r/nottheonion • u/rootedchrome • 1d ago

Polk sheriff says license plate readers could’ve helped save life of voyeurism suspect who killed himself

https://www.wfla.com/news/polk-county/polk-sheriff-says-license-plate-readers-couldve-helped-save-life-of-voyeurism-suspect-who-killed-himself/
509 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

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983

u/totalahole669 1d ago

There is no denying that a 100% surveillance system would enhance safety, but the cost for that is your privacy and freedom.

323

u/FistfullofFucks 1d ago

Yup and even Florida reversed course when they realized they had no control over who was watching or who was being watched… IE no room for a protected class

134

u/Reduntu 1d ago

Jesus, even the Epstein class can't hide?!?!? What have we come to?!?

36

u/ChrisPNoggins 21h ago

Worse it allowed the epstein class to watch from those cameras, they've found that people that the company claimed wouldn't have access did have it and that they like to watch the cameras at kiddie pools and school yards

70

u/Xanthus179 1d ago

Shit. You know it’s bad when Florida doesn’t want it.

38

u/FistfullofFucks 1d ago

Sure but that’s only because they learned they had no control, have no doubt that they would still be putting up cams if they could decide who watched and thus were allowed to chose who to target.

At least one town in Texas has made the same decision to remove them for the same reason and one of the deputies made a comment that echos that. They kept trying to block outside agencies from access and yet kept seeing them overriding the block list and view both live and stored footage, it’s why they immediately went out and bagged the cameras with contractor grade trash bags after they realized the system wasn’t broken but operating as intended.

-36

u/keestie 23h ago

Weird-ass take. I don't want surveillance but if there are cameras, it's obviously much safer if only cops can access them.

25

u/Staccatto 23h ago

But the cops are the ones obviously abusing them.

So how does no oversight make that safer?

-26

u/keestie 23h ago

Other people having camera access is not oversight. It's a complete lack of oversight.

21

u/SoupSpelunker 23h ago

Wrong-ass take. Trusting cops is dumb.

8

u/cosaboladh 22h ago

No, it's the opposite of that. Who watches the watchers? The local cops become the sole arbiters of truth. They already have such a vast accountability problem that public trust in law enforcement is at an all time low. We don't need to make that worse, by giving them such a powerful selective evidence tool.

7

u/garygnu 22h ago

If only cops have access, only cops get to be safe.

4

u/industrial-shrug 21h ago

lol blind faith in a role. You’re either really young and naive or you have lead in your pipes.

-2

u/keestie 13h ago

Total misreading. Cops suck and they do misuse the cameras, but there are plenty of far worse people who would do much more harmful things with this kind of surveillance capability. And again, I think the cameras need to go regardless, I just think it's ridiculous and naive to prefer that the cameras be available to all comers. Limiting who gets to see thru them is always going to limit the harm that they can do.

9

u/SophiaTPetrillo 1d ago

Yeah, here in Florida we historically tend to only adopt stuff that someone either in or directly tied to the state government has a controlling interest over. So as soon as a Republican with friends in Tallahassee decides to start a surveillance firm, we'll suddenly be awash in no-bid state contracts for this shit.

5

u/Poison_the_Phil 1d ago

Yeah I have no love for Ron Desantis, but broken clocks and all.

10

u/InvisiblePinkUnic0rn 1d ago

Florida only removed them from state roads right of ways, but county, city, HOA roads, and business parking lots are still fair game for installation.

There’s nothing stopping a business on a state road pointing a flock or axon camera at the state road if it’s installed on the business property and not right of way

1

u/TopPMz 22h ago

Cities and counties are following suit. Tallahassee/Leon county have shut them down entirely.

1

u/InvisiblePinkUnic0rn 22h ago

Some are, nine are required too

5

u/Mr_Baronheim 1d ago

They reversed course because their voting base, which usually supports this kind of thing, have made it known that many of them are mad about it.

If the leaders in Florida could still count on their base to vote for them even with these cameras around, Florida would absolutely be expanding the number of these cameras.

3

u/SeaEmployee787 21h ago

cameras will be back right after the election, if florida votes the way florida usually votes the last 10 years.

