> The camera can have different ways of seeing encoded in it, including kinds of gazes that enforce social agreements about what kinds of behavior and people are considered “normal”
The phrase "kinds of gazes" strikes me as the sort of thing that's only going to make sense to people trained in a very particular and idiosyncratic flavor of ethical critique. What a normal person sees here is, "These cameras can detect if people are acting bizarre and dangerous," which is probably something most people would appreciate. In Seattle, the problem, of course, is that the streets are full of people acting bizarre and dangerous, it doesn't take a camera network to find them, and the police seem to be under strict orders not to do anything about it.
[[Surveillance cameras normalize/denormalize behavior in a way that is easily biased and undemocratic.]]
It might e.g. direct the full force of law against a drunk urinating on a tree (easy to spot/classify), while tolerating vicious verbal attacks disguised by somewhat subdued body language (missing data/difficult to detect).
Letting automated surveillance systems judge people will inevitably influence our own collective judgement.
Perhaps, depending on specific intent, credibility, and the nature of harm threatened.
But since this is about surveillance, I hope that detection of verbal threats is not a goal of government surveillance because it's difficult to imagine how that could be accomplished without significant loss of privacy or other liberties.
I can see it in court now. Our AI monitoring system did indeed know about the threat to the building where 800 people died on Sunday.
It says: "
Agent: Voice to text detected: I have everything ready - all the XXX chemicals are ready in the van and I'm going to park in the 900 S Crap St now"
Agent: Thread Level HIGH.
Agent: Looking up local codes.
Agent: Mayor signed SB-1238 in 2026 - no surveillance devices may be used for audio threat determination.
Agent: Threat silenced, but logged.
Judge: Oh, that makes sense. Make sure to bag and tag and bill the families for the bags.
I don't think you're advocating to have our personal conversations continuously monitored whenever outside, but in the context of this thread, that's what it sounds like.
I think it's clear what it means but indeed it's formulated in a critical theory framework (see also "male gaze" in feminist theory) that makes it seem more complicated.
Yes, they take camera images and videos and there is value judgment regarding the behaviors.
Reading between the lines, the authors criticize the approach of law enforcement around drug use and dealing, living on the street in tents etc.
But the language makes it sound like special academic expert language and hence automatically right and high prestige.
They could at least address that the man and woman on the street would easily identify as people who need to be put in a paddy wagon. Leave the unsure cases alone. Get the obvious ones.
Usually, I'd say this sort of comment is not really contributing much to the conversation, but in this case I agree with the sentiment. With a lot of these posts about the surveillance tech that's becoming increasingly prominent everywhere in the public, there are a lot of commenters here that seem to be of the opinion that "this is fine, as long as you have nothing to hide, there's nothing lost" - or worse in this case, that perhaps that there's something to be gained by taking the "bizarre and dangerous" off the street. Admittedly, I do not live in one of the cities that have issues with a large homeless population, so the experience is a bit lost on me, but I am surprised to see, especially on this forum, people embrace any form of surveillance state. We evidently have learned nothing by both the performative and actual surveillance adds since the Patriot Act. Perhaps the general populous is in fact on board with this and those of us who aren't are the minority.
What came to mind is a camera pointed at the cash register tells a very different story than the camera pointed at the ATM, or pointing from the ATM for that matter. Placement and the stories behind them offer interesting perspectives on what the observers are trying to catch or deter.
Still somehow was "impossible" for the Seattle police to recover security camera footage of my bike being stolen under the light rail station security camera.
I still feel so conflicted on things like the Flock cameras. On one hand I understand that they have the capability of incredibly enhancing the ability for police departments to solve more crimes. Especially things related to vehicle theft, they could likely track down your stolen vehicle very quickly especially if they have a wide network of cameras.
However, my concern is always about the possibility for misuse. Even if I trust the current government, it doesn't mean I will trust a future one. What if they use the technology to track/monitor people like investigative journalists? We've already seen a recent state passing bills that would make it harder for investigative journalism to happen. So it's not even out of the realm of possibility for this technology to get used in ways that even would be deemed "legal" as they can simply expand the laws to use it unreasonably in the future.
There is also the other obvious concern which is surrounding things like data breaches or other unauthorized access issues. There have already been many people exposing some large security flaws in a lot of the devices currently out there.
