The argument by law enforcement that Flock cameras help solve crimes could be used to argue in favor of any form of mass electronic surveillance. A system whereby the movements and actions of every man, woman and child in the United States is tracked electronically at all times would virtually eliminate all crime in this country.

Nobody is seriously advocating for an AI system to watch every human being, 24 hours a day, in their public and private lives—even though it would end or at least catch all crime—because as a society, stopping or catching crime is not our only priority. It's the only priority of law enforcement, but we don't live in a "cop"-ocracy. If every citizen lived in cells like on Alcatraz instead of private homes, that would also help prevent crime!

"Oh, but even though we're going to collect all the data, we're going to put in safeguards so it can't be used by bad actors!"

Well that same justification could be used to justify the AI skynet watching all people at all times. "We're just going to over here quietly collecting all the data—but we promise government officers won't be able to use it without a warrant!"

There's a huge difference between having get a warrant to bug a phone, or set up electronic surveillance of a suspected criminal, vs bugging everyone's phone and surveilling everyone and then saying cops will need a warrant to access the data being collected on everyone.

That's obviously mass surveillance and that's exactly what these Flock cameras are.

https://archive.is/o0G4M

what the fuck are we doing here