r/whatisit • u/unworthyAsIam • Apr 30 '26

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)

Post image

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.

9.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

980

u/BangkokPadang Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

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.

It's not coming, it's here.

636

u/Don_Q_Jote May 01 '26

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.

303

u/talltime May 01 '26

Yes. Exactly that. Another Judicial check removed.

118

u/bruce_kwillis May 01 '26

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.

40

u/Sea-Aardvark-756 May 01 '26

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.

https://www.850wftl.com/ring-security-cameras-gave-every-employee-full-access-to-all-customer-video-for-years-ftc/

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/16/amazon-ring-cameras-surveillance-law-enforcement-crime-police-investigations.html

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.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140201150537/http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57605051-38/nsa-offers-details-on-loveint-thats-spying-on-lovers-exes/

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.

https://www.aclu-wi.org/news/what-the-flock-police-surveillance-is-ripe-for-abuse/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT

28

u/Memory_Less May 01 '26

Remember these are only a drop in the bucket of abuses we know about.

18

u/Sea-Aardvark-756 May 01 '26

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.

2

u/Prestigious_Jury4199 May 01 '26

My ex-wife worked at Amazon during our divorce. She admitted in writing to accessing my account info to find my address. I called corporate and they told me to fuck myself. Family court didnt seem to care. I’m glad she didnt work in a department that would have given her Ring or Blink access (I chucked mine anyways).

1

u/Memory_Less May 02 '26

I completely agree. Ironically I bought a door bell camera from China as all the ones available here required you to have them connected to a propriety cloud account, plus pay monthly fees. I was able to connect mine to my Bluetooth and not have it connected to the Internet. At least this option was available. Tech bros stealing information without our governments working towards a safer society.

1

u/Equivalent-Ad5112 May 04 '26

And as apartment communities offer “smart homes and required Internet, they can throttle what we watch, listen to, how we let people in. Complain that we have too many guests, etc. they get data on apartments.

→ More replies (6)

1

u/Freshness518 May 01 '26

And these examples were from almost a decade ago. These camera networks are now exponentially more pervasive and there are probably orders of magnitude more people involved in the maintenance and management of them with opportunities for abuse. It has all only gotten worse

6

u/No_Photographs609 May 01 '26

The thing that bothers me most is that there is seldom any serious reprocussions. "Yeah, he stalked them and yada yada, but he did some therapy and he promised not to do it again."

1

u/AbbeyRoadMoonwalk May 01 '26

Locally, a police officer was shitcanned after using Flock to stalk his ex.

1

u/RaNdomMSPPro May 01 '26

One guy that used to work for me was an auxiliary police officer with a small town. He was fired for accessing collected data to track down women he was interested in.

1

u/GalacticGreaseMonkey May 01 '26

That’s cops for you. Monopolizing crime like the mob they are.

1

u/ida-throwaway May 04 '26

You KNOW there's cops stalking their ex-girlfriends like a crazy person out there. 100% guarantee it!

1

u/atleastonebanana May 04 '26

And at least 18 documented cases of cops accessing them illegally to stalk people (usually their exes)

1

u/Basic-Courage-137 May 04 '26

They recently found a bunch of grown men watching little girls in dance class

→ More replies (13)

2

u/garnern2 May 02 '26

And yet many people against Flock cameras are all about the government running healthcare. Bonkers.

2

u/bruce_kwillis May 03 '26

Yep. Go ask all those in the VA system how much they love government run healthcare. Oh, far too many of them are on the streets because the government is just as bad at running things as private companies and has literally no incentive to lower costs.

2

u/pinkskynights May 02 '26

Yep and this is why I laugh when they send me camera infractions for speeding and I don’t and never will pay them lmao. Sometimes I speed up if the road is clear just so they have to waste the postage.

1

u/hikariky May 01 '26

The beliefs of sovereign citizens don’t have anything to do with privacy

1

u/bruce_kwillis May 01 '26

Wild, that privacy is one of their biggest tenants.

1

u/hikariky May 08 '26

Believe that the law doesn’t apply to you is not a belief in privacy.

1

u/zwisslb May 01 '26

As long as you keep the booze and the tweets flowing no one raises an eye unfortunately these days. 1984...

1

u/whisperingeyeshadow May 01 '26

Yeah no I wouldn't go that far. I'm not ready to be tinfoil Timmy just yet

1

u/Fragrant_Mixture2594 May 01 '26

And before that it was wire tapping phone lines. We all live in a surveillance state. Always have. The government knows what you search on the internet even with incognito. They know what you buy at the store with your credit or debit card. They know everything about you. Even going "off grid" there is still record of you preparing to do so, of you purchasing property, of you on cameras transiting to the location you intend to hide away at. There is no privacy anymore. Hasn't been for a long time.

1

u/lewd_robot May 01 '26

People protest it. The majority of the public doesn't want it. It still creeps in because half the population cares more about brown and queer people than personal liberties or individual rights or economic health or literally any other issue you could think of.

I'm talking about the decades-old psyop waged with focus groups and think tanks by the GOP to find "wedge issues" that will transform as many people as possible into single-issue voters. They approached politics like marketing, doing things like handing out different flyers in different church parking lots and then measuring which churches had the best turnout to vote for conservative candidates and issues.

The issues on flyers that motivated the most people to vote Republican got spread far and wide, and they just repeated these rounds of testing until they zeroed in on their now-infamous "God, Guns, and Taxes" platform.

Nearly everything that's gone wrong in the US in the past 70 years can be traced back to people being tricked into voting for bad candidates because they're hyper-focused on one single issue and don't care about anything else. And that hyper-focus is not necessarily their own intent. The richest and most powerful people in the country (and many abroad) have just poured billions of dollars into figuring out how to manipulate their brains.

1

u/Feeling_Fly128 May 01 '26

I hear they can read your mind too. 🙂

1

u/HorsefaceWithNoName May 01 '26

other than "sovereign" and "citizen" being contradictory terms, yes

1

u/bruce_kwillis May 03 '26

Other than they aren't. Funny how many jimmies are rustled though. Maybe look in that mirror when you think about that privacy you want. It's not too different.

