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Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

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Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#61

Post by snypher »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #50
Dig1t wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still a useful first step. Once “flock” becomes eponymous and a toxic political football, it can be applied to all future companies who do the same thing. The word “Flock” is quickly becoming toxic, in the future we’ll be able to use it as a shorthand for all companies of this type. e.g. if I call something a cleanex everyone knows what I’m talking about regardless of whether Cleanex the company actually made…

I think the point you're trying to make is undermined slightly by the fact that the word I think you're looking for is "Kleenex" not Cleanex. It took me a while to figure out what you were talking about, and I did some searching online to make sure I wasn't missing something about "Cleanex" in particular I still agree with you though ."Flock Camera" is very likely to become the general term for "public surveillance c…

Sometimes a misspelling is for avoiding social media vampire lawyers.

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#62

Post by idiotsecant »

amazingamazing wrote: post #44
m4ck_ wrote: post #32

Doxxing is bad of course but does "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" apply here? Or is that only for us working folk?

Do you believe anyone with a surveillance camera should have the owners name and address published if in any way a “public” area is recorded? I suppose we can start with all Blink, Ring and Nest Cams. Then we will continue with dash cam owners.

Are you asking if a public registry of where you're being observed by security cameras is a good thing? Sure. I wouldn't mind that.

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#63

Post by idiotsecant »

nancyminusone wrote: post #9
mullingitover wrote: post #6

I worry that Flock is going to take the fall, and some other bad actor with political connections (my money would be on Palantir) will just quietly pick up where they left off while everyone's patting themselves on the back for defeating Flock. The stuff Flock is doing is going to be standard AI-driven surveillance in the future, and unless the actual practices are made into political third rails and made into crimin…

My money would be on Axon. They at least have a claim to the "hold police accountable" angle with bodycams and less-lethal weapons. Compared with Flock's "we'll watch you and what're you gonna do about it"

Same problems long term with better marketing.

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#64

Post by phendrenad2 »

Dezvous wrote: post #28
legitster wrote: post #17

I know this is an extremely hot take, but it's not the license plate reading service that bothers me. A license plate is specifically a tracking number to identify a registered vehicle on a public road. The 4th Amendment gives you privacy inside of your car , but your car is not itself guaranteed privacy. Before Flock, police departments already had informally aggregated data from speed cameras, red light cameras, an…

They aren't just tracking license plates though. They're tracking people - let me explain. Their 'ALPR' cameras (purposefully misleading to call them ALPR btw) capture the footage and send it off to their servers where it's retained - building a long-term historical location history on every vehicle. Advanced analysis is performed on the data to provide features to their customers such as the ability to search for ve…

So would you be okay with this is Flock demanded a warrant before showing police the information?

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#65

Post by bluefirebrand »

snypher wrote: post #61
bluefirebrand wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point you're trying to make is undermined slightly by the fact that the word I think you're looking for is "Kleenex" not Cleanex. It took me a while to figure out what you were talking about, and I did some searching online to make sure I wasn't missing something about "Cleanex" in particular I still agree with you though ."Flock Camera" is very likely to become the general term for "public surveillance c…

Sometimes a misspelling is for avoiding social media vampire lawyers.

That's silly. :)

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#66

Post by dghlsakjg »

amazingamazing wrote: post #44
m4ck_ wrote: post #32

Doxxing is bad of course but does "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" apply here? Or is that only for us working folk?

Do you believe anyone with a surveillance camera should have the owners name and address published if in any way a “public” area is recorded? I suppose we can start with all Blink, Ring and Nest Cams. Then we will continue with dash cam owners.

If they are sharing the footage with a dragnet, tracking people across the country, and giving access to unaccountable cops with a history of abusing that data?

Yes.

If they are using it to see when their amazon package got delivered, or for bog standard security purposes?

No.

