14 comments

[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 24.3 ms ] thread
It was only about an hour ago I saw yet another mindless commentator on one of these threads saying "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about".
I don't understand why a regular patrol officer would / should even have access to something like this without some level of extra authorization. They're not detectives running an open investigation ...

In this case this officer was searching numerous networks over and over again, that alone should trigger some metrics that raise the question "uh ... why?"

Wonder how quick this will get removed off the front page, like the last one about a woman pulled over at gunpoint multiple times because the ALPR kept making a mistake.

Like I said in the last thread... I went and spoke at my county commission meeting today against these cameras: https://www.youtube.com/live/1OmEmpL-7qY?t=720

I went back and got transcripts for the rest of the meetings for the day, and after saying it was not up for a vote today, two of the commissioners attempted to push it through within 10 min of the end of day, but it ended up failing in a tie. So, decision is delayed, and there is actually a chance of fighting these being put up, as well as the ones already there.

(comment deleted)
This is actually one of the more limited and benign risks of voluntarily installing a municipal/private panopticon system owned by a corporation.

Because of the motivations and degrees of agency associated with under-regulated capitalism, derived data about vehicles and people will be stored indefinitely because it has value to be extracted, to be sold and leased, to the highest bidder, be it to data brokers, police agencies (as is the supposed mission), and intelligence agencies. They won't necessarily be US-based entities either. It will be used to form judgements, discriminate, make inferences, and accusations about people with limited or wrong "evidence" anytime between now, days, years, and who knows for how long in the distant future. No privacy and unknowable risks of misuse and abuse that manifest with use of new technology developed or "connections" made with new information at any time in the future.

At this point I think it's necessary to notify anyone who has been tracked after a fixed number of days, unless a court order is used to extend that period. An officer using this for legitimate reasons should have few problems getting that court order. This would at least give people some amount of safety net from stalking by LE.
As an observer from another country, it is increasingly obvious that America can no longer call itself 'The Land of the Free' unironically.

In my view it is closer to a police state.

Cops abuse every system that's given to them, to varying extents.

Whining about lack of access controls and rogue (i.e. not using to do their job properly) cops is implicitly saying that this system could/would/should exist if it has "proper" access controls, whatever that means.