alt Hacker News> Person gets kidnapped, government surveillance camera helps police find the car before the kidnapper kills them. Or, probably more common: murder happens, government surveillance camera helps police find murderer and jail them before they kill someone else.
It's a good steelman/devil's advocate of their position, but I wonder if proponents realize how much wishful thinking drives those supposed outcomes.
I don't think it's wishful thinking. Flock advertises how many actual, real-world cases their cameras have contributed to solving, and even just reading news reports on murder trials you'll often see comments like "suspect's car was caught on camera traveling such and such direction" in the timeline of events.
The question isn't whether these cameras help law enforcement. Of course they do. The question is whether that's sufficient justification for continuous government surveillance of the public movements of millions of law abiding citizens.