It seems really obvious, but for some reason as I've been working locally in my neck of the woods against Flock and worrying about it snowballing it hadn't really occurred to me that the snowball could work the other direction as well. The emergent effects of more and more deployments into a single unified storage/search system has always been the new and scary part. But "the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts" of course necessarily means "the parts are worth less than the whole" too. So managing to stop or reverse a deployment in your own locality, however small, also serves to help reduce the capability to everyone else across the nation whether they agree or not. That's really hopeful.
As the article notes, in some cases a locality might try to switch to a competitor, but the competitive community pressure here is still useful. Seems like a rare time where it creates an actual direct incentive to consider what will be popular amongst the people all over, even if certain LEAs etc personally might want more.
Yes, the whole is worth more than the individual parts. It's like if you're trying to catch someone who robbed a home, you may have a camera to catch the car and license. Great first step, but cars used in crimes are often stolen. So you follow the car, and then you enter a dead zone where anti-flock activists prevented cameras. You're now at a dead end.
So I guess that's a win as that first camera is not very useful. And this is a good thing? I don't see your point.
I have cameras around my home. If someone breaks in I have video recording that I can provide police. I also live in a safe expensive neighborhood and naturally we have police cameras and a well funded police force. They have what they need to make sure no one breaks into my house and get away with it.
More importantly, can _I_ log into the cameras? Because allowing randos into the data is the real ask.
I understand that the unspoken assumption is that (unlike internet randos such as myself) LEOs and your local government and every other jerk to whom they decide to grant access are universally "good and well intentioned".
But I am always astonished that folks really believe that assumption when stated as such.
If you give up on that assumption, though, the actual reality is that there isn't a difference between only letting literally everyone who has or knows someone with a .gov address access who comes and goes from your house and letting every random dumbass such as myself access that information.
So to put the overall point first: democracy and freedom can require putting some money and effort into protecting rights, preventing abuse, preventing dragnets, and honestly addressing second/third/nth order effects that people are worried about, etc, even if you're trying to improve something. In this particular case, it's REALLY not difficult to envision systems that would achieve a better balance for the "officially stated case" [0] you describe, and thus be more likely to win the public's approval. We could use the same basic from-the-founding historical check of requiring a warrant and specifics for a search for example, and update that for modern times. The US judiciary could establish a solid internal PKI system and every judge could have an HSM of their own, then we could have a system where all footage, search capabilities and so on were encrypted and it literally required a judge's cryptographic signature on a warrant that had enforceable technical boundaries in time and space, with everything immutably documented. That wouldn't prevent the occasional bad judge and bad warrant, but just as with traditional searches it'd be a strong low pass filter and change incentives and accountability significantly.
So you have presented (amongst other things) a very black & white false dichotomy. You're claiming a bad, prone to abuse system is the only possible way to respond to your stated threat scenario. But it's just not. And you do actually need to win the public's approval not just browbeat them.
Moving on:
>It's like if you're trying to catch someone who robbed a home
It's notable how you didn't say "trying to catch someone who had gay sex" (a felony in some states until 22 years ago), "trying to catch someone who had an abortion" (back as a felony all of a sudden), "trying to catch someone brought as a child to the US who is in the green card process", "trying to catch someone who had a state reported stolen because the car dealership reported the car missing 6 months ago but it was found 2 months ago but the databases were never designed to get real time updates so there's a lag" and so on and so forth. Or more straight forwardly "it's like if you're a cop trying to catch your ex-girlfriend who said mean things about you on social media". You're on HN, you've been part of plenty of this, I don't think it's good faith discussion on your part to reach for an emotional tug and a lot of people here recognize and resent the technique.
And again see the first thing: in this case, why could the police not get a proper narrowly tailored warrant? They have plenty of clear, straight forward probable cause do they not?
>So you follow the car, and then you enter a dead zone [...] You're now at a dead end.
Wait, you said you were following the car? Police can do that you know, without massively networked surveillance nets, they have cars too, and they can follow cars. They can also put out an alert to keep an eye out. You'll need to quantify the gain here vs the cost.
>So I guess that's a win as that first camera is not very useful. And this is a good thing? I don't see your point.
I truly don't think you're making a good faith effort to see anyone's point at all.
