held-than-I'd-like reactionary (and probably
not well thought out) beliefs. >smile
psc wrote 1 day ago:
You may want to check out David Brin's work, he covers the
implications of this idea extensively in The Transparent Society:
[1] I found it really interesting he frames privacy, surveillance,
and power through the lens of information asymmetries.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society
bitexploder wrote 1 day ago:
I started building ALPR and speed detection systems for my house
based on RTSP feed. I kind of want to finish this with an outdoor TV
that has a leaderboard of the drivers that drive the fastest and
their license plate in public display on my property, but visible to
the street. In part to make my neighbors aware of how powerful ALPR
technology is now, but also many of my neighbors should slow the heck
down. I am not sure how popular this would be, but also I kind of
like starting the right kind of trouble :)
hypercube33 wrote 1 day ago:
Look up the YouTube on project Argus that uses drone cameras in
like 2010 or something. every moving object inside a city is
classified, identified and tracked in and out of buildings, cars
and that's just the declassified part. I've talked to people who've
told me or shown me a lot more wild systems they've built for
retail decades ago to track user product interactions then tied it
to loyalty and credit cards so they know what you looked at vs
purchased and how long and mood age etc just from video. tie all
that to public data or purchased or given data and it's basically
game over for being anonymous.
AdamJacobMuller wrote 1 day ago:
I'm curious what does your hardware/software stack look like for
your ALPR system?
bitexploder wrote 1 day ago:
It is very janky. The speed camera I have an old Core i5 that is
running YOLOv8 on the integrated GPU and it can just /barely/
handle 30FPS of inference. The code is all Python and vibe coded
(for science). The speed camera needs a perpendicular view to
work best for how I set it up (measuring two reference points
with a known distance). So the ALPR camera is separate and I
basically just buffer video and built this ultra janky scheme
where I call an HTTP endpoint and it saves the last few seconds
and then I batch process to associate the plate later in the web
app. It is all CSV and plain files; this is a perfect append only
DB scenario. Eventually it will need the wonders of the big data
format SQLite probably, but I am sure Claude will know what to do
;) The long term solution would be to have a proper radar circuit
and two cameras facing both road directions to capture the rear
plate as people often don't use front plates here even though
they are required to by law.
(the point, though, is you don't need a lot of GPU power to do
say YOLOv8 inference on the pre-trained models) and OpenCV makes
this all pretty darn easy.
varenc wrote 1 day ago:
If you're in CA, I learned recently that any use of automatic
license plate recognition here is regulated and has a bunch of
rules. Technically just turning on the ALPR feature in your
consumer level camera is illegal if you don't also do things like
post a public notice with your usage and privacy policy.
The law is a bit old and seems like it was written under the
assumption that normal people wouldn't have access to ALPR tech for
their homes. I suspect it gets very little enforcement.
[1]: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xht...
a456463 wrote 1 day ago:
Great. Let's stop using Ring cameras for security then
try_the_bass wrote 22 hours 31 min ago:
Build a better, cheaper replacement, then?
iberator wrote 1 day ago:
Who uses them anyway? Almost nobody in Europe
iAmAPencilYo wrote 1 day ago:
That's awesome.
In the US, they are everywhere - apartment buildings, houses,
business. Amazon's Ring might the most popular, but there are
many vendors.
bitexploder wrote 1 day ago:
Interesting. It actually is posted that my property is under
video surveillance. Colorado though. It seems like you would have
a poor argument that you can’t collect and analyze images of a
public space.
One cynical aspect of Colorado law I learned about going down the
ALPR rabbit hole: in Colorado it is a higher class misdemeanor
than regular traffic violations to purposely obfuscate your plate
to interfere with automated plate reading. The law is “well
written” in that there is little wiggle room if they could
somehow prove your intent. Meanwhile it is a lesser class
violation to simply not have a plate at all. Their intent feels
pretty clear to me.
varenc wrote 1 day ago:
> seems like you would have a poor argument that you can’t
collect and analyze images of a public space
Absolutely agree... but the CA law is clear that tracking
license plates get special treatment! It being public space
doesn't matter. It's wild to me that how you analyze the video
is regulated. Also that no similar regulation for the regular
public doing facial recognition exists. Just ALPR.
I wonder how I'm supposed to comply with the law if I were to
take a public webcam feed, like one from a highway[0], and run
ALPR on it myself. I obviously can't post any notices there.
And I'm not the camera operator so can't comply with anything
related to that. But I would be doing ALPR which does require I
follow rules. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Will be interesting to see what happens to the law. It feels
outdated, but I'm doubtful any CA politician is going to expend
karma making ALPR more permissive. So I bet it'll stay on the
books and just go largely unenforced.
[1]: https://go511.com/TrafficTransit/Cameras
bitexploder wrote 22 hours 18 min ago:
I would blatantly ignore that law. I am in a position to
easily fight a state entity with legal resources. They
definitely cannot regulate that constitutionally. As a
private citizen I am not posting notices. It is bad law that
doesn't protect anyone and erodes protected rights.
IAmBroom wrote 20 hours 10 min ago:
Maybe they can't regulate that "constitutionally" (for your
understanding of that document, which has no legal weight).
They still might be able to regulate it for all practical
purposes.
bitexploder wrote 14 hours 33 min ago:
Potentially. I care a lot about this. I think this is a
pretty easy case to fight them on 1A grounds as the case
law is quite settled and clear per my understanding. So
they can have unconstitutional laws on the books, but the
long tail of that fight is against the.
Karrot_Kream wrote 1 day ago:
Cities in CA also often put their own ALPR restrictions on btw so
you'll want to check both state and local laws.
bitexploder wrote 1 day ago:
I feel if you have a camera on your property with a view of
public spaces they have a losing argument. I doubt none of that
holds water constitutionally. This is first amendment
protected. If you are filming a public space with no
expectation of privacy the government has no constitutional
authority to restrict you if you are retaining the data private
and never sharing it.
So far the only legal area that matters is the government
itself being regulated in how they use ALPR since they are the
entity that can actually infringe upon constitutional rights.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> if you are retaining the data private and never sharing it.
"Never sharing it?" What? Free speech is literally defined by
the fact that you can distribute information. Publishing your
video feed (a la news helicopters, etc.) is clearly a
protected activity - possibly even more so than collecting
the data to begin with.
RHSeeger wrote 1 day ago:
Nearly every right is limited in some way "for the good of
society". You can't take pictures of the entire contents of
a book and publish it. You can't run into an airport and
yell that you've got a bomb. We, as a society, put limits
on what we allow people to do because doing so is better
for society as a whole.
I expect there are plenty of cases where you can't publish
your video feed.
bitexploder wrote 22 hours 16 min ago:
You are of course correct. There are always limits on
speech. In this area, however, we have already decided
how it works. You cannot regulate what private citizens
record in public spaces with no expectation of privacy
and you definitely cannot regulate what they do with that
data.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> You can't take pictures of the entire contents of a
book and publish it.
Copyright is "mostly" civil law, not criminal.
> can't run into an airport and yell that you've got a
bomb.
Right: now try and argue that a license plate
intentionally designed for public visibility is somehow
subject to the same restrictions. All 50 states have
legislation requiring public display of these objects:
what tailoring of the First Amendment would legally be
consistent with past case law?
> I expect there are plenty of cases where you can't
publish your video feed.
Legally these cases are few and far between, and none of
these exceptions apply to the situation being discussed.
You're welcome to try and cite a case or explain relevant
case law - good luck.
Freedom of the press is extraordinarily broad and is one
of the more difficult things to limit using criminal
penalties.
IAmBroom wrote 20 hours 5 min ago:
> > You can't take pictures of the entire contents of a
book and publish it.
> Copyright is "mostly" civil law, not criminal.
Does that matter? Seriously - doesn't the 1st Amendment
also protect against the government raising civil
complaints?
I think the better point here is: Disney suing you for
copyright violations is not a First-Amendment case,
because Disney is not the US government - so this isn't
a Free Speech issue at all.
bitexploder wrote 1 day ago:
Yes, I agree, but I am saying there are virtually zero
grounds to legislate the use case I provided. They try to
weasel it on "privacy" grounds and "transparency" when you
share the data, but yeah. I agree.
IlikeKitties wrote 1 day ago:
> If you are filming a public space with no expectation of
privacy the government has no constitutional authority to
restrict you if you are retaining the data private and never
sharing it.
