That depends on the municipality and who decides to show up to meetings and make a big deal about it. If enough people get freaked out by these cameras it’s gonna cause real problems for elected officials who enable them.
The people who show up to town council meetings lean heavily to the side of security over liberty. The most obvious reason is that it's mostly retired homeowners with busybody personality types.
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.
This really depends on where you live. I have no doubt that on average you’re correct but a lot of those retired homeowners are pretty upset about how the feds are behaving recently and believe it or not when your material needs are met some people actually try to use their privilege to help those most likely to be victimized by the surveillance state
I live in a very liberty minded county. The kind of place with no building codes and pretty much no police. All our cameras on county/municipal property were voted disabled.
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.
I don't agree. I watched a concerted effort, involving a good deal of public comment (which: not a very effective tool for change; you have better tools in your arsenal), and vanishingly little of it took the "there's always going to be risk, crime isn't everything" tack. "This stuff doesn't work and causes more problems than it solves" is the effective answer, not this George Floyd stuff.
It's unpopular with residents. Residents do not have the attitude towards crime reflected in the comment I replied to. It's a very online thing to say.
Yeah perhaps it's a bit inflammatory and terminally online of me to say. But it's true. Zero crime means zero crime. Minority report levels of surveilance and policing.
What stance would you recommend? You're one of the folks here i recognize immediatedy and have a wealth of wisdom.
You're 100% correct, and in fact I think you've touched upon partly explaining why fascism and authoritarianism is not just on the doorstep, it's got a foot in the door (without a warrant) and is asking^W trying to force its way in saying "it's just a quick search, you have nothing to hide cause you're not doing anything wrong, are you?"
Realism isn't very palatable. Most folks want to stay in their little rat race lane and push their little skinner box lever and get their little variable interval algorithmic treato, and they are content with that. That's fine. It's just a shame they gotta tighten the noose around absolutely everyone else for a morsel of safety.
I don't agree with basically any of this. I don't think people who oppose crime, or recoil from arguments suggesting deliberate tradeoffs involving more crime, are stuck in little skinner boxes.
I'm probably not doing a great job of getting my point across, and most of that is on me. Let me try to clarify.
Every aspect of cybernetics (whether it be engineering, society/politics, biology) involves deliberate tradeoffs. In metaphor, we have a big knob with "liberty/crime" on one side and "surveillance/safety" on the other. It's highly nonlinear and there are diminishing returns at both extrema. Everyone (subconsciously) has some ideal point where they think that crime-o-stat should be set.
I'm saying don't turn it up to 11, and it's already set pretty high. It's increasingly technologically possible, and I think it's a bad thing to chase the long tail. I'm pretty happy with where we are at the present, but corporations keep marketing we need more cameras, more detection, more ALPRs, more algos, more predictive policing, more safety, who doesn't want to be more safe? I think it's very precarious.
I reiterate: it's uncomfortable, but I don't want to live in a world with zero crimes because everyone has probably committed crimes without even knowing it. The costs, both fiscal and in terms of civil liberties, of chasing ever-decreasing-crime are far higher than finding some stable setpoint that balances privacy and liberty with measures that justly deter crime. Let us not let the cure become worse than the disease.
Refusing to return escaped slaves used to be illegal. Inter-racial marriage used to be illegal. Gay marriage and even gay relationships used to be illegal. Crime is not necessarily wrong.
That depends on the municipality and who decides to show up to meetings and make a big deal about it. If enough people get freaked out by these cameras it’s gonna cause real problems for elected officials who enable them.
The people who show up to town council meetings lean heavily to the side of security over liberty. The most obvious reason is that it's mostly retired homeowners with busybody personality types.
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.
This really depends on where you live. I have no doubt that on average you’re correct but a lot of those retired homeowners are pretty upset about how the feds are behaving recently and believe it or not when your material needs are met some people actually try to use their privilege to help those most likely to be victimized by the surveillance state
I live in a very liberty minded county. The kind of place with no building codes and pretty much no police. All our cameras on county/municipal property were voted disabled.
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.
I don't agree. I watched a concerted effort, involving a good deal of public comment (which: not a very effective tool for change; you have better tools in your arsenal), and vanishingly little of it took the "there's always going to be risk, crime isn't everything" tack. "This stuff doesn't work and causes more problems than it solves" is the effective answer, not this George Floyd stuff.
I think that's kinda the point?
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.
It's unpopular with residents. Residents do not have the attitude towards crime reflected in the comment I replied to. It's a very online thing to say.
Yeah perhaps it's a bit inflammatory and terminally online of me to say. But it's true. Zero crime means zero crime. Minority report levels of surveilance and policing.
What stance would you recommend? You're one of the folks here i recognize immediatedy and have a wealth of wisdom.
I would recommend not campaigning for public policy interventions on a premise of "some crime is OK".
You're 100% correct, and in fact I think you've touched upon partly explaining why fascism and authoritarianism is not just on the doorstep, it's got a foot in the door (without a warrant) and is asking^W trying to force its way in saying "it's just a quick search, you have nothing to hide cause you're not doing anything wrong, are you?"
Realism isn't very palatable. Most folks want to stay in their little rat race lane and push their little skinner box lever and get their little variable interval algorithmic treato, and they are content with that. That's fine. It's just a shame they gotta tighten the noose around absolutely everyone else for a morsel of safety.
I don't agree with basically any of this. I don't think people who oppose crime, or recoil from arguments suggesting deliberate tradeoffs involving more crime, are stuck in little skinner boxes.
I'm probably not doing a great job of getting my point across, and most of that is on me. Let me try to clarify.
Every aspect of cybernetics (whether it be engineering, society/politics, biology) involves deliberate tradeoffs. In metaphor, we have a big knob with "liberty/crime" on one side and "surveillance/safety" on the other. It's highly nonlinear and there are diminishing returns at both extrema. Everyone (subconsciously) has some ideal point where they think that crime-o-stat should be set.
I'm saying don't turn it up to 11, and it's already set pretty high. It's increasingly technologically possible, and I think it's a bad thing to chase the long tail. I'm pretty happy with where we are at the present, but corporations keep marketing we need more cameras, more detection, more ALPRs, more algos, more predictive policing, more safety, who doesn't want to be more safe? I think it's very precarious.
I reiterate: it's uncomfortable, but I don't want to live in a world with zero crimes because everyone has probably committed crimes without even knowing it. The costs, both fiscal and in terms of civil liberties, of chasing ever-decreasing-crime are far higher than finding some stable setpoint that balances privacy and liberty with measures that justly deter crime. Let us not let the cure become worse than the disease.
Refusing to return escaped slaves used to be illegal. Inter-racial marriage used to be illegal. Gay marriage and even gay relationships used to be illegal. Crime is not necessarily wrong.
I'm sure there's a municipality somewhere where that's a viable argument, but in mine, 2020 called and wants that one back.