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Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

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Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#291

Post by runarberg »

coliveira wrote: post #231
kettlecorn wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is far too nihilist. Obama and Biden both led to meaningful policy improvements and they were far more stable than the current admin.

They were able to slow down the inevitable trajectory, they did nothing to reverse course. Doing anything different would be too "radical" for Obama or Biden.

The trajectory in question was pretty well laid out in Bush’s Patriot act. If the Democratic Party at any point wanted to reverse course they would have opposed the initial legislation (like the general public did), and subsequently championed a policy which abandons it and corrects for the harm it caused.

That did not happen, quite the contrary in fact.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#292

Post by jacquesm »

Teever wrote: post #189
jacquesm wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of truth in this but I'm not convinced sortition is going to work either. But what you could do is vote with a string attached and a penalty for being recalled that is going to make people think twice about running for office if their aim is to pull some kind of stunt. The 'you give me four years unconditionally' thing doesn't seem to work at all.

I've been mulling over a system where there's a legislative body composed of citizens picked through sortition and another legislative body that's elected like normal legislative bodies of today. The twist on that body however is that voting is mandatory and ballots have a non of the above option on them. If a super majority (say 60-75%) vote none of the above the election is a do-over with all the people on the ball…

Nice one, that might actually work. But it will be hard to explain to the electorate.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#293

Post by cg5280 »

kstrauser wrote: post #210
cg5280 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My confusion stems from the fact that mass surveillance is already pretty normal in major cities. Your face is on a dozen cameras anytime you walk through the grocery store. Your precise location is pinged off cell towers multiple times a day. I understand specific qualms with Flock as a company and how they manage the data, but this libertarian demand for total privacy in public spaces has been long lost and the bee…

We already have mass surveillance, and yet we still have major crimes. It's not working, and I see no reason to believe that removing more freedom will lead to having safer streets. Why are we giving up liberty and getting nothing in return? That's an excellent reason to protest against adding more surveillance.

Our public surveillance is actually limited relative to other developed countries because it makes people here uncomfortable for cultural reasons. You’ll also note that our crime rates are pretty high, especially relative to the surveillance happy countries in East Asia.

Regardless, I’m happy to take a results oriented approach here. Does tracking license plates make it easier to catch criminals? Does it make it easier to track stolen vehicles? I suspect cities wouldn’t be signing these expensive contracts if they didn’t see any benefits.

And finally, surveillance of public spaces is not inherently at odds with personal freedoms. Your mobility is not restricted at all, your core rights have not been touched. And you are always welcome to go live in the woods off the grid.

I firmly believe that living in dense urban areas with millions of others requires a reasonably limited expectation of privacy in public spaces.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#294

Post by sigwinch »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #6

America is really now two Americas. The divide between traditional freedoms and neo-authoritarianism is getting wider. But America is so large that even the minority (just) that believes in freedom is still 167 million people. Even if only a small percentage of that number, from either side of the divide, believes in violent activism, things are going to get worse before they get better.

Trump won the election with less than 50% of the popular vote. He has never enjoyed an approval rating equal to or higher than 50%.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#295

Post by roger110 »

matt3210 wrote: post #269

Yet everybody is happy giving plaid and therefore palintir there entire financial history and future data

It's funny how some banks even disallow you from copy-pasting your routing and account numbers to make it harder to manually set up payments that way

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#296

Post by jacquesm »

Waterluvian wrote: post #241
jacquesm wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You won't get to the kind of change you thought you would see until food runs low and the economy stalls. These are no longer impossibles.

Boy is he trying on the latter. Quite impressive just how resilient it seems to be.

Yes, tbh I would not have thought that you could take a sledgehammer to the economy as if you're say Elon Musk buying a communications platform and yet, here we are, 1 year in and we're still hanging on.

But I wouldn't bet on another three of these.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#297

Post by mv4 »

When it comes to privacy violations, Ring and Nest aren't much better - but at least people have a choice whether or not to install them.

Nest: video was recovered from 'residual data located in backend systems' even though there was no active subscription.

Ring: employees accessing people's videos.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/05/...

I am an American and I am doing something about it. Co-founded a company that manufactures privacy-centric, on-prem video monitoring devices. No cloud.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#299

Post by recursive »

cg5280 wrote: post #88
steviedotboston wrote: post #43

This is really bad for all the reasons that people have mentioned (vigilante "justice" never is a good thing) but people have a misplaced understanding of right and wrong here. Flock cameras have helped solve some major crimes, and people will be glad to have this technology around if they are ever a victim.

My confusion stems from the fact that mass surveillance is already pretty normal in major cities. Your face is on a dozen cameras anytime you walk through the grocery store. Your precise location is pinged off cell towers multiple times a day. I understand specific qualms with Flock as a company and how they manage the data, but this libertarian demand for total privacy in public spaces has been long lost and the bee…

Commonplace does not mean acceptable. Flock is new, and so it is an easier target for concentrated action. Also, Flock seems to be a centralized clearinghouse for surveillance data on a different scale than your local grocer's CCTV system.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#300

Post by runarberg »

mywittyname wrote: post #140
unclad5968 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who can I vote for that will stop flock cameras from being installed?

The local government officials in charge of allowing these to be installed. It also represents an opportunity for upstarts. If you want to get into local politics, this is a single issue that will unit voters and bring them in. We had a city councilperson elected on the sole issue of replacing the purple street lights. She won decisively and her entire campaign was literally signs everywhere promising to fix the purp…

Seattle voted for Katie Wilson as mayor partly because she seemed to oppose surveillance cameras. She now seems to have changed her mind is is speaking in favor of them.
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