This a shitty argument from a time where mass surveillance
wasn't possible. If you have "no expectation of privacy in
public spaces" than Governments could force you to wear an
ankle monitor and body camera at all times since you have "no
expectation of privacy".
IAmBroom wrote 19 hours 59 min ago:
No, it's a great right.
You (personally) can't stop me from photographing you in
public, Ms. Steisand.
And Freedom of Speech has no sensible connection to being
forced to carry objects. Your argument also assumes no one
ever goes into private houses, where 1A doesn't apply.
bitexploder wrote 1 day ago:
You are mixing up the duties and rights a government has
vs. the duties and rights citizens have. The one area I
might start to agree is corporate personhood and giving
corporations the same rights as a private citizen in this
regard because their interests are very different from a
private citizens. The whole point of the constitution is
largely what the government can't do to its citizens. The
goal is to protect citizens FROM its government by carving
out our rights. These of course apply broadly, but I can't,
for example, as a private citizen really violate your 4A
rights very easily.
IlikeKitties wrote 1 day ago:
> You are mixing up the duties and rights a government
has vs. the duties and rights the governments have.
Can you correct that typo? I've been thinking about what
you mean for a while and I can't figure it out.
edit: Thank you
LocalH wrote 1 day ago:
I fail to see how passively recording a space that you don't
own is "first amendment protected". Passively recording a
space isn't in and of itself speech.
IAmBroom wrote 20 hours 3 min ago:
Reproducing information is within the legal limits of
"speech and press".
You don't have to have a physical, lead-type printing press
to be protected by Freedom of the Press, and you don't have
to physically vocalize to be protected by Freedom of
Speech.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
I can photograph and publish whatever I am allowed to see
in public (with very few exceptions - think Naval Air
Station Key West), this has been affirmed and reaffirmed by
countless courts.
The best part about publishing? You have no right to
question when, how, or if I am going to do it - that
discretion is also free speech.
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
Hilarious! If i didnt already have too many projects and hobbies,
this is the kind of thing i'd do.
Maybe not a speed leaderboard, that just seems like a challenge to
choon heads. But perhaps a "violation count". Also toss in a dB
meter for loud exhaust (again dont make it a contest).
Edge compute with alpr/face/gait/whatever object detection at the
camera is basically solved. Genie is out of the bottle. I think the
most fruitful line of resistance is to regulate what can be done
with that data once it leaves the device.
bitexploder wrote 1 day ago:
I am the loud exhaust. Where we live the noise pollution is not a
concern and I have no complaints around that. Many of my
neighbors have lifted trucks and go vroom cars. Ironically the
performance cars are the nicest drivers :)
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
I get it, I used to drive a GTI. I don't mind just loud exhaust
by itself, as long as they are tuned well. It's the
pops/crackling/backfires that set off all the neighborhood dogs
and sound like they split the air that are a scourge around
here. These folks also are the ones driving like maniacs in
inappropriate contexts.
p_ing wrote 1 day ago:
There is a sign put up by the county on a downward hill with some
nice curves in it. It _used_ to display your speed but that was
removed in favor of just flashing "Slow Down" once people used it
to see how fast they could navigate the bends.
bitexploder wrote 1 day ago:
Unintended consequences. Maybe it can just be annoying and show
each car its count of speed 10mph over the limit as they pass
plandis wrote 1 day ago:
This only works if society was okay with surveillance on private
property. The wealthy can afford large tracts of private land and can
afford to send people on their behalf to interact in public for many
things. They can pay services to come to them as well.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
The "wealthy" can't control the FAA or obtain TFRs (look no further
than the issues Elon and Taylor Swift have had with obfuscating
their jet registration), so they're basically fucked when it comes
to preventing aerial video observation over private property unless
this "large tract of private land" exists within 14nm of Washington
D.C. (these types of tracts aren't practically obtainable there) or
falls within an existing flight-restricted zone (which aren't
typically permanent.)
wombatpm wrote 1 day ago:
If the wealthy want to hide away in a prison of their own choice
I’m ok with that. What I don’t like are the wealthy using their
wealth to take over public spaces. Like using Venice for a private
wedding.
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
It seems inevitable that cameras will proliferate, and edge compute
will do more and more inference at the hardware level, turning heavy
video data into lightweight tags that are easy to cross-correlate.
The last thing I want is only a few individuals having that data,
whether it be governments, corporations, or billionaires and their
meme-theme goon squads. Make it all accessible. Maybe if the public
knows everyone (including their stalker/ex/rival) can track anyone,
we'd be more hesitant to put all this tracking tech out there.
rootusrootus wrote 1 day ago:
Indeed, I already see this in the consumer space with Frigate
users. Letting modern cameras handle the inference themselves
makes running an NVR easier. Pretty soon all cameras will be this
way, and as you say the output will be metadata that is easily
collected and correlated. Sounds useful for my personal
surveillance system and awful for society.
I feel like at some point we need to recognize the futility of
solving this issue with technology. It is unstoppable. In the
past we had the balls to regulate things like credit bureaus --
would we still do that today if given the choice?
We need to make blanket regulations that cover PII in all forms
regardless of who is collecting it. Limits on how it can be used,
transparency and control for citizens over their own PII,
constitutional protections against the gov't doing an end run
around the 4th amendment by using commercial data sources, etc.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> We need to make blanket regulations that cover PII in all forms
regardless of who is collecting it
Cool, change the First Amendment first. Your face and name aren't
private under our existing framework of laws - no standard
legislation can change this.
rootusrootus wrote 1 day ago:
I don't know how the First Amendment applies, could you
elaborate? And assuming it does, that does not seem like an
impossible barrier; time, place, and manner restrictions are a
thing. And like I said, we already do it at some level.
Doesn't mass surveillance plausibly violate the First
Amendment, by having a chilling effect on speech and freedom of
association? Or is the argument that it's private entities and
the Constitution only limits the government?
Even in the latter case, at least we could do something about
the government using private data collection to do things they
are not otherwise permitted to do under the Constitution.
That's some BS we should all be on board with stopping.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
No law can prevent me from operating a corporation that
collects and publishes license plate data for lawful purposes
(basic freedom of the press.) If I can see something in
public (where no reasonable expectation of privacy exists), I
can report on it. Very few exceptions exist to this - think
national security or military installations.
> Doesn't mass surveillance plausibly violate the First
Amendment, by having a chilling effect on speech and freedom
of association?
Plausibly, but no relevant case law I am aware of makes this
interpretation.
We can prohibit the government from utilizing and collecting
the data: absolutely, but you cannot prevent the people from
doing the same.
iamnothere wrote 18 hours 49 min ago:
Are you allowed to do the same thing with SSNs? It’s just
another government issued ID like a license plate.
15155 wrote 7 hours 44 min ago:
As far as I am aware, there's no Federal law prohibiting
the publication of SSNs for lawful purposes (which is the
typical default.) In Virginia, Ostergren v. Cuccinelli
(4th Cir. 2010) touched on this very issue, and
ultimately concluded that publishing SSNs is protected
speech (some nuance there, but this was the outcome.)
License plates are explicitly designed for legibility and
are legally mandated by every state to be displayed in
public view. The entire purpose of this object is to be
seen and create accountability. An SSN is a private,
individually-issued piece of information that isn't
intended for public view - and courts are still saying
publication is okay.
Law in the United States isn't an autistic, overly-rigid
computer system where edge cases can be probed for
"gotchas:" judges and case law exist to figure out these
tough questions.
iamnothere wrote 2 hours 14 min ago:
I’m surprised that SSNs could be published like that.
It’s curious that nobody has attempted to “do a
journalism” and publish the SSNs of HNW individuals.
It seems there would be little to stop you.
> Law in the United States isn't an autistic,
overly-rigid computer system where edge cases can be
probed for "gotchas:" judges and case law exist to
figure out these tough questions.
That’s obvious, and you seem to be going against
yourself here. If some details are considered too
sensitive for publication then it would follow that a
judge may be able to interpret the law to prevent mass
publication of even sensitive public or semi-public
data by creating an interpretive carve-out. But if you
can publish SSNs then there’s little to no hope for
that. It almost seems that the law is
“autistically” tilted in favor of data brokers.
Someone ought to set up a tracker that updates a list
of known HNW individuals with last detected location
based on license plate data and/or facial recognition.
Maybe also a list of last detected million dollar+
supercars. That will get some bills started.
rootusrootus wrote 1 day ago:
Alright, I will accept that what you say about license
plate data is true (though I know there remains ongoing
debate about it, IANAL so I cannot claim to know anything
more).
