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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

#191

Post by patcon »

taylodl wrote: post #175

25 cameras destroyed over the course of a year, and more than half were destroyed by a single person. This doesn't appear to be a widespread concern the headline makes it out to be.

I feel that part of the insight is that many people reading this story may want it to be true as stated. All the upvotes and it's propagation in networks may lossily lay this claim (of course debatable)

The beauty of surveillance is that it mutes the ability to cover the distance between desire and action. Which is another way to state "it has a chilling effect"

As I understand, part of any story being shared is that its propagation is part of the story, in a McLuhan medium-is-the-message sense.

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

#192

Post by sigmoid10 »

danjc wrote: post #174
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".

A browser plugin that scores webpage content based on how likely it is to have been AI-generated would be quite useful. Browser vendors can't build this.

This is virtually impossible to build. Not just because all current "AI detector" systems are fake or outright scams with accuracy comparable to a coin-flip on frontier model output, but because even if someone did build a reliable detector and released it to the public, it could be used for adversarial training and it would become worthless pretty fast.

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

#193

Post by peyton »

cortesoft wrote: post #112
danvoell wrote: post #78

Counter point - I live in a major-ish city in which our police force isn't as strong as the surrounding suburbs so I don't mind a few extra eyes on the streets. My kids like to explore the neighborhood and I like a little extra peace of mind.

I am interested to hear why the cameras give you peace of mind? I'd be curious to know what situation you imagine where these cameras help protect you or your family from any harm.

The other day somebody sped through my neighborhood ignoring all red lights and lane markers. It would be cool to deter this behavior before somebody gets hurt. The police aren’t patrolling 24/7.

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

#194

Post by trimethylpurine »

Tyrubias wrote: post #160
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 ofte…

Outside of lobbying, advertising, voting, and legal action, in order of decreasing efficacy, presumably?

Civil disobedience, in perspective, has by comparison been incredibly ineffective historically.

Books are written to glamorize remarkable exceptions, not the mundane reality of the facts we expect in every day life. The majority by far were punished or executed and forgotten.

Voting has plenty of impact. But most people don't and they're really easy to manipulate into free advertising to garner support for an otherwise unpopular cause at the expense of their own well-being.

It's far better to ask yourself if your cause might not be popular or even just before you run out and change the world. With very, very few exceptions that you're not likely to be able to recognize through mere self reflection.

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

#195

Post by nicce »

danjc wrote: post #174
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".

A browser plugin that scores webpage content based on how likely it is to have been AI-generated would be quite useful. Browser vendors can't build this.

> A browser plugin that scores webpage content based on how likely it is to have been AI-generated would be quite useful.

I am strongly against this, because you cannot accurately detect it. People start to get blamed even more when they actually did not use the AI.

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

#196

Post by tptacek »

patcon wrote: post #191
taylodl wrote: post #175

25 cameras destroyed over the course of a year, and more than half were destroyed by a single person. This doesn't appear to be a widespread concern the headline makes it out to be.

I feel that part of the insight is that many people reading this story may want it to be true as stated. All the upvotes and it's propagation in networks may lossily lay this claim (of course debatable) The beauty of surveillance is that it mutes the ability to cover the distance between desire and action. Which is another way to state "it has a chilling effect" As I understand, part of any story being shared is that…

The idea that this is an important trend story is infinity times more fun to talk about than the corrective that this isn't really a thing at all, which means online forums will sharply bias towards the notion that this is important.

This whole thread is pretty powerful evidence for that proposition: it's sprawling commentary on what pretty clearly seems to be LLM slop writing. You could build a novel operating system and get flagged off the front page for having a README with Claude tells in it, but that preference is obviously contingent.

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

#199

Post by ai_critic »

zug_zug wrote: post #54
amazingamazing wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is destruction of private property will only justify the very surveillance one is trying to avoid. Would you agree ring cameras should be destroyed too? The police can use their footage. In practice they are similar to flock.

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.

That's...exactly what happened with the Boston Tea Party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intolerable_Acts

Had France not been willing to subsidize an insurgent campaign to distract the British, it's incredibly likely those Acts would've remained in place for some time.

People who rush to using violence as an answer frequently do not consider the outcome if they've misjudged their opponents' capacity for it.

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

#200

Post by Groxx »

danjc wrote: post #174
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".

A browser plugin that scores webpage content based on how likely it is to have been AI-generated would be quite useful. Browser vendors can't build this.

Everyone has failed to build this. They can only sell claims that they have built it to fools.
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