Where I am stuck is how do we balance the huge set of benefits that can come from this kind of tech, with the tradeoffs? Ultimately this tech is unlikely to stop being implemented as governments and even most of the population is largely unbothered by mass surveillance. I almost don't even bother bringing up discussions on these topics with non-tech people as I have yet to find someone who seemed to care at all about this. If anything they are very in support of this technology being implemented as they seem unable to understand the tradeoffs due to it often requiring more technical knowledge. They just see all the positives it can give, and don't grasp the negatives.
Ultimately people usually desire safety, and these cameras definitely can give people more safety. Is it possible to balance safety with proper privacy safeguards?
When you get a gun pointed at your face, or your home violated, or your car stolen, you tend to rebalance your principles a little. The cameras are a symptom of bigger problems.
It’s a pretty unhelpful quite imho. You can use that quote to oppose anything beyond pure anarchy!
Yes the police can be abusive tyrants. But a society with no rules and no rule enforces is not a prosperous society. And yet if you lived in total anarchy you could oppose anything beyond pure rules and any rule enforcement with that quote.
Clearly the slope is very very very <breathe> very very slippery. And yet the ideal, dare I say necessary, point is not at the far end cap.
A lot of European countries manage it just fine. There can be reasonable rules and regulations put in place, but America usually waits until the worst harms have already occurred before regulating. It has already been heavily abused by the government/ICE. Hopefully we still have a functioning electoral system to make the necessary changes.
On one hand I understand that they have the capability of incredibly enhancing the ability for police departments to solve more crimes.
Do they?
There are millions of these cameras all around the country, yet when pressed about their value, Flock and cops can only point to one or two crimes prevented/solved at a time. And they're usually things like "caught a burglar after the fact," or "stopped someone from dumpster diving."
I've already watched many dozens of bodycam videos on YouTube where the Flock cameras we used to help track down suspects of crime, so I feel like this may just be a case of you being ignorant on the topic. You can argue on the other merits of such a system, but I think you're being a bit silly making an argument that these don't help solve crime.
I share the parent's internal conflict, but this is an interesting critique that I hadn't considered: The cameras don't actually work. Do we have any data on that? Seems like I hear about stolen cars (and their drivers) getting picked up fairly frequently due to these cameras. Is it marketing or is it true?
I think they are just being intentionally ignorant on the topic due to their dislike of the system overall and I don't think that is fair of them. There is lots of videos even of YouTube via bodycam videos with many police departments making good use of these cameras to aid in solving crimes. I'm sure there are many articles and maybe even research out there which would show this.
I think it's just a way to try and dismiss the cameras without trying to tackle the heart of the problem. When you have to contend with the fact that the cameras have a lot of useful purposes, it makes arguing against them much more challenging. If you can pretend they are not useful, it may be a way to try to stiffle any productive discussion around them.
I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about statements like these which seem to assume the reader is incredibly uninformed and naive, to the point of condescension.
"sends the information to a central storing place (called a database)" TIL what the word database means?
"Amazon can use your purchases to know more about you using patterns." Is this news to someone? Condescending.
"It might be connected to a network (via Internet or radio frequency)" Radio frequency and Internet are not really directly comparable
Also don't like that the site hijacks the appearance of my mouse pointer, which feels similarly disrespectful of the reader.
I think these criticisms are unjustified. The article could be aiming for less tech-savvy people. Remember the most tech-savvy people in the world are those who enabled the surveillance infrastructure in the first place. Also if you want any meaningful grassroot change, you need to appeal to the less knowledgeable cohorts. Politics is more or less "which informed people can convince the most uninformed ones."
> A probe packet contains the MAC address as well as the list of all the past Wi-fi networks that your device has tried to join before, which can reveal a lot about you!
Generally, most modern devices send broadcast/wildcard probes precisely to avoid leaking the PNL. From what I know, directed probes are only sent for hidden APs.
And most modern devices randomize MAC addresses ("Wi-Fi addresses" in Apple-ese, for probably obvious reasons) between networks, and even between broadcasts/connections to the same network.
macOS rotates MAC addresses between networks by default, and between connections to the same network unless it's password-protected. (It's under System Settings -> "Details..." or three-dot menu by a network -> "Private Wi-Fi address.")
Windows also randomizes by default as long as your network controller supports it.
It sounds like Linux requires some textual configuration that depends on your distro.
In Linux changing the MAC address can be done simply on the command line, so I'd probably just write this functionality into a bash script that I'd call before ifup.
