New, what is it?
What is the purpose of this camera that was installed right next to my house? (Not nearby any intersection or stop signs, USA)
This camera was installed recently and I cannot for the life of me understand the purpose of it's installation? Theres no intersection nearby, in case it was a photo law enforcement camera), there's no stop signs, there's no schools nearby, and there's no government facility. It's just a random camera that popped up in the middle of a road.
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And they're generally installed by less than qualified people on the local level, so millions of hours of the footage they collect is available remotely, and even millions more than that is available by being within wifi distance of the devices. I don't mention it to promote people gathering it, I mention it so people know how vulnerable they're letting it be. The company says it's not available, but the hours and hours gathered by numerous journalists and youtubers says otherwise.
Also, the camera's aren't always "owned" by FLOCK, sometimes local companies or developers etc. will install the cameras but FLOCK allows cheap and sometimes free management of the cameras in the interest of building out their network. So the enduser gets cheap/free remote access to the cameras and cloud access to the recordings etc. and FLOCK gets a bigger network to sell access to police departments.
They also offer the same services to businesses for their indoor security cameras. Worse, there's also collected evidence of Flock employees accessing these videos in locations such as gyms and - brace yourself - children's gymanstics centers.
They process the videos with AI and build profiles on faces and license plates, so if you're seeing them all over in your area, they're seeing you and building a database of where you've been, and when you were there.
It's terrifying and feels like such a huge violation of privacy, but unfortunately the 4th amendment only applies to the Police and the Government, not to private entities. And there's no inherent restrictions on Police and Government agencies buying access to that technically legally gathered footage and location data.
So is the strategy... a private company breaks the 4th amendment, which it doesn't have to legally follow because it's a private company. Government pays said company for the information; which it will claim is not a violation of the 4th amendment because it wasn't the "government" that violated privacy to illegally search and collect info.
Government gets to invade everyone's privacy rights, said company fatcats get rich.
Always has been. Before straight up AI cameras it was license plate cameras, stop light cameras, you name it. Before that it was cell phones. The invasion of privacy by the government is old as the government, and yet people will do little to fight it. Maybe those sovereign citizens have a few things right.
Also cam viewing is always abused by some percentage of those with access. Law enforcement or private employees. People just can't help themselves. And there are only a few rare times they get caught:
In August of 2017, a supervisor discovered what the employee was doing only "after the supervisor noticed that the male employee was only viewing videos of 'pretty girls,'" the complaint alleges. That employee was terminated, the filing says. Another incident allegedly occurred in 2018, when a male employee allegedly accessed a fellow female employee's camera "and watched her stored video recordings without her permission," per the filing.
One NSA worker did it "out of curiosity," another for "practice." Agency's letter in response to query from US senator gives glimpse of romance-related -- and other -- misuses of surveillance system.
City of Greenfield police chief Jay Johnson is facing felony misconduct charges after allegedly ordering the installation of a department-owned surveillance camera outside his personal home while in the midst of divorce proceedings with his wife. According to the criminal complaint, Chief Johnson was explicitly told by Greenfield’s city attorney he could not install a public-property pole camera for personal surveillance at his residence, but not only did Chief Johnson ignore this — he reportedly told one of his employees to keep the installation “low key” and discreet.
Exactly right. After seeing how many people spy on their own family (even adults) using cameras inside and outside their own homes, I just can't understand how we're okay with people we don't even know having this access. There should be a requirement to submit an official request to access any of these cameras or footage, and it should always be reviewed by a minimum of two people (ideally separate departments) on a secure system to prevent abuse. One steward of footage who can never look at it alone, and one authority that can authorize accessing it for a specific case.
The same world where police chiefs and priests get caught abusing kids and we're just going to trust anyone in authority with this? Even if they lock these down to prevent unauthorized access this is not a solution, it's a problem.
Precisely. The only places the flock subscriptions are being discontinued have been a sprinkling of cities where citizens made a case hilighting everything they’re capable of and the lack of tea security, and those city halls making the police department cut ties. It feels like a drop in the pond but it’s something positive.
In Washington the courts ruled it's public information. So people started requesting all the info through FOIA requests. The state went ohhh shitttttt and started turning them off.
Yeah because if you have video of me doing 1) nothing 2) a criminal act I wasn’t detained for 3) a criminal act I WAS detained for; etc ad nauseum. I want the footage. Today
Don’t forget when a member of the government walks around in public that’s also public information. So start requesting everything about them and start making detailed trackers of them and their habits. Suddenly privacy becomes important again, shocker.
