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I was surprised to learn that many countries have what amounts to a flock equivalent. UK for instance has a National ANPR Service w 12k fixed cameras and 90-100

by bko 7d ago

I was surprised to learn that many countries have what amounts to a flock equivalent. UK for instance has a National ANPR Service w 12k fixed cameras and 90-100m plates read a day. They also store it much longer. Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-anpr-service-data-protection-impact-assessment/national-anpr-service-data-protection-impact-assessment-accessible https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-anpr-ser...

NoImmatureAdHom 7d ago
The UK arrests ~11,000 people a year for wrongthink. https://archive.is/vaCkJ https://archive.is/vaCkJ
cmiles8 7d ago
The UK has been a surveillance state for decades. Heck you can’t even watch television without going on a register and inspectors coming to your door verifying your TV paperwork is in order. Imagine trying that in the US! This sort of thing is just starting more broadly in the US and Americans are not happy about it. It’s the new political hot potato where behind the scenes they’re pressured to support it but publicly saying so is political kryptonite. For US politicians the only thing worse than saying you support Flock cameras is advocating for an AI data center in your community.
- bko 7d ago
  I never thought of UK as a police state. How about Netherlands w a similar program? Non watchlist plates are kept for 28 days compared to most flock implementations that keep for 7 https://www.politie.nl/informatie/waar-staan-anpr-cameras.html https://www.politie.nl/informatie/waar-staan-anpr-cameras.ht...
  - atmosx 7d ago
    I always thought of the UK and London especially as most tightly monitored city on the planet. By far.
  - p-e-w 7d ago
    The funny thing is that countries commonly called “police states” aren’t, while countries not thought of as such are. Most Western countries have 2-3 times as many police officers per capita as China and Russia. Many people in China have had not a single encounter with authorities in their lifetime (other than basic administrative tasks). Meanwhile, in some EU countries, you need government approval to add a roof window to your own house, and you better believe there are inspectors and fines enforcing that.
    - mrngld 7d ago
      Not at all true of your average Chinese. Remember, the Great Leap Forward and it's enormous famine and death and violent social upheaval is all within living memory. A few small pockets of the country had only minimal starving thanks to local authorities that quietly disobeyed Mao's directives and managed to 'fly under the radar' so to speak, but outside of those areas virtually everyone was touched in one way or another. Most of them are also extremely aware and very effected by the modern day rural/urban birth location apartheid, where if you're born outside of certain areas you can move to others -- but your kids will get 2nd-rate (if any) education, you won't get health care, etc. And that's not to even speak of your lived experience if you're an ethnic minority in China. Tibetans don't self-immolate out of boredom. Can't speak about Russia, the Russians I know personally all left before the Putin era really got going and isn't reflective of the current state of affairs over there, but what you said is the opposite of truth regarding China.
    - cucumber3732842 7d ago
      Western countries are richer per capita, they can afford more government per capita. Higher yields mean more overhead for taxes. More overhead more taxes means more money for the lord. More money for the lord means more men at arm. More men at arms means more ability to shake down the peasants for even more. It's a self feeding cycle, well until you get out competed by the next country that didn't waste all that overhead trying to enforce a local maximum.
    - brookst 7d ago
      By “police state” people generally mean one where day to day behavior, speech, and thought are tightly controlled by the government. Not so much police per capita or building codes. We can debate whether the government has a legitimate interest in ensuring that rooftop windows don’t make house fires dramatically more dangerous, but I don’t think there’s much debate to be had about whether it should be a crime to own a picture of a man standing in front of a tank.
  - elric 7d ago
    Why not? The UK has been a police state for decades. They have a long history of mass surveillance and of cracking down on protests.
  - tokai 7d ago
    Uk has been widely know as a budding police state for years. V for Vendetta was written in the 80s partially as a commentary on the British states turn towards a police state. This poster is from 2002: https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/posters/item/2003-3170 https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/po...
    - cmiles8 7d ago
      And right after seeing those posters you’d see big ads on the Tube walls that says things like: >>We have the name and address of everyone in the UK without a TV license. Inspectors on on their way now to your home to investigate. Also lookup “TV detector vans” which is another hilarious bit of the theatre of the UK police state Seeing that as someone visiting the UK on vacation was a real eye opener, like what the heck kind of police state is this
- budman1 7d ago
  For the record, the honorable governer of texas, a mr. abbott, pledges his undivided love for the Donald. And he has publicly denounced Flock cameras and data center development in the past month. Amazing what polling does to a politician.
