A Cop's Case for Flock(worksinprogress.co) |
A Cop's Case for Flock(worksinprogress.co) |
1. They don't have access to the data.
2. They don't trust those that do.
3. They don't believe that violations in how it is used will be appropriately punished (article clearly disagrees, citing a study).
4. They believe the Federal government will misuse the data, and there won't be a record of the misuse.
One solution is: Make the data a public good. Instead of trying to ban such things, make the feeds accessible to everyone. It levels the playing field.
Bans aren't really going to work in the long run. I could hook up a camera on my property, facing the street, and record and stream. You can do the same. We can set up a common protocol for all such people to share their streams. Municipalities banning this type of behavior will be as effective as banning piracy.
Will society be better off as a result? I seriously doubt it. Some things will drastically improve. Others will get a lot worse. But it's a likely solution going forward.
Until sufficient measures are in place to prevent abuse (and I have doubts it's even possible) then the cameras gotta go and they can do their jobs the same way the did decades before.
Mass surveillance apparatus like flock cameras and their ilk have a huge surface area for abuse, meaning there must be at least as large a positive impact to even be worth considering.
Unfortunately, we already have plenty of historical evidence from areas that deployed cameras all over - e.g., London, where there was a near-zero drop in crime afterward, and multiple cities in the US, where police immediately began abusing the systems.
There is no baby to throw out, and the bathwater is toxic.
Flock took the path of least resistance setting them up often skirting any normal discussion that should have taken place with the community before they were installed.
That’s a long winded way of saying, if they can abuse a system they will. There are no repercussions, and so the only way to stop the abuse is to prevent it from happening. I’d absolutely love to see massive reform to police in the US, but it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.
All around the world, and certainly in developed countries, having power over other people is the biggest draw for joining the police.
This is of course also true in Europe. The reason European cops (usually) don’t just randomly kill people is that they (usually) can’t get away with it, not that they wouldn’t want to.
People join the police so they can rule over people, not so they can “serve” them.
I was quite surprised to find that the figures don't back that up. I'm not sure how to account for it. Perhaps the fact that every mall security guard is given a mock police uniform, a gun and a huge SUV contributes to the feeling.
In one county, the locals are actively against paying higher taxes to fund the police. They pay a third per capita what other counties do. The problems due to the lack of police are well known - 911 calls often end with "I'm sorry - there just aren't officers available to help you. Please protect yourself."
1) homeowner / business owner installs their own cameras.
2) open source camera server software, analyses said video using any number of plugins, and categorizes said video / issues alerts.
3) results of video analysis are OPTIONALLY made available in a queryable manner, in a radius selected by the camera operator.
4) victims of crime and investigating officers in an area, can search for video/analysis that might help, and contact the owner of the video directly.
5) camera operator could OPTIONALLY charge a small fee for the service of providing the video, to recoup camera / system operating costs.
At no time does the system upload any video or analysis not expressly approved by the operator of the camera.
Because each camera operator has control over their own video and analysis/events, and can retract them at different times, the history of any individual as they go about their business is fragmented, and by design not made available in a centralized database form.
This was spitballed. Tear it apart. Fill the cracks with bondo. Paint over it. Make it shine. V
1) The increased availability of semi-private information about people and how large amounts of "public" data can be used to reveal very private details, along with how just the just the existence of such databases leads to more abuse, based in the simple logic that if they didn't exist they couldn't be abused.
2) The absolutely atrocious behavior of (american) police. It's probably not all that worse than 100 years ago, but these days we have cameras and digital communications so we see every crime they commit.
Frankly it's not even about cops committing crimes (or things that really should be) but the lack of accountability in the form of arrests.
I am continually confused by stories about a cop being caught committing a crime and the end result is they get fired. How is that a sufficient response?
All of this means that people are extremely unlikely to be happy about giving police more power in the form of mass surveillance software.
In my head, the camera operator ( homeowner, business owner, etc ), has their local database, in their local storage, and can allow/disallow searches of what I'm calling events, which would be, the result of plugin processing of the raw video.
Example: vehicle-burglary-detection-plugin ... would process the video of your car, in your driveway, on your driveway camera, and alert you, and you have the option of making that event searchable by neighbors or police.
Because, as much as we see bad actors in our daily clickbait newsfeed hype machines, the police are our neighbors too.
I know, its a bit utopic of an idea. Reality will tear at it some more before a paradigm sticks. V
Decentralized, private, firearm ownership, strengthens the defense of the entire nation, when said firearm ownership is by responsible law abiding citizens who look out for each other.
Apply that scenario to cameras. That was the concept.
Downsides:
1) Same software could be used by national/state authorities, to create their own system, that doesn't follow the above rules.
Major Downsides:
1) See above.
2.5) Said open-source camera software and hardware will likely be packaged up by commercial vendors, who will happily store your data in the cloud and resell it (I mean Empower Law Enforcement) on the side. This will probably be the majority of installs.
3) Queryable in what way? If the query reveals presence/absence of a person, they already have the info they need - if it doesn't, users won't know who to pay.
4) It's easy to pretend to be a victim of crime. Stalkers can easily abuse this to find their victims. Cops are also highly-trusted by a lot of the public, and also can use this to stalk people.
5) Morally, seems bad to charge a person looking for their lost child. Less bad if it's a fixed fee, rather than deciding what to charge after hearing the request - but that goes a little against the idea of point 4 to be able to approve/deny certain requests.
6) Ubiquitous surveillance is probably still bad even when decentralized.
Anyone can store the data and share it (for free)!
> Stalkers can easily abuse this to find their victims.
I posted a similar proposal in a different thread, and yes, this is one of many downsides. I believe in the end the world will be a worse place with this solution, but I also believe this is the only viable alternative to only the police/government having access to the data.
> Morally, seems bad to charge a person looking for their lost child. Less bad if it's a fixed fee,
The owner can decide who to charge and how much.
I was spitballing an idea to prevent abuse, via a centralized database of video and history, on a national level, by a corporation.
This would have been more like, a collection of villages thing. aka internet vs mesh. ( in my head anyway ).
Keep ripping it apart. V
So, think of yourself as a member of government. What would you propose ?
Not like, take over your camera, or install their camera on your property.
There is an upper bound on "top down efficiency" one wants built into a government system, because anything too effective draws corruption to it like no one's business, probability 1.
Cameras and ALPRs aren't going away. It's commodity hardware and software at this point.
I'm only spitballing potential solutions for how to manage the inventory.