Who’d have thought that warrant-less mass surveillance that treats every citizen like a potential criminal would eventually hit a tipping point where people began to fight back against it?
Along with it incorrectly labeling people as a criminal so cops harass innocent families
I watched a video last night. Some guy was banned from a casino. All they had was a blurry surveillance camera photo of him.
The AI tagged some other guy as him. Cops came and arrested him. Said the man’s ID must be fake, or he used a fake ID last time because there’s no way their high-fallutin AI could be wrong! It was >99% certain!
That’s a feature, not a bug.
The whole point of warrantless mass surveillance where you collect a person’s entire life history from birth to death is to be able to go back through that history at any point they become an inconvenient person, whether because they are protesting or are a whistleblower or anything else that endangers the existing power structures. They can and will use your history to fabricate a “reasonable” narrative to turn you into whatever type of criminal they claim you are.
This is exactly why they’re pushing the “antifa is an organized terrorist organization” so hard.
What’s funny is someone at flock is likely seeing this as a business opportunity. “With flock+ we will detect downed cameras and send a technician out to replace them instantly. Subscribe now!”
Meanwhile, municipalities are less than thrilled about defending throwing money at something literally no taxpayer wants.
This problem might solve itself really. Let the buisness majors sell the hangman their own nooses.
Sadly some people do want flock cameras because they think it’s worth it to have a better chance of catching criminals even if our personal liberties get taken away. It’s the age old freedom vs safety discussion.
Those who sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither
The thing is though you could have both, at least to a degree. You could have much more transparent policing, the cameras could do processing purely locally and based on publicly accessible lists with listed reasons for why the given plates are captured, you could make it so that the only ones who do get the data are actually thr police and not thr company selling the cameras, etc.
But that’s not in the interest of Flock, or even really the powers that be. The surveillance machine needs feeding, doesn’t matter for what cost.
ANYTHING cloud-connected - your doorbell, your security system, even all f**king post-2006 vehicles, regardless of manufacturer - are suspect.
And are highly likely to be actually spying on you.
I’ve been working with computers since 1982, on the Internet since 1988, on the Web since 1992, and in the IT industry since 1997. The proportion of average people who don’t realize how much of their stuff is exposing them, and by how much, is frankly astounding. It’s almost 100% of normies who are woefully ignorant. Even IT people who have no clue is in the majority.
And the security on this stuff that tracks you tends to be - except in rare circumstances - absolute dogshite. Sometimes it comes without any security at all, such as all devices sold having admin creds baked in, or all remote-access credentials being identical and non-user-editable.
This is why almost all of my stuff is hardlined, I have no IoT devices at all, and the wifi for my family’s devices is physically separate from everything else.
Don’t get me wrong, as IT for almost three decades I love all the new shinies. But I’m not blind, and I’m not stupid.
What is this and why did they put them up in the first place
The article explains every aspect of this.
Ive thought about getting a stick with a cardboard sign that says fuck flock and putting it right in front of all the cameras around me that i know of
Here’s a map of them: https://deflock.org/
How did Ring avoid controversy?
Cause private citizens are doing it. Not sure why people aren’t hating on them as much yet
Any RAM or storage in those things? That solar panel looks useful.
That solar panel looks useful.
Since I have never gone out in nondescript black clothing at night to destroy these things, I can’t say from firsthand knowledge…
But yes, yes they are. They make great trickle chargers for large batteries that only get used intermittently. Or string several together and enjoy an ebike battery charger. I have a similarly sized and shaped panel I found somewhere that I use to charge my 18650 bank.
There’s nothing more American than destroying a Flock camera
I was almost gonna say something about killing nazis, but…
nah, not as american
Killing Nazis is a Soviet thing. In the US, we hire them for important government jobs and fold them into our culture.
Soviets were allied with nazi Germany untill they turned on them.
This is such awful history; of course it works because it serves the US, but it does blow me away that otherwise well-meaning people continue to parrot it. You don’t have to be a “tankie” to stop spouting this nonsense.
You’re referring to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. That was a non-aggression treaty, not an “alliance.” The soviets would be pretty foolish to make an alliance with a country whose fascist genocidal leader, hitler, made clear the inescapable need to invade the soviet union in mein kampf.
You know who else had already made non-aggression pacts with the Nazis before that? The UK, France, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Estonia, and Latvia. You think they were “allied” with the Nazis?
Hell the Spanish civil war was a proxy war that the soviets had to pull out of to get ready for invasion (much to the ire of western anarchists forever).
No, man. The soviet position was pretty damned clear: they needed time to mobilize. You think they were mobilizing to deal with…what, Poland? Everyone knew what was happening between the Nazis and the soviets. They still weren’t ready, and got slaughtered.
Dislike the Soviet Union for other reasons. There are plenty of good ones. This is nonsense.
Criminals.
Yes. Flock are criminals.
On the wrong platform if you want to suck up to cops and surveillance chief
Don’t call the cops when you need help. Of course, you will.
I hesitate to call the cops even for traditionally appropriate situations when someone like you who probably loves ICE too would love to call them.
I don’t understand the cult around U.S. cops because its luck of the draw if you get an asshat abuser like my SO’s previous step father or a cop that can actually de-escalate a situation, vs cops doing some semblance of something correct overseas.
But keep sucking people off that are drawn to abuse of power.
Yes the corporations violating Americans 4th amendment rights are criminals and traitors
