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At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

stateofsurveillance.org

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Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#151

Post by ssl-3 »

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #44
ssl-3 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Better yet, dismantle them without harm and send them back with no return address. This definitely takes more effort than smashing them does. > Reduces what you can be charged with, Does it? How? There's not even a return address to show that a person sent the parts back to Flock instead of just disappearing it. > prevents Flock from getting insurance benefits How? The camera doesn't repair itself. It still takes m…

I think my choice of the word "dismantle" has caused some confusion. "Cleanly dismount, and ship back whole" is what I meant. If nothing is destroyed, they can't charge your with destruction. If the item is returned, it is not stolen. There surely will be some lesser things one could be charged with here, but I doubt they would be worth the effort and expense of a lawsuit, and unlikely to sway a jury to convict. Frus…

When I take your things, I have quite clearly stolen from you. That's theft.

When I take your things and then mail them back to you, I have still stolen from you. That's still theft.

It's the taking part that constitutes theft.

---

If I instead just smash your things in-situ, then that can be a different crime like vandalism.

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#152

Post by new_account_100 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #145
new_account_100 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is?

Lack of family structure and good role models for young people.

I see your point, you could be born to a wealthy deadbeat father and end up chasing a life of crime because you haven't seen anything better modeled for you.

It seems to me that poverty is more likely than anything else to cause those factors though.

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#153

Post by prepend »

timcobb wrote: post #114
ohyoutravel wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article was written with a premise into a prompt for Claude, which then wrote the whole thing.

What do you think about the contents?

It’s poorly written and untrustworthy. I’d rather it not exist.

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#155

Post by NDlurker »

tptacek wrote: post #147
RobLach wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smashing cameras is enjoyable whereas building movement for legislation is laborious. It will be easier to negotiate for legislation as well if the economic risk of installation increases because of vandalism.

No it won't. (Source: got legislation for this, pretty good bead on who the stakeholders are). This is all Internet logic. It's fun to talk about destroying cameras as a vector for public policy, ergo, by the First Law of Message Boards, that must be a viable strategy. Reader, it is not. Nobody's going to blink at these costs, but residents who supported or were on the fence about the cameras are now negatively polar…

What if we just zip tie bags over them while working on legislation?

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#156

Post by dandellion »

amazingamazing wrote: post #80
zug_zug wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For throwing the tea into the harbor. By the way -- Where do you stand on throwing tea into the harbor? And where do you stand on the legitimacy of publicly discussing throwing tea into the harbor?

[flagged]

What riddle? I'm not a native English speaker, and it's pretty clear even to me what he's saying.

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#157

Post by tfourb »

peab wrote: post #99
tfourb wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about addressing the root causes of crime (i.e. poverty) instead of suppressing the symptoms by pushing crime out of politically powerful areas into politically marginalized areas? I'm not a fan of vandalism and luckily I'm living in a country where I have the law on my side when demanding that public space is not surveilled indiscriminately, but I totally understand the urge to simply take a stick to a camera th…

Poverty is not the root cause of crime

Obviously there is no single cause for any social dynamic (hence my "i.e.") but there is wide scientific consensus that poverty (especially when combined with inequality) contributes greatly to crime, bot directly (people steal if it is the only way to get something to eat) and indirectly (poor people are much more likely to live in the social conditions that correlate with incidence of crime).

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#158

Post by prepend »

raincole wrote: post #65
zug_zug wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda like saying "Throwing the British's tea into Boston harbor will only make us subject to harsher terms." The reality is the vast majority of social progress in the last millenium was achieved with force and threat of force. I find this weird revisionist "violence is never the answer" trope recited as a fact that needs no justification to be incredibly weird and unreliable.

Violence is only the answer if you're willing to cost a few thousands (sometimes millions) of lives.

I wouldnt call property crime violence.

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#159

Post by rdiddly »

tolerance wrote: post #48

I've warmed to LLM-generated/assisted writing in general but this kind of stuff is just lazy and is basically "I got Claude to say something I agree with and then made it pretty".

Did not strike me as AI-written. But it's useless to try to distinguish. There is only good writing and shite writing. (With things like "accuracy" and "verifiability" and even "awareness of adjacent context" included in my definition of "good.") The article is reasonably good and your comment I'm afraid is fairly shite.

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#160

Post by Tyrubias »

amazingamazing wrote: post #28

Eventually toll cameras and a consortium of private businesses will have this tech and then game over. Better to use this energy and legislate the behavior you want. Never let the enemy decide the terms.

People are able to do both. There are plenty of grassroots efforts across the country to end cities’ contracts with Flock. Unfortunately, just as many counties have been unresponsive about stopping data center construction, many cities have been unresponsive about ending contracts with Flock. I don’t condone illegal property damage, but civil disobedience on a large scale both in the US and around the world have often been the only effective mechanism for change.
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