u/Interesting-Check442

I am astounded that companies like Flock aren't being ostracized for creating a mass surveillance system. As a computer engineer myself, I can quote the IEEE and ACM code of ethics, where we put privacy of others pretty high up there on the pedestal. This is an invasion to the privacy of everybody within the United States.

Companies like this so-called "hack" ethics by saying that they are only doing it to put public safety first. The thing about that is, is that the public wasn't in any type of danger before these types of cameras existed, and the amount of crime reduction they have caused thus far is negligible, if any, based on some recent research.

So what are they really doing to keep the public safe? Because they are doing everything to invade everybody's privacy every time you drive or walk past one. They will also say that there is no expectation to privacy in public; however, this is where we go back to ethical codes. Just because you can do something, or that there isn't an expectation of privacy, doesn't mean that you should invade everybody's privacy and create things that track people's movements day to day.

The term "hack ethics" is just a disgusting thing in itself. Ethics aren't something that you hack. Ethics is a code by which you make decisions and live, similar to morals, in that you use your best judgment based on these codes to live your life without affecting others, at the very least, or at their very best, benefit others.

These companies market that they are making us safer, but in all reality, this is not the purpose of such a system. Such a system will be used in a negative, privacy-invading way, as it already has. You can find articles about it all over Google and other places on the internet, including here on Reddit.

Our government itself is treating it as a loophole for them to be able to track us because these are private companies, and the private companies can accumulate and sell data to the government, but it is not the government itself doing it, so that itself is a slippery slope.

Honestly, this is a Pandora's box that is best just left closed, but nobody is doing anything to really stop it. Sure, organizations like Deflock mark where cameras are, which is great, and I admire that, but in all reality, this type of thing needs to be shut down completely. The next thing you know, we will be like the CRP, being graded on our day-to-day behavior and living by a point system based on such behavior.

Yes, that is an extreme, but that is where things like this lead if nobody tries to stop it. Typically, I don't care what other people are doing, but this once again affects all of us.

Another huge red flag and issue here is that recently I have been going down a bit of a rabbit hole on how to peer review these systems to ensure that they actually coincide with the guidelines that we are told they follow about the deletion of data and what is actually being captured; however, there are big blocks against this because these are private companies, and they aren't required to disclose anything (without a chain of federal requests), and much of the system that they are using is considered proprietary technology, so it is by law blocked from anybody who does not have the authority to access it.

What I really want to know is, who is doing what about this? I want to know about groups, coalitions, or government officials. And where are my other engineers that believe that this is violating an engineering code of ethics to even create this technology?