Who thinks a surveillance state is about reducing crime? It's about control!

I spent half my day today in Atlanta's inner loop... soooo many Nissans just don't even have license plates, anymore (and other cars, too; but all other OEMs summed == Nissans).

It makes me want to purchase a beat-up silver Nissan (without plates also) and then I can blend in through obscurity?

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My own ATL adventure today involved zero license plate scans, but obviously the machines are doing way more than just LPR (I have no illusions that my activities aren't still traced, even without a legible tag).

Sort of related. Across the street from my cousin's house in Portland, OR, a car ran over the curb and into landscape features that knocked off the car's bumper and license plate. The perpetrator then backed up and drove away. My cousin's doorbell camera caught it all. Police are not interested, saying no one can prove who was driving. Who needs a license plate reader when you can get a license plate?

That loosely resembles research about economic impact of adopting PC. Which was not as great as could be imagined. Increased competition sets prices lower, increased data flows are not compatible with manual labour. Like in running faster in "Through the looking glass"

People who like Flock: is this a surprise?

Flock is about surveillance for profit sometimes that also has positive results but often the costs are too high

Crime?

I thought these were deployed so that Cops could keep track of the women they want to beat.

Conspiracy theory: Cops are worried about essentially being replaced by Flock cameras (if Flock cameras do, in fact, reduce crime rates, it's only a matter of time before the city council starts looking for ways to reduce the budget, and the police is often the biggest spend for cities), so they intentionally report slightly inflated crime rate data to remind the public: "See? Y'all still need us!"

They are for identifying dissidents to round up in the future, not for reducing the incidence rate of petty crime.

Governments and AI billionaires are all talking about some utopian future where we are all free to do what we want and have a universal basic income to support us. But the deployment of a draconian surveillance network, militarised police, domestic concentration camps and 'left wing terrorist' rhetoric is not painting a picture of a future utopia.

Cameras solved parking enforcement's crime problem just fine.

This reduction is happening across the board and isn't "because of flock".

I think that purpose statement implies good intentions - we all know measurement stats become the thing that is gamed to make one's organization look good and this is well documented for American law enforcement. Unless absolutely forced to, they simply do not measure things they do not want to report, i.e. prosecutors do not have to document racial backgrounds of accused to prevent racial discrimination from being proved in court (The New Jim Crow), crimes by law enforcement are underreported - especially fatal use of force - justified because "cop scared for his life" (Copoganda), tons of anecdotal evidence many cops will not investigate petty theft even when owners track down thief. The Wire kind of made fun of this "juking the stats" more than ten years ago (co-written by formal journalist David Simon).

Same pattern as SLA dashboards ops teams game to hit five nines: metric becomes target, target gets gamed, nobody fixes root cause. Unmeasured stuff just quietly rots.

If Cameras prevented crime, London would be some kind of Utopia.

Small nitpick: London's cameras are mostly ANPR/traffic, not a Flock-style network, but point stands. UK's got a camera on every corner and clearance rates are still garbage for actual crimes like burglary.

2019 had 99 murders. This has absolutely nothing to do with Flock, and the notion is perverse nonsense.

Cameras do not prevent crime. This has been eminently shown endlessly. Now ideally they help then find the culprits, but in practice this just isn't happening.

The reduction in crime cannot be attributed to using Flock cameras, so the figures you give aren't meaningful for this conversation.

2021: I ate more hamburgers 2025: I ate less hamburgers

Prove to me it wasn't my hamburger eating.

Homicide rates have dropped similarly (or more) in less-surveilled cities like Baltimore.

Crime is complex, and it’s incredibly silly to look at those two variables and call it a day.

Seems a bit premature to attribute that solely (or even primarily) to Flock.

It also begs the question of if there is a deterrent effect from cameras to commit homicide, couldn't that deterrent be achieved with a far less controversial technology?

Eh 2020-2022 saw a nationwide increase in crime.