That gets you as far as distributing the license plate,
location, and time. But if you combine that data with
other non-public data, then it is no longer a First
Amendment protected use.
As an aside, if we cannot figure out a way to make this fit
with the First Amendment as written today, we need to make
updating that a priority already. The founders had no idea
that we would end up with computers and cameras that could
automatically track every citizen of the country with no
effort and store it indefinitely. "No reasonable
expectation of privacy" rests on a definition of reasonable
that made sense in the 18th century. Our technological
progress has changed that calculus.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> As an aside, if we cannot figure out a way to make this
fit with the First Amendment as written today, we need to
make updating that a priority already. The founders had
no idea that we would end up with computers and cameras
that could automatically track every citizen of the
country
This is a commonly echoed sentiment for the Second
Amendment too ("These idiot founders! They could never
have imagined so much individual power - We need to take
rights away!"), and I am in hard disagreement for both.
I cherish the fact that our legal system is so
intentionally slow that these types of "progressive"
efforts to reform the Constitution are basically
impossible.
rootusrootus wrote 21 hours 3 min ago:
The founders clearly intended the second amendment to
be about military service, we have contemporary
evidence to support that. The idea that it broadly
applied to individuals on their own is an
interpretation that didn’t really gain steam until
well into the 20th century.
15155 wrote 17 hours 22 min ago:
Have you ever read any of the Federalist papers? This
is extraordinarily ignorant - even left-leaning
SCOTUS justices do not agree with you (see Caetano,
etc.)
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
Government for a redress of grievances.
It says nothing directly about privacy, for or against, let
alone surveillance dragnets. I would contend it strongly
implies in fact laws should protect and also not chill your
ability to:
- go to and from a place of worship
- go to and from a peaceful assembly
- conduct free speech activities
- conduct press/journalism
- petition the government
If anything, the existing framework of laws implies a gap, that
data should not be able to be hoovered up without prior
authorization, since the existence of such a dragnet with a
government possibly adversarial to certain political positions
(e.g. labeling "AntiFa" terrorists) has quite the chilling
effect on your movement and activity. US vs Jones (2012) ruled
a GPS tracker constitutes a 4th Amendment search. If I have no
phone on me, and a system is able to track my location
precisely walking through a city, does it matter if the trace
emitted by that black box is attached to me physically, or part
of a distributed system? It's still outputting a dataframe of
(timestamp, gps) over a huge area.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> It says nothing directly about privacy, for or against
Freedom of the press is directly related to privacy: if I can
see something in public as a private citizen, I can report on
it, and you may not create any laws abridging this.
I'm not commenting on surveillance dragnets or how the
government uses the data or if the government is prohibited
from using it by statute or case law - the First Amendment
doesn't apply there (Fourth and Fifth do.)
jkestner wrote 1 day ago:
A friend of mine in school had a similar thought - make body cams so
cheap that everyone has one. Watch the watchmen.
I’ve considered making this a commercial reality, but we’ve seen
that ubiquitous cameras don’t necessarily stop cops or
authoritarians from kneeling on your neck, if they don’t feel
shame.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
Facial recognition databases of public sector employees will be the
straw that breaks this camel's back.
koolala wrote 1 day ago:
AR / AI glasses will be this.
jkestner wrote 1 day ago:
I don't know. Is it better that it's obvious or not? I was
thinking a buttonhole camera linked to your phone with an LED
indicator when recording.
stephenhumphrey wrote 1 day ago:
I’m embarrassed to admit how
readily I overlooked the “on” in “buttonhole”, and…
more embarrassed how afraid I became when your post still made
sense.
Well, for certain fringe definitions of “sense”.
MangoToupe wrote 1 day ago:
I specifically have considered this in terms of protecting workers
from (otherwise private or hidden) workplace abuse.
elevation wrote 1 day ago:
Two thoughts:
1. Amazon blink is an interesting hardware platform. With a
power-optimized SoC, they achieve several years of intermittent
1080P video on a single AA battery. A similar approach and price
point for body cam / dash cam would free users from having to
constantly charge.
2. If you're designing cameras to protect human rights, you'll
have to carefully consider the storage backend. Users must not
lose access to a local copy of their own video because a central
video service will be a choke point for censorship where critical
evidence can disappear.
buellerbueller wrote 1 day ago:
Surround the homes of the politicians and billionaires, and you're
onto something. Better yet, make them publicly viewable webcams.
ZebusJesus wrote 1 day ago:
Im glad WA ruled that you can get flock data with a FOIA request and
because of this local cities decided to disable the cameras. Currently
they have put caps of the lenses of the installed cameras in WA.
[1]: https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/investigator...
p_ing wrote 1 day ago:
Unfortunately they haven't disabled them in all locales.
lutusp wrote 1 day ago:
I hope the article's authors aren't taking the position that mass
surveillance is a bad thing, signifying a breakdown in civilized norms
... after all, they're using the same methods to "track the trackers."
immibis wrote 1 day ago:
It's 1938.
When nazis kill jews that is bad.
When jews kill nazis that is good (arguably (it used to be obvious
but now it is only arguable)).
Symmetric situations are not equivalent.
MSFT_Edging wrote 1 day ago:
In the US it's not uncommon to get on the wrong side of a police
officer for some personal beef, and the police officer begins to
harass you using legal tools provided to them.
It's also not uncommon for police officers to use their tools to
stalk women.
Now we're given the same untrustworthy officers full profiles of an
individuals travel history without a "need to know". If you can't see
how that's dangerous, I don't know what to tell you. In the US if
someone is threatening your life, you can typically shoot them if
you're out of options. You usually can't do that with an officer,
even if they're off duty. The rest of the cops will stand behind that
thin blue line and harass you.
gs17 wrote 1 day ago:
> It's also not uncommon for police officers to use their tools to
stalk women.
And Flock specifically has already been used for this multiple
times.
MSFT_Edging wrote 1 day ago:
Hell, if anyone is still like "oh that's unlikely", this guy on
youtube makes a living on police breaking the law and getting
away with it.
This video here literally catches a K-9 officer faking a drug hit
just to harass this guy over an expired inspection sticker.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv5kXxiJiMA
buellerbueller wrote 1 day ago:
The "trackers" (in the sense used by the parent post, i.e., those who
govern us) are there as our representatives; it is our right to
observe what they do in that role.
Judging by the downvotes, there are a lot of surveillance state
apologists/quislings in here! Oops, I mean "founders".
bonestamp2 wrote 1 day ago:
Maybe it's one of those situations where it takes a good guy using
surveillance to take down a bad guy using surveillance?
plorg wrote 1 day ago:
Surely there is a difference berween "surveiling" records of
institutional actors that answer to the public and dragnet tracking
of individuals operating in their private capacity.
ck2 wrote 1 day ago:
I don't get it
99% of the population is voluntarily carrying sophisticated tracking
devices with self-reporting always on
even if the signal is off it catches up later
with SEVERAL layers of tracking
not just your phone carrier but Google+Apple stores have your location
as the apps are always on in the background
even phone makers have their own tracking layer sometimes
we know EVERY person that went to Epstein Island from their phone
tracking and they didn't even have smartphones back then
Flock is just another lazy layer/databroker
artifaxx wrote 1 day ago:
Tracking already feeling pervasive suffers from the cognitive bias of
all or nothing thinking. A phone can be turned off or apps disabled
far more easily than a network of surveillance cameras. There are
degrees of surveillance and who has access to the data. We can push
back.
graemep wrote 1 day ago:
> Google+Apple stores have your location as the apps are always on in
the background
Does that imply that Android settings lie about which apps have
accessed location data?
klinquist wrote 1 day ago:
1. Government having the data is different than private companies
having the data
2. Consent
3. Accountability (e.g. A government agency needs a warrant to use
your cell phone location data against you).
rpjt wrote 1 day ago:
There is also no legal "reasonable expectation of privacy" for a
license plate displayed on a public road.
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
I'm fine with license plates being read and parsed. I'm fine with
license plates being read, parsed, assessed for violation, and
ticketed automatically, or cross-checked for amber alerts. That's
literally my line of work.
I want strict, strict guardrails on when and where that occurs. I
want that information erased as soon as the context of the citation
wraps up. I want every company/contractor in this space FOIA-able
and held to as strict or stricter requirements than the government
for transparency and corruption and other regulation. I don't want
every timestamped/geostamped datapoint of every law abiding driver
passing into any juncture hoovered into a data lake and tracked and
easily queryable. That's (IMHO, IANAL, WTF, BBQ) a flagrant 4th
amendment violation, and had the framers been able to conceive such
a thing, they'd absolutely add a "and no dragnet surveilance"
provision from day 1.