----
0: I'm using scarequotes there and giving it a footnote because I also want to emphasize that part of our suspicion is that, precisely because of obvious improvements, the "stop the robber!!", like "think of the children1!!!!", is primarily a cover story for far... less popular things that elite powers want to do to us. Meaningful checks and balances are possible, implementation importance aside that they haven't even bothered to try from the start tells a story of absence all by itself.
On the flip side, you are Uber and you’re trying to decide if you should charge the “low price” or the “high price” to somebody who just opened your app.
Luckily the person you’re about to make an offer to lives within the flock network so you quickly get pings from the last week that they shopped at Whole Foods and dropped by a dispensary on the way home. Yeah this person probably has disposable income, let’s charge them the 30% increased rate.
Or maybe you’re a future employer - oh this guy stopped at a dispensary 12 years ago? The algorithm will give him +4 risk points before we make our hiring decision. Plus he regularly goes to this bad neighborhood (which the algorithm doesn’t know is where his sister lives that he visits), that’s another +9 risk points.
AND on the darker side — if you knew they did this, would you visit your sister less?
There's some proper shareholder-oriented thinking! Even I was falling into the trap of purely considering Flock in a governmental context, and thus the potential for law abuse. But of course, they're not government, they're a private (indeed YC backed, Summer 2017) company. Policing might be their tent-pole and install argument but once in place there's all sorts of potential profitable revenue streams they might turn their minds too.
Pretty sure flock network isn't available to Uber.
As an aside, some people have an uncanny ability to take two things that are different in every conceivable way except one, and use the one similarity as the basis for an analogy.
This has always been how the dystopian sci-fi future works. If you can get just get to 'the <future/decayed sounding name> zone' you are outside the big brother tracking.
It's also why a big brother system will always become full on/more and more big brother, because it needs to suck up and remove all the dead ends.
> Perhaps it’s the local summer diet of deep-fried cheese curds, corn on the cob, and Spotted Cow, but Wisconsin residents have been feeling pretty dyspeptic about Flock’s automated license plate cameras.
Or... perhaps it's because Wisconsin is a hotbed of progressive politics?
Wisconsin is a "purple" state, but that's somewhat misleading, because the people aren't generally "centrist". Rather, the state is deeply divided between left wing and right wing, as evidenced by Wisconsin's polar opposite Senators Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson.
Right vs left wing is a silly idea. What does my position on health care have to do with my position on defense? Now consider the above question, but substitution any two of the thousands of different things the government does. At best the two are a loose alignment, but there is no unity.
Support for Trump is not crumbling. His base still supports him. What is crumbling is the alliance of "right wing" people who never really liked/supported Trump, but were willing to accept him for the alliance. This is enough to turn the next election, but the "right wing" (again, whatever that is...) is still there and mostly hasn't change positions.
You so completely lost my point that I can't even figure out how you got to your reply from mine (after reading both again), much less how to get you back on track. I know I'm not the best writer, but I didn't think I'm that bad.
I'm only responding at all in hopes that someone can help me understand the confusion and perhaps explain things in a way you can understand.
Well and leftist voters don't like neoliberals that seemingly sit around finding knew ways to jerk off corporations while pretending they are doing it for the working class.
I would really disagree that opposing Trump hard enough is the reason. It’s probably the opposite, the entire party has become “oppose Trump” and has treated that like a platform instead of doing things actual voters want.
Bernie was probably the most popular presidential candidate in Michigan during the 2016 and 2020 elections. They also have legal weed, despite the local republicans doing everything possible to stop it and sabotage it. Doesn't seem that bad to me.
It’s not as uninteresting as you imply. There’s also a strong union-blue presence (also seen on the south side of Chicago), where there are swaths of blue collar union workers who vote blue due to financial progressivism rather than social progressivism. You’ll find pockets of people who have no problem pulling out racial slurs but also voted for Kamala.
There’s also what I call the “Janesville conservative”, or people who likely worked or know someone who worked for Scott Walker and/or Paul Ryan. Their politics are much more conservative coastal elite / country club rather rural / pastoral.
The largest number of union members in Wisconsin may be government workers. (Incidentally, the outgoing Governor was originally a public school teacher.)
> people who likely worked or know someone who worked for Scott Walker and/or Paul Ryan.
What do you mean by "worked for"? If you meant that literally, it wouldn't be an electorally significant number of people.
WRT "uninteresting", this phrasing I found reductive to the rather interesting political dynamics in Wisconsin:
> Wisconsin is a "purple" state, but that's somewhat misleading, because the people aren't generally "centrist". Rather, the state is deeply divided between left wing and right wing, as evidenced by Wisconsin's polar opposite Senators Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson.
