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Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

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Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#341

Post by strangattractor »

the__alchemist wrote: post #10

This breakdown in rule of law is unfortunate. Ideally, this would be handled by, in order of desirability: - Flock decision-makers and customers holding ethics as a priority, and not taking the actions they are due to sense of duty, community, morals etc - Peer pressure resulting in ostracization of Flock execs and decision makers until they stop the unethical behavior - Governments using legislation and law enforcem…

Guess Flock cameras don't solve quite as many crimes as they claim. Surveillance heal they self.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#342

Post by TuringNYC »

ryandrake wrote: post #165
yardie wrote: post #58

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. The American Revolution was rare in that it didn't need to happen. The Founders were just being giant assholes (j/k). While the French Revolution just a few decades later was more status quo. A lot of starvation and poverty just pushed the population over the edge.

I would have believed that before 2020, but after COVID, I fully believe that if the food ran out, half the country would say it's a fake hoax. People would be on their death beds actually starving, and deny it was happening with their last breath.

>> I would have believed that before 2020, but after COVID, I fully believe that if the food ran out, half the country would say it's a fake hoax. People would be on their death beds actually starving, and deny it was happening with their last breath.

We're in a K-Shaped Economy right now and half the folks will deny there is any K and insist everything is amazing.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#343

Post by kridsdale1 »

atlgator wrote: post #334

Someone in the thread linked a teardown showing these use a ~$4 OV5647 Arducam sensor on what's essentially a Raspberry Pi. The real vandalism isn't the people with hammers — it's charging municipalities six figures for a trail camera with a cellular modem and a pitch deck.

“You can’t put a price on safety”

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#344

Post by everforward »

mywittyname wrote: post #136
Waterluvian wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not ideal, but it is necessary when the higher-desirability options are not working. What has worried me for years is that Americans would not resort to this level. That things are just too comfortable at home to take that brave step into the firing lines of being on the right side of justice but the wrong side of the law. I'm relieved to see more and more Americans causing necessary trouble. I still think th…

> What has worried me for years is that Americans would not resort to this level. They'll stop once the police (or ICE, more likely) start dishing out horrific punishments for it.

That would be an incredibly risky escalation, and it would be a stupid ultimatum to issue.

The people, or even states, could escalate in response. The worst case is escalating to violence; ICE isn’t trained, equipped, or numerous to deal with deploying into a violently hostile area. The army could, but then we’re in full blown civil war.

A more realistic middle ground is that it pushes people or states into nonviolent non-compliance by eg refusing to pay federal taxes. Frankly if California and New York alone stopped paying federal taxes the system would probably crumble.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#345

Post by fc417fc802 »

mv4 wrote: post #337
fc417fc802 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An informative data point. To provide some context regarding my earlier comment, a brand new full size memory foam mattress can be had for less than $200 shipped in the continental US. A computer capable of playing modern AAA video games can be had for less than $400. Material luxuries in the modern day are cheap to an almost absurd degree. I think maybe we need a new CPI metric for HCOL areas that takes the form of…

I wouldn't call these material luxuries, just like big screen TVs are no longer a luxury. Being able to visit a doctor or a dentist on the other hand...

By "luxury" I mean approximately "anything beyond bare survival". My point is that the vast majority of material possessions have become absurdly cheap by historic standards. However that doesn't preclude severe societal dysfunction (housing, children, retirement, or as you note doctors and dentists).

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#346

Post by wartywhoa23 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #18
the__alchemist wrote: post #10

This breakdown in rule of law is unfortunate. Ideally, this would be handled by, in order of desirability: - Flock decision-makers and customers holding ethics as a priority, and not taking the actions they are due to sense of duty, community, morals etc - Peer pressure resulting in ostracization of Flock execs and decision makers until they stop the unethical behavior - Governments using legislation and law enforcem…

> It is not ideal, but it is necessary when the higher-desirability options are not working. What has worried me for years is that Americans would not resort to this level. That things are just too comfortable at home to take that brave step into the firing lines of being on the right side of justice but the wrong side of the law. I'm relieved to see more and more Americans causing necessary trouble. I still think th…

> I still think that overall, Americans are deeply underreacting to the times.

