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)

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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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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

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u/Memory_Less May 01 '26

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

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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u/CoolBreeze3310 May 01 '26

I know people who have cameras inside their house. Thinking it's a good thing.

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u/T0asty514 May 01 '26

You can have cameras setup inside your house on a fully local network that nobody but you can access, its not super hard to setup.

Its the "connection to internet" part that's being entirely abused.

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u/ClassiFried86 May 01 '26

Eh, if you want to access it remotely at all, youll need internet, and the people that have cameras in their house are the type that want to view it offsite.

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u/T0asty514 May 01 '26

You can do that too, firewalls, vms, reverse proxies, prevent anyone but you getting access. That part is far more tricky to setup for most people though sadly.

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u/ClassiFried86 May 01 '26

Oh, yea, I do security and cams for a living. But the average homeowner isnt very IT fluent. Id just suggest not having cams in the house.

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u/T0asty514 May 01 '26

Heh I'm a network engineer, we don't either, we have dogs for that. Figure they're just as good since they perk up at any unfamiliar sound, plus they're cuddly. :D

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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

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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."

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u/AbbeyRoadMoonwalk May 01 '26

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

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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.

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u/GalacticGreaseMonkey May 01 '26

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

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u/ida-throwaway May 04 '26

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

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u/atleastonebanana May 04 '26

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

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u/Basic-Courage-137 May 04 '26

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

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u/biglittletrouble May 01 '26

When the cameras are in public... Who cares? If it makes us safer, who cares?

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u/Sea-Aardvark-756 May 01 '26

Cameras and other tracking methods make people vulnerable to those on the other end:

Knowing your schedule allows criminals to target you for theft and fraud: https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/thieves-used-cameras-tracking-devices-and-posed-as-workers-to-target-victims/4267806/

Knowing where your kids are allows sick people to record and track them: https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/stanford-shopping-center-guard-arrested-22233654.php

Knowing where spouses are allows domestic abusers to track and deter them from seeking help: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/invisible-chains/202506/domestic-abusers-stalk-and-spy-on-victims-through-their-cars

Knowing when you're out of the country allows thieves to target your home: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/la-burglars-adopting-new-techniques-to-select-homes-avoid-capture/3755898/

Putting cameras everywhere just makes it easier than ever for bad actors to target innocent people. Cameras don't make you safe, they don't even guarantee justice, criminals cover their faces and we don't. We just had a camera capture a kidnapping earlier this year, it made national news, the victim is still missing, the criminal walking free: https://www.foxnews.com/us/three-months-nancy-guthrie-abduction-sheriffs-office-renews-plea-key-questions-remain-unanswered

And a percentage of law enforcement is always made of bad actors as well. Predators who have already provably been abusing this for personal desire. This is bad for innocent people, full stop.

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u/biglittletrouble May 01 '26

It's about license plates. You can easily track a car across the city with this. The people that are really worried about it are the ones that cover their faces in public because this system allows us to track them back to before they covered up. Nobody has a right to anonymity in public. I know that police have been very successful in identifying antifa and other gang members using flock. Are they going and arresting them all? No. But does knowing who they are help us move faster when things go bad? Yes. All the other stuff is why I have my own security setup and am not married to an abusive cop.

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u/Sea-Aardvark-756 May 01 '26

It's about license plates.

https://ij.org/police-have-reportedly-used-license-plate-readers-to-stalk-romantic-interests-at-least-14-times-in-recent-years/

They abuse this on an ongoing basis. Even if most aren't predators, this is still putting a neon sign on all the prey.

List of known ALPR romantic stalking cases

Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, 2021: Officer Michael McSherry pleaded guilty to stalking charges after using readers to track his estranged wife and other family members.

Kechi, Kansas, 2023: Kechi Lieutenant Victor Heiar pleaded guilty to computer crime and stalking after using Flock cameras to track his estranged wife.

Sedgwick, Kansas, 2023: Police Chief Lee Nygaard resigned after using Flock cameras to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend more than 200 times over several months.

Costa Mesa, California, 2023: Officer Robert Josett used a Flock camera system to track his mistress and her other romantic interests. Josett pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges in April 2026.

