tptacek
Who are you talking about who likes the cameras? It isn't me. But if you're in a suburb of Chicagoland, my guess is your neighbors like them a bunch. They won't like Flock, because of the Trump administration and ICE press around Flock, but ALPRs are commodity technology now and you'll likely roll out some other vendor, like the munis surrounding Oak Park did.
Feb 23 at 10:11pmWeb
Show threadtokyobreakfastFeb 23

> They won't like Flock, because of the Trump administration and ICE

This tells me the population votes based on emotion and vibes rather than critical thinking. With that attitude, presenting a reasoned rebuttal doesn't stand a chance; i.e. it's okay when my team does it.

Show threadtptacekFeb 23
This would be a more compelling rebuttal if I hadn't just told you a story about how we obtained exactly the outcome you claim to want in our own municipality.
Show threadhalfmatthalfcatFeb 24
Hi, Evanstonian here, we got rid of them.
Show threadtptacekFeb 24

Right, you're the 2nd most liberal muni in Illinois after us. But Wilmette still has theirs, just like River Forest still has their ALPRs. I think a lot of munis will drop Flock, because of the bad PR, but they're just going to stand up no-name ALPRs.

(For people unfamiliar with Chicagoland, Oak Park borders Chicago to its west and is like our version of Park Slope, and Evanston, which houses Northwestern University, borders Chicago to the North and is like our Westchester County.)

I was pretty irritable about us cancelling our Flock contract. We did a metric fuckton of regulation on our cameras; I think we may have had the most sophisticated ALPR regulation of any ALPR in the country (granted, that's a statement about how little regulation there is of them, but still). We could have disabled our cameras but kept the contract, kept our standing as a municipality that uses Flock, and then shopped our ordinances and police general orders to the neighboring municipalities.

Instead, we performatively cancelled our contract, while remaining 4.5 square miles surrounded on all sides by totally unregulated ALPRs.