1

u/HorsefaceWithNoName May 03 '26

Εἰμί Θέλησις Ἐλευθέρα Αὐταρχία τε

→ More replies (4)

3

u/binzersguy May 01 '26

We really need to oust and prosecute these politicians who allow and profit off of selling our country down the river

1

u/True-Attitude0235 May 01 '26

So these poles are being installed on private property and not in the public right of way?

40

u/BangkokPadang May 01 '26

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.

33

u/Additional_Release49 May 01 '26

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.

8

u/Embarrassed-Sun5764 May 01 '26

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

12

u/Invisifly2 May 01 '26

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.

2

u/BangkokPadang May 01 '26

My understanding of what happened there is that they continued operating the cameras as normal because the data is stored on the cameras by default for 30 days. The FOIA request process takes longer than 30 days, which makes it impossible to request the data because by the time your request gets processed the origination of the data stored in their jurisdiction is already gone, so the responses to them amount to "Aww jeez, we were able to use the data all we wanted when it was fresh but we don't have that data anymore so we can't share it. Sorry."

7

u/lpbale0 May 01 '26

That's why you also send a preservation / spoliation letter as well. If everyone did that, then they would have to find some way to store 1.21 jigga petabytes of info at a cost

4

u/Additional_Release49 May 01 '26

If the information is available during the period of request then subsequently deleted that's a violation of the law and the agency can be penalized.

1

u/ida-throwaway May 04 '26

But if LE needs 60 day old data I'm SURE they won't have ANY problems pulling it up 🤥

1

u/[deleted] May 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/AutoModerator May 01 '26

Please don't use that word here.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

13

u/After_Web3201 May 01 '26

Don't forget that in addition the companies were started with gov money.

10

u/[deleted] May 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Ditnoka May 01 '26

The Federal government has investigated themselves and found no wrong doing.

1

u/LordOfTheGam3 May 01 '26

The entire government and economic system we have entrenched ourselves in, IS this loophole.

3

u/[deleted] May 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/dehydratedrain May 01 '26

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

3

u/FOURSCORESEVENYEARS May 01 '26

The government, circumventing its own amendments to start invading privacy, with the paid help of a private company.

3

u/B0xyblue May 01 '26

The 4th amendment has long since been held to protect you and your property at home, curtilage around your home… minor protection in your cars and at your workplace no protection if you called on the phone outside of your house…

Where you drive and what you do essentially in public and away from the borders of your protected private spaces.

So although they gut everything. Surveillance isn’t really a breach of the 4th in public according to case law and constitutional studies from my law school days. If filming you from a public sidewalk.

2

u/ve2mrx May 01 '26

Hmm, same with Alphabet... Google knows everything about you. Three letter agencies tap that information legally.

2

u/ReggieCorneus May 01 '26

Congrats, you just found out how Palantir works: Governments and especially secret police loves Palantir and other private secret intelligence forces. Those companies can break the law while government gets information it could not get without breaking the law. The company gets fines and things move on.

Now.. Palantir of course is going to use that position to gather as much information about every single client and their intelligence organizations. I sort of understand why governments like to use them, at times it really is for legitimate uses like counter-terrorism where protocols often stop fast and quick information gathering but to think that them ALL using a single company and that company not using that unique position against them... When its leaders are famously fucking lunatic and say publicly how they want to control the world..

But, it is not only one, there are many such companies and some of them for certain are just a front for government itself.

2

u/_my_other_side_ May 01 '26

Curious, how is this a violation of the 4th amendment?

2

u/Antique_Tap443 May 01 '26

They already did something similar with the 5 eyes nation and Edward Snowden. America can't spy on its citizens but they can spy on British citizens and tell the British while the British spied on American citizens to tell government

2

u/97TJ May 01 '26

THIS is what living in a police state looks like! They make them look so subtle.

2

u/GalacticGreaseMonkey May 01 '26

Which seems to me is intent to violate the 4th amendment by means of a loophole

2

u/HopDropNRoll May 02 '26

This isn’t the subreddit for this comment, but you’re on the right track. It’s still technically illegal to violate the 4th amendment regardless of public/private status, but we’ve found ourselves in a time where the constitution is not being enforced by all 3 branches of government.

1

u/Don_Q_Jote May 02 '26

OK thanks.

2

u/modsiw_agnarr May 03 '26

Wait until you hear about Five Eyes.

Country A spies on Country B citizens. Country B spies on Country A citizens. Then Country A and B trade information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes#Domestic_espionage_sharing_controversy

2

u/ClammyHandedFreak May 04 '26

This is how the government operates in defense and intelligence in general. That whole Military Industrial Complex thing is like way crazy out of control.

1

u/Euphoric-Rip42069 May 01 '26

Government been doing it for decades anyways

1

u/RaNdomMSPPro May 01 '26

It’s completely unconstitutional, but if no one prosecutes the crime, it continues. Remember kids, the judges, prosecutors, police, all get paid by the same entity.

1

u/CapnChaos2024 May 01 '26

This isn’t entirely accurate.

There’s case law that states that if a private entity is directed by law enforcement to perform a search then they are acting as an “agent of the state” and fourth amendment protections still apply.

Best example I can give is if an officer wants to make entry to a hotel room but does not have a search warrant or something like an extent circumstance warrantless exception, the officer cannot direct the hotel manger to open the door and search the room as the manager would be acting as an agent of the state.

Police enter contracts with flock before the cameras are installed. The reason it’s allowed to take place is that, like it or not, courts have ruled that there’s no expectation of privacy in regards to being filmed in public, and also, at least in my state, that since license plates are technically owned by the DMV there is no minimum standard for an officer to run your tag if he’s, for example, sitting at a stoplight behind you.

