People always hated the cameras. It's just that now that people feel comfortable that the government won't move heaven and earth to come after them for daring to vandalize it's infrastructure they're finally acting up. But they wanted to all along.
I have similar and deep privacy concerns. But I also know that cameras have helped find criminals and assist crime victims. I don't want to let fugitives go without punishment. In fact, I must admit that cameras are a realistic choice given the current technology.
Flock Safety must be under public evaluation. Tech companies tend to hide technical specs, calling them trade secrets. But most internet security standards are public. What should be private is the encryption key. The measure to protect development effort is patents, which are public in the registry.
The cameras aren't the problem, it's the companies behind them.
Everybody wants murderers and rapists in jail, nobody wants to 24/7 share their location and upload their every thoughts to palantir and other companies operated by degenerates like Thiel
Why are tech specs relevant here? The problem with Flock is that once the data is collected, and once it's made accessible to law enforcement without any legal review, it's going to be used for solving heinous crimes, for keeping tabs on a vocal critic of the police commissioner, and for checking what the officer's ex-wife is up to.
If the cameras were installed and operated by the DHS or by the local PD, would that make you feel better? The data should not exist, or if it must, it shouldn't be accessible without court approval. The model you're proposing doesn't ensure that; in fact, it moves it closer to the parties most likely to misuse it.
This has nothing to do with the actual problem, which is Flock itself.
The fact that Flock controls all of the cameras, all of the data and said data is easily accessible means police and the state have access to information that they should only get with a warrant. A business having a camera storing video data that's completely local isn't an issue. A business having a camera which is connected to every other business that has a camera is.
Since when are warrants required for footage of people in public? Does a red light camera need a judge's warrant before it snaps a photos of a car running the light?
There's no money to be made arresting criminals. Sure you get a few police contracts, and you need to show enough results to keep them.. but your moat is mostly how hard it is to even submit bids.
There's a lot more money to be made knowing that Accountant Mary's Lexis is looking kind of banged up and she could be sold on a new one.
I'm surprised the flock cameras aren't being disabled in a more subtle fashion.
All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint. Drone goes 'boop' on the camera lens, and the entire system is disabled until an expensive technician drives out with a ladder and cleans the lens at non-trivial expense.
A handful of enterprising activists could blind all the flock cameras in a region in a day or two, and without destroying them, which makes it less of an overtly criminal act.
Obviously not advocating this, just pointing out that flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack from activists.
The goal here by activists isn't to directly physically disarm every camera. Like with any act of protest, it's at least as much about the optics and influence of public opinion. Visibly destroying the units is more cathartic and spreads the message of displeasure better. Ultimately what needs to change is public perception and policy.
One or two cameras getting bashed is basically a fart in the wind for flock, and I'd argue that it doesn't actually move the needle in any direction as far as public opinion goes. Those who dislike them don't need further convincing, those who support them are not going to have their opinion changed by property destruction (it might make them support surveillance more, in fact).
But hey, it's provocative I guess.
On the other hand flock losing their entire fleet is an existential problem for them, and for all the customers they're charging for the use of that fleet. Their BoD will want answers about why the officers of the company are harming shareholders with the way they're operating the business. Cities that have contracts with them may have grounds to terminate them, etc etc.
There has been a pattern in the UK of destroying speed cameras for the same reasons - including in some cases throwing an old car tire around the pole and setting it on fire.
>All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint. Drone goes 'boop' on the camera lens, and the entire system is disabled until an expensive technician drives out with a ladder and cleans the lens at non-trivial expense
Americans don’t care enough
Too busy enjoying S&P500 near 7,000 and US$84,000/year median household income
Why would I fly an expensive drone close to a camera, fumble about for a minute trying to get it painted like a renaissance artist, when I can get a paintball gun for much less?
Where I am (Sydney Australia) we have fixed speed cameras that automatically create speeding fines to drivers going too fast (well, technically the registered owner of the vehicle via ANPR).
They eventually had to equip pretty much every speed camera with a speed camera camera, usually on a much higher pole to make vandalism more difficult.
Where I live, the speed limit keeps getting reduced so the city can make money off of fines, especially because nobody follows speed limits that are ridiculously low for wide, straight roads where following the limit would make traffic ground to a halt.
This happened in my hometown. Arterial roads that were 40mph when I was a kid are posted at 25 today and they just passed legislation to make the automated speed cameras near school zones active 24/7.
We have most of that in <pick some European city/country>, and the statistics show it makes a big difference compared to the USA, but drivers still exceed the speed limit, run through red lights etc and cause injuries and death to pedestrians and cyclists.
Removing automatic enforcement of speed limits would not improve the situation.
Ownership of paintball guns is regulated under the state-level firearms act in most (all?) states and territories.
You can use them under the direct supervision of the licensed owner, but it's still quite restrictive. If you were to take one and shoot at cameras on the street it would vandalism plus firearms offences, most of which start at inversion of innocence, massive fines and move pretty quickly into prison time.
If you actually purchased one yourself in Queensland, you would need a Cat A firearms license, genuine reason, permit to acquire, safe storage etc as for a firearm.
NSW used to be similar, but a few years ago the state government had a rare moment of common sense and did away with most of that pointless bullshit.
A paintball gun might not invoke the federal government to hunt you down; an over-powered laser absolutely will. The FAA has a very low tolerance for that sort of thing. Do not ever, ever, ever use lasers in open air that are capable of damaging the human retina without the appropriate licenses. The last thing cities need right now is another federal agency going on a witchhunt. Firing eye-damaging lasers into the air would just serve them that excuse on a silvered platter.
The CCDs in cameras can be damaged with low-power lasers, or so I thought. No need for anything crazy. And the FAA won't become involved unless you're pointing them skyward. Pointing them across the street, or anywhere not visible from the air isn't going to sic federal agencies on you.
> And the FAA won't become involved unless you're pointing them skyward.
The point here is that 'skyward' is where the laser's beam goes when you're trying to aim it at a camera up on a pole. It's practically impossible to point a non-fixed position laser at something a non-trivial distance higher than you without spilling a large amount of laser beam into whatever happens to be behind your intended target; which is very often the sky.
"In NSW, paintball is classified as a "prohibited firearm" under the Firearms Act 1996. However, it can still be legally played under strict licensing conditions. Unlike in some states where it is more loosely regulated, players and operators in NSW must comply with a range of legal requirements to ensure safety and legality."
These rules have changed, I think back before COVID they reclassified them as sporting equipment instead of firearms, but still brought in a whole bunch of licensing rules and requirements similar to gun ownership.
You can't just walk into KMart and walk out with a paintball gun here. |Or paintball markers.
I remember reading about that back in the 90s as a kid here in the USA, in Action Pursuit Games magazine. They said semi-automatic paintball guns were illegal in Australia. I was like what kind of hellhole dystopia is that? Meanwhile at the local paintball field I remember this hillbilly had a fully automatic Angel when they came out. (The first electronic paintball gun.) He walked over to the treeline and emptied a hopper full of Brass Eagle paintballs into a tree in like 5 seconds. They all hit the tree at the exact same spot and vaporized into pink mist. Freedom, baby.