If that seems hypocritical, my line starts with "has a crime
occurred with decent likelihood?" "Lets collect everything and go
snoopin for crimes" is beyond the pale.
mothballed wrote 1 day ago:
I'd argue it's a 4A violation to require it to be displayed,
though. It's a search of your registration 'papers' without RAS or
PC of an offense.
The fact that driving is a 'privilege' doesn't negate your rights
to be secure in your papers, the police should have to have
articulable suspicion that your car is unregistered or unlicensed
before they can demand you to display your plate.
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
I dont personally agree but that is a really interesting argument
I can kinda get behind. I guess the question is, what if you have
footage of a crime being committed, and you would have a great
lead if you only had a way to pair a vehicle with a person?
sambaumann wrote 1 day ago:
I also don't agree with the argument you replied to, but a
counter-argument to your point is that we don't mandate
individuals to wear name tags while in public
bonestamp2 wrote 1 day ago:
Legally, you're absolutely right. But as camera technology, data
transmission, data storage, and automated data analysis progress,
maybe it's also reasonable that privacy laws progress with the
technology. I expect any police officer or other person to freely
view my license plate as I drive around and I have no problem with
that.
But, I do not think it's reasonable for an automated system to
systematically capture, store, and analyze all of my movements (or
anyone else who is not suspected of a serious crime). If they
suspect I have done something illegal, they should have to get a
warrant and then the system can be triggered to start tracking me.
I understand the desire for the data... sometimes I would like to
know if my kids are following the rules at home, but I have a
stronger conviction that I don't want my kids to grow up in a home
where they feel like they are under constant surveillance. It's a
gross feeling to be under constant surveillance, like you're living
in a panopticon built for prisoners, which is an unfair side effect
when you've done nothing wrong. Mass data surveillance of everyone
is a totalitarian dystopian that I don't want to live in.
alistairSH wrote 1 day ago:
I can reasonably expect that government agents don't follow me
every time I leave the house. Legal basis for that belief or not,
that's what most people expect.
klinquist wrote 1 day ago:
because it would be ridiculous for police to be able to track every
car everywhere it goes! (10 years ago)
Judges require warrants to put a GPS tracker on your car. Now that
Flock cameras are so ubiquitous in many cities, this gives them
access to the same data without a warrant.
sodality2 wrote 1 day ago:
I can opt out of that, by not carrying a phone. I cannot opt out of
public surveillance. Plus at least the gap between police -> tech
companies typically adds some resistance, maybe a warrant, etc. With
ALPR's police have immediate access without warrants to the
nationwide network. It's far more ripe for abuse, yet is exactly what
the police departments want; the only chance is local governance.
gearhart wrote 1 day ago:
Interesting. I just ran a similar search for « ANPR » which I think
is the UK equivalent, in UK local government meetings and it’s
mentioned about 80 times a month, which from a cursory glance looks
like it’s more than are being shown here. I didn’t look through
them yet to see how many were discussions about adding new
installations vs referencing existing ones.
Is the argument that Flock cameras are used for mass surveillance
defensible, or just paranoia, and if it is real, does anyone have a
good idea of whether the same argument would apply in the UK?
thinkingemote wrote 1 day ago:
ANPR have been widely used in the UK for at least 25 years. It was
first used 32 years ago in 1993 around the City of London.
They were initially deployed without discussion as it would have
tipped their hand. The coverage back then was on the main roads
around major cities, criminals with enough knowledge could have used
minor roads, or used fake plates.
Discussions in the UK in meetings would be about the benefits of
them, what arrests the use of ANPR have enabled. Councils have
regular scheduled meetings about crime. There would be no real in
depth discussion about new ones; that either never happened or
happened before many of us (and many of the politicians discussing
them!) were born.
pseudalopex wrote 1 day ago:
> Is the argument that Flock cameras are used for mass surveillance
defensible, or just paranoia
Our definitions of mass surveillance must differ for you to ask this.
Flock cameras are marketed and purchases for mass surveillance
expressly.
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
That's true if you define modern policing as a form of mass
surveillance, but doing so stretches the dilutes the usefulness of
the term. People see a difference between automatically flagging
cars on a stolen car hotlist, and monitoring the comings and goings
of every resident in their town. And they're right to see that
difference, and to roll their eyes at people who don't.
That doesn't mean the cameras are good; I think they aren't, or
rather, at least in my metro, I know they aren't.
g_sch wrote 1 day ago:
These cameras may have been originally sold to municipalities as
a way to find stolen cars, but from one year to the next, federal
agencies have (1) decided that their main goal is finding
arbitrary noncitizens to deport, and (2) that they're entitled to
the ALPR data collected by municipalities in order to accomplish
this goal. The technology isn't any different, but as a result of
the way it was deployed (on Flock's centralized platform), it was
trivial to flip a switch and turn it into a mass surveillance
network.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> decided that their main goal is finding arbitrary noncitizens
to deport
In the vast majority of cases this means: "enforcing
immigration law." A presidential administration deeming it
politically expedient to import illegal immigrants via turning
a blind eye doesn't change the law of the land.
> that they're entitled to the ALPR data collected by
municipalities in order to accomplish this goal
"Entitled" to purchase something that is being sold on the
market for a fair price? Why wouldn't they be entitled to
purchase this info if a vendor wishes to sell it to them?
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
Maybe, but I don't think there's much evidence that cameras
with sharing disabled were getting pulled by DHS, and I think,
because of how the cameras work, it would be a big deal if they
had. Flock also has extreme incentives not to let that happen.
We'll see, I guess: contra the takes on threads like this, I
don't think the cameras are going anywhere any time soon. I
think small progressive and libertarian enclaves will get rid
of their cameras while remaining landlocked in a sea of
municipalities expanding theirs.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> I think small progressive and libertarian enclaves will get
rid of their cameras while remaining landlocked in a sea of
municipalities expanding theirs.
Flock will just start putting cameras up on private property
and selling the data to the Federal government.
Municipalities can do very little to stop this, and local
governments are pretty poor at keeping their true reasons out
of public forum deliberation. Loophole methods of prohibition
("Can't put up camera masts") are easily thwarted in court.
rconti wrote 1 day ago:
There's been increased attention on it here when (from memory), it
was found that police departments on the other side of the country
were handing over data from completely different jurisdictions'
cameras, without any kind of warrant or official order, to third
parties.
deepvibrations wrote 1 day ago:
There are quite a few new camera types rolling out in the UK,
summary:
4D AI speed/behaviour cameras (Redspeed Centio): multi-lane radar +
high-res imaging; flags speeding, phone use, no seatbelt, and can
check plates against DVLA/insurance databases.
AI “Heads-Up” camera units (Acusensus): elevated/overhead
infrared cameras (often on trailers/vans) to spot phone use and
seatbelt/non-restrained occupants.
New digital fixed cameras (Vector SR): slimmer, more discreet
spot-speed cameras (sometimes with potential add-on behaviour
detection, depending on setup).
Smart motorway gantry cameras (HADECS): enforce variable speed limits
on motorways from gantries.
AI-assisted litter cameras: council enforcement for objects/litter
thrown from vehicles
rx_tx wrote 1 day ago:
On the topic of tricking the automated phone usage detection
cameras this youtuber had an entertaining video where he built a
car phone holder by molding his hand and making a replica.
[1]: https://youtu.be/Ud8kFCmalgg
gearhart wrote 1 day ago:
Really interesting, thank you! They do seem very rare in comparison
to ANPR, although maybe I'm not looking for the right thing.
Durham, Plymouth and Wokingham are talking about Red Speed and
Acusensus but given basically all 300 odd councils have discussed
ANPR at some point in the last year, that's a tiny percentage.
deepvibrations wrote 1 day ago:
No, I think you are right- they are not common in any way yet and
hopefully will stay that way. Although with the fly-tipping
issues here, if it could be done in an anonymous way, I would
actually welcome the camera's that detect people dropping
rubbish!
verisimi wrote 1 day ago:
> Is the argument that Flock cameras are used for mass surveillance
defensible
Its always defensible - think of the children!/terrorists! - and
always in the same dystopian direction. Just believing yourself to
be being tracked, changes behaviour. Just as in large cities, people
moderate their behaviour.
try_the_bass wrote 22 hours 14 min ago:
> Just as in large cities, people moderate their behaviour.