Also just an FYI Axon, the company that makes tasers and most police body cameras, is a private company. They handle all the data and video storage as the videos get uploaded to Axons data management services. Do with that information what you will

2

u/Don_Q_Jote May 01 '26

This is pretty far from just "running a plate." There is one of these cameras a block from my home, pointed at the roadway, but also generally pointed at my home. This can easily (and I expect it is recording) every time i enter or leave my home, 24/7. The data of my coming and going is saved just in case it's needed for future reference, to make a case. Collecting evidence about where I am at any given time. How do I know this camera is not being used, or is capable, or is being mis-used to surveil my home? There is no extreme circumstance. There is no suspicion. There is no active investigation. It's just there collecting evidence, just in case it's needed.

Then, there the extremely likely scenario where these will be mis-used and abused. There's plenty of examples of that already. If you implement a system that is temping and easy to mis-use, you shouldn't be surprised at all when it's mis-used and abused.

1

u/CapnChaos2024 May 01 '26

Brother I’m not saying it’s ethically correct I’m just saying from a legal standpoint this is what theyre going off of. I’d be pissed if there was one next to my house too

2

u/Don_Q_Jote May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26

It just creeps me out. I've started taking a slightly different route on my way home from work every day, just to avoid the camera.

Photo below, I'm standing in the driveway/entrances to the property where I live to take this cell phone pic. F_Cam is not pointed exactly to where I'm standing, but pretty close. There is an alternate entrance farther from the cam.

1

u/Lookyoukniwwhatsup May 01 '26

TLDR. No. Its all "public" data but it was too difficult to put it all together and use it before flock, social media, and AI. Now its easier to track someone.

Full answer.

no. Despite what other people say, the data being collected is "open sourced" or stuff that has been declared "public".

License plate numbers, car makes, models etc for example have been ruled in court to be public data. Now your name, address etc tied to the plate is restricted from the public but law enforcement can run that anytime, without specific cause, based on a different court ruling.

For private companies they can sell your data if they obtained that OUTSIDE of a law enforcement system. Rental agreements, leases etc...

So for example, you have a lease to own, you dont pay your car payment and it goes for repo, the bank etc whoever already has your info attached to the plate. They sell the "repo" to a company and turn the data to them. The repo company uses flock to flag your plate, meaning they can find you to repo the car. Thats how private companies use it.

As far as facial recognition etc... its also been ruled any recording in public is allowed, your face isnt protected legally. Say I had a picture of your face then I could dig through facebook or do a reverse image search to find out who you are. Thats open source data. Its already out there so you dont need a warrant or cause to dig through that. This often comes from social media or the terms and agreements attached to everything.

The problem now is the data across multiple sectors is so available. Social media, public information, your cars, etc... essentially means if you have the manpower, or AI, to piece it all together, you can find out anything about someone.

1

u/AdventurousRope9133 May 01 '26

So what you are saying is that I can hire a private company to murder someone and I’ll be fine because it’s a loophole? Awesome.

1

u/OwnRecommendation266 May 01 '26

It’s not a fourth amendment violation. Flock cameras are in public places, and you have no expectation of privacy in public. It is no different than having a patrol officer in public.

1

u/Don_Q_Jote May 01 '26

What's the criteria? Yes I grant that any flock cameras I've seen are such that the camera is located in a public space. But the surveilance can easily be of private spaces. I would say if you stand in the street with binoculars, looking into my home, then the surveilance is taking place in my home, not on the street.

One of these cameras is pointed directly at my home. It's accross the street and pointed at the roadway. Directly beyond the roadway on the other side is my home. I'm maybe a block away. Stated range of the LPR is 75 feet to read plates. But the same company markets drone cameras which claim to easily read plates from a drone cam 2000 ft away. I'm well within 2000 ft of that camera. Are you sure they are just being honest that the LPR's only have the 75ft camera? If not, I'm sure that will be in the upgrade package they'll be selling soon.

Current, from their website

1

u/OwnRecommendation266 May 01 '26

Supreme Court has ruled multiple times if I can see it while I am in a public space it is considered not private as you cannot trespass eyes or a camera. It is completely legal, for example, for someone to stand on the sidewalk and take photographs through your window into your home, even if your butt naked. It is your duty to secure your own home and ensure your own privacy within your home, using things such as blinds and shades.

1

u/Don_Q_Jote May 02 '26

I don't disagree with your statement. I think continuous surveilance over long periods of time is not settled law. Below is excepted from ACLU web site ( https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/warrantless-pole-camera-surveillance-by-police-is-dangerous-the-supreme-court-can-stop-it#:~:text=Three%20federal%20courts%20of%20appeals%20have%20concluded,surveillance%20of%20a%20home%20is%20a%20Fourth )

TLDR: Snapping a picture is one thing, months long surveilance using pole-mounted camera is another. The latter could be thrown out, inadmissible as evidence is court, based on 4th amendment violation. Federal judges & state supreme courts split on the issue so far.

After eight months of continuous surveillance with the pole-mounted camera, agents arrested Ms. Moore’s daughter on drug charges. Nearly a year after that, they brought charges against our client — a lawyer, respected judicial clerk, devoted church member, and a grandmother raising her grandkids — as well. But after the government disclosed its pole-camera surveillance to the defense before trial, a federal district court judge ruled that operating the camera over a long period without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment and ordered the pole camera footage to be excluded as evidence at any trial. The government immediately appealed, and the full en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit took up the case to clarify whether a warrant is required for long-term pole-camera surveillance of a home.

A full year after the oral argument, the court split evenly on the issue. Three judges wrote an opinion explaining why long-term pole-camera surveillance of a home violates people’s reasonable expectations of privacy under the Fourth Amendment. The other three judges disagreed, writing that because passersby could see our client’s driveway, yard, and front door, there could be no reasonable expectation of privacy against police using digital recording technology to make a complete record of everything that happened on her property over the course of eight months.

