Even the Yakuza participate in society. When they have big disasters, the local mobsters are usually helping people out, before the authorities can get going.
I think the only objective conclusion we can come to in a comments section is that going by “I visited there” vibes isn’t going to be useful.
The operating theory of all of these cameras is that anything happening in public sight is by its nature not private. The federal government is dumping millions and millions of dollars into grant programs for municipalities to buy it… It’s a giant federal surveillance program disguised as decisions made by individual police departments.
It’s hilarious and depressing to contrast the HN community reaction to Snowden versus the mostly meh response to flock.
As others have pointed out, they're not just ALPRs or traffic cameras, and their use-cases, official and unofficial, are extremely dynamic and expanding fast. They are not the only thing of their kind, but they justly earned the lightning rod status for their conspicuous cooperation with the administration's immigration thuggery and the douchy--but highly consequential--pronouncements of their CEO. Moreover, there's a ticker tape of daily news about police misuse of Flock's database, mainly for stalking exes and things like that.
This _is_ a stop on the way to a Chinese-style surveillance state, and there's nothing inevitable about it. But it will happen if we allow it to happen.
Ben Johnson's video on the security vulnerabilities, linked in the article, always deserves an explicit shout-out. It's likely to intrigue the tinkerers here:
The subway was extremely hostile. People were regularly drugged out of their mind. I saw one guy try to drink a Coca Cola upside down and spilled it all in the bus. Another crazy chased my limited mobility Estonian friend who wanted to visit nyc alongside me when she went alone for groceries.
Could it be that your frame of reference is broken and/or you’re numb to it?
When meth heads get arrested, there isn't an army of losers protesting the sheriff the next day claiming it's cruel and unusual punishment and demanding the city give them a free house for them to do meth in.
Enjoy your Alcatraz pharmacies while they're still open.
Then come the big police department.
Allowing a private company to profit of holding information about me is innerving to me.
I would feel better if it was 100% run by the police. ( better, not good )
Still, a few some areas of Asia achieved this reputation back when cameras were still extremely rare.
Although Tokyo does have a system of traffic cameras which log traffic movement and license plates, that's most all that it does. Except in cases of murder or kidnapping (or political influence), it's quite rare to request the recordings of many private cameras. Outside of big cities, it's even more rare.
The largest connected system of cameras I'm aware of are for the subway camera systems (Shinjuku, Shinagawa, etc). Although independent systems, together they can do facial recognition to track individuals. Not a lot of AI yet, though.
In Tokyo, it is not uncommon to see bikes parked on residential streets with keys left overnight in their wheel locks (as if there aren't even mischievous 12 year olds?!). Oh, and outside of the cities, crime is even more rare. It is common in youth hostels for there to be open cubbies where personal items are stored in the front near the door. Nothing is taken. Most common thefts are: umbrellas (considered a fungible public good?), unlocked bikes (in high traffic business areas), women's underwear (off of outdoor drying racks).
Before, if the cops asked for witnesses to come forward, they always got someone because they had a good reputation and were trusted.
A few years of the people saying no to flock and the cops and city hall ignoring us has destroyed that trust.
Now, when the cops ask for help, they get told to go flock themselves.
I'd suggest a better way is to reform policing. They need to start working for all the people, not just the Epstein class.
ah yes, the famously dependable statistics of east Asia, with their famously free press and citizen auditing communities, and the famously dependable impressions of tourists and expatriates...
A friend of mine (white guy) married a Chinese woman and when they visited China they were subject to slurs and dirty looks in public.
There's a whole category of videos on social media of Japanese furiously angry at Westerners acting like fools on their subways. They're not happy about it.
I’m not going to pretend that an anecdote fully captures a problem but considering I spent over a month there just living a normal life I imagine that if the problem were widespread I’d have many chances to experience it.
My elderly parents were there for two weeks too and they have nothing but positive things to say.
And finally, my wife’s cousin married a White man from Ireland and he has loved the place for the many years he’s lived there.
Ultimately I do agree with the original thesis around monocultures.
Is the anti-prosecution narrative
Many Asian cities are safer -- and they undisputedly are -- for cultural reasons. You can't create culture through surveillance.
ChrisMarshallNY•1h ago
However:
> This makes AI powered cameras like Flock's distinct from traditional surveillance or traffic cams, which require someone to manually look over footage in order to find a specific vehicle or individual.
Is a bit misleading. These days, anyone can give an LLM footage from any source, and get this kind of information.
cyanydeez•1h ago
Is a bit misleading itself, to do this at scale requires all those iffy data centers.
xnx•33m ago
erikerikson•1h ago
There's a very important difference between "anyone could walk through my door and steal my stuff" and "this person walked in my door and stole my stuff".
llm_nerd•11m ago
Police setting up a 1984 monitoring system throughout your city, tracking every car, person, activity -- yields lots of questions, oversight, concerns, debate, challenges, etc.
Some private business doing the same, and then letting the same police use it at will as a paying customer -- yay, all of the invasive monitoring with none of the oversight.