Apparently there is scraping of public data + keyword matching + moderators filtering the matches.
An example that he shows a bit earlier in the video comes from this page, which has an RSS feed: https://www.cityofsanbenito.com/AgendaCenter/City-Commission...
The video says it's open source but I can't find the source.
I do agree that we have heavy crime (though HN will say it's all anecdotal and the stats show we're in a period of remarkable peace).
I just don't know that greater enforcement around vehicle use will have the outsized effect that you're claiming.
I wish there was a way to implement this sort of “surveilance” in such a way that it only impacts criminals or would be criminals and only them.
I was specifically asking about the GP's focus on vehicles (larger plates, unregistered vehicle enforcement) and how they thought that would reduce crime so much.
Then the question is, why don't they do that? Why do we need a surveillance state to enable police to do what residents might consider the bare minimum?
At the end of the day, avoiding accusations of racism is behind much of modern policing's foibles (like the near-total relaxation of traffic law enforcement in some cities).
I am concerned about the lack of follow through after police intervention. Lack of prosecution and convictions, light sentences, repeat offenders being released, etc.
If judges would simply keep someone with 3+ felonies in jail, crime would drop 80%.
We have that too here, the issue seems to be more that it's a catch and release crime. The police not only knew who was doing it on our street, they had caught them multiple times and released them immediately. I'm guessing if they're not caught with stolen guns on them here it's not enough of a charge to bother with. I really doubt Flock would matter.
Might feel that way, but objectively, violent and property crime are on the decline in the USA.
I've also heard many stories where a person gets high def footage of someone committing a crime (usually burglary, smash and grab, or porch snatching) and the cops are basically like "eh we'll get to it when we get to it"
Hands taped behind the back with a gunshot through the head... It's a suicide.
Also I believe my eyes and when I see crimes happening in my neighborhood I don't rush to "the stats" to ask them what I saw.
In those statistical roundups homicide is treated as a proxy for crime in general, so the best we can rigorously say is that homicide rates have decreased - which is, obviously, great. Researchers treat homicide as a proxy because they know not all crimes are reported.
Anecdotally, living in [big city] between 2014 and 2021 my street-parked car was broken into ~10 times, and stolen once (though I got it back). I never reported the break-ins, because [city PD] doesn't care. In [current suburb] a drive by shooting at the other end of our block received no police response at all, and won't be in the crime stats.
Are those types of crimes increasing? I don't know! I'd had my car broken into before 2014, and I witnessed (fortunately only aurally - I was just around the corner) a drive-by in the nineties. But... That's the point: no one knows! These incidents aren't captured in the statistics.
Personally, I think the proxies are broadly accurate, and crime in general is lower, and I shouldn't trust my anecdotal experiences. However, I think the general lack of trust in the quality of American police-work (much of it for good reason, sadly) biases most people towards trusting anecdotal experience and media-driven narratives.
Drive around Kansas City sometime, particularly on the Missouri side. Tons of temporary paper license plates that are a year past expiration. Any member of law enforcement could pull the person over and enforce a penalty for it.
They just... don't. I don't know exactly why that is. Are they afraid that doing so opens them up to the chance of being shot or engaging in a high-speed pursuit? The former definitely happened in North Kansas City a few years ago (not to be confused with KC North) but having a massive network of cameras tracking license plates and how they move across town doesn't help. At the end of the day, you have to send someone a fine, and if they don't pay it and don't show up for court, you are again faced with having a police officer try to interact with them one-on-one, this time to enforce a bench warrant for their arrest.
In the meantime, you now have an absolutely massive data set of citizen movements being collected without a warrant by an increasingly authoritarian American government.
These cameras only punish law-abiding citizens. Fake plates and out-of-date temp tags effectively render these people invisible to the ALPRs.
But long-expired temps are everywhere. So confusing. How?
You have fallen for political talking points.
I'm certain that had the 2024 election gone a different way, we'd still have our Flock cameras.
There's Eugene and Springfield, OR; Cambridge, MA; a few in TX; Denver and Longmont, CO; Redmond, WA; Evanston and Oak Park, IL; etc.
Oak Park is 4.7 square miles. All our surrounding munis have rolled out more ALPRs after we killed ours.
Further: because of the oversight we had over our ALPRs before, they weren't really doing anything, for something like 2 years. OPPD kept them around because they were handy for post-incident investigation. We effectively had to stop responding to alerts once our police oversight commission ran the numbers of what the stops were.
Which is to say: our "de-Flocking" was mostly cosmetic. We'd already basically shut the cameras down and cut all sharing out.
I'm just happy for any sort of critical analysis or attention being brought to every municipality's use of this technology as so often people have no idea at all, though. Because there are a lot of counties which are far worse, and almost none of the public is even aware; I suspect there is at least some gap between people who would care if they knew, and people who care now.
[0]: https://alpranalysis.com/virginia/206807
[1]: https://transparency.flocksafety.com/williamsburg-va-pd
Is the argument that Flock cameras are used for mass surveillance defensible, or just paranoia, and if it is real, does anyone have a good idea of whether the same argument would apply in the UK?
Its always defensible - think of the children!/terrorists! - and always in the same dystopian direction. Just believing yourself to be being tracked, changes behaviour. Just as in large cities, people moderate their behaviour.
4D AI speed/behaviour cameras (Redspeed Centio): multi-lane radar + high-res imaging; flags speeding, phone use, no seatbelt, and can check plates against DVLA/insurance databases.
AI “Heads-Up” camera units (Acusensus): elevated/overhead infrared cameras (often on trailers/vans) to spot phone use and seatbelt/non-restrained occupants.
New digital fixed cameras (Vector SR): slimmer, more discreet spot-speed cameras (sometimes with potential add-on behaviour detection, depending on setup).
