We used to call those dragnets which are illegal under the 4th amendment, but the constitution only tends to apply to those with the ability to hire attorneys nowadays.
I think there is a rise of "this is legal because we used a computer to do it." A HN audience will not appreciate this sentiment, but honestly, a company should not provide tools to do this because they should have a filter. They should say "I won't provide tools to break constitutional rights".
Somewhere along the way, tech stopped asking questions like that, and now, people are hostile to the suggestion that the question should be asked.
Like it or not, the other team get to play lawyer too. Flock's argument is almost certainly along the lines of "If we had police officers stationed at all these intersections writing down license plate numbers, no one would bat an eye at it. Why is a camera any different?"
We know why it's different of course: scale. But there was never a general principle about scale and automation articulated in the Constitution because it just wasn't a thing to worry about in the 1700s.
We're left to hope that courts agree that just because something is okay for one police officer in one place to do, that doesn't mean the police department can perform that same task a thousand times in a thousand places with a thousand machines and still have it be okay.
We used to call second hand information "circumstantial", and it couldn't be used against you. If the officer sitting in court didn't personally see it, then it didn't happen.
> I think there is a rise of "this is legal because we used a computer to do it."
Arguably, a lot of the modern tech industry is built on this. AirBnB to sidestep hotel regulations. Uber to sidestep taxi regulations. There's a bit of "this is legal because a private company is doing it and not the government", too.
Many in tech would say that, and sure we'd be better off if even more did, but on some level it doesn't matter. In a sufficiently large country you'll always find someone willing to Be Evil, especially if they're paid well. We can't rely on every single capable company deciding not to take a given government contract, this sort of thing has to be solved via the political and legal system
But the more dominant the "legal because computer, and how dare you ask me?" attitude is, the less we'll see enforcement. People should demand action, rather than call it a clever business plan.
Folks who were on here praising Uber or Airbnb for skirting the law 10 years ago, this was part of the problem.
> A HN audience will not appreciate this sentiment
I don't really agree. I think HN is particularly hostile to the likes of Flock cameras and other surveillance companies like Palantir.
But it's undeniable that spying on people along with other war/defense spending is very lucrative as governments love intel. All it takes is to be an amoral fonder to pitch to the amoral investors. It's a particularly easy pitch as well "We'll charge governments a lot of money and they'll happily pay because they love spying on their citizens".
Our economy is based on "its legal for a computer to do it", so long as the ones controlling the computers are in the same class and sufficiently subservient to the power structures that selectively enforce laws.
> I think there is a rise of "this is legal because we used a computer to do it.
This has literally been defining the modern age since the 2000's or earlier. Basically every law that ever existed about targeting ads towards children has been WILDLY ignored (to everyone's profit) because of it.
> Somewhere along the way, tech stopped asking questions like that, and now, people are hostile to the suggestion that the question should be asked.
People never stopped asking this sort of thing, and you can find some people who are hostile to anything. 'Twas ever thus. Constructing a cherry-picked, wistful narrative is not very helpful.
"'I just had to be sure because I’m not a regular cop, I’m part of the FBI, and when I scanned your plate I could see you had suspicious travel patterns,' I think is how he worded it" [1].
This isn't traffic cops, it's federal police. And it isn't suspicious driving patterns, e.g. weaving, it's full-on movement tracking.
Ironically the best defense against police abuse of power seems to be doing your own surveillance. Recording interactions with the police and having a dash cam. Many popular dash cams like Viofo record to an SD and don't send recordings to the cloud.
Some criminal behaviors are somewhat correlated with skin color, age or gender. It would be extremely hard to train an AI to ignore those correlations. But would it even matter? Nobody knows why the AI flagged suspicious behavior, it usually can't tell even if you are able to ask follow up questions. So nobody could prove racial profiling.
I work on software that Dr and Nurses use. The company I work for trains its own models to provide automated insight on patient history, etc. I've been pretty concerned about these kinds of problems you describe. I sat down with one of the data scientists and talked about biases a while ago. She walked me through the (high level) process they go through to try and detect common biases in the model before publishing.