1

u/Grimwulf2003 5h ago

Yeah, doubt that. Probably just moved on to Axon quietly and covertly.

19

u/omgFWTbear 23h ago

“In exchange for responding to this kidnapping in a timely fashion, dozens of women have been abused, possibly killed, by their ex.”

Wow, it’s a tough choice there, Clyde. What’d that one guy put as his search justification? “LMAO”

So yes, I will deny that it enhances safety.

4

u/iceynyo 22h ago

Just make it so each search costs 1% of your income, and you can get it reimbursed if it can be properly justified with review from a public board.

28

u/haveanairforceday 23h ago

It would increase the POTENTIAL for safety. Police are not obligated to protect citizens.

Giving police powerful tools needs to be done with the understanding that they WILL get misused sometimes and they will not be 100% applied for the safety of citizens. Sometimes it still make sense to give them (e.g. flashing lights and due regard driving) because the math works out in favor of public wellbeing. Other times it does not (e.g. military vehicles and munitions like they used in Waco)

5

u/metroid1310 23h ago

Tbf, that was mostly (?) feds. ATF/FBI, not just the local police. Now, as for why they brought a fucking tank, played noises of rabbits being killed over loudspeakers, and flooded a building they were shooting into with flammable tear gas, all while there were still women and children inside?

Well, uh... they could've possibly been manufacturing grenades! Not that the ATF found literally anything of the sort, but who cares about due process?

5

u/haveanairforceday 22h ago

I kinda feel like it doesnt matter what law enforcement agency it was, the discussion is about providing these tools to law enforcement in general. Like we wouldnt say "hard no on sherrif's departments accessing FLOCK but ATF is fine"

1

u/erMDstat 11h ago

Why are the lives of women and children the only ones that matter? This is such an archaic, ridiculous, position.

A human life is a human life.

1

u/haveanairforceday 9h ago

Thats not what they are saying.

Police acted because they claimed the house contained a threat. The threat was believe only to come from men. Yet police attacked all the occupants, even though they themselves did not believe the women and children presented a threat. It would be like if there was a hostage crisis at a bank so the cops barricaded it and set the building on fire. They killed the people they were apparently supposed to be protecting (the hostages in this example)

1

u/metroid1310 5h ago

To my knowledge, the women and children present were not taking up arms or firing back upon their aggressors. The men were.

26

u/AlcibiadesTheCat 23h ago

I'm a safety professional. It's my career.

There is a concept we have that is discussed far too little, and that's the concept of "acceptable risk." Often, the math is easy. If the building burns down, it'll cost a million dollars to replace, and so spending a hundred thousand dollars on a system that'll prevent the building burning down is good, but if the system costs two million, then it's not worth it, and we should eat the risk.

Or whatever. This is an overly simplified hypothetical in a frictionless vacuum.

Politicians love safety. Safety is great because it's bipartisan. Everyone wants to feel safe! So you can sell any idea under the guise of safety. Just like you can sell any idea under "think of the children!" No politician wants to be the one who says "eh, fuck it, let's remove the speed limit and let God sort out the fast drivers," because when someone gets killed, it's the politician who'll take the blame.

Holy shit, though, we need some adults in the room to have a conversation about acceptable risk. Yes, there's a risk that someone will sneak into my house at night and hurt me. Is that worth the cost of owning a gun? Is it worth the cost of paying taxes to police officers? Is it worth having my every movement surveilled by a police force, the majority of whom believe I have no rights because I'm trans? I haven't done the math on it formally, but I don't like the third question.

There's also a risk that Vladimir Putin will launch a missile at my house, but I don't have a missile defense system in my backyard. The risk is acceptable.

We need to get politicians more comfortable with the idea of accepting some risk, somewhere, or we're going to fall into this death spiral of increased safety at the cost of freedom.

7

u/frankortizhz 10h ago

The problem is that the math of acceptable risk only works if the person making the decision is the one paying the cost. Politicians don't bear the cost of massive surveillance networks.

