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US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

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Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#201

Post by 52-6F-62 »

schlap wrote: post #178

These companies build this tech in SF and Seattle, cities with some of the gnarliest public safety problems in the country, then turn around and sell it to smaller towns where it does more harm than good. Most places in America don't have problems that surveillance solves. They have problems they already know about and won't act on. Cameras don't fix homelessness or addiction or underfunded services. They just make l…

> But that's the whole appeal for bureaucrats.

I don't think it's the bureaucrats. You should hear the Flock CEO talk. They have made it very public that their direct intent is to influence government policy in sweeping and total fashion to enable their service to be the mass surveillance tool of the near future. They sincerely believe that people will look back on them as the saviours of mankind.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#202

Post by FireBeyond »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #11
jmuguy wrote: post #7

I'm surprised Garrett Langley still has a job, he seems wildly out of touch. For instance he really believes that his Panopticon as a service is the reason crime is down in cities, conveniently ignoring crime rates prior to COVID.

Does he really believe it or is it his job to say he really believes it?

As an ex-employee of Flock, if he doesn't really believe it he is an amazing actor. He talks of a very Minority Report-esque future, where there is literally zero crime, and it's because of Flock.

Flock's stats are very misleading too. If there was a Flock query in the course of investigating a crime, even if it leads nowhere or isn't relevant to the arrest or conviction, still, Flock was queried, so "Flock solved a crime".

It was sad. I had significant ethical questions when I joined, but all through recruitment and week one, everything was all about controls and restraints and auditing and ethics. After that, nope, a free for all. Selling our products in states that don't allow the use of certain functionality? Not our problem. We're not disabling it. That's up to you to decide whether you're using it or not.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#203

Post by ryandrake »

schlap wrote: post #178

These companies build this tech in SF and Seattle, cities with some of the gnarliest public safety problems in the country, then turn around and sell it to smaller towns where it does more harm than good. Most places in America don't have problems that surveillance solves. They have problems they already know about and won't act on. Cameras don't fix homelessness or addiction or underfunded services. They just make l…

> They just make life harder for regular people.

"Making life harder for people [in the other tribe]" has become a core platform for a great many politicians. There's growing movement advocating that one of the major purposes of government is to grief people you don't like. Looked at through that lens, blanketing small towns with these things, with a plan to use them against "Those People," makes complete sense.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#204

Post by dmbche »

jeffbee wrote: post #158
jonas21 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is much less concerning to me than mass surveillance. If someone calls 911 and you need to send a first responder, why not send a drone to get there faster while a person is on their way?

Yeah this doesn't bother me in any way, shape, or form. We already have manned aircraft that respond to such things, unmanned aircraft are a strictly better solution. It makes sense for police and it makes even more sense for fire. An aircraft can arrive at the site of a reported fire while firemen are still buckling their pants.

You get manned aircraft to come and check in before the police when you call 911?

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#205

Post by jeffbee »

dmbche wrote: post #204
jeffbee wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this doesn't bother me in any way, shape, or form. We already have manned aircraft that respond to such things, unmanned aircraft are a strictly better solution. It makes sense for police and it makes even more sense for fire. An aircraft can arrive at the site of a reported fire while firemen are still buckling their pants.

You get manned aircraft to come and check in before the police when you call 911?

Yes, often the first response to some calls is a CHP aircraft that continuously loiters in the area.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#206

Post by vel0city »

schlap wrote: post #178

These companies build this tech in SF and Seattle, cities with some of the gnarliest public safety problems in the country, then turn around and sell it to smaller towns where it does more harm than good. Most places in America don't have problems that surveillance solves. They have problems they already know about and won't act on. Cameras don't fix homelessness or addiction or underfunded services. They just make l…

> These companies build this tech in SF and Seattle

Flock's headquarters and largest offices are in Atlanta. They also have an office in Boston.

Ring's headquarters were in Santa Monica until post-acquisition they moved to Hawthorne, CA.

