zlacker

>>chaps+(OP)
flock is the most heinous reflection of the ills of our current socioeconomic structure. absolutely nobody should be okay with mass surveillance, much less mass surveillance enabled by a private company.

>>j3s+6i
It's what happens when we rank private property over human lives. We deserve this.

>>simlev+7j
I think you have it backwards. This is what happens when we rank human lives over human freedom.

The argument for these cameras is that they save lives. The argument against them is that they destroy freedom.

>>Ajedi3+Ux
I don’t know that I’ve heard the “saves lives” argument for this type of camera. How would that play out?

>>docjay+UA
That's easy. Person gets kidnapped, government surveillance camera helps police find the car before the kidnapper kills them. Or, probably more common: murder happens, government surveillance camera helps police find murderer and jail them before they kill someone else.

That's why these cameras are so prevalent, the case for them is extremely obvious and easy to make (give police more tools to stop bad guys), while the case against them is a lot more subtle (human freedom, government abuse, expectations of privacy, risk of data breaches, etc).

>>Ajedi3+JG
I don’t mean that I can’t imagine a scenario in which an imagined world has cameras covering every square inch, a 911 operator with their fingers hovering over the keyboard and ready to enter a license plate into the InstaLocate system, which then automatically triggers SWAT to be quick-released from a drone directly onto the current location of what is still called a “getaway car”, rather than “evidence.” But I can also imagine a situation with less steps wherein a spoon takes down an F-16, but I equally haven’t heard an argument for using spoons as air defense. ;)

Helping to solve a crime after the fact is certainly a thing, and that discussion has merit, but I think you’re taking creative license again with stopping a serial killer or spree killer “before they kill again.” That’s not really how murders play out, which is why there are special names for them.

It would be helpful for discourse, and for making your own argument, if the discussion was grounded in the reality of the sour world we live in now.

>>docjay+n81
So is it your position, based on what you just said, that people who have committed murder but have not yet been caught are no more likely to commit murder a second time than the average person?

I think my example of helping police catch a murderer "before they kill again" is not only "grounded in reality" but has, in fact, quite plausibly already happened thousands of times throughout the course of Flock's existence.

Now, whether I think that justifies mass surveillance is another matter entirely.

>>Ajedi3+UA1
My friend, I've said only what I've said. Past my casual "that's not really how murders play out", through the comma, sits "special name”, which isn't "the general population." Serial killer, serial murderer, and spree killer aren't synonyms for general population. The mere existence of those terms gave you all the information you needed to determine that they’re distinct from the general population and simple “murderer”, and my mention of them should have implied my understanding of the same.

Your assertions in every comment so far have been fully balanced on what you ‘feel like’ should be the case, not on known facts. I’ll give you an example:

“quite plausibly already happened thousands of times throughout the course of Flock's existence.”

‘ FBI monograph, July 2008: "Serial Murder: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives for Investigators"

https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/reports-and-publications...

Introduction on page 1: "Serial murder is a relatively rare event, estimated to comprise less than one percent of all murders committed in any given year." ‘

The FBI used to classify serial murder as 3+ murders with a cooling off period between them, but that resulted in too few cases to bother studying, so by the time of the quoted statement they had reduced it to 2+ separate murder events. Seems like it fits our discussion.

In 2008 there were 16,465 homicides, so if we take “less than 1%” to be a healthy 0.5% that would be ~82. Even if you assume every year spawns a fresh new set of 82 serial murderers then Flock would have needed to contribute to catching every single one this century in order to meet the minimum requirements for “thousands.”

Of course there’s no way of telling if the murderer you caught would have become a serial murderer if not caught, so here’s where your intuition can be helpful. Take the 82, spread them around the country in densities that you ‘feel’ are appropriate. Do the same for the density of Flock cameras. Then use the same rigor when guessing at how many of the 82 just got witnessed committing a murder, and their license plate was noted, and they happen to transit an area with Flock camera license plate readers in the future while still driving the same car. Feel your way through to how many of them might be caught, then intuit what it would take to catch “thousands.”