ExoticPearTree 7d ago
That fact that in the UK or China you are surveiled non-stop it does not mean Americans want the same to happen to them.
- shuwix 7d ago
  [dead]
- bko 7d ago
  Don't forget Belgium, Netherlands, sweden, Germany, France and many others! Google national ANPR [country]
  - ExoticPearTree 7d ago
    There is a difference between ANPR and what Flock does.
    - bko 7d ago
      Which is... I like how you're so nuanced when I'm pretty sure you never heard the acronym ANPR before
      - ExoticPearTree 7d ago
        You are right.
  - fmobus 7d ago
    Apples to oranges. Sure, there are ANPR systems in other countries, but they have to operate under very different regulations, and cannot collect information haphazardly like Flock. Using your exact suggested query for Germany will quickly tell you that mass retention of ANPR data is illegal, and only matching against "targeted suspect databases" is acceptable. Even usages of the technology in private areas have to comply with data protection rules.
    - 7d ago
ga_to 7d ago
Because Flock is privately owned while ANPR seems to my cursory research to be government owned. And we all know what private corporations do to peoples data.
- websap 7d ago
  Yes, people pretend to not understand the difference.
  - deleted 7d ago
    [deleted]
- bko 7d ago
  I'm not sure about your exp w government agencies, but in my experience, I much prefer private companies. Much easier to hold to account. Just as an example, NYC mayor is going after landlords for violations and tenant rights. He has hearings regularly. However there is no enforcement of the law when it comes to government owned housing projects, which are very often not kept up to code and are outright dangerously mismanaged
  - brookst 7d ago
    Does the city have exclusive jurisdiction over those projects? Honest question, not familiar with NYC government housing. Some places have county, state, or federal preemption.
  - ga_to 7d ago
    What big-tech companies have been _actually_ held accountable for data misuse, as in, 'consequences that actually mattered'? Being able to absorb fines just turns them into a cost-of-doing-business tax.
    - bko 7d ago
      Billions in fines is at least an incentive to invest in measures to prevent data leaks or misuse. For instance, in July 2026 the D.C. Department of Health Care Finance discovered that two reports published on its own website contained hidden underlying personal data that unauthorized users could access. The reports were supposed to show aggregate statistics, but the accessible data could include Medicaid IDs, birth dates, provider names, race, gender, ward, and ethnicity. The exposure potentially existed from 2023 until July 2026. Do you want to guess how many billions in fines or people were fired due to the leak? https://dhcf.dc.gov/page/dhcf-data-incident https://dhcf.dc.gov/page/dhcf-data-incident
xienze 7d ago
> Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online. Nobody really cared until they realized that it could be used to more effectively round up our precious illegal immigrants.
- sophacles 7d ago
  We care about the immigrants becaus we know the rest of the fucking poem.
  - bko 7d ago
    I too base my political beliefs on poetry
    - harimau777 7d ago
      You do realize that humans use art to communicate difficult or emotional ideas including political beliefs, right?
      - bko 7d ago
        It makes me feel so much better than someone can be one-shotted into a political belief with a poem. I was worried they would rely too much on reasoning and evidence.
        sophacles 7d ago
        The poem in question conveys not just accurate history, but also it presents an argument in favor of standing for your neighbors . Even more, it conveys the feeling of loneliness when it comes to be your turn - both another argument for community and just a reminder that actual real humans are involves. Not bad for a few lines of text... very efficient. Of course your whole statement is ridiculous - the notion that a poem is the foundation of a belief rather than a good conveyance of it, is so stupid that all you are saying is that you can't come up with a good argument and are reaching for bad, unfunny snark to deflect.
FinnKuhn 7d ago
The US isn't the UK or China and different cultures deem different things as acceptable. The UK for example is also a monarchy, which would rial up people in the US if proposed there. Additionally the trust that the government uses these cameras as intended is apparently higher in the UK than the trust of Americans that Flock will not misuse their surveillance technology.
- bko 7d ago
  Doesn't UK arrest a few thousand people a year for social media posts? What are you basing this high degree of trust on?
  - brookst 7d ago
    Source for “a few thousand”?
  - FinnKuhn 7d ago
    In the UK overall, 64% of the population support police use of facial recognition technology to some degree and only 11% were opposed to its use [1]. The survey also looks at support for different szenarios, but overall many generally did not oppose it, while in the US 47% oppose the use of flock cameras [2]. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-attitudes-to-police-use-of-facial-recognition-technology/public-attitudes-to-police-use-of-facial-recognition-technology#headline-findings https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-attitudes-... [2] https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/florida-bans-highway-license-plate-readers-backlash-over-surveillance-spreads-2026-09-03/?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/florida-bans-highwa...
