alt Hacker News> this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI
This story wouldn't exist without flock cameras constantly surveilling the public...cameras have EVERYTHING to do with this story.
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This story also wouldn't exist without license plates. License plates are IDs into a state registry of cars prominently placed on the car, in order to make it easy for anyone who sees it, including cops, to identify that car to the criminal justice bureaucracy later. The same issues with Flock cameras correctly identifying the letters and numbers on the plate and then informing law enforcement, which uses them as an index into a corrupted database, apply to any other system, including a human being looking at the car. Any argument for getting rid of Flock cameras for this reason also applies to getting rid of license plates themselves.
And maybe we should get rid of license plates. What breaks if we abolish them, and neither cops nor anyone else is capable of running a license plate number search on the non-existent license plates of the cars around them?
This wouldn't be a story if the cops did not put the wrong license plate in the system. How is it Flock's fault? Flock is just doing what it is being asked to do!
Let me put in simple terms: Flock flags license plates that are given to it. Someone, somewhere says, license plate "ABCD1234" has a warrant out. And guess what, if Flock sees that plate, it _will_ flag it each. and. every. time!
Tomorrow, say an "Amber Alert" is issued for a pink Ford Taurus with plate "PINKLADY" (when in fact it was a red Taurus with the plate "MADLAD"). Don't you think anyone driving around in a pink Ford Taurus with that plate should be pulled over?
"Law enforcement is setting up a multi-county dragnet by putting every version or mistype of a license plate into a warrant list"
wouldn't be a story? It should be! We should have a higher standard for the people with guns and a badge on the street.