Thread

One Piece of Flock Camera Data Put This Innocent Woman in Jail for 13 Days

257 points · 145 comments · HotGarbage

freddealmeida · 1790398947 · focus · HN ↗
Flock did not put the woman in jail. The police and DA put her in Jail. This is not a failure of the technology (do they have confidence levels?). This is a failure of how police are outsourcing their reasoning and decision making to an AI camera service that seems to fail at the tail.
1. atoav · 1790410825 · focus · HN ↗
  The technology is not a neutral thing here. Automation bias¹ exists and is especially problematic in this context.
  And if your country happens to have a police force that is historically bad at its job, giving them that power seems like a really stupid idea.
  ¹: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation_bias" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation_bias
  1. newtonsmethod · 1790421623 · focus · HN ↗
    I very much agree with what you say on automation bias.
    Certain technology just has too much potential to be misused / people repeatedly prove they can't use it properly. It also comes with risks of making authoritarian takeover easier.
    However, here, it seems they used Flock a bit like a regular ANPR. The actions they took independent of Flock show there are better stories to use to criticise this technology.

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