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Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

investigatetv.com

211–220 of 297 posts

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I don't think private HOA networks count as "mass surveillance".

An HOA has a lot more leeway to do whatever it wants than other local governments. They get to act as government sometimes, then as a corporation sometimes, and then as a group of amateur lawyers sometimes. They can both pass laws and try you for violating them without recourse. And IME only the most toxic people stay on the board for very long.

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#212
post #155
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they called 911 because they were worried about privacy when publically installing a privacy-violating tool, then yes, they 100% should be. Having higher standards for higher impact things isn't somehow hypocritical.

>If they called 911 because they were worried about privacy when publically installing a privacy-violating tool, then yes, they 100% should be. Seems like the installer was calling because he thought he was being harassed? >As Keefe began to shoot video, the installer saw him and immediately packed up his equipment and drove away, so Keefe also returned to his car and followed several cars behind, hoping to document…

The implication is "setting up public security cameras in a city should be fair game to document by journalists". If anything, the solution here seems like it would be a requirement that the date, time, and location of each camera being set up should be public information, so then no one needs to get followed to be able to document what's happening.

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#213
post #42

I've gotta mention it because everyone seems to have a learned helplessness with this type of thing. I went and spoke at my county commissioners meeting a couple times after the initial flock roll out (voted on with no discussion a couple years prior) started becoming apparent. The first meeting, the group of me and two other people were half of the people making public comment. Every single person was against it unl…

I don’t understand your point.

> We managed to swing a couple of the county commissioners who were in favor of it before and were not in favor of it after hearing about the constitutional issues as well as the cyber security issues that flock doesn't really care about.

Do you not see the problem here?

Pasco County has a $2.2B annual budget. These county commissioners have the financial resources, organizational access to expertise, and time to focus on these problems.

Do they really need an under-resourced citizen to inform them about the constitutional issues after deployment? And then they just say “Aw shucks, whoopsies, now I see the light.”

I don’t think it’s fair to call this learned helplessness (a lingering belief after the threat has vanished) when we’re facing off against an active, persistent adversarial threat.

Your county commissioners didn’t make a “whoopsies” when they took a deliberate, informed action against your interests.

Furthermore, it’s unsustainable to require citizens to pour significant time and energy into forcing their representatives to faithfully represent them. That quite literally defeats the purpose of a representative governing body.

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not bananas. It happens all the time. The police show up, check things out, and inform the caller that the person recording has a right to do so. In this case, it's even less bananas, because the people recording him were literally following him around, which is not what generally happens in these "audit" scenarios where someone parks themselves on the street outside a restaurant or bank. There's pretty clearly…

Except that the reason that the YouTube “1A Auditors” get the attention that they do is that frequently it’s not a simple “check things out, and inform the caller that the person recording has the right to do so”, but the interactions often escalate to threats of unlawful arrest as police default to the side of the caller. Calling the police, especially in America, can 100% be a coercive use of force. That’s why peop…

I don't know what to tell you. I watch these videos all the time (it's one of my vices, bodycam footage in particular) and what I see every time --- when it's "auditors" harassing businesses, not when it's auditors confronting police at police departments --- is business owners being told to suck it up.

I know that in Summer 2020 there was a fashion for saying any call to the police was ipso facto a deployment of coercive force, but I'm rejecting that argument out of hand while also pointing out that in many regions 911 is exactly the thing you're supposed to do when you have uncertainty. It is simply not a demand for violence; it's a demand to have a trained authority come and resolve a situation, rather than having two private citizens with no training at all in the law confront each other and hope for the best.

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, when you’re on the clock, you’re an agent of that company. And when you’re installing an indiscriminate mass-surveillance camera, calling the police on someone that’s video recording you is kind of bananas. Perhaps you don’t find that to be an interesting event, but a lot of people who are rightfully angry at the non-consensual deployment of a mass surveillance network disagree.

It's not bananas. It happens all the time. The police show up, check things out, and inform the caller that the person recording has a right to do so. In this case, it's even less bananas, because the people recording him were literally following him around, which is not what generally happens in these "audit" scenarios where someone parks themselves on the street outside a restaurant or bank. There's pretty clearly…

TIL that 911 (Emergency Services) is how one should report a stolen bicycle.

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#216
post #213
post #42

I've gotta mention it because everyone seems to have a learned helplessness with this type of thing. I went and spoke at my county commissioners meeting a couple times after the initial flock roll out (voted on with no discussion a couple years prior) started becoming apparent. The first meeting, the group of me and two other people were half of the people making public comment. Every single person was against it unl…

I don’t understand your point. > We managed to swing a couple of the county commissioners who were in favor of it before and were not in favor of it after hearing about the constitutional issues as well as the cyber security issues that flock doesn't really care about. Do you not see the problem here? Pasco County has a $2.2B annual budget. These county commissioners have the financial resources, organizational acces…

Oh I absolutely see the issue. These people are honestly beneath contempt after talking to them and seeing their responses.

Regardless, I'd rather tailor my message to people who I fundamentally disagree with, and make a little bit of progress.

Edit: anyways, the point is that a group of less than 15 or 20 people can sway decisions.

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not bananas. It happens all the time. The police show up, check things out, and inform the caller that the person recording has a right to do so. In this case, it's even less bananas, because the people recording him were literally following him around, which is not what generally happens in these "audit" scenarios where someone parks themselves on the street outside a restaurant or bank. There's pretty clearly…

TIL that 911 (Emergency Services) is how one should report a stolen bicycle.

Happy to help. 911 is the primary "call for service" channel for most police departments.

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blantantly making stuff up is a bad look, they were founded as an HOA (private neighborhood) security service. >Flock’s camera and accompanying software is geared towards private neighborhoods and neighborhood associations looking to decrease petty crime.[1] [1] https://www.hypepotamus.com/flock-safety-funding-round-growt...

I’m not making anything up any more than you are. Neither of us was there. My point: you don’t get YC funding unless you have a disruptive business idea. “Cameras, but to a niche HOA market” is not that.

The 350K HOAs are hardly "niche".

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

I don't think private HOA networks count as "mass surveillance".

Nobody is saying HOA except you.

It started as license plate readers and expanded to include identifying people by clothing, body type, etc. storing it in a database that communicates with surveillance networks in other cities.

That is literally mass surveillance.

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#220
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beware of cities 'ditching Flock' only to immediately replace them with Axon, which is the same thing.

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If there's anything Flock does that Axon doesn't, it's only because Axon doesn't have people smart enough to do it yet. Once the funding shifts from Flock to Axon, they'll hire the people who can make it happen, especially if enough money shifts that they can pilfer the exact same engineers.

The police want the capability. Flock just happens to temporarily have the better technology.

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