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US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

cnet.com

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Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#51

Post by whimsicalism »

therobots927 wrote: post #8
jmuguy wrote: post #7

I'm surprised Garrett Langley still has a job, he seems wildly out of touch. For instance he really believes that his Panopticon as a service is the reason crime is down in cities, conveniently ignoring crime rates prior to COVID.

He won’t for long. The backlash is just getting started. Left or right, no one wants their whereabouts subject to constant surveillance. His only advantage is that the cops are on his side and won’t let go of these cameras without a fight.

I'm very in favor of speed & redlight cameras and don't have a particular problem with license plate trackers. I think we partisan-ize far too many things nowadays, unfortunately.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#52

Post by cucumber3732842 »

alex43578 wrote: post #46
phendrenad2 wrote: post #13

It's funny, if the company had just sold cameras to cities, they probably could have avoided this whole mess. But they just had to hit some keywords for Wall Street (like "AI" "cloud" and "SaaS"), which had the side-effect of making it appear (true or not) that they were part of a Palantir-style surveillance panopticon that tracks you everywhere.

A big part of the value is the network: track a stolen a car or a suspect in the next town over or across the country.

And they will either quietly rebrand and build it or someone else will.

Government loves the product. What it doesn't like about Flock is that the peasants are aware about it and complaining.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#53

Post by whimsicalism »

baggachipz wrote: post #43

I drove into a very affluent subdivision this weekend, and like most others around here it had a flock camera recording every car on the way in. This camera, however, had the gall to advertise its presence as a neighborhood security measure. "Flock Safety watches this neighborhood" read the sign on the post, or some such. Of course the residents there had no choice but to accept its installation, as the local police…

we enforce laws presumably in the name of safety, is this really nefarious framing or marketing? seems pretty straightforward to me.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#54

Post by cucumber3732842 »

jdross wrote: post #9

I realize how unpopular flock is, and I will first say that I have literally never personally looked into the privacy concerns. But one city you don’t see named here is SF, which has cited Flock as a primary driver of its 10x reduction in car break-ins, and 30% reduction in burglaries. Those were a quality of life plague while I lived there

The crime did not happen because of a lack of technological capability or resources availability at a given price point. It happened because of politics and priorities. The 1984 camera dragnet vendor is no more responsible for the change in politics and priorities and subsequent crime reduction than whatever vendor sold the tires for the cop cars.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#55

Post by AlBugdy »

Non-US citizens - what's the situation with cameras in public spaces where you live? In my town every 2nd hour or building entrance has a private camera pointed at the street. It's very depressing because the cops don't care - I've asked 2 in a patrol car when there was a mild case of vandalism I witnessed. Technically it's illegal, but nothing happens. The public cameras are on intersection and some bus stops. Too much, if you ask me, but the private cameras are everywhere.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#56

Post by bob1029 »

baggachipz wrote: post #43

I drove into a very affluent subdivision this weekend, and like most others around here it had a flock camera recording every car on the way in. This camera, however, had the gall to advertise its presence as a neighborhood security measure. "Flock Safety watches this neighborhood" read the sign on the post, or some such. Of course the residents there had no choice but to accept its installation, as the local police…

> no choice but to accept its installation

You might be shocked to discover there are subdivisions so affluent they can afford physical armed security and access control structures with far more invasive identification and logging procedures.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#57

Post by whimsicalism »

ceejayoz wrote: post #12
jdross wrote: post #9

I realize how unpopular flock is, and I will first say that I have literally never personally looked into the privacy concerns. But one city you don’t see named here is SF, which has cited Flock as a primary driver of its 10x reduction in car break-ins, and 30% reduction in burglaries. Those were a quality of life plague while I lived there

Crime's been descending from the COVID blip for a while, everywhere, Flock or otherwise. My city saw zero murders in Q1; 2021 saw ~15 by now. In other words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw

it's clearly not a covid effect https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/sf-car-breakins/

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#59

Post by komali2 »

waNpyt-menrew wrote: post #36
gorgonical wrote: post #21

Musician-turning-tech anarchist (?) Benn Jordan is making a very interesting series of videos about Flock cameras, their poor safety, and their gray-area interfacing with local governments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMIwNiwQewQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ I recommend them.

Someone complaining about local governments having data while directing them to YouTube, whose owner does surveillance at a scale far exceeding all local governments of all countries combined, is ironic. Why don’t these people use Peertube at least. Fact of the matter is they’d like to personally profit off the same nonsense they complain about. This person has a million subscribers, they aren’t some random whistlebl…

During the KMT military dictatorship in Taiwan, the KMT used the radio to spread its anti-democratic propaganda and disparage pro-democracy activists. Activists meanwhile spread their messages via pirate radio.

Re: US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

#60

Post by snsr »

whimsicalism wrote: post #51
therobots927 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He won’t for long. The backlash is just getting started. Left or right, no one wants their whereabouts subject to constant surveillance. His only advantage is that the cops are on his side and won’t let go of these cameras without a fight.

I'm very in favor of speed & redlight cameras and don't have a particular problem with license plate trackers. I think we partisan-ize far too many things nowadays, unfortunately.

Maybe you're also in favor of some light reading https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/
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