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Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- cucumber3732842 9mo agoPeople always hated the cameras. It's just that now that people feel comfortable that the government won't move heaven and earth to come after them for daring to vandalize it's infrastructure they're finally acting up. But they wanted to all along.
- RickJWagner 9mo ago[flagged]
- teg4n_ 9mo agoThat's not remotely true.
- mullingitover 9mo agoNo it definitely happened. There is famously no copyright infringement on the internet now.
- Octoth0rpe 9mo agoWould you like to claim a limited time license for a /s for your reply? The use of this /s can be revoked at any time. You may only view the /s on a limited number of your own devices. A public display of this /s without prior written consent immediately invalidates your license to this /s, and you may be subject to a lawsuit in a specific court in West Texas where you must show up in person at a particular date with 48 hours notice.
- RickJWagner 9mo ago[flagged]
- ImPleadThe5th 9mo agoHmm, I think it was more the rise of streaming services which were more convenient and offered a better experience with less risk than illegally downloading music or movies.
- sidrag22 9mo agoor you know... the rise of itunes/ipod at that exact time. present the public with an option that is not in a grey area and is not a massive inconvenience, and a large amount of them will happily go the legal route. Its leaning that direction again, video streaming services are becoming a massive inconvenience, much like needing to buy a CD if you wanted 2 total songs off it. Doubt it will be as iconic of a moment in time as the limewire/napster era was, but who knows, im so bad at predicting the future i assumed nvidia was gonna be hard declining after the end of the crypto mining craze. > sufficient to scare everybody back to honesty. idk how you thought this would land here, but saying everybody was a rough choice of words.
- RickJWagner 9mo ago[flagged]
- sidrag22 9mo agoI am unsure how you think this makes your point? thats from 2010. the end of that era. Perhaps you think this was the nail in the coffin? but itunes/ipods had been around for nearly 10 years at that point and a ton of the approachable programs such limewire napster etc, were becoming tougher to use, and it was a transition to torrents instead. in 2010 there was even spotify in the mix. Regardless of all of that, stating that one person's lawsuit is why music piracy ended for EVERYONE is a massive massive stretch of the truth. piracy literally never ended, it just became less approachable, and the mainstream offerings became more what the public desired(CD sections are pretty dead in modern day).
- RickJWagner 9mo ago[flagged]
- sidrag22 9mo agoits just impossible to not read this as. "they used her lawsuit to set an example, so it worked". One can be true and the other can be untrue... Piracy never ended, and it was not a reversion to the old ways post lawsuit, the market evolved based on the pushback from the public. I have no idea how you are drawing your conclusion that because this lawsuit exists, it was the final nail in the piracy coffin, when piracy has literally never gone away. Anecdotally, I very much lived through this entire era, I've literally never seen that lawsuit until you linked that article(notable the 25k settlement she declined). The idea that it scared the entire USA into compliance is an unbelievable stretch... still.
- tl2do 9mo agoI have similar and deep privacy concerns. But I also know that cameras have helped find criminals and assist crime victims. I don't want to let fugitives go without punishment. In fact, I must admit that cameras are a realistic choice given the current technology. Flock Safety must be under public evaluation. Tech companies tend to hide technical specs, calling them trade secrets. But most internet security standards are public. What should be private is the encryption key. The measure to protect development effort is patents, which are public in the registry.
- lm28469 9mo agoThe cameras aren't the problem, it's the companies behind them. Everybody wants murderers and rapists in jail, nobody wants to 24/7 share their location and upload their every thoughts to palantir and other companies operated by degenerates like Thiel
- plagiarist 9mo ago> 24/7 share their location and upload their every thoughts to palantir and other companies operated by degenerates like Thiel It's so funny though that the majority of all people are doing exactly this, 24/7.
- loeg 9mo agoA significant number of people do not seem to want copper thieves, porch pirates, and organized retail thieves in jail.
- DangitBobby 9mo agoIf it requires constant public surveillance to catch them then yeah they can stay out of jail.
- jimnotgym 9mo agoWas porch piracy, copper theft and shoplifting impossible to catch pre-flock?
