The U.S. has more people imprisoned than any country on Earth. A.I. and companies like Flock Safety are about to increase the incarcerated population by orders of magnitude.
Today, your license plate reveals the status of your driver’s license, insurance and registration. If any of those things aren’t in order, you’re hit. Chances are, if those things aren’t current, it’s because you’re broke, and it’s likely you’ve already had a ticket for that and, being broke, you failed to pay the ticket. Off to jail you go. Other warrants … immigration status not in order – off to jail.
If you believe police will not use this technology to monitor “persons of interest,” you are deluding yourself. The records of every person ever convicted of any crime are public information. It’s remarkably simple to add that to Flock’s database.
So, if a robbery occurs at City Market, police can then (theoretically) go to Flock and search for any known criminals driving around that area at that time, and they have a ready-made list of suspects.
I hope they catch the robber. I just wonder how many people’s lives they’ll upset in the process. And I wonder exactly how large our prison system will become under the watchful eye of Big Brother.
You heard it here first.
John David Cochran
Durango (writing from La Plata County Jail)
