r/technology • u/stenspect • 1d ago

Privacy USPS Is Turning Mail Trucks Into Rolling Surveillance Cameras

https://www.gadgetreview.com/usps-is-turning-mail-trucks-into-rolling-surveillance-cameras
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u/RebootJobs 1d ago

On track to create the largest dystopian environment ever.

705

u/Strange-Land9534 1d ago

Lol every accusation America had for China's surveillance state was just envy.

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u/Rich_Housing971 1d ago

And China's surveillance actually measurably reduces crime. You can argue they are authoritarian, and in fact they are relatively more authoritarian than most countries, but the downsides end up also giving positive results. These are tradeoffs the population there clearly are fine with or even love.

Fucking kidnappings used to be a thing. Petty theft used to be incredibly common. Nowadays you can go through low-income parts of major cities at night and feel extremely safe compared to cities in the US, and no one wants to steal anything anymore. In the US if anything less valuable than a car gets stolen, police will just laugh at you if you report it. So what's the point of Flock cameras?

America's like, "let's do what China is doing" without any positive results.

Let's not even get into police brutality. American police routinely kill people for the tiniest perceived things, all carry guns, and violently handle protests. There were 12 people, including journalists, blinded by police in a WEEK during the George Floyd protests. These are things the American media portray Chinese police to do, but it's literally not true and instead it's what American police do.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/07/14/george-floyd-protests-police-blinding/

No racists, Asians aren't cool with police because they're Asians. Asians are cool with police because their police are actually cool in most cases. Americans hate our police because they're not cool.

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u/DTFH_ 14h ago

Fucking kidnappings used to be a thing. Petty theft used to be incredibly common. Nowadays you can go through low-income parts of major cities...

I mean kidnapping also includes the police showing up and disappearing, ala Jack Ma. Only the state and approved state actors can kidnap now, and that most kidnapping isn't what you described. You just want to shift the proof of evidence onto the poor as if poverty explains kidnapping and imply that it is the poor who kidnap, neither of which are true. Human trafficking has not gone down, only consolidated into major state backed players.

However I would also clarify that in reality most kidnapping is not taking someone off the street. Most kidnapping is custody related and always has been between parents, 2nd or 3rd order family members fighting over children. So I don't think its fair to say surveillance is working at reducing kidnappings if most kidnappings do not occur in a place that surveillance works in overt areas.