The best part is that flock owns the cameras and the poles so even when the contract expires the cameras keep running and recording data that flock can sell to e.g. CHP, LASD, FBI, Palantir; and LAPD can just call them and access the data
the flock scam was engineered to be resilient to political pressure by giving departments and jursidictions this fake exit ability while the data continues to be harvested, it is a noose that only tightens; the amount of flock cameras recording only ever goes up not down.
Does it say how many cameras the LAPD pays for or if they are getting rid of the flock software from their org? Folks conflate this a lot but often times most regions have a substantial number of private flock deployments, city owned, rarely directly with the police.
Police get access to software no costs (AFAIK) for BOLO alerts on tags.
I'm not defending flock, and have mixed feelings on the matter due to having personal experience with flock. My neighborhood was being hit by sophisticated robberies one after another. Police could not catch the guys. The police confirmed that it was a Tren de Aruagua operation. They would buy cars mainly BMWs off Facebook marketplace. Go rob a house and sell the car within 24-48 hours. Our neighborhood had cameras, but by manually going through the footage to find what was relevant, it was too late. After working with the police, the HOA decided to install a flock camera set at each entrance. Once it was installed, which was over a year ago, we haven't had a break in since. I know they are tracking my car going in and out but my phone and car also do this. Objectively, my neighborhood is less private but more safe. I think if I had to choose, this would be my choice. I wish I could have a safe and private neighborhood, but this isn't the world we live in.
There is a difference between this situation, a targeted install in a problem situation, and hundreds of thousands of these cameras at every intersection in the country
Also, Flock cameras are not just on roads. Many institutions use them for surveillance inside buildings. There is a community center in Atlanta that has them and there is evidence that random people with access to all Atlanta area cameras, including Flock employees and police officers in other jurisdictions, were watching juveniles at the pool. More than one deputy at a suburban Atlanta sheriff's department has been fired for abusing Flock cameras to track romantic interests
Like everything else in this country we've taken something that has a useful purpose when used in a limited, controlled fashion and pushed it to the maximum extreme. We can't do anything based on nuance anymore
There is a lot of middle ground between ">100k cameras tracking the movement of every vehicle in the country and retaining those data indefinitely" and "cameras in a private neighborhood in response to a specific crime wave".
I don't understand flock cameras in high crime areas. Every time somebody commits a heinous crime it's always like "they were arrested 72 times and were well known by the police"
What's the point in helping the police catch criminals when they don't do anything after the fact!
Maybe the police are part of the problem.
Because this kind of stuff is used for way beyond this
It’s used for surveillance in the truest sense
Heaven forbid you are on someone’s watchlist, they will just track your movement across the city
This isn’t some fake CSI pop dream - this kind of tech isn’t used to catch the people breaking into your house
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The US has the highest per-capita rate of imprisonment I think we’re plenty “hard on crime”. What we lack is a principled stance that Americans deserve basic dignity and access to things that make people live less violent lives. It’s no secret that poverty is the key contributor to one’s likelihood of being in prison.
People who are “soft on crime”, practically speaking, are the people and politicians so committed to dehumanizing others that they’d rather watch their neighbors wallow in poverty or rot in jail than to actually do something to address the root causes (the foremost of which being the aforementioned societal dehumanization of the poor).
Easily disproved. So much inaccurate malarky no this thread. I would assume it's bots AstroTurfing, if American zeitgeist wasn't already so demonstrably poisoned.
I've lived in California my whole life, and I'm just basing it off my experiences over the years.
California enacted a law in 2014 that turned all theft under $950 into a misdemeanor instead of a felony (reverted last year). Theft became so common that police wouldn't even respond to theft calls unless it was over $950, which enboldened theives. During covid especially, entire stores would be looted and robbed constantly.
When people were caught, the judges would often give them minimal sentences, and release them over and over. Then the same people would commit more crimes because they knew the judges were lienent.
I'm not saying every single person fits into this box, but it's common enough to be recognized as a trend that happens in liberal areas. Los Angeles, Oakland are prime examples.
