• jvanderbot 2 years ago
    Mass selective enforcement via selective alerting is a dystopian scenario that Ring makes much easier.

    Someone should go write a scifi about a big tech company called Nile that uses consumer goods to gather data on political enemies and effectively weaponizes the populace against itself.

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    • avidiax 2 years ago
      I think the part that's missing from most of these scenarios is that all this surveillance can be retroactive.

      Now, you might say that things can't be made retroactively illegal, but selective enforcement can be done retroactively. The protagonist angers someone in power, and then finds that they are being summoned to court for jaywalking 357 times over the past year, getting their license revoked for 957 traffic infractions, illegal disposal of hazardous materials like lithium ion batteries in household garbage, etc. They are also a "subject of interest" in customs duty evasion, until they can account for every discrepancy in their last 46 airport x-ray bag scans. Apparently, they are also a serial loiterer, as confirmed by 588 separate security camera videos. They have been seen exchanging something with known drug users (the videos where it is clear they gave a homeless man $1 are quietly ignored).

    • jvanderbot 2 years ago
      Actually, this would make an excellent cyberpunk RPG scenario
  • h2odragon 2 years ago
    ITYM "Kindergarten teachers".

    If they were reddit moderators, they'd be kicking people out of neighborhoods and putting up billboards for diet pills and cryptocurrencies everywhere.

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    • adhesive_wombat 2 years ago
      At least half would. The other half would set up a HOA and start vigorously policing lawn length.
  • omscs99 2 years ago
    I agree with the premise of the article, but something caught my eye in it:

    > Some experts worry that this kind of information may shift policing more toward quality-of-life issues and property theft rather than life-threatening crimes such as assault.

    Property theft isn’t merely a “quality of life issue”. This seems to imply that policing shouldn’t be concerned with it, which is utter bullshit, they absolutely should be

  • cainxinth 2 years ago
    https://archive.ph/OCcJF

    Summary:

    > The collaboration of the LAPD with Amazon’s Ring network and its Neighbors platform (designed for community members to share information about alleged crimes) inundates officers with information, much of which does not pertain to actual crimes, and it brings up issues about consumer privacy and the over-collection of data. The efficacy of this data in improving policing outcomes remains unclear.

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    • tinus_hn 2 years ago
      In other words, first there was the phase when this was paranoid dystopian tin-foil hat conspiracy theory, and now we have reached the phase where it’s the reality we live in.
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  • Veliladon 2 years ago
    [flagged]