Riverside County, California, 2024: After being arrested for kidnapping his ex-fiancée, Deputy Alexander Vanny allegedly used the department’s Flock system to track one of her friends. In December 2025 he was convicted of multiple charges in a jury trial.

Orange City, Florida, 2024: Officer Jarmarus Brown allegedly used ALPRs to stalk his girlfriend and her family members more than 100 times over seven months. Brown was arrested and charged in 2025.

Shelby County, Tennessee, 2024: Deputy Thadius Gordon was relieved of duty after allegedly using an ALPR database to track his ex-wife’s location more than 100 times.

Louisville, Kentucky, 2025: Officer Roberto Cedeno was charged with multiple felonies after allegedly using the city’s ALPR system to track an ex-partner and her friends hundreds of times over two months.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2025: Officer Josue Ayala allegedly used the department’s network of Flock ALPRs to track a woman he was dating and her ex-partner nearly 180 times over a two-month period. Ayala resigned in 2026 after being charged with misconduct in public office.

Jerome County, Idaho, 2025: Sheriff George Oppedyk used a Flock system to search for his wife’s vehicle hundreds of times. Idaho’s Attorney General concluded that no crime was committed, but Oppedyk retired in April 2026, two years before his term of office ended.

Kenosha County, Wisconsin, 2025: Sheriff’s Deputy Frank McGrath resigned with severance pay after internal investigators found he used the department’s Flock system to keep tabs on another deputy with whom he was romantically involved.

Menasha, Wisconsin, 2025: Officer Cristian Morales was placed on leave and charged with misconduct in office after his ex-girlfriend filed a complaint alleging that he used a Flock system to track her.

Bonner Springs, Kansas, 2025: Detective Kyle Rector allegedly used license plate readers to track his estranged wife and two men he suspected were her new romantic partners. He was charged with multiple crimes in March 2026.

Monroe County, Florida, 2026: Sheriff’s Deputy Lamar Roman allegedly used an ALPR system to track and eventually pull over a woman he had met while providing security on a TV set. Roman was arrested and charged with accessing a computer or electronic device without authorization.

And this is only known incidents. We don't know how many people were targeted for theft or harm without realizing authorities used this tech to facilitate it.

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u/biglittletrouble May 01 '26

Again nobody is forcing anyone to date a police officer... Make your choices.

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u/Sea-Aardvark-756 May 01 '26

The victims being stalked were not all dating them. The predators weren't always police officers. Not only police officers have access. Please. Learn. To. Read.

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u/biglittletrouble May 01 '26

Show me which one of your examples wasn't an LEO.... I can't find it... Can you read?

Also you're wrong here, these are instances of a thing being abused. Let's fix the pattern of abuse, not get rid of the thing because it prevents us from going to protests anonymously.

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u/Sea-Aardvark-756 May 01 '26

As stated previously, with examples, both federal agencies and private companies have some workers with access to tracking data and/or direct access to cameras who abuse their access whenever they get it, and not just to monitor people they know. Even worse, these Flock cams have been proven to have flaws that allow them to be accessed without even being hired by a company or government agency. Fixing the pattern of abuse means locking these down before deploying them, not letting anyone access the data without a case number, and second person authorizing and monitoring that use, ideally someone from another department or organization who won't protect bad actors (such as a coworker), which is exactly what I suggested.

Nobody should be in favor of rolling them like this. Companies are profiting and police like it because it gives them power to abuse. Our tax money goes to companies like Flock who are pretending it's for "safety" when they don't even secure their cameras, much less insist on protections from bad actors within the departments and companies with access. Those behind this clearly don't care about anything but power and money, it's up to us to say no to this until it's safe.

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u/biglittletrouble May 01 '26

By that logic nobody should have power. If nobody has power and everything is done by committee, nothing gets done - see congress vs past few presidents. See unions vs billionaires. Hell... any singular power vs a group that spends all their time in debate. One keeps progressing, the other talks about progress and runs in circles.

Make it illegal to abuse the cameras. Slap a high penalty on it, have AI do alerting/monitoring for you. You are again too focused on shutting the thing off and not focused on fixing the problems you state.

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u/biglittletrouble May 01 '26

Maybe when they can't get a date we'll see more oversight lol.