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Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

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Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#41
post #12

they (and others like them) also make zero effort to install poles complying with highway safety standards

Not just that but I would also be very skeptical that whatever free standing poles they're erecting are fully compliant with TIA/EIA 222H (or engineer stamp approved drawing for each unique installation location, which will vary with local climate of snow/ice and wind loading), which is the engineering standard for self supporting tubular steel monopoles that have antenna, camera, solar panel appurtenances attached t…

This is the kind of stuff that municipalities and counties absolutely hate. Reporting this stuff generally matters and will get taken care of.

When reporting, if the work of citing standards is done, it makes the report much more likely to go through and have action taken.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#42
post #21

How come we allowed all these cronies to put camera and do surveillance. Any politician advocating this should have cameras in their home for safety reason.

Because clearly we are powerless. Someone should post that chart of how likely a law is to be passed vs. how much the people want it or not. It is basically a flat line. People's will have zero impact.

If I was an abuser who wanted my victims to feel like they couldn't do anything, I'd try to convince them of some version what you just said.

Congrats! You decided to give up.

You're now advocating against your best interests and the best interests of everyone you love. Way to go, slugger!

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#43
post #20

How come we allowed all these cronies to put camera and do surveillance. Any politician advocating this should have cameras in their home for safety reason.

[flagged]

Safer for who? Definitely not anyone critical of the Chinese dictator or regime. Definitely not the Uygher population.

Free society is more important than marginally safer streets.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#44
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just that but I would also be very skeptical that whatever free standing poles they're erecting are fully compliant with TIA/EIA 222H (or engineer stamp approved drawing for each unique installation location, which will vary with local climate of snow/ice and wind loading), which is the engineering standard for self supporting tubular steel monopoles that have antenna, camera, solar panel appurtenances attached t…

This is the kind of stuff that municipalities and counties absolutely hate. Reporting this stuff generally matters and will get taken care of. When reporting, if the work of citing standards is done, it makes the report much more likely to go through and have action taken.

In particular 222g, 222h and such have a "reliability factor", which can be summed up as, in a worst case scenario if it completely falls over, within its fall radius, is it going to hit anything or kill anyone?

For example, a self-supporting steel monopole in the middle of a field, that if it falls over is going to hit some corn has a very low reliability factor. Even if it has been engineered to withstand the worst case 120 mph wind with extensive rime ice loading.

On the other hand, if you have a 40 or 50 ft steel pole that's within the highway right away and it might fall over into traffic moving at 70 mph, that's a whole other question.

222G and H and similar do not cover scenarios like being hit by a 5 ton or 10 ton truck, I am not familiar with, but presumably there are also engineering standards for designing poles within the highway right-of-way that have to be able to withstand a certain sort of hit by a vehicle. Or being protected by a certain engineering standard of bollard.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#45
People always want high trust societies. They are incredibly hard to create and incredibly easy to destroy.

However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. High trust requires, well, actual trust. You can’t build real trust in a panopticon just a sickly police state facsimile of it.

Society and progress moves at the speed of trust. Without it many uniquely human and beautiful things disappear.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#46
post #42
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because clearly we are powerless. Someone should post that chart of how likely a law is to be passed vs. how much the people want it or not. It is basically a flat line. People's will have zero impact.

If I was an abuser who wanted my victims to feel like they couldn't do anything, I'd try to convince them of some version what you just said. Congrats! You decided to give up. You're now advocating against your best interests and the best interests of everyone you love. Way to go, slugger!

Seriously. I'm as left wing as you can go and I still think that voting is useful to influence the system while building a critical mass of people willing to break the wheel. Saying "we'll never get class solidarity" is the most annoying and pointless thing someone can say so you have to assume they're working to ensure it is the case.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#48
post #45

People always want high trust societies. They are incredibly hard to create and incredibly easy to destroy. However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. High trust requires, well, actual trust. You can’t build real trust in a panopticon just a sickly police state facsimile of it. Society and progress moves at the speed of trust. Without it many uniquely human and beautiful things disappear.

Sadly, many people just want to be highly trusted in society (whilst themselves fearing most of the rest of it). It's why we flirt with/fall face first into authoritarianism every few decades.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#49
post #12

they (and others like them) also make zero effort to install poles complying with highway safety standards

This guy on instagram does a good job of highlighting this (and other unsafe roadside hazards). https://www.instagram.com/theguardrailguy?igsh=ZXAxM2h2ZXFub... From his bio, he lost his daughter to a guardrail crash and started exposing improperly installed guardrails.

For people who don't have instagram: https://imginn.com/theguardrailguy

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#50
Even with all this said, surveillance like this is certainly going to be one of the best ways to catch criminals and reduce crime over the long term. I hope the misgivings that we have around Flock won't close the door to us ever using this type of technology, in some way, in the future.
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