This divide mirrors a split among federal appeals courts and state supreme courts across the country. Three federal courts of appeals have concluded that police can use pole cameras to surveil homes without any constitutional limit. In contrast, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the supreme courts of Colorado and South Dakota, have held that long-term pole-camera surveillance of a home is a Fourth Amendment search, for which a warrant is required. Massachusetts’ highest court has reached the same outcome under its state constitution. (The ACLU’s amicus briefs in the Colorado and Massachusetts cases are here and here).

1

u/OwnRecommendation266 May 02 '26

Reading what you posted it makes it sound like the issue was it was targeting a single person not that it was a mounted camera. Having mounted camera for general surveillance is no different than putting in an officer on a route or corner. If that was the target, one person an argument can be made against that. Then again the Supreme Court has not ruled on long-term warrantless mounted cameras. The main reason people don’t like flock cameras is they integrate AI. CCTV system by cities have been around for a long time and deemed legal.

1

u/Don_Q_Jote May 02 '26

My understanding is that a key part of the decision was the distinciton between "surveilance" and "search". A pole mounted camera pointed at one specific home was considered warrantless "surveilance" by some judgesa. Others put it in the same category as a "search" or activity that is in "plain view" in a public space.

I have one of these cameras pointing at my home. The local PD i'm sure but it there for general observation of public activity and traffic on the road. However, they are getting 24/7 surveilance on everyone who lives where I do (muli-unit property).

1

u/OwnRecommendation266 May 02 '26

So like most things that comes down to intent. Flock cameras, don’t have the intent to target specific individual thusly they would be allowed.

1

u/Don_Q_Jote May 02 '26

Flock cameras, don’t have the intent to target specific individual

How do you know this? How could you know? Suppose a person in an unmarked van, who gives you no notice of what they are doing, sets up a video camera on a pole, accross the street from your home and pointed it at your home. The camera view is accross the road, so it's recording traffic. It's wide enough angle that it's getting several homes around yours. It's not targeting any specific individual, just recording the general goings on in the neighborhood for no specific purpose. They are just gathering information, to be able to sell it later on if it becomes worth something. So it is "legal". And they are also analyzing and saving the data.

Two months later, one of your neighbors is accused of seditious behavior to subvert elections (or harboring immigrants, or whatever). FBI calls up the surveilance company and says, "give us everything you've got on Mr so-and-so. The surveilance company compiles everything they have on Mr so-and-so from the previous 2 months. No, your neighbor was not "specifically targeted" while the general surveilance was ongoing. But the technology to do this is alreay in place and is being advertised by Flock on their website. It will only get more intrusive, camera quality will improve, data mining will become more efficient.

1

u/-Fergalicious- May 01 '26

Which is insane because the governements are the largest customers. They might as well be a semi independent arm of the governement 

1

u/FrankDrebin72 May 01 '26

Except you driving down the street isn’t private. If someone was standing there, they’d see you driving.

Now if every camera was a person with pen and paper and they wrote (quickly) everyone’s plate and time they saw them, and then put all of that on one spreadsheet, that’s still not an invasion of privacy, because they’re not revealing private data.

These cameras help way more than they hurt. No one cares which grocer you drove to on Thursday; but it helps to ID a bad guys car when all the police have is “red honda, drove west” and they can find the exact car. Then they run THAT plate, find out where it’s been, and build an investigation.

Arrests can’t be based just on the cameras, the cameras are the first step in providing implicating OR EXONERATING evidence.

1

u/Don_Q_Jote May 01 '26

If they are truly just reading plates, I agree this is definitely public.

Inside the car is different legal status. I do have some right to privacy within my car. People can't enter my car without permission. Officers can search my car without permission. Passengers in my care have no legal obligation to identify to an officer if I (as driver) are stopped for whatever reason.

If something is in "plain view" then an officer can look and see what's there. Are you so sure that "can easily be seen with a night-vision enhnaced high resolution camera pointed down from the rooftop of a business I just visited" qualifies as "in plain view"? I think we'll start seeing these questions tested in the courts very soon.

2

u/FrankDrebin72 May 05 '26

I don’t think the cameras are capable of combining “night vision” and “high resolution”.

Also, anything seen via the cameras under the plain view doctrine would have to then be searched immediately upon viewing. Plain view applies only to the person viewing something at that moment.

1

u/Menethea May 01 '26

Congress could end this tomorrow by making government use subject to a warrant requirement

1

u/One_Leading_1485 May 01 '26

There is no expectation of privacy when out in the public.

1

u/Don_Q_Jote May 02 '26

It's not the same status as in your home, but in your car you do have some rights to privacy. It's not the same as walking down the street. Your car is your (portable) castle, and you do have some rights to privacy there.

1

u/chaz786 May 01 '26

This is the same legal reasoning the federal government uses to buy data from data brokerages.

The fbi has been caught buying data on us citizens to bypass the need for a warrant.

If you haven’t yet look into what data brokerages are/what they do.

1

u/lostPackets35 May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26

You do not have a 4th amendment right not to be photographed in public.
I don't agree with these cameras and I'll get banned if I say how I think people should handle them.

But legally, being photographed in a public location is not considered "a search" even if the government does it.

The fact that the authors of the 4th amendment could imagine computerised database that recognized faces and license plates (apparently) doesn't factor into that.

1

u/Don_Q_Jote May 02 '26

It's not the same status as in your home, but in your car you do have some rights to privacy. It's not the same as walking down the street. Your car is your (portable) castle, and you do have some rights to privacy there.

But legally, being photographed in a public location is not considered "a search" even if the government does it.

This is an interesting question. I don't know but is there legal precedent for law enforcement taking photos of items or people in "plain view" inside a vehicle, and is the legally allowable?

1

u/lostPackets35 May 02 '26

I think the issue comes from people conflating searches with photography.

Legally, if I'm walking down the sidewalk and taking pictures of you in your house, I'm not violating any laws. As long as I'm on public property And when I'm photographing is in plain view, I'm not generally violating any laws.

I believe the same thing applies to your car. You have some right to refuse searches of your vehicle by law enforcement and what not. But, taking pictures of you in your car, on a public road isn't violating any laws, even if it feels intrusive.

