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Flock Says Its Cameras Worked 'Correctly' When Police Tracked and Ambushed Me for No Reason (www.thedrive.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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A brief recap: a few weeks ago I’d taken the $155,000 Range Rover I was testing out to run some errands with my wife in Plymouth, Minnesota. I was backing out of a parking space in front of my local Kohl’s when four cop cars came screaming up and “initiated a box and pin on the vehicle,” as the police report says. Hands on their guns, the officers ordered us out of the vehicle, patted us down, and eventually told us the Range Rover’s license plate—New Jersey 34 10 DTM—was stolen, they suspected the vehicle itself was stolen too, and they’d used Flock cameras to track me down over the last two days.

The scenario involving my wife and I is just one of many like it. Thomas noted that the system is 99% accurate today, but it’s performing 20 billion reads a month. That 1% error rate, of which I was a part of in June, makes for two hundred million misreads a month.

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[–] 20 points 3 months ago* (14 children)

I'm just saying a licence plate is intended as a vehicle tracking ID

Everyone here and everyone who gets them knows and understands that.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be registering cars

I didn't say or even imply you were, and the fact you clarified that anyway is bizarre – because it'd be completely batshit.

letting them trick your brain into pretending that they belong to you and are an extension of your "self" by adding fancy designs is kind of gross.

Brother, my god, it is a fucking identifier plate on your car; no one's getting "tricked", and I don't know if you can believe this, but people can enjoy making objects into extensions of themselves without becoming slaves to The Man – if you can apprehend that someone in Kentucky who pays $25/year or some shit to signal that they're into amateur radio isn't offering up their soul in a plate-shaped vessel on the altar of Rebecca Goodman.

Even if you want to bring ALPRs into this, custom plates existed long, long before we had the technology to turn plates into mass-surveillance tools.

This is so goddamn snobby that it's painful.

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  • [–] -4 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    I'm kind of in agreement with him, in that I don't see the point in paying extra to have an ID on my car that tells The Man more about me than I think they need to know, but I don't think it makes me a shill or (much of) a sucker if I get them. Everyone, including me, makes less than ideal choices. This poor choice is less egregious than most.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    I don't see the point in paying extra to have an ID on my car that tells The Man more about me than I think they need to know

    Literally what on Earth are you doing to your license plate that tells The Man more about you in a way that realistically matters? You don't need your Ashley Madison credentials to create a custom plate.

    If you're worried about dragnet surveillance, I guess it'll help them when they divide the prison camps by baseball team. If you're worried about automated surveillance like by ALPRs then, uh, pretty sure the model whose literal entire purpose is to create its own features for classification will find abundant other ways to uniquely fingerprint and extract actual, pertinent information about you. And if you're worried about targeted surveillance by humans scrutinizing you down to what your custom plate says about you, then god help you, and viva México.

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  • [–] -5 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    So, you walk into a government agency, and they say, "Thanks for providing this required information about yourself. You can provide more information about yourself to us and everyone you pass while driving your vehicle, for a fee. Remember, the more mainstream your opinion, the more it will cost." Why would anyone say yes to that proposal? And why would you get up in arms about someone saying they think that's ridiculous but generally pretty harmless?

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago* (3 children)

    If you think the magnitude of information gained is even worth considering for either (or frankly any) party, you're grossly misunderstanding the scale of the surveillance state or just have really terrible ideas for custom plates. Your plate is inherently already a 100% unique identifier; if you're worried enough that like six characters of custom text or a chosen design will in any way further government or corporate surveillance, then – and I say this as someone who frequents privacy communities, hates defeatism, and thinks people (myself included) need better privacy hygiene – have fun pissing on a forest fire.

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  • [–] -5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    You say you're into privacy communities, but you sound like someone who pays to get more ads. As for reading comprehension, what exactly does pretty harmless mean to you?

    My first thought when reading your previous reply is that you're someone who likes to argue for the sake of arguing. This reply has reinforced that opinion.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    My first thought when reading your previous reply is that you’re someone who likes to argue for the sake of arguing.

    Bbbbbbbbbbb wrote: "I like plate customization, its a form of self expression."

    GreenBeard responded to this totally innocuous, non-argumentative statement with: "That’s like embellishing a prison camp number with a fun design. That’s not self-expression that’s morbid." Then went on to call the practice "gross" and "tacky" and the people who get custom plates under a "sad illusion" and "letting themselves be tricked".

    Again, in response to just an extremely benign and normal statement: "I like plate customization, its a form of self expression."

    Truly I'm the one who likes arguing for the sake of an argument here – not the person who started and perpetuated this abject, comically combative nonsense.

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  • [–] -3 points 3 months ago

    My first thought when reading your previous reply is that you’re someone who likes to argue for the sake of arguing.

    I agree with you, bc that was also the Impression I got. A very emotional/aggressive and unnecessary response/thread from tt27..

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  • [+] -7 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    I'm not really concerned what your opinion of me is. You think it's snobby to not waste money on a stylized government ID? Because that makes sense. If you want to plaster your car in your favourite things, go for it. Live your best life. If you want to paint your car like Lisa Frank exploded in a mist of glitter on it, I'm totally down. But the plate, that's not ever an extension of you. It isn't yours and it never was, and the illusion that it is, is kind of sad. But clearly, my opinion isn't a popular one, so I'll leave off. We're clearly not going to agree on this.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago* (5 children)

    You think it's snobby to not waste money on a stylized government ID?

    If you could read, you'd know I think that it's fine one way or another and that what's snobby is your obnoxious attitude toward people who do get one. The difference between you and I is that I see it as a waste of money for me and leave it at that because I don't pretend to be superior and enlightened when my level of insight that the unwashed masses surely lack is "um, didn't you know that license plates are tracking IDs?? by the government??? Fucking idiot, Sandra, with your stupid fucking 'museums are for everyone' plate with Snoopy on it."

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  • [+] -6 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Got it. You resent other people having values you don't share.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    You resent other people having values you don’t share.

    As you sit here saying those who have values you don't share are participating in something "gross", under a "sad illusion", and "letting themselves be tricked" into doing something that's "morbid", "tacky at best", and akin to "embellishing their prison camp number". lmao okay

    So are you a Mercator or a Robinson kind of guy?

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  • [+] -6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    So would you rather I assume they just don't know any better, that they lack agency and enough insight to recognize that calling it "self-expression" is internalizing an imposed identity? Or are you going to care-troll that I'm calling them stupid and helpless then?

    Yes, I think most people get that's all it is, and they do it anyway. I think the impulse to ignore external imposition is pretty deeply conditioned in people and I think that's unfortunate. Do I think it's their fault, not entirely, but do I also think they have a choice in it, I certainly do. Even when it's a matter of practical necessity, we should always be aware of identity imposed externally, because it can and often is used against you. I do think that offering customized plates is kind of gross because it's a way of dulling that awareness, and I think it's morbid that people have been conditioned to accept it, even fully cognizant of what it represents.

    And you can keep your red herring, I'm not interested.

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