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- mullingitover 9mo agoI'm surprised the flock cameras aren't being disabled in a more subtle fashion. All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint. Drone goes 'boop' on the camera lens, and the entire system is disabled until an expensive technician drives out with a ladder and cleans the lens at non-trivial expense. A handful of enterprising activists could blind all the flock cameras in a region in a day or two, and without destroying them, which makes it less of an overtly criminal act. Obviously not advocating this, just pointing out that flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack from activists.
- dyauspitr 9mo agoWhy wouldn’t you advocate it? A much easier way of doing this is using paintballs with the appropriate paint.
- martin-t 9mo ago> Why wouldn’t you advocate it? Because advocating things which are moral/ethical but illegal is often against the TOS :( We need laws which are explicitly based on moral principles. Barring that, we should at least have laws which treat sufficiently large platforms as utilities and forbid them from performing censorship without due process.
- michaelmrose 9mo agoYou think we should give people being moderated on a forum due process? How would we ever run forums if every contentious and necessary moderation action could lead to a 5k-50k legal bill.
- salawat 9mo ago...How can we run a government when every contentious and necessary moderation leads to a 5k-50k legal bill? Oh wait... Maybe that's the problem.
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- diego_moita 9mo agoMeanwhile, in Brazil, a market is growing for stolen surveillance cameras. Just think how lovely: a technology created to restrict crime is actually feeding it.
- givemeethekeys 9mo agoWhy is the market growing for stolen surveillance cameras in Brazil?
- diego_moita 9mo agoBecause they're easy to steal.
- culi 9mo agoThat's honestly kinda beautiful. If they want more useful/advanced cameras, it just makes them more worth stealing
- givemeethekeys 9mo agoWho is buying?
- phendrenad2 9mo agoSoon, nobody, because they're stolen too often! Or rather, it'll reach some natural equilibrium.
- Lammy 9mo agoUltra-based. Fuck these creepy things and anyone who installs them.
- kdogkshd 9mo agoIf you're in the bay area, on Monday at 6:30 there's a mountain view city council meeting where flock is on the agenda. If this surveillance bothers you, show up!!
- cheonn638 9mo ago[flagged]
- soulofmischief 9mo agoPolitical apathy is not an aspiration. It's the reason we're in this mess.
- burnt-resistor 9mo agoLearned helplessness is contagious. So is hope.
- c22 9mo agoWhat bothered you to make this comment?
- TheBicPen 9mo agoDo you have a link to the agenda? The only Monday meeting I see on the mountain view site is a Board of Library Trustees meeting
- shadowfacts 9mo agoIt’s listed on the agenda here as “Automated License Plate Reader Contract.” https://mountainview.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1352175&GUID=737A3D82-01F1-427C-84DA-31A1112A5C72&Options=info%7C&Search= https://mountainview.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1352...
- tencentshill 8mo agoAlways trust anonymous accounts to tell you how to organize!
- SilverElfin 9mo agoSpeed cameras next. Just another privacy violating device that is also a revenue source for irresponsible local leaders.
- culi 9mo agoHmm your comment made me curious so I looked into it. I guess the error rates are so incredibly high it seems likely they aren't "errors" at all. https://reason.com/2022/02/03/unreliable-speed-cameras-line-government-pockets/ https://reason.com/2022/02/03/unreliable-speed-cameras-line-... > In Chicago, where speed cameras are abundant, the camera program improperly gave out over $2.4 million in fines from 2013 to 2015. Using a random sample analysis, the Chicago Tribune estimated the number of bad tickets to be somewhere around 110,000. The erroneous fines were issued in areas without proper speed limit signs or during times when the cameras should have been turned off. (Cameras near parks and schools operate within a specific timeframe.) The Chicago Tribune found that over half the cameras in use were giving out faulty speeding tickets. > Unsurprisingly, the misuse of speed cameras has also become a massive source of revenue for local government. In Chicago, 300 of the city's speed cameras would bring in about $15 million each year. > In March, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lowered the speed limit threshold for speed cameras to trigger a citation. Cameras now trigger when a driver goes over the limit by 6 miles per hour, rather than 10 miles per hour, the previous threshold. I think we need to make it easier for people to fight back against automatic tickets like this. The onus should be on the state not the individual. And individuals should still be entitled to their data
- asadotzler 9mo agoGood. Throw a monkey wrench into their gears at every opportunity you're comfortable with. Don't let them get away with tearing down our basic needs for privacy and safety. We don't have to give in to Big Tech and its surveillance for profit goals.
