I was surprised to learn that many countries have what amounts to a flock equivalent. UK for instance has a National ANPR Service w 12k fixed cameras and 90-100m plates read a day. They also store it much longer.

Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-anpr-ser...

The UK has been a surveillance state for decades. Heck you can’t even watch television without going on a register and inspectors coming to your door verifying your TV paperwork is in order. Imagine trying that in the US!

This sort of thing is just starting more broadly in the US and Americans are not happy about it.

It’s the new political hot potato where behind the scenes they’re pressured to support it but publicly saying so is political kryptonite.

For US politicians the only thing worse than saying you support Flock cameras is advocating for an AI data center in your community.

Because Flock is privately owned while ANPR seems to my cursory research to be government owned. And we all know what private corporations do to peoples data.

The US isn't the UK or China and different cultures deem different things as acceptable. The UK for example is also a monarchy, which would rial up people in the US if proposed there.

Additionally the trust that the government uses these cameras as intended is apparently higher in the UK than the trust of Americans that Flock will not misuse their surveillance technology.

Flock became a controversy when it was being used for ICE raids and tracking people who got abortions rather than its original stated purpose of finding stolen cars.

Yes, but in that very link it explains how they work with the public to establish some trust?

"Any current issues of public concern?

It is recognised the extent of the UK network is a privacy concern and the scale of that network is likely to remain so for...

The NPCC ANPR lead has established an Independent Advisory Group (IAG) chaired by the Surveillance Camera Commissioner (SCC), with a broad representation from civil society and other..."

That fact that in the UK or China you are surveiled non-stop it does not mean Americans want the same to happen to them.

Putting aside how disproportionately noisy some activist types are, it probably has to do with Americans having practically no trust in one another, corporations in particular, and their government by extension. At the same time, Americans tend to value some positive forms of liberty - like the ability to say and do what you want in one moment - far more than other forms of liberty - like the ability for all people to feel safe enough to be able to do the things they want.

I’m an American living in Japan, I’ve always felt a great sense of liberty because of how safe it is here; I can live a lifestyle that would get me robbed pretty much immediately in the USA. While crime rates have always been relatively low here; part of that is because Japan got tough on crime around the turn of the century, and one part of that was pervasive rollout of automated license scanners used for reconstructing vehicle movement, like Flock. I suspect that Japanese people didn’t accept this because they don’t care about privacy - they absolutely do - but instead because they have a healthy enough social context to be able to consider the tradeoffs, and a government responsive enough to design around those tradeoffs; rather than immediately flying into a rage and vandalizing their cities like some angry Americans are doing now.

The same thing plays out for other things that would pretty clearly be a good thing, like having a real secure national ID instead of relying on social security numbers for identity verification (terrible). Can’t do it, people (as well as criminals) value the liberty of being difficult to trace far more than the liberty of not being defrauded regularly, or having a civil service that is able to do basic functions like authenticating you for benefits efficiently. Sigh…

Most of the outraged people live in the US where we have Flock. Presumably people in other countries are outraged about their local equivalent.

The UK arrests ~11,000 people a year for wrongthink.

https://archive.is/vaCkJ

> Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online.

Nobody really cared until they realized that it could be used to more effectively round up our precious illegal immigrants.

> UK for instance

It's one of the most dystopian western countries when it comes to that, not sure I'd use it as an example

> Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online.

A big reason is because there's virtually no oversight, and it's managed by a single private corporation nationwide. Neither of those things are true in the UK case.

You should really educate yourself on things like this. They matter, and by your apathy and ignorance you're helping sleepwalk your country into a dystopia.