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A handful of cities have replaced Flock with Axon

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Re: A handful of cities have replaced Flock with Axon

#31

Post by SoftTalker »

mrexroad wrote: post #17
echelon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're a public company with a $50B market cap. That's not going to happen. The direction would be the other way around. Axon is showing that they want the market, that they can build the tech themselves, and that they can leverage their extensive existing relationships with law enforcement and municipal governments as sales channels.

My city has a contract with Flock, but the rest of their tech “stack” is Axon based. I’ll be surprised if they don’t change ALPR to Axon at first chance.

In fact they are probably already using Axon ALPR in their police vehicles. That technology has existed for a while, even before Flock's fixed cameras became widespread.

I find it slightly less objectionable, as the chances that I drive by Flock's cameras every day are nearly 100% but the chances that I'm within visual range of a police car are much lower and more random.

Re: A handful of cities have replaced Flock with Axon

#32

Post by asteroidburger »

gilthelander wrote: post #28
pphysch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a step in the right direction. Everyone hates public surveillance until they become the victim of a crime, but it's critical that the surveillance is owned and controlled fully on an appropriate level. You should fully own and control your home security cameras. Right now many homeowners are shipping their data to national datacenters. Municipalities should fully own and control their public security cameras,…

> You should fully own and control your home security cameras. Right now many homeowners are shipping their data to national datacenters. In practice it's difficult to do and offer remote access.

It’s not a technical limitation. Nobody sees the need to build it that way though.

Re: A handful of cities have replaced Flock with Axon

#34

Post by mirmor23 »

> Axon, for example, advertises AI-powered cameras that attach to an existing streetlamp and are designed to completely blend in with their surroundings, and also collects license plate data with cameras installed inside police officers’ patrol vehicles

If anything this will make it go from bad to worse along all axes -- decentralized sharing, making it harder to track data request/usage, hide surveillance in an infrastructure that is considered essential, and host of other things..

Re: A handful of cities have replaced Flock with Axon

#36

Post by ortusdux »

Barbing wrote: post #22
wolfi1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it took Last Week Tonight years to get these records in one particular case

Probably this from 3d ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lnBPhelCdWE Generally, silly jokes but a very serious research and fact checking team.

Also one heck of a legal team.

Re: A handful of cities have replaced Flock with Axon

#39

Post by chaps »

ortusdux wrote: post #36
Barbing wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably this from 3d ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lnBPhelCdWE Generally, silly jokes but a very serious research and fact checking team.

Also one heck of a legal team.

For those interested in FOIA lawsuits, there are many, many attorneys out there who'd love to take on a pro bono FOIA case. Lots of it is quite boiler plate and pushing back on arguments that the courts decided on years prior.

Re: A handful of cities have replaced Flock with Axon

#40

Post by eth0up »

Cider9986 wrote: post #11
eth0up wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prediction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49053193 Axon just replaces Flock in some places. But I forgot to say that it probably doesn't matter much, and that whatever anyone resents about the whole thing, will just get worse.

These are literally city councils in many places. They're not our overlords.

That's fine too. I didn't intend to create a point of dispute. That's just my writing style which lends itself to selective interpretation. Understood.

The masses, or 'other' population, whoever it is that protests this variety of surveillance; the angry minority/ineffectual-majority, the misguided few/many that don't embrace the panopticon, etc. Regardless, it's not going away. From here onward, whatever form of surveillance or control it is, it's not going away. Eternal whackamole, eternal malcontent, we can hate it and spray-paint it all we want, but the only means to stop it is the one most people are either not capable of, or do not believe they are capable of, and it does not involve vandalism, feeble expressions of frothing contempt or anything but serious organized and unfortunately, legal methodology. Everything else is mostly symbolic, in a time when public opinion is less valuable than ever, and symbols offer little more than forensic evidence and fuel for long-term counter strategy.

Flock, Axon, ARGUS-IS, Xfinity CSI multi-AP WiFi sensing fusion, evil smartphones -- it's all here to stay, and evolve, and get pushed in our lives.

Might is Right. However terribly wrong it might be. And might is especially right when society divests from the primary tool capable of making it wrong. And I think, largely, that is what we've done. A city council is a minority. Whether it represents the majority, is, I think, not always consistent.

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