301–310 of 439 posts
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Probably? Would be easier to develop drones to rip off the solar panels.
Hypothetically, of course, it would be even easier to just sneak up from behind and drop contractor bags over them.
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…
Flock may own the camera and the physical pole, but I find it hard to believe that they own the ground the poles are installed in. Almost definitely owned by the Department of Transportation.
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I don't know much of anything about any other jurisdictions. I'm saying that my municipality took the cameras down with zero drama. I'm on one of its commissions with oversight on this. (More precisely: there was drama, but it was all public drama from residents who didn't want the cameras taken down.)
Curious. Why didn’t they want them taken down?
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…
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…
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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.
Id have to re-listen as well for all the details. But I think this is slightly different than the headline here. In this case, the county voted for an ordinance banning them. Ike was threatened saying your going to be charged this is potentially state property, he did a sunshine request to see that they were privately owned by flock. Then he requested flock take them down but they didn't. After a few months he decide…
yeah that's basically theft then. The cameras are probably a lot of money and so the dollar number put it in felony territory.
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This norm around privacy was kinda set before the concept of mass surveillance became a thing, though. Maybe we should revisit it and rethink what privacy means. People shouldn't expect privacy in public, sure. They should expect they may be overheard or witnessed. But that's not really equivalent to mass surveillance and long-term recording "You should not expect privacy in public" does not imply "you should expect…
I don’t see why you should expect any privacy in the middle of a public road. What are you doing there that is private? I think everyone’s threat model is severely miscalibrated if they are threatened by being recorded driving somewhere via Flock, yet use a phone or social media account. There’s way more meaningful threats to actual private matters than Flock.
You are seriously clueless if you think otherwise
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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…
Do you have a phone, modern car, or social media account? If so, I have some bad news for you…
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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.
> I'm curious how they could prevent taking them down if the local gov doesn't renew the contract? IANAL but based on the facts available to me, they can't. It's a sham held up by intimidating local officials. The cameras were installed on public property, that's that. If they somehow keep this nonsense running for very long, I'd anticipate a Meigs Field-esque incident at some point.
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Silliness. Who enforces it then? The local law banning it was already equally as valid as a court order would have been. Would the county need to ask the judge to take it down? Someone has to physically take it down and I'm guessing flock didn't put that in the budget.
The court enforces it. We're getting into movie plot politics here. The sheriff's department will not in fact ignore a district court ruling. These scenarios rapidly reach the point where the sheriff is removed from office and imprisoned for some amount of time. This is what happened to Joe Arpaio. This is much simpler in a municipality: the board simply fires the village manager and the chief. A sheriff is usually a…
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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.