Arlo's offices are in Carlsbad and San Jose. Ok, finally an office in the Bay Area (one of two main offices), but still not San Francisco.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#207

Post by mothballed »

nkrisc wrote: post #193
mothballed wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The courts have been wrong about many things, sometimes for centuries before they've fixed it. Some things they think they've interpreted correctly now that they'll turn around and interpret some other way later. Trying to interpret viewing and recording the plate as speech but not displaying it as speech is trying to have your cake and eat it too. If the camera can stalk my car everywhere and record it under auspice…

Driving a motor vehicle on public roads is a privilege that many of the morons I share the road with seem to take for granted. If they are allowed to drive then I want their plate identifiable on video from my dash cam. Automated mass surveillance of license plates should also be illegal.

Ah yes, the muh public roads false representation.

Guess what, all the roads around me are private easements, all privately owned, and they are that way 90% to town. A good portion of my trips never touch a publicly owned road yet I'm still required to display my plate on them. We don't even have public, tax maintained roads where I live (I literally have to bring out a tractor and fix them myself when they wear down). Yet the compelled 'speech' of displaying the license plate is required even then while driving your car on your privately owned non-gated road.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#208

Post by FireBeyond »

mothballed wrote: post #69
zulux wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's gotten worse: I'm so tired of rampant crime that I'm up for a little surveillance. And I used to donate to the ACLU before they went crazy.

Ha ha ha, you think it'll be used to help you ? A hit and run drived totaled my car at an intersection with cameras, the cops would not even show up even though it was all on camera. When I called insurance they didn't bat an eye, the claims person pretty obviously was used to this happening all the time and didn't even question why I wasn't able to get a police report.

Happened with my step daughter. Traffic light at intersection. She said she had a green light, so did the other driver.

Cops -did- show up. "Did you have a green light" "I did." Less than 30 seconds of questions. Goes to the other driver, same, is back in under a minute. "Well, he said he's absolutely sure he had a green light, so I'm citing you for failing to obey a traffic signal".

There were no cameras in the area, no witnesses, just the two drivers. But the other driver was a 50 something male, and my step daughter was 17 and upset because it was our car. So the cop took his word and cited her.

Hmm, vehicle black box? If that showed that she had come to and been at a stop, and then accelerated, that would at least imply she had been at a red light, and gone when it turned green, as she said.

No, no interest there. Even the insurer (fine, whatever), said "unless we're facing a six digit payout, we're not pulling the black box".

Don't even start me on the fact that after our insurance denied liability, the other driver sued her in small claims court for $10,000 for a car that had a KBB of $1,450. And the small claims judge noted that he technically couldn't sue a minor in small claims, but required us to go to mandatory arbitration, where the arbitrator said, quote, "I don't understand why, as a decent human being, if insurance will pay out, you don't just accept the claim." (Yeahhhh, filed a complaint about that, too. And here I stop, because I feel my blood pressure rising lol).

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#209

Post by rudhdb773b »

jonas21 wrote: post #146
diogenes_atx wrote: post #109

It seems like this article buried the best lede of the story on paragraph ten, which explains Flock's new business of surveillance drones launched in response to 911 calls (and also presumably triggered by other alerts configured by police and private businesses). > Flock has recently expanded into other technologies... Most concerning are the latest Flock drones equipped with high-powered cameras. Flock's "Drone as…

This is much less concerning to me than mass surveillance. If someone calls 911 and you need to send a first responder, why not send a drone to get there faster while a person is on their way?

Because today it will be used as a first responder.

Tomorrow a police officer will suggest that these drones (that we are already using successfully) could be very useful for checking up on that "dangerous" neighborhood.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#210

Post by gretch »

FireBeyond wrote: post #199
grimcompanion wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH it will provide more surveillance of the police themselves. Humans are also bad at gun detection (sometimes willfully so) and this provides another check.

Watch for Flock footage to be "unavailable"/"deleted"/"corrupt" just as often as bodycam footage is.

That's right. And also just like the missing epstein footage.

Because it's a social problem, not a technology problem.

At the same time, just because these instances of "missing" tape happen, does not mean that body cams and jailhouse CCTV are useless. We would not take those away. Likewise for the future drone footage

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