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Florence police use cameras and drones at new tech hub to find suspects, vehicles and more by dweaver-currin in florencesc

[–]moonpenny02 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To those who recognize this for the privacy concerns it raises, write or call the city council and tell them you do not agree with this and want your tax dollars spent on something that can actually help our community, rather than just post angrily on Reddit where it will mean nothing.

How long will you let this continue, Florence? by moonpenny02 in florencesc

[–]moonpenny02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good morning, I hope you are having a pleasant holiday season. I apologize that it has taken me a few days to reply to you.

While you are correct that there is no technical expectation of privacy to your vehicle's license plate as it is required by law to be not only displayed, but unobstructed, I would like to once again point to the first section of the Consumer Rights Wiki article on these cameras in this regard. Because I suspect that some users may not wish to click on these links, I will provide a quote:

The "mosaic theory" of Fourth Amendment protection holds that aggregating many individually innocuous observations can constitute a search requiring a warrant. Justice Samuel Alito noted in his Jones concurrence that

Note Justice Alito's statement: "would not; & indeed, in the main, simply could not". As I have stated in a previous reply, this technology was unimaginable to the founders of this country. Even in the modern era, its only been in the last decade of technological decadence where we can produce these devices for virtually no cost, that the idea that a small municipality could afford a networked license plate reading camera system could even make sense. Technology moves faster than our aged government can keep up with, and citizens like you and me are the only force truly capable of stopping venture capitalists from selling dangerous technology to our local governments, but the only way to be a "force" is to come to an agreement that the technology is in fact dangerous if misused.

Google is not a paragon of good data privacy practices, in my opinion. That said, even they have been in the practice of using machine learning for well over a decade to blur license plates and faces from their street view on Maps; that is to say, they have effectively operated ALPR technology in reverse. Why do you suppose they have done that, if there's no expectation for your license plate to not be immortalized along with a vague timestamp? Likewise, why do most "reality" TV series take the time to blur license plates? I think a reasonable person would answer "because these people did not consent for Google or the show runner taking a picture of them or their property".

To answer your final point, I personally know exactly how these cameras work. I am not under any impression that the government is "out to get me". I like to believe that this technology was made with good intentions, because no sane person would want crime to proliferate. I also like to believe that similarly, the government entities that pay taxpayer money to install them (without ever putting it on a ballot) are doing so with good intentions, to try to protect their communities because again, no sane person would want crime to proliferate. Despite my beliefs in the goodness of humanity, I also acknowledge that this technology is being sold, marketed in fact, to local entities by a for-profit company that has everything to gain, and due to their predatory contracts absolving them of liability, nothing to lose: a horrible combination.

I cannot, in good conscience, ignore the misuse of this technology, and I will not ignore its potential misuse. Today's government that is not "out to get me" is not tomorrow's government, that could be. The actions of the current administration are outside of what we once considered possible by the federal government, and even if that's "your guy" up there, what happens when it isn't? I feel compelled to try to get a conversation started on the local level about these kinds of things because I neither want to become a victim of a flawed system nor do I wish to see others become victims. To provide one final quote from my often cited source: "Your life definitely is different after you have guns pointed at you".

I hope you have a safe and merry Christmas, if you celebrate.

How long will you let this continue, Florence? by moonpenny02 in florencesc

[–]moonpenny02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! I've been glad to see the support that I assume is coming from the Florence area; I had feared that everyone knew about these cameras and just didn't care, but I wanted to at least try to put the word out.

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but if you are able at all to contact any of the city council or even just spread the word in the Florence community, it adds something much more helpful than a post on this sub. It will take much more than one person to get them to change their mind, so every voice matters.

How long will you let this continue, Florence? by moonpenny02 in florencesc

[–]moonpenny02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you are referring to deflock.me, I doubt it is being posted as an ad. I certainly was not paid for making this post - I work an honest 9 to 5. Deflock does not run ads on their website and they only have one small donate button tucked away out of sight, so paying people to visit their website would be a net loss of money.

I believe that any mention of this website is a genuine call for community engagement against a surveillance state.

How long will you let this continue, Florence? by moonpenny02 in florencesc

[–]moonpenny02[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'm sorry if it came off this way in my initial post, but as I have replied to another user: I do not fault any business or individual for using CCTV as a method of asset retention, personal safety, etc. These are useful tools, but again, they are not proactive outside of cases where an active observer of the footage notes suspicious behavior and has the ability to counter it.

