The difference is ANPR is that Flock is a private business, collecting data and stalking people across the US for commercial purposes, which sold this data to law enforcement - meanwhile law enforcement were using the private sector to bypass the checks and balances of court warrants.
In the UK, ANPR is an official tool, not private. Police need to get authorisation to use it, and it is not used for commercial purposes.
It’s still wank, but it’s not quite as wank.
We don’t have “Flock-style” cameras at all. We have a statutory system with a strictly defined remit that was subject to years of argument, scrutiny and rewrites before it was turned on, not an invasive profit factory run by ruthless, messianic psychopaths. Secondly, our cops are all educated to degree level, they’re not just a bunch of otherwise futureless thugs who sit a three-week impossible-to-fail class and are given a gun. Neither the UK ANPR system nor police are perfect, far from it, but both are orders of magnitude better than what you have the Land Of The Free™.
I know enough about the ANPR systems on public roads that the UK police have access to. Firstly, it’s centrally managed through the PNC and every single query is logged: each query has to me made by an authorised officer who signs in with a federated identity and has to make the query in the context of an investigation - any query made without that immediately launches to an internal investigation and instant no-questions-asked dismissal is on the cards for anyone who makes a query without official justification. You know how American cops can shoot a protester and go back to full work after a two-week fully-paid break? Last month a cop in the UK was fired and blocked from ever working in the police, as a security guard or even as a doorman for the rest of his life without any possibility of appeal. He stole a reusable carrier bag from a supermarket.
Also, different people in different organisations have different levels of access. The DVLA can see if a particular license plate has been logged anywhere in a given month to see if an untaxed car is in use, for example, but they can’t see anything else. A traffic cop can see if a car has insurance, tax and an MOT certificate, but not the owner’s name or address. The biggest loophole at the moment is private car park owners who can ask the DVLA for the details of the owner of a car to issue parking fines, but that’s being clamped down on and, regardless, is nothing to do with public cameras.
Also, also: as a public, statutory systen the UK system is subject to FOI and GDPR: anyone can demand a copy of all of their own records from it. Highly recommended.
The UK has been saturated with CCTV cameras of all sorts for decades so the frog has been thoroughly boiled on public opinion on them.
The US is mad about them because its police force is uneducated, untrained and murderous. Whatever flaws the UK’s police have, it’s not nearly as bad, and having surveillance (in public) is not likely to result in you or your dog getting shot for no reason.
The US is (also) mad about them because it’s a violation of the 4th amendment of our constitution against unreasonable search.
And because US law enforcement have been using the private sector to bypass the need for a warrant.
I don’t really know the legal arguments that make surveillance of public places into searches, but let’s assume they exist and are valid… I still don’t think people would be that mad about it if you thought you could trust your police to use the information half-way responsibly.
police are untrustworthy in any country on earth.
Great contribution, very informative
Whatever flaws the UK’s police have, it’s not nearly as bad
The only major difference between the US and UK police is the numbers that are armed.
UK police are still full of the corrupt, racists, misogynists, rapists, child abusers and wife beaters.
The entire basis of policing in the two countries is different. This is reflected in their attitude and use of force, which is relevant when evaluating any new police power or tool.
At very very least, UK police don’t carry guns.
ding ding ding
Humans generally don’t mind guardrails and the like when they trust the people enacting them.
We’ve never really trusted the PO-lice in the USA, some have enthusiastically but many have never
The state song of Tennessee has a line about murdering two federal agents searching for a moonshine operation. Americans only like cops if they are brutalizing minorities or striking workers.
Americans only like cops if they are brutalizing minorities or striking workers.
Yes.
I suppose it’s because there hasn’t been any stories about the police abusing their powers and following their exes around. I’m sure it happens there’s just not been any stories about it.
Other one thing I will say is this, I used to actually watch the road traffic cameras so we could report in accidents and breakdowns on the motorways and trust me no one can track you using those cameras you could barely tell what colour of the car was, make and model you had no chance. You wouldn’t have thought they would still make cameras with the resolution of 720i, but apparently they still do.
The UK has surrendered their rights to a nanny state. They can’t even own pointy knives.
Oh no I’m not allowed a murderous weapon, what a restrictive country I live in I don’t know how I cope. The day I wasn’t able to randomly kill someone who cut me off in traffic. What an utterly appalling infringement on my freedoms.
How do you stab another driver from a car?
You take a shortcut.
That person is wrong anyway. We can carry a knife but there are restrictions. Some knifes are completely banned though, zombies, etc.
I carry a 3" non-locking knife with me often. Totally legal.
I’ve never really looked into it because I’ve never particularly felt the need to carry one around
You can also carry knives around for work, or various other reasons. It’s not like chef’s knives are illegal, and so long as you have a valid reason for moving it from A to B it shouldn’t be a problem. Unless you start brandishing it or something.
I know what you mean. I only carry one because when I go for a long walk I might meet some mushrooms, I carry a knife made for mushroom cutting. Prior to this I never had a need to unless it was a Stanley knife for working on stuff.
Honestly, they probably have better security. And there is probably less transparency about about usage.
Americans idolise Europe and wouldn’t stop bitching about how great it is here and how easy we have it. But then they’ll go ‘No kings!, no government ID!, no mass surveillance!, no face scanning and fingerprinting everyone without them committing a crime!..’, like, do you lot want Europe style ‘democracy’ or not?
I think flock is a pretty egregious example though. The corrupt us police were using it for personal reasons most of which were nefarious.
I’m not sure if Americans can really articulate this because they’re kind of used to their police being the enemy, but I think the larger issue isn’t so much the cameras themselves, it’s mass surveillance by an organization that is barely one step above criminals.
Law enforcement in the US extensively use the private sector to bypass the courts and get around having to get a warrant.
