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LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

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Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#371

Post by mistercheph »

alex43578 wrote: post #346
bluefirebrand wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People tracking your in-person movements and behaviors is way more threatening than people tracking your online behaviors You are seriously clueless if you think otherwise

The police observing your car driving down a road is not threatening, and acting as if it is is hysteria. Furthermore, if you’re worried about that, have you considered that “they” could get even more comprehensive tracking data just by requesting it from a data-broker? There’s no divide between the online and real world if you have a phone or an online presence.

> The police observing your car driving down a road is not threatening, and acting as if it is is hysteria.

Yeah, but a national license plate surveillance system that lets a single police officer observe all of the movements you and your family members make every day for the past few years is not a single police officer making a plainview observation of you driving down the road.

And it's clearly a power that threatens liberties, you cannot have a free society when a government has that power.

"Palantir, what are the names and home addresses of all of the people that were at the pro-Mamdani rally, show me places that many of them go to in common, I want to find where these criminals are having their secret meetings."

Probably not in voice-to-text form, but this power is already in the hands of some US agencies, in part thanks to the national ALPR system.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#372

Post by [deleted] »

chasd00 wrote: post #305
smalltorch wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 decided he will enforce the ordinance as the sheriff refused too. yeah that's basically theft then. The cameras are probably a lot of money and so the dollar number put it in felony territory.

[deleted]

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#373

Post by krupan »

kmacdough wrote: post #51
SoftTalker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 gove…

The structure that prevents abuse is, don't do mass surveillance

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#374

Post by krupan »

bko wrote: post #220
goobatrooba wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

C'mon, you aren't going far enough. Catching someone after the crime was committed is not preventing the crime. You need AI to watch the cameras non stop and alert you before someone commits a crime ;-)

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#375

Post by ryukoposting »

chasd00 wrote: post #308
ryukoposting wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If the cameras and poles are private property then, contract or not, taking them is theft is it not? You'll get in trouble taking lime scooters and throwing them in the lake regardless of whatever contract exists or doesn't exist.

The cameras and poles are private equipment installed on public property. If the city terminates the contract and says "get rid of it" and the contractor says "no," well someone has to deal with it.

Imagine if a power company got cleared to bury a bunch of power lines, but they left all the unused poles in the ground, on land they no longer have rights to. That's closer to the situation we're dealing with here.

Wireless and solar make some of the more visceral approaches to this problem ineffective. In the past, the city could have strongarmed Flock by severing power or data service somewhere on the public side.

I'd bet there are still tons of tricks LA can pull, though. These 1000 9-square foot patches of land have been rezoned as green space, we're clearing it for native plant life.

Or, like I said, just pull a Daley and remove them. The city owns the land. Flock can complain, they can sue, and they might even win. But once the city removes the cameras, Flock can't put them back. The city owns the land, and Flock has no rights to it.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#376

Post by krupan »

nunez wrote: post #330

Honestly, if Flock forces people to enforce speed limits and follow the rules of the road, its expansion can't come fast enough. I realize how contrarian of a view this is to the mainstream, but car accidents are a leading cause of death worldwide, and it's my belief that many of them wouldn't have happened if driving rules were respected.

I agree with you 100% that cars are super dangerous, but that's a whole 'nother discussion

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#377

Post by krupan »

lokar wrote: post #361
krupan wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Whatever the system is now is clearly not preserving privacy

Have an independent non-profit with strong oversight manage the data. Grant access with a warrant. The police should show that a crime has likely been committed, and get access to just the data that probably has evidence.

You still have people with very tempting access to a whole lot of data. I don't see how this is different from the current situation other than it's just different (corruptible) people with access.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#378

Post by mistercheph »

ibejoeb wrote: post #218
etdznots wrote: post #96

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.

There are dozens of ways for it to be done, but here's an example of how Austin PD worked around contract termination:

https://www.kut.org/crime-justice/2026-02-12/austin-tx-apd-f...

The network effect value far outweighs the lost revenue from a single local contract.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#379

Post by orthecreedence »

bko wrote: post #26
superkuh wrote: post #3

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 an…

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.

I don't know, I'd prefer the cops do their jobs and solve crime without the state having intimate knowledge of my whereabouts and activities any time I enter the public sphere.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#380

Post by lokar »

krupan wrote: post #377
lokar wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have an independent non-profit with strong oversight manage the data. Grant access with a warrant. The police should show that a crime has likely been committed, and get access to just the data that probably has evidence.

You still have people with very tempting access to a whole lot of data. I don't see how this is different from the current situation other than it's just different (corruptible) people with access.

I think motivations matter. Putting a for-profit company hired by the police, and the police in charge is just the worst.

There are many other contexts where we trust properly supervised people who lack an immediate and obvious incentive to abuse the system. Combined with good overall software design, auditing and transparency almost all of the harms could be mitigated. And the tech does have some pretty major benefits.

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