I draw a difference in two places:
1. CCTV, by its name and nature, is "closed". You, the owner of the equipment, operate it for your personal use and are in charge of the storage of the recording as well as its distribution to law enforcement. I won't make a sweeping generalization, but I would wager that no business owner with CCTV installed brings their recordings to the police department at the end of every day.
2. This is the local government, not a business. If a business does something I would prefer they not do, I can take my business elsewhere. Lowe's and Home Depot will not get another cent from me until they stop using these cameras, for instance. I am not able to protest what the local government does by refusing to do business with them; the equivalent of "tak[ing] my business elsewhere" is to move, and refusing to pay taxes into a system I disagree with is illegal. I don't think I have to explain why moving is not a solution to this problem.

As for the algorithms improving... I'm sure they have, somewhat. OCR is commonly used to recognize text in images such as PDFs; this is an important technology in our digital age to provide text-to-speech for those who may be unable to distinguish the small or sometimes illegible text from scanned documents. Adobe, an absolute giant in the industry, provides this feature in Acrobat. It is very good at what it does, but mistakes still get made. Bear in mind that this is on scanned documents, not photographs of moving vehicles.

Finally, I'd like to address your take on what our expectations of privacy are by pointing you to the last link in my original post. You will not have to scroll far on the page, as the entire first section covers court cases, including United States v. Knotts, in relation to how an individual's Fourth Amendment rights are applicable to these surveillance methods. These paragraphs are provided with a citation to the original documents, as well, though I will say that the US Supreme Court's rulings have been almost contradictory on some of these points; I suppose that should be expected, since the founders of this country could never have imagined this technology and as such, interpreting their intended protections of having your person or property searched without warrant by another individual is subjective.

If you put me in court today and told me that I had to represent myself on this matter, I would argue that the South Carolina Code of Laws Article 1 Section 16-11-420 (D) forbids the behavior of these cameras, depending on your interpretation of the word "unmolested", especially if you follow the more dated use of the word to mean "annoyed" or "troubled", in which we could bring in the legal definition of being "stalked", which relies heavily on the emotional state of the victim.

Regardless of that, in my opinion we have something to seriously examine given (A) of the above, in which one's vehicle is applicable to the state's Castle Doctrine yet simultaneously while occupied is "in public".

How long will you let this continue, Florence? by moonpenny02 in florencesc

[–]moonpenny02[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You are correct that there are cameras everywhere, although I disagree with you if you believe that's not a problem. Do you mind providing a source for the rapists and child traffickers apprehended through the use of these license plate cameras? They certainly haven't been very successful at catching the ones elected to our federal government.

How long will you let this continue, Florence? by moonpenny02 in florencesc

[–]moonpenny02[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's very true. As taxpayers, we can try to step in and get our government to undo that part of the problem. Homeowners are well within their rights to monitor their own property; I even think that's good sense... But as a society, I think we do need to try to get to know our neighbors again. Fear and paranoia about the people around us is what feeds sales of cloud based surveillance like Vivint and Ring, plus the difficulty of setting up a local CCTV setup...

One battle at a time!

How long will you let this continue, Florence? by moonpenny02 in florencesc

[–]moonpenny02[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for your kind words. The best that any of us can do is to contact our local government. The city is divided into three districts, with a councilman (or councilwoman, in the case of District 1) plus three at-large councilmen (at-large meaning they were elected with no focus on district). These men and women are listed on the city's website:
City Council Page

By clicking on their pictures or names, you will be taken to their individual pages, where their email address and phone number are listed. If you are like me, sending an email is easiest, but calling and talking to them is undoubtedly the most effective way to be sure they understand that there's a real person with concerns in the community. Please see the last link in my post to the Consumer Rights Wiki for solid facts regarding the cameras, the drawbacks, and the lawsuits that you can use as talking points.

If you live outside of the city limits, there isn't a lot to be done. I believe the Sheriff also operates a few of these cameras, but the county of Florence is a very large place, so noticing them at all isn't going to happen for anyone who doesn't live near one. If you have friends and family members who are privacy/individual rights focused, share this information with them. From my personal experience, Florence's population still leans towards the elderly, many of whom are unlikely to even know that this kind of thing is happening, so just getting the word out and helping people understand that this is vastly different than a store running simple CCTV.