WRT union-blue presence, I'm speaking from a position of firsthand experience: friends and family who are union-blue and not public sector workers. Paper mill workers and railroaders, specifically.
WRT "worked for", you'll notice my full phrasing included "or know someone who worked for". Janesville is not a sprawling metropolis and most people know most people. Paul Ryan and Scott Walker have deep connections with the south-central part of the state, which has a thick flavor of coastal / country club elite that is not found elsewhere in Wisconsin. Ryan and Walker's success in Wisconsin is interesting given how much they were not rural yokels and would stick out like a sore thumb in most taverns north of the conifer line. Ron Johnson was part of that same anti-Obama political wave, but he's maintained his presence by embracing MAGA in a way that Ryan and Walker never did.
> WRT union-blue presence, I'm speaking from a position of firsthand experience: friends and family who are union-blue and not public sector workers. Paper mill workers and railroaders, specifically.
I'm certainly not denying their existence, but their political potency is another matter.
> Janesville is not a sprawling metropolis and most people know most people.
That's ridiculous. I've lived in smaller cities than Janesville, live in one now, and most people do not in fact know most people. I don't even know most of the people who live in my building.
> Ryan and Walker's success in Wisconsin is interesting given how much they were not rural yokels and would stick out like a sore thumb in most taverns north of the conifer line.
This is true of most politicians, indeed Trump himself. Politicians are not "average" people.
> There is some centrism in there, especially if you consider that MAGA is further right than the Tea Party, and have probably successfully shifted the Overton window.
I put "centrist" in quotes specifically because I think the line theory of politics is bunk, the idea that political views can be put on a line of left-center-right or liberal-moderate-conservative. The elections of Trump should have completely refuted that theory, but it somehow survives in reality denial form. Anyway, I don't think the Tea Party was ever centrist.
Idk man I think you're just going to argue point-by-point literally anything I write. I'm pointing out, as someone very familiar with Wisconsin, that coming onto this forum and making claims about the state that reduces its political dynamics to "deeply divided between left wing and right wing" is silly.
> I think you're just going to argue point-by-point literally anything I write.
What's wrong with arguing point by point?
> I'm pointing out, as someone very familiar with Wisconsin, that coming onto this forum and making claims about the state
I would point out that I live in Wisconsin and have lived in Wisconsin for more than 30 years. You?
> reduces its political dynamics to "deeply divided between left wing and right wing"
I don't think "reduces" is a fair characterization. My point is that although Wisconsin is a "swing" state, it often swings quite wildly, again evidenced by its two Senators for example, so purple does not imply centrist or moderate, and the superficial appearance of Wisconsin election results does not preclude it from being a hotbed of progressive politics (and/or the opposite of progressive politics).
I was wondering the other day, while reading about a woman thrown in jail based on a false report form Flock... How can Flock be fully insulated from the consequences of making thousands of false reports to the police? People can go to prison for less.
The same way my neighbors are insulated from consequences when they make an outright false complaint: they claim that they believed the information was true.
People go to prison for providing incorrect data without malicious intent? Are you sure? Anyway, working under contract with the police is not the same as calling in a report. Even if you wish it were.
There is such thing as criminal negligence. Not saying that's what happened here, but people do sometimes go to prison for being uniquely bad at their jobs.
I would like to live in a world where Flock is liable for providing unreliable insights to law enforcement, who then use it to infringe upon civil liberties.
If they’re not liable in specific circumstances, then at least they’re liable on aggregate for false claims of reliability.
Lots of forensic science is dubious, if not quackery. At least in court as the accused you can challenge such evidence with expert testimony. The uncharitable interpretation of your comment is that it would be just fine and dandy if citizens had no redress against Flock and law enforcement due to poor insights.
It would be interesting to me who you identify as “the state” in America in 2026, especially given the bureaucratic and executive upheaval of the past two years, and the newly-formed relationships between corporations and government agencies.
Can someone enlighten me why Flock cameras are worse than the average security camera? How is it such a big topic now when their large network suggests that they've been in operation for quite some time by now?
Flock is a large panopticon used to control the population. It became apparent recently how Flock cameras would be used by a new administration to purge law abiding workers and residents whose only crime was their immigration status. Whether you agree or not with the policy of this purge, you still witnessed the frightening efficiency with which authorities could now track and enforce whatever policy would come down the pipe. It made clear through show of force the new threat to a free people.