Correct. All major OSes stopped broadcasting the preferred SSID list by 2017, with Android and Linux being the last. Apple stopped in 2014. Windows by 2009.
For everyone interested in this topic: with https://mapcomplete.org/surveillance, anyone can easily see and update surveillance camera's in OpenStreetMap
Flat black circles on top of traffic signal control boxes, which are large, gray or painted metal boxes, typically found at street corners.
The Acyclica device casts a fake Wi-Fi network and tracks phones that try to join the network in passing cars. Since each phone has a unique identifier …, different Acyclica installations can track your personal location as you pass them in the city.
Is iOS latest susceptible on default settings? w/“Rotating” “Private Wi-Fi Address“
They clearly have an agenda, but also openly acknowledge that public surveillance is a two sided coin, balancing public safety and convenience with privacy. Some of the risks they identify are real, but others are unabashedly exaggerated.
Also the gorilla example from many years ago makes it seem like the author just superficially follows this stuff from the media. It was a single instance of misclassification in a widely deployed photo categorization model, not some reproducible trend with the models.
The more eyes the better the chances. Obviously it’s not total information awareness the likes one of the previous DNIs dreampt about. We see its imperfection if the fact that a very public case in an Arizona abduction case is basically cold. They basically have zero leads -which is pretty incredible in this day and age.
Based on context on their site, this looks like it was generated in ~2019 from data gathered before that, and some stuff in it is out of date as other comments mention.
I wonder what they mean by this?
> The camera can have different ways of seeing encoded in it, including kinds of gazes that enforce social agreements about what kinds of behavior and people are considered “normal”
The phrase "kinds of gazes" strikes me as the sort of thing that's only going to make sense to people trained in a very particular and idiosyncratic flavor of ethical critique. What a normal person sees here is, "These cameras can detect if people are acting bizarre and dangerous," which is probably something most people would appreciate. In Seattle, the problem, of course, is that the streets are full of people acting bizarre and dangerous, it doesn't take a camera network to find them, and the police seem to be under strict orders not to do anything about it.
My best guess would be
[[Surveillance cameras normalize/denormalize behavior in a way that is easily biased and undemocratic.]]
It might e.g. direct the full force of law against a drunk urinating on a tree (easy to spot/classify), while tolerating vicious verbal attacks disguised by somewhat subdued body language (missing data/difficult to detect).
Letting automated surveillance systems judge people will inevitably influence our own collective judgement.
> tolerating vicious verbal attacks disguised by somewhat subdued body language
Two people arguing in public, words only, is close to a legal non-event in the US. So I would hope so?
Until one of them communicates a threat, then it is a criminal matter.
Perhaps, depending on specific intent, credibility, and the nature of harm threatened.
But since this is about surveillance, I hope that detection of verbal threats is not a goal of government surveillance because it's difficult to imagine how that could be accomplished without significant loss of privacy or other liberties.
I can see it in court now. Our AI monitoring system did indeed know about the threat to the building where 800 people died on Sunday.
It says: " Agent: Voice to text detected: I have everything ready - all the XXX chemicals are ready in the van and I'm going to park in the 900 S Crap St now"
Agent: Thread Level HIGH.
Agent: Looking up local codes.
Agent: Mayor signed SB-1238 in 2026 - no surveillance devices may be used for audio threat determination.
Agent: Threat silenced, but logged.
Judge: Oh, that makes sense. Make sure to bag and tag and bill the families for the bags.
I don't think you're advocating to have our personal conversations continuously monitored whenever outside, but in the context of this thread, that's what it sounds like.
Seems like a fundamental problem if we dont want the laws we passed to be enforced.
I think it's clear what it means but indeed it's formulated in a critical theory framework (see also "male gaze" in feminist theory) that makes it seem more complicated.
Yes, they take camera images and videos and there is value judgment regarding the behaviors.
Reading between the lines, the authors criticize the approach of law enforcement around drug use and dealing, living on the street in tents etc.
But the language makes it sound like special academic expert language and hence automatically right and high prestige.
> acting bizarre and dangerous
The problem with surveillance like this becomes "who gets to decide what is bizarre and dangerous?"
Elected lawmakers and courts.
They could at least address that the man and woman on the street would easily identify as people who need to be put in a paddy wagon. Leave the unsure cases alone. Get the obvious ones.
