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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

#351

Post by kjkjadksj »

ck2 wrote: post #30

remember when people first started experiencing TSA and there were massive protests at how obscene and violating it all was, then uncovering how useless they were as fake security theater and they were going to get it all shut down TWENTY-FIVE YEARS NOW so good luck getting rid of flock where people don't even know it's happening Not sure if people realize that cellphone locations, several layers in the firmware and…

Wasn’t the first edition of the TSA scanner straight up showing pretty much nude photos of people? I seem to remember something like that. Now a days at least it just flags a region on a generic human model for more investigation.

The funniest part though is you pay $80 every five years and just bypass it entirely. I guess they assume terrorists are too stupid to figure out TSA precheck is available.

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

#352

Post by autoexec »

freeone3000 wrote: post #204
afavour wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US government is a democracy and can be replaced should it exceed people’s limits. The CCP… uh, not so much. I’m not trying to say the US government is faultless but it amazes me how often I see this kind of anti-democratic institition sentiment.

It’s not anti-democratic, it’s simply a matter of exposure. China can WANT to do whatever they want to me, but I have no assets in China, no trade in China, and neither me nor anyone close to me will ever go to China. So it simply matters a lot less what China has on me than the country where I have friends, loved ones, financial assets, property, and frequently visit.

Generally I'd agree. The threats here are larger. That said China isn't powerless to hurt you either. I haven't seen much of it happening, but in theory China could blackmail you. They can manipulate and influence you and your children through social media and advertising, even encouraging kids to harm themselves/others.

They can also fill the products they make for us with heavy metals and other poisons while building them to break draining our finances and filling our country with trash. The worst thing they could do though is just stop producing crap for us entirely since we're basically dependent on them for just about everything.

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

#353

Post by gnabgib »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #351
ck2 wrote: post #30

remember when people first started experiencing TSA and there were massive protests at how obscene and violating it all was, then uncovering how useless they were as fake security theater and they were going to get it all shut down TWENTY-FIVE YEARS NOW so good luck getting rid of flock where people don't even know it's happening Not sure if people realize that cellphone locations, several layers in the firmware and…

Wasn’t the first edition of the TSA scanner straight up showing pretty much nude photos of people? I seem to remember something like that. Now a days at least it just flags a region on a generic human model for more investigation. The funniest part though is you pay $80 every five years and just bypass it entirely. I guess they assume terrorists are too stupid to figure out TSA precheck is available.

All my pre-check friends have to go through the nude scanner. And gave up bio-metrics. It's a two tiered security line - theirs is faster, but you need money to get into it (or fly business class+, or a flight crew, or know someone in the airport, or win the entrance-line direction lottery).

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

#354

Post by mothballed »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #333

Flock cameras would be so easy to disable by motivated people. Dress in nondescript clothing, mask, sunglasses, and just spraypaint over the lenses. This is completely asymmetric warfare because it is trivial how long it would take for you to do this. You could hit dozens of cameras across an area overnight. Meanwhile, flock or the city, whoever maintains this stuff, needs to identify the vandalized cameras, flag the…

The initial disabling might be asymmetric but when/if you're caught you go to jail for years for something that cost the state maybe an hour tops to fix.

Therefore if only say one of a thousand gets caught, it still costs the people doing it more than the state on average (unless their life/time is worth basically nothing for years on end).

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

#356

Post by edoceo »

ed wrote: post #307
itishappy wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the algorithm "working as intended" consistently downranks stories that cast a bad light on YCombinator, the sorts of people y'all mingle with, or the tech industry in general...is that any better than putting your thumb on the scale? That's the exact opposite of what Dan stated, what this thread (and your link) demonstrate, and my own lived experience here.

that's fair but the post was on page 3 for a while. glad to see it restored to the front page. (the charitable explanation is that non-moderators can flag stories, as opposed to an official policy to protect YC companies)

Maybe the algorithm down-ranks posts that have lots of down-voted comments? Lots of light-grey text on this page.

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

#357

Post by mothballed »

torben-friis wrote: post #337
superultra wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in an Atlanta neighborhood where one of the founders lived. A prototype for Flock Camera was designed by three Georgia Tech grads because someone kept breaking into their car (not uncommon in our neighborhood tbh). The trick is that the camera was pointed towards a middle school. Which means they were constantly recording kids without adult consent. Now, years later, Atlanta is the most surveilled city in Nort…

>There are 124 cameras for every 1,000 people How does that make any kind of economic sense? Morals aside, that’s a ridiculous amount of devices, data collected and transmitted, and so on.

The cameras don't make economic sense unless the goal is to enrich contractors or generate money on speed/red light tickets.

The bottleneck in solving crime is going after the criminals. There's already not enough resources to go after the crimes that are open and shut.

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

#358

Post by tdeck »

dvtkrlbs wrote: post #7
edot wrote: post #6

Flock or their defenders will lock in on the excuse that “oh these are misconfigured” or “yeah hacking is illegal, only cops should have this data”. The issue is neither of the above. The issue is the collection and collation of this footage in the first place! I don’t want hackers watching me all the time, sure, but I DEFINITELY don’t trust the state or megacorps to watch me all the time. Hackers concern me less, ac…

Yes and the biggest problem with this kind of ALPRs are they bypass the due process. Most of the time police can just pull up data without any warrant and there has been instances where this was abused (I think some cops used this for stalking their exes [1]) and also the most worrying Flock seems to really okay with giving ICE unlimited access to this data [2] [3] (which I speculate for loose regulations). [1]: http…

I'm sure the 40 percent of cops who are domestic abusers and the white supremacists militias recruited wholesale into ICE will use this power responsibly.

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

#359

Post by newRoMncr »

edot wrote: post #6

Flock or their defenders will lock in on the excuse that “oh these are misconfigured” or “yeah hacking is illegal, only cops should have this data”. The issue is neither of the above. The issue is the collection and collation of this footage in the first place! I don’t want hackers watching me all the time, sure, but I DEFINITELY don’t trust the state or megacorps to watch me all the time. Hackers concern me less, ac…

[dead]

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

#360

Post by autoexec »

lubujackson wrote: post #118
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.

Did you see the other post about this where the guys showed a Flock camera pointed at a playground, so any pedo can see when kids are there and not attended? Or how it has become increasingly trivial to identify by face or license plate such that combining tools reaches "movie Interpol" levels, without any warrant or security credentials? If Big Brother surveillance is unavoidable I don't think "everyone has access"…

> Did you see the other post about this where the guys showed a Flock camera pointed at a playground, so any pedo can see when kids are there and not attended?

If it's inappropriate for any pedo to see when kids are in a park then certainly it should inappropriate when those pedos just happen to be police officers or Flock employees. The nice thing about the "everyone has access" case is that it forces the public to decide what they think is acceptable instead of making it some abstract thing that their brains aren't able to process correctly.

People will happily stand under mounted surveillance cameras all day long, but the moment they actually see someone point a camera at them they consider that a hostile action. The surveillance camera is an abstract concept they don't understand. The stranger pointing a camera in their direction is something they do understand and it makes their true feelings on strangers recording them very clear.

We might need a little bit of "everyone has access" to convince people of the truth that "no one should have access" instead.

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