Smart motorway gantry cameras (HADECS): enforce variable speed limits on motorways from gantries.
AI-assisted litter cameras: council enforcement for objects/litter thrown from vehicles
99% of the population is voluntarily carrying sophisticated tracking devices with self-reporting always on
even if the signal is off it catches up later
with SEVERAL layers of tracking
not just your phone carrier but Google+Apple stores have your location as the apps are always on in the background
even phone makers have their own tracking layer sometimes
we know EVERY person that went to Epstein Island from their phone tracking and they didn't even have smartphones back then
Flock is just another lazy layer/databroker
Judges require warrants to put a GPS tracker on your car. Now that Flock cameras are so ubiquitous in many cities, this gives them access to the same data without a warrant.
But, I do not think it's reasonable for an automated system to systematically capture, store, and analyze all of my movements (or anyone else who is not suspected of a serious crime). If they suspect I have done something illegal, they should have to get a warrant and then the system can be triggered to start tracking me.
I understand the desire for the data... sometimes I would like to know if my kids are following the rules at home, but I have a stronger conviction that I don't want my kids to grow up in a home where they feel like they are under constant surveillance. It's a gross feeling to be under constant surveillance, like you're living in a panopticon built for prisoners, which is an unfair side effect when you've done nothing wrong. Mass data surveillance of everyone is a totalitarian dystopian that I don't want to live in.
The fact that driving is a 'privilege' doesn't negate your rights to be secure in your papers, the police should have to have articulable suspicion that your car is unregistered or unlicensed before they can demand you to display your plate.
2. Consent
3. Accountability (e.g. A government agency needs a warrant to use your cell phone location data against you).
Does that imply that Android settings lie about which apps have accessed location data?
It's also not uncommon for police officers to use their tools to stalk women.
Now we're given the same untrustworthy officers full profiles of an individuals travel history without a "need to know". If you can't see how that's dangerous, I don't know what to tell you. In the US if someone is threatening your life, you can typically shoot them if you're out of options. You usually can't do that with an officer, even if they're off duty. The rest of the cops will stand behind that thin blue line and harass you.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/investigat...
The common reaction to surveillance seems to be similar to how we diet. We allow/validate a little bit of the negative agent, but try to limit it and then discuss endlessly how to keep the amount tamped down.
One aspect explored/hypothesized in Rainbows End, is what happens when surveillance becomes so ubiquitous that it's not a privilege of the "haves". I wonder if rather than "deflocking", the counter point is to surround every civic building with a raft of flock cameras that are in the public domain.
Just thinking the contrarian thoughts.
I’ve considered making this a commercial reality, but we’ve seen that ubiquitous cameras don’t necessarily stop cops or authoritarians from kneeling on your neck, if they don’t feel shame.
The last thing I want is only a few individuals having that data, whether it be governments, corporations, or billionaires and their meme-theme goon squads. Make it all accessible. Maybe if the public knows everyone (including their stalker/ex/rival) can track anyone, we'd be more hesitant to put all this tracking tech out there.
Like what are we doing as a socity? Stop trying to build the surveilance nexus from sci fi. I don't want to live in a zero-crime world. It's not worth it. Safety third, there is always gonna be some risk.
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/flock-cameras-lead-col...
Privacy and liberty advocates are unlikely to win in council meetings by sheer numbers. They get some leverage with campaign donations, especially recently that Bitcoin made a lot of such people rich.
So the feds just put their flock cameras anywhere they had a little piece of federal property, and there is no way to vote those ones off. They have little patches that cover the highways and some main thoroughfares. It's everywhere.
If public servants funded by taxpayers don't like it, maybe they shouldn't be forcing it on the populace and breaking the forth amendment.
That's about the worst, most inflammatory way possible to make your point. I agree with you 100%, but I am begging you to learn to frame your ideas better, in order to get people on your side. If you say that to any voters you will lose them instantly
We're living constantly in the scene from Fahrenheit 451 where the government asks everybody to go outside at once and report any suspicious activity. We have made it potentially not OK for kids to push boundaries or make mistakes.
The idea was to seek spots in the city where public web cams are pointed at, and paint QR codes on the ground at those spots (using a template), linking to the camera stream. So when curious passerbys scan the code, they see themselves in a camera stream and feel "watched".
I'm only aware of boring rooftop weather webcams where obv you can't see yourself.
Any examples for what you speak of?
Quality isn't great, but you could likely see yourself recognizably.
Just search for "<your city> webcam" and see what you can find.
In other words, the "we're trustworthy we'd never do that" folks ought to be A-OK with criminal penalties for something they'd never do anyway, right?
This would also create an incentive for these companies to lobby for the creation/continuation of such a law at the state level, as a way to unlock (or retain) their ability to do businesses in the localities.
first the came for the turkeys...
ChrisbyMe•1h ago
Any interesting technical details? Getting the actual data from govt meetings looked like it was the hardest part to me.
toomuchtodo•1h ago
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2025/apr/16/keeping-l...
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2024/mar/27/automatin...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=pX_xcj-p0vA
https://documentcloud.org/add-ons/MuckRock/Klaxon/
https://documentcloud.org/
https://muckrock.com/
tptacek•29m ago
During our last election cycle, I did this for all our board meetings going back to the mid-aughts, using 'simonw's LLM tool to pass each agenda item to GPT 4o to classify them into topical buckets ("safety", "racial equity", "pensions", &c), tying them back to votes, and then doing a time breakdown of the topics (political opponents were claiming our board, which I support, was spending too much time on frivolous stuff).
That's a pretty silly use case, but also a data-intensive one; the things you'd actually want to do across municipalities are much simpler.
You could probably have Claude one-shot a municipal meetings notification service for you.