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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

#441

Post by KurSix »

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…

Fair point but there's a crucial nuance: state surveillance used to be limited by human resources. You couldn't assign an agent to every citizen - there aren't enough people. Flock with their AI tracking has effectively removed this scalability constraint. This vulnerability just highlighted how powerful a tool they've built. If these were just dumb cameras, the state would have to hire an army of operators. As it stands, the technology allows for total surveillance with essentially zero marginal cost. And when they fix the security, that terrifying potential for infinite scale isn't going anywhere; it just goes back under the client's control

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

#442

Post by KurSix »

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…

But isn't that "auto-PTZ" exactly what changes the game here? Sure, there are plenty of open cameras, but usually, that's just a passive stream you have to stare at for hours to spot anything interesting. Here, we have a situation where technology has effectively removed the "friction" from the surveillance process. You don't need to monitor the screen for hours - the algorithm itself grabs the person, zooms in on the face, and tracks them. It’s like the difference between searching for a needle in a haystack by hand and having a powerful magnet. Because of the Flock leak, this magnet is now available to anyone with a link, and that is what's truly terrifying, not just the mere fact of filming a playground

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

#443

Post by bakies »

eightysixfour wrote: post #281
rsync wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Or others see when parents are repeatedly leaving their kids unattended." ... which is the expected, default use-case for a playground ...

I didn't want to get into an argument over whether kids should be unattended at playgrounds or not - I don't know where the other poster is front and it seems to be based on age, density, region, etc. Where I grew up it would be weird to stay, in the city I am in it would be weird to leave them. If you leave your kids unattended at a playground I don't see how the camera changes the risk factor in any meaningful way.…

once i learned to ride a bike i took myself to the playground

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

#444

Post by potato3732842 »

Systems like this that exist to facilitate dispatching government violence will never be "good" by whatever the standards of the time is because they don't need to be. They have "at-cost" access to nearly infinite government violence they can dispatch capriciously and an unequally good relationship with any system that would hold them accountable for any misuse of their stuff.

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

#445

Post by embedding-shape »

mikkupikku wrote: post #241
ryandrake wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being an expert in every single country's legal system, I would guess that the USA's is about middle of the spectrum in terms of badness/fairness/justice.

These things are hard to weigh objectively. For instance, in America the police don't take bribes, you can't bribe your way out of a traffic ticket. The cops will laugh at your attempt and pile on more charges. But if you're a local business owner, the bribes to local politicians are far from unheard of and all manner of corrupt dealings between business and local government is prevalent. So how you rank America's co…

> For instance, in America the police don't take bribes, you can't bribe your way out of a traffic ticket. The cops will laugh at your attempt and pile on more charges.

Sure, they might not take as many bribes as South American police tends to take (as someone who traveled that continent in car without a driving license, I'd say 90% are accepting of bribes for minor crimes), but American police also accept bribes from time to time. They'll laugh at you and pile on more charges if you offer too little, but even American police has a price.

FY 2024 has 229 "Number of Bribery Offenses" (https://www.ussc.gov/research/quick-facts/bribery), which obviously doesn't account for the bribing that no one noticed or where there wasn't enough proof, we could probably assume it's at least 50% higher than that if we're being charitable, but in reality that number is probably way higher, by magnitudes.

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

#446

Post by throwaway173738 »

Barathkanna wrote: post #428
dogman144 wrote: post #311

Was fortunate to talk to a security lead who built the data-driven policing network for a major American city that was an early adopter. ALPR vendors like Flock either heavily augment and/or anchor the tech setups. What was notable to me is the following, and it’s why I think a career spent on either security researching, or going to law school and suing, these vendors into the ground over 20 years would be the ultim…

This is the part that doesn’t get enough attention. The real risk isn’t any single vendor, it’s the aggregation layer. Once ALPR, retail cams, traffic cams, ISP data, and vehicle telematics all land in one searchable system, the idea that this will be perfectly RBAC’d and jurisdictionally contained is fantasy. At that point it’s not policing tech, it’s a nationwide surveillance substrate held together by policy promi…

In other words it’s the telescreen from 1984.

