Typically, traffic cameras for tickets only recorded a protentional violation, or just generically gave a video feed.
Flock is by continuous documented surveillance that allows identifying everyone at nearly any time they are in a monitored public space, and the data is stored for long term retrieval (no one is making me believe it ever gets erased, that is naive).
There is a big difference between a generic traffic camera we are used to and devices like Flock.
There is a big difference between a generic traffic camera we are used to and devices like Flock.
That’s for sure.
(no one is making me believe it ever gets erased, that is naive).
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Why would they be. That would ruin their highest upside.
If I’m a murder or narcotics detective, and I suspect that Clevon was involved with an incident at the corner of Prospect and 5th at 2:45am on a date last month, what good is flock cameras if they got erased?
“the data is stored for long term retrieval”
One can easily tell a lot of data is being stored because the price of SD camera cards has soared.
Most of my SD cards are far from being filled.
The data centers alone have about as much data as the eight billion people of the world.
The US Patent Office patents can be stored on a very modest number of SD cards.
The data from my private library probably would fit on one large SD card.
I have been saying it for years-in my state, there are traffic cams everywhere, plate readers and such at nearly every intersection.
They are not there for traffic violations, since we do not (yet) allow tickets to be issued for traffic violations on the basis of a traffic cam.
But what they no doubt have is plate reading OCR technology which is very advanced and accurate. Every car that goes through an intersection is likely tracked by license plate number. But because these are not private, but “owned, maintained, or operated” by the federal, state, or local government”, any information taken from them must be accompanied by a warrant.
But they have been tracking cars by plate numbers for years. How long they keep it, I don’t know, but it is a certainty they were not installed there and sitting idle.
Each plate scanned stores the plate number, date, time, and location. Doesn’t even need GPS coordinates. Just a number designating the camera location. That is a very, very small dataset.
And storage is extraordinarily cheap, nearly limitless. So this data can be stored for very long periods of time. It can be accessed by any “authorized agency” with a warrant and the plate number may be unmasked to show the owner and the movements of that person over time.
Flock allows them to bypass all of this since it is “private” (ostensibly) surveillance data. They are not bound by the same laws that Federal, State, and Local agencies are, and the only limiting factor is who wants to pay to get access to that data, and if they are an “authorized” entity.
And those “authorized” entities are surely not you and me. They probably include nearly ANY Federal, State, and Local authority. Not to mention any foreign entity that has found a way to gain access to it.
Might they find THAT useful?
Kinda like there is a fundamental difference between absentee ballots and mailins. The former is for military overseas while the latter is only for the DNC.
It CAN'T be. It may be needed in the future, to solve cold cases.