SparrowMap – Cameras that watch government vehicles

ppaulnpace about 3 hours ago 24 commentsRead Article on sparrowmap.com

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Discussion (24 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

angeldimitrov94•about 2 hours ago

It sure would be interesting if suddenly all of the Flock employees coming to work were being constantly watched by a network of crowdfunded private cameras. Might drive home the point of invasion of privacy if its someone other than them watching...them. Or if all of the neighbors of the CEO of Flock suddenly joined some service like this so that everyone could track his activity at all times. I'm sure he'd wouldn't mind the entire world knowing exactly what he or his family are doing always.

Teever•24 minutes ago

The term you're looking for is sousveillance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance

It's a very important tool to figure out which people in positions of authority are coordinating for authoritarian purposes or just plain old corruption.

I'm instantly suspicious of anyone in government who is critical of this idea.

What are they hiding?

ToucanLoucan•1 minute ago

I mean they don't hide much anymore. Our current admin is simply awash in corruption, and nothing happens because a majority of lawmakers are also in on it, getting rich, and just aren't required to do anything. And even more broadly worldwide, corporations trade in human suffering by the ton, our planet continues to be destroyed by people who will be dead long before the consequences of their greed come to fruition, and the wealthy trade children to exploit either by way of their blood or much, much darker things.

We don't need a citizen surveillance network, we already know what they're doing, perhaps not all of it but far more than enough to justify mass civil unrest. They just figured out all they had to do was get us exhausted, overwhelmed and of course fighting each other enough to make certain we wouldn't.

dylan604•about 1 hour ago

How would the video captured from those cameras be used? These people are already driving on the same streets you and I do, so how would they not also be in the Flock footage? If you capture TBs of video footage and nobody sees it, what's the point? Are you going to start sending harassing posts to employees with footage of the car driving by your camera?

The anti-flock movement is real, but half baked ideas don't really serve a purpose to actually doing anything. Not sure how I feel about those destroying Flock cameras, but that's action moving the needle a lot further than establishing an entirely new anti-Flock camera network.

jspank•about 1 hour ago

you don't store TBs of video footage... You process it and store the instances of each object/license plate detection.

dylan604•about 1 hour ago

great, so now what? who are you giving access to that data that will mean anything? the cops aren't going to do anything with it as it does not pertain to anything within the purview. the only thing I could think that would be done with that information is not good with people showing up to their house or some such.

chaps•about 3 hours ago

Fun fact: in some municipalities you can FOIA for the GPS records of police vehicles. Here's Chicago Police's. They removed 0-15mph for, erm, privacy reasons.... but it's not the worst.

Have a glance:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/hj4jtcag2i9qvl4sj6mg2/AF6c9r7...

judge2020•41 minutes ago

The speed limit in neighborhoods is usually 25, so... 0-15mph limiting seems useless? I imagine some level of police <-> home address / general home area is in that data.

darksim905•40 minutes ago

What? Removing 0-15 mph is to remove places where they camp or loiter with the engine on either for tickets, naps, or other purposes.

chaps•34 minutes ago

Right there's another gotcha with the data. They gave 15-60mph data in :30 minute increments.

"This would still identify officers blocks or get within a couple blocks of their home for those with take home cars. Would speeds of 15 miles per hour or more but only pings on the :30 minute mark, so one ping per hour from 2019 until the end of April work for you?"

Even gave them this SQL to run to get around that problem but they never got back to me, heh:

  WITH immobile_pings as (
  select count(*), vehicleid, round(xcoord::numeric, 3) as xcoord_rounded,
    round(ycoord::numeric,3) as ycoord_rounded,date_trunc('day', datetime) as day
  FROM gps_table
  WHERE speed = 0
  GROUP BY
    vehicleid,
    xcoord_rounded,
    ycoord_rounded,
    day
    having count(*) > 1440), --4 hours
  day_counts as (
    select count(*), vehicleid, xcoord_rounded, ycoord_rounded
    from immobile_pings
    group by vehicleid, xcoord_rounded, ycoord_rounded having count(*) > 15 -- 15 days
  )

select gps_table.* from gps_table s inner join day_counts i ON i.vehicleid = s.vehicleid AND array[round(s.xcoord::numeric, 3), round(s.ycoord::numeric, 3)] != array[i.xcoord_rounded,i.ycoord_rounded] AND speed > 15; -- 15mph

protocolture•33 minutes ago

>other purposes.

Just say "Stalking their ex partners" its fine we all know about it in 2026.

arm32•about 2 hours ago

That's indeed a very fun fact!

nickandbro•12 minutes ago

Are the .exe to install a always on computer as part of a open source repo I can verify with a hash? Otherwise I am not going to trust it.

ButlerianJihad•5 minutes ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Eye_Is_on_the_Sparrow

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/His_Eye_Is_on_the_Sparrow

  I sing because I’m happy,
  I sing because I’m free,
  For His eye is on the sparrow,
  And I know He watches me.

lellow•about 2 hours ago

{"error": "internal error"}, when trying to open the live map.

VoidWhisperer•about 2 hours ago

Seconding this. I wonder if the server got hugged to death by the HN front page

CR1337•about 2 hours ago

same here

Onplana•about 1 hour ago

Most of the cameras are showing offline.

tamimio•24 minutes ago

All public servants should have all their info publicly available, some safety measures can be put like some delays or similar, but as the name implies, public servant! Police for example should be watched and they should feel they are actively being watched by the public, also their badge numbers should be available on these maps so you just click and you can report them if needed.

inigyou•about 2 hours ago

I keep saying if it's legal for Flock to make Flock it's legal for anyone else to make Flock.

bbor•about 1 hour ago

To the wonderful creators, who will presumably find this thread: did you know that sparrows had at least two full millenia of being associated with lust and depravity, rather than the connotation used here and in the final book of ISOIAF (Game Of Thrones)? Well... now you do! I beg of you to fit an easter egg to this effect somwhere in this site, for us followers of the old ways out there.

To get a bit more on-topic: this is a perfect example of the missing scale in HN's "no politics" rule. There are facets of politics that you simply cannot ignore while still being an individually-minded technologist (closest thing this community has to a shared ethos).

NDlurker•about 2 hours ago

This is what I like to see AI used for. Thank you Claude Opus 5