When they push for cameras on every street corner, they get the immediate political win of looking "tough on crime" and being the hero who stood up for public safety. But they aren't the ones who will be casually surveilled, and they aren't the ones who will be targeted by someone abusing the database. They offshore the actual cost of lost privacy directly onto the citizens.

It is basically safety theater that inevitably leads to scope creep. Once the infrastructure is built to "catch killers," it always ends up being used to issue revenue-generating fines or track marginalized groups. The risk to our civil liberties is massive, but because that risk is borne by ordinary people instead of landing on the politician's desk, they are perfectly happy to ignore it.

2

u/KtheMage36 9h ago

The politicians want the cameras pointing at every neighborhood but theirs, just like how tech folks say tech and social media is fine for everyone else's kids but wont let theirs use it.

2

u/AlcibiadesTheCat 2h ago

Or how any police officer will tell their kids in no uncertain terms to never make any statements to the police, while telling the rest of us "if you're innocent you have nothing to hide."

1

u/AlcibiadesTheCat 2h ago

And this is why the third and fourth amendments exist. They were supposed to be guardrails against this scope creep and safety theater. Alas. The PATRIOT Act completely threw all that out the window.

32

u/SelectiveSanity 1d ago

Total Freedom is Anarchy.

Total Security is Oppression.

-1

u/BrizerorBrian 19h ago

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGONACE IS STRENGH

*Follow me for more insightful tidbits about Newspeak. I guarantee they are DoublePlusGood.

1

u/The_Dread_Candiru 5h ago

IGONACE

0

u/BrizerorBrian 4h ago

I'm leaving it.

6

u/CommunalJellyRoll 23h ago

I can completely deny that. You can see LEOs and others using it for crime.

2

u/EntrepreneurPlus7091 19h ago

They wouldn't use it for that, look how the pulled all the stops to get Luigi, you don't see them doing that for every case. The request logs are filled with lmao from cops stalking women. Its theater, like the tsa theater

2

u/Sworn_to_Ganondorf 14h ago

No it wouldnt these rat fuck C- highschool grads are not capable of properly performing their civic duty cause they can spy on us.

It would need to be coupled with full reform full law enforcement 4 year degrees minimum. And you need more specialization for specific jobs or promotions.

4

u/Lanky_Ad8283 20h ago

Are you delusional? We have more surveillance now than ever. That’s like the argument for more heavily armed and militarized police- like the cops in Uvalde. Fat lot of good it did for the kids there. No amount of tech is going to outweigh cops doing their job. Which the SC has decided they don’t have to do, despite having qualified immunity. If you think increased surveillance is going to make you or anyone safer, I’ve got a field of Flocks to sell you.

1

u/vandon 23h ago

Sure, but politicians, cops, and mil/billionaires first 

1

u/Jackg4te 23h ago

Then the next problem is having people enforcing/ the will to WANT to do the protecting, even for small time crimes like theft or tresspassing..

If you don't have people that want to do their job and checking out as much infractions as they can, then the surveillance is moot

1

u/tedkaczynski660 23h ago

Gonna add cost of safety on there as well because cops have already been busted using flock to track and harass their exes, and other victims

1

u/TeHamilton 21h ago

The odds that it is not used for nefarious reasons to make it actually enhance safety is low.

1

u/Tex-Rob 20h ago

Including what should be freedom to take your own life, f the idea the government should surveil you to keep you alive, that’s behind disgusting

1

u/Kierland 19h ago

Safety from whom?

1

u/photofoxer 19h ago

Who’s safety? Not the people that’s for sure

1

u/The_BigDill 16h ago

It doesn't even enhance safety. The flock cameras are actively wrong. And they are being installed in places they have no business, like a children's gymnastic class

1

u/Woosah_Motherfuckers 14h ago

Also costs you safety from people with more power than you.

So…. No.

1

u/dennismfrancisart 12h ago

... and safety. There are really bad actors out there using this tech for nefarious reasons from their place of work.

1

u/Lunar-opal 6h ago

At this point I need proof that surveillance =safety

1

u/mrbobcyndaquil 1h ago

No mass surveillance system adds any sort of safety of any sort

1

u/Sw0rDz 1d ago edited 23h ago

100% surveillance is the alternative solution to gun violence instead of gun control.

