Despite good intentions and my own discomfort, I can't help but feel like the anti-surveilance movement is mostly an extension of privilege politics and virtue signaling. Police brutality is a real problem, but a wildly common observation of life in the hood/ghetto/LI-housing is the prevalence of crime. You could make neighborhoods a lot safer with a lot fewer police by using modern methods like facial recognition cameras and unmanned aerial surveillance. Break-ins and robberies suddenly become wildly easy to punish afterwards and a lot of investigative work like tracking gang members to get a sense of their operations morphs into a trivial affair. We're rapidly approaching the point where basic physical crime is optional and while there should obviously be oversight and moral considerations at every step I can't help but feel it's a bit entitled of me to live in an okay neighborhood (some crime but its mostly kids drinking in parks and hobo drama) while telling people that the risks are too great to use this kind of tech in any circumstance.
Places like Baltimore's East/West sides and South Chicago already have arial surveillance, shot spotter, street corner camera, nearly limitless police power, and CommStat operations. These things have been in place for at least a decade and don't seem to be moving the needle.Sure, they could go full PRC, but I doubt anyone has the appetite for that level of draconian surveillance.
In my experience living in one of these places, police mostly don't investigate crime even when there's clear video.
My point is that the tech is of questionable quality, the application is horrible, and people hate it all the same. Anything that actually "work" would be so oppressive as to be untenable in the American context. Also, no one who is already policed in the US trusts the institution of policing in America to not abuse their most basic rights.
You could make neighborhoods a lot safer with a lot fewer police by using modern methods like facial recognition cameras and unmanned aerial surveillance. Break-ins and robberies suddenly become wildly easy to punish afterwards and a lot of investigative work like tracking gang members to get a sense of their operations morphs into a trivial affair.