>California enacted a law in 2014 that turned all theft under $950 into a misdemeanor instead of a felony (reverted last year)
So all states with $1000 Felony cutoffs or higher should have this issue, right?
So why don't they?
You know the National Retail Federation had to stop posting their annual shrink numbers after they demonstrated that shoplifting was not meaningfully higher than previous years.
Someone is spending $500M per month on AI to generate grassroots support...
My man, if your comments can't be distinguished from a bot's, you're no better than one. Also if you can't tell that your comment's unsubstantiated bait, you really need to go touch grass.
Everyone has an annecdote. "it's common enough to be recognized as a trend" is equally justification for racial profiling, and at least racial crime statistics are easily citable. And you still haven't even put forth that modicum of effort.
>liberal judges are typically soft on crime.
You're going to need to back that claim up with statistics
Are there any privacy-first security camera provider where it's the city that manages data access and uses it purely for local law enforcement purposes?
Why would you trust the city more than Flock. One of the common claimed abuses of Flock data is city cops using it to stalk exes and crushes.
The problem with Flock is not who owns the data, it's the potential for abuse.
I wonder why we aren't addressing the real problem which seems to be cops behaving completely unethically. Their job is about enforcing the system that codifies our societies agreed up and codified rules of ethics. They should be obsessed with this the same way people here obsess over system performance, correctness, etc! If we cannot trust them with the very basics of ethical behavior they are absolutely in the wrong job and there need to be very clear consequences.
Because finding people that are 100% ethical is extremely difficult. Even if we are wildly optimistic and say 20% of the population is 100% ethical. You aren't likely to weed out unethical people, so you are hiring people, training them, and then firing them 4 out of 5 of them. There are many cases where an experienced but occasionally unethical worker is better than an unexperienced but ethical worker. When faced with this dilemma it is likely that more police debts would simply cheat or cover up police abuses to retain valuable staff or staff at all.
The solution is not making humans more virtuous but reducing the capability and the harm done that unethical humans can do.
> If we cannot trust them with the very basics of ethical behavior they are absolutely in the wrong job and there need to be very clear consequences.
Police should not be trusted because they are police. There should be audits and controls that prevent abuse and unethical behavior. Small unethical behaviors should result in corrective measures but not termination, since when the punishment becomes too great you create incentives for cover ups or scapegoats. A small number of minor punishments, that catch people as soon as they step over the line, functions better as a deterrent than a large scale punishments that are unlikely to be actually enforced. Granted if a police officer does a major crime, they should face serious consequences, but the goal should be to creating a system that makes major crimes by police less likely. If they know they will get caught for minor crimes, they are less likely to commit bigger crimes.
So revealed preferences of voters is that they just dont care that much about weeding out bad apples?
From what it sounds like, it’s likely not on any sizable group’s top 10 priority list in LA.
The problem is simple: qualified immunity has become a blank check. The officer can simply claim they didn't know the law. They somehow can't be expected to understand basic constitutional protections.
How many instances of are there of qualified immunity actually resulting in an officer being found liable because of past precedent where someone else was considered to have had qualified immunity in the same circumstances? If it's not anywhere close to the number of times when they were found to be immune, then the distinction is theoretical only, and it's arguably more misleading to emphasize it as if it's a real limitation.
If you hold police accountable, they respond by refusing to work. That's a problem that, at this time, has no solution.
> If you hold police accountable, they respond by refusing to work. That's a problem that, at this time, has no solution
Of course it does. You dissolve the police department and create a new one. New York did it twice, first replacing the city-controlled Municipals with the state-controlled Metropolitans [1], and then in 1870 creating the NYPD [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Police_riot
[2] https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/about/history/history-timeline...
In other countries, cops may carry guns, but if those guns are ever fired, there is an investigation to ensure it was fired for a very good reason. Those places still have cops.
They also have months or years of cop training, not weeks.
> they respond by refusing to work. That's a ~~problem~~ solution that, at this time, has no ~~solution~~ problem.
