undefined | Better HN

0 pointstptacek5mo ago0 comments

What's your point? Obviously we wouldn't allow something like this to be deployed in our community. But what does that have to do with Flock providing an interface to police departments for collecting Ring camera footage?

I don't think that's a good thing --- I think PDs should continue to manually canvass for footage and specifically ask residents for footage when they need it, I think that's actually the right public policy and we don't need to innovate past it. But good or bad, it has nothing to do with Flock's "AI".

0 comments

puppycodes5mo ago

The point is Flock intends to expand their product offerings far beyond license plate reading. It has to do with Flock's AI because all the features in all the products will converge on selling surveillence of civilians. All their products will feed data to all their other products because centralized data makes their features more attractive to LEOs. The further embeded they are in an investigation the more they maximize profits for shareholders. The math is pretty simple.

Spivak5mo ago

Also the thing not being mentioned anywhere in this thread that is in other reporting is that the Flock partnership is an interface for police to ask the Ring owner to share their footage with police. A thing that police can already do under the current system. It seems to just be a "single pane of glass" for both systems.

tptacekOP5mo ago

Right; it bugs me that TechCrunch is doing this "AI is racist" thing here. Like: I think a lot of naive AI is in fact racist. But AI has nothing --- that I can tell --- to do with this story. Do they know what they're talking about or not? I have an issue with this "jazz hands" stuff.

I feel the same way about this Flock stuff as I did about all the NSA stuff back in the Snowden days: like, directionally, I get it, I'm on the same page, but I know just enough to know when Glenn Greenwald is just making shit up, and I can't let that slide.