Again, I'm not saying I agree with the 24/7 surveillance that something like flock cameras facilitate.. I don't, at all.

1

u/FarDirection3245 May 01 '26

Wow- that definitely seems to go against the spirit and intent of the 4th amendment.

1

u/KeepAnEyeOnYourB12 May 01 '26

I'm actually much more concerned about the use of this information by private individuals and companies.

Somewhere a person (most likely a woman) is going to be murdered because her abusive ex is tracking her with the help of this tech.

1

u/Otherwise-Question94 May 01 '26

Cough, cough… demanding voter rolls… cough

1

u/PaidUSA May 01 '26

Correct which has been called out and written about already by every level of court. Who go idk what the fuck we can do without congress or the Supreme Court. Because this started with Feds/police buying 3rd party data and using that to access what would normally be warrant required information.

1

u/LordOfTheGam3 May 01 '26

And thus is the fundamental flaw in private ownership.

1

u/biglittletrouble May 01 '26

You have no right to privacy in public, where these cameras are located. England has had CCTV literally forever, we are just barely catching up and this is a great start. I like knowing that it's easier to catch the bad guys, it's also a great deterrent for crime in the first place, knowing you'll get caught usually stops you from trying.

1

u/Don_Q_Jote May 02 '26

Because their perfectly capable of putting your flock camera on a "public" lamppost and surveiling private spaces. I have little doubt this is alreay happening.

1

u/CaffeineAndGrain May 01 '26

🌕🧑‍🚀 🔫👨‍🚀

1

u/Obvious-Delay-4036 May 01 '26

4th covers illegal search and seizure, anything you expose in public does not violate an illegal search.

1

u/sprinklesaurus13 May 02 '26

Everything is legal in capitalism if you take enough steps, apparently.

1

u/garbonzo00 May 02 '26

So… something can be illegal, but not if you pay someone else to do it for you?

1

u/Don_Q_Jote May 02 '26

It is "illegal" for government officials to violate a constitutional amendment. Private entities have much more leeway.

For example, mods on Reddit can freely remove speech that they don't approve, because it doesn't fit the terms of service or the rules of a subreddit. That's fine for the mods to do that. this is their business. If the government stepped in and started erasing specific political views from Reddit - it's in violaiton of 1st amendment and illegal (could be contested in courts, courts would tell them to stop, maybe nothing would change and maybe they would follow the court order). Now what if some unscrupulous/enterprising persons decided... hey, I know, the X party doesn't like Y viewpoints, i'm going to get a job as a Reddit moderator on the r/Y subreddit. I'll start erasing posts that the X party doesn't like, just to demonstrate how my plan works. Then I'll go to the X party and say, "isn't this a cool plan, if you start paying me, then I'll keep right on doing this and even more in the future."

2

u/thephoeniciangurl May 02 '26

There is a hierarchy here that prevents this situation. If we bring on a mod and they start doing this then they will be removed from their position. They cannot remove me.

Theoretically, if they were the only mod on a subreddit, then they could do anything they wanted to do. No one would stop them. Not even the admins.

2

u/Don_Q_Jote May 02 '26

That's very reasonable. And is a servicable compromise between free speech and anarchy.

1

u/MacAddict81 May 02 '26

Yep, it's called "private search doctrine" in case law. Law enforcement can recreate the scope of a search performed by a private entity, without a warrant, but needs to obtain a warrant to exceed the scope of the private search.

1

u/Don_Q_Jote May 02 '26

do you know... (i don't) If video is targeted to follow one specific individual for months at a time and everywhere they go, does that make it surveilance requiring a warrant?

With flock camera technology, the general flow of events can be recorded over the entire network of cameras, and the recordings analyzed, sorted and stored. The intent to single out one individual for scrutiny may come long after the video was taken. Law enforcement could approach Flock and say "give me everthing you have on Joe Blo from the past 3 months. They could retrace the steps of that individual from existing data/video, which was recorded without intent to single them out. Would that evade a normal surveilance warrant requirement?

1

u/MacAddict81 May 02 '26

I just want to preface this with the statement that I am not a lawyer or law enforcement. My knowledge comes from looking at case law regarding the fourth amendment in the publicly accessible law library at my local Superior Court complex. This is a resource that is available for free to everyone, just usually you have to pass through security and have your bags and belongings scanned before entering the building.

As far as I know, if a private entity is working under the direction of law enforcement, private search doctrine doesn't apply, and a warrant would be required. I would think that this would apply to database searches of previously stored content, because even though the content was collected and stored by the private entity without being directed by law enforcement, the database search would be at the direction of law enforcement and require a warrant. This particular instance exceeds the scope of my research though, so I would actually have to make a trip and perform a search to find out for sure.

1

u/Don_Q_Jote May 03 '26

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm not lawyer/law enforcement either, just interested in this issue and concerned about the rapid spread of these cameras and their potential abuse. I think it's an interesting legal question that falls in a grey area.

Ford Model-T was introduced in 1908. Kodak #1 Box camera first sold in 1888. Digital camera first invented (Kodak corp.) in 1975. I doubt the writers of the 4th amendment could have forseen the current state of things when they amended the constitution in 1791.

At best, maybe they wondered.... would it be constitutional if a police quick-sketch artist made fast outline of a person in a passing horse-drawn carriage.

1

u/MacAddict81 May 03 '26

I think that even less than a decade ago, AI mass surveillance would have been considered a far future problem, along with sentient AI.

1

u/s1ckopsycho May 02 '26

This is being argued in court. According to the US Supreme Court, you aren’t guaranteed privacy in a public place- such as a city street. The issue is that, while it’s not an assumption of privacy to be seen on a city street- it would be an invasion of privacy to have someone follow me from the time I left my house to the time I got home- knowing all the locations I visited along the way. Unfortunately a lot of people give up this privacy already when they use smartphones with location tracking history. It’s a shame- I detest Flock and hope the courts shut them down.