To put things in perspective, the whole humankind, as in 99.99% of population, is utterly underreacting.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#347

Post by runarberg »

thephyber wrote: post #336
runarberg wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you vastly undersell how much of the US voters supported extreme measures in reaction to Sept 11. There was a social panic to “protect us against terrorism” at pretty much any cost. It was easy for the party in power to demonize the resistance to the power grab and nobody except Libertarians had a coherence response.

I don‘t think it really matters how much people supported these extreme actions. This policy was clearly wrong. The general public mounted a much more significant opposition against this policy then the Democratic party did. Some members of the Democratic party did some opposition, but the party as a whole clearly did not oppose this, and therefor it was never truly on the ballots.

To be clear, I personally don‘t think stuff like this should ever be on the ballot in any democracy. Human rights are not up for election, they should simply be granted, and any policy which seeks to deny people human rights should be rejected by any of the country’s democratic institutions (such as courts, labor unions, the press, etc.)

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#348

Post by bandofthehawk »

bullfightonmars wrote: post #144
achierius wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like how all we had to do to shut down Guantanamo Bay was vote for President Obama, right? So glad that that worked out. By and large, our institutions are not democratic, in that they are not responsive to 'popular opinion'; while there are certain arenas where, for one reason or another, the will of the majority does sway the day (e.g. the influence of scandals on individual elected officials), by and large mo…

This is ahistoric. No-one ever said we had to "just vote for Obama" to close Guantanamo Bay. Frankly, Obama _tried_ to close Guantanamo Bay. He significantly shrunk the population of inmates, but it was ultimately Congress, and the courts that prevented the closure Obama spent a huge amount of time and political capital trying to clean up Bush's messes.

Obama only tried to close Guantanamo by moving the prisoners to the United States, which is arguably worse than having them in Guantanamo. It would mean that you could hold prisoners in the United States indefinitely without trial. What he should have done was give the prisoners fair trials or release them.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#349

Post by array_key_first »

tptacek wrote: post #151
the__alchemist wrote: post #10

This breakdown in rule of law is unfortunate. Ideally, this would be handled by, in order of desirability: - Flock decision-makers and customers holding ethics as a priority, and not taking the actions they are due to sense of duty, community, morals etc - Peer pressure resulting in ostracization of Flock execs and decision makers until they stop the unethical behavior - Governments using legislation and law enforcem…

All of this presumes that residents in municipalities with ALPRs don't want them used the way they are. That's not true! These things are broadly pretty popular among a broad set of residents.

They're only popular because people are routinely lied to. We see this same issue time and time again in "free markets".

If you tell people this will help stop crime and that's it, everyone and their mama is gonna say yes.

If you tell people the truth, that police don't really care to look at the data and this surveillance is going to be used to target innocent people for unrelated "crimes" on the taxpayers dollar, then everyone would say no.

This is also why 99% of surveys are broken. You can get people to agree to literally anything if you just lie a little. After all, Adolf Hitler got elected by promising to fix the German economy and, in a way, he did.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#350

Post by thephyber »

realo wrote: post #203
yardie wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you are aware but we rarely directly get to vote on these things. You vote for a representative and hope they vote in a way that serves your interests. But now, we have omnibus bills. And it's 50/50 loaded with things we want and things we don't. The same bill that funds Pre-K will also have a section to fund a kitten shredding machine. But if you vote against it all voters will hear is how you don't want…

I do not live in the USA, but my understanding of those omnibus bills is that they are government blackmail of its people. I remember being horrified the first time I heard this was legal in the USA. How can the US citizens accept such a brutal denying of good governance is beyond me.

The omnibus bills aren’t blackmail, as much as a symptom of the failure of Congress to be able to do what it is supposed to: debate.

There is 1 funding bill per year which only requires a 50% vote instead of a 60% / 67% to pass that all other spending bills require.

Every member with a goal tries to attach it to the big annual funding bill. The bill becomes so large that nobody likes the bill as a whole, but everybody has something in it they will defend.

And the old filtering process (committees which recommend the content of bills) are dominated by majority party leadership. This is maybe the closest symptom to blackmail.

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