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speak_plainlytoday at 3:36 PM3 repliesview on HN

A license plate is already publicly displayed information (and is in most jurisdictions not private property), and you're operating in a public space.

I know it's unpopular but I went from not supporting these sorts of systems to embracing them after seeing the positive effects in China.

For crimes that depend on anonymity, theft, assault, hit-and-runs, vandalism, illegal parking, etc., surveillance changes the calculation because the offender expects a higher or even a near certain chance of being identified/caught in China. I think this is a good thing. I also see no issue with someone breaking the law and receiving a ticket almost immediately.

With all systems, it comes down to the design. What sort of oversight is there, how long is footage stored, can it be used for specific crimes or expanded later, and are there mechanisms to correct false identification.

Done right, these systems work well. I would be happy to live in a society where street crime is rare enough that I can leave personal property anywhere, like a bike, without constantly worrying about theft. I think many fears about these systems come from dystopian science fiction and assume the worst possible implementation, rather than recognizing that technology can be designed with strong safeguards.


Replies

edottoday at 4:39 PM

Yeah China is not dystopian at all! They don’t keep millions of people in open air prisons, they don’t keep track of people’s compliance with the government, they don’t support brutal dictatorships, and they definitely don’t pass any laws that would enable them to use their surveillance technology to suppress democratic behavior!

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/04/world/asia/xi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit_system

https://www.csis.org/analysis/old-friends-new-calculations-r...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hong_Kong_national_securi...

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lokartoday at 4:20 PM

The idea that these are needed, and deployed to address a crime problem is false. For example, Irvine, CA has been one of the safest large cites in the US for decades.

Why did they need flock?

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thewebguydtoday at 3:46 PM

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