If a police department reuses to accept accountability, and dig in their heels by refusing to work, "just" dissolve it. And while at it, half the calls could be handled by folks without guns.
In practice that obviously would not go over well, people are too attached to the status quo. We just lack the political will to rethink and retool the system (despite most Americans favoring police reform).
So you're saying that the solution is RICO, because they're operating as a protection racket?
They don't strike, they just respond really slowly, pretend they didn't see something or just take reports and barely solve anything.
Since they are all unionized and replacing them is crazy slow and expensive, nothing happens.
Robots!
There is so much rot in law enforcement. LASD still has deputy gangs.
Police actually exist to protect capital. At least in the USA.
When you get robbed who else are you going to call when you need someone to show up 7 hours later and shrug their shoulders.
Also to reduce capital murder...
It's easy to say these anti-capitalistic platitudes, but do you really want to live in a society where the concept of private ownership is not supported by the state?
Society is not starting at zero right now, it has developed for 10.000 years with many genocidal wars. As a result, 1% of the population has achieved generational wealth due to some sort of "value creation" by their ancestors.
Through trial and error and a lot of violence, humanity has noticed that with free trade and free enterprise, the welfare of everyone else can significantly improve (toilets, food, entertainment), while the overall amount of violence significantly decreases.
Because when people put their money where their mouth is, capital can be allocated much more efficient than through other means (e.g. the King of England forcing a levy and centrally deciding what industry to invest it).
The only problem with this model is deflation, because if there is no incentive to deploy capital, then the overall pie shrinks and people start fighting about keeping their shares. That's why central banks talk about target inflation rates of 2%, because purchasing power of your hoarded capital needs to shrink in order to incentivize you to use your capital in a productive way, which also increases the overall pie for society.
The main thing one can criticize about generational wealth such as Trump, Epstein, Musk or Thiel is the fact that they have to lie about its existence, and keep up a charade of "I'm self-made" due to their low self esteem.
The alternatives are always worse for the common person. I'd rather have Trump, Epstein, Musk and Thiel than even bigger capital concentration like it was with the British crown and the Catholic church in their full bloom.
Ideally, those figures would also follow the moral code of the rest of society, but still it's much better than their parents who did crazy shit in Africa only 50 years ago, or the crown and the catholic inquisition a couple hundred years ago.
It seems that making government union members accountable is an intractable problem in the current political landscape.
The government is not a monolith. Being owned by the city doesn't have to mean the cops are in control. The municipality can determin by law exactly who operates the infrastructure, who has access to what, what process they must follow, and how that all will be monitored and enforced. "The government didn't handle this well, therefore they can't be trusted for anything like it again" is a misunderstanding of how governments are constructed and how power can be separated between legislatively mandated structures. Find the source of the abuse, then build a structure to check that abuse.
I want local cameras that require physical connections to offload data. Camera access panels can be locked with a wireless system that publishes the access timestamp and details to the city’s website. Each access must correspond with signed warrant.
If my family gets kidnapped, I want a department to be able to check a camera. I’ll wait for the judge’s signature.
But that’s night & day from today’s reality. I simply cannot stand being recorded to the cloud by a creepy corporation everywhere I drive in California with just about no oversight.
Do you have a phone, modern car, or social media account? If so, I have some bad news for you…
> Why would you trust the city more than Flock
Nationally, I trust a system where the data are split up between siloes more than a single, privately-owned database.
Do we genuinely, really need a mass surveillance network? Isn't the expansion of surveillance through increasing prevalence of technology already way too much? Police can real-time track almost anyone if they have a warrant as it is, thanks to the magic of modern cell phones. We didn't even have time to discuss whether that was a good status quo before it became normal. Are we really sure we want to expand this to a massive network of cameras?
I get that it helps solve crimes, but solving crime is not the end-all-be-all of improving society. If anything, it's a highly symptom-oriented solution, and we absolutely have plenty of levers we could be trying to pull if we wanted to prevent crime instead.
Forget whether one global surveillance network is more trustworthy than another global surveillance network for a minute. Do we want this at all?