    - bko 7d ago
      The Flock stat is interesting because 46% of Americans believe widespread use of facial recognition would be a good thing (27% unsure). Maybe people oppose Flock because it's not going far enough! Or maybe there is a coordinated campaign against a license plate reader for some weird reason https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/03/17/public-more-likely-to-see-facial-recognition-use-by-police-as-good-rather-than-bad-for-society/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/03/17/public-more-...
Gigachad 7d ago
Flock became a controversy when it was being used for ICE raids and tracking people who got abortions rather than its original stated purpose of finding stolen cars.
- delfinom 7d ago
  Or you know, just stalking exs using Flock like most cops charged with wrongdoing have been.
moritonal 7d ago
Yes, but in that very link it explains how they work with the public to establish some trust? "Any current issues of public concern? It is recognised the extent of the UK network is a privacy concern and the scale of that network is likely to remain so for... The NPCC ANPR lead has established an Independent Advisory Group (IAG) chaired by the Surveillance Camera Commissioner (SCC), with a broad representation from civil society and other..."
- bko 7d ago
  Oh good, there's a government agency to submit complaints and comments to. I was concerned for a second.
  - ygjb 7d ago
    So what's the expectation here? We all know that governments are going to be corrupted. We all know that democracy sucks sometimes or even alot of the time. At least if there is a government agency to communicate with that collects that data and keeps it over time, when the government changes there is the possibility to seek redress. If the information and systems are held by corporations or other unaccountable third parties who may not be subject to public scrutiny or records keeping requirements, then how do you seek redress and enforcement over time?
toasty228 7d ago
> UK for instance It's one of the most dystopian western countries when it comes to that, not sure I'd use it as an example
- gizajob 7d ago
  How are you defining dystopian exactly? The climate is dystopian, all the rest follows naturally from that.
  - toasty228 7d ago
    It's not my opinion... > Britain rated worst in Europe for protecting privacy https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/dec/31/uk.eu https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/dec/31/uk.eu > 'UK surveillance is worse than 1984' says UN privacy chief https://www.wired.com/story/uk-digital-surveillance-joseph-cannataci/ https://www.wired.com/story/uk-digital-surveillance-joseph-c...
antonvs 7d ago
> Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online. A big reason is because there's virtually no oversight, and it's managed by a single private corporation nationwide. Neither of those things are true in the UK case. You should really educate yourself on things like this. They matter, and by your apathy and ignorance you're helping sleepwalk your country into a dystopia.
presentation 7d ago
Putting aside how disproportionately noisy some activist types are, it probably has to do with Americans having practically no trust in one another, corporations in particular, and their government by extension. At the same time, Americans tend to value some positive forms of liberty - like the ability to say and do what you want in one moment - far more than other forms of liberty - like the ability for all people to feel safe enough to be able to do the things they want. I’m an American living in Japan, I’ve always felt a great sense of liberty because of how safe it is here; I can live a lifestyle that would get me robbed pretty much immediately in the USA. While crime rates have always been relatively low here; part of that is because Japan got tough on crime around the turn of the century, and one part of that was pervasive rollout of automated license scanners used for reconstructing vehicle movement, like Flock. I suspect that Japanese people didn’t accept this because they don’t care about privacy - they absolutely do - but instead because they have a healthy enough social context to be able to consider the tradeoffs, and a government responsive enough to design around those tradeoffs; rather than immediately flying into a rage and vandalizing their cities like some angry Americans are doing now. The same thing plays out for other things that would pretty clearly be a good thing, like having a real secure national ID instead of relying on social security numbers for identity verification (terrible). Can’t do it, people (as well as criminals) value the liberty of being difficult to trace far more than the liberty of not being defrauded regularly, or having a civil service that is able to do basic functions like authenticating you for benefits efficiently. Sigh…
- brookst 7d ago
  In the US flock is routinely used by law enforcement personnel to stalk exes and for other abuses. Are police in those other countries equally untrustworthy?
  - presentation 7d ago
    To me, that’s a problem of oversight, audit trails, consequences, and the relationship of police with their communities; not of Flock itself. And based on what I’m reading, they are reacting - criminal case IDs will be required to do searches and automated monitoring of misuse will be mandatory by default soon. So the anger against Flock itself seems misplaced.
deleted 7d ago
[deleted]
harimau777 7d ago
Most of the outraged people live in the US where we have Flock. Presumably people in other countries are outraged about their local equivalent.