If it were a single camera or location, there is much less ability to track and attempt to coerce a large population.
the best place to start, if you're legitimately curious, would probably be the many news paper articles and the many recorded city meetings where flock's controversies are brought up.
They have not been in operation for quite some time now. The large network is not a product of a long and steady roll out, but instead significant financial investment - much of which coming from people who are on record saying that democracy is a flawed system and other authoritarian soundbytes.
Bob is the town mayor. The police want XYZ. The police request from flock a detail breakdown of everywhere that Bob went in the last 5 years (this example is after flock has been around a while) and then feeds that into AI looking for patterns. The police find a mistress. The police now get everything they want for the rest of mayor Bob's term.
>Indeed, the broad backlash against Flock has grown so strong that the surveillance company last week announced mandatory new audit controls and lower default data retention periods for US users.
I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't call out how much bullshit was in that statement. They are just changing the default settings for new customers. That's it. All the deployed cameras remain the same, and new customers can just toggle those settings off of the defaults. It is so obvious that they were attempting to get credit for doing nothing, and reporters should call that out.
Vote with money, and spread the info about this cancer far and wide so everybody else votes with money. Its not a minor technical issue, the whole concept of how they operate their devices is amoral and/or unlawful in many parts of the world.
Thats the only stick with carrot these companies follow, rest is just empty PR not worth anyone's time.
Just one data point, but I've been to many policing conferences since 2020 and I think one of the main drivers of the Flock problem is a disconnect between what the public understands 'crime prevention' to mean, and what is sold to police under the same verbiage. Something I believe strongly is that healthy public safety requires both responsive action and crime prevention. When I talk about this, I will show quadrants with axes for Give/Take and Planned/Responsive, and try to get people to classify their public safety activities to see where they fall. To me it should be somewhat balanced. Everything concentrated in Take/Responsive is an incomplete strategic plan.
However, most tools available to police are designed to be responsive; they help catch a criminal that has already done something bad. This is not crime prevention. Nothing was prevented. Anyone living in an American city knows these cameras don't prevent much.
It is also (unfortunately) a very vendor driven industry. IACP is a big deal each year, and Flock / Axon / Motorola go all out on spending to influence decision makers.
Talking to communities, in my experience, they ask for crime prevention. People want the actual incident to never have occurred in the first place. When vendors go around saying they are solving crime once and for all, but all they deliver is surveillance, it builds distrust. It feels like lying, while the companies themselves get rich on public money.
Then they go on huge PR campaigns to tell the public actually what they're feelings is wrong and they should accept the surveillance. It's silly.
In the policing communications world, people often say trust is built in drops, and lost in buckets.
Of the measures available to the justice system for deterrence, increasing the perceived certainty of arrest is possibly the most effective.
An arrest also prevents the same offender from committing more crimes. Since offending is highly concentrated among a relatively small number of repeat offenders, this isn't insignificant.
A camera does not prevent the first crime that it records. But a system that makes detection more likely can reduce later crime.
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[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 23.3 ms ] threadAs the article notes, in some cases a locality might try to switch to a competitor, but the competitive community pressure here is still useful. Seems like a rare time where it creates an actual direct incentive to consider what will be popular amongst the people all over, even if certain LEAs etc personally might want more.
So I guess that's a win as that first camera is not very useful. And this is a good thing? I don't see your point.
Try coming up w a better analogy
I understand that the unspoken assumption is that (unlike internet randos such as myself) LEOs and your local government and every other jerk to whom they decide to grant access are universally "good and well intentioned".
But I am always astonished that folks really believe that assumption when stated as such.
If you give up on that assumption, though, the actual reality is that there isn't a difference between only letting literally everyone who has or knows someone with a .gov address access who comes and goes from your house and letting every random dumbass such as myself access that information.
So you have presented (amongst other things) a very black & white false dichotomy. You're claiming a bad, prone to abuse system is the only possible way to respond to your stated threat scenario. But it's just not. And you do actually need to win the public's approval not just browbeat them.