For example, it is a common belief within the medical community that Black people have higher pain tolerance, and thus don't need as much or as strong of pain killers. People in pain sitting in beds in the ER will be delayed or refused pain killers because of this. This belief has been proven false, but it shows up in papers, notes, etc. and nurses and doctors still will treat their patients as if it's true.
This is just one example of many many things they test for. When training the model the data-science team actually tries to see if they can produce output that exhibit those identified biases/problems and block it from ever been used in production if they do.
I've had people internally tell me how frustrated they are that I or other people aren't letting them get their new-fangled AI-powered feature in front of customers fast enough... Without a lot of discipline and guardrails people would be using ChatGPT or Claude APIs instead.
My point is: I highly doubt that kind of care is being taken in many industries/companies. It's very concerning to me.
You don't even need there to be any kernel of reality statistically.
If a model is trained on data that shows some bias due to prior human decisions, it would continue to follow those biases while being a lot harder to prove/sue. There were examples of this with AI assisted resume screening & criminal sentencing for example.
On the contrary, you can feed the model counterfactuals and see what it does. Edit the person to be white then feed the image back into the model and see if its opinion changes.
Lets not forget that all your personal movements are also recorded by your cell location. The US government has access to all this through various "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" agreements with the corporate data holders.
One must assume that the various "fusion centers" are pulling in all this data and connecting all the dots. Unless you are walking, with a face mask, and without your cell phone you have to assume they know were you are.
> US government has access to all this through various "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" agreements with the corporate data holders
These claims really need to be more specific to be believable and actionable. Particularly given the law has been changed in reaction to prior fuckery.
why was this FBI guy so forthcoming with this lady about his agency's arguably civil rights abuses? I mean I guess it's good he was but on the other hand it seems a bit weird, given my experience with feds.
alright, so finally a "thought crime" becomes reality. i feel the world leaders need to stop turning their eyes blind to ai but unfortunately they are too detached from tech to get what change is happening around the world.
I think world leaders are acutely aware of what's happening. They just don't care because shit stains like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk keep shoving money in their faces.
I strangely have mixed feelings on this. Half of me says "Illegal search and seizure", the other half say "We need to get the crazy drivers off the road"
I do think we need better enforcement of the laws we already have in place, the roads are becoming the wild west, and not in a good way. I think I love the tech and the idea, but not how it's currently being abused. It'd be great for Amber Alert scenarios, consistent reckless driving, a better way to deal with high-speed chases, and just a way to prevent all of the dangerous traffic violations that occur simply because they're not enforced and people just see others doing it and assume it's ok.
The Bay Area are the biggest hypocrites in the planet
They know how to present themselves in a way that not only they appear liberal, but appear liberal under scrutiny
They are rolling out versions of this but doing it in poor neighborhoods of course - heaven forbid they roll anything like this out in the Berkeley hills
Obviously im over generalizing for dramatic effect, but if this stuff can get passed in the Bay Area, I hold little hope we will successfully challenge it elsewhere
According to deflock there's cameras in the berkely hills already, in particular on the grizzley peak and shasta road intersection. It's all over the bay area.
lets be fair, police are using ______ to pull over drivers fo suspicious behavior is just a headline you get when you have a functional journalism any time in the 20th and 21st century.
That sentiment seems to fail the test with reality, because you have people following the rules and behaving perfectly normally (like the subject in this story) who end up getting scrutinized anyway. That's a recipe for increasing anti-social behavior. After all, why bother following the rules if it doesn't keep me out of trouble?
It’s a fine line. Periodic demonstrations of arbitrary state power over your personal life can enhance the coercive effect. TSA checkpoints serve this purpose.
All of this airport security, all the searches, the screenings, the cameras, the questions, it's just one more way of reducing your liberty, and reminding you that they can fuck with you anytime they want.
Because they're the exception, not the norm. These systems generally do what they're supposed to do, at least if implemented correctly. The key isn't efficacy; you need to be emotionally prepared to oppose privacy violations even if they're doing exactly what they advertise.
Because it's not about helping you, it's about control. These people are literal anti-humanists, they just want to control all aspects of society. If people are suffering from the consequences of a massive publicly mandated surveillance state, well that's the price of progress if you listen to the anti-humanists.
