I don't want these cameras to exist but, if they're going to, might we be better off if they are openly accessible? At the very least, that would make the power they grant more diffuse and people would be more cognizant of their existence and capabilities.

▲

lubujackson 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Did you see the other post about this where the guys showed a Flock camera pointed at a playground, so any pedo can see when kids are there and not attended?

Or how it has become increasingly trivial to identify by face or license plate such that combining tools reaches "movie Interpol" levels, without any warrant or security credentials?

If Big Brother surveillance is unavoidable I don't think "everyone has access" is the solution. The best defense is actually the glut of data and the fact nobody is actively watching you picking your nose in the elevator. If everyone can utilize any camera and its history for any reason then expect fractal chaos and internet shaming.

▲

autoexec 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Did you see the other post about this where the guys showed a Flock camera pointed at a playground, so any pedo can see when kids are there and not attended?

If it's inappropriate for any pedo to see when kids are in a park then certainly it should inappropriate when those pedos just happen to be police officers or Flock employees. The nice thing about the "everyone has access" case is that it forces the public to decide what they think is acceptable instead of making it some abstract thing that their brains aren't able to process correctly.

People will happily stand under mounted surveillance cameras all day long, but the moment they actually see someone point a camera at them they consider that a hostile action. The surveillance camera is an abstract concept they don't understand. The stranger pointing a camera in their direction is something they do understand and it makes their true feelings on strangers recording them very clear.

We might need a little bit of "everyone has access" to convince people of the truth that "no one should have access" instead.

▲

eightysixfour 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> so any pedo can see when kids are there and not attended?

Sure. It also lets parents watch. Or others see when parents are repeatedly leaving their kids unattended. Or lets you see some person that keeps showing up unattended and watching the kids.

> Or how it has become increasingly trivial to identify by face or license plate such that combining tools reaches "movie Interpol" levels, without any warrant or security credentials?

That already exists and it is run by private companies and sold to government agencies. That’s a huge power grab.

> The best defense is actually the glut of data and the fact nobody is actively watching you picking your nose in the elevator. If everyone can utilize any camera and its history for any reason then expect fractal chaos and internet shaming.

This argument holds whether it is public or not. It is worse if Flock or the government can do this asymmetrically than if anyone can do it IMO, they already have enough coercive tools.

▲

rsync 7 hours ago | parent [-]

"Or others see when parents are repeatedly leaving their kids unattended."

... which is the expected, default use-case for a playground ...

▲

eightysixfour 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I didn't want to get into an argument over whether kids should be unattended at playgrounds or not - I don't know where the other poster is front and it seems to be based on age, density, region, etc. Where I grew up it would be weird to stay, in the city I am in it would be weird to leave them.

If you leave your kids unattended at a playground I don't see how the camera changes the risk factor in any meaningful way. Either a pedophile can expect there to be unattended children or not.

▲

braingravy 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s anonymity of the viewers combined with mass open-access surveillance that enables an unheard of level of stalking capacity.

Most people don’t like the idea that strangers could easily stalk their child remotely.

It’s the easy of access to surveillance technology that is different. Has nothing to do with the park being safe or not.

Try to think like an evil person with no life and very specific and demonic aims if you’re still having trouble seeing why this would be an issue.

	▲	eightysixfour 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Try to think like an evil person with no life and very specific and demonic aims if you’re still having trouble seeing why this would be an issue. That person already has incredible power to stalk and ruin someone's life. Making Flock cameras public would change almost nothing for that person. It fascinates me how fast people jump to "imagine the worst person" when we talk about making data public. We have the worst people, they're the ones who profit off of it being private, with no public accountability, who don't build secure systems. The theater of privacy is, IMO, worse than not having privacy.

▲

tptacek 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There are sites that index thousands of public live streaming cameras, with search fields where you can just enter "park" and get live cams with kids playing, because people have specifically arranged for those cameras to exist.

▲

enahs-sf 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wonder if such a business model could exist where they were effectively "public" and thus, access was uniformly granted to anyone willing to pay. not sure if this would be net better for society, but an interesting thought.

▲

JKCalhoun 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've thought the same regarding license plate readers (and saw considerable pushback on HN) — feeling like you suggest: if they have the technology anyway, why not open it up?

I imagined a "white list" though (or whatever the new term is—"permitted list"?) so that only certain license plates are posted/tracked.

▲

overfeed 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I don't want these cameras to exist but, if they're going to, might we be better off if they are openly accessible?

Cities will remove Flock cameras at the first council meeting that sits after council-members learn their families can be stalked.

	▲	eightysixfour 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Seems like a positive side effect. The Seattle area is delaying it after the open records request case.

▲

hrimfaxi 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is it more symmetrical? I know in theory we all can continuously download and datamine these video feeds but can everyone really?

▲

eightysixfour 10 hours ago | parent [-]

No, but the same argument could be made for things like open source software. We assume/hope that someone more aligned with our outcomes is actively looking.

Or, at the very least, that we can go back and look later.

▲

hrimfaxi 10 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't think they are similar. Public feeds would enable someone to document and sell people's whereabouts in real time. The fact that I could do the same or go back and look later is no defense.

▲

eightysixfour 9 hours ago | parent [-]

This is a different argument than what I was responding to.

> I know in theory we all can continuously download and datamine these video feeds but can everyone really?

To which my response is "this is like OSS." What I mean by that is that, in theory, people audit and review code submitted to OSS software, in reality most people trust that there are other people who do it.

> Public feeds would enable someone to document and sell people's whereabouts in real time. The fact that I could do the same or go back and look later is no defense.

This is a different argument to me and one that I'm still torn about. I think that if the feeds exist and the government and private entities have access to them, the trade-offs may be better if everyone has access to them. In my mind this results in a few things:

1. Diffusion of power - You said public feeds would "enable someone to document and sell people's whereabouts in real time." Well, private feeds allow this too. I'd rather have everyone know about some misdeed than Flock or the local PD blackmail someone with it.

2. Second guessing deployment - I think if the people making the decisions know that the data will be publicly available, they're more likely to second guess deploying it in the first place.

3. Awareness - if you can just open an app on your phone and look at the feed from a camera then you become aware of the amount of surveillance you are subject to. I think being aware of it is better than not.

There's trade-offs to this. The cameras become less effective if everyone knows where they are. It doesn't help with the location selection bias - if they're only installed in areas of town where decision makers don't live and don't go, the power is asymmetric again. Plenty of other reasons it is bad. None of them worse than the original sin of installing them in the first place.

▲

xyzzy123 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Open cameras make information that was previously local and difficult to collect global and easier to collect. Relatively, it reduces the privacy and power of people on the ground in your neighbourhood and increases the power of more distant actors. It doesn't seem very socially desirable as an outcome. It also increases the relative power of people with technical capacity and capital for storage and processing etc.

I do buy your argument that open access could help check the worst abuses. But, if widespread, it'd be so catastrophic for national security that I can't see how it would ever fly.

	▲	eightysixfour 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think the theater of closed versions have the same problems, we just don’t acknowledge them as well. If I were an enemy nation state, flock would definitely be a target.

▲

kgwxd 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They don't grant power, they enhance it. Not helpful for those without don't have any actual power.