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#67

Post by refactorAbraxas »

Manuel_D wrote: post #51
rc5150 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're being deliberately daft. Its not the recording, its the surveillance dragnet with zero regulation or oversight that creates an instant dossier on whatever datapoints are searched for, by whomever decides to search for them who has paid for access. Honestly the nuance isn't that intellectually taxing and having to explain it to people in the tech space is tiresome.

You're calling me daft yet you couldn't be bothered to answer the question. What is going the be legalized, as the above commenter wrote? What law is Flock breaking presently? Like it or not recording and photographing people in public, then selling that information is not illegal. Paparazzi do it all the time. You can point a webcam out your window, run ALPR software on the video feed, and sell access to query that…

That will notion of an individual’s right to photograph a person in public held against the rights of the person being photographed, to conduct their business and affairs undisturbed, is likely to be challenged successfully before the Supreme Court when it can be shown a majority of people are under perpetual persistent technical surveillance.

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#68

Post by dghlsakjg »

legitster wrote: post #22
mullingitover wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recent WIRED[1] article goes in depth on this exact problem: > Another prompt instructs the system to list everyone arrested more than twice in two years for “any offense,” exempting only narcotics arrests, and then says to map where those people live, retrieve the calls for service at their homes, and “do a workup on the top three individuals.” The prompt begins with everyone in the area who has an arrest record and…

> This stuff is beyond the wildest fantasies of East Germany's Stasi I feel like that's a bit of a false equivalency. The soviet secret police had surprisingly little hard evidence on anyone - part of the terror of these regimes is that they could act decisively with little more than a rumor or gossip and be free from scrutiny for any mistakes.

Look up some of the Flock horror stories.

There's the one where a guy was surrounded by cops with their guns pointing at him because of a flock fuckup. He had a partial plate match (as in, some of the digits matched, but not an exact match) with a plate that was lost or stolen (as in the plate itself was stolen, not the car it was attached to.) That one went viral because the guy was an editor at a magazine driving a loaner car

There's this one where a lady was pulled out of her car at gunpoint after flock flagged her as a murder suspect. This happened twice in a weekend. She was never suspected of murder, it was a mistaken flag. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/aug/28/milwaukee-p...

Flock doesn't require evidence for an alert to be put in their system. If you have access you can apparently just put out an alert saying someone is a murder suspect, and some police department will repeatedly drag a woman out of her car until the media embarrasses them publicly

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#69

Post by dghlsakjg »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #64
Dezvous wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't just tracking license plates though. They're tracking people - let me explain. Their 'ALPR' cameras (purposefully misleading to call them ALPR btw) capture the footage and send it off to their servers where it's retained - building a long-term historical location history on every vehicle. Advanced analysis is performed on the data to provide features to their customers such as the ability to search for ve…

So would you be okay with this is Flock demanded a warrant before showing police the information?

I, personally, would feel better about it.

Warrants (are supposed to) have judicial oversight and are limited in their scope. There's also a paper trail attached to information obtained from a warrant.

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#70

Post by Manuel_D »

refactorAbraxas wrote: post #67
Manuel_D wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're calling me daft yet you couldn't be bothered to answer the question. What is going the be legalized, as the above commenter wrote? What law is Flock breaking presently? Like it or not recording and photographing people in public, then selling that information is not illegal. Paparazzi do it all the time. You can point a webcam out your window, run ALPR software on the video feed, and sell access to query that…

That will notion of an individual’s right to photograph a person in public held against the rights of the person being photographed, to conduct their business and affairs undisturbed, is likely to be challenged successfully before the Supreme Court when it can be shown a majority of people are under perpetual persistent technical surveillance.

You assume that some future Supreme Court case will rule that governments' use of Flock violated the Fifth Amendment, but at present Flock is violating now laws. Like I said in the my original reply: nothing is good to be legalized because nothing Flock is doing violates the law.

There's a big difference between "X is illegal" and "X is presently legal, but my prediction is that the Supreme Court will, in the future, rule that X is illegal."

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