u/Dharmaniac

Any commitment to not renew the contract?

(and certainly we’ve not heard an apology for spying on the citizens of Waltham)

I haven’t seen any pledge for action other than covering the cameras with plastic at this moment. I’d really appreciate finding out Im wrong here. All I’ve had is something about the mayor not trusting them because they returned a letter to her without opening it. But AFAIK, contract is still in place.

Maybe she sends it again and they read it and they will go back to being friends.

I was talking to somebody who’s intimately familiar with city politics and the mayor in particular, and was told it’s entirely possible that there’s a little game being played here. And it might not end with the spy cameras going away for good.

It might all come down to whether the mayor is worried that we’re going to actually vote, and that we actually care about being being spied on, and that we have memories that last more than a week or two.

This will be interesting.

>Massachusetts State Police will have to disclose where license plate readers are in the state and submit to audits about when, where, and what data they’re collecting, a judge ruled this week. It’s a win for groups demanding transparency on how agencies are surveilling people.

>The ACLU contended in the case that as of June 7, 2023, there were more than 290 million records in the database which then allowed the state police to track particular vehicles and get alerts from license plates recorded as far back as 12 months.

Don’t let the haters get you down, don’t buckle under like hundreds of other municipalities have.

Remember, as noted constitutional scholar George W. Bush said, the constitution is “just a goddamn piece of paper.”

"For the third time in a week, police officers in Massachusetts were caught misusing Flock Safety’s license plate camera network, raising questions about the lack of oversight of the surveillance technology that quickly and quietly has sprouted up across the country.

Such reports of misuse and a slew of data privacy concerns sparked a nationwide furor against Flock, leading dozens of municipalities, including at least 13 in Massachusetts, to cancel or pause their contract with the company"

When there's 0 municipalities that still have them, that will be enough. Fuck flock

A good video that explains how a recent Supreme Court ruling strikes at the heart of the Flock spy camera system, and the WPD’s use of it.

I guess the WPD and the people charged with their oversight need to decide: are they for the Constitution or not? Will they recognize their grave mistake as did Watertown?

We voters need to decide that too.

Good to see another city has decided to respect the US Constitution, as affirmed by last week’s SCOTUS ruling. Hopefully our city’s leadership will promptly see fit to do the same.

It looks like SCOTUS in a 6-3 decision has ruled in Chatrie v. US that using mass surveillance via electronics, exploiting the things people need to do all day to function in today's world, and clever-but-specious arguments to commit mass surveillance is a violation of our 4th Amendment rights.

I found a good writeup at Scotusblog.

My understanding is that the ruling fundamentally found that the continuous stream of location and other personally identifiable info swept up by apps on cellphones (Android is particularly flagrant in this) being used by law enforcement constitutes a search, and a search falls under the protections of the 4th Amendment. Just using your cellphone and apps does not amount to opting into mass surveillance.

So no ruling on Flock per se, but the parallels to what Flock and its customers are doing is pretty straightforward - our driving past a street corner does not seem to amount to opting in to our being surveilled and profiled. The arguments against Flock are likely stronger than against phones as SCOTUS said that even agreeing to the terms of service of apps does not mean that you agree to waive the 4th Amendment.

Given how much the Flock situation overlaps this case - and is arguably more egregious - I guess the City needs to decide: are they more like Justices Kagan, Roberts, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, Jackson and Gorsuch? Or more like Thomas, Alito, and Barrett? Are they OK with spending money to get convictions that might be thrown out if/when the Flock Camera scheme is found to be unconstitutional?

We already know where the city stands on mass surveillance. I'm curious where they come out now that the case law supports that clever workarounds of the Constitution don't stop mass surveillance from being mass surveillance.

Point raised (from Chatrie)	What SCOTUS decided	Reasonably applies to Flock?
Privacy in location history held by a third party	You keep a reasonable expectation of privacy in the record of where you've been, even when a company (Google) holds it	Yes — Flock's data sits in Flock's cloud, not police servers; historical plate reads are the same kind of third-party-held location record
Third-party doctrine	Rejected as a shield; "voluntarily" sharing data with a company doesn't forfeit 4A protection for this data type	Yes — directly undercuts Flock's premise that pooling data in a private network and sharing it among agencies is fair game
Demanding the data = a "search"	Obtaining it is itself a Fourth Amendment search, even for a short window and from a company database	Yes, and stronger — Chatrie had a warrant and still lost the "is it a search" question; many Flock queries use no warrant at all
Duration / passage of time	A limited time window still counts; comprehensiveness strengthens the privacy interest (the "mosaic")	Yes — Flock's ~30-day+ retention is what turns scattered public sightings into a reconstructable timeline
Dragnet reach (innocent people swept in)	The sweeping-in of people with no link to any crime is the core constitutional problem	Yes — every plate/vehicle is logged regardless of suspicion; Vehicle Fingerprint deepens this
Single, isolated capture	Not squarely decided; a lone public observation looks like the classic "no search" case	Weak / No — one plate photo of a car on a public road is Flock's strongest ground and Chatrie doesn't clearly reach it
Warrants not banned; narrow use allowed	Court required warrant + particularity + reasonableness rather than banning geofence warrants outright	Partial — targeted, particularized hotlist alerts (stolen car, AMBER Alert) likely survive; suspicionless historical searches don't
Formal extension to license plates	Left open — Chatrie was expressly limited to geofence facts	Undecided — whether Carpenter/Chatrie logic formally reaches ALPR networks is the open question the pending suits will fight over

