alt Hacker NewsI realize how unpopular flock is, and I will first say that I have literally never personally looked into the privacy concerns. But one city you don’t see named here is SF, which has cited Flock as a primary driver of its 10x reduction in car break-ins, and 30% reduction in burglaries. Those were a quality of life plague while I lived there
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Crime's been descending from the COVID blip for a while, everywhere, Flock or otherwise. My city saw zero murders in Q1; 2021 saw ~15 by now.
In other words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw
Any evidence that the reduction is actually due to the cameras?
> which has cited Flock as a primary driver of its 10x reduction in car break-ins, and 30% reduction in burglaries
Are there reports or studies released which explains how the flock system influenced these reductions?
ALPR does help with some things but stationary burglaries are largely not among them.
Unfortunately, Flock really has been doing some shady stuff and the alliance of 1) people with legitimate concerns about Flock operations, and 2) the much larger population of people who are accustomed to getting away with petty crimes is, together, politically successful.
It would be easy to create a camera network that is locally owned and operated by public agencies, and if any place in America could so that it should be SF.
The crime did not happen because of a lack of technological capability or resources availability at a given price point. It happened because of politics and priorities. The 1984 camera dragnet vendor is no more responsible for the change in politics and priorities and subsequent crime reduction than whatever vendor sold the tires for the cop cars.
I could believe that perma-cameraing every inch of public space is more akin to chemo than to vitamin gummies, that SF had the city equivalent of bone cancer, and that this doesn’t mean healthy midwestern towns need Flock in any way.