by bko 7d ago

NoImmatureAdHom 7d ago

The UK arrests ~11,000 people a year for wrongthink. https://archive.is/vaCkJ https://archive.is/vaCkJ

cmiles8 7d ago

The UK has been a surveillance state for decades. Heck you can’t even watch television without going on a register and inspectors coming to your door verifying your TV paperwork is in order. Imagine trying that in the US! This sort of thing is just starting more broadly in the US and Americans are not happy about it. It’s the new political hot potato where behind the scenes they’re pressured to support it but publicly saying so is political kryptonite. For US politicians the only thing worse than saying you support Flock cameras is advocating for an AI data center in your community.

bko 7d ago
I never thought of UK as a police state. How about Netherlands w a similar program? Non watchlist plates are kept for 28 days compared to most flock implementations that keep for 7 https://www.politie.nl/informatie/waar-staan-anpr-cameras.html https://www.politie.nl/informatie/waar-staan-anpr-cameras.ht...
- atmosx 7d ago
  I always thought of the UK and London especially as most tightly monitored city on the planet. By far.
- p-e-w 7d ago
  The funny thing is that countries commonly called “police states” aren’t, while countries not thought of as such are. Most Western countries have 2-3 times as many police officers per capita as China and Russia. Many people in China have had not a single encounter with authorities in their lifetime (other than basic administrative tasks). Meanwhile, in some EU countries, you need government approval to add a roof window to your own house, and you better believe there are inspectors and fines enforcing that.
  - mrngld 7d ago
    Not at all true of your average Chinese. Remember, the Great Leap Forward and it's enormous famine and death and violent social upheaval is all within living memory. A few small pockets of the country had only minimal starving thanks to local authorities that quietly disobeyed Mao's directives and managed to 'fly under the radar' so to speak, but outside of those areas virtually everyone was touched in one way or another. Most of them are also extremely aware and very effected by the modern day rural/urban birth location apartheid, where if you're born outside of certain areas you can move to others -- but your kids will get 2nd-rate (if any) education, you won't get health care, etc. And that's not to even speak of your lived experience if you're an ethnic minority in China. Tibetans don't self-immolate out of boredom. Can't speak about Russia, the Russians I know personally all left before the Putin era really got going and isn't reflective of the current state of affairs over there, but what you said is the opposite of truth regarding China.
  - cucumber3732842 7d ago
    Western countries are richer per capita, they can afford more government per capita. Higher yields mean more overhead for taxes. More overhead more taxes means more money for the lord. More money for the lord means more men at arm. More men at arms means more ability to shake down the peasants for even more. It's a self feeding cycle, well until you get out competed by the next country that didn't waste all that overhead trying to enforce a local maximum.
  - brookst 7d ago
    By “police state” people generally mean one where day to day behavior, speech, and thought are tightly controlled by the government. Not so much police per capita or building codes. We can debate whether the government has a legitimate interest in ensuring that rooftop windows don’t make house fires dramatically more dangerous, but I don’t think there’s much debate to be had about whether it should be a crime to own a picture of a man standing in front of a tank.
- elric 7d ago
  Why not? The UK has been a police state for decades. They have a long history of mass surveillance and of cracking down on protests.
- tokai 7d ago
  Uk has been widely know as a budding police state for years. V for Vendetta was written in the 80s partially as a commentary on the British states turn towards a police state. This poster is from 2002: https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/posters/item/2003-3170 https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/po...
  - cmiles8 7d ago
    And right after seeing those posters you’d see big ads on the Tube walls that says things like: >>We have the name and address of everyone in the UK without a TV license. Inspectors on on their way now to your home to investigate. Also lookup “TV detector vans” which is another hilarious bit of the theatre of the UK police state Seeing that as someone visiting the UK on vacation was a real eye opener, like what the heck kind of police state is this
budman1 7d ago
For the record, the honorable governer of texas, a mr. abbott, pledges his undivided love for the Donald. And he has publicly denounced Flock cameras and data center development in the past month. Amazing what polling does to a politician.

