Flock is definitely not the only provider of this kind of surveillance. What is the real reason that this is getting so much media attention?
The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras
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Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras
#62Passed an old guy sitting on the side of the road with a lawn chair today, he was holding a pool skimmer with cardboard attached at the end to block a flock camera. There was a local news story about it [1]. Happy to see it. [1] https://www.cltampa.com/news/a-77-year-old-republican-man-is...
Well that is just art and quite the signal.
Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras
#63When people feel like their voice isn’t heard, this is the inevitable result.
On some level, it feels like (some) politicians haven't realised this, or have forgotten it.
We can either have a functioning democracy and justice system, where responsibility is delegated to people whose job it is to uphold society's values, or we can have individual people that do job themselves. If a judge or police officer isn't going to carry out justice, then eventually people are going to do it themselves. That tends to get messy, so we stopped doing that with good reason, and built institutions to better service justice, but if the institutions aren't doing their jobs, they should be reformed or thrown out.
Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras
#64This isn't a vigilante movement. These cameras are being installed without any constitutional basis. And people don't need legal authority to correct an unlawful camera installation problem that cities are not handling.
Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a HUGE assumption about the ability of surveillance to succeed, and it goes against the evidence of the most surveillance-heavy states in the present and history. There are flaws in systems that go beyond collecting evidence, for example corruption can undermine any technical approach as we see in places like China where surveillance is omnipresent. Hell if "total surveillance" was the secret to ending crime,…
Total surveillance would be watching people all the time, indoors too aka Fahrenheit. It would absolutely end 95% of crime.
This assumes the people watching actually cared about stopping crime enough to step in and arrest the offenders.
To echo the topmost comment's point, you can't convince the public that law enforcement actually cared when the elites who flew on the Lolita express to the child rape island are facing zero consequences while urinating on the side of a highway gets you put on a list forever.
Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras
#66I think I may have a minority view about surveillance. At least I need someone to explain something to me. Is the backlash really about privacy, or is the real problem a complete lack of trust in government? Because if I thought someone would actually use the cameras to enforce the law, that's not actually such a bad outcome. You aren't supposed to speed, you aren't supposed to let your dog poop without cleaning up a…
You know how animals in captivity behave differently from animals living in the wild and why this is judged to be a bad thing for the animals? Humans under surveillance also act differently from free humans and it's a bad thing for the same reason. It is in essence an attack on the human spirit.
>It is in essence an attack on the human spirit.
Although this is by no means a consensus view on the human spirit. Culture and civilization are in many ways simply what you describe, means of domesticating the human animal. It's quite loaded to assume everyone who isn't on board with the Taxi Driver view of the human spirit is 'bad'.
Another user points to the Panopticon which wasn't viewed as evil or 'dystopian'. It was thought of as a humane, progressive reform of prisons that does away with the violence and privation you had in prisons up until that time. In a lot of Confucian cultures that remains today, you don't find a lot of Koreans, Japanese or Chinese people who think law enforcement and surveillance is crushing the human spirit, they'd tell you these are tools to cultivate civilized human beings so you don't end up like monkeys in the banana factory.
Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras
#67Flock was pitched as the triumph of technology over criminality. It's surveillance network was supposed to end crime. However, when people witness extreme criminality thriving unpunished at the top levels of U.S. politics, the lie becomes evident. Flock isn't about ending crime. It's a tool of control to be used by criminals. Who watches the watchers? Everyone .
I put privacy over ending crime. That’s the unspoken stance everyone needs to decide on. Ubiquitous surveillance will end most crime but do we want that if the cost is our privacy?
> Ubiquitous surveillance will end most crime
It doesn't even do that, is the worst part. So the trade is to give up all privacy, but low-level crime continues unchanged.
Anyone who has tried to get the police interested in a theft where you have clear HD video of the action and a clear view of their faces and/or license plate, has lived this experience.
Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras
#68I think I may have a minority view about surveillance. At least I need someone to explain something to me. Is the backlash really about privacy, or is the real problem a complete lack of trust in government? Because if I thought someone would actually use the cameras to enforce the law, that's not actually such a bad outcome. You aren't supposed to speed, you aren't supposed to let your dog poop without cleaning up a…
> Is the backlash really about privacy, or is the real problem a complete lack of trust in government?
Both.
Even if a hypothetical perfect police force could serve justice better with a panopticon, that is A.) not the police force that exists today, and 2.) who's to day that there won't be a worse government in X years that will use that panopticon and police force to be dicks?
The benefit of minor crimes being addressed today is very small compared to the potential disaster of tomorrow.
Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras
#69I think I may have a minority view about surveillance. At least I need someone to explain something to me. Is the backlash really about privacy, or is the real problem a complete lack of trust in government? Because if I thought someone would actually use the cameras to enforce the law, that's not actually such a bad outcome. You aren't supposed to speed, you aren't supposed to let your dog poop without cleaning up a…
There's a social norm that it's rude to follow someone around watching everything they do, and that the state shouldn't do it unless they have good reason to suspect that person of a crime.
Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any historical precedent for a defacto public square? We can't relegate (unwillingly even) every bit of our lives to the private sector and suddenly say rights shouldn't exist.
If we want a digital public square we should fund one with public tax dollars.
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