Given that crime rates are generally higher the more densely
populated an area is (in the US, at least), I'm not sure this is
true
lenerdenator wrote 1 day ago:
Mass deployment of CCTV and traffic cameras have a much, much longer
history in the UK than in the US. Tires burning around Gatsos were a
meme 20+ years ago.
sodality2 wrote 1 day ago:
It’s so awesome to see more people making things to fight back
against ALPRs. Deflock movements are gaining traction across the
country and genuinely making progress at suspension or cancellation of
contracts.
Karrot_Kream wrote 1 day ago:
I don't know. To me this seems like an energized minority trying to
use technology to make a lot of noise; much like social media
activism. In our city Flock cameras are very controversial but both
the PD and transparency reports have shown benefits from Flock. We're
not a wealthy, well-to-do suburb though. I imagine heavy ALPR
presence is a lot more silly in those areas.
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
Are they? Work I was involved in was instrumental in getting our
Flock contract cancelled. Meanwhile, all the surrounding
municipalities have, over the last 2 quarters, acquired more ALPR
cameras.
I'm certain that had the 2024 election gone a different way, we'd
still have our Flock cameras.
therobots927 wrote 1 day ago:
How did you go about getting the contract canceled? I’m assuming
you had to convince the police chief?
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
No. The police chief was unhappy with the outcome.
I also didn't personally get the contract cancelled --- in fact,
I (for complicated reasons) opposed cancelling the contract. But
I can tell you the sequence of things that led to the
cancellation:
1. OPPD made the mistake of trying to deploy the cameras as an
ordinary appropriation, without direct oversight, which pissed
the board off.
2. We deployed the cameras in a pilot program with a bunch of
restrictions (use only for violent crimes, security controls,
stuff like that) that included monthly transparency reports to
our CPOC commission.
3. Over the pilot period, the results from the cameras weren't
good. That wasn't directly the fault of the cameras (the problem
is the Illinois LEADS database), but it allowed opponents of the
cameras to tell a (true) story.
4. At the first renewal session, an effort was made to shut off
the cameras entirely (I was in favor then!), but the police chief
made an impassioned case for keeping them as investigative tools.
We renewed the contract with two provisos: we essentially stopped
responding to Flock alerts, and we cut off all out-of-state
sharing.
5. Transparency reports about the cameras to CPOC continued to
tell a dismal story about their utility, complicated now by the
fact that we (reasonably) were not using them for alerting in the
first place; we had something like 5 total stories over a year
post renewal, and 4 of them were really flimsy. The cameras did
not work.
6. Trump got elected.
7. A push to kill the cameras off once and for all came from the
progressive faction of the board; Trump and the poor performance
of the cameras made them impossible to defend.
8. OPPD turned off all sharing of camera data.
9. The board voted to cancel the contract anyways.
therobots927 wrote 1 day ago:
Just having the transparency report available to demonstrate
that the cameras weren’t working seems like an important
step. I’m working on trying to get this information myself
for my local area. I do agree that the election moved the
needle. Hopefully this generates a pro-privacy coalition that
will be just as opposed to similar efforts when the blue ties
are back in power.
sodality2 wrote 1 day ago:
It's definitely a push and pull; more are adopting it, but more are
pushing back. The total amount is definitely still rising, though,
but so is awareness.
There's Eugene and Springfield, OR; Cambridge, MA; a few in TX;
Denver and Longmont, CO; Redmond, WA; Evanston and Oak Park, IL;
etc.
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
I'm Oak Park (I helped write our ALPR General Order and the
transparency reporting requirements that formed the case for
killing the contract because it wasn't addressing real crime).
Oak Park is 4.7 square miles. All our surrounding munis have
rolled out more ALPRs after we killed ours.
Further: because of the oversight we had over our ALPRs before,
they weren't really doing anything, for something like 2 years.
OPPD kept them around because they were handy for post-incident
investigation. We effectively had to stop responding to alerts
once our police oversight commission ran the numbers of what the
stops were.
Which is to say: our "de-Flocking" was mostly cosmetic. We'd
already basically shut the cameras down and cut all sharing out.
sodality2 wrote 1 day ago:
I definitely think there's something to be said for nuance; my
county is one of the worst in my state for penetration [0] but
according to their transparency log avoids many of the common
criticisms of Flock, like data sharing, immigration enforcement
use, etc [1].
I'm just happy for any sort of critical analysis or attention
being brought to every municipality's use of this technology as
so often people have no idea at all, though. Because there are
a lot of counties which are far worse, and almost none of the
public is even aware; I suspect there is at least some gap
between people who would care if they knew, and people who care
now.
[0]: [1]:
[1]: https://alpranalysis.com/virginia/206807
[2]: https://transparency.flocksafety.com/williamsburg-va-p...
therobots927 wrote 1 day ago:
It’s because they tap into a primal fear that the Snowden
revelations didn’t. It’s more obvious and visceral to know
there’s a massive network of cameras watching everyone 24/7.
TheCraiggers wrote 1 day ago:
Not just that, but because people can see the devices themselves.
It's not just some guy talking about bad things in Washington DC,
you can see these things on rural roads in the middle of nowhere.
jeffbee wrote 1 day ago:
"Massive database of vehicles" is the best hope we have for
reestablishing order and peace in American cities. I am all for cameras
and the larger, more visible number plates of Europe. I also think the
cops should intercept and seize all vehicles operating without their
plates.
sethammons wrote 1 day ago:
A massive database of people's travel records is the best hope we
have for reestablishing morality and church attendance. Cops could
proactively round up mon-attendees or those who went to a synagogue.
Famously, excellent Dutch record keeping was bad for jewish people in
the Netherlands in May 1940.
Also, an unlicensed-plated car and your dream enforcement, my first
thought was of "illegal" cases I have done include moving a vehicle
to a neighboring property a couple blocks away. How strict would you
like it? Should I be forced to use an expensive tow service to move
an unregistered car across the street on some slow residential
street?
anigbrowl wrote 1 day ago:
reestablishing order and peace in American cities
False premise
mikkupikku wrote 1 day ago:
> "Massive database of vehicles" is the best hope we have for
reestablishing order and peace in American cities
Have you tried electing moderate prosecutors who don't drop charges
just because the habitual offender has a heartbleed sob story?
buellerbueller wrote 1 day ago:
Your comment suggests that you do not spend much time in American
cities. They are safer than they have been any time during my life.
You have fallen for political talking points.
alistairSH wrote 1 day ago:
You lost me at "reestablishing order and peace"... what do you
believe is happening in our cities? And how is tracking cars
nationwide going to fix whatever problem you think exits?
jeffbee wrote 1 day ago:
The number of people killed and maimed while just walking around
has never been higher.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
I don't disagree with you, but this is obviously a misleading
stat on its face because the number of people has simply never
been higher.
Crime per capita could be completely static and this statement
would always be true simply because there are more people.
alistairSH wrote 1 day ago:
Citation for that?
Overall crime rates are up from pre-COVID, but nowhere near
all-time highs.
Or, if you mean specifically traffic-related deaths and injuries,
again, trending the wrong way, but also nowhere near all-time
highs.
In either case, you still haven't indicated how pervasive
surveillance will help...
buellerbueller wrote 1 day ago:
Wrong.
[1]: https://counciloncj.org/homicide-trends-report/
jeffbee wrote 1 day ago:
My dude, we are not talking about homicides.
anigbrowl wrote 19 hours 0 min ago:
Oh, are we talking about natural disasters and animal
attacks? Or is it some secret third thing so you can feel
even more clever as vaguepost?
buellerbueller wrote 21 hours 31 min ago:
>The number of people killed and maimed while just walking
around has never been higher.
Yes, we are. You brought it up.
anigbrowl wrote 1 day ago:
Substantiate your claims or GTFO. Comments like this are just
bait, you have been here long enough to know that.
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
Order and peace sounds great! But that's just road crime, why stop
there? We have so many wifi enabled nodes and cameras. Lets put alpr
on every Waymo and Tesla. Gait detection and face recognition on
every Ring. Triangulate every cell phone down to the meter. Dump it
all in a big data watershed. Let anyone with username/password query
it (no MFA needed). We could even name our panopticon after some
mythical all-seeing artifact, like a palantir. You won't be able to
take a breath without officials knowing.
IncreasePosts wrote 1 day ago:
Okay, sounds good?
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
You genuinely don't think that's ripe for abuse?
IncreasePosts wrote 1 day ago:
When has "ripe for abuse" stopped anything from happening?
