Find SF parking cops

App reception and “civic hack” debate

• Many commenters love the app’s design, Apple Maps “Find My” feel, and leaderboard/”loserboard” concepts, calling it fun, clever citizen hackery.
• Some want extensions: alerts when an officer nears your car, heatmaps of enforcement, historical density, or plate-level leaderboards.
• Others dislike the idea of helping people dodge tickets, arguing it undermines responsible use of public space and turns enforcement into a game.

Legality, data access, and city response

• Thread identifies the data source as the online citation dispute/payment system, where ticket IDs are sequential with a simple check digit; this made enumeration trivial (“security through obscurity”).
• Multiple people note SF already publishes a large daily parking-citation dataset; the novelty here was near–real-time, officer-linked data.
• The city’s vendor quickly deployed stronger protections (e.g., Cloudflare/captcha changes), breaking the real-time feed within hours. Some see this as an impressive municipal response speed.

Privacy and safety concerns

• A large subthread criticizes publishing real-time, officer-identifiable locations as potentially enabling stalking or retaliation; some call it “inconsiderate and thoughtless.”
• Others argue public officers working in public should not expect location privacy and compare this to broader government surveillance (ALPRs, shot-detection systems).
• There’s disagreement over whether accountability justifies real-time tracking versus after-the-fact transparency.

Parking enforcement priorities and fairness

• Many are surprised how dominant street-cleaning tickets are on the leaderboard, calling it “shooting fish in a barrel” and questioning whether public-safety violations (bike lanes, crosswalks, fire access) are under-enforced.
• Discussion touches on fines as de facto regressive taxes, stories of erroneous or hyper-technical tickets, and a plumber allegedly driven out of SF by street-sweeping penalties.
• Others defend strong enforcement as necessary to keep spaces turning over, protect disabled access, and reduce safety risks.

Broader policy ideas: pricing, tech, and commons

• Several propose automatic, usage-based parking charges (transponders, cameras) instead of fines and confusing signage.
• Debate over parking as a “commons”: some want true market pricing and reduced or eliminated curb parking; others emphasize better public transit and loading zones for deliveries.
• There’s recurring tension between viewing streets as shared public goods versus spaces primarily optimized for private car storage.