Agree.

If you find yourself sympathetic to Flock, you should ask yourself: do we have a right to any kind of privacy in a public space or is public space by definition a denial of any sort of privacy? This is the inherent premise in this technology that's problematic.

In Japan, for instance, there are very strict laws about broadcasting people's faces in public because there is a cultural assumption that one deserves anonymity as a form of privacy, regardless of the public visibility of their person.

I think I'd prefer to live in a place where I have some sort of recourse over when and how I'm recorded. Something more than "avoid that public intersection if you don't like it."

You can both have a desire to defend your peace, while also being against mass surveillance.

Surveillance technology doesn't stop property crime, so it isn't a tradeoff question.

The necessary and sufficient steps to stop property crime are:

1. Secure the stuff.

2. Take repeat criminals off the street.

Against random 'crime of opportunity' with new parties nothing but proactive security is particularly effective because even if you catch the person after the fact the damage is already done. The incentive to commit a crime comes from the combination of the opportunity and the deterrence-- and not everyone is responsive to deterrence so controlling the opportunity is critical.

Against repeated or organized criminals nothing but taking them out of society is very effective. Because they are repeated extensive surveillance is not required-- eventually they'll be caught even if not in the first instance. If you fail to take them off the streets no amount of surveillance will ever help, as they'll keep doing it again and again.

Many repeat criminals are driven by mental illness, stupidity, emotional regulation, or sometimes desperation. They're committing crimes at all because for whatever reason they're already not responding to all the incentives not to. Adding more incentives not to has a minor effect at most.

The conspiratorially minded might wonder if the failure to enforce and incarcerate for property crime in places like California isn't part of a plot to manufacture consent for totalitarian surveillance. But sadly, life isn't a movie plot-- it would be easier to fight against a plot rather than just collective failure and incompetence. In any case, many many people have had the experience of having video or know exactly who the criminal is only to have police, prosecutors, or the court do absolutely nothing about it. But even when they do-- it pretty much never undoes the harm of the crime.

No, we do not "deserve this". The universe has no concept of "deserve".

I think you have it backwards. This is what happens when we rank human lives over human freedom.

The argument for these cameras is that they save lives. The argument against them is that they destroy freedom.