Moving on:
>It's like if you're trying to catch someone who robbed a home
It's notable how you didn't say "trying to catch someone who had gay sex" (a felony in some states until 22 years ago), "trying to catch someone who had an abortion" (back as a felony all of a sudden), "trying to catch someone brought as a child to the US who is in the green card process", "trying to catch someone who had a state reported stolen because the car dealership reported the car missing 6 months ago but it was found 2 months ago but the databases were never designed to get real time updates so there's a lag" and so on and so forth. Or more straight forwardly "it's like if you're a cop trying to catch your ex-girlfriend who said mean things about you on social media". You're on HN, you've been part of plenty of this, I don't think it's good faith discussion on your part to reach for an emotional tug and a lot of people here recognize and resent the technique.
And again see the first thing: in this case, why could the police not get a proper narrowly tailored warrant? They have plenty of clear, straight forward probable cause do they not?
>So you follow the car, and then you enter a dead zone [...] You're now at a dead end.
Wait, you said you were following the car? Police can do that you know, without massively networked surveillance nets, they have cars too, and they can follow cars. They can also put out an alert to keep an eye out. You'll need to quantify the gain here vs the cost.
>So I guess that's a win as that first camera is not very useful. And this is a good thing? I don't see your point.
I truly don't think you're making a good faith effort to see anyone's point at all.
----
0: I'm using scarequotes there and giving it a footnote because I also want to emphasize that part of our suspicion is that, precisely because of obvious improvements, the "stop the robber!!", like "think of the children1!!!!", is primarily a cover story for far... less popular things that elite powers want to do to us. Meaningful checks and balances are possible, implementation importance aside that they haven't even bothered to try from the start tells a story of absence all by itself.
Luckily the person you’re about to make an offer to lives within the flock network so you quickly get pings from the last week that they shopped at Whole Foods and dropped by a dispensary on the way home. Yeah this person probably has disposable income, let’s charge them the 30% increased rate.
Or maybe you’re a future employer - oh this guy stopped at a dispensary 12 years ago? The algorithm will give him +4 risk points before we make our hiring decision. Plus he regularly goes to this bad neighborhood (which the algorithm doesn’t know is where his sister lives that he visits), that’s another +9 risk points.
AND on the darker side — if you knew they did this, would you visit your sister less?
As an aside, some people have an uncanny ability to take two things that are different in every conceivable way except one, and use the one similarity as the basis for an analogy.
It's also why a big brother system will always become full on/more and more big brother, because it needs to suck up and remove all the dead ends.
Or... perhaps it's because Wisconsin is a hotbed of progressive politics?
Wisconsin is a "purple" state, but that's somewhat misleading, because the people aren't generally "centrist". Rather, the state is deeply divided between left wing and right wing, as evidenced by Wisconsin's polar opposite Senators Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson.
Support for Trump is not crumbling. His base still supports him. What is crumbling is the alliance of "right wing" people who never really liked/supported Trump, but were willing to accept him for the alliance. This is enough to turn the next election, but the "right wing" (again, whatever that is...) is still there and mostly hasn't change positions.
Plenty if you're in charge of allocating finite resources. Look up "guns vs butter"
I'm only responding at all in hopes that someone can help me understand the confusion and perhaps explain things in a way you can understand.
Trump's disapproval is all Democrats.
DNC's disapproval is all Republicans plus many/most Democrats (for not opposing Trump hard enough).
Ah, yes, Wisconsin. Famously more progressive than the bordering states of Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois (I'll give you Iowa).
Attitudes on surveillance follow economics more than anything else.
Wisconsin actually is famously progressive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Progressive_Party
"Milwaukee is a city where socialists have found success to a greater extent than any other U.S. city" https://uwm.edu/lib-collections/mke-socialism/
There’s also what I call the “Janesville conservative”, or people who likely worked or know someone who worked for Scott Walker and/or Paul Ryan. Their politics are much more conservative coastal elite / country club rather rural / pastoral.
Uninteresting?
> There’s also a strong union-blue presence
The largest number of union members in Wisconsin may be government workers. (Incidentally, the outgoing Governor was originally a public school teacher.)
> people who likely worked or know someone who worked for Scott Walker and/or Paul Ryan.
What do you mean by "worked for"? If you meant that literally, it wouldn't be an electorally significant number of people.
> Wisconsin is a "purple" state, but that's somewhat misleading, because the people aren't generally "centrist". Rather, the state is deeply divided between left wing and right wing, as evidenced by Wisconsin's polar opposite Senators Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson.