Cell phones are ripe for abuse...do you carry one?
tavavex wrote 1 day ago:
That's not what they asked.
The poster above asked why you personally support total
surveillance, despite it being ripe for abuse. How inevitable
something may or may not be is completely irrelevant to
whether you personally choose to support it. Acknowledging
that it can be abused means you have to make that logical
connection and say why something being ripe for abuse doesn't
preclude you from cheering on for it.
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
Decreasingly so. Particularly if I am going to anything
charged (e.g. political rallies). Which is a shame, they are
very useful tools and it's a very real chilling effect.
buellerbueller wrote 1 day ago:
Go live in Mordor; lmk how that goes.
lenerdenator wrote 1 day ago:
Police ignore crime that's happening on the roads right now.
Drive around Kansas City sometime, particularly on the Missouri side.
Tons of temporary paper license plates that are a year past
expiration. Any member of law enforcement could pull the person over
and enforce a penalty for it.
They just... don't. I don't know exactly why that is. Are they afraid
that doing so opens them up to the chance of being shot or engaging
in a high-speed pursuit? The former definitely happened in North
Kansas City a few years ago (not to be confused with KC North) but
having a massive network of cameras tracking license plates and how
they move across town doesn't help. At the end of the day, you have
to send someone a fine, and if they don't pay it and don't show up
for court, you are again faced with having a police officer try to
interact with them one-on-one, this time to enforce a bench warrant
for their arrest.
In the meantime, you now have an absolutely massive data set of
citizen movements being collected without a warrant by an
increasingly authoritarian American government.
phantasmish wrote 1 day ago:
I can confirm that they are not shy about pulling over people with
regular plates that have just expired, however. They’re on top of
that. N = 3, 100% enforcement within a month.
But long-expired temps are everywhere. So confusing. How?
alwa wrote 1 day ago:
In some places where I’ve lived, local LE mounts ALPR systems
atop most of their fleet. Those read “formal” plates as
vehicles pass near the cruiser, and they proactively alert
against a watchlist. Which presumably somebody’s hooked up to
periodically ingest lists of recent lapses alongside the usual
stolen/wanted/pile-of-unpaid-tickets sorts of stuff.
My sense is that such systems are rather less consistent at
reading temp tags, and that temp tag issuance tends to be
decentralized/dealer-based, rather more ad hoc, and thus rather
less legible for semi-automated enforcement purposes.
mikkupikku wrote 1 day ago:
People with barely expired plates are normies who made a mistake.
Safe. People with temps expired a year ago aren't making a
mistake, they're willfully and openly displaying defiance of the
law. That makes them scarier.
mothballed wrote 1 day ago:
This is basically a description of police in a nutshell. They
are just ordinary civil servants, plus a gun, plus maybe a
little less accountability if they mess up. People who get
scared like you and me. People who are lazy like you and me.
Imagine the clerk at the motor vehicle office or the secretary
at the welfare office but asked to do something different
today.
Do you, reader, want to have to confront a bunch of scary
people for a $? Oh, you think having a gun makes it a bit less
scary?
Almost no one wants to confront dangerous people day in and day
out. Once in a while to flex the hero complex, maybe. But a
few times of that will cure you of any particular desire to
seek it out.
The people that want to do that are one in a thousand types.
Basically criminals themselves, just on the right side of the
law who use the 'criminal' mentality for good. Most police
are not that.
They want to do a job, collect a paycheck, and do it in an easy
way. Like how I like to drive to work rather than do a
handstand and walk 5 miles on my hands and wrists. They get
little to nothing for making their job harder.
The people with the most motivation to stop the criminal is the
victim themselves. You are pretty much on your own. The state
won't be coming to save you.
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
I think you have hit the nail on the head why more police
funding, more surveillance tech, more dystopian BS that looks
more like PreCrime every single day, is only going to get us
so far.
I'm sure there are exceptions, but I think most folks
(including criminals) believe crime is, generally speaking,
bad. Folks commit crimes to survive, to enrich themselves,
out of retribution, out of lapse of judgment, or lack of self
control. Almost all some flavor of unmet needs. You put money
into tackling those challenges, address why people are
stealing, why turf wars break out, why addiction ruins lives
and puts people in terrible positions, why poor nutrition and
family support and mental health care lead to so many folks
slipping through the cracks.
phantasmish wrote 1 day ago:
School quality’s largely in the same place. You’re not
going to make much of a dent without fixing social support,
the social safety net, healthcare, mental healthcare, and
generally greatly improving stability for the economically
bottom third or so of families.
In other words, the main problems with schools have little
to do with schools. But they’re complicated and expensive
problems with distant payoff, so we keep monkeying around
with schools instead.
lenerdenator wrote 1 day ago:
I'd also add that there's a socioeconomic component. In
Missouri, at least up until 2025, you'd get your temp tags when
you buy the car, and your actual metal plates once you paid
sales and property tax and registered the vehicle with the DMV.
This recently changed to make the sales and property tax apply
at the time of the purchase so that you'd get your plates much
more quickly after.
A car is a necessity in most of Missouri. Kansas City has more
highway miles per capita than any other major city in the
country (and maybe in the world); IIRC St. Louis is fourth-most
highway miles per capita. Public transit has major gaps.
Inability to drive is such an encumbrance that those convicted
of DUI are allowed to petition courts for a hardship license
allowing them to drive to work and other essential places
because not allowing for this could fail under the Eighth
Amendment.
All of this is to say that if you are able to pay for a car,
but not the sales tax for the car, and you get pulled over for
not registering after your temp tags expire, you are
essentially under house arrest until you can put together the
money to both pay the fine and to pay the tax on the car, which
is now exponentially harder since you can't drive anywhere.
Since that'd put disadvantaged people at an even greater
disadvantage, it might be a "community relations" move by the
PD to look the other way on these cases, at least until another
blatant violation occurs.
baggachipz wrote 1 day ago:
Absolutely. Turns out policing actually requires real police work.
These cameras only punish law-abiding citizens. Fake plates and
out-of-date temp tags effectively render these people invisible to
the ALPRs.
jeffbee wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, this is a major problem, and it obviously is not just Kansas
City. In San Francisco the useless SFPD completely stopped writing
traffic tickets, gradually over the last 20 years. They were
writing > 14000 per month as recently as 2014 and this was below
500 per month for years until recent reforms brought it up
slightly. The problem is that the police are self-selecting members
of the tinted-dodge-charger club and do not perceive traffic laws
as real laws. This ties in more generally to the fact that every
single individual member of law enforcement throughout the United
States needs to be closely scrutinized by psychologists.
aerostable_slug wrote 1 day ago:
Uh, no. They stopped because they were being punished for pulling
over ethnically disproportionate numbers of drivers. This is
likely due to several factors but the end result was making
traffic stops a politically sensitive area, so they just pulled
back.
ypeterholmes wrote 1 day ago:
If you think authoritarianism will lead to order and peace, you're
gonna have a bad time. The presence of a secret police is already
causing wide scale violation of our constitutional rights.
rcpt wrote 1 day ago:
Getting ticketed for blowing through a red light isn't
"authoritarianism"
gs17 wrote 1 day ago:
This discussion isn't really about red light or speed cameras,
although they suck in different ways. They are technically
"license plate cameras", but they only capture for a specific
purpose. ALPR cameras are about a surveillance dragnet over the
whole city, tracking people who are not accused of anything.
DaSHacka wrote 1 day ago:
Nor is getting reinstated to your home country of origin when you
are here illegitimatly.
immibis wrote 1 day ago:
You're making the assumption that widescale violation of our
constitutional rights can't lead to order and peace.
a456463 wrote 1 day ago:
Where has that actually happened?
aerostable_slug wrote 1 day ago:
El Salvador is making a case for it, and other countries are
paying attention.
jeffbee wrote 1 day ago:
It is not "secret police". The reason your car has a highly visible
number plate is because for decades society has recognized its
compelling interest in knowing the whereabouts of private vehicles.
kyboren wrote 1 day ago:
No, the ability to know the current whereabouts and location
history of practically all private vehicles is a new capability
afforded by deployment of ALPR mass surveillance.
Previously, we had some balance between privacy and
accountability. A bystander or a victim of a collision could
remember license plate numbers and give them in a police report.
The police could tail you (but only you, because $$$) to discover
your movements. But government agents couldn't track the
movements of all the people, all the time. Now they can.
The societal balance of power has shifted and is now seriously
lopsided in favor of the rulers. And cheerleaders like you don't
mind, as long as you can purchase a little temporary safety...
ypeterholmes wrote 1 day ago:
Then why are they wearing masks?
