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Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

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Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#251

Post by mikkupikku »

therobots927 wrote: post #233
mikkupikku wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half the people I work with in rural PA aren't white, you're just showing off your own racial bias with such an assumption. They still overwhelmingly support the police.

Thanks for the anecdote. Now let’s look at the numbers, where you will see a strong correlation between both income AND race and support for the police: https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/policing-america-underst...

Get out of your liberal urban centers and you'll find that in most of America the police are very popular and it has nothing to do with income or race. Low income? That means crime effects you even more, which is more reason to support the police. Live in a very white part of the country? The overwhelming amount of crime will come from other white people, and accordingly most of the arrests will be of white people. And yet the people of those communities still support the police with borderline religious devotion.

Half the people I work with aren't white, and roughly half aren't straight either. By internet stereotypes they'd be judged to be progressive liberals who want police reform but in actuality my car is one of the few in the parking lot that isn't a pickup truck with "back the blue" decals on it.

Another point of fact: When democrats trash the police they start losing elections. Even most people who usually vote democrat get demoralized and stay home when the election turns to anti-police rhetoric. The only people who really hate the police are career criminals, people adjacent to career criminal lifestyle and culture (their families, etc) and of course rich liberals who can easily afford to insure all their property, live in controlled access communities and never have to interact with the criminal elements of society except on their own terms.

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#252

Post by tptacek »

fuzzylightbulb wrote: post #249
tptacek wrote: post #33

I would love to watch a shorter version of this video that just discussed the deltas between the status quo and Flock, rather than breathlessly reporting the implications of cameras as if they were distinctive to Flock. He'll spend 30 seconds talking about how you can see every activity and every person on the camera --- yeah, that's how cameras work. There are thousands of public IP cameras on the Internet, aimed at…

Have you ever gone fishing? Did you catch all the fish? Often it is more impactful to address one major/tangible player in a particular space than it would be to "boil the ocean" and ensure that we are capturing every possible player/transgressor. I agree that some of the video was overly breathless, but if that's what wakes people up to the dangers of unsecured cameras/devices then so be it.

Ok, you're the second person to say that, and I think my point is not clear enough. That's on me.

This response would make sense if I was saying "why focus on Flock, there are so many other ALPR cameras out there" (also true, but not relevant to my point).

But this is a video that is mostly about things that are true of all IP cameras, of the kind that we've had staring out onto public streets for decades, plural decades. People celebrated those cameras, thought they were super neat, built sites indexing them. All of them do most of the same things this video says those Flock cameras did, the tiny minority of Flock cameras you can access publicly.

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#253

Post by tptacek »

ryandrake wrote: post #246
tptacek wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, I don't agree with that. Why do you assume everyone in this thread agrees with that?

Sorry, I assumed you did, given the advocacy you mentioned you led.

I pushed back on our Flock deployment because the particulars of its deployment meant that we were curbing more cars driven by innocent Black drivers than we were responding to any meaningful crimes, and because when we had Flock's alerts enabled, the net effect was to take our selectively-recruited, highly-trained, very expensive police force and turn them into failure-to-appear-warrant debt collectors for nearby suburbs with far worse police departments.

It was not some nerd† principled stand against "surveillance". My experience working on the public policy of this stuff is that when you take a stand against "surveillance", normal people --- and I'm in what I believe to be one of the 10 most progressive municipalities in the country, the most progressive municipality in Chicagoland --- look at you like you're a space alien.

† I am, obviously, a nerd, fwiw.

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#254

Post by overfeed »

eastbound wrote: post #239
overfeed wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pg, what happened? Don't look to pg for anything that can be seen as "woke" - he wants that mind-virus eliminated forever[0]. Many billionaires revealed their true colors after November 2024, remember this when they adjust their public posture to follow the political winds. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42780223

This is not woke, no matter how large you define woke. You can see links with the ACLU or various human rights defense groups, but those groups may have become woke, without “global surveillance” becoming a woke topic. Wokism is about making racist accusations of dominance over an audience who didn’t do it. It’s about unfairness and hyping factions against each other. The global surveillance is not about pitting grou…

"Wokism" is an amorphous culture-war weapon that can be anything an author wants it to be. Diversity is woke, equity is woke, inclusion is woke, non-heteronomative relationships are woke, movies that are barely critical of unbridled capitalism are woke. Not being onboard with "law and order" is woke - and not being 100% onboard with Flock can be reframed as being pro-Criminal and "woke"

> global surveillance is not about pitting groups against each other.

