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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

#121

Post by KaiserPro »

voidUpdate wrote: post #93
urams wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. This is directly refuted by Singapore, Japan, arguably the UK, and others. Singapore is very interesting to visit. Externally there's somewhat of a narrative of a harsh police state but when I visited I almost never saw a single police officer and they don't have particularly many police officers on a per capita basis (170/100k vs 440/100k in NY…

Saying the UK is a "high trust society" is definitely an interesting choice

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/12/01/where-mos...

ITs not actually that surprising. Trust is different to cynicism though.

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

#122

Post by zombot »

janalsncm wrote: post #108
thaumaturgy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a glaring lie of omission when Singapore is cited as a "safe society" in a surveillance context without also mentioning that those same surveillance systems are used to aggressively suppress political dissent ( https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/sou... ). Super safe society, unless you happen to express disagreement with any part of it. Then, not so safe for you. So I guess the question…

There are two separate types of events with associated probabilities: 1) the probability of being harmed by criminals, and 2) the probability of being harmed by the government. For most people in most places, police are ineffective and therefore the first is orders of magnitude more of a problem. For example in the Bay Area, car break-ins are incredibly common and police are incapable of solving it. This would be unt…

> the government in Singapore is genuinely popular.

Easy to say when the opposition rots in prison.

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

#123

Post by zombot »

wmf wrote: post #9
elictronic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Company directly lies to governing body of city. Is found out the next day. Loses contract. Attacks city online afterwards. This isn’t about surveillance states, it’s about companies run by idiots.

Ironically, Flock might create enough backlash to trigger regulations against surveillance. They're certainly an example of what not to do.

While police just use fleets of drones. Hardly any backlash there.

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

#124

Post by vkou »

paol wrote: post #114
janalsncm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two separate types of events with associated probabilities: 1) the probability of being harmed by criminals, and 2) the probability of being harmed by the government. For most people in most places, police are ineffective and therefore the first is orders of magnitude more of a problem. For example in the Bay Area, car break-ins are incredibly common and police are incapable of solving it. This would be unt…

How meaningful is that in a society where political dissidence is suppressed?

It's somewhat meaningful. No society can go on for very long when a supermajority of it actively hates the government.

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

#125

Post by vkou »

urams wrote: post #73
vuurmot wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Singapore, policing does not have the dystopian surveillance thing attached to it, because a large number of police are civilian conscripts. It takes the edge off, when you know that your neighbor's 18 year old kid is working in the police force, rather than some mercenary force On top of that, the majority of the military consists of civilian conscripts, which arguably holds more power if the system ever goes bad…

> In Singapore, policing does not have the dystopian surveillance thing attached to it, because a large number of police are civilian conscripts. I would not have guessed in a million years that someone would argue that country's surveillance doesn't have a dystopian vibe because the country conscripts people into service.

Conscripts policing their own society will almost certainly produce better outcomes than people attracted to power volunteering to do so instead.

Especially if that society is fairly homogenous. (I'm well aware that Singapore is a fusion of cultures, but it's nothing like an empire that can shuffle its conscripts around, so that they always end up policing and brutalizing an ethnic group that's different from theirs.

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

#126

Post by 47282847 »

pclowes wrote: 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.

This discussion reminds me of a valuable and yet rarely discussed book by Bruce Schneier, Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive.

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

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

#127

Post by alfiedotwtf »

Everyone in the comments so hopeful, but here’s the reality - nothing will happen, they’ll get more money from more local governments signing up, and industry groups that have problems with protesters like forestry, and everyone will go about their day without anything changing moving onto the next rage bait.

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

#128

Post by lostlogin »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #81
fodkodrasz wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality shows otherwise. Take a look at Google and free-for-ads-and-surveillance everything. People are willing to make compromises on privacy for less important things than the change of them or their loved ones getting murdered, as mentioned as an example. But back to Flock: public cameras are not 24/7 surveillance, as those don't surveil people at home. ps: I'm not for a panopticon, enforcement needs to come with…

So the argument here is that people are too stupid to realize that they are being manipulated into being controlled, therefore it’s ok? Sit someone down, a normal average person, and explain to them the actual implications and then do you think they will agree? Reality shows that when people actually understand what surveillance means they reject it wholeheartedly

> Reality shows that when people actually understand what surveillance means they reject it wholeheartedly

They certainly say they do. Then back they go to Amazon, Facebook, Instagram et al.

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

#129

Post by jemmyw »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #107
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is I think if you give people the choice between a 0.001% chance of getting murdered on the street or a 100% chance of being surveilled 24/7 you will find that people will take their chances with the murderers

You may do. And I may do. But most people won't. See how they react to terrorism, despite the fact they amount to almost nothing compared to any other cause of death. People are NOT rational.

I'm not sure we know what people want though. After terrorist attacks politicians seem to decide what people want, tell people what they want, but rarely, if ever, offer a referendum on the subject. And on this alone they also get bipartisian support because nobody dares look weak on terrorism, so there's no possible vote against it.

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

#130

Post by kdheiwns »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #72
daymanstep wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My counter argument is that you only need 1% of the population to be bad apples in order to destroy a high trust society. Hell, even a single serial killer on the loose will make a lot of people too afraid to walk alone at night. One or two burglars can be responsible for 50% of the burglaries in a town. And so in and so forth. The other problem you have is that a lot of crime tends to be financially rewarding, so if…

The thing is I think if you give people the choice between a 0.001% chance of getting murdered on the street or a 100% chance of being surveilled 24/7 you will find that people will take their chances with the murderers

I think people are for surveillance under the presumption of it catching major criminals. But once it's introduced, they realize its main purpose isn't to nab murderers, but to punish them (the people who voted for it).

Surveillance everywhere means you can't park in a no parking zone for 3 minutes just to drop something off real quick. You'll get a ticket mailed to your door. You can't go 5 mph over the limit when nobody is around. You can't slow down at a stop sign without stopping for a full 10 seconds without risking being busted. You can't sneakily sample a grape before deciding whether they taste good enough to buy. You can't not tip a bad restaurant without them plastering your picture on the walls to embarrass you. You can't say a mean thing to an annoying person online in the heat of the moment. Half the people on earth cheat on their spouses while pretending they never would and anyone who does should be imprisoned, and soon they'll have their secret revealed and regret their words. You can't trip and fall in a goofy way without your video being a global meme for a whole month.

All these pop into people's heads and make them think "screw that" after at first thinking it's great.

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