Hmm. Personally, I disagree; I'd prefer to outlaw it explicitly. That's just my opinion, but I think that regulation has failed to keep up with the pace of technology and we've essentially lost the effect of some constitutional protections.
The large distribution of silo'ed law enforcement across the US is one of the driving reasons why it can be so hard to solve crimes (murder, vehicular theft, etc). Once any crime has the potential to cross state or even jurisdiction lines, dealing with the inner-bureaucracy of crossed enforcement agencies adds days to weeks to solving urgent crimes. A distributed system without consideration into how to coalesce the data together is no better of a solution vs what we have today.
> often hinged on incompetence or negligence rather than lack of information sharing.
Or just technology. Almost every “50 year old cold case solved” I see is because advancements in DNA processing .
> A distributed system without consideration into how to coalesce the data together is no better of a solution vs what we have today.
Unless you'd rather prioritize liberty over safety. I want crimes to be harder to solve if the alternative is a panopticon.
Agreed, and more than that, those siloes are governed by democratic processes. Of course, democracy doesn't preclude abuse but it's a lot better than private governance.
In other words centralization of the power is most risky end game here
The city doesn't run around accusing private citizens of being terrorists like Flock's CEO does.
A better designed system could be driven by warrants issued by courts, without (or at least minimal) access to individual officers.
It requires better access controls.
Even invasive ideas like automated license plate scanning city-wide can have its data only accessible to an API to eg, track a stolen car across the city to avoid a dangerous high-speed chase in populated areas.
I think to throw the baby out with the bathwater around networked security cameras is failure around designing robust and secure APIs and systems (including audit trails).
Or… hear me out… no surveillance system at all.
Bars on windows and cages on retail goods, gated driveways, armed security at anything of importance, etc, etc, are a heck of a lot cheaper in the long run than a 1984 police state.
flock shares the data with other cities and jurisdictions a little more easily, and also flock workers can see your videos. That's some amount of extra abuse potential?
You don't need to trust them. You can request information as allowed under FOIA and vote the mayor out in the next election if there is any sign of misuse.
With Flock? Good luck.
I'd trust a municipality I have a vote in more than a private company.
> The problem with Flock is not who owns the data
The one who owns the data is the one who should be responsible to provide proper guardrails in certain cases if not all, specially like these ones. It comes down to the fine line around business, rules and regulations. The motivation of business is to make most profit with least cost and implementing regulatory mechanisms are cost. Abuses are natural to happen in the absence of guardrails and audits.
The purchasers of the cameras, ie HOAs, law enforcement, etc, own the data. They are also the ones routinely caught abusing this. This is a real problem that should be dealt with by enforcing laws against the people improperly using the data.
I'm not sure what a realistic solution is for Flock to try and manage data they do not own nor if it makes sense for them to deny access to data they are not the owners of.
This is false. the HOAs and LEOS have access to the data. Even if the contract specifies that the data is owned by these organizations, they are not the true owners.
I think Flock is probably the worst solution besides all the rest. They seem to be the most auditable and accountable. The fact that anyone even knows the service and founder is a testament to accountability.
Lol, what totalitarian nightmare do we live in that this is your standard for acceptability when it comes to mass surveillance. “Well fellas, atleast we know whats happening and look here’s the name of the guy in charge, I mean how bad it could be?”
> The fact that anyone even knows the service and founder is a testament to accountability.
As opposed to their mayor/governor/president, who they not only can easily find out who it is if they don't already, but can also vote out (and who often will have term limits)?
Knowing about the CEO of a company is the lowest bar for, "testament to accountability" I've ever seen.
Yes guys if you don’t like flock please please please just send a dm to the ceo with your social media account, or you can send him a letter in the mail, just dont send some anonymous crap he doesnt like that just use your real name and address or your social media handle and just go ahead and send him a message and let him know how ya feel. Flock loves to know how it’s customers are feeling, and will definitely keep a ticket open for any unsatisfied customers with your name and how to contact you so they can fix it.
