Sure they have. Just look at the accusation in the comment you're replying to.
It's literally happening and this story makes it really clear. I wish it was this easy to spot. It's usually Flock donating to some charity a council person is also a board member on
A council member "crashing out" (ie. proposing some satirical bills) is "really clear" evidence of kickbacks? Seems like a stretch. At the very least I'd want evidence of some transaction having occurred, rather than "wow you strongly support something I can't possibly imagine anyone would support? You must be getting kickbacks!"
Well that's entirely up to the people. Anyone can be removed one way or another. This article is about a locality in Texas. Don't mess with Texans in a small town.
Nobody's bribing a councilmember in an 800-person rural township.
I suspect this happens a lot more often than people assume. It does not take much to bribe people to change their minds based on the publicly known international spy/espionage cases. People will sell out their country for like $5k.
> All forums start off good, enjoy a "honeymoon period" in which they continue to be good, and then steadily decline... from the point of view of each individual observer...
https://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2005/11/20/charles_rules_of_on...
I like this first law better.
Just box office baseball tickets, just a $2k steak dinner with high end wine, just a phone call with the governor, just a gift card, just an advisor position with some equity, etc, etc, etc.
It's weird that people seem to act like lobbying doesn't exist at the city council level.
Does said company operate against the best interests of the constituents?
It's not a bribe, but if a govenor is placing his time @ 1200/hour for an individualized bow of gratitude, I can only imagine how cheap it is for a not good govenor to sell out for his own personal interests.
At the scale these tech trillionaires are working, why not throw a few pennies at some small councilman?
Days ago:
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/tarrant-county/north...
Multiple being charged at the same time:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-mayor-ricardo-lopez-corru...
Hell, I remember my town of a few hundred at the time having a council member bribery case.
Is this definitive proof? Nah. But a smaller town doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. If anything it means it just costs less.
The argument about surveillance is whether the negative trade-off (lack of privacy) is worth it.
Now I hate the idea of Flock and think we should basically fully ban facial recognition technology, license plate readers, and similar topics. It is just too dangerous if the wrong people get in power. But we should make sure we are making real, fact based arguments.
[1]. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/670398
The strongest deterrent for the general populace.
Generally speaking, crime rates tend to be pretty low already. So the sample shifts from general populace to those who already commit crimes, or in such an emotional fervor that they gain the capacity for crime.
Among that population, I don't think surveillance cameras are stopping much.
Also, how can we know how much crime isn't happening due to cameras? If it's like "we installed a camera at location X and crimes there dropped 72%", that's not taking into account that the criminal just found an easier target, leaving the same amount of net crime.
I.e. they are much more likely to rob a grocery store if they think they won’t get caught, but the penalty for robbing a grocery store being 1 year or 10 years doesn’t have a strong effect on deterrence.
To your second point - I don’t think it is helpful to find hypothetical holes in their methodology, without reading the individual studies.
The control group. Aka, the current crime rates right now with current infrastructure. Not a blank slate
In a lawless anarchy, you're probably right that "will I be held accountable for my actions?" Is the nost important question to ask. But we don't live in that society. The question we're asking instead is
1) how much does surveillance augment law enforcement?
2) how much does surveillance deter would be criminals compared to current deterrents that is law enforcement patrolling and reporting?
I’m sure this is true for a subset but is not universal. I imagine just as big a subset or even the majority of criminals simply think they are smart enough to get away with the crime.
Assume a perfect world where this system resulted in swift capture and high conversion on charges to convictions to the point where it becomes a pop culture fact that petty crime wouldn’t pay anymore. Does the next generation of criminals still believe they won’t get away with it? Or does the criminal population shrink?
Of course people don’t just stop being poor simply because crime is more effectively rooted out, but maybe their efforts would be redirected towards the power structures that allow poverty to continue vs each other, like would be the case if you rob a 7-11 franchise.
Oh boy, back to this crap again. If that's true, for you to be acting this defensively sure is sending some signal.
Hopefully whoever elected this person will have second thoughts and boot them. It's quite clear they are more interested in aggregating power and creating edifi through which to abuse the public than representing them in good faith.
> A Modest Proposal for Digital Device Prohibition: A total ban on all cellular and GPS-capable devices for all operations within city limits.
> A Modest Proposal for Total Surveillance Abolition (Residential & Commercial): A total ban on all outward-facing cameras
> A Modest Proposal for Total Municipal and Commercial Decommissioning: A total termination of all internet services and electronic record-keeping
For those that didn't catch the reference, he's alluding to the 1729 publication by Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels
>A Modest Proposal For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick.
Which was a satirical work suggesting that the Irish poor's financial woes could be addressed by eating children, thus feeding people while reducing resource demand.
[1] https://www.banderabulletin.com/article/3093,council-votes-t...
Third one makes no sense.
That the resolutions are literally titled "modest proposals" makes this article so much cringier.
If not, he is leaning all the way into a false equivalence comparing a cell phone one has personal control over to a nationwide network of spy cams that no regular citizen controls.
So which is it? Idiot or bad faith actor?
But again, that’s not what this is. Taking away all cell phones, which are a lot more useful than the camera function it shares with flock, is not an equivalent move.
The issue is people don’t want their town covered in cameras they don’t control and has been shown to be abused nationwide. How on earth is removing internet access to the populace even in the same ballpark?
This is a tantrum by someone who I suspect was set to gain financially by signing a contract with flock.
When I dropped my wallet the security guard still had no issue checking the camera footage.
Classic "all-or-nothing", "black and white" argument style
It's either one extreme or another
If the town wants to ban Flock cameras then surely it also wants to ban all outward-facing cameras, GPS-capable devices, cellular network devices, internet service and electronic record-keeping
There is no option to go back to a few years ago before Flock cameras were installed. Nope, the town must go back to "1880, paper ledgers and cash only"
Totally absurd
That's how China does things, e.g. 12345