Safety and abuse

I had a great low-key weekend with lots of sleep and recovery. It was admittedly a bit “boring” where most of my weekend was mostly just being a Dad or running errands. For better or worse, at this point of my life, you either choose boring and relaxing so you can feel rejuvenated and great after the weekend or choose a more fun weekend where recovery suffers.

On another note, I was reading about the increased public scrutiny against Flock cameras. There’s a lot of concern about privacy and police misuse of the cameras. Most of which I completely understand. There’s a reported number of abuse of the technology where police officers are using it to track down people for personal use. That is indeed alarming.

On the flip side, I also know how powerful the technology can be to deterring crime. In San Francisco where I grew up, crime is now down especially in car smash and grabs. For some years during the after the pandemic, San Francisco was the hot bed for smash and grab theft. It was brutal walking the streets seeing multiple car windows smashed. It still happens, but I read that it’s been down almost 10 fold since Flock cameras came on.

Overall, I believe the bigger issue at hand is the mistrust of police and government in general. Yes, it’s hard for me to still be a staunch supporter if our police is going to abuse the technology to track ex-partners down. There is a much larger systematic problem here and that is that there are a lot of bad cops and abuse in the system. I do believe that we need to address the root cause of the problem here, not blame the technology.