You do realize that we have "executives" in most government jurisdictions as well? And that there are actual mechanism for changing who they are that you have the ability to take part in as a citizen, which is not a privilege afforded to everyone under surveillance by these systems for the CEO of Flock?
(Yes, I know that shareholders have the ability to vote on board proposals as well, but even if you think those mechanisms are equivalent, there's a pretty huge difference between "if you buy stock, you get the right to vote" and "you have inherent human rights including but not limited to the ones enumerated by a written constitution")
If you're lucky, he might call you a domestic terrorist for questioning him and Flock's motives!
Try going to one of flock's PR meetups and ask questions. You will not get a straight answer at all, you might even get back-talked.
Lmao not remotely. Their security is a joke. Axon's evidence system at least has concepts of security. Flock has had numerous high publicity security failures (see: Benn Jordan's work with 404 media).
Have you seen Flock's CEO?
And another common claimed abuse of Flock data is cops using it to stalk people in other cities, other states, and across the country.
The potential for abuse rises with the number of people who have access to that data, regardless of who they work for. Restricting access strictly to users in the municipality under contract reduces the number of people with access and thereby mitigates some abuse vectors.
Also, there's plenty of past incidents of cops abusing their access to state and federal databases for the same kinds of purposes.
The profession attracts individuals who are willing to abuse power for their own purposes. That's not to say that every cop is in the job to abuse power, but many are, and we have to build our law enforcement structures in a way that directly acknowledges and addresses this fact.
As the saying goes: A few bad apples spoil the bunch. It's a rotten profession.
The problem with Flock is its continued existence as part of the surveillance state. Like guns or bombs, these are things with one intent, and that intent is always ALWAYS bad as the resource is inevitably concentrated in the hands of a few to control the many.
Because there's a more robust legal framework for curtailing the inevitable abuse when the government does it than when it's done via the "oops our contractor who's a private company" slight of hand.
Same basic reason I'd rather have the cops after me than have the environmental/zoning/whatever civil enforcement jerks after me. There's just sooooo much more scrutiny (which really says a lot considering how bad the cops are).
Said by someone who's clearly never had cops after them...
how many times does civil enforcement shoot people in a year though?
do they have the power to assault you and then have it be your fault?
Can we normalize a healthy 4th amendment posture? It’s wild that the Peter Thiel “don’t tread on me” folks are so cool with a China like police state.
It's because their actual motto is "Don't tread on me, tread on them"
It's not "don't tread on us"
A lot of the "don't tread on me" is window dressing.
Peter Thiel and his ilk absolutely adore what China has done. You have an elite - in this case, the CCP - that is entitled to their position by law. It bills itself as the "best and brightest" of society and has ideological constraints that it gets to impose on its members through the cadre system. The rest of the population labors for the benefit of this elite with little-to-no input on the operation of the ruling class.
That's what Thiel wants, just with his kind in the positions of power. It'd eliminate any opposition to what they imagine as the "right" way of doing things and reduce the friction to the creation of economic value for their holdings.
Note that "friction" in this case means things like human rights, democracy, competition, workers rights, etc.
Salem, Oregon, assembled its own using OpenALPR and an on-prem server. There are plenty of reasonable criticisms of that approach too, but it's currently the farthest thing from Flock on the municipal mass-surveillance tech scale bar that I'm aware of.
"The system does not utilize facial recognition and does not have automated functions, such as automatically running license plates through the state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) or Law Enforcement Data System (LEDS) databases. All license plates must still be verified by an investigator and then individually queried through the appropriate database."
This sounds like a lot more than your average flock installation at a local PD
https://salem.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=7375982...