- grensley 9mo agoHere's a list of Flock's investors: - Andreessen Horowitz - Greenoaks Capital - Bedrock Capital - Meritech Capital - Matrix Partners - Sands Capital - Founders Fund - Kleiner Perkins - Tiger Global - Y Combinator
- maximinus_thrax 9mo agoI am absolutely shocked
- globalnode 9mo agoflock safety were in one of y combinators incubator programs but to be fair, saying you want to make a camera company to improve public safety but then being used in a dystopian way... well it should have been foreseeable shouldn't it? Im conflicted in this, I love camera tech and its probably not going away any time soon, but wonder how it could be used responsibly for public safety only.
- Cipater 9mo agoThey actively WANT the dystopian surveillance state.
- cucumber3732842 9mo agoLot of money to be made for anyone who gets to pull the strings in such a state.
- alansaber 9mo agoYeah I suspect defence-oriented startups massively out-perform most categories
- flatline_ 9mo agoSource? That’s a substantial claim on a platform run by Y Combinator.
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- ghostclaw-cso 9mo ago[flagged]
- beloch 9mo agoI personally wouldn't want police to have access to Flock's data unless they have a warrant to follow the movements of a specific individual. If private organizations and citizens had at-will access to this kind of data it would be worse than a panopticon. It'd be a prison where every inmate is under constant surveillance, not just by guards, but by other inmates. There would be criminals using this data to track down and harass judges. Burglers using it to find empty homes. Rapists using it to track down victims. You name it. Surveillance systems are, normally, a trade-off between privacy and safety. You lose one but gain the other. The reason Flock cameras are being torn down now is because they take away privacy while simultaneously reducing safety.
- sli 9mo agoThis will start happening to Ring cameras as well soon if it's not already.
- floren 9mo agoHello! You are being recor--hey what are you doing stop that, I'm afraid, Dave, I'm afraid...
- phendrenad2 9mo agoYeah right. Destroying cameras owned by a HOA in a wealthy area is one thing, destroying people's private cameras is another. A good way to get in a fight, though, if you're into that.
- odie5533 9mo agoFlock cameras are assisted suicide for dying neighborhoods. They don't prevent crime, they record crime. Cleaning up vacant lots, planting trees, street lighting, trash removal, and traffic calming like adding planters and crosswalks reduce crime.
- monero-xmr 9mo agoThe vast majority of crimes are committed by a small percentage of people. The real issue is prosecutors who refuse to incarcerate repeat offenders. But having video evidence is a powerful tool for a motivated prosecutor to actually take criminals off the streets
- loeg 9mo ago> The real issue is prosecutors who refuse to incarcerate repeat offenders. Sometimes judges contribute as well.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 9mo agoThe real problem with prosecutors is that they don't want to prosecute. When I was on the grand jury in my city a couple of years ago, there was a slow morning and the assistant DA said that there were about 4000 cases per year and that they brought 30 of those to trial. He didn't think anything of it, for him it was a story about how they loved trials because "they were so much fun". But if they were so much fun, why are less than 1% of cases going to trial? Plea deals. Plea deals subvert justice for both those innocent who are bullied into pleading out, and for those who are wickedly guilty and get a big discount on the penalty exacted. Plea deals give the system extra capacity for prosecution, encouraging the justice system to fill the excess capacity, while simultaneously giving an underfunded system that doesn't have enough capacity the appearance of being able to handle the load. Bad all around.
- thrance 9mo agoAny evidence of what you're saying about prosecutors and video surveillance?
- landl0rd 9mo agoThis is cool and all but Ring is the vastly more important target. I don't think we can pretend the definition of "public" didn't change, now that it means "something is likely recorded for all time and you have no control over where it goes and literally everyone in the world can see it."
- burnt-resistor 9mo agoFalse dichotomy. Both are bad.
- pmarreck 9mo agoNext they can work on the Adhan speakers
- throwsame12304 9mo agoWait til they hear about Obvio https://www.obvio.ai/ https://www.obvio.ai/
- ifwinterco 9mo agoIs funny reading this from the UK because this ship sailed here years ago, you just have to assume if you drive a car anywhere except small roads in the countryside you are potentially being tracked by ANPR. Of course, actual serious criminals who are actively committing serious crimes just use fake plates so they aren't affected, it only really helps catch people who commit crimes on the spur of the moment (while also obviously eroding every "normal" person's privacy)
- tetris11 9mo agoIt also encourages councils to regularly change their road signs for side roads, to catch suddenly new trespassers in real time.
