Company Behind School Bus AI Cameras Wants To Share Footage With Police
- Reference: 0183424942
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/27/0029246/company-behind-school-bus-ai-cameras-wants-to-share-footage-with-police
- Source link:
> [2]BusPatrol , a company that has installed AI-powered cameras in tens of thousands of school buses around the U.S., now [3]plans to turn those cameras into automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), capturing the location of every vehicle the buses drive past, and give that data to law enforcement, 404 Media has learned. BusPatrol has already taken steps to share the collected data with law enforcement contracting giant Axon, according to leaked BusPatrol documents and a source with knowledge of the plans. BusPatrol has acknowledged how controversial its plan to collect and share this data is, pointing specifically to concerns about ICE using license plate data, but emphasizes the likely success of selling the angle of protecting children.
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> "Who would have thought that school buses would be turned into the mass surveillance state?," Michael Soyfer, an attorney from the Institute for Justice, which has various ongoing ALPR-related lawsuits The Institute for Justice argues that warrantless use of ALPR systems is unconstitutional, describing similar systems as a "dragnet." Kate Spree, senior manager of brand communications at BusPatrol, said in an email "This inquiry is based on a false premise and inaccurate information. BusPatrol does not pool or sell data across communities; student safety program data is used only to support the BusPatrol program in the community where that data was created." When 404 Media asked clarifying questions and said that the reporting is based on leaked BusPatrol material, Spree stopped replying to text messages and emails. This plan gives new meaning to the animated cartoon series " [4]The Magic School Bus "...
Further reading: [5]FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers
[1] https://slashdot.org/~joshuark
[2] https://buspatrol.com/
[3] https://www.404media.co/buspatrol-put-ai-cameras-in-tens-of-thousands-of-school-buses-now-they-want-to-give-cops-access/
[4] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108847/
[5] https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/05/18/1952255/fbi-wants-to-buy-nationwide-access-to-license-plate-readers
There are no words (Score:2)
The phrase "dystopian hellscape" comes immediately to mind. This is just so fundamentally fucked up that it's hard to say much beyond that.
Can off-the-rack clothing which contains cameras and cell modems be far behind? Sure, that sounds like an impossible stretch, at least practically and technologically speaking. But wouldn't many of the dystopian developments we live with now be seen as unthinkable or outright impossible a decade or two ago?
On the bright side, at least we'll have sufficient data centres o
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> Can off-the-rack clothing which contains cameras and cell modems be far behind?
Do glasses count?
They always shared with police (Score:2)
I was in middle school and school bus cams first appeared (massive black box with a window, many of us speculated that only some of them even contained a camera)
There were some incidents where the video was used. The school always has the option of giving video to the cops. Likewise, the system always had the option to subpoena the video.
This is all about cops just being able to pull up the school bus footage on a whim. I don't really see how increased access to video for investigative and not evidential
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yeah I was in HighSchool when those "Silent Witness" boxes first showed up. I don't know how many cameras there actually were (if any) or if the district just put them on "problem buses" or what but I distinctly remember one of them was not latched correctly and came open when taking a corner, to reveal the box was empty save for a wire running directly the little red light bulb you were supposed to think meant it was recording..
The wheels on the bus / go over your spine (Score:2)
Sure, why not? Our civilization is already tumbling down a sixty-story staircase of dystopian ruin. What's another step at the bottom?
Slippery slope and all..... (Score:2)
...but if someone drives past a school bus with it's lights on deserves a ticket. In Ontario, Canada it's something like $2,000.00 and they earned it.
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If that was the goal, it could easily be achieved by making it so the cameras are only enabled when the bus activates its stop sign/lights. But they want the cameras to always be rolling and reading plates.
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Why?
I mean, seriously. How exactly is it a good thing that someone driving past a school bus with some flashing lights gets a more serious punishment than someone who crashes into a school bus and kills a few kids?
Smash 'em (Score:2)
This will just lead to an increase in vandalism against the school buses that have them installed. A camera system to *just* report offenders of school bus related traffic laws, fine. Constantly recording ALPR, get the fuck outta here.
Remember kinds, paintballs are good for temporarily blinding stationary cameras. Bus mounted cameras are just worth smashing to shit. Those enclosures are not as strong as they would like people to think - especially to something like a pickaxe.
Besides stop-arm enforcement... (Score:2)
...a better purpose for these cameras than tracking innocent drivers is to [1]locate potholes, [slashdot.org] burnt out street and traffic lights, missing signs, etc., and to enforce no parking in bus lanes.
[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/04/09/1644208/waymo-is-offering-to-help-cities-fix-their-potholes
What is it with surveillance? (Score:2)
What is it with the addiction our governments have to mass surveillance? Were the police unable to do their jobs before the Internet? When correspondence was by physical mail instead of Email? When they had to get warrants before invading a person's privacy?
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Look, I'm no fan of mass surveillance, but "Were the police unable to do their jobs before the Internet?" seems like a mind-numbingly stupid way to think about it.
Crimes go unsolved every day! Serious crimes, like rape, child abuse, torture, or murder. And with crimes like that, you don't want the perpetrator running around free and able to continue committing crimes!
So yes, people have a very good reason to want to make the police more successful, and no that is not a bad thing! It still doesn't make ma
They think a watched pot never boils (Score:2)
And yet it always does.
It's not the government (Score:2)
That's your mistake. You're directing your anger at the government. This isn't coming from the government this is coming from a handful of psychopathic billionaires.
Noticed that all of this surveillance is being owned and operated by private companies. While you're crazy uncle is having a conniption fit about ethics in games journalism and trans girls in sports (or violent video games and satanic music if you're old) Peter thiel and Planitir have been lobbying local and state governments to create a corpo
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It's owned and operated by private companies in the US because US laws make it difficult for the government to introduce the surveillance state directly. All across Europe these cameras are just owned directly by the government.
> This is what happens when you let a handful of people have too much power.
Yes. This is why we need to get rid of 99% of government.
Without which, the billionaire oligarchs couldn't function.
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> Noticed that all of this surveillance is being owned and operated by private companies.
Private companies don't do things without a return on investment. These "psychopathic billionaires" found a business opportunity following defund the police movements. Instead of cops hiding behind every billboard, your town can now pay to have some cameras mounted*. Which cost a lot less.
*Far cheaper than cities DIY the surveillance systems. But if you want to see a really distopian world, ban federal law enforcement from accessing these local systems. And then watch them install their own. Or rather, exp
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They're terrified of people doing unauthorized things. So they must spy on us all the time to ensure we don't.
Weak people have a desperate desire to control others, and Western governments have never been run by such weak people before.