Originally published at: Hartford Police want to stop violent crime using Slack | Boing Boing
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Ah, and there I thought the criminals were using Slack.
Silly mistake, gangsters use Microsoft Teams.
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Can Slack be configured for anonymous posts?
A spokesman for the Hartford Police Department declined to comment on its plans for the service. At a public meeting in December, police explained that Slack would allow residents to communicate with them at any time instead of waiting for public meetings.
“In that private channel with your residents, anybody can sign up who lives in that area,” Sgt. Chris Mastroianni said. “We will connect your fire department on there, but the big one would be obviously your police.”
So, it won’t just be for discussing crime or the problems leading to it. That part seems a bit more realistic; my city’s emergency phone alert system gets used to tell people about Trick or Treating hours.
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Does anyone have enough hands-on experience to clarify how ‘anonymous’ works in the context of Slack?
I see that there are a variety of ‘poll’/‘suggestion box’/etc. arrangements offered for Slack, so that people can avoid attaching their names to certain things within the context of an organization; but as best I can tell from their configuration documentation all activity within a slack instance is either authenticated to a slack-provided account or an (optionally SCIM provisioned) account tied to a SAML iDP(OAuth is also mentioned specifically in the context of Google Workspace accounts; but not for Enterprise plans).
Is there actually a mechanism that allows ‘anonymous’ interact with slack; or is there just a ‘your helicopter middle manager can’t see you; but IT’s audit logs know better’ level of anonymity?
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Have they ever visited nextdoor.com? They’re attempting to set up an officially sanctioned gossip ring of busybodies and lost dog postings. If ever there is any real serious crime info mentioned on it, it will instantly turn into a witch hunt.
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I guess it’s a better use of funds than killbots? (Yes, it is a very low bar.)
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If “Get off my lawn!” was a web platform it would be Nextdoor.
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So Slack can turn the entire town in to an HOA; dominated by the loudest, most bigoted voices?
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This is the most ridiculous idea. What a waste of money. Slack offers nothing that they can’t get with Facebook and Twitter and other free tools. They’d be better off spending that money on a young tech savvy civilian to manage their social connectivity apps and teach them how to engage online.
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This is such a terrible idea. Not only are there no advantages over the free options suggested above, but the barrier to entry for Slack is really high. You have to install a special client, figure out how to find and join a workspace, and configure a profile before you can chat. It’s a whole messy thing. I’m a software engineer and I struggle to set it up every time. Average non-tech savvy citizens in Hartford (especially the elderly) have no chance.
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This is crucial, because I know the cartels in Mexico follow folks on Facebook who are desperately seeking their relatives who are likely dead already – even following them home from known dump sites (usually someone’s abuela) so they can kill them too, and stop the search for the missing in its tracks. 
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as somebody who moved to CT in the early pandemic for reasons that didn’t really pan out, I can say that the state is regularly about 20 years behind the rest of the nation in all things technological.
Slack probably sounds like cutting edge technology compared to the systems they currently have employed for communicating with the community.
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It’s all fun and games until someone pops calc…that happens to have a killbot interface. Or a patronizing friend’s dad’s interface, apparently. And uses it to order fresh mole’ and clean the bathroom.
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To add to the pile up started upthread, what a ridiculous waste of money.
So, the premise here is that the rate of violent crime could be reduced if only there were ways to anonymously communicate in real time with the authorities?
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I wonder what the guy selling Slack to this small town looked like?
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It’s just the part of spending their nearly two million dollar grant that didn’t involve cameras everywhere.
Grant money will also fund overtime pay for police violent crimes units, ShotSpotter gunshot detection technology and a new camera partnership program. The camera system is modeled after one in Atlanta, where police can access footage from cameras used by local businesses to solve crimes.
The city’s grant proposal originally included funding to distribute Ring video doorbell cameras and to install more city-owned surveillance cameras on poles. It will instead use the money to fund its camera partnership with local businesses at an estimated cost of $75,000 a year, according to a spokesman for the city.
I don’t understand your point. Are you saying the spending on Slack is an effective, sensible use of those funds? Because it’s only part of what they’re spending the money on?
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Nope.
Wow, thanks for clarifying.
Really putting the “dis” in “discussion forum,” here.
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Ugh. They bought into ShotSpotter too?
That technology is proven to be garbage. This is why we can’t give police departments more money. They spend it all on increasingly stupid shit.
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