The fact that 659,880 vehicles were stolen last year doesn't automatically lead to a suspension of personal privacy and the granting of authority to police officers beyond what they appear to be able to responsibly wield. I don't accept hand waving past the lack of oversight, transparency, and consequences to those who abuse their authority in the hopes that some meaningful portion of the 659,880 vehicle thefts are closed or reduced in future years.

It was 850,708 in 2024. That 23% drop had little to do with Flock, and is mainly the Kia/Hyundai software fixes, post-pandemic crime continuing to trending down, and focused programs in some communities around reminding people to lock their vehicles, hide valuables, etc. (you may have seen these signs in your area or the PSAs). Supporters of Flock and other camera systems tends to claim around a 10% decrease in crime for local communities that install their cameras, while the above shows that some thefts are dropping beyond that percentage regardless if cameras were installed.

Let's not put tools into the hands of people who abuse them. At least not without more significant safeguards and better transparency than we have today.

While the reasons matter they aren't relevant to the point, which is that any cops covering for bad cops aren't good cops. If the system is designed to reject good cops, then both the system and the cops are bad.

The code is AGPL'd. If they don't have another mechanism for distributing the code to anyone entitled to receive it then kinda: closing the repo isn't illegal, but not observing the license is unlawful, and grounds for legal action.

People evacuating benefit from information on evacuation, like which routes are viable. This can change while in transit, and the cell phone network goes to shit when it's leaned on at all so you need a broadcast radio information source. So yes, they fucking well do.

To my mind, nobody wants this to get to this supreme court, because the outcome could be anything someone is willing to pay for. But it's going to wind up there eventually. If it does get there under this administration the most likely outcome is something beneficial to AI service providers, quite possibly allowing GenAI to wash away copyrights. But will it do so enough to allow someone else to copyright the result, or will it be basically uncopyrightable and therefore (in the case of code or other, similar output like instructions) protectable only with secrecy? That would be an interesting outcome.

Right, they're arguing that they should be allowed to knowingly sell products which produce radio interference which affects FCC-licensed use there, devices with a public safety interest no less. Also, if their lack of shielding is affecting AM radio, then it's almost certainly affecting other things as well. That was a weird argument.

But the whole thing is weird all over for the reasons stated. Getting the radio signal into the car isn't expensive or difficult. Practically any one of us could do it with an off the shelf module which costs twenty bucks with e-tail costs and profit baked in. They're already shielding the PCB in the antenna. It's got to cost them a few dollars per unit at the absolute most to add AM even if they put a whole receiver in there. Their arguments are crappy even from a distance.

You know what Americans also deserve to know, oh exalted lawmaker of yore? Why the fuck you're pretending Mass Surveillance just fell off the back of the Flock truck when you've been around long enough to have voted for Clipper Chip kickbacks in your 401k and name your grandkids Prism and Orwell.

There's a difference between a Politician and a Representative. If you cannot uphold the Constitution and Bill of Rights to protect the very citizenry you're elected to Represent, then you are in the wrong as a lawmaker. You should not hold that title or power. You should be fired permanently. Because those enforcements Will Not Be Infringed.

At some point voters will either remember they hold the power to fix this problem, or they will lose that power. Forever.

The detective is paid to maintain the status quo first and think second, like every other cop, except that he's actually paid to think at some point.

Because they actively encourage police to believe that their matches are 100% accurate.

Cops are dumb. This is on purpose. The job is extremely boring so they filter out more intelligent people because smart people get bored and leave the job after all that expensive training.

So flock rolls in and tells these cops who already aren't the sharpest tool in the shed how accurate and amazing their software is. So the cops just take it for granted and arrest anyone the software tells them to arrest.

I mean yeah we could hire smarter police but that would require a ton of police reform nobody is willing to do. It's just easier to get rid of the flock cameras and that's at least on the table.

It's AGPL, not just GPL

You are arguing on the level of "you are holding it wrong". Pathetic and marks you as not very smart. Which, incidentally, makes you the primary LLM target group.

That is a nonsensical statement. One size does very much not have to fit all.

We had a small resurgence in some workers cleaning cabins, they switched protocol to using liquid before cleaning to trap dust from feces. It's never really contained.

I'm not the person in this thread denying that demonstrable reality exists.