As Backlash Grows, More Americans Now Oppose Automated Police License Plate Readers Than Support (techcrunch.com) 44
A new survey on police license plate cameras found that "more Americans oppose these surveillance cameras than support them," reports TechCrunch:
According to a new YouGov survey of 20,000 people across the U.S. that was shared exclusively with The Washington Post, 46% of respondents opposed the company's surveillance cameras in their communities, while 38% supported them. This is a reversal from last year, when the majority of survey respondents said they were in favor... The survey also reported that more respondents said the surveillance would not make them feel any safer.
TechCrunch reports that Flock CEO Garrett "faces a growing public outcry around concerns that Flock's surveillance cameras, drones, and license plate recognition technology could be misused." Responding to reports of police abusing Flock's system, Langley told CBS News " I don't think that Flock created police abuse. I think we're the first company to ever shine a light on it and build the tools to find it."
But Futurism notes that "a grand jury in Ohio declined to bring felony charges against a man accused of destroying a Flock camera earlier this month — perhaps the clearest sign yet of the country's overwhelming hatred for the surveillance gadgets." And Newsweek documents more of the backlash: Flock Chief Executive Garrett Langley recently became the subject of a doxxing campaign after his home address was circulated online by opponents of the company's technology, underscoring how deeply divisive the issue has become.
TechCrunch reports Flock's CEO is now calling for new laws — at the state level — regulating not Flock's cameras but the police officers who use them: Langley has said that state regulators should "pass bills that make [the illegal use of Flock data] a criminal offense." And during his Fox News interview, he pointed to the changes the company has already made, while also saying, "Today, it is too often that in Flock and in other technologies, there's no regulation. There's no accountability, and we think that's wrong."
But Flock has its supporters. One local police department used a 3D printer to create a fake "decoy" camera, then monitored it for five days until they arrested a Florida man for knocking it down. 404 Media suggests that because the man told officers he believed it was a camera worth between $1,000 and $5,000, he was charged with three felonies including "grand theft" and criminal mischief of property damage worth over $1,000, plus property crimes against computer equipment supplies.
Ironically, days earlier the City Council was already considering a resolution to end their city's use of Flock cameras altogether...
TechCrunch reports that Flock CEO Garrett "faces a growing public outcry around concerns that Flock's surveillance cameras, drones, and license plate recognition technology could be misused." Responding to reports of police abusing Flock's system, Langley told CBS News " I don't think that Flock created police abuse. I think we're the first company to ever shine a light on it and build the tools to find it."
But Futurism notes that "a grand jury in Ohio declined to bring felony charges against a man accused of destroying a Flock camera earlier this month — perhaps the clearest sign yet of the country's overwhelming hatred for the surveillance gadgets." And Newsweek documents more of the backlash: Flock Chief Executive Garrett Langley recently became the subject of a doxxing campaign after his home address was circulated online by opponents of the company's technology, underscoring how deeply divisive the issue has become.
TechCrunch reports Flock's CEO is now calling for new laws — at the state level — regulating not Flock's cameras but the police officers who use them: Langley has said that state regulators should "pass bills that make [the illegal use of Flock data] a criminal offense." And during his Fox News interview, he pointed to the changes the company has already made, while also saying, "Today, it is too often that in Flock and in other technologies, there's no regulation. There's no accountability, and we think that's wrong."
But Flock has its supporters. One local police department used a 3D printer to create a fake "decoy" camera, then monitored it for five days until they arrested a Florida man for knocking it down. 404 Media suggests that because the man told officers he believed it was a camera worth between $1,000 and $5,000, he was charged with three felonies including "grand theft" and criminal mischief of property damage worth over $1,000, plus property crimes against computer equipment supplies.
Ironically, days earlier the City Council was already considering a resolution to end their city's use of Flock cameras altogether...
Shocked it was ever that high (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's not even touching on the blatant fourth amendment violation going on, which I don't expect Joe Average to even recognize much less care about. Who wants Uncle Sam or his proxies watching their every move?
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Re:Shocked it was ever that high (Score:4, Insightful)
I absolutely agree with you, and also oppose these cameras. We need to get this word out more; I think most citizens will oppose them when they realize what's going on.
In my area at least, the cameras are aimed right at our faces- facial recognition, which I'm even more against.
It sure seems like a 4th Amendment violation, and IIRC a recent court (SCOTUS?) ruling ruled against this mass surveillance.
