flock says customers own their data and control access. but their national lookup tool means 5,000+ agencies can search your city's cameras without your city's permission. 'customer-owned data' that anyone in the network can query isn't customer-owned in any meaningful sense.
US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
251–260 of 468 posts
Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Police used AI facial recognition to arrest a Tennessee woman for crimes committed in a state she says she’s never visited": https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/29/us/angela-lipps-ai-facial-rec...
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Your question was:
> In what way do cameras make life harder for regular people?
I provided an example. Are you only accepting peer-reviewed studies?
Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Police used AI facial recognition to arrest a Tennessee woman for crimes committed in a state she says she’s never visited": https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/29/us/angela-lipps-ai-facial-rec...
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You didn't ask for data... You asked: "In what way do cameras make life harder for regular people?"
That requires a specific example, which you were provided with. This reads to me as a pithy response that doesn't want to wrestle with the ways this can be misused.
Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
#254These 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…
Agreed. I live in a city that's top 5% of safest cities in CA and these cameras have sprouted up everywhere. I reached out to my cities representative about it and he ignored my outreach (nice thing about instagram - that "read" indicator!). The most blatant is one that just points into the Home Depot parking lot. I don't see them at target.
It's gross but I think the cohort of America that watches Fox News all day probably loves these things because they've been brainwashed with crime reports that are disproportionate from reality.
Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
#255These 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, cities with some of the gnarliest public safety problems in the country I live just outside Seattle. I worked for Flock. Flock is a company based in Atlanta GA.
Axon, on the other hand, does have a decent sized Seattle presence.
Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was over a decade ago. I wonder if it has gotten better or worse since.
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.
I am also tired of rampant crime in this country, but unfortunately they aren't installing these cameras in boardrooms or the meeting rooms of politicians, so I don't think they are going to do much to deter the real crimes that are hurting our society.
Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it's not. Would crime go up, down, or stay the same if we had to get strip searched before entering airplanes?
The types of crime that would happen in an airplane would already be identifiable due to its constrained cabin, so I don’t understand the comparison. Let’s use your example for say a concert. Is checking bags worth it? Would crime go up if there was no bag check? Why or why not?
My point was if you are only looking at the reduction in crime as the sole success criterion we will all end up naked in glass cells because that would result in the lowest crime rates.
Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the drones are "providing information" to the police, it's only a matter of time before their AI hallucinates something that gets someone killed. We've already seen AI gun detection services that report things like Doritos bags as guns.
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It's more "sus" that you blindly trust the police, politicians, and billionaires that have a history of discrimination, violence, and oppression and attempt to slander those who don't. Not to mention blindly trusting AI systems with someone's life - the only reason one would do that is because they either stand to profit from it or don't understand how they work. Are you really willing and eager to put your life in the hands of a piece of software that can't distinguish a gun and a Doritos bag?
Remember, oppression and invasion of privacy is still bad even if it isn't currently happening to you. If you think you can't be a target, you're sorely mistaken.
Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any evidence that the reduction is actually due to the cameras?
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Sorry, this is russell's teapot falacy.
"the burden of proof lies with the person making an unfalsifiable claim, rather than on others to disprove it"
If there is evidence this is related to cameras, then the onus is on companies making these cameras and claims to provide the data. Not on others to prove that they don't stop crime.
There's a reason you always start with the null hypothesis.
Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless something has changed (or I'm simply clueless), it's not quite so trivial to ask where my phone was on January 30th. Camera surveillance is not time-limited.
It’s quite common for cell phone carriers to provide law enforcement with historical records of which towers a phone was connected to at specific times. Also the phone itself stores detailed location history, including which wifi networks it connected to, allowing police to get someone’s movements if their phone is seized as evidence. Police can even use battery temperature history to get an idea of whether the phone…
None of that sounds as straightforward as a dragnet would be. Most require a target to be identified.