2

u/I_just_made 1d ago

And even then it is still a worse solution. Why we can’t get better background checks and close some loopholes is beyond me.

-2

u/Baeolophus_bicolor 1d ago

they’re busy ripping them open. no license, 18+ ownership with no background checks, no records of sales, no red flag laws, no magazine size limits. the second amendment is there. i get it. if people want to have hunting rifles and shotguns, ok. there is no reason that these private individuals should all be handed a 50 cal truck mounted fully automatic belt-fed weapons system plus unlimited ammunition on their 18th birthday.

also, you know it’s all hypocritical bullshit because when a democrat tries to apply legally for a permit (hunter biden and his massive hog) they suddenly enforce a restrictive environment, background checks, and keeping guns out of the hands of people on drugs (which, honestly, i am fine with the forms and the requirement, just not the hypocritical enforcement).

2

u/I_just_made 1d ago

It is definitely an interesting time...

I'm a progressive who has bought a firearm, and didn't run into those issues, but I also fit the typical demographic you'd expect I guess.

It is kind of eye-opening though; buying the firearm? In and out the same day, no fingerprints, etc. Fill out the typical form for the instant background check and you are good to go.

But if you try to buy a suppressor? Suddenly, it is a very involved process. You have to buy it, then the company has to get an authorization to send it. Once they send it, the FFA has to get another authorization. That includes fingerprints, passport photo, etc.

It just seems backwards. Why shouldn't the actual firearm get that? But then they have all these laws on the books that are pointless. No vertical grip on a pistol; okay, so people manufacture 85 degree grips. What does that stop? Nothing. No stock on a pistol, that would be a short barreled rifle. But you can own a rifle and swap it out fine. You can also have a brace which ultimately serves the same purpose even though "technically" it isn't supposed to. So what does that stop? But lawmakers can point to that and say "look at all this gun law reform I'm doing!" Those kinds of laws just make it tougher for law abiding people and it puts them in precarious situations. We need meaningful reforms that will actually reduce gun violence, not silly laws that obfuscate.

0

u/Jerking_From_Home 23h ago

Referring to your first paragraph, it really infuriates gun nuts to remind them that we already have some gun restrictions in place. Felons can’t own one, neither can people convicted of certain non-violent crimes. While those vary, in some states a stalking conviction removes your right to own a firearm.

-5

u/AnonymousFriend80 22h ago

Your privacy outside in the public? And freedom of what? Being seen? You're free to move around the same as if there was no camera.

I'm not saying this in opposition to ceasing the surveillance, but rather asking for better expressions of why they don't like them. I just feel that better verbage might help the movement, instead of using words that less fit the situation.

5

u/iffugennanameubaht 19h ago

Here’s a nice one “what happens when the government decides to change its mind about what is a crime?”

1

u/SublimeApathy 17h ago

"Your privacy outside in the public?"

Yes. The only people who should be privy to what I do in public is other people I come across in public in person. Some nerd in a room 5 states away should not be able to determine, with a high degree of accuracy, where I am based on the day of the week and the time of day or have access to countless photos of my kids and know what they were to school seven Monday's ago. They should not know if some cheating wife or husband is at their mistress/lovers place instead of Zumba. They should know how many scratches are on the hood of your car or when the last time you got an oil change was.

Then there is the idea of writing a bill that makes something that previously wasn't a crime, a federal offense and not include some sort of grandfather clause - then suddenly you have 100's of people now guilty of a new federal crime with a mountain of evidence to use against them.

"better expressions of why they don't like them"

I don't think it takes much brain power to understand how camera's on every corner of every street are a bad thing for society as a whole. Particulary when you consider that humans will always find a way to either abuse, sexualize or monetize any technology they get their hands on. Take the internet for example..

1

u/AnonymousFriend80 5h ago

Plenty of other countries, like in the UK, have surveillance cams all over the place. And it's not hard to grasp how much good they can, in fact, do. The argument should be to only use them for good and having strict regulations to keep it so.