And yet this is exactly how the surveillance companies sell their global surveillance tools. Ring, Flock are all about keeping an eye on "outsiders" - see Nextdoor for examples on how people justifying surveiling others.

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#255

Post by chaps »

rsync wrote: post #250

There's an interesting idea here that is tangentially related to "common carrier" regulations ... Specifically: If a flock (or similar) camera is deployed on public land/infra there should exist default permission for any alternate vendor to deploy a camera in the same location. I wonder how that could be used and/or abused and, further, what the response from a company like flock would be ...

Not directly an answer to your question, but installed Shotspotter locations are generally "not shared with police" and installations are done in a way where the location is obfuscated away from the police/city through Shotspotter contractors. It's not actually true that the device locations aren't shared with the police, but shotspotter/police testimonies in shotspotter cases say so anyway.

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#256

Post by goda90 »

gruez wrote: post #109
goda90 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. These things don't just happen overnight. It's not crying wolf when you see the wolf on the horizon running…

>These things don't just happen overnight. It's not crying wolf when you see the wolf on the horizon running towards you. So were vaccine mandates and passports "fascism" as well, even though they melted away after the pandemic ended, contrary to some who thought it was going to be part of some new world order?

This Whataboutism[0] is quite silly, because the vaccine mandates "melted away" due to the checks and balances of the government operating to make them go away. Meanwhile we're seeing checks and balances themselves melting away.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#257

Post by [deleted] »

mikkupikku wrote: post #251
therobots927 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the anecdote. Now let’s look at the numbers, where you will see a strong correlation between both income AND race and support for the police: https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/policing-america-underst...

Get out of your liberal urban centers and you'll find that in most of America the police are very popular and it has nothing to do with income or race. Low income? That means crime effects you even more, which is more reason to support the police. Live in a very white part of the country? The overwhelming amount of crime will come from other white people, and accordingly most of the arrests will be of white people. A…

[deleted]

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#258

Post by doctorpangloss »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #145
kklisura wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And let me share this reply by Garry Tan, CEO of YC, after someone made a comment that Flock might be _pretty dystopian_ [1][2]: > You're thinking Chinese surveillance > US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims [1] https://x.com/neurajordan/status/1963303084609966288 [2] https://x.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955

Another sign of Chinese ideological dominance is that nobody can conceive of a future that does not mimic China's solutions to social problems. Trump says frequently that he's jealous of Xi's position as dictator, tech firms envy 996 culture, public safety advocates are pivoting to restricting internet speech and constant surveillance.. etc. etc.

Well a lot of people can conceive of a cultural hegemony that is more pleasant to live under. It’s more that Y Combinator wants to be exposed to the returns of the Palantirs, Andurils and Clearviews out there.

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#259

Post by overfeed »

eightysixfour wrote: post #13

I don't want these cameras to exist but, if they're going to , might we be better off if they are openly accessible? At the very least, that would make the power they grant more diffuse and people would be more cognizant of their existence and capabilities.

> I don't want these cameras to exist but, if they're going to, might we be better off if they are openly accessible?

Cities will remove Flock cameras at the first council meeting that sits after council-members learn their families can be stalked.

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#260

Post by therobots927 »

mikkupikku wrote: post #251
therobots927 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the anecdote. Now let’s look at the numbers, where you will see a strong correlation between both income AND race and support for the police: https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/policing-america-underst...

Get out of your liberal urban centers and you'll find that in most of America the police are very popular and it has nothing to do with income or race. Low income? That means crime effects you even more, which is more reason to support the police. Live in a very white part of the country? The overwhelming amount of crime will come from other white people, and accordingly most of the arrests will be of white people. A…

Unsurprisingly you completely ignore the link I sent and keep yapping about the people you work with. Facts and evidence are pointless with you people.
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