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City Learns Flock Accessed Cameras in Children's Gymnastics Room as a Sales Demo

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Re: City Learns Flock Accessed Cameras in Children's Gymnastics Room as a Sales Demo

#21
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases the people deploying these cameras have no idea the feeds are being resold to Flock. It’s not like they have a consumer brand and people are saying, “oh yeah, Flock, they’re the license plate camera folks…I definitely want one of those in my locker room.”

I feel like I’m missing something. There is someone that is making the decision right? Or are you just saying the person placing the cameras is decoupled from the person making the decision to aggregate them all. But I still feel like the accountability is on who is giving the access to sensitive cameras.

Most often the business hires a security contractor to take care of it, and signs the contract without understanding the terms. You should be able to trust your suppliers enough that you can do the above, they are the experts in the thing (cameras in this thing, but could be things like plumbing or accounting) and you have your own business to run. "Should" is key though, all too often someone doesn't do right by their clients.

Re: City Learns Flock Accessed Cameras in Children's Gymnastics Room as a Sales Demo

#22
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases the people deploying these cameras have no idea the feeds are being resold to Flock. It’s not like they have a consumer brand and people are saying, “oh yeah, Flock, they’re the license plate camera folks…I definitely want one of those in my locker room.”

I feel like I’m missing something. There is someone that is making the decision right? Or are you just saying the person placing the cameras is decoupled from the person making the decision to aggregate them all. But I still feel like the accountability is on who is giving the access to sensitive cameras.

> Or are you just saying the person placing the cameras is decoupled from the person making the decision to aggregate them all.

That's exactly what's happening.

People are buying webcams which are cheap and have in their ToS something to the effect of "we get to sell everything the camera can see". Which, in turn, allows them to partner with Flock and sell video footage directly to them.

Consider the fact that at one point, Amazon partnered with Flock to sell their ring camera footage to Flock. [1] It only got botched because of the creepy superbowl commercial selling the spying as "finding lost puppies".

[1] https://apnews.com/article/amazon-flock-super-bowl-surveilla...

Re: City Learns Flock Accessed Cameras in Children's Gymnastics Room as a Sales Demo

#24

Meanwhile YC President Garry Tan continues to support and defend Flock. I'm curious how he'd spin this as a good thing.

If a school shooter was in your children's daycare, wouldn't you want there to be cameras so you knew where they were? ...is how I imagine that one goes.

Cameras would get shot first. Come on.

Re: City Learns Flock Accessed Cameras in Children's Gymnastics Room as a Sales Demo

#25
post #19

While I think this isn’t great. Why is the camera there in the first place?? Presumably there are people that have access to it. And if you are demoing software that connects to cameras, then someone gave the sales guy access to those cameras. I’m also assuming those probably weren’t the only cameras…

Any sane business that has lots of random people coming in will have cameras recording (except in bathrooms/locker rooms). There is too much opportunity for crime, and a camera is cheap. If something happens you pull up the feed from the last month and give the interesting parts to the police; most often you just delete everything after a month. More than one crime has been solved this way. That said, if there wasn't…

> There is too much opportunity for crime, and a camera is cheap.

The camera doesn't prevent crime. It just displaces it. Even when it doesn't it will not prevent the crime from happening. It _may_ provide you an opportunity to prosecute the person who committed it.

In reality the only real reason to have one is to reduce your insurance premiums.

> crime has been solved

A perpetrator was potentially caught and now has to be tried or negotiated into a plea. I understand we use the term "solve" as a term of art but it's a particularly poor one. It speaks to the need of police to clear their books of negative indicators and not to any first order desirable social outcome.

> That said

That said, if during a demo, you access another customers equipment, I will _never_ do business with you. That's just extremely unprofessional behavior.

Re: City Learns Flock Accessed Cameras in Children's Gymnastics Room as a Sales Demo

#26

While I think this isn’t great. Why is the camera there in the first place?? Presumably there are people that have access to it. And if you are demoing software that connects to cameras, then someone gave the sales guy access to those cameras. I’m also assuming those probably weren’t the only cameras…

[deleted]

Re: City Learns Flock Accessed Cameras in Children's Gymnastics Room as a Sales Demo

#27
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is the camera there in the first place?? I imagine its for security. Ie if there are reports of robbery, you can find who did it. I know its not that popular in the states but its common elsewhere, but with better controls. (well, "better" as in controlled by shitty IoT devices) I think the thing with flock is just how poorly put together everything is. They are obviously insecure, and the entire network has ma…

Why would a gymnastics gym get robbed? It’s just a bunch of smelly equipment that’s hard to sell and probably very little cash.

Looting is done for fun too. It must suck to have kids show up for practice in the morning and some of the essential gear is gone. It doesn’t matter if it is inexpensive to replace, you still have to cancel class and take a day or two up replace it, file a police report, etc

Re: City Learns Flock Accessed Cameras in Children's Gymnastics Room as a Sales Demo

#29
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases the people deploying these cameras have no idea the feeds are being resold to Flock. It’s not like they have a consumer brand and people are saying, “oh yeah, Flock, they’re the license plate camera folks…I definitely want one of those in my locker room.”

I feel like I’m missing something. There is someone that is making the decision right? Or are you just saying the person placing the cameras is decoupled from the person making the decision to aggregate them all. But I still feel like the accountability is on who is giving the access to sensitive cameras.

We are opening up a wellness clinic and we were planning to use a managed service company for internet, network, and security. I was appalled by the managed services suggestions. Privacy of our patients and their data is critical, and the managed service company wants to send all of our feeds to third parties and give third parties direct access to our network.

We decided this was a privacy and security risk, and have gone in a completely different direction, but it would not surprise me if most businesses used one of these companies and just went with whatever they suggested without understanding at all what is at stake or who has access to the data.

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