US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
Negative sentiment concerning surveillance technology, specifically criticizing Flock Safety's impact on privacy and governance.
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- gorgonical: 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:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMIwNiwQewQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMIwNiwQewQ</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ</a><p>I recommend them.
- e2le: For those unfamiliar, you can read more about the flock safety cameras themselves here:<p><a href="https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Flock_license_plate_readers" rel="nofollow">https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Flock_license_plate_readers</a><p>And more about the company behind the cameras:<p><a href="https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Flock_Safety" rel="nofollow">https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Flock_Safety</a>
- jmuguy: 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.
- Dezvous: It's quite ironic to get an amazon ring video ad while viewing this article.
- gosub100: Someone in my hometown was arrested for vandalizing them. The media chose to say "city owned security camera". It's amazing how they will rush to defend private enterprise.
- josefritzishere: Funny that. Not everyone wants to live in an open air prison.
- phendrenad2: 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.
- lenerdenator: It really is amazing how they managed to fit so much copper into those devices.
- jdross: 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
- waNpyt-menrew: Would crime go up, down or stay the same if all surveillance cameras were removed? The answer to that is the only one that matters.<p>Ironically many people who whine about surveillance cameras have their video door bells or similar setups.<p>So which is it?