ExoticPearTree 7d ago

That fact that in the UK or China you are surveiled non-stop it does not mean Americans want the same to happen to them.

shuwix 7d ago
[dead]
bko 7d ago
Don't forget Belgium, Netherlands, sweden, Germany, France and many others! Google national ANPR [country]
- ExoticPearTree 7d ago
  There is a difference between ANPR and what Flock does.
  - bko 7d ago
    Which is... I like how you're so nuanced when I'm pretty sure you never heard the acronym ANPR before
    - ExoticPearTree 7d ago
      You are right.
- fmobus 7d ago
  Apples to oranges. Sure, there are ANPR systems in other countries, but they have to operate under very different regulations, and cannot collect information haphazardly like Flock. Using your exact suggested query for Germany will quickly tell you that mass retention of ANPR data is illegal, and only matching against "targeted suspect databases" is acceptable. Even usages of the technology in private areas have to comply with data protection rules.
  - 7d ago

ga_to 7d ago

Because Flock is privately owned while ANPR seems to my cursory research to be government owned. And we all know what private corporations do to peoples data.

websap 7d ago
Yes, people pretend to not understand the difference.
- deleted 7d ago
  [deleted]
bko 7d ago
I'm not sure about your exp w government agencies, but in my experience, I much prefer private companies. Much easier to hold to account. Just as an example, NYC mayor is going after landlords for violations and tenant rights. He has hearings regularly. However there is no enforcement of the law when it comes to government owned housing projects, which are very often not kept up to code and are outright dangerously mismanaged
- brookst 7d ago
  Does the city have exclusive jurisdiction over those projects? Honest question, not familiar with NYC government housing. Some places have county, state, or federal preemption.
- ga_to 7d ago
  What big-tech companies have been _actually_ held accountable for data misuse, as in, 'consequences that actually mattered'? Being able to absorb fines just turns them into a cost-of-doing-business tax.
  - bko 7d ago
    Billions in fines is at least an incentive to invest in measures to prevent data leaks or misuse. For instance, in July 2026 the D.C. Department of Health Care Finance discovered that two reports published on its own website contained hidden underlying personal data that unauthorized users could access. The reports were supposed to show aggregate statistics, but the accessible data could include Medicaid IDs, birth dates, provider names, race, gender, ward, and ethnicity. The exposure potentially existed from 2023 until July 2026. Do you want to guess how many billions in fines or people were fired due to the leak? https://dhcf.dc.gov/page/dhcf-data-incident https://dhcf.dc.gov/page/dhcf-data-incident

xienze 7d ago

> Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online. Nobody really cared until they realized that it could be used to more effectively round up our precious illegal immigrants.

sophacles 7d ago
We care about the immigrants becaus we know the rest of the fucking poem.
- bko 7d ago
  I too base my political beliefs on poetry
  - harimau777 7d ago
    You do realize that humans use art to communicate difficult or emotional ideas including political beliefs, right?
    - bko 7d ago
      It makes me feel so much better than someone can be one-shotted into a political belief with a poem. I was worried they would rely too much on reasoning and evidence.
      - sophacles 7d ago
        The poem in question conveys not just accurate history, but also it presents an argument in favor of standing for your neighbors . Even more, it conveys the feeling of loneliness when it comes to be your turn - both another argument for community and just a reminder that actual real humans are involves. Not bad for a few lines of text... very efficient. Of course your whole statement is ridiculous - the notion that a poem is the foundation of a belief rather than a good conveyance of it, is so stupid that all you are saying is that you can't come up with a good argument and are reaching for bad, unfunny snark to deflect.

FinnKuhn 7d ago

The US isn't the UK or China and different cultures deem different things as acceptable. The UK for example is also a monarchy, which would rial up people in the US if proposed there. Additionally the trust that the government uses these cameras as intended is apparently higher in the UK than the trust of Americans that Flock will not misuse their surveillance technology.

bko 7d ago
Doesn't UK arrest a few thousand people a year for social media posts? What are you basing this high degree of trust on?
- brookst 7d ago
  Source for “a few thousand”?
- FinnKuhn 7d ago
  In the UK overall, 64% of the population support police use of facial recognition technology to some degree and only 11% were opposed to its use [1]. The survey also looks at support for different szenarios, but overall many generally did not oppose it, while in the US 47% oppose the use of flock cameras [2]. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-attitudes-to-police-use-of-facial-recognition-technology/public-attitudes-to-police-use-of-facial-recognition-technology#headline-findings https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-attitudes-... [2] https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/florida-bans-highway-license-plate-readers-backlash-over-surveillance-spreads-2026-09-03/?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/florida-bans-highwa...
  - bko 7d ago
    The Flock stat is interesting because 46% of Americans believe widespread use of facial recognition would be a good thing (27% unsure). Maybe people oppose Flock because it's not going far enough! Or maybe there is a coordinated campaign against a license plate reader for some weird reason https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/03/17/public-more-likely-to-see-facial-recognition-use-by-police-as-good-rather-than-bad-for-society/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/03/17/public-more-...