OpenALPR is not open source despite the open name, sigh
AGPL-licensed: https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr
(Not updated in years though.)
that's not privacy-first. There's no such thing as privacy-first surveillance. How can Americans spend so much time criticizing surveillance states only to build the world's largest
Woops, the olgiarchy amassing wealth turns out to beat the constitution this time folks, sorry, play again soon
It's astonishing to me that the largest tech hubs in the world do not have the money to invest in developing a camera system that is sovereignly owned by the city. There are a lot of very talented engineers who would work on a project like this. Also simply putting a person in between the information would certainly reduce the profile for abuse with stalking and harassing people
Isn't it obvious? There's way more profit in building a Torment Nexus.
do not have the money to invest in developing a camera system that is sovereignly owned by the city
Well according to Flock, the data is actually owned by the city and they are already responsible. This is just private sector loopholing
I'd say most are hosted first, Milestone, Genetec, Avigilon, etc. They all sell software to host feeds from your own standardized cams (Axis, Hanwah, Samsung, etc) via h.264/mpeg. The cloud hosted CCTV at scale is relatively recent.
Any number of companies sell cameras and recorders both on-premise and cloud stored which are managed entirely by the customer. Most security cameras you see on any given building work this way, and most such camera systems also support features like LPR (license plate recognition). Most of the time you're on your own to sort out connectivity and power though.
What Flock is selling is the whole package: The hardware (including power, networking, and the pole), the software, the infrastructure, the logic design, the connectivity. For someone who doesn't want to operate and support a wide area network of IoT devices, you can see why "just give them money to watch your streets" looks appealing.
Fun fact: When they switch to Axon Outposts instead, just know that they have Amazon Sidewalk modules inside them, too for backdoor C2 to Axon.
(Go check the FCC docs for X4GS06009 and note that there's a Quectel KG100S sitting on the power supply board. https://fccid.io/X4GS06009)
This is good. But unfortunately it doesn't mean the Flock cameras will be removed because the city doesn't own them. Flock does. And Flock will likely want to keep them there. In other cities when the contract is canceled or let expire Flock prevented those cities from removing the cameras. Some had to resort to covering them with trash bags because they could not legally remove them. This happened in Dayton, Ohio and many other cities. https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/cities-covering-flock-surv...
> "Some locals have taken matters into their own hands by dismantling Flock cameras and covering them with trash bags"
This techcrunch article incorrectly characterizes this need and required behavior as something done by random citizens. But it is actually the cities themselves having to resort to it, totally officially and legally, because of Flock behaving badly.
Aren't the cameras on city's land or did city lease the land to Flock? If they are on city's land couldn't city require that Flock removes their stuff from city's property or city will do it on Flock's expense?
I've seen videos of flock cameras installed improperly (missing a breakaway device) right next to roads. The city must be able to remove unsafe devices!
https://highways.dot.gov/safety/local-rural/maintenance-sign...
Presumably the license to surveil the city is extended to flock by the city? Presumably they should be able to compel them to disable them, and provide proof of this (whether they’re trusted or not…)
I think the problem is that people are allowed to set up cameras of public spaces without requiring any “license to surveil”.
Making recording in public require a license is a very easy way to cut free speech and document wrong-doing of a system.
are they on land flock owns though? I don't think I could go put up a camera on city infrastructure like traffic lights without their permission. does flock buy a lot of little permissions to install and power their cameras or something?
I assure you that if I slapped a camera on city infrastructure they would absolutely find some license or permission that I don't have and threaten me with a million+ dollar fine over it.
Thanks !! It is so easy to assume that ending contract means turning off the cameras. Hopefully ciities can fight back harder for them to remove them, specially when people don't want that surveillance.
It could also mean "we get the cameras for free now ..."
I don't know, I'd prefer cops have access to technology that helps them apprehend criminals and enforce the law. Better audits and accountability are the solution, not removing technology.
Cameras don't prevent crime, they just increase the cost of doing so (or the cost of preparing for it).
Most crime is spontaneous. Plenty of examples from across the world that installing cameras or other checks at best shifts crime to other areas.
I do know.
I do not want to live in a society that is under 24/7 surveillance. Of course, if the cops can watch everything you do all the time, there will be less crime. But that is not a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
> if the cops can watch everything you do all the time, there will be less crime
I disagree there. If cops watch us at all times then more crimes will be prosecuted, think they'll just sit bored with nothing happening? They will find things, real or not.