Pretty sure the person you're responding to sees that clearly and may in fact be trying to point it out.
The original view presented by the quote is a child's view of authoritarians: they force you to behave the way they want you to.
The other commenter is pointing out how they work in practice, how they'll work with this, is by making noncompliant behavior the accepted norm and then enforcing it selectively based on their changing goals and targets.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Reasonable suspicion, where the "reasonable" part is absurdly subjective here, is not probable cause.
These detentions, even for the majority who have documented in writing a full assent to adhere to vehicle codes under public policy, are not legal.
Those who aren't well-educated in law can stop reading here.
A custodial arrest of someone who went to sufficent lengths to opt for not assenting in writing to adhere to vehicle codes, based on reasonable suspicion, would be unlawful, and in addition to the involved false declaration of an emergency on the road (which is a felony) would ipso facto be criminal in nature.
Documentation of dishonor has value in the public space. Blockchains for the win.
We used to call those dragnets which are illegal under the 4th amendment, but the constitution only tends to apply to those with the ability to hire attorneys nowadays.
Yeah, still illegal, but because they are new they have to work their way up through the courts to be affirmed as illegal once again.
These cameras need to be banned federally. It shouldn't be legal to own or sell access to a network of these pervert cameras.
I think there is a rise of "this is legal because we used a computer to do it." A HN audience will not appreciate this sentiment, but honestly, a company should not provide tools to do this because they should have a filter. They should say "I won't provide tools to break constitutional rights".
Somewhere along the way, tech stopped asking questions like that, and now, people are hostile to the suggestion that the question should be asked.
Like it or not, the other team get to play lawyer too. Flock's argument is almost certainly along the lines of "If we had police officers stationed at all these intersections writing down license plate numbers, no one would bat an eye at it. Why is a camera any different?"
We know why it's different of course: scale. But there was never a general principle about scale and automation articulated in the Constitution because it just wasn't a thing to worry about in the 1700s.
We're left to hope that courts agree that just because something is okay for one police officer in one place to do, that doesn't mean the police department can perform that same task a thousand times in a thousand places with a thousand machines and still have it be okay.
We used to call second hand information "circumstantial", and it couldn't be used against you. If the officer sitting in court didn't personally see it, then it didn't happen.
Or did Law and Order lie to us?
> "If we had police officers stationed at all these intersections writing down license plate numbers, no one would bat an eye at it."
This is literally the definition of a police dragnet.
> I think there is a rise of "this is legal because we used a computer to do it."
Arguably, a lot of the modern tech industry is built on this. AirBnB to sidestep hotel regulations. Uber to sidestep taxi regulations. There's a bit of "this is legal because a private company is doing it and not the government", too.
Many in tech would say that, and sure we'd be better off if even more did, but on some level it doesn't matter. In a sufficiently large country you'll always find someone willing to Be Evil, especially if they're paid well. We can't rely on every single capable company deciding not to take a given government contract, this sort of thing has to be solved via the political and legal system
But the more dominant the "legal because computer, and how dare you ask me?" attitude is, the less we'll see enforcement. People should demand action, rather than call it a clever business plan.
Folks who were on here praising Uber or Airbnb for skirting the law 10 years ago, this was part of the problem.
> A HN audience will not appreciate this sentiment
I don't really agree. I think HN is particularly hostile to the likes of Flock cameras and other surveillance companies like Palantir.
But it's undeniable that spying on people along with other war/defense spending is very lucrative as governments love intel. All it takes is to be an amoral fonder to pitch to the amoral investors. It's a particularly easy pitch as well "We'll charge governments a lot of money and they'll happily pay because they love spying on their citizens".
The people that run HN are so hostile they launched the bloody thing:
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety
Our economy is based on "its legal for a computer to do it", so long as the ones controlling the computers are in the same class and sufficiently subservient to the power structures that selectively enforce laws.
> I think there is a rise of "this is legal because we used a computer to do it.
This has literally been defining the modern age since the 2000's or earlier. Basically every law that ever existed about targeting ads towards children has been WILDLY ignored (to everyone's profit) because of it.
> Somewhere along the way, tech stopped asking questions like that, and now, people are hostile to the suggestion that the question should be asked.
