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LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

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211–220 of 439 posts

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#211
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but if this is actually true then they're violating California law. I submitted a CCPA request to them to give me and delete everything they had on me. Their response is that they own no data, and I have to make the request to their customer, whomever that may be. If they're retaining any identifying data about me and then selling it to new customers, they are explicitly violating CCPA.

IANAL, but making some assumptions to fill in gaps, it seems they are avoiding having to comply with CCPA and other privacy laws like this: they harvest camera data and retain the images probably forever, but only turn it into identifying data on demand for customers. So you really do have to go talk to the customer, because Flock never "has" any identifying data about anyone, they just have anonymous images that whe…

> but only turn it into identifying data on demand for customers.

How could this seriously hold legal weight? The data is identifiable. Just because it’s gated by some transformation doesn’t mean they are magically not holding my identifiable information.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#212
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What planet do you live on? 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 and dealing with petty crime that they'll just invent otherwise and use to harass people, you're out of your mind. You really need to get out more.

You're right and wrong. The first paragraph is absolutely accurate -- I live near some of these areas (SW Connecticut) and the contrast is stark. The second is not. There are absolutely people who take pleasure in the bullying behavior cops are often associated with. They're the ones who want the cushy jobs in Greenwich but don't get them (probably for the aforementioned reasons in many cases) and wind up being doubl…

Violent crime / property crime per 100k people:

Bridgeport ~393 ~1,700

Greenwich ~9.4 ~867

More cops, more crime! In other news, wet sidewalks cause rain.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#213
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, no, almost everyone is really dumb, including the people who do agree with me.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#214

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…

[deleted]

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#215
post #91
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What planet do you live on? 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 and dealing with petty crime that they'll just invent otherwise and use to harass people, you're out of your mind. You really need to get out more.

I could show you 10,000 yt videos that show there are plenty of cops that abuse power and harass.

Police body cameras have completely dispelled this notion and are a god-send to the vast majority of police officers that want to do good work. So much so the left has turned against them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP4_2soVZe0

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#216

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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs

The problem GP is describing is mostly with the courts, not the cops.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#217

it needs to be illegal for the government to buy data or intelligence that it could not otherwise legally collect itself.

This wouldn't even help anyway. Flock sells to law enforcement, sure, but they also sell data to everyone else who wants to know everything about everyone.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#218

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…

>LAPD can just call them and access the data

Can they? Does anyone know the terms of these contracts? Does flock just look the other way if a licensee just gives away the data to some other entity without getting a fee for it? I can see arguments on both sides from flock's perspective, i.e., revenue vs lock-in.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#219
post #144
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the city install Flock cameras on their lawns and driveways, right?

Thats not necessary. They have the loving embrace of Nest cameras connected directly to Google. Gladly share footage when there's a string of property crimes. Whats your point?

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#220
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'll take shifting crime as long as it's away from me.

Camera's 100% prevent crime because you catch the bad guy, and in a sane society lock the person up so he can no longer commit crime. See how that works?

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