Sounds like a new remit for the NRO. Park a billion dollar satellite over an area to keep an eye out for petty vandalism. Then the sheriffs office can team up with Space Force: papers will be served immediately by LEO MIRV deployment, which may also count as execution depending on visibility and aim on the day.
/s - but it wouldn't surprise me at the rate things are going.
In the mid-2000s the company I worked for in Glasgow fitting microwave links to buildings (broadband wasn't readily available outside cable TV aerials) had a pile of ODUs that had been shot off roofs.
Mostly from one particularly benighted area, Easterhouse. If you extensively gentrified Easterhouse back then, it would look like Detroit in the 90s. It's improved a little since then.
Which Aeroflot flights were hijacked and flown to West Berlin? I've never heard of this. Funny though that Windows Copilot believes this happened and says that:
"On December 12, 1978, two Soviet citizens hijacked an Aeroflot Yak‑40 on a domestic route and forced it to fly to West Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, which was under U.S. control."
But then, when asked about any reference to this event, gives this:
"1. LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 (30 August 1978)
A LOT Tupolev Tu‑134 was hijacked by East German citizens seeking asylum and forced to land at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin."
The use of a drone also ups the ante from a prosecutor’s perspective. Charging a vandal caught with a paintbrush and a ladder is nothing out of the ordinary. A routine misdemeanor.
Someone who has the wherewithal to jerry rig a paintball gun to a drone is someone scary. Plus, any officer who witnesses such a drone is almost certainly going to misidentify the paintball gun as an actual gun. I can imagine the operator would be charged with several felonies.
Yeah like we gotta be serious here, US cops and courts are out to screw people over because that is how they increase their budget, pay, and bonuses. If they think they can twist some law into giving you a felony, they will, regardless of the spirit of the law.
Attaching any kind of potential weapon on a drone has no real precedent so they can dig through 19th century law and combine it with some 21st century law and punishment and screw your life over with bull crap unless you got $100K+ sitting around to throw on a good lawyer. The risk of being caught may be a bit lower, but the potential punishment if caught could be absolutely enormous.
Also, you are dropping something from the aircraft which is a different violation (even if it is moving at 100m/s horizontally while falling at 9.8m/s²).
About ten years ago a company started fitting CCTV cameras to the illuminated advertising hoardings in bus stops, initially to discourage vandalism and then using frankly fucking creepy targetted advertising that used fairly crude machine vision stuff to guess the demographic of people at the stop.
The advertiser's operators could actually look through the camera and shout through hidden speakers at people vandalising their adverts, usually by writing on the specially-coated toughened vandal-resistant glass that ink or paint didn't stick to.
The local wee wannabe gangsters took to filling bingo markers with the stuff they use to etch frosted glass, and tagging the displays with that.
Last I heard, putting a glock on a quadcopter was creating an "illegal weapon system" or similar fancy sounding BS but I wonder what the accusation would be for a paintball gun on a drone?
On the list of "laws you don't want to screw with", National Firearms Act violations are high on my list. Regardless of whether something is or isn't a violation, I'm certainly not interested in paying expensive lawyers to argue they're not.
Or use a powerful enough laser pointer. Bonus points if you use infrared since other humans can't see the beam and won't know what you're up to.
Though you either need a laser powerful enough to harm human eyes or lots of patience. Hong Kong protesters innovated a lot of these sort of resistance using lasers
Because advocating things which are moral/ethical but illegal is often against the TOS :(
We need laws which are explicitly based on moral principles. Barring that, we should at least have laws which treat sufficiently large platforms as utilities and forbid them from performing censorship without due process.
You think we should give people being moderated on a forum due process? How would we ever run forums if every contentious and necessary moderation action could lead to a 5k-50k legal bill.
> A handful of enterprising activists could blind all the flock cameras in a region in a day or two, and without destroying them, which makes it less of an overtly criminal act
No, that would likely end in a RICO or terrorism case if it continued. Just because the cameras aren't destroyed doesn't mean CorpGov won't want to teach a lesson.
You want to fly a multi-hundred dollar device loaded with radios that constantly broadcasts out a unique ID and possibly your FAA ID and use it for crime?
Or even better yet, get arrested halfway to trying to dip your drone into paint on a sidewalk?
Drones over 250 grams or for any drone operated commercially under part 107 registration is required. But, its easy to just build your own or desolder the id chip if you dont want it.
It’s easy to build your own, but it’s impossible to build one to be as stable as a DJI one, or as cheaply. E.g. with an FPV drone hitting the lens would be much harder (but you could use spray instead of a stick to make it easier). Removing remote id ‘chip’ is plain impossible since it’s implemented by the same radio that does video link.
In 1950s UK every country kid had a catapult in their pocket. Maybe that is what we should do. Give the kids catapults and tell them not to use them on Flock cameras. That is usually effective at making kids so stuff
What is the threshold for eye vs sensor damage and am I correct in assuming that duration is a factor. Basically less juice for a longer duration ruins a sensor but humans blink? For science.
I picked up an Axis security camera rated for ALPR use (the Q1700 series) and it has a safety warning telling me I shouldn't look at the built in IR LEDs for more than a minute...
> All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint
I (EDIT: hate) Flock Safety cameras. If someone did this in my town, I’d want them arrested.
They’re muddying the moral clarity of the anti-Flock messaging, the ultimate goal in any protest. And if they’re willing to damage that property, I’m not convinced they understand why they shouldn’t damage other property. (More confidently, I’m not convinced others believe they can tell the difference.)
Flock Safety messages on security. Undermining that pitch is helpful. Underwriting it with random acts of performative chaos plays into their appeal.
> flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack
We live in a free society, i.e. one with significant individual autonomy. We’re all always very vulnerable. That’s the social contract. (The fact that folks actually contemplating violent attacks tend to be idiots helps, too.)
The point of resistance is commonly to harm the counterparty in a fashion that the perpetrator finds morally acceptable such as to disincentivize them not convince them.
Vietnamese vs US Grunts not cute useless protestors holding signs that threaten to hold different signs longer.
That would be detectable by the FAA and they would send the FBI after you, unless you used a junk toy drone but that would not cover much distance between charges.
Because destroying them sends a different message. People want them gone, not merely disabled. They're not joking or messing around with drones and tempera about it. Using a firearm to wreck the camera lens before tearing the whole thing down would be nice though.
I wouldn’t suggest doing that, it will result in more regulation restricting drones. I joined before few workshops that included the government too, and there were discussions about requiring a whole license every time you modify the drone, not limited to the airframe, but the flight purpose and payload. So you can imagine in the future, modding or repurposing your drone could be a “federal crime” if you don’t go and re-license the drone every time you change the payload.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, a market is growing for stolen surveillance cameras. Just think how lovely: a technology created to restrict crime is actually feeding it.
If you're in the bay area, on Monday at 6:30 there's a mountain view city council meeting where flock is on the agenda. If this surveillance bothers you, show up!!
