Which key indicates a surveillance camera system vendor?

General talk Tagging general discussion
, , , ,
1

Due to recent interest in the OSM-based DeFlock application, there have been some discussions in the name-suggestion-index repository and OSMUS Slack about how to tag a surveillance camera’s relationship to Flock Safety. As I understand it, Flock leases the camera to a law enforcement agency to install on public property; the agency uses Flock’s service to operate the equipment and use the analysis that Flock provides.

Normally, the law enforcement agency would be the operator=* of a man_made=surveillance feature, as they’re the ones pushing the buttons. Flock is more automated, but there’s also interest in using operator=* for the law enforcement agency. How then should we tag Flock? Currently, both brand:wikidata=* and operator:wikidata=* commonly indicate Flock cameras, the latter possibly because of NSI. Otherwise, manufacturer:wikidata=* seems to be more popular for other kinds of street furniture:

Key (Wikidata) brand manufacturer network operator
Flock cameras 3,029 2 0 1,126
Surveillance cameras 3,879 22 4 4,576
Traffic signals 2 0 1 364
Street lamps 60 541 3 54,555
Warning sirens 1 689 0 1,191

Non-Wikidata tagging shows an even strong preference for manufacturer=* among some feature types. The table below includes all the Flock cameras, which are dual-tagged with non-Wikidata tags, but you can see that most non-Flock cameras have manufacturer=* on them:

Key brand manufacturer network operator
Surveillance cameras 4,096 2,623 381 42,086
Traffic signals 3 2 57 732
Street lamps 68 2,665 93 185,330
Warning sirens 1 5,173 11 5,464

Is there something that distinguishes Flock from other surveillance camera vendors? Is it the fact that the vendor handles surveillance more end-to-end?

1 Like
2

Some other camera vendors that provide the same ALPR-as-a-service are Motorola Solutions, Leonardo, and Avigilon.

1 Like
3

My $.02 on this:

  1. Nobody is really interested in the camera vendor. What people want to know is whether the camera participates in some sort of networked, automated analysis scheme. For Flock, this might happen to coincide with the vendor, but it is entirely possible (and likely) that similar systems exist or come into being where you can simply register your no-name surveillance cam and hook it up to some dystopian security network.
  2. Which dystopian security network(s) a certain camera participates in will usually not be visible or verifiable (bar legislation that requires public-facing labels), and can also change at the owner’s whim, so we won’t be able to record it in OSM.
  3. Hence, why even bother with Flock.
4

You know, this is probably already the case for some doorbells (which we probably don’t map for a different privacy reason). Still, the fact that Flock is both the manufacturer and the service provider makes this particular case more visible in the public discourse, and also more mappable. Not coincidentally, there’s been similar interest in mapping police-operated ShotSpotter gunfire detectors as people find them.

(It isn’t all so macabre. I’ve also been wondering which key to use for the manufacturers of the automated traffic counters that some cities install on the sidewalk. They look quite like those gunfire detectors.)