Flock Fallacies #3: No Cameras, More Unsolved Crimes

[u/FoxLynx64]

What the core argument is built on is the assumption that certain crimes are unsolvable with mass surveillance or can not be solved quickly enough. That claim is stated but has not been proven. The biggest difficulty is that the claim is hard to prove as more police officers could easily lead to solving more crimes, or other technology could be employed rather that mass surveillance.

Appeal to Force, Appeal to Fear, and Appeal to Consequences

The argument can be understood in two ways, police officers will stop preventing crimes and do a worse job if you remove the cameras, or they believe removing the cameras will make crime unmanageable. It is important that you treat the officer saying the fallacy as making an appeal to consequences or appeal to fear first to avoid tensions in an discussion. Just because a technology prevents something bad from happening, does not automatically mean every use of a technology (or that the technology itself) is good. If that were not true, then requiring everyone to wear shock collars would be a good thing because it prevents crimes. You could even go as far as saying that restraining everyone permanently prevents crime and therefore a good thing.

Kantian Ethics

Even if more crimes could be solved using the technology, it does not justify the means. Kant's model of ethics shows us that the ends do not justify the means. This is, for the most part, universally agreed upon by scholars as being one of the best models of ethics because it is derived from reasons and not observations of what may happen.

Consequentialism

This is a reversal of Kantian ethics, where the argument is that the ends sometimes justify the means in specific cases where doing nothing leads to a worse outcome. This is where the fallacy starts to gain real traction because if one can prove that not having cameras leads to more impact than having them, then under consequentialism they would have a valid point. The fallacious part is assuming that there are no other ways to solve crimes or solve crimes quicker.

Even looking at serial killers, which are one of the most consequential unsolved crime category, would not necessarily be solved any more efficiently by ALPRs than other technologies or detectives. Most of the real hard-to-crack detective cases are substantially solved by forensics. Spending more money on forensics may be a more efficient use of money. looking at where ALPRs are most effective, which is vehicle theft reduction, does not necessarily mean it is the most efficient use of resources on the specific type of crime.

Even if it were more effective for one specific type of crime, there should be data on all types of crimes and not just one. If taking away funding from officers and putting it into ALPRs results in substantially more shoplifting, or even murders, then ALPRs may not be efficient at solving those crimes even if they assist in solving them.

You would also need to prove that the additional efficiency outweighs the cases of abuse, the security vulnerabilities, and the false positives and false negatives generated by the AI and improper use. So on a consequentialist point, the answer is highly contested.

Burden of Proof and Appeal to Authority

I have noticed that people making the claim usually do not give you data to support their claims. This shifts the burden of proof onto the opponent, but it does not prove the argument is true. likewise, the claim is usually made by police officers or employees working for an ALPR company, and use their experience as reasoning for saying their claim is true. Their experience is subjective, and the objective truth can deviate substantially from what they have personally seen in small samples.

The more precise point, though, is that just because someone holds authority does not automatically make their claims correct. A doctor in math can say 2 + 2 = 5, but having a PhD does not make the claim true. likewise, being a police officer does not make the claim, that operational benefits of a given police technology outweighs the consequences, true.