> In Chicago, where speed cameras are abundant, the camera program improperly gave out over $2.4 million in fines from 2013 to 2015. Using a random sample analysis, the Chicago Tribune estimated the number of bad tickets to be somewhere around 110,000. The erroneous fines were issued in areas without proper speed limit signs or during times when the cameras should have been turned off. (Cameras near parks and schools operate within a specific timeframe.) The Chicago Tribune found that over half the cameras in use were giving out faulty speeding tickets.
> Unsurprisingly, the misuse of speed cameras has also become a massive source of revenue for local government. In Chicago, 300 of the city's speed cameras would bring in about $15 million each year.
> In March, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lowered the speed limit threshold for speed cameras to trigger a citation. Cameras now trigger when a driver goes over the limit by 6 miles per hour, rather than 10 miles per hour, the previous threshold.
I think we need to make it easier for people to fight back against automatic tickets like this. The onus should be on the state not the individual. And individuals should still be entitled to their data
Good. Throw a monkey wrench into their gears at every opportunity you're comfortable with. Don't let them get away with tearing down our basic needs for privacy and safety. We don't have to give in to Big Tech and its surveillance for profit goals.
flock safety were in one of y combinators incubator programs but to be fair, saying you want to make a camera company to improve public safety but then being used in a dystopian way... well it should have been foreseeable shouldn't it? Im conflicted in this, I love camera tech and its probably not going away any time soon, but wonder how it could be used responsibly for public safety only.
Id argue they run this site as a forum for tech discussions, because that alone gives them a huge boost to their image and name recognition, without any need for meddling.
Flock cameras are assisted suicide for dying neighborhoods. They don't prevent crime, they record crime. Cleaning up vacant lots, planting trees, street lighting, trash removal, and traffic calming like adding planters and crosswalks reduce crime.
The vast majority of crimes are committed by a small percentage of people. The real issue is prosecutors who refuse to incarcerate repeat offenders. But having video evidence is a powerful tool for a motivated prosecutor to actually take criminals off the streets
The real problem with prosecutors is that they don't want to prosecute. When I was on the grand jury in my city a couple of years ago, there was a slow morning and the assistant DA said that there were about 4000 cases per year and that they brought 30 of those to trial. He didn't think anything of it, for him it was a story about how they loved trials because "they were so much fun". But if they were so much fun, why are less than 1% of cases going to trial?
Plea deals.
Plea deals subvert justice for both those innocent who are bullied into pleading out, and for those who are wickedly guilty and get a big discount on the penalty exacted. Plea deals give the system extra capacity for prosecution, encouraging the justice system to fill the excess capacity, while simultaneously giving an underfunded system that doesn't have enough capacity the appearance of being able to handle the load. Bad all around.
there exists evidence proving that a fraction of individuals commit the majority of violent crime. thus, incarcerating those particular individuals would inherently reduce the majority of violent crime. is something missing from this equation?
If you’d like to have an informed opinion, at least engage with the academic material. Otherwise you come off sounding naïve, insisting that complex problems have simple solutions.
Edit: maybe my ears are a bit sensitive, but I can’t help but hear a faint whistle in the wind, maybe only at a frequency a dog could hear. But no, surely not here in gentlemanly company.
That’s not what I’m disputing, of course. I’m disputing that the grandparent’s assertion that if we (by your stats) simply lock up 1% of the population that violent crime would drop by 60%.
I mean, trivially, using our brains for a nanosecond, what if that 1% of the population is almost always 16-18 year olds when they commit those violent crimes. The 16-18 demographic is roughly 4% of the US population (Google). That would mean locking up 1 in 4 high school students for 6-20 of their most formative years, and thrusting them back into society with a “Mission Accomplished” banner hanging behind you.
Play with the numbers a bit (maybe it’s 1 in 20), but the point stands. Using imprisonment to try to quarantine a demographic that is perceived as irreparably violent is a barbaric, sophomoric idea that has very little evidence of success in the modern era.
Don't jail criminals because maybe they're young, that's your argument? Sounds like a something that's already part of the sentencing policy, leniency of first time offenders.
There are two ideas here - locking up actual criminals and locking up people who happen to fit the pattern of a criminal even without committing any crime. You're arguing against the latter, but I don't think anybody was proposing that.
you are accusing me of virtue signalling without discussing the evidence. this in itself is a virtue signal. I'm not trying to insult you by saying this ... you are behaving hypocritically. lots of people don't treat that gently, I genuinely suggest you be careful towards whom you act that way. if you have an actual point I'm happy to chat about it, however my tolerance of snippy snappy rhetoric is running low
Nah man I’m going to continue to proudly call out people who skirt the line of racism by advocating for the same policies that racists have championed since the fall of the Confederacy. Say it with your chest next time, there’s a reason that it’s not tolerated in polite company. I guess maybe some of YCombinator would enjoy it though, judging by their investments and the rhetoric of those they are associated with.
it sounds to me like you would prefer moral grandstanding about north american politics instead of sharing discussion. not interested, thanks for the opportunity to practice my patience
I read that as questioning whether better evidence would actually help. Which I assume is a reference to some prosecutors ignoring certain crimes as a matter of policy, for example there was news a bit ago about CA choosing to ignore shoplifting under some amount.
Depends a lot on the city/state.
Check super blue cities like Seattle or San Francisco, and the people there complain that the justice system doesn't work as repeat offenders are let go, for one reason or another.
The big incarceration states are most likely deep red states.
I live in Canada, to me the US is a whole. I am pretty sure one can find close to crimeless areas there along with something totally opposite. does not matter from the outside.
The incarceration rate of every single US state is higher than that of every country in the European continent except Belarus, Russia and Turkey. Each state's incarceration rate is also higher than that of every country in the OECD (a club of mostly rich countries) except Chile, Costa Rica and Turkey.
Of the exceptions I have listed, Turkey has the highest incarceration rate of 366 per 100k. Even so, it is still lower than that of 41 states, falling between Hawaii (367) and Connecticut (326).
We spend $80 billion a year on incarceration in the US, and have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Your plan increases both. Do you honestly think that if we spend $160 billion or $240 billion a year and double or triple our incarcerated population that we'd solve crime?
Look at places and countries with low crime. They don't have the most Flock cameras, the most prisoners, or the most powerful surveillance evidence because while those may solve a crime, they don't solve crime as a whole.
You have to understand that the people who want mass incarceration/neo slavery are never going to want to stop locking people up.
Of course he thinks the incarceration rate is too low; people who express this opinion are at some level a justification for incarceration rates continuing to rise.
Most offenders in the U.S. prison system that U.S. citizens tax dollars are paying for are not violent offenders, at least not until they've been in and out of the prison system at least once, then their chances of committing additional crimes sky rocket.
So to answer your sneakily worded question (throwing in the word violent like some kind of gotcha for the first time): I personally don't want more people in prison because I think it is wasteful both in terms of capital and in terms of human experience, there are proven better alternatives like rehabilitation that work for most people and have significantly better outcomes, and finally because the united states prison system is effectively captured by corporate interests which is antithetical to a society that should be against cruel punishments.
Did I say that someone who commits a violent crime should avoid prison?
