Video is useful in keeping people safe. Including from the cops. It’s about remaking the system to require court permission every time they access it, process and transparency.

This. I don't understand why something can only be used in the wrong way. Either

A. there is nothing a good person needs to hide (including cops, at least good ones), therefore it should be openly public to everyone and all usage logged and public (to catch abuse), or

B. privacy is important so it should be protected, and while data is collectible, nonetheless cannot be shared without consent or a court order. And none of this fake content that companies claim you gave by walking outside, setting up your phone/account/etc after buying it and being forced to sign so you didn't just buy an expensive brick, etc.

Hmm, I wonder if, as a plaintiff that wished to file a complaint against a police department, would the records be gone by the time I got far enough through the courts to force evidence discovery. All of the Flock-lovers I talk to love to bring up the short-lived nature of the data (7 or 30 days depending on who you talk to).

No big deal is it was just video. It's really about the data that can be extracted from the video such as who you meet, when you are home or not and who is at your house, etc. all in realtime.

Give me freedom or give me death.

Police wearing body cameras has nothing to do with universal mass surveillance devices.

You are conflating extremely different things, and that is dangerous.

Somehow we went from:

1. People can see and hear your in public

2. Therefore public places are not private

3. Therefore people can record you

4. Therefore it's okay to build a network of cameras that can track and query every place you have ever been

The problem has always been on step 2. The assumption that "public places are not private" anymore just because everyone can record you and post it on TikTok. In reality before smartphones public places were extremely private compared to being broadcast to the entire planet.