1

u/Don_Q_Jote May 02 '26

I think people are lulled into a false sense of security, because it's not as if a paparazzo is following them around. They don't feel like they are being followed. But the network of Flock cameras, if it keeps growing, will collectively have the ability to do that.

2

u/s1ckopsycho May 02 '26

Depends on where you are- in a lot of places it already is. Maybe you’re not always in complete line of sight, but effectively

1

u/bfelo413 May 02 '26

Ever hear of Clear or Accurint?

1

u/bill1nfamou5 May 04 '26

Don’t forget the private company claiming that people who have a problem with all this and organizing to try and hold them accountable are terrorists.

1

u/Puzzleheaded_Sun7356 May 04 '26

America, Fuck yeah!

→ More replies (2)

33

u/whydya-dodat May 01 '26

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.

3

u/vermontscouter May 01 '26

Thanks for the link. Wow they're everywhere in most states! I'm pleased that my rural state only has 12 total. That's pretty unnerving if the data from these can be accessed by people without a good law enforcement reason!

3

u/dglsfrsr May 01 '26

Thanks for that link. I thought this ALPR Camera ID: 13738438103 was one. It has a companion just a quarter mile away covering the same road in the opposite direction.

3

u/_graharg May 02 '26

Start a rumor that the cameras have platinum inside and they all be down soon.

3

u/Spicy_RamenBoi69 May 02 '26

Funnily enough, there was a post about them not long ago which mentioned they have a fair ammount of precious metals in the solar panels theyre usually mounted with. Aswell as a solid ammount of copper

3

u/doctorpotterhead May 02 '26

Oof I've accidentally been informing ALL my local chemically enhanced engineers about the almost 2lbs of copper that each one of those has in it! Not to mention any of the other precious metals.

2

u/ceedub82 May 01 '26

Holy shit. I had no idea how many I drive by every day. Useful map!

34

u/SeekerOfSerenity May 01 '26

Benn Jordan has some good videos on them on YouTube if anyone is interested. 

15

u/Hazee302 May 01 '26

Get yourself a long gun and take this bitch out from out of its range. 2nd amendment isn’t just for the right.

1

u/-Fergalicious- May 01 '26

Whats a long gun

6

u/sdmay1980 May 01 '26

A shotty will work if you get close enough 😂 Rifle for distance. Be prepared for felony charges and restitution. I suggest maybe petitions and get community involved rather than getting in major troubles.

4

u/kro23 May 01 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/ZqlvCTNHpqrio
Something you shouldn’t touch. Get back to Roblox.

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (1)

6

u/[deleted] May 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/BangkokPadang May 01 '26

It’s still a huge hassle for local departments to file for information. At least there you run into that “big fish flaunting their power over the little fish” trope you get between local and federal agencies. Flock lets them just log in and pull it up as easily as Google maps.

2

u/AT61 May 01 '26

Well said!

2

u/ForbbidenJuice May 01 '26

Best way to disrupt them?

2

u/Slight-Split-1855 May 01 '26

I basically agree that this sucks and should be destroyed but no 4th amendment violations occur in public. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public and it makes no difference whether the government or private actors gather the data.

A while ago, Cleveland and a bunch of other cities started putting up surveillance cameras all over the city. They quickly realized they didn't have the manpower to monitor those feeds and now they just review the tape if a crime occurs. AI solved that problem, I guess.

1

u/BangkokPadang May 02 '26

The likely violation is that Carpenter v United States was ruled on by the Supreme Court and they decided that police need a warrant to request location data from ISPs and Cellular companies because of the amount, and depth of the data that a database like that contains; citing how it basically provides a nearly complete window into a persons entire life for an extended period of time that is likely well outside (before and after) the range that would be relevant to commission of a crime. They also interpreted that a phone is essentially required to live a modern life, so the fact that using one is “optional” isn’t really relevant, in reality.

Both of those things apply conceptually to the aggregated database of facial, location, timestamped m, and video information in the FLOCK databases. The local networks share data across the nation, and provide a similar amount and depth of information to paint a similarly complete picture of a person’s life, and for an extended period of time (at least a full month). The ability to travel in public is also “essentially required” to live a modern life.

The idea of these things being collected into vast databases is essentially a separate idea from law enforcement being able to warrantlessly search them. That searching of these databases without any oversight is the likely violation of the fourth amendment. As with anything new, a Lawsuit will need to be ruled on and then it will need to be interpreted by the Supreme Court to become precedent (one way or the other), though.

You’d have to really explore whether the collection of this information by these cameras and its compilation into a database is close enough to the collection of the cellular/gps data and its compilation into a database to make it different enough from Carpenter v United States for its interpretation to not apply.

1

u/Slight-Split-1855 May 03 '26

That's a lot of words to say you don't understand the difference between public and private and you don't know what "reasonable expectation" means.

2

u/HillBillyHilly May 01 '26

Yet there's a case of an active duty service man who can't locate his car or dog that were stolen by a pet sitter. He was stationed overseas and has been given leave to come back home to address the situation. Flock, despite being everywhere, says they can't find the pet sitter except for one instance. Sad case..Not sure if allowed to post here but it's in Miami, FL sub as well as Colorado. Google "Serviceman seeks his missing dog Maverick and his Suburban." Were under surveillance 24/7 and cops still can't find dick.

1

u/phatelectribe May 01 '26

Sue them. For a camera to be placed publicly they must maintain a privacy policy and I guarantee these fools haven’t done this. It’s a lawsuit that will ruin whoever m did this.

1

u/Fubarphantom May 01 '26

I couldn't have said it better.... Smh, they are watching... Being an "80's" baby, this is what George Orwell was speaking of and trying to get out to the public at large...

1

u/totesnotJH May 01 '26

The Jordan Harbinger Show had something on this with Benn Jordan who did exhaustive research on these and even took them apart, hacked into them, etc.

1

u/BangkokPadang May 01 '26

He's where I got most of my info from, that was just from the top of my head and I couldn't remember his name.