Why are you putting words in my mouth?
In my opinion the problem is extreme sentences for non-violent crimes and a society that encourages recidivism by excluding the possibility for felons to re-enter society.
Why is your focus so narrow on ensuring people get punished for crimes rather than ensuring there is no crime? We have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Increasing that isn't going to turn us into Iceland.
If there is no real penalty for being a career criminal, people will continue to be career criminals.
If someone knows they can rob people and get away with it, why would they do honest work for a living?
What is your solution to prevent crime without incarceration as a possible outcome for people breaking the law… especially those who do it repeatedly? It’s easy to talk down to solutions being used today, but without offering up a realistic alternative, this provides no value.
You continue to dodge my question about the alternative to incarceration, when we continue to have significant numbers of repeat offenders. You know what I’m asking, yet continue to try and distract from it by nitpicking semantics. I don’t think you have an answer.
Hoss, if you cared you'd know about all the many, many efforts at things like "Restorative Justice". Hell, you'd know what the statistics are around recidivism in the US versus other countries and be able to tell us why other places in the world have such different outcomes.
There are plenty of reasons. Mass incarcertaion is a strategy, and it's unique to the US.
If you're really curious, a good entry point is the film "13th".
As a third person observing this conversation, you seem neither curious nor interested in learning why someone might think of US mass incarceration in such strong terms.
The answers are out there, if you actually cared to find them.
Looking for opinions on the open internet doesn’t tell me what the person I asked actually thinks about the topic. The strong term they used is precisely the reason I asked.
This may be hard to accept - but there are some people who can’t help themselves. They are career criminals and even when presented with honest work they still choose to commit crimes. There exist sociopaths who don’t feel empathy or remorse, and are driven by their own desires and needs regardless of the cost to other people and society. They cannot be rehabilitated. They need to be locked in a cage forever. Society has known about these people since civilization began
Yeah there are people who can't help themselves, but they are a fraction of a fraction of the population. When presented with an honest and decent alternative the vast majority will choose it.
I asked for a realistic alternative solution and you offered none, just more criticisms for the status quo.
There are already incentives for honest work… a paycheck, benefits, etc. Not to mention being a net positive to society. There is also the option to start a business, which has unlimited upside.
Some people put a lot of effort into breaking the law and making life worse for other people. If that effort was directed in a positive direction, they could be successful, without being a criminal.
This also goes for the white collar criminals that get a pass while running large companies or governments. If those efforts were directed in a better direction, life would also get better for everyone.
I wish there was as much sympathy for the victims as the criminals.
From the outside, it looks like the US's society and culture fosters an unusually large criminal class compared to other western countries? If people had access to education, healthcare, jobs that aren't shipped overseas, minimum wage that wasn't laughable, etc, there wouldn't be so much problems? Arguing over severity of punishment while ignoring systemic issues is silly.
Non-developed countries do not have functional law enforcement and they are highly corrupt, so any statistics outside of developed countries should be ignored.
For developed countries, none but America have such high levels of immigration nor the racial diversity America has. It is much easier to convince society to promote high-trust empathetic solutions when society is racially homogenous and shares cultural background. It’s impossible to compare America to any European country, although soon it may be possible if immigration continues
Who do you think those people are that are incarcerated in the USA?
I come across this rather frequently among people from sheltered backgrounds like those who graduated from mom and dad taking care of them, all the way through to Mega Corp/university taking care of them, and absolutely cannot fathom why everyone doesn’t just eat cake.
I have a working theory that this effect, whatever one wants to call it, of people being too abstracted from reality, is ultimately the source of collapse of all kinds of organizations of humans… including civilizations.
It is, for example also why America can have so many vile warmongering people, because not only do they not have to lead troops into battle, have their children drafted into the front lines, or pay for the invariable disaster and murder they perpetrated and orchestrated; but in the most grotesque way, they profit from it and immensely; usually also combining it with other types of fraud like “money printing”, i.e., counterfeiting, which they use to plunder the wealth they accumulated through murder, mayhem, and fraud.
This isn't a new complaint. People have been identifying this group as the source of a lot of bad stuff at least as far back as Marx. The petty or petite bourgeoisie, the professional managerial class, Karens, the name changes with the times. But the constant derision for these groups is rooted in people observing that these groups are disposed to the sort of "driving society off a cliff" behavior you are listing examples of.
Now you're getting it. You have exactly identified the problem.
Instead of identifying and addressing the real problems--mass unemployment, homelessness, hopelessness--your dystopic "solution" is simply more and bigger jails, more and better armed cops with surveillance cameras attached, more laws, more weapons, more bondage and discipline, more "you will do what I say or else."
Doesn't work. Never works.
Read the essay "Fate of Empires" by Sir John Glubb to see how things this time are not in fact any different than what came before.
I agree. There needs to be a non racist president that just sweeps in and does a El Salvador type cleanup of the streets. I bet the 80%+ of normal black people in crime ridden cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, Memphis, Detroit, New Orleans would be in full support. Let’s be honest, young black gangsters are the main criminal element in these places. Trump can’t do this because he is a piece of shit with no integrity.
El Salvador doesn't have the type of Constitutional rights that America has. That type of sweep would not be legal.
And that doesn't even get into jurisdictional issues. The federal government doesn't have jurisdiction over local crimes that do not cross interstate boundaries.
Every single one of my ancestors who were in the war--except one--fought for the Confederacy in the War Between the States. (Or the War of Lincoln's Aggression, according to some. Yankees call it the "Civil War.")
Going further back, my Cherokee forefathers (the Chickamauga) were equally unimpressed by what they saw and experienced of this entity (they viewed it as a malignant tumor) that calls itself the "United" States of America.
I believe my ancestors are envious that I get to see the day when the truth of the Empire of Lies is finally exposed in front of all the world.
This is cool and all but Ring is the vastly more important target.
I don't think we can pretend the definition of "public" didn't change, now that it means "something is likely recorded for all time and you have no control over where it goes and literally everyone in the world can see it."
Is funny reading this from the UK because this ship sailed here years ago, you just have to assume if you drive a car anywhere except small roads in the countryside you are potentially being tracked by ANPR.
Of course, actual serious criminals who are actively committing serious crimes just use fake plates so they aren't affected, it only really helps catch people who commit crimes on the spur of the moment (while also obviously eroding every "normal" person's privacy)
> except small roads in the countryside you are potentially being tracked by ANPR.
They do put them specifically whereever those roads join major roads though. Meanwhile the crime stats in the UK make chilling reading, as the focus on replacing Police officers with cameras, replacing courts with... nothing has lead to many crimes skyrocketing, especially those that are not associated with driving a car.
Yep, I mean "proper" countryside - I grew up out in the villages (all little B roads and unclassified roads) and it's still like the Wild West out there really.
A lot of people still habitually drink drive (not getting completely smashed, but a few pints at a country pub then drive home) and realistically as long as you don't crash you could do that for decades and probably get away with it.
