We have to stop the city governments from implementing surveillance. We can use the Flock hate to pass legislation, not just block contracts with specific companies.
It becomes something of a push, if you can't create a more structural hurdle to these kinds of roll-outs.
I might start by pardoning anyone who damaged or destroyed a camera. I might follow up with very aggressive and unpleasant lawsuits against camera manufacturers and operators.
Treat surveillance like The Right treats abortion.
Same fucking thing with meta glasses right now. Its been infuriating for decades to see people give a shit when the threat is obvious and ignore it completely so long as it's hidden out of sight. They don't want to hear about it at all, they only pay attention to what they're feeling at any given moment. They don't care at all what the powerful at enough, they just don't want to notice it.
I don't doubt that subtlety will be the next move. But I think you're putting a lot of chips on the "competent business / competent government" hypothesis and skipping right over the "cheap business / lazy government" play.
This isn't the first panopticon the country has built out. Flock/Axon are new and fancy, but the UK has been managing a network of CCTV cameras across England since the 90s. NYC, Chicago, and San Francisco have had similar. DC and the surrounding area is comically oversurveiled, by both the US and our rivals. IBM, ATT, Microsoft, and Google have all had their turn at scaled up data collection. And the NSA is carting around... Zetabytes? of data annually that they're trying to manage.
I think we'll get another round of these installations as Flock draws flack. But we're also staring down an economic contraction, a ton of public and private sector job cuts, and a lot of people just selling a bunch of fucking scams.
Idk who eats all this data in the long term. Idk who maintains the networks or sorts the data. Idk who will even remember this system exists in five or ten years.
I think we're going to get another set of cameras... and then another set and another set and another set, just because it's a great line item to pay off private contractors under the guise of crime fighting and security.
I don't think there's a real physical solution to this problem, because it's more of a sociological problem to begin with. National leadership is constantly turning to surveillance as a panacea for social problems. And when it doesn't work, we just double down.
It is very concerning. The promise behind CCTV, as far as I understood, was for it to be a generally obvious deterrent, localized to protect a specific location, building or system from defined risks of potential criminal activity. Background: I've liaised with a CCTV company headquartered in Europe whose rep admitted they haven't developed their object classification to the same degree as their North American competitors, due to homegrown privacy regulations.
So personally, while I can understand redesigning cameras or placement to make them more resistant to vandalism, I don't see how the argument can be made that making these covert will reduce crime overall. Preventing the vandalism of the cameras themselves is not the reason they were installed.
Previously, roadside cameras were used for tolling, catching people running red lights, policing speeding, measuring travel time, etc.. They had one specific purpose, usually only activated in the times and conditions an infraction could take place. The absurd idea is that police now feel the need to collect gobs of information on non-criminals everywhere, so they can look up people they have arbitrarily decided are criminals, and find information that was collected and handed to them before they made that decision. My point is that this novel way of collecting and using CCTV data is what state and local legislation should prohibit, not (just) specifically Flock contracts.
As farcas I know, camera detectors rely on the reflection from the lens. Puttig the camera up high, and putting lenses in even the posts that don't have cameras make that sort of detection impractical. Blocking the cameras is just as difficult, as, if they're wired through the same ducts as the power for the lights, they can just use wired signals, rather than radio, and the camera itself is too high to obscure the lens without carrying some fairly obvious equipment.
These systems need to be stopped at the procurement stage, by removing anyone who supports them from local government before they build a panopticon that would give even Jeremy Bentham or George Orwell nightmares.
10 Comments
bowsertattoo@piefed.social · 65 pts · 1d
We have to stop the city governments from implementing surveillance. We can use the Flock hate to pass legislation, not just block contracts with specific companies.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 1d
Works until you get another Crime Wave scare and the next administration goes running back to mass surveillance.
NOPper@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 1d
Maybe. But it beasts the alternative of "do nothing"
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
It becomes something of a push, if you can't create a more structural hurdle to these kinds of roll-outs.
I might start by pardoning anyone who damaged or destroyed a camera. I might follow up with very aggressive and unpleasant lawsuits against camera manufacturers and operators.
Treat surveillance like The Right treats abortion.
Shanmugha@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
And you beat and burn that administration down. Sorry for unrealistic dreams
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 1d
Same fucking thing with meta glasses right now. Its been infuriating for decades to see people give a shit when the threat is obvious and ignore it completely so long as it's hidden out of sight. They don't want to hear about it at all, they only pay attention to what they're feeling at any given moment. They don't care at all what the powerful at enough, they just don't want to notice it.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 1d
I don't doubt that subtlety will be the next move. But I think you're putting a lot of chips on the "competent business / competent government" hypothesis and skipping right over the "cheap business / lazy government" play.
This isn't the first panopticon the country has built out. Flock/Axon are new and fancy, but the UK has been managing a network of CCTV cameras across England since the 90s. NYC, Chicago, and San Francisco have had similar. DC and the surrounding area is comically oversurveiled, by both the US and our rivals. IBM, ATT, Microsoft, and Google have all had their turn at scaled up data collection. And the NSA is carting around... Zetabytes? of data annually that they're trying to manage.
I think we'll get another round of these installations as Flock draws flack. But we're also staring down an economic contraction, a ton of public and private sector job cuts, and a lot of people just selling a bunch of fucking scams.
Idk who eats all this data in the long term. Idk who maintains the networks or sorts the data. Idk who will even remember this system exists in five or ten years.
I think we're going to get another set of cameras... and then another set and another set and another set, just because it's a great line item to pay off private contractors under the guise of crime fighting and security.
I don't think there's a real physical solution to this problem, because it's more of a sociological problem to begin with. National leadership is constantly turning to surveillance as a panacea for social problems. And when it doesn't work, we just double down.
Rentlar@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 1d
It is very concerning. The promise behind CCTV, as far as I understood, was for it to be a generally obvious deterrent, localized to protect a specific location, building or system from defined risks of potential criminal activity. Background: I've liaised with a CCTV company headquartered in Europe whose rep admitted they haven't developed their object classification to the same degree as their North American competitors, due to homegrown privacy regulations.
So personally, while I can understand redesigning cameras or placement to make them more resistant to vandalism, I don't see how the argument can be made that making these covert will reduce crime overall. Preventing the vandalism of the cameras themselves is not the reason they were installed.
Previously, roadside cameras were used for tolling, catching people running red lights, policing speeding, measuring travel time, etc.. They had one specific purpose, usually only activated in the times and conditions an infraction could take place. The absurd idea is that police now feel the need to collect gobs of information on non-criminals everywhere, so they can look up people they have arbitrarily decided are criminals, and find information that was collected and handed to them before they made that decision. My point is that this novel way of collecting and using CCTV data is what state and local legislation should prohibit, not (just) specifically Flock contracts.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 1d
Couldn't there be an alternative camera detector though? I'm sure you could have a device that detects cameras, not to mention one that blocks them.
notabot@piefed.social · 22 pts · 1d
As farcas I know, camera detectors rely on the reflection from the lens. Puttig the camera up high, and putting lenses in even the posts that don't have cameras make that sort of detection impractical. Blocking the cameras is just as difficult, as, if they're wired through the same ducts as the power for the lights, they can just use wired signals, rather than radio, and the camera itself is too high to obscure the lens without carrying some fairly obvious equipment.
These systems need to be stopped at the procurement stage, by removing anyone who supports them from local government before they build a panopticon that would give even Jeremy Bentham or George Orwell nightmares.