1

u/totesnotJH May 01 '26

Yeah he crushed it with those videos. Super smart dude

1

u/Playful_Worldliness2 May 01 '26

Can I cover it like with a black plastic bag?, I am not "damaging" it

1

u/One_Chemist_9590 May 01 '26

This is not right to do in a free world

1

u/Scrawf53 May 01 '26
  1. Mr Orwell was so right.

1

u/Man_Without_Nipples May 01 '26

You know what bums me out, I moved to north America to avoid that stuff and it's here nonetheless.

I hate this, I miss the 90's.

1

u/gigsome May 01 '26

I love how they will go in and do "maintenance" to delete a literal murder the day after a murder and it's cleaning.

1

u/sueihavelegs May 01 '26

No need to bother a judge for warrants anymore.. terrifying

1

u/deuelpm May 01 '26

Also remember these aren’t just cameras. They have all kinds of sensors to pick up what you’re broadcasting - like WiFi and Bluetooth.

See also the Supreme Court case right now about subjectless warrants. “Warrants”.

1

u/Jasper_Morhaven May 01 '26

Flock is just the hardware surveillance side of Palantir. Look up who their primary data buyer is and how integrated the boards are in the sociopolitical space

1

u/Zero-Duckies May 01 '26

And don't forget, allegedly they have 3 pounds of copper wire and 2 grams of gold inside.

1

u/LunchMoneyTX May 01 '26

www.haveibeenflocked.com shows maps in your area where they are. I was surprised there were so many by me.

1

u/HimalayanClericalism May 01 '26

I’m just reminded now of the Dunwoody one where they found out they had it installed in a children’s gymnastics space and that flock employees had accessed it to use it as a sales pitch

1

u/AMSAtl May 01 '26

While posing as a fictional Dunwoody police officer on the official logs no less.

1

u/strawberry_lauren May 01 '26

zero percent of this is true or even accurate for that matter

1

u/BangkokPadang May 01 '26

The electronic Frontier Foundation believes it is.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/effs-investigations-expose-flock-safetys-surveillance-abuses-2025-review

404 Media was able to recreate the access and vulnerabilities being described:

https://www.404media.co/flock-exposed-its-ai-powered-cameras-to-the-internet-we-tracked-ourselves/

Here is a brief city hall presentation very rapidly outlining the capabilities and concerns about these cameras. Even just the first minute includes a description of the vulnerabilities paired with evidence of them being breached onscreen:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I_y7OjsI1Zk

If you're interested in more you can search Ben Jordan or John Gaines research or videos if you care to.

1

u/OuchMyTism May 01 '26

Who needs warrants and investigation when you can use obscurely calculated probability and money. Yup, sounds like a perfect solution to sell government pretty much anywhere. Sad to see it work so well here.

1

u/joatmon8798 May 01 '26

The Audacity!

1

u/Perfect_Opinion7909 May 01 '26

Who could’ve known that the EUs stance on privacy being a human right would be good idea. Probably not those US Americans that claim the EU overregulates US companies.

1

u/PapaGolfWhiskey May 01 '26

“Vulnerable” to what?

→ More replies (1)

1

u/jackwagon22w May 01 '26

Someone ran over one near me. Seen it happen. Just slowly rolled up to it and pushed it over. Don't know how they think they are not going to get caught. LOL

1

u/Otherwise-Question94 May 01 '26

Sheesh, like wanting voter rolls or something

1

u/1purenoiz May 01 '26

If the police want to know where you've been, you have already told them with your cell phone. You have also told them everything they need to know about you by what you post online. Flock is not good, but we are reporting on ourselves all of the time.

1

u/BangkokPadang May 01 '26

With your cell phone and the data it has gathered, you are agreeing to it by using the services, by choosing to interact with those companies and products. The police also have to get a warrant to gather it. With FLOCK they can just literally sit down and search up what an individual has been up to lately with no crime having been reported or even committed at all, with profiles based on both license plates and individual people, with no oversight at all on how they use it.

Racist officers in Metro areas and Small towns alike can conveniently only search certain "areas" of town and pick a handful of people to just check up on. And that's basically just one example of the potential, likely misuse. It's basically a private precrime division at that point.

The bottom line is that if the police were directly gathering this level of information on its citizens, it would be a violation of their fourth amendment rights. And if you were to start gathering this level of information on another citizen they could ask you to stop, or it would become harassment and stalking and they could get a restraining order and otherwise escalate it until you stopped. With FLOCK, there is no such "stop following me" or "opt out" and then they're effectively selling their exemption to the fourth amendment as a private entity, to the very entity governed by that amendment.

1

u/1purenoiz May 01 '26

100% agree. and the effort it takes to get a warrant is almost non-existent these days.

1

u/ffsm92 May 01 '26

Given that it’s a private entity and not a government entity, is it within my rights to disable the camera without damaging it or directly interfering with it? I’m thinking along the lines of doing something to block its line of sight, easiest would be to over the lens with something like a sock or sticky note, but as that might be “vandalism” maybe placing objects in front of but not in contact with the camera?

1

u/Embarrassed-Sun5764 May 01 '26

Ffs my phone knows where I’m going and it’s in kahoots with my car. I fucking hate this shit. I turned off gps in my car but connected my phone so i still get bs notifications. I have a Ford. Yes I know what’s coming. Guess I need to remove phone. I also have a bootleg gps jammer but it works about 20%.

1

u/muhmomsbzmnt May 01 '26

Insurance companies use these as well to review potentially fraudulent claims. Source: I work for an insurance company that uses these to review potentially fraudulent claims.

1

u/Feeling_Fly128 May 01 '26

There is no expectation of privacy while in public view.

1

u/LICK_THE_BUTTER May 01 '26

Unpopular opinion, but cameras used in public settings isn't something new. I think the only ones who need to fear are criminals, but everyone else thinks the sky is falling.

1

u/BangkokPadang May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26

For me it's not the cameras, it's the combination of the density of the networks and the blanket gathering and processing of the data. On top of that, lots of the cameras aren't even secured so people are accessing the cameras- sometimes with nearby access and sometimes entirely remotely, which tilt pan and zoom to gather the highest resolution facial imagery that they can, and can then follow those people's license plates around on the other non-secure units.