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
Probably so unhinged individuals don't show up at their homes
and attack their families for performing unpopular law
enforcement functions?
ypeterholmes wrote 20 hours 6 min ago:
Setting aside their lawlessness, it sounds like we agree they
are unidentifiable, meaning their identity is a secret. So
they are a secret police. And you support that for some
reason, maybe because you haven't read a single history book.
15155 wrote 17 hours 23 min ago:
Is this supposed to be some kind of "gotcha?" I don't
really care about the language being used to describe this
law enforcement agency: it isn't going to change my opinion
about their mission or somehow change their legal ability
to carry it out.
You're right: because I do not want illegal immigrants in
my country I haven't "read a single history book."
sethammons wrote 1 day ago:
Interesting that record deportations under the Obama
administration didn't spur such reactions to immigration
enforcement at the time. Has there been any change in
behavior by officials?
buellerbueller wrote 1 day ago:
Masked, unidentified individuals abducting people are either
kidnappers (if doing it without the law behind them) or secret
police (if doing it with the law behind them).
EDIT: Rather then downvote, offer an example of a masked,
unidentified person abducting someone who is neither a kidnapper
nor secret police.
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote 1 day ago:
Just curious to understand how you think vehicles are such a critical
point for decreasing crime in the US?
I do agree that we have heavy crime (though HN will say it's all
anecdotal and the stats show we're in a period of remarkable peace).
I just don't know that greater enforcement around vehicle use will
have the outsized effect that you're claiming.
rcpt wrote 1 day ago:
Car crashes are a leading cause of death. We can save a lot of
lives by getting drivers to follow the law.
infecto wrote 1 day ago:
I don’t think it’s so much as critical but has potential to
help close the loop on crime. Big box stores love this service. The
can easily identify the car type and license and out out a bolo
with the police. Police put this into flock and track movement. You
don’t have to pursue chases as aggressively. You can just track
the car next time it pops up. I think flock is a net positive in
this sense.
wat10000 wrote 1 day ago:
I'm curious as to why you think we have heavy crime when you know
the stats say otherwise.
eszed wrote 1 day ago:
Not the person you asked.
In those statistical roundups homicide is treated as a proxy for
crime in general, so the best we can rigorously say is that
homicide rates have decreased - which is, obviously, great.
Researchers treat homicide as a proxy because they know not all
crimes are reported.
Anecdotally, living in [big city] between 2014 and 2021 my
street-parked car was broken into ~10 times, and stolen once
(though I got it back). I never reported the break-ins, because
[city PD] doesn't care. In [current suburb] a drive by shooting
at the other end of our block received no police response at all,
and won't be in the crime stats.
Are those types of crimes increasing? I don't know! I'd had my
car broken into before 2014, and I witnessed (fortunately only
aurally - I was just around the corner) a drive-by in the
nineties. But... That's the point: no one knows! These incidents
aren't captured in the statistics.
Personally, I think the proxies are broadly accurate, and crime
in general is lower, and I shouldn't trust my anecdotal
experiences. However, I think the general lack of trust in the
quality of American police-work (much of it for good reason,
sadly) biases most people towards trusting anecdotal experience
and media-driven narratives.
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote 1 day ago:
Great response, you said it better than me.
I am more skeptical of homicide rate stats than you are, given
the garbage data I see for crime in general, but even I am
willing to admit they're much more robust than the rest.
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote 1 day ago:
I work with stats. I think even very honest people with high
incentive to tell an accurate story and good data have trouble
with stats. Now add politicians and police and bad data into that
mix with winner-takes-all politics at stake and the stats get
gamed.
Also I believe my eyes and when I see crimes happening in my
neighborhood I don't rush to "the stats" to ask them what I saw.
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
So we have stats, that's the closest we have to objective, but
I guess we can't trust those. You say your anecdote contradicts
"the stats", and I genuinely believe you. Sincerely, what's the
alternative? Vibes? We gotta steer this ship (society) based on
something.
How else do you condense down myriad and often conflicting
datapoints of this complex human existence in order to get
trends you can make decisions on?
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote 1 day ago:
Short answer: idk.
Longer answer: this is a fundamental problem across many
domains. I don't think anyone has solved it.
I think of a story of Bezos being told by his Amazon execs
that customer support wait times were meeting X service
levels. In the meeting room with his execs, Bezos dials up
customer service, gets some wait time of >>>X and makes the
point that service levels are not up to his expectations.
I don't think that story is a great analogy for running
society but is interesting nonetheless.
RHSeeger wrote 1 day ago:
But "what you saw" isn't necessarily representative of the
state of things, either. Arlington, VA is (was?) one of the
nicer places in VA; generally expensive, etc. When I drove
through there, the van in front of me at a light was
car-jacked, and the person in it chased down. I'm uncomfortable
driving through Arlington because of that; even though it's not
representative of the area. Admittedly, this was years ago...
but the point stands. My experience is not representative of
the actual facts.
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote 1 day ago:
Stats are also "not necessarily representative of the state
of things". At the very best they are a single factoid about
a very complex human existence.
Stats only get worse from there: at neutral they contain no
information, at worst they are dis-info.
rpjt wrote 1 day ago:
You have to be careful with stats. There's an incentive to
manipulate crime stats.
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/12/12/dc-po...
wat10000 wrote 1 day ago:
I could buy that for some crimes, but e.g. murder is pretty
hard to manipulate.
giancarlostoro wrote 1 day ago:
I live in a usually safe and crime free area in Florida, we had
someone going car by car stealing from any car left open. My
neighbor opened his door and told him he had him on camera, guy ran
away. I had him on camera too but sadly no spotlight to catch a
better look. I cant help but imagine that Flock deters people doing
this sort of thing. I hate surveillance nanny states but criminals
are getting bolder everyday it feels like.
I wish there was a way to implement this sort of “surveilance”
in such a way that it only impacts criminals or would be criminals
and only them.
sethammons wrote 1 day ago:
We are moving from God sees all and the afterlife will judge you
to The Govt de Jour sees all and will judge you in this life.
kortex wrote 1 day ago:
> but criminals are getting bolder everyday it feels like.
Might feel that way, but objectively, violent and property crime
are on the decline in the USA.
I've also heard many stories where a person gets high def footage
of someone committing a crime (usually burglary, smash and grab,
or porch snatching) and the cops are basically like "eh we'll get
to it when we get to it" [1] edit: can someone explain what is
objectionable about this comment?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
buellerbueller wrote 1 day ago:
Two weeks ago, my parked car, along with two other parked cars,
was rear-ended at 3:15am by a drunk driver (the car interior
smelled like alcohol), in an unregistered car that was not his.
He then fled the scene.
All of this was caught on high definition video.
However, he also left his phone and State ID (he was also
unlicensed) in the car.
Did the cops drive the 2 blocks to the address listed on his ID
to arrest him for leaving the scene of the accident, or to give
him any kind of blood alcohol test? No, no they did not.
Did the cops follow up in any way whatsoever? No, no they did
not. How do I know this? Because a few days later, I walked
the two blocks to the house to inquire whether the car was
insured. It was not.
---
What is objectionable about your comment is the same thing that
eventually plagues every social media that has
downvoting/flagging: you violated someone's strongly-held
priors.
gs17 wrote 1 day ago:
> we had someone going car by car stealing from any car left
open.
We have that too here, the issue seems to be more that it's a
catch and release crime. The police not only knew who was doing
it on our street, they had caught them multiple times and
released them immediately. I'm guessing if they're not caught
with stolen guns on them here it's not enough of a charge to
bother with. I really doubt Flock would matter.
buellerbueller wrote 1 day ago:
Hell, at least you have the "catch" part. Here, "officers of
the law" just DGAF.
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks for the response and I generally agree. Though I HATE HATE
HATE the march towards the surveillance state, we need to stop
crime.
I was specifically asking about the GP's focus on vehicles
(larger plates, unregistered vehicle enforcement) and how they
thought that would reduce crime so much.
jeffbee wrote 1 day ago:
All but literally every crime in my city (in the categories of,
say, burglary, robbery, assault, etc) are committed by people
who drive into town in stolen cars with no plates. It's totally
ridiculous. If the only tactic the police knew was to pull over
every Infiniti with tinted windows and no plates, the crime
rate would drop to zero.
jancsika wrote 1 day ago:
> If the only tactic the police knew was to pull over every
Infiniti with tinted windows and no plates, the crime rate
would drop to zero.