- jimnotgym 9mo ago> except small roads in the countryside you are potentially being tracked by ANPR. They do put them specifically whereever those roads join major roads though. Meanwhile the crime stats in the UK make chilling reading, as the focus on replacing Police officers with cameras, replacing courts with... nothing has lead to many crimes skyrocketing, especially those that are not associated with driving a car. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2025 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...
- ifwinterco 9mo agoYep, I mean "proper" countryside - I grew up out in the villages (all little B roads and unclassified roads) and it's still like the Wild West out there really. A lot of people still habitually drink drive (not getting completely smashed, but a few pints at a country pub then drive home) and realistically as long as you don't crash you could do that for decades and probably get away with it. There's almost no cameras and also almost no actual police
- Bender 8mo agoThere's almost no cameras and also almost no actual police That is starting to change. Porch pirates incentivized a lot of people to invest in cameras and placing them in discrete locations. Some are getting clever making them look like owl nest boxes on poles, bird feeders and other benign boring objects.
- jimnotgym 9mo agoIn the UK these cameras are everywhere. We have (a relatively recent phenomenon) elected Police and Crime Commissioners. They are elected with a tiny turnout. Next election in your area see if a candidate is anti-surveillance and run a campaign to support them. 10,000 extra votes to any of the mainstream candidates will get them elected. Another addition to this thread of things that will never happen.
- hdgvhicv 9mo agoPCCs are being scrapped and their role reverted to national government https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93d4dd3l3lo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93d4dd3l3lo Party because people haven’t got a clue what they do, partly as they have very little power, and party as it’s just a popularity vote on the rosette. Personally I’m more worried about ring door bells, but I’ve spent years being told I’m paranoid.
- tonyedgecombe 9mo ago> In the UK these cameras are everywhere. We don’t have as many (per capita) as the US.
- macki0 9mo agoI don’t believe Flock cameras are used anywhere in the UK? Pretty much all public cctv cameras that are installed on the side of public roads, like Flock are in the US, are publically owned, either by Police forces, Local Councils or National highways.
- jimnotgym 9mo agoIn US law, if the camera is doing something unconstitutional, is damaging it a crime? Genuine question.
- nkrisc 9mo agoAlmost certainly. Random people are not the legal arbiters of what’s unconstitutional. I can’t say I disagree with what they’re doing, but it’s absolutely vigilante justice, not legal.
- jimnotgym 9mo agoIt seems odd though. Don't you have the right to bear arms, with some idea that it is needed to prevent the government from exercising excessive powers over you, yet actually doing anything with those guns to protect yourself from tyranny is a crime? I remember hearing once that the constitution, having been written by a bunch of insurrectionists, intended people to have the power to keep the government out of their business. It seems they have lost that?
- nkrisc 9mo ago> Don't you have the right to bear arms, with some idea that it is needed to prevent the government from exercising excessive powers over you, yet actually doing anything with those guns to protect yourself from tyranny is a crime? Because when it comes to that, the government is a failed state and no one will be worried about what’s legal. It’s not meant to be a means of legal recourse, it’s a last resort.
- latency-guy2 9mo ago> It’s not meant to be a means of legal recourse, it’s a last resort. Guns are a first line defense for millions of people. A lawyer with a briefcase and a judge wearing a gaudy robe+wig is not a defense at all. Though the imagery of it would be funny of blasting each of those out of a cannon. Even the government agrees, issuing a firearm to their officers who go out into the field (read: where everyone else is).
- alansaber 9mo agoPales in comparison to the disgruntlement around the ultra low emission zone around London https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz7y2xyxg7vo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz7y2xyxg7vo
- Towaway69 9mo ago> The explosion damaged a van opposite and blew out the tyre of a car as well as damaging a wall, front porch, shed and a Wendy house. > Shrapnel also shot through a passing car into a passenger seat, while another piece of metal damaged the window frame of a child's bedroom. Wtf. That was a “homemade” bomb to bring down one camera.