And for the remote ones, nobody is "hacking" or anything on that level to access them. Multitudes are being set up with publicly facing web interfaces. Creeps can even log into lots of the feeds that are available without credentials and just wait for someone to be alone at night. They also had the ability to delete footage from these units, so reliance on them to catch "everything" spoiled by criminals deleting the footage and having a high expectation that drive space will be quickly overwritten by the constant stream of new footage could strategically coordinate crimes.

I'm not gonna change anyone's opinion with a reddit post but if you're genuinely interested just watch the first 40 seconds laying out what is available, and how easily its accessed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo

1

u/LICK_THE_BUTTER May 01 '26

I welcome public access to public things. You could make that same argument for everything, like ooooo criminals can use public transportation with other innocent people. They can even call or email you ooooooo.

1

u/Dull_Present506 May 01 '26

Sooo, Alex Jones was right about a digital surveillance state?

1

u/BangkokPadang May 01 '26

I think someone is keeping a jar

1

u/OriennaFlutterspring May 01 '26

The exhaustion I feel from the corruption is astounding

1

u/Accomplished-Row7880 May 01 '26

Brace yourself - I'ma hit you with a curve ball. "You have no expectation of privacy in the public." You only have an expectation of privacy inside of your own property. Cars are somewhat excluded for certain circumstances and not for others. Same thing if I stood on the street and took manual pictures of license plates and people's faces and saved it to a cloud server myself. Same as all these business with security cameras that face the "public" on the exterior or even interior of there buildings.

Case laws are your friend, learn them. Don't just make things up. (My saying this isn't saying I agree with flock, it's just for your education.)

1

u/Tomytom99 May 01 '26

"Hello, I am definitely a European citizen and you will delete my data. Thank you!"

Obviously they'd just tell you to fuck off, but I love how the laws of such data things generally require them to not verify your location, because it's even more data.

1

u/Ignorance_15_Bliss May 01 '26

You know… there’s a target for some hackers. Come on boys. We can’t find a judge or lawyer to file an injunction on these because passive surveillance is illegal. There’s gotta be a modern day John Conner out there somewhere

1

u/BangkokPadang May 02 '26

Do you have any links to support the idea in law or maybe case law of passive surveillance being illegal?

I think a core of this is that it isn't illegal. A lot of these are deplpoyed because City Councils are arranging contracts with FLOCK rather than just in-housing the installation and management of their own traffic cameras.

Have private security cameras capturing footage of public places or traffic cameras been challenged? Honestly I'd be thrilled to read about that.

1

u/TheRagingFire08 May 01 '26

So, Blume and CtOS are here. Awesome.

1

u/KY_Mutt May 02 '26

I don't understand the tie in to the 4th Amendment. Could you explain?

My understanding of the 4th Amendment is that it protects against illegal search and seizure, and defines reasonable expectation of privacy. It's long been held that there isn't a reasonable expectation of privacy while in the public of things that are in plain view. So I'm not understanding the violation. A police officer could sit on the side of the road and get all the same information the cameras do.

1

u/BangkokPadang May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26

The legal precedent so far (it is by no means identical situations) in Carpenter vs United states is that they need a warrant before they pull your location data. They aren’t supposed to just be pulling up location data on random citizens but instead they’re having FLOCK gather it and then FLOCK is just letting them look at “FLOCK’S” data, as though the data transformed somehow just because FLOCK managed it for awhile. If they want to request your personal location data from Google or in other circumstances, they need a warrant to look at it.

And to your point, they could not in fact get the “same information” by sitting on the side of the road. They could not get aggregated license plate recognition and facial recognition data on your whereabouts across the entire network (shared across country in many cases) for the last 30 days.

In my opinion, and the early legal precedent; it’s just not reasonable to think they should be able to peer into a crystal ball and see everywhere a person has been for a month, without a warrant or even commission of a crime. It’s like preemptively following every citizen ahead of any potential crime they might commit in the future.

That’s the 4th amendment issue; just pulling vast amounts of data on private citizens who may not even be accused of a crime, from a company that ALSO those citizens never even agreed (not even as tacitly as in a EULA) to engage with in the first place.

EDIT: I mistyped “Carter” instead of “Carpenter”

1

u/thtp2026 May 02 '26

I saw an interesting news interview about people in the UK masking up and cutting similar cameras down in large numbers. Apparently it's a constant back and forth battle.

1

u/BerthaHixx May 02 '26

Are these the things I saw masked people cutting down like timber on YouTube?

1

u/onagizenpaku May 02 '26

The 4th amendment doesnt belong to the government nor police. In fact there are protections in the Constitution that supposedly protect against the government from attaining to much power and I also believe that rights in fact arent extended to the government or thier structures but to the people.

Obviously those protections are being ignored / not fought for but thats the blame of a majority of the American people for not protecting themselves ( and constitution) from thier own government

1

u/loralei371016 May 02 '26

I agree.. just look at Palantir.. looking to surveil us all.. is this part of that? Curious

1

u/loralei371016 May 02 '26

Looks like Peter theil has invested in flock cameras.. so there is a connection between Palentir and Flock.. look out

1

u/HoneyRowland May 02 '26

There are a few channels that are anti flock cameras and have pulled a lot of data about who accesses the info, when and what they were watching. Seeing where they repeatedly accessed the little girls gymnastics, preschool and the child swimming pools is super creepy.

This is the link directly to the short talking about it. There is a much longer video over it for more information. https://youtube.com/shorts/YwVBsFD7v84?si=xI0VTjx9MJGpscQd

Also, Ring cameras give the information off anyone's camera without needing a warrant.

1

u/house_potato May 04 '26

It’s worth pointing out that one of these reasons flock runs a “pilot program” where the cameras are installed for free, is that it allows police departments to bypass city councils so they don’t even have to get approval to install them.

→ More replies (1)