There's almost no cameras and also almost no actual police
Big difference though is that in the UK these cameras are publically owned, and the data feeds into a publically owned ANPR database. Whereas Flock cameras are owned by flock and all the ANPR records are stored on their own infrastructure
We have (a relatively recent phenomenon) elected Police and Crime Commissioners. They are elected with a tiny turnout. Next election in your area see if a candidate is anti-surveillance and run a campaign to support them. 10,000 extra votes to any of the mainstream candidates will get them elected.
Another addition to this thread of things that will never happen.
I don’t believe Flock cameras are used anywhere in the UK?
Pretty much all public cctv cameras that are installed on the side of public roads, like Flock are in the US, are publically owned, either by Police forces, Local Councils or National highways.
It seems odd though. Don't you have the right to bear arms, with some idea that it is needed to prevent the government from exercising excessive powers over you, yet actually doing anything with those guns to protect yourself from tyranny is a crime?
I remember hearing once that the constitution, having been written by a bunch of insurrectionists, intended people to have the power to keep the government out of their business. It seems they have lost that?
> Don't you have the right to bear arms, with some idea that it is needed to prevent the government from exercising excessive powers over you, yet actually doing anything with those guns to protect yourself from tyranny is a crime?
Because when it comes to that, the government is a failed state and no one will be worried about what’s legal.
It’s not meant to be a means of legal recourse, it’s a last resort.
cucumber3732842 | 22 hours ago
tl2do | 22 hours ago
Flock Safety must be under public evaluation. Tech companies tend to hide technical specs, calling them trade secrets. But most internet security standards are public. What should be private is the encryption key. The measure to protect development effort is patents, which are public in the registry.
lm28469 | 22 hours ago
Everybody wants murderers and rapists in jail, nobody wants to 24/7 share their location and upload their every thoughts to palantir and other companies operated by degenerates like Thiel
plagiarist | 21 hours ago
It's so funny though that the majority of all people are doing exactly this, 24/7.
loeg | 19 hours ago
DangitBobby | 18 hours ago
jimnotgym | 11 hours ago
lich_king | 22 hours ago
If the cameras were installed and operated by the DHS or by the local PD, would that make you feel better? The data should not exist, or if it must, it shouldn't be accessible without court approval. The model you're proposing doesn't ensure that; in fact, it moves it closer to the parties most likely to misuse it.
fzeroracer | 21 hours ago
The fact that Flock controls all of the cameras, all of the data and said data is easily accessible means police and the state have access to information that they should only get with a warrant. A business having a camera storing video data that's completely local isn't an issue. A business having a camera which is connected to every other business that has a camera is.
Manuel_D | 16 hours ago
tadfisher | 21 hours ago
There is a famous quote about this that needs to be updated for the modern age.
"I'd rather let ten fugitives go unsurveilled, than to surveil one innocent person."
vorpalhex | 20 hours ago
There's no money to be made arresting criminals. Sure you get a few police contracts, and you need to show enough results to keep them.. but your moat is mostly how hard it is to even submit bids.
There's a lot more money to be made knowing that Accountant Mary's Lexis is looking kind of banged up and she could be sold on a new one.
mullingitover | 22 hours ago
All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint. Drone goes 'boop' on the camera lens, and the entire system is disabled until an expensive technician drives out with a ladder and cleans the lens at non-trivial expense.
A handful of enterprising activists could blind all the flock cameras in a region in a day or two, and without destroying them, which makes it less of an overtly criminal act.
Obviously not advocating this, just pointing out that flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack from activists.
idle_zealot | 21 hours ago
mullingitover | 21 hours ago
One or two cameras getting bashed is basically a fart in the wind for flock, and I'd argue that it doesn't actually move the needle in any direction as far as public opinion goes. Those who dislike them don't need further convincing, those who support them are not going to have their opinion changed by property destruction (it might make them support surveillance more, in fact).
But hey, it's provocative I guess.
On the other hand flock losing their entire fleet is an existential problem for them, and for all the customers they're charging for the use of that fleet. Their BoD will want answers about why the officers of the company are harming shareholders with the way they're operating the business. Cities that have contracts with them may have grounds to terminate them, etc etc.
andrewflnr | 20 hours ago
themafia | 20 hours ago
You want to evoke the people and not the state.
reactordev | 19 hours ago
primax | 12 hours ago
jeffrallen | an hour ago
lazide | 11 hours ago
Seems to be getting more popular [https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/antiulez-campaigners-v...].
tiagod | 21 hours ago
robotnikman | 21 hours ago
cheonn638 | 21 hours ago
Americans don’t care enough
Too busy enjoying S&P500 near 7,000 and US$84,000/year median household income
stavros | 21 hours ago
shawn_w | 21 hours ago
stavros | 20 hours ago
bigiain | 20 hours ago
They eventually had to equip pretty much every speed camera with a speed camera camera, usually on a much higher pole to make vandalism more difficult.
stavros | 20 hours ago
lotsofpulp | 20 hours ago
stavros | 20 hours ago
c22 | 13 hours ago
redwall_hp | 19 hours ago
Roads that are narrow in places where a lower speed is desirable.
Heavy taxation on vehicles with more mass and lower visibility.
Actual licensing standards other than driving down a couple of city streets and parking.
More crossings, with lights or bridges, instead of long four-lane arterial roads with nowhere to safely cross.
Symbiote | 12 hours ago
Removing automatic enforcement of speed limits would not improve the situation.
seanmcdirmid | 20 hours ago
staringforward | 19 hours ago
Just wait until you find out that paintball guns are considered firearms are require licensing in the aforementioned region.
zoklet-enjoyer | 18 hours ago
andwur | 17 hours ago
You can use them under the direct supervision of the licensed owner, but it's still quite restrictive. If you were to take one and shoot at cameras on the street it would vandalism plus firearms offences, most of which start at inversion of innocence, massive fines and move pretty quickly into prison time.
bigfatkitten | 12 hours ago
NSW used to be similar, but a few years ago the state government had a rare moment of common sense and did away with most of that pointless bullshit.
appplication | 18 hours ago
altairprime | 15 hours ago
NoMoreNicksLeft | 14 hours ago
drysart | 12 hours ago
The point here is that 'skyward' is where the laser's beam goes when you're trying to aim it at a camera up on a pole. It's practically impossible to point a non-fixed position laser at something a non-trivial distance higher than you without spilling a large amount of laser beam into whatever happens to be behind your intended target; which is very often the sky.
bigiain | 14 hours ago
"In NSW, paintball is classified as a "prohibited firearm" under the Firearms Act 1996. However, it can still be legally played under strict licensing conditions. Unlike in some states where it is more loosely regulated, players and operators in NSW must comply with a range of legal requirements to ensure safety and legality."
These rules have changed, I think back before COVID they reclassified them as sporting equipment instead of firearms, but still brought in a whole bunch of licensing rules and requirements similar to gun ownership.