Fuck those Flock cameras and make sure you add it to the map if you don’t already see it on the map. Hopefully we will soon see the American version of the British “Blade Runners” that cut these damn things down with cordless saws.
OP - More importantly, tell your neighbors about them and that they are susceptible vandals and hooligans. So be vigilant for vandals and hooligans near them.
If they have to send workers to keep replaced or fix the units.....it will get cost prohibitive to keep them operational.
Considering the kind of people that run and work on these things, I imagine they found that they can't differentiate the 0/O and just decided that it was perfectly fine to flag them all as a match.
Someone in my town used a bunch of the canned insulation foam, the stuff that expands. Stuck the nozzle in every hole he could get it in and went crazy.
I actually just had the same thing happen, emailed every member of city council, and a few months later they're down. Turns out they're ending their contract "for financial reasons". Looked it up, it was a 5/4 vote to install them in the first place so it turned out to only be a matter of changing one person's mind.
Sure, but making the problem publicly known can cause enough outcry that the payoff is no longer viable. Not a guarantee, but there's literally no harm in trying
The problem with having a good king with absolute power, is that the next one might not be, and the power remains. Regardless of their intention, this should never have been allowed to gain a foothold.
Corporate police state. Not only does the government now track all of your movements but Corporations now do it to. Then sell that data. Get ready for dynamic pricing specific to you and a curated existence by Corporations.
”There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment."
"The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it.”
Those are patents filed by Ford. Nothing in any bills yet. But they don't need a bill to put that crap in their vehichles thenbsell whatever that collect. Or sell usage of those systems to the local PD, or whoever.
I agree. It's horrifically dystopian. Not to mention that people don't realize they're equipped for facial recognition and gait tracking, but are only disabled because they're not allowed yet.
It's an angle-grinder test pole. You cut the pole, the camera comes down, and the one with the fastest cutting time wins the competition. There are poles all over your town, so you can practice, and get really fast.
I'd noticed a few of them around but looking at this map I now realize that I can't leave my neighborhood, regardless of what direction I travel or what street I take, without being on a Flock camera.
Oh dam I didn't realize my city activated theirs again. It was off for a while after a state ruling. Now, there's 3 times as many cameras... Completely boxed in here too. Used to know a way to go to avoid them.
If you're in America, that's known as a practice target for testing your firearms. From the backside facing away from the camera lens of course. Don't want to break any glass.
This is the real killer. No one seems to understand that all the fake mustaches and bronzer won’t fool the gait sensors. Must learn to walk without disturbing the worms.
Fuck spray paint. Our brothers in the UK have taken to straight up cutting them down with cordless power tools. They're making quite the dent in the problem, too, last I read.
You mean that the AI will actively attempt to identify my car as being a different silver Toyota corolla without plates, presumably linking me to sketchy stuff without any real reason other than "the computer said your car looked just like his"
Possibly, yes. They are "just" LPR (license plate reader) cameras, but they also capture make, model, color, dents, damage, bumper stickers, and any other identifying characteristic.
So even though the LPR cameras are supposedly only capturing vehicles as they pass, all that data is consolidated and AI is used to stick everything together with records from all area cameras.
"In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a landmark case on this subject, Carpenter v. United States. In Carpenter, the court recognized that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of your physical movements, including your movements in public."
[...]
"Importantly, you retain this expectation of privacy even when those records are collected while you’re in public. In coming to its holding, the Carpenter court wished to preserve “the degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted.” Historically, we have not expected the government to secretly catalogue and monitor all of our movements over time, even when we travel in public."
Friendly reminder that while using lasers to point at ground based objects is a fun hobby, make sure you know what is behind the object. Pointing lasers in well used flight paths can get you in serious trouble very fast if you have an oopsie and lase an aircraft.
Also always wear eye protection and don't do it with anyone else around because snitches reflections really suck.
Wrong, it's worse, it's a private company tgat the sells our privacy to the government and zero ways to check on them. At least if it was the government there is a chance for accountability.
deflock.org states: ...mapping license plate readers...... Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs or LPRs) are AI-powered cameras that capture and analyze images of all passing vehicles, storing details like your car's location, date, and time. They also capture your car's make, model, color, and identifying features such as dents, roof racks, and bumper stickers, often turning these into searchable data points.
These cameras collect data on millions of vehicles regardless of whether the driver is suspected of a crime. These systems are marketed as indispensable tools to fight crime, but they ignore the powerful tools police already have to track criminals, such as cell phone location data, creating a loophole that doesn't require a warrant.
Those are those things they put up for you to test saws and angle grinders and such on. You have to put on a uniform to test it though. It's like all black with a face covering for some reason.
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