Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t want laws to be written to the level of my emotional individual reaction to a singular crime. I want laws to reflect the ideals and values of society, and to work at scale when balancing individual freedom, societal safety, and protection from government abuse.

“It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.” - Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

They should also require a warrant at least, especially for any data sharing. With "they can only be accessed by law enforcement", we've already had plenty of police harassing their exes. If they couldn't convince a judge to let them use the camera, there's really no hope of the case going anywhere.

> There's nothing worse than being told "we don't have any leads" when someone you care about is attacked.

I'd argue worse is "we know exactly who did it and we're not going to do anything about it (but we would do something if you try to do something about it yourself)".

What about when ICE uses this data to abduct and deport your spouse and family members? Will you be grateful then?

Until your spouse/SO/sister/mother/girlfriend spurns a LEO, and then the LEO uses it to stalk and harass them. Talk to any LEO, they constantly misuse their data access to look up friends/family/neighbors to find dirt. Most of the time its relatively harmless gossip, but it can easily be used to harass people.

I'll make up another one to pile on. Perhaps the police would have had a visible, deterrent presence if they weren't lazily relying on cameras, and that would have prevented the assault in the first place.

Anyhow, if you read the flock database, they're overwhelmingly not using them for the purposes of public safety or random crime.

If your argument has to start with "now, imagine your sister was raped", then it's probably just a bad argument.

Appealing to emotions, tsk tsk, but going right for the jugular? Yikes.

Also, elephant in the room: if your sister was going to be raped or beaten, it would probably be by someone in her home, in her family. Like her cop husband.

Ah yes, the good ol' appeal to fear. "Think of the childr--err, I mean poor defenseless woman!"

No, I don't want these cameras. I don't care if they make law enforcement's job easier. They are an invasion of privacy and a part of the disgusting dragnet surveillance state.

They need to go.

A decade ago, I was attacked on a public sidewalk by three men, who roughed me up a bit and stole from me. The police were utterly unhelpful, and as far as I know, they never caught anyone. But ultimately, that didn't really matter. I was traumatized for a while, but eventually worked through it. Whether or not they were caught would not have changed any part of that process.

I get that, emotionally, we want some sort of justice when things like this happen, but I am not willing to put up with even more constant surveillance in order to feel a little bit better about a bad thing that happened to me. I would much rather criminals sometimes went free.

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

This is true of course. You could also apply this logic to even the most extreme of fascist tendencies though.

There is freedom to and freedom from as they say in The Handmaid’s Tale.

What if your spouse/SO/whatever was wrongfully arrested because they were on a Flock camera and conveniently matched what the police were looking for? Or if they ran whatever dogshit AI algorithm over it looking for suspects?

We can make up situations all day where it can or can not be validated but the reality is that this is a defacto surveillance state. If every move you make can be monitored, you should assume that the state can and will abuse it to hurt innocent people in the name of politics or whatever.

What's the point of making a statement like that? Is it like a Snapple cap thing, or do you expect people to actually give up on talking about the blatant government overreach?

And what a dumb way to frame it. "Think of the woman" is the same argument as "think of the children". Why not just say if you were attacked you'd want it to be on camera? Afraid it'll make you sound weak? Well, so does bootlicking.