WRT union-blue presence, I'm speaking from a position of firsthand experience: friends and family who are union-blue and not public sector workers. Paper mill workers and railroaders, specifically.
WRT "worked for", you'll notice my full phrasing included "or know someone who worked for". Janesville is not a sprawling metropolis and most people know most people. Paul Ryan and Scott Walker have deep connections with the south-central part of the state, which has a thick flavor of coastal / country club elite that is not found elsewhere in Wisconsin. Ryan and Walker's success in Wisconsin is interesting given how much they were not rural yokels and would stick out like a sore thumb in most taverns north of the conifer line. Ron Johnson was part of that same anti-Obama political wave, but he's maintained his presence by embracing MAGA in a way that Ryan and Walker never did.
I'm certainly not denying their existence, but their political potency is another matter.
> Janesville is not a sprawling metropolis and most people know most people.
That's ridiculous. I've lived in smaller cities than Janesville, live in one now, and most people do not in fact know most people. I don't even know most of the people who live in my building.
> Ryan and Walker's success in Wisconsin is interesting given how much they were not rural yokels and would stick out like a sore thumb in most taverns north of the conifer line.
This is true of most politicians, indeed Trump himself. Politicians are not "average" people.
> There is some centrism in there, especially if you consider that MAGA is further right than the Tea Party, and have probably successfully shifted the Overton window.
I put "centrist" in quotes specifically because I think the line theory of politics is bunk, the idea that political views can be put on a line of left-center-right or liberal-moderate-conservative. The elections of Trump should have completely refuted that theory, but it somehow survives in reality denial form. Anyway, I don't think the Tea Party was ever centrist.
What's wrong with arguing point by point?
> I'm pointing out, as someone very familiar with Wisconsin, that coming onto this forum and making claims about the state
I would point out that I live in Wisconsin and have lived in Wisconsin for more than 30 years. You?
> reduces its political dynamics to "deeply divided between left wing and right wing"
I don't think "reduces" is a fair characterization. My point is that although Wisconsin is a "swing" state, it often swings quite wildly, again evidenced by its two Senators for example, so purple does not imply centrist or moderate, and the superficial appearance of Wisconsin election results does not preclude it from being a hotbed of progressive politics (and/or the opposite of progressive politics).
People go to prison for providing incorrect data without malicious intent? Are you sure? Anyway, working under contract with the police is not the same as calling in a report. Even if you wish it were.
If they’re not liable in specific circumstances, then at least they’re liable on aggregate for false claims of reliability.
Lots of forensic science is dubious, if not quackery. At least in court as the accused you can challenge such evidence with expert testimony. The uncharitable interpretation of your comment is that it would be just fine and dandy if citizens had no redress against Flock and law enforcement due to poor insights.
Bad shit has always been tolerated when done in furtherance of the state's goals.
If it were a single camera or location, there is much less ability to track and attempt to coerce a large population.
even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_Safety#Controversies is a good start
The number of cameras rolled out since 2025 is insane.
(ironic URL)
I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't call out how much bullshit was in that statement. They are just changing the default settings for new customers. That's it. All the deployed cameras remain the same, and new customers can just toggle those settings off of the defaults. It is so obvious that they were attempting to get credit for doing nothing, and reporters should call that out.
Thats the only stick with carrot these companies follow, rest is just empty PR not worth anyone's time.
However, most tools available to police are designed to be responsive; they help catch a criminal that has already done something bad. This is not crime prevention. Nothing was prevented. Anyone living in an American city knows these cameras don't prevent much.
It is also (unfortunately) a very vendor driven industry. IACP is a big deal each year, and Flock / Axon / Motorola go all out on spending to influence decision makers.
Talking to communities, in my experience, they ask for crime prevention. People want the actual incident to never have occurred in the first place. When vendors go around saying they are solving crime once and for all, but all they deliver is surveillance, it builds distrust. It feels like lying, while the companies themselves get rich on public money.
Then they go on huge PR campaigns to tell the public actually what they're feelings is wrong and they should accept the surveillance. It's silly.
In the policing communications world, people often say trust is built in drops, and lost in buckets.
Of the measures available to the justice system for deterrence, increasing the perceived certainty of arrest is possibly the most effective.
An arrest also prevents the same offender from committing more crimes. Since offending is highly concentrated among a relatively small number of repeat offenders, this isn't insignificant.
A camera does not prevent the first crime that it records. But a system that makes detection more likely can reduce later crime.