zlacker

>>chaps+(OP)
Was fortunate to talk to a security lead who built the data-driven policing network for a major American city that was an early adopter. ALPR vendors like Flock either heavily augment and/or anchor the tech setups.

What was notable to me is the following, and it’s why I think a career spent on either security researching, or going to law school and suing, these vendors into the ground over 20 years would be the ultimate act of civil service:

1. It’s not just Flock cams. It’s the data eng into these networks - 18 wheeler feed cams, flock cams, retail user nest cams, traffic cams, ISP data sales

2. All in one hub, all searchable by your local PD and also the local PD across state lines who doesn’t like your abortion/marijuana/gun/whatever laws, and relying on:

3. The PD to setup and maintain proper RBAC in a nationwide surveillance network that is 100%, for sure, no doubt about it (wait how did that Texas cop track the abortion into Indiana/Illinois…?), configured for least privilege.

4. Or if the PD doesn’t want flock in town, they reinstall cameras against the ruling (Illinois iirc?) or just say “we have the feeds for the DoT cameras in/out of town and the truckers through town so might as well have control over it, PD!”

Layer the above with the current trend in the US, and 2025 model Nissan uploading stop-by-stop geolocation and telematics to cloud (then, sold into flock? Does even knowing for sure if it does or doesn’t even matter?)

Very bad line of companies. Again all is from primary sources who helped implement it over the years. If you spend enough time at cybersecurity conferences you’ll meet people with these jobs.

>>dogman+Sj1
Now you have scale with ai hardware becoming cheaper and software incentives aligning.

>>tehlik+Pt1
I always thought that show "person of interest" was a bit far fetched. how could one system have access to that much data? privacy concerns would surely stop it.

>>myster+Gz1
Along with all the cop shows I'm thinking it's almost intentional at this point to normalize things.

>>bakies+xB1
It's definitely. Notice how after the 1994 Crime Bill was put into effect you had a large wave of shows and movies that increasingly depicted police as tools of the state rather than as protectors of the public. The fact that police-centered media exploded in ever larger shockwaves after that, the Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park Bombing, 9/11, and the deaths of Trayvon Martin and George Floyd was no coincidence. Law & Order, NYPD Blue, NCIS, Chicago PD, and Blue Bloods each correspond to each of those periods. The shows and movies are designed to make the abusive and destructive actions of the police look gallant. The police themselves actually advocate on many of them in order to sensationalize depictions or manipulate points of view so that they can then take them and use them as emotional appeals when the public criticizes policing.

The name "Law & Order" is a blatant example of this, as it's a phrase used by Richard Nixon during his campaign in 1968, and was widely repeated when he created justifications for starting the War On Drugs in 1970. This same phrase was later used by Reagan and H.W. Bush when they planted their positions of wanting to wield state violence against countercultures that arose. The '90s was full of change as Gen-X started to become adults and formed their own powerful countercultures, and the title of the show was an emotional appeal to conservative older people who hated that change and wanted the state to shape society instead of the other way around.

>>Tanoc+FF2
Law and Order is interesting as the early episodes were way more nuanced and gritty. It evolved into something different over the years.

They went from exposition of “tv reality” to making a weird case that both cops and prosecutors must cut corners and push the envelope. The weird part is they gloss over the futility. But as you said, the old people get the message that we need to do more.