The reality is that crime is way down, we do not need more enforcement. Leave us alone already. https://www.opencrime.us/years
>Go to a low crime neighborhood. Cops are super friendly and basically spend their day happily helping old ladies cross the street or getting cats down from trees.
>If you think cops like cracking heads
They adore getting to crack heads. That's the entire reason they became cops. They love being able to use their power, rightfully or not, they don't really care.
Cops themselves say this!
I could show you 10,000 yt videos that show there are plenty of cops that abuse power and harass.
Cool, I choose to live in a highly policed neighborhood with well funded police. Essentially a gated community.
You can enjoy your "freedom", but based on the real estate prices, I think more people have my preference.
Yeah, right. That's why the rich were the first to have to city install Flock cameras on their lawns and driveways, right?
What is a dragnet? Why are dragnets illegal?
Flock is essentially a private loophole that creates a nationwide dragnet.
while cops are impossible to hold accountable, id prefer to give them fewer capabilities rather than more
I don't think this is true. With the advent of body cameras, cellphones with cameras and FOIA requests you can build a good case if someone violates your rights. The bigger issues are that there is little to no consequence of a flagrant violation of rights because the police union is VERY protective over its members.
Time you have also directly bounded by how alive you are after the event
> I'm cool with zero privacy if it means cops can arrest people more easily since they have perfect judgement
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Ben Franklin
Grant me the liberty to camp out on a public sidewalk and use hard drugs in a children's playground or give me death!
I think you should have the liberty to do both but there should be no reason for anyone to do so. Your two instances are happening because that's what available for them.
They should hire some juniors to patch together analysis with local LLMs and do that on an as needed basis to avoid the creepiness. Networks of cameras remain a highly powerful way of holding evildoers accountable.
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Nonsense.
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Civil disobedience is a civic duty when the state is tyrannical.
Yeah it's kinda crazy you can't legally take them down even if they are banned/contract expires. IKE Skelton, a county commissioner took it into his own hands and they were pressing felony charges on him. Not sure what ended up happening. Basically flock wouldn't respond to take them down, he felt it was his duty to remove them, he brought them back to his office, and then the state hunted him down.
Here is a podcast about it. https://internationalflavor.podbean.com/e/the-surveillance-s...
I'm curious how they could prevent taking them down if the local gov doesn't renew the contract? Presumably they're installed under some works dept land/pole/utility access permits that allow them the space and electrical, which all goes away and requires their removal.
Sorry if this is answered in the pod, don't have time for it immediately.
If Flock can put them up, can I/my city just decide to put signs or lasers in front of the cameras?
With Marc Andreessen, the boy from rural Wisconsin, major investor and ambassador of Flock Safety, now part of the federal government, expect the number of Flock civil surveillance systems to increase even more.
What gives them the right to install and operate those cameras? I would have assumed that the license for placing them on public property was inherently linked to the services they provided to the local government.
But if it's not tied to that, does that mean that anyone can install cameras anywhere? What grounds would they have to give permits to Flock while refusing them to other interested parties, like StalkingMyEx LLC. and CopTrack Corp.?
Is there any realistic road to having them outlawed nationwide? Eg, ignoring probabilities here, could a wildly successful grassroots program where it became an issue as politically salient as immigration or abortion eventually lead to legislation banning them?
Probably? Would be easier to develop drones to rip off the solar panels.
Black spray paint is less effort
I didn’t know this but it’s the kind of stuff our tax dollars pay for and ultimately why I’m so disgruntled about the high taxes we pay - especially in the middle class
No problem paying taxes - my entire gripe is with what what the moneys spent on
Would love to see someone vibecode an explorer for seeing how their jurisdiction spent their taxes. Denver has a decent explorer here: https://www.denvergov.org/transparency/checkbook#/home?year=...
The US has below average middle class tax rates. But luckily we can just choose what our tax dollars are spent on through democracy! The main problem is nobody agrees about anything and lots of people are really dumb and can't handle the responsibility of electing competent people into government.
It would be a mistake to assume that people who don’t agree with you are really dumb.