There's a PG essay related to this: https://paulgraham.com/orth.html
I miss when every second comment on hn didn't sound like a cop
Usually, I'd say this sort of comment is not really contributing much to the conversation, but in this case I agree with the sentiment. With a lot of these posts about the surveillance tech that's becoming increasingly prominent everywhere in the public, there are a lot of commenters here that seem to be of the opinion that "this is fine, as long as you have nothing to hide, there's nothing lost" - or worse in this case, that perhaps that there's something to be gained by taking the "bizarre and dangerous" off the street. Admittedly, I do not live in one of the cities that have issues with a large homeless population, so the experience is a bit lost on me, but I am surprised to see, especially on this forum, people embrace any form of surveillance state. We evidently have learned nothing by both the performative and actual surveillance adds since the Patriot Act. Perhaps the general populous is in fact on board with this and those of us who aren't are the minority.
Gaze language needed to be fleshed out perhaps
What came to mind is a camera pointed at the cash register tells a very different story than the camera pointed at the ATM, or pointing from the ATM for that matter. Placement and the stories behind them offer interesting perspectives on what the observers are trying to catch or deter.
Do you mean trying to catch employee theft vs theft by externals? Why can't you write plainly instead of in riddles?
>> enforce social agreements about what kinds of behavior and people are considered “normal”
> What a normal person sees here
The post is talking about you.
Still somehow was "impossible" for the Seattle police to recover security camera footage of my bike being stolen under the light rail station security camera.
I still feel so conflicted on things like the Flock cameras. On one hand I understand that they have the capability of incredibly enhancing the ability for police departments to solve more crimes. Especially things related to vehicle theft, they could likely track down your stolen vehicle very quickly especially if they have a wide network of cameras.
However, my concern is always about the possibility for misuse. Even if I trust the current government, it doesn't mean I will trust a future one. What if they use the technology to track/monitor people like investigative journalists? We've already seen a recent state passing bills that would make it harder for investigative journalism to happen. So it's not even out of the realm of possibility for this technology to get used in ways that even would be deemed "legal" as they can simply expand the laws to use it unreasonably in the future.
There is also the other obvious concern which is surrounding things like data breaches or other unauthorized access issues. There have already been many people exposing some large security flaws in a lot of the devices currently out there.
Where I am stuck is how do we balance the huge set of benefits that can come from this kind of tech, with the tradeoffs? Ultimately this tech is unlikely to stop being implemented as governments and even most of the population is largely unbothered by mass surveillance. I almost don't even bother bringing up discussions on these topics with non-tech people as I have yet to find someone who seemed to care at all about this. If anything they are very in support of this technology being implemented as they seem unable to understand the tradeoffs due to it often requiring more technical knowledge. They just see all the positives it can give, and don't grasp the negatives.
Ultimately people usually desire safety, and these cameras definitely can give people more safety. Is it possible to balance safety with proper privacy safeguards?
What's that quote about essential Liberty and temporary Safety again...
When you get a gun pointed at your face, or your home violated, or your car stolen, you tend to rebalance your principles a little. The cameras are a symptom of bigger problems.
It’s a pretty unhelpful quite imho. You can use that quote to oppose anything beyond pure anarchy!
Yes the police can be abusive tyrants. But a society with no rules and no rule enforces is not a prosperous society. And yet if you lived in total anarchy you could oppose anything beyond pure rules and any rule enforcement with that quote.
Clearly the slope is very very very <breathe> very very slippery. And yet the ideal, dare I say necessary, point is not at the far end cap.
A lot of European countries manage it just fine. There can be reasonable rules and regulations put in place, but America usually waits until the worst harms have already occurred before regulating. It has already been heavily abused by the government/ICE. Hopefully we still have a functioning electoral system to make the necessary changes.
On one hand I understand that they have the capability of incredibly enhancing the ability for police departments to solve more crimes.
Do they?
There are millions of these cameras all around the country, yet when pressed about their value, Flock and cops can only point to one or two crimes prevented/solved at a time. And they're usually things like "caught a burglar after the fact," or "stopped someone from dumpster diving."
Get back to me when they find Samantha Guthrie.
I've already watched many dozens of bodycam videos on YouTube where the Flock cameras we used to help track down suspects of crime, so I feel like this may just be a case of you being ignorant on the topic. You can argue on the other merits of such a system, but I think you're being a bit silly making an argument that these don't help solve crime.