You can't just walk into KMart and walk out with a paintball gun here. |Or paintball markers.
sdkfjhdsjk | 5 hours ago
terminalshort | 17 hours ago
andwur | 17 hours ago
/s - but it wouldn't surprise me at the rate things are going.
monksy | 15 hours ago
xarope | 15 hours ago
/s (but not really)
bob1029 | 12 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS
mentalgear | 12 hours ago
etrautmann | 17 hours ago
terminalshort | 8 hours ago
vkou | 12 hours ago
2. As of 2026, most rednecks seem to be all for the police state. Don't expect them to come save you.
ErroneousBosh | 4 hours ago
Mostly from one particularly benighted area, Easterhouse. If you extensively gentrified Easterhouse back then, it would look like Detroit in the 90s. It's improved a little since then.
alexpotato | 10 hours ago
- Aeroflot flights get hijacked and flown to West Berlin
- Soviets decided to put Spetsnaz (Soviet special forces) on the planes much like we have Air Marshals today
- Spetsnaz figures "we have guns and are on the plane already" so they start hijacking flights
- So Soviets put TWO Spetsnaz teams on the flight
- Team 1 decides to hijack flight, realize there is a Team 2 who ALSO agrees to hijack the flight
pandaman | 8 hours ago
"On December 12, 1978, two Soviet citizens hijacked an Aeroflot Yak‑40 on a domestic route and forced it to fly to West Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, which was under U.S. control."
But then, when asked about any reference to this event, gives this:
"1. LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 (30 August 1978) A LOT Tupolev Tu‑134 was hijacked by East German citizens seeking asylum and forced to land at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin."
Are you an AI?
nozzlegear | 18 hours ago
stavros | 18 hours ago
maplethorpe | 16 hours ago
dsl | 16 hours ago
dyauspitr | 20 hours ago
Realistically that’s going to attract a lot of negative attention.
BuyMyBitcoins | 20 hours ago
Someone who has the wherewithal to jerry rig a paintball gun to a drone is someone scary. Plus, any officer who witnesses such a drone is almost certainly going to misidentify the paintball gun as an actual gun. I can imagine the operator would be charged with several felonies.
AngryData | 15 hours ago
Attaching any kind of potential weapon on a drone has no real precedent so they can dig through 19th century law and combine it with some 21st century law and punishment and screw your life over with bull crap unless you got $100K+ sitting around to throw on a good lawyer. The risk of being caught may be a bit lower, but the potential punishment if caught could be absolutely enormous.
kotaKat | 12 hours ago
rationalist | 7 hours ago
cucumber3732842 | 10 hours ago
ErroneousBosh | 4 hours ago
The advertiser's operators could actually look through the camera and shout through hidden speakers at people vandalising their adverts, usually by writing on the specially-coated toughened vandal-resistant glass that ink or paint didn't stick to.
The local wee wannabe gangsters took to filling bingo markers with the stuff they use to etch frosted glass, and tagging the displays with that.
dyauspitr | 20 hours ago
wolvoleo | 14 hours ago
martin-t | 20 hours ago
Must less recoil too.
Arainach | 20 hours ago
On the list of "laws you don't want to screw with", National Firearms Act violations are high on my list. Regardless of whether something is or isn't a violation, I'm certainly not interested in paying expensive lawyers to argue they're not.
culi | 16 hours ago
Though you either need a laser powerful enough to harm human eyes or lots of patience. Hong Kong protesters innovated a lot of these sort of resistance using lasers
Stevvo | 9 hours ago
stavros | 8 hours ago
estimator7292 | 6 hours ago
doubled112 | 4 hours ago
DonHopkins | 3 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV-B-Gone
dyauspitr | 20 hours ago
martin-t | 20 hours ago
Because advocating things which are moral/ethical but illegal is often against the TOS :(
We need laws which are explicitly based on moral principles. Barring that, we should at least have laws which treat sufficiently large platforms as utilities and forbid them from performing censorship without due process.
michaelmrose | 16 hours ago
salawat | 12 hours ago
Oh wait... Maybe that's the problem.
toomuchtodo | 20 hours ago
jimnotgym | 11 hours ago
soulofmischief | 20 hours ago
No, that would likely end in a RICO or terrorism case if it continued. Just because the cameras aren't destroyed doesn't mean CorpGov won't want to teach a lesson.
vorpalhex | 20 hours ago
Or even better yet, get arrested halfway to trying to dip your drone into paint on a sidewalk?
Just throw a rock at the stupid thing.
logankeenan | 20 hours ago
eichin | 18 hours ago
tastyfreeze | 17 hours ago
05 | 7 hours ago
jimnotgym | 11 hours ago
mock-possum | 3 hours ago
(Or a trebuchet?)
rolph | 2 hours ago
api | 19 hours ago
uoaei | 17 hours ago
michaelmrose | 16 hours ago
kotaKat | 11 hours ago
dsl | 16 hours ago
JumpCrisscross | 19 hours ago
I (EDIT: hate) Flock Safety cameras. If someone did this in my town, I’d want them arrested.
They’re muddying the moral clarity of the anti-Flock messaging, the ultimate goal in any protest. And if they’re willing to damage that property, I’m not convinced they understand why they shouldn’t damage other property. (More confidently, I’m not convinced others believe they can tell the difference.)
Flock Safety messages on security. Undermining that pitch is helpful. Underwriting it with random acts of performative chaos plays into their appeal.
> flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack
We live in a free society, i.e. one with significant individual autonomy. We’re all always very vulnerable. That’s the social contract. (The fact that folks actually contemplating violent attacks tend to be idiots helps, too.)
encrypted_bird | 19 hours ago
Was this a typo? If not, what does "haste" mean in this context? (I'm not messing with you; I'm genuinely wondering.)
JumpCrisscross | 18 hours ago
malfist | 18 hours ago
JumpCrisscross | 18 hours ago
If they do it right. If they don’t, it doesn’t. And between the action and the next rain, Flock Safety gets to message about vandalism.
Hizonner | 6 hours ago
It'd be more likely to make more people do it.
jbxntuehineoh | 17 hours ago
JumpCrisscross | 17 hours ago
Anyone can go that far. The question is if it’s smart. The answer is it’s not. Acting out one’s need for machismo on a good cause is just selfish.
If I were a Flock PR person, I’d be waiting for someone to pull a stunt like this. (Better: they shoot it.)
SoftTalker | 18 hours ago
michaelmrose | 16 hours ago
Vietnamese vs US Grunts not cute useless protestors holding signs that threaten to hold different signs longer.
uoaei | 17 hours ago
petre | 16 hours ago
Rapzid | 15 hours ago
kybernetyk | 15 hours ago
This must be the most hi-tech solution to a low tech problem I've seen this week ;)
mzi | 14 hours ago
tamimio | 14 hours ago
wolvoleo | 14 hours ago
kotaKat | 12 hours ago
Maybe some spray foam?
rationalist | 7 hours ago
mock-possum | 3 hours ago
Alright you buy one for me and I’ll consider it
diego_moita | 21 hours ago
givemeethekeys | 21 hours ago
diego_moita | 20 hours ago
culi | 16 hours ago
givemeethekeys | 4 hours ago
Lammy | 21 hours ago
kdogkshd | 20 hours ago
cheonn638 | 20 hours ago
Bothers me, but not enough to drive to city hall
Doesn’t even bother me enough to send an email quite frankly
soulofmischief | 20 hours ago
burnt-resistor | 18 hours ago
c22 | 13 hours ago
TheBicPen | 17 hours ago
shadowfacts | 14 hours ago
SilverElfin | 20 hours ago
culi | 16 hours ago
https://reason.com/2022/02/03/unreliable-speed-cameras-line-...
