Privacy, A.I. and the backlash against Flock license-plate readers

 Privacy while driving seems to be more important than privacy while surfing the internet, to judge from recent reactions to automated license-plate readers produced by the company Flock Safety.

Here's the story from the Atlantic: 

Why the Flock Backlash Has Gotten So Intense
The sudden anger about these cameras seems to reflect more than just wariness about the surveillance system.  By David A. Graham 

"As corporate names go, Flock is cleverly flexible. It evokes the many cameras that compose the company’s surveillance system and also a group of sheep, protected by a watchful shepherd. The recent backlash against the company, however, more closely resembles a flight of starlings, seeming to erupt out of nowhere and move as one unified body. 

...

"Flock is useful because it is ubiquitous. Reforms such as strict data-retention limits would only marginally answer privacy concerns, and anything more drastic would undermine the system’s efficacy. As National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke noted, no one doubts that Flock works. “Lots of things would reduce crime if implemented,” he wrote. “That doesn’t mean that those things are necessarily a good idea in a free republic.” Impositions on privacy to reduce crime are a particularly tough sell when crime is dropping sharply: Recently released FBI statistics show that violent crime dropped nearly 10 percent last year, part of a consistent trend since it spiked in 2020 and 2021. Preliminary statistics suggest that 2026 might be even safer. When safety is a less urgent concern, people are less willing to sacrifice privacy for security.

"Moreover, the Flock backlash fits into a broader moment of anger—at corporations in general, and at tech companies and artificial intelligence in particular. “Americans feel they have less and less control over their own lives, and they increasingly blame large corporations,” the Financial Times columnist Rana Foroohar recently wrote. Anxiety about AI and surveillance is big and abstract, and the companies and people pushing these anxieties are far away from most Americans. Polls show widespread apprehension about the growth of AI—a Gallup poll this summer found that about half of Americans think AI will do as much harm as it will good; another 39 percent said that it’s mostly bad. But people don’t have a lot of ways to communicate those fears. "