Gigachad 7d ago

Flock became a controversy when it was being used for ICE raids and tracking people who got abortions rather than its original stated purpose of finding stolen cars.

delfinom 7d ago
Or you know, just stalking exs using Flock like most cops charged with wrongdoing have been.

moritonal 7d ago

Yes, but in that very link it explains how they work with the public to establish some trust? "Any current issues of public concern? It is recognised the extent of the UK network is a privacy concern and the scale of that network is likely to remain so for... The NPCC ANPR lead has established an Independent Advisory Group (IAG) chaired by the Surveillance Camera Commissioner (SCC), with a broad representation from civil society and other..."

bko 7d ago
Oh good, there's a government agency to submit complaints and comments to. I was concerned for a second.
- ygjb 7d ago
  So what's the expectation here? We all know that governments are going to be corrupted. We all know that democracy sucks sometimes or even alot of the time. At least if there is a government agency to communicate with that collects that data and keeps it over time, when the government changes there is the possibility to seek redress. If the information and systems are held by corporations or other unaccountable third parties who may not be subject to public scrutiny or records keeping requirements, then how do you seek redress and enforcement over time?

toasty228 7d ago

> UK for instance It's one of the most dystopian western countries when it comes to that, not sure I'd use it as an example

gizajob 7d ago
How are you defining dystopian exactly? The climate is dystopian, all the rest follows naturally from that.
- toasty228 7d ago
  It's not my opinion... > Britain rated worst in Europe for protecting privacy https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/dec/31/uk.eu https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/dec/31/uk.eu > 'UK surveillance is worse than 1984' says UN privacy chief https://www.wired.com/story/uk-digital-surveillance-joseph-cannataci/ https://www.wired.com/story/uk-digital-surveillance-joseph-c...

antonvs 7d ago

> Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online. A big reason is because there's virtually no oversight, and it's managed by a single private corporation nationwide. Neither of those things are true in the UK case. You should really educate yourself on things like this. They matter, and by your apathy and ignorance you're helping sleepwalk your country into a dystopia.

presentation 7d ago

Putting aside how disproportionately noisy some activist types are, it probably has to do with Americans having practically no trust in one another, corporations in particular, and their government by extension. At the same time, Americans tend to value some positive forms of liberty - like the ability to say and do what you want in one moment - far more than other forms of liberty - like the ability for all people to feel safe enough to be able to do the things they want. I’m an American living in Japan, I’ve always felt a great sense of liberty because of how safe it is here; I can live a lifestyle that would get me robbed pretty much immediately in the USA. While crime rates have always been relatively low here; part of that is because Japan got tough on crime around the turn of the century, and one part of that was pervasive rollout of automated license scanners used for reconstructing vehicle movement, like Flock. I suspect that Japanese people didn’t accept this because they don’t care about privacy - they absolutely do - but instead because they have a healthy enough social context to be able to consider the tradeoffs, and a government responsive enough to design around those tradeoffs; rather than immediately flying into a rage and vandalizing their cities like some angry Americans are doing now. The same thing plays out for other things that would pretty clearly be a good thing, like having a real secure national ID instead of relying on social security numbers for identity verification (terrible). Can’t do it, people (as well as criminals) value the liberty of being difficult to trace far more than the liberty of not being defrauded regularly, or having a civil service that is able to do basic functions like authenticating you for benefits efficiently. Sigh…

brookst 7d ago
In the US flock is routinely used by law enforcement personnel to stalk exes and for other abuses. Are police in those other countries equally untrustworthy?
- presentation 7d ago
  To me, that’s a problem of oversight, audit trails, consequences, and the relationship of police with their communities; not of Flock itself. And based on what I’m reading, they are reacting - criminal case IDs will be required to do searches and automated monitoring of misuse will be mandatory by default soon. So the anger against Flock itself seems misplaced.

deleted 7d ago

[deleted]

harimau777 7d ago

Most of the outraged people live in the US where we have Flock. Presumably people in other countries are outraged about their local equivalent.