People never stopped asking this sort of thing, and you can find some people who are hostile to anything. 'Twas ever thus. Constructing a cherry-picked, wistful narrative is not very helpful.
> A computer can never be held accountable
> Therefore a computer must never make a management decision
>We used to call those dragnets which are illegal under the 4th amendment
How is surveillance related to dragnets? A dragnet being an indiscriminate stop and search of suspects that sweeps up lots of people.
This plate reader surveillance network, for better or worse, is the exact opposite.
The example they lead with in the article is the police pulling over a woman who spent too much time driving in the left lane. Stupid. But targeted.
And often, not even then.
Well yeah, it depends on what social class you live in.
We could decide to fund civil rights litigation like medicaid.
"'I just had to be sure because I’m not a regular cop, I’m part of the FBI, and when I scanned your plate I could see you had suspicious travel patterns,' I think is how he worded it" [1].
This isn't traffic cops, it's federal police. And it isn't suspicious driving patterns, e.g. weaving, it's full-on movement tracking.
[1] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/ai-driven-polic...
Ironically the best defense against police abuse of power seems to be doing your own surveillance. Recording interactions with the police and having a dash cam. Many popular dash cams like Viofo record to an SD and don't send recordings to the cloud.
Can AI also fully legalize racial profiling?
Some criminal behaviors are somewhat correlated with skin color, age or gender. It would be extremely hard to train an AI to ignore those correlations. But would it even matter? Nobody knows why the AI flagged suspicious behavior, it usually can't tell even if you are able to ask follow up questions. So nobody could prove racial profiling.
I work on software that Dr and Nurses use. The company I work for trains its own models to provide automated insight on patient history, etc. I've been pretty concerned about these kinds of problems you describe. I sat down with one of the data scientists and talked about biases a while ago. She walked me through the (high level) process they go through to try and detect common biases in the model before publishing.
For example, it is a common belief within the medical community that Black people have higher pain tolerance, and thus don't need as much or as strong of pain killers. People in pain sitting in beds in the ER will be delayed or refused pain killers because of this. This belief has been proven false, but it shows up in papers, notes, etc. and nurses and doctors still will treat their patients as if it's true.
This is just one example of many many things they test for. When training the model the data-science team actually tries to see if they can produce output that exhibit those identified biases/problems and block it from ever been used in production if they do.
I've had people internally tell me how frustrated they are that I or other people aren't letting them get their new-fangled AI-powered feature in front of customers fast enough... Without a lot of discipline and guardrails people would be using ChatGPT or Claude APIs instead.
My point is: I highly doubt that kind of care is being taken in many industries/companies. It's very concerning to me.
You don't even need there to be any kernel of reality statistically.
If a model is trained on data that shows some bias due to prior human decisions, it would continue to follow those biases while being a lot harder to prove/sue. There were examples of this with AI assisted resume screening & criminal sentencing for example.
On the contrary, you can feed the model counterfactuals and see what it does. Edit the person to be white then feed the image back into the model and see if its opinion changes.
>Some criminal behaviors are somewhat correlated with skin color, age or gender.
Well, yes, because so is crime.
potato, potahto
Lets not forget that all your personal movements are also recorded by your cell location. The US government has access to all this through various "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" agreements with the corporate data holders.
One must assume that the various "fusion centers" are pulling in all this data and connecting all the dots. Unless you are walking, with a face mask, and without your cell phone you have to assume they know were you are.
> US government has access to all this through various "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" agreements with the corporate data holders
These claims really need to be more specific to be believable and actionable. Particularly given the law has been changed in reaction to prior fuckery.
[delayed]
Using transit or roads outside of normal commuting hours?? How suspicious. Driving somewhere without a destination? Suspicious.
I'm used to AI agents doing what I tell them to do. Gonna be rough the first time I realize one has direct authority over me...
why was this FBI guy so forthcoming with this lady about his agency's arguably civil rights abuses? I mean I guess it's good he was but on the other hand it seems a bit weird, given my experience with feds.
"We have you dead to rights. Check here in my fancy computer."
Just intimidation, pretty common.