We citizens need a permit to plant a bush on our own property in some areas. Did Flock et al get permits? Was the public duly notified about the cameras, giving us a fair chance to oppose the cameras before they have been installed?
Sadly this country (as with others) is devolving into an "us against them" mess.
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It sure seems like a 4th Amendment violation, and IIRC a recent court (SCOTUS?) ruling ruled against this mass surveillance.
I'm not a fan of Flock cameras. And IANAL, but my understanding is that these cameras are not a violation of the 4th amendment if they are installed on public property, and record what any normal person could see from that public property. Law enforcement would need a warrant if they wanted to install cameras within your property.
What might be an issue is the use of enhanced technologies in connection with these cameras. For example, telephoto lenses and thermal imagers are proscribed without a warrant. May
There are some (Score:3)
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Red light cameras have historically increased the rate of crashes as people more likely to suddenly slam the brakes to avoid the ticket [1]. And worse, cities have been caught shortening the time for yellow lights around red light cameras as a way to increase revenue [2].
So saying any camera is "for safety" has very little basis in actual fact.
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
[2]: https://www.crarybuchanan.com/... [crarybuchanan.com]
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Great way to point out you didn't read the references. This is literally the first paragraph of the 2nd reference, with emphasis added to assist with your ability to process it this time.
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Re: Shocked it was ever that high (Score:2)
Speeding has been technically solvable for years. Since at least 2020 my car has known the speed limit on any road Iâ(TM)ve been on. From middle of nowhere Indiana/ohio/Michigan to down town Chicago.
In fact my current car self drives on highways and actually has a setting to choose how much to speed.
Speeding is too profitable to fix.
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ALPR works fine if it's used the way it was intended to be used. Dragnetting and using it as a lazy way to track a suspect that hasn't actually done anything is not what it was meant for.
What it was meant for:
a. Traffic Management (eg congestion control)
b. Parking Enforcement
c. Traffic Control (preventing unauthorized vehicles from entering, eg bus areas)
d. Toll plazas
e. Law Enforcement/Customs signals (eg a specific suspect driving this vehicle needs to be detained ASAP)
Everything else? Get a court order.
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This is a fight that cannot be won (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless the opponents of LPR cameras can figure out how to outlaw either computers or security cameras, this is a doomed cause. An LPR camera is literally nothing but a high quality camera connected to a computer network, with image recognition software being run on the video stream.
I've been on this site long enough to remember how Slashdot users mocked the efforts of media companies to stop file sharing, pointing out that computers and computer networking couldn't be outlawed. But now, somehow, we're supposed to outlaw character recognition of license plates in the AI age?
Efforts would be far better spent on changing laws to punish misuse of LPR cameras, and codify the parameters of their use. They are useful tools for solving crimes and recovering stolen vehicles, and any police force that uses them can tell you that.
If people truly think that having their license plates being seen in public is a violation of their 4th Amendment rights, then perhaps they should petition their state legislatures to eliminate license plates altogether. Otherwise, what is the purpose of having them?
Re:This is a fight that cannot be won (Score:4, Insightful)
Privacy laws are a thing. You can definitely outlaw security cameras filming public places. You only need politicians to want that.
Change License Plates (Score:3)
I think you are right, the issue is license plates; they make us too easy to track.
I do not believe legislation outlawing the requirement for license plates has much of a chance; but perhaps a compromise?
I propose a e-ink license plate supported by the state.
The e-ink licensee plate rotates license plate numbers on a regular basis so that a camera system like flock would generally not see the same number on your vehicle twice, and as a result would not be able to easily confirm it was the same vehicle.
On th
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Unless the opponents of LPR cameras can figure out how to outlaw either computers or security cameras, this is a doomed cause. An LPR camera is literally nothing but a high quality camera connected to a computer network, with image recognition software being run on the video stream.
That's a false dichotomy argument that people are against computers or security cameras. What people are against is the state using automated surveillance with LPR. People are also against police using that technology with little oversight including many, many cases of stalking. People are also against the tax payer paying for all of that.
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It's easily won. If police are prohibited from requesting any information from the cameras absent a signed judicial warrant then the perceived value drops and the incentive to utilize them evaporates. Any case they could try to build that was based on accessing the cameras has a "fruit from the poisoned tree" problem, and prosecutors really hate when cases get thrown out for that reason.
Companies aren't putting these cameras up because they want to. They do it because there's a financial incentive. Don'
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How would you feel if one of these cameras was pointed at your house and the cops could access the video anytime they like?