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

#447

Post by PleasureBot »

autoexec wrote: post #371
appreciatorBus wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison to private ships doesn't quite land, IMO. Ships - ships big enough to do material damage would be very small in # - ships big enough to do material damage would have a (somewhat?) professional crew - whatever damage they could do would always be limited to tiny areas - only where water & land meet, only where substantial public or private investment had been made in docks/etc - operators have strong fi…

> I don't love flock but IMO the only realistic way to get rid of license plates would be mandatory speed governors that keep vehicles from going more than like 15mph. I don't understand this reasoning. License plates don't stop speeding from happening. Removing license plates wouldn't prevent enforcement of speed limits either. A cop can pull over and ticket someone without a license plate just as easily as they do…

Even the least sophisticated criminals know that you should buy a stolen Kia or Hyundai for ~$100 and use that to commit your crime. I suspect most of the crime these Flock cameras are catching is red-light runners and maybe hit and runs if it happens to be caught on camera.

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

#448

Post by phyzome »

tptacek wrote: post #334
phyzome wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, around 33:00 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY The other video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ but I don't recall which one goes more into it. It's also possible I'm just remembering Flock-specific stuff from other sources, and the things he shows in these videos are more general issues with security camera companies (using Flock as the example). It would be great if this stuff wa…

Thanks! I looked, but that's a segment about someone at Flock accusing anti-Flock people of being "antifa" or terrorists. I'm about as anti-Flock as I think it's possible to be (having been instrumental in killing it my Chicagoland suburb) and I'm not not sure what to do with "someone at Flock said something dumb". In case it helps: my thing here is, the video we were commenting on thread seems to be about all public…

I mean, it's not just any person at Flock, it's the CEO.

But I hear what you're saying about public cameras.

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

#449

Post by mothballed »

PleasureBot wrote: post #447
autoexec wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't love flock but IMO the only realistic way to get rid of license plates would be mandatory speed governors that keep vehicles from going more than like 15mph. I don't understand this reasoning. License plates don't stop speeding from happening. Removing license plates wouldn't prevent enforcement of speed limits either. A cop can pull over and ticket someone without a license plate just as easily as they do…

Even the least sophisticated criminals know that you should buy a stolen Kia or Hyundai for ~$100 and use that to commit your crime. I suspect most of the crime these Flock cameras are catching is red-light runners and maybe hit and runs if it happens to be caught on camera.

A hit and runner hit me in front of such camera and totalled my truck. Police refused to investigate, they're not interested in using camera for such reasons nor is there much incentive that's in it for the police to do so.

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

#450

Post by PunchyHamster »

skipants wrote: post #420
dogman144 wrote: post #311

Was fortunate to talk to a security lead who built the data-driven policing network for a major American city that was an early adopter. ALPR vendors like Flock either heavily augment and/or anchor the tech setups. What was notable to me is the following, and it’s why I think a career spent on either security researching, or going to law school and suing, these vendors into the ground over 20 years would be the ultim…

As someone who has thought about, planned, and implemented a lot of RBAC... I would never trust the security of a system with RBAC at that level. And to elaborate on that -- for RBAC to have properly defined roles for the right people and ensure that there's no unauthorized access to anything someone shouldn't have access to, you need to know exactly which user has which access. And I mean all of them. Full stop. I d…

It always starts with "we just give developers in project access to things in project and it all be nice and secure, we will also have separate role for deploy so only Senior Competent People can do it.

Then the Senior Competent Person goes on vacation and some junior needs to run a deploy so they get the role.

The the other project need a dev from different project to help them.

Then some random person need something that has no role for it so they "temporarily" gets some role unrelated to his job.

Then project changes a manager but the old one is still there for the transition

And nobody ever makes a ticket to rescind that access

And everything is a mess

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