> In Chicago, where speed cameras are abundant, the camera program improperly gave out over $2.4 million in fines from 2013 to 2015. Using a random sample analysis, the Chicago Tribune estimated the number of bad tickets to be somewhere around 110,000. The erroneous fines were issued in areas without proper speed limit signs or during times when the cameras should have been turned off. (Cameras near parks and schools operate within a specific timeframe.) The Chicago Tribune found that over half the cameras in use were giving out faulty speeding tickets.
> Unsurprisingly, the misuse of speed cameras has also become a massive source of revenue for local government. In Chicago, 300 of the city's speed cameras would bring in about $15 million each year.
> In March, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lowered the speed limit threshold for speed cameras to trigger a citation. Cameras now trigger when a driver goes over the limit by 6 miles per hour, rather than 10 miles per hour, the previous threshold.
I think we need to make it easier for people to fight back against automatic tickets like this. The onus should be on the state not the individual. And individuals should still be entitled to their data
asadotzler | 20 hours ago
grensley | 20 hours ago
- Andreessen Horowitz
- Greenoaks Capital
- Bedrock Capital
- Meritech Capital
- Matrix Partners
- Sands Capital
- Founders Fund
- Kleiner Perkins
- Tiger Global
- Y Combinator
maximinus_thrax | 20 hours ago
globalnode | 17 hours ago
Cipater | 16 hours ago
cucumber3732842 | 9 hours ago
alansaber | 7 hours ago
flatline_ | 4 hours ago
Cipater | 17 hours ago
camillomiller | 14 hours ago
lionkor | 12 hours ago
sli | 19 hours ago
floren | 17 hours ago
odie5533 | 19 hours ago
monero-xmr | 19 hours ago
loeg | 19 hours ago
Sometimes judges contribute as well.
NoMoreNicksLeft | 14 hours ago
Plea deals.
Plea deals subvert justice for both those innocent who are bullied into pleading out, and for those who are wickedly guilty and get a big discount on the penalty exacted. Plea deals give the system extra capacity for prosecution, encouraging the justice system to fill the excess capacity, while simultaneously giving an underfunded system that doesn't have enough capacity the appearance of being able to handle the load. Bad all around.
thrance | 19 hours ago
Aeglaecia | 18 hours ago
datsci_est_2015 | 17 hours ago
Decades of historical evidence to the contrary.
If you’d like to have an informed opinion, at least engage with the academic material. Otherwise you come off sounding naïve, insisting that complex problems have simple solutions.
Edit: maybe my ears are a bit sensitive, but I can’t help but hear a faint whistle in the wind, maybe only at a frequency a dog could hear. But no, surely not here in gentlemanly company.
Manuel_D | 16 hours ago
datsci_est_2015 | 16 hours ago
I mean, trivially, using our brains for a nanosecond, what if that 1% of the population is almost always 16-18 year olds when they commit those violent crimes. The 16-18 demographic is roughly 4% of the US population (Google). That would mean locking up 1 in 4 high school students for 6-20 of their most formative years, and thrusting them back into society with a “Mission Accomplished” banner hanging behind you.
Play with the numbers a bit (maybe it’s 1 in 20), but the point stands. Using imprisonment to try to quarantine a demographic that is perceived as irreparably violent is a barbaric, sophomoric idea that has very little evidence of success in the modern era.
toxik | 15 hours ago
foxglacier | 15 hours ago
Aeglaecia | 16 hours ago
datsci_est_2015 | 16 hours ago
Aeglaecia | 16 hours ago
tbrownaw | 16 hours ago
FpUser | 19 hours ago
Sure. US prosecutors are so lenient that the US is the capital of incarceration
bpodgursky | 19 hours ago
FpUser | 18 hours ago
laksjhdlka | 18 hours ago
Izikiel43 | 17 hours ago
The big incarceration states are most likely deep red states.
FpUser | 16 hours ago
Mordisquitos | 13 hours ago
Of the exceptions I have listed, Turkey has the highest incarceration rate of 366 per 100k. Even so, it is still lower than that of 41 states, falling between Hawaii (367) and Connecticut (326).
Source: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2024.html
odie5533 | 16 hours ago
Look at places and countries with low crime. They don't have the most Flock cameras, the most prisoners, or the most powerful surveillance evidence because while those may solve a crime, they don't solve crime as a whole.
culi | 16 hours ago
co_king_5 | 15 hours ago
Of course he thinks the incarceration rate is too low; people who express this opinion are at some level a justification for incarceration rates continuing to rise.
monero-xmr | 10 hours ago
nullocator | 7 hours ago
So to answer your sneakily worded question (throwing in the word violent like some kind of gotcha for the first time): I personally don't want more people in prison because I think it is wasteful both in terms of capital and in terms of human experience, there are proven better alternatives like rehabilitation that work for most people and have significantly better outcomes, and finally because the united states prison system is effectively captured by corporate interests which is antithetical to a society that should be against cruel punishments.
monero-xmr | 6 hours ago
co_king_5 | 7 hours ago
Why are you putting words in my mouth?
In my opinion the problem is extreme sentences for non-violent crimes and a society that encourages recidivism by excluding the possibility for felons to re-enter society.
monero-xmr | 6 hours ago
co_king_5 | 5 hours ago
Why are you putting words in my mouth?
You are hysterical.
odie5533 | 3 hours ago
al_borland | 7 hours ago
If someone knows they can rob people and get away with it, why would they do honest work for a living?
What is your solution to prevent crime without incarceration as a possible outcome for people breaking the law… especially those who do it repeatedly? It’s easy to talk down to solutions being used today, but without offering up a realistic alternative, this provides no value.
co_king_5 | 7 hours ago
When did I say there should be no penalty for crime? When did I say there should be no penalty for a career of crime?
> What is your solution to prevent crime without incarceration
When did I say we should eliminate incarceration?
You're putting words in my mouth. You're creating a strawman.
What does crime mean to you?
What does crime look like?
What sorts of people commit crimes? Why do they commit crimes? What crimes do they commit?
al_borland | 5 hours ago
So what should the penalty be?
co_king_5 | 5 hours ago
> The base assumption is slavery is wrong.
Do you disagree that slavery is wrong?
al_borland | 3 hours ago
You continue to dodge my question about the alternative to incarceration, when we continue to have significant numbers of repeat offenders. You know what I’m asking, yet continue to try and distract from it by nitpicking semantics. I don’t think you have an answer.
scarecrowbob | an hour ago
There are plenty of reasons. Mass incarcertaion is a strategy, and it's unique to the US.
If you're really curious, a good entry point is the film "13th".
As a third person observing this conversation, you seem neither curious nor interested in learning why someone might think of US mass incarceration in such strong terms.