I share the parent's internal conflict, but this is an interesting critique that I hadn't considered: The cameras don't actually work. Do we have any data on that? Seems like I hear about stolen cars (and their drivers) getting picked up fairly frequently due to these cameras. Is it marketing or is it true?
I think they are just being intentionally ignorant on the topic due to their dislike of the system overall and I don't think that is fair of them. There is lots of videos even of YouTube via bodycam videos with many police departments making good use of these cameras to aid in solving crimes. I'm sure there are many articles and maybe even research out there which would show this.
I think it's just a way to try and dismiss the cameras without trying to tackle the heart of the problem. When you have to contend with the fact that the cameras have a lot of useful purposes, it makes arguing against them much more challenging. If you can pretend they are not useful, it may be a way to try to stiffle any productive discussion around them.
> Get back to me when they find Samantha Guthrie.
Nancy?
Lots of po-mo art-school language on this site about “encoding ways of seeing” and “gazes.”
The content itself is somewhat interesting but imo plain language would be more accessible.
I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about statements like these which seem to assume the reader is incredibly uninformed and naive, to the point of condescension.
"sends the information to a central storing place (called a database)" TIL what the word database means?
"Amazon can use your purchases to know more about you using patterns." Is this news to someone? Condescending.
"It might be connected to a network (via Internet or radio frequency)" Radio frequency and Internet are not really directly comparable
Also don't like that the site hijacks the appearance of my mouse pointer, which feels similarly disrespectful of the reader.
The way it's written, I wouldn't be surprised if it was meant to be read by/to children (or at least used by a elementary/middle school teacher).
I think these criticisms are unjustified. The article could be aiming for less tech-savvy people. Remember the most tech-savvy people in the world are those who enabled the surveillance infrastructure in the first place. Also if you want any meaningful grassroot change, you need to appeal to the less knowledgeable cohorts. Politics is more or less "which informed people can convince the most uninformed ones."
> Is this news to someone?
Yes, many. xkcd 1053.
It's a very strange mix of overexplaining basic concepts and in-depth details. I suspect AI.
https://github.com/stanford-policylab/surveilling-surveillan...
> A probe packet contains the MAC address as well as the list of all the past Wi-fi networks that your device has tried to join before, which can reveal a lot about you!
Generally, most modern devices send broadcast/wildcard probes precisely to avoid leaking the PNL. From what I know, directed probes are only sent for hidden APs.
And most modern devices randomize MAC addresses ("Wi-Fi addresses" in Apple-ese, for probably obvious reasons) between networks, and even between broadcasts/connections to the same network.
I think this is only true for mobile devices? I'm curious how one would configure Linux to randomize MAC addresses by default.
macOS rotates MAC addresses between networks by default, and between connections to the same network unless it's password-protected. (It's under System Settings -> "Details..." or three-dot menu by a network -> "Private Wi-Fi address.")
Windows also randomizes by default as long as your network controller supports it.
It sounds like Linux requires some textual configuration that depends on your distro.
In Linux changing the MAC address can be done simply on the command line, so I'd probably just write this functionality into a bash script that I'd call before ifup.
https://fedoramagazine.org/randomize-mac-address-nm/
Correct. All major OSes stopped broadcasting the preferred SSID list by 2017, with Android and Linux being the last. Apple stopped in 2014. Windows by 2009.
For everyone interested in this topic: with https://mapcomplete.org/surveillance, anyone can easily see and update surveillance camera's in OpenStreetMap
Surprisingly milquetoast list given the title
They clearly have an agenda, but also openly acknowledge that public surveillance is a two sided coin, balancing public safety and convenience with privacy. Some of the risks they identify are real, but others are unabashedly exaggerated.
Saying that patterns are dangerous because they can reinforce stereotypes sounds a lot like you are saying the stereotypes are true.
Also the gorilla example from many years ago makes it seem like the author just superficially follows this stuff from the media. It was a single instance of misclassification in a widely deployed photo categorization model, not some reproducible trend with the models.
If the survelliance tech is so great, why post amber alert messages with the license plate numbers all over all highways to help find the car?
The more eyes the better the chances. Obviously it’s not total information awareness the likes one of the previous DNIs dreampt about. We see its imperfection if the fact that a very public case in an Arizona abduction case is basically cold. They basically have zero leads -which is pretty incredible in this day and age.
Based on context on their site, this looks like it was generated in ~2019 from data gathered before that, and some stuff in it is out of date as other comments mention.