SparrowMap – Cameras that watch government vehicles

(sparrowmap.com)

71 points | by paulnpace 2 hours ago

7 comments

  • angeldimitrov94 1 hour ago
    It sure would be interesting if suddenly all of the Flock employees coming to work were being constantly watched by a network of crowdfunded private cameras. Might drive home the point of invasion of privacy if its someone other than them watching...them. Or if all of the neighbors of the CEO of Flock suddenly joined some service like this so that everyone could track his activity at all times. I'm sure he'd wouldn't mind the entire world knowing exactly what he or his family are doing always.
    • dylan604 43 minutes ago
      How would the video captured from those cameras be used? These people are already driving on the same streets you and I do, so how would they not also be in the Flock footage? If you capture TBs of video footage and nobody sees it, what's the point? Are you going to start sending harassing posts to employees with footage of the car driving by your camera?

      The anti-flock movement is real, but half baked ideas don't really serve a purpose to actually doing anything. Not sure how I feel about those destroying Flock cameras, but that's action moving the needle a lot further than establishing an entirely new anti-Flock camera network.

      • jspank 39 minutes ago
        you don't store TBs of video footage... You process it and store the instances of each object/license plate detection.
        • dylan604 22 minutes ago
          great, so now what? who are you giving access to that data that will mean anything? the cops aren't going to do anything with it as it does not pertain to anything within the purview. the only thing I could think that would be done with that information is not good with people showing up to their house or some such.
          • judge2020 8 minutes ago
            This is irrelevant.

            Flock operates on the foundational constitutional model of "Our cameras are in public, there is not an expectation of privacy in public, therefore we can capture anything/everything our camera sees in any way possible" (including LPR logging and even video recording).

            And thus, so does any other system of recording public activity and processing/storing data collected from it.

            It quite literally does not matter what people do or don't do with the information. If someone does use the information for something illegal (like stalking) them the police aught to take a police report filed by said Flock employee seriously and perform an investigation within the bounds of the law and constitution.

  • chaps 2 hours ago
    Fun fact: in some municipalities you can FOIA for the GPS records of police vehicles. Here's Chicago Police's. They removed 0-15mph for, erm, privacy reasons.... but it's not the worst.

    Have a glance:

    https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/hj4jtcag2i9qvl4sj6mg2/AF6c9r7...

    • judge2020 5 minutes ago
      The speed limit in neighborhoods is usually 25, so... 0-15mph limiting seems useless? I imagine some level of police <-> home address / general home area is in that data.
      • darksim905 3 minutes ago
        What? Removing 0-15 mph is to remove places where they camp or loiter with the engine on either for tickets, naps, or other purposes.
    • arm32 1 hour ago
      That's indeed a very fun fact!
  • lellow 1 hour ago
    {"error": "internal error"}, when trying to open the live map.
    • VoidWhisperer 1 hour ago
      Seconding this. I wonder if the server got hugged to death by the HN front page
    • CR1337 56 minutes ago
      same here
  • Onplana 18 minutes ago
    Most of the cameras are showing offline.
  • inigyou 1 hour ago
    I keep saying if it's legal for Flock to make Flock it's legal for anyone else to make Flock.
  • bbor 34 minutes ago
    To the wonderful creators, who will presumably find this thread: did you know that sparrows had at least two full millenia of being associated with lust and depravity, rather than the connotation used here and in the final book of ISOIAF (Game Of Thrones)? Well... now you do! I beg of you to fit an easter egg to this effect somwhere in this site, for us followers of the old ways out there.

    To get a bit more on-topic: this is a perfect example of the missing scale in HN's "no politics" rule. There are facets of politics that you simply cannot ignore while still being an individually-minded technologist (closest thing this community has to a shared ethos).

  • NDlurker 1 hour ago
    This is what I like to see AI used for. Thank you Claude Opus 5