I bought an X2D which is excellent. I’d like to mount the original AMS from my P1P on top of it, but it’s not obvious to me that there are any riser models available that will do a good job of this.

If anyone knows of any riser models, that would work well for this, I would be deeply appreciative, thanks.

I purchased a P1P before the P1S was available. Have regretted not having an enclosed printer. I added an AMS.

I bought an X2D without AMS when it came out. Great printer, I want to add the AMS now.

Two options that look good to me at the local Micro Center, I’m having trouble picking one.

For $300 I can get an AMS 2 Pro.

For $550, I can get a P1S with original AMS. So basically, for an extra $250 over the AMS Pro 2 I could have an AMS on my X2D and have a leftover brand new P1S I can use in place of the P1P which is getting long in the tooth, then sell the P1P.

I keep all my filament dry in plastic cereal boxes with desiccant and hygrometers as well as desiccant boxes in the AMS, so humidity has not really been a problem, although I don’t print much with “technical” filaments.

So I guess my question is along the lines of, in practice, how much better is the AMS 2 Pro vs AMS? Does it substantially change quality of life? Or is it a nice to have, but not that big of a deal? Which would you go for?

Additional info added after original post: I already do have a 2-spool external dryer for when I need it.

I have a family member who recently gave me access to their online chart to help them navigate some insurance stuff, and I saw some things that I’m concerned about, but don’t know how to gauge how concerned it’s appropriate to be. I sent emails to his PCP alerting of the situation, but I have not heard back in several days, and I’m wondering how urgent the situation is or whether it’s even too concerning.

I’m not a clinician although I work in a pretty technical field within medicine so I’m kind of an idiot savante here, and I’m hoping someone can help me get perspective on this

Person is in their 20s and has a number of illnesses from years of serious physical and mental health issues. A major problem is that he’s physically dependent on THC and also has cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, so at least 3 times a week or so he violently vomits or dry heaves and has had several ED visits for it when abdominal pain became abnormally intense

On his chart, I saw that late last year at one of his ED visits his QTc was 471 ms, which statistically put him at the 98th percentile, and close to the 500 ms threshold which I understand would be pretty serious

Since then his psychiatrist has put him on a stimulant, and my understanding is these further raise QTc.

So to me, this all starts off being somewhat concerning. But the thing that’s really throwing a scare into me is that based on his chart, he’s not reported to clinicians that he has cannabis dependence and cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, rather he reports that he smokes more pot than he should, and sometimes vomits, rather than the reality
which is that he smokes pot multiple times a day and vomits or dry heaves at least several times a week. And he is definitely physically dependent, he voluntarily detoxed once cold turkey and it was really ugly for about 48 hours.

My understanding is that a standard Valsalva against 40 mmHg produces a further QTc elevation of 30 to 40 millisecond, and the functional Valsalva caused by violent hyperemesis can transiently raise QTc by 100 or even 200 ms.

So transiently his QTC might be reaching 600 or even 700ms multiple times per week, from a baseline that’s already pretty high (and multiplies baseline risk of sudden cardiac death). And there is case literature of people suffering SCD after violent vomiting from CHS.

Meanwhile, nobody has referred him for a cardiology consult or seems too concerned about this, but they also don’t have complete information. And PCP (who has a signed release from my relative to speak directly to me) is not getting back to me regarding my attempting to add the missing information that I think could change medical decision-making. So I feel like on the one hand if his baseline QTc were 600+ he’d be bunking at the hospital for a while as they sorted this out and tried to reduce QTC and get him off of weed. But it’s only transient. But even transient QTc elongation has resulted in some number of deaths. And he has not been referred for a cardiac consult so he does not have a cardiologist.

So I guess my question is the degree of urgency with which I should try to push this forward. Is this more like “relax, it’s not great, but pretty unlikely anything will happen” or is it more like “your hair should be on fire and you should be out moving things as quickly as humanly possible and buying an AED tonight at the local AED store”

Any informed opinions would be deeply appreciated. Thank you in advance.