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A comment on LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire. Parent comment

Re:LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire by jchw on Monday July 13, 2026 @12:35PM (#48895145)
Do we genuinely, really need a mass surveillance network? Isn't the expansion of surveillance through increasing prevalence of technology already way too much? Police can real-time track almost anyone if they have a warrant as it is, thanks to the magic of modern cell phones. We didn't even have time to discuss whether that was a good status quo before it became normal. Are we really sure we want to expand this to a massive network of cameras?

I get that it helps solve crimes, but solving crime is not the end-all-be-all of improving society. If anything, it's a highly symptom-oriented solution, and we absolutely have plenty of levers we could be trying to pull if we wanted to prevent crime instead.

Forget whether one global surveillance network is more trustworthy than another global surveillance network for a minute. Do we want this at all?

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Re:LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire by JumpCrisscross on Monday July 13, 2026 @12:52PM (#48895419)
> Do we genuinely, really need a mass surveillance network?

I think that's a fair question for each local jurisdiction to make on its own.

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Re:LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire by jchw on Monday July 13, 2026 @01:05PM (#48895635)
Hmm. Personally, I disagree; I'd prefer to outlaw it explicitly. That's just my opinion, but I think that regulation has failed to keep up with the pace of technology and we've essentially lost the effect of some constitutional protections.
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Re:LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire by etdznots on Monday July 13, 2026 @01:41PM (#48896132)
Sadly this was the entire lesson of Marbury v Madison, and the courts are supposed to be the mechanism that brings the hammer down on things that clearly violate the constitution where legislation has not yet arrived, but the courts are completely failing to protect us from what are obviously 4th amendment violations writ large on the entire nation, absurd.
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Re:LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire by saghm on Monday July 13, 2026 @01:41PM (#48896134)
I don't necessarily disagree, but I also don't think that it makes sense to wait to address the immediate issue of a private company centralizing the surveillance until there's sufficient political will for that (which realistically might not ever happen).
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