Zigerians Defense System Activated (Score:2)
He would enjoy it, open his front window curtains wide, and walk around naked in his living room of course.
Of course his front yard would then be known to be safer than a dark alley for committing crime, since no cop wants to view the video feed and the Ai just sees blurs due to the auto nudity censor.
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How would you feel if one of these cameras was pointed at your house and the cops could access the video anytime they like?
Excellent question. You got me doing some research.
Short answer: people do not have an expectation of privacy if they are visible in a public place. Nor do they have such expectation if they are in their own private place but are viewable from a public place without any enhanced technology (telephoto lenses or thermal imaging, for example.) So, anything you do in your front yard that can be seen or heard by others is fair game.
That said, I'd certanly object to a camera pointed at my house that allows the po
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privacy has other elements, temporal and quantity, not just a location boolean
the bartender looking at your license with his meat eyeballs is one-dimensional, it does not go into a database where ctrl+V means indefinite propagation nor does it last more than two seconds
this avoids a third layer, where the eternal data points mean constructing new conclusions, the vagaries of those last few words are the juiciest of all because people only concern themselves after the problem is right in front of their nose
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[Not storing data] avoids a third layer, where the eternal data points mean constructing new conclusions
You're talking about a legitimate, but different issue: what is done with the data, as opposed to how it is collected. Lots of data about our behaviors is stored from numerous sources, not just from Flock cameras. There is a legitimate debate about what data is and isn't appropriate to preserve or to make available to law enforcement, but there are many ways existing data can be parsed to investigate someone's movements. Flock cameras are a new entry into that debate.
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How would you feel if one of these cameras was pointed at your house and the cops could access the video anytime they like?
You are confusing the police department's FLOCK camera with my across-the-street-nosy-neighbor's doorbell camera that stores data unencrypted on a weak- or no-password-required web site that the cops happen to be watching and recording 24/7.
Re: Uhuh, sure.. (Score:2)
I guess that means you are in a small minority of control freaks.
If we lived in a democracy, (Score:2)
this information might matter.
It's going to be extremely difficult (Score:2)
to stuff this genie back in the bottle unless the Supreme Court rules that the government is effectively performing a warrantless blanket search (i.e. dragnet).
I see a few possible outcomes for a Supreme Court Ruling:
1. The Supreme Court rules that Flock can continue to capture license plate data without a warrant and give it to whomever pays for it. In other words the citizenry can suck it up with the only option being federal legislation (Highly Unlikely given the current make up of the federal government
Grand Theft (Score:2)
If the police were 100% trustworthy... (Score:3)
... and the tech was used ONLY for the most serious crimes, I would be a supporter. Sadly, neither condition is true.
While it's true that the cameras can be used to solve serious crime, they are also widely abused. If they must exist, their use should require a warrant and be supervised by an officer of the court, with every use logged into the public record.
Original Argument Flawed (Score:5, Interesting)
The original argument for these cameras was:
You are in public, it is legal for humans to physically observe you, therefore it is legal for the cops to observe you, therefore it is legal for them to use cameras to observe you.
The problem is that quantity changes things. It may be legal for a person standing in public to observe you, but for them to follow you all day is called STALKING. That is not legal.
For a cop to follow you all day, every day of your life, that is Harassament. They would need a court order to do that, or be subject to a court order preventing it.
Flock and other similar cameras do not just take pictures, they have software now to track you everywhere you go in the US (excluding Alaska) using over 120,000 cameras. They can follow you from one camera to another.
This is stalking, not merely observing.
LPR (Score:2)
Let's use LPR for their purpose; reading and validating license plates. Strip the devices down to the minimum required and load lists of license plates to them. They can trigger in those and generate events. They can also be audited to make sure the plates listed are official stolen/bolo, etc, as required.
That's it. That's all they do. Leave the spy craft to spies.
Why knock when you have Flock (Score:1)
I could live with rapid deletion (Score:1)
I would prefer not having these cameras at all. If you need to read license plates, hire people to do the jobs. If it's that important, it's worth paying for.
But that's not going to happen.
So, I can live with destroying all images within seconds unless there was an actual need to keep them, then keeping them and the data gathered from them in an encrypted, non-network-accessible location only for as long as they are needed, with strong oversight to make sure images really are deleted when no longer needed
Most people oppose them doesn't matter (Score:1)
deflok site increasing (Score:1)