They're not confessing. They're bragging.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c14vfq3jqpo
At this point just have the car tell the cops when the driver is misbehaving. And get the taxpayers to fund it!
alright, so finally a "thought crime" becomes reality. i feel the world leaders need to stop turning their eyes blind to ai but unfortunately they are too detached from tech to get what change is happening around the world.
I think world leaders are acutely aware of what's happening. They just don't care because shit stains like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk keep shoving money in their faces.
Let’s all commit suspicious driving patterns and overload the system.
How much better is the "intelligence" of police officers compared to artificial intelligence?
It's the human in the loop that makes it subjective. Whether it's better or worse to have policing be subjective is a valid question.
I've had plenty of encounters where the discretion of a police officer was of great benefit to me and my friends.
Humans are "artificial artificial intelligence."
It's not centralized.
I strangely have mixed feelings on this. Half of me says "Illegal search and seizure", the other half say "We need to get the crazy drivers off the road"
I do think we need better enforcement of the laws we already have in place, the roads are becoming the wild west, and not in a good way. I think I love the tech and the idea, but not how it's currently being abused. It'd be great for Amber Alert scenarios, consistent reckless driving, a better way to deal with high-speed chases, and just a way to prevent all of the dangerous traffic violations that occur simply because they're not enforced and people just see others doing it and assume it's ok.
So, we're just speed running Little Brother now?
Is suspicious a felony or a misdemeanor, officer?
The Bay Area are the biggest hypocrites in the planet
They know how to present themselves in a way that not only they appear liberal, but appear liberal under scrutiny
They are rolling out versions of this but doing it in poor neighborhoods of course - heaven forbid they roll anything like this out in the Berkeley hills
Obviously im over generalizing for dramatic effect, but if this stuff can get passed in the Bay Area, I hold little hope we will successfully challenge it elsewhere
According to deflock there's cameras in the berkely hills already, in particular on the grizzley peak and shasta road intersection. It's all over the bay area.
lets be fair, police are using ______ to pull over drivers fo suspicious behavior is just a headline you get when you have a functional journalism any time in the 20th and 21st century.
"Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on"
-Larry Ellison
That sentiment seems to fail the test with reality, because you have people following the rules and behaving perfectly normally (like the subject in this story) who end up getting scrutinized anyway. That's a recipe for increasing anti-social behavior. After all, why bother following the rules if it doesn't keep me out of trouble?
It’s a fine line. Periodic demonstrations of arbitrary state power over your personal life can enhance the coercive effect. TSA checkpoints serve this purpose.
All of this airport security, all the searches, the screenings, the cameras, the questions, it's just one more way of reducing your liberty, and reminding you that they can fuck with you anytime they want.
George Carlin, “Airport Security” (1999)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQdC-e82gmk
Because instead of merely being scrutinized, you get sent to jail.
Because they're the exception, not the norm. These systems generally do what they're supposed to do, at least if implemented correctly. The key isn't efficacy; you need to be emotionally prepared to oppose privacy violations even if they're doing exactly what they advertise.
Because it's not about helping you, it's about control. These people are literal anti-humanists, they just want to control all aspects of society. If people are suffering from the consequences of a massive publicly mandated surveillance state, well that's the price of progress if you listen to the anti-humanists.
Pretty sure the person you're responding to sees that clearly and may in fact be trying to point it out.
The original view presented by the quote is a child's view of authoritarians: they force you to behave the way they want you to.
The other commenter is pointing out how they work in practice, how they'll work with this, is by making noncompliant behavior the accepted norm and then enforcing it selectively based on their changing goals and targets.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
"Land of the Free", lol
"home of the brave" LOL
Source: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/ai-driven-polic... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50256169)
Reasonable suspicion, where the "reasonable" part is absurdly subjective here, is not probable cause.
These detentions, even for the majority who have documented in writing a full assent to adhere to vehicle codes under public policy, are not legal.
Those who aren't well-educated in law can stop reading here.
A custodial arrest of someone who went to sufficent lengths to opt for not assenting in writing to adhere to vehicle codes, based on reasonable suspicion, would be unlawful, and in addition to the involved false declaration of an emergency on the road (which is a felony) would ipso facto be criminal in nature.
Documentation of dishonor has value in the public space. Blockchains for the win.