What's the justification for why your (and everyone else's) dashcam doesn't count as automated mass surveillance that should be illegal? Lots of people post timestamped dashcam video with the license plates of other cars clearly visible on the public internet, sometimes explicitly to point out that a particular car was driving unsafely or badly. The police can use this footage as evidence to charge people with crimes.
I drove that way in 2024 for the solar eclipse. Some parts of that route struck me as a bit exurb-ish and spread-out, I wouldn't call it a single metro area, but there were definitely people living there. And it was way too green to be called a desert; I've driven through actual deserts in southern CA and nowhere that I saw in that part of Texas was anywhere near that dry (I guess you have to go further west to get to actual Texas desert, which we didn't do on that trip).
The deserts around El Paso are still quite a bit more alive than the ugliest desert I've ever seen (the stretch between Phoenix and San Diego gets that dubious honor).
> The bill gained traction after residents in Wiscasset and Lewiston successfully opposed data center proposals over water usage and safety concerns.
"Water usage" and especially "safety" are bullshit arguments against building new data centers - in particular the idea that data centers use a lot of water was popularized by the freelance prestige journalist Karen Hao, who got a lot of her facts egregiouly, sloppily wrong in her reporting about AI data centers. This is either retarded environmentalism unconcerned with facts; or the actual motivation to prevent data center construction is some kind of more nebulous distrust of big tech or AI companies or concern that AI will take people's jobs.
People stealing copper from public infrastructure in public spaces is exactly the sort of serious quality-of-life crime that I want something like Flock cameras to deter.
There's really no stopping a guy from stealing scrap metal if he thinks it'll pay for his next fix.
It's like when you try to keep something from being taken by bolting it down and they just come in and steal the bolts too. Some of that's just a part of life.
The ostensible purpose of the criminal justice system is to stop guys from stealing scrap metal obtained by vandalizing public structures in order to buy drugs. Perhaps by arresting them and locking them in a building with armed guards so they can't vandalize and steal things and also can't get drugs anyway.
Insofar as the actual criminal justice system is doing a bad job with this, I want it to do a better job - which may entail "use more public security cameras to detect copper thieves" - and not just accept that pieces of infrastructure in public places might get vandalized and stolen by drug addicts.
> The Bay Area is objectively safe, for example, yet I constantly run into neighbors in affluent neighborhoods who are afraid of venturing various places, letting their kids play outside or bike to school, or just generally exploring around.
A lot risks associated with "venturing various places" (which specific places?) and generally exploring around are not well-tracked in official crime statistics, precisely because the people who are affected by these crimes don't expect the police or criminal justice system to do much about them.
Arranging your bodies in a swastika pattern on the football field and photographing it isn't a crime in the US (nor should it be). It's reasonable to be more concerned about the school where a student brought a gun to campus. Although really both of these things sound like isolated incidents that don't say much one way or the other about what things would generally be like at either school for that incoming student.
One of the services that is most underfunded is the service of arresting, trying, and incarcerating homeless people who commit petty thefts, vandalism, and in some extreme cases physical assault or even murder. Insofar as cameras drive down the cost to the legal system of gathering enough evidence to convict and incarcerate people who do these things, this would make life better for regular people.
In the city I live in, there is a chronic shortage of police officers and a lot of dangerous neighborhoods. If a drone could be used to do the same or a substantially-similar policing job in those neighborhoods that a human cop would, without having to pay for a human cop (not just their salary in and of itself, but also in terms of making the police department a place people are willing to work for at that salary), this would be an improvement to public safety and quality of life.
Also remote-operated drones don't need to fear that they will get suddenly shot or stabbed to death by a criminal suspect whose potential crimes they are investigating, like a human cop does; and this would itself have some beneficial effects on policing.
The "same or substantially-similar policing job" is the key to this argument. Which it can't. A drone can't de-escalate a tense conflict between neighbors, it can't provide traffic redirection after an accident, or even rescue a kitten from a tree.
It can't be a calm, reassuring presence, offer a kind smile, or give directions. It only disconnects the police force from the policed community. Its presence will only raise tensions and paranoia. And that's with unarmed drones!
It's a cool thing if you're the younger man getting sexual attention from a hot older woman. Declaring by fiat that this is not okay doesn't change what peoples' desires actually are, or what behavior done by other people they feel compelled to punish.
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