Your efficiency gain in the size and complexity of the
policies and procedures handbook would be unparalleled.
But why might the crime rate shoot up on day two of your
short tenure as police chief?
Hint: a metric is distinct from a target.
mikkupikku wrote 1 day ago:
> "If the only tactic the police knew was to pull over every
Infiniti with tinted windows and no plates, [...]
...they'd get called racist. Let's be real. The tint thing
in particular gets filed as "bullshit excuse for racial
profiling", never mind that illegal tint can be empirically
measured.
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote 1 day ago:
Very funny, thanks for the response.
I am concerned about the lack of follow through after police
intervention. Lack of prosecution and convictions, light
sentences, repeat offenders being released, etc.
If judges would simply keep someone with 3+ felonies in jail,
crime would drop 80%.
aerostable_slug wrote 1 day ago:
That got labeled "mass incarceration" and even Joe Biden (a
'law and order Democrat' to the core) had to walk back
support of what he viewed as one of his greatest
achievements, championing the 1994 Crime Bill.
yannyu wrote 1 day ago:
> If the only tactic the police knew was to pull over every
Infiniti with tinted windows and no plates, the crime rate
would drop to zero.
Then the question is, why don't they do that? Why do we need
a surveillance state to enable police to do what residents
might consider the bare minimum?
aerostable_slug wrote 1 day ago:
A large part of the deal is that ALPRs flag on hotlists and
cannot be accused of racism. There's no way to argue a
vehicle stop is the result of profiling when it's a machine
recognizing a plate on a list and issuing an alert. The
stats don't go in the same bucket.
At the end of the day, avoiding accusations of racism is
behind much of modern policing's foibles (like the
near-total relaxation of traffic law enforcement in some
cities).
kyboren wrote 1 day ago:
I think the broad thrust of your argument is right on the
money. Officers' perception of heightened (or unfair)
accountability has turned every police interaction into a
risk for the officers and department, too. However, I
think the problem actually goes even deeper. The
incentives are all aligned to launder responsibility
through automated systems, and we'll end up sleepwalking
into AI tyranny if we're not careful.
Where I am, police officers get paid healthy 6-figure
salaries plus crazy OT to boot. $300k total comp is
absolutely not unheard of. I think the police have
basically figured out that the best way to stay on the
gravy train is to do as little as possible. Certainly
stop enforcing traffic laws entirely, as those are the
highest risk interactions. Just rest n' vest, baby. So
you get to hear about "underfunded" and "overworked"
police departments while observing overpaid police
officers who are structurally disincentivized from doing
their jobs.
The bottom line is: People want policing, but adding more
police officers won't deliver results and anyway is too
expensive. What to do?
Enter mass surveillance and automated policing. If we
can't rely on police to do the policing, we'll have to do
it some other way. Oh, look at how cheap it is to put
cameras up everywhere. And hey, we can get a statistical
inferential model (excuse me, Artificial Intelligence!)
to flag "suspicious" cars and people. Yeah yeah, privacy
risks blah blah blah turnkey totalitarianism whomp whomp
whomp. But think of all the criminals we can catch! All
without needing police to actually do anything!
While police are expensive and practically useless at
doing things people want, this technology can actually
deliver results. That makes it irresistible. The problem
is that it's turning our society into a panopticon and
putting us all in great danger of an inescapable
totalitarian state dominated by a despot and his AI army.
But those are abstract risks, further out and
probabilistic in nature. Humans are terrible at making
these kinds of decisions; as a population we almost
always choose short-term benefit over abstract long-term
risks and harms. Just look at climate change and fossil
fuel consumption.
snow_mac wrote 1 day ago:
How do you get access get all the local government meetings? Do you
have a crawler that looks up every city in the country then visits each
website and pull down the info? A public listing site?
phildini wrote 1 day ago:
Hi! I've written crawlers for about a dozen municipal hosting
platforms, and you can learn the bare-bones of it from our "How"
page: [1] I also gave a talk on this concept that walks through the
whole process: [2] The short answer is: there's no common API for any
of these sites, and even the ones that do have an API are sometimes
misconfigured. It's why I wrote all the scrapers by hand.
[1]: https://civic.band/how.html
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtWzNnZvQ6w
c0brac0bra wrote 1 day ago:
Perhaps something like [1] ?
[1]: https://www.perigon.io
whstl wrote 1 day ago:
This video that was posted here yesterday shows some details: [1]
Apparently there is scraping of public data + keyword matching +
moderators filtering the matches.
An example that he shows a bit earlier in the video comes from this
page, which has an RSS feed: [2] The video says it's open source but
I can't find the source.
[1]: https://youtu.be/W420BOqga_s?t=93
[2]: https://www.cityofsanbenito.com/AgendaCenter/City-Commission...
stronglikedan wrote 1 day ago:
Try asking. Louis is fairly responsive.
nyjah wrote 1 day ago:
There isn’t any sort of standard for recording public meetings.
I’ve seen everything mic less live streams with obstructed cameras
to well curated flawless back and forth with great audio and
transcripts. Meeting to meeting it can vary.
1123581321 wrote 1 day ago:
Is that map using the same data as DeFlocked? The presentation is
easier for me than how DeFlocked's map groups cameras until you zoom in
closely.
tsbischof wrote 1 day ago:
Different datasets. deflock.me is for ALPR locations, alpr.watch
shows where local government meetings are taking place
1123581321 wrote 1 day ago:
alpr.watch shows camera locations as well as government meetings
once you zoom in a bit—the green dots.
ChrisbyMe wrote 1 day ago:
Very cool, I was thinking about building a similar thing when I saw the
Flock discourse, but got busy with the holidays.
Any interesting technical details? Getting the actual data from govt
meetings looked like it was the hardest part to me.
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
A huge number of municipalities all share the same tech stack:
Granicus/Legistar. You can pull the agendas and minutes of all their
board meetings probably going back a decade. From captioning
information you can Whisper-transcribe and attribute transcripts of
the meetings themselves.
During our last election cycle, I did this for all our board meetings
going back to the mid-aughts, using 'simonw's LLM tool to pass each
agenda item to GPT 4o to classify them into topical buckets
("safety", "racial equity", "pensions", &c), tying them back to
votes, and then doing a time breakdown of the topics (political
opponents were claiming our board, which I support, was spending too
much time on frivolous stuff).
That's a pretty silly use case, but also a data-intensive one; the
things you'd actually want to do across municipalities are much
simpler.
You could probably have Claude one-shot a municipal meetings
notification service for you.
phildini wrote 1 day ago:
Granicus is six providers in a trench coat it turns out. IQM2,
NovusAgenda, Legistar, Granicus, PriveGov, and CivicClerk are all
Granicus projects that share absolutely 0 apis that I've found, and
a city having one of these operational is no guarantee they have
any of the others.
Legistar and CivicClerk have actual APIs, which is nice, although
it's extremely easy for the City Clerk's staff to trip and make the
Legistar API unusable.
My experiments with using LLMs to write crawlers for these has been
extremely mixed; it's good at getting first page of data and less
good at following weird pagination trails or follow-on requests.
All of this led me to build CivicBand (which tracks all the
municipalities I can get my hands on) and CivicObserver (which is
generalized full-text search alerting for municipalities via email,
mastodon, bluesky, and slack webhook)
tptacek wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, don't get me wrong, they all suck ass, but it's good to
know there's one common set of things to scrape to get you lots
and lots of cities. Those both sound like very cool projects!
phildini wrote 1 day ago:
thanks! the next major hurdle is school boards; gotta get
EBoard and BoardDocs to make that work
toomuchtodo wrote 1 day ago:
Not OP, but I automate collecting public meeting data from various
local agencies across the US. The below resources might be helpful.
Public meeting video can be captured using yt-dlp (and if not made
public, obtained with a FOIA request), archived, transcribed, etc.
Sometimes there is an RSS feed, otherwise use an LLM provider as an
extractor engine against the target datastore. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
[1]: https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2025/apr/16/keeping-l...
[2]: https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2024/mar/27/automatin...
[3]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=pX_xcj-p0vA
[4]: https://documentcloud.org/add-ons/MuckRock/Klaxon/
[5]: https://documentcloud.org/
[6]: https://muckrock.com/
phildini wrote 1 day ago:
I _think_ (but am not actually certain) we're monitoring more
municipal agencies at CivicBand, but I know some of the folks at
MuckRock and the work they're doing is absolutely critical.
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