The answers are out there, if you actually cared to find them.
al_borland | 50 minutes ago
ceejayoz | 6 hours ago
I know this is a wild idea, but what if they had better options than career criminal for a living?
Americans are so invested in the penalties they can’t imagine the incentives approach.
monero-xmr | 6 hours ago
lillecarl | 6 hours ago
monero-xmr | 5 hours ago
Maybe we just incarcerate you permanently once you have 31 arrests
ceejayoz | 3 hours ago
ceejayoz | 5 hours ago
They’re just a lot rarer than you imagine.
sdkfjhdsjk | 5 hours ago
al_borland | 5 hours ago
There are already incentives for honest work… a paycheck, benefits, etc. Not to mention being a net positive to society. There is also the option to start a business, which has unlimited upside.
Some people put a lot of effort into breaking the law and making life worse for other people. If that effort was directed in a positive direction, they could be successful, without being a criminal.
This also goes for the white collar criminals that get a pass while running large companies or governments. If those efforts were directed in a better direction, life would also get better for everyone.
I wish there was as much sympathy for the victims as the criminals.
co_king_5 | 5 hours ago
It's not Americans generally speaking, it's a vocal minority of white supremacist fascists.
culi | 4 hours ago
barnabee | 11 hours ago
a) much more time and effort should be focused on catching and stopping the most persistent repeat offenders (sometimes by locking them up); and
b) orders of magnitude too many Americans are currently in prison.
morkalork | 7 hours ago
monero-xmr | 6 hours ago
For developed countries, none but America have such high levels of immigration nor the racial diversity America has. It is much easier to convince society to promote high-trust empathetic solutions when society is racially homogenous and shares cultural background. It’s impossible to compare America to any European country, although soon it may be possible if immigration continues
roysting | 11 hours ago
I come across this rather frequently among people from sheltered backgrounds like those who graduated from mom and dad taking care of them, all the way through to Mega Corp/university taking care of them, and absolutely cannot fathom why everyone doesn’t just eat cake.
I have a working theory that this effect, whatever one wants to call it, of people being too abstracted from reality, is ultimately the source of collapse of all kinds of organizations of humans… including civilizations.
It is, for example also why America can have so many vile warmongering people, because not only do they not have to lead troops into battle, have their children drafted into the front lines, or pay for the invariable disaster and murder they perpetrated and orchestrated; but in the most grotesque way, they profit from it and immensely; usually also combining it with other types of fraud like “money printing”, i.e., counterfeiting, which they use to plunder the wealth they accumulated through murder, mayhem, and fraud.
cucumber3732842 | 9 hours ago
bagels | 8 hours ago
sdkfjhdsjk | 5 hours ago
Instead of identifying and addressing the real problems--mass unemployment, homelessness, hopelessness--your dystopic "solution" is simply more and bigger jails, more and better armed cops with surveillance cameras attached, more laws, more weapons, more bondage and discipline, more "you will do what I say or else."
Doesn't work. Never works.
Read the essay "Fate of Empires" by Sir John Glubb to see how things this time are not in fact any different than what came before.
dyauspitr | 4 hours ago
bean469 | 3 hours ago
Sounds like a certain, controversial federal law enforcement agency in the US
dyauspitr | 2 hours ago
gamblor956 | 2 hours ago
And that doesn't even get into jurisdictional issues. The federal government doesn't have jurisdiction over local crimes that do not cross interstate boundaries.
leoh | 17 hours ago
NoMoreNicksLeft | 14 hours ago
wesleywt | 14 hours ago
KaiserPro | 13 hours ago
sdkfjhdsjk | 5 hours ago
Every single one of my ancestors who were in the war--except one--fought for the Confederacy in the War Between the States. (Or the War of Lincoln's Aggression, according to some. Yankees call it the "Civil War.")
Going further back, my Cherokee forefathers (the Chickamauga) were equally unimpressed by what they saw and experienced of this entity (they viewed it as a malignant tumor) that calls itself the "United" States of America.
I believe my ancestors are envious that I get to see the day when the truth of the Empire of Lies is finally exposed in front of all the world.
landl0rd | 18 hours ago
I don't think we can pretend the definition of "public" didn't change, now that it means "something is likely recorded for all time and you have no control over where it goes and literally everyone in the world can see it."
burnt-resistor | 18 hours ago
pmarreck | 16 hours ago
throwsame12304 | 12 hours ago
ifwinterco | 12 hours ago
Of course, actual serious criminals who are actively committing serious crimes just use fake plates so they aren't affected, it only really helps catch people who commit crimes on the spur of the moment (while also obviously eroding every "normal" person's privacy)
tetris11 | 11 hours ago
jimnotgym | 11 hours ago
They do put them specifically whereever those roads join major roads though. Meanwhile the crime stats in the UK make chilling reading, as the focus on replacing Police officers with cameras, replacing courts with... nothing has lead to many crimes skyrocketing, especially those that are not associated with driving a car.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...
ifwinterco | 8 hours ago
A lot of people still habitually drink drive (not getting completely smashed, but a few pints at a country pub then drive home) and realistically as long as you don't crash you could do that for decades and probably get away with it.
There's almost no cameras and also almost no actual police
macki0 | 6 hours ago
jimnotgym | 11 hours ago
We have (a relatively recent phenomenon) elected Police and Crime Commissioners. They are elected with a tiny turnout. Next election in your area see if a candidate is anti-surveillance and run a campaign to support them. 10,000 extra votes to any of the mainstream candidates will get them elected.
Another addition to this thread of things that will never happen.
hdgvhicv | 11 hours ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93d4dd3l3lo
Party because people haven’t got a clue what they do, partly as they have very little power, and party as it’s just a popularity vote on the rosette.
Personally I’m more worried about ring door bells, but I’ve spent years being told I’m paranoid.
tonyedgecombe | 9 hours ago
We don’t have as many (per capita) as the US.
macki0 | 6 hours ago
Pretty much all public cctv cameras that are installed on the side of public roads, like Flock are in the US, are publically owned, either by Police forces, Local Councils or National highways.
jimnotgym | 11 hours ago
nkrisc | 11 hours ago
I can’t say I disagree with what they’re doing, but it’s absolutely vigilante justice, not legal.
jimnotgym | 10 hours ago
I remember hearing once that the constitution, having been written by a bunch of insurrectionists, intended people to have the power to keep the government out of their business. It seems they have lost that?
nkrisc | 7 hours ago
Because when it comes to that, the government is a failed state and no one will be worried about what’s legal.
It’s not meant to be a means of legal recourse, it’s a last resort.
latency-guy2 | 3 hours ago
Guns are a first line defense for millions of people. A lawyer with a briefcase and a judge wearing a gaudy robe+wig is not a defense at all.
Though the imagery of it would be funny of blasting each of those out of a cannon.
Even the government agrees, issuing a firearm to their officers who go out into the field (read: where everyone else is).
alansaber | 7 hours ago
Towaway69 | 3 hours ago
> Shrapnel also shot through a passing car into a passenger seat, while another piece of metal damaged the window frame of a child's bedroom.
Wtf. That was a “homemade” bomb to bring down one camera.