I'm surprised the flock cameras aren't being disabled in a more subtle fashion.
All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint. Drone goes 'boop' on the camera lens, and the entire system is disabled until an expensive technician drives out with a ladder and cleans the lens at non-trivial expense.
A handful of enterprising activists could blind all the flock cameras in a region in a day or two, and without destroying them, which makes it less of an overtly criminal act.
Obviously not advocating this, just pointing out that flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack from activists.
The goal here by activists isn't to directly physically disarm every camera. Like with any act of protest, it's at least as much about the optics and influence of public opinion. Visibly destroying the units is more cathartic and spreads the message of displeasure better. Ultimately what needs to change is public perception and policy.
There has been a pattern in the UK of destroying speed cameras for the same reasons - including in some cases throwing an old car tire around the pole and setting it on fire.
Those are not "speed" cameras, they're to enforce daily payment (or fines) for driving in "Ultra Low Emissions Zone" areas in non-compliant vehicles. The area covers all 32 London Boroughs, around 1,500 km² (580 square miles), - affecting approximately 9 Million people.
One or two cameras getting bashed is basically a fart in the wind for flock, and I'd argue that it doesn't actually move the needle in any direction as far as public opinion goes. Those who dislike them don't need further convincing, those who support them are not going to have their opinion changed by property destruction (it might make them support surveillance more, in fact).
But hey, it's provocative I guess.
On the other hand flock losing their entire fleet is an existential problem for them, and for all the customers they're charging for the use of that fleet. Their BoD will want answers about why the officers of the company are harming shareholders with the way they're operating the business. Cities that have contracts with them may have grounds to terminate them, etc etc.
Why would I fly an expensive drone close to a camera, fumble about for a minute trying to get it painted like a renaissance artist, when I can get a paintball gun for much less?
Or use a powerful enough laser pointer. Bonus points if you use infrared since other humans can't see the beam and won't know what you're up to.
Though you either need a laser powerful enough to harm human eyes or lots of patience. Hong Kong protesters innovated a lot of these sort of resistance using lasers
Last I heard, putting a glock on a quadcopter was creating an "illegal weapon system" or similar fancy sounding BS but I wonder what the accusation would be for a paintball gun on a drone?
On the list of "laws you don't want to screw with", National Firearms Act violations are high on my list. Regardless of whether something is or isn't a violation, I'm certainly not interested in paying expensive lawyers to argue they're not.
You want to fly a multi-hundred dollar device loaded with radios that constantly broadcasts out a unique ID and possibly your FAA ID and use it for crime?
Or even better yet, get arrested halfway to trying to dip your drone into paint on a sidewalk?
In 1950s UK every country kid had a catapult in their pocket. Maybe that is what we should do. Give the kids catapults and tell them not to use them on Flock cameras. That is usually effective at making kids so stuff
Drones over 250 grams or for any drone operated commercially under part 107 registration is required. But, its easy to just build your own or desolder the id chip if you dont want it.
I wouldn’t suggest doing that, it will result in more regulation restricting drones. I joined before few workshops that included the government too, and there were discussions about requiring a whole license every time you modify the drone, not limited to the airframe, but the flight purpose and payload. So you can imagine in the future, modding or repurposing your drone could be a “federal crime” if you don’t go and re-license the drone every time you change the payload.
> A handful of enterprising activists could blind all the flock cameras in a region in a day or two, and without destroying them, which makes it less of an overtly criminal act
No, that would likely end in a RICO or terrorism case if it continued. Just because the cameras aren't destroyed doesn't mean CorpGov won't want to teach a lesson.
Because advocating things which are moral/ethical but illegal is often against the TOS :(
We need laws which are explicitly based on moral principles. Barring that, we should at least have laws which treat sufficiently large platforms as utilities and forbid them from performing censorship without due process.
You think we should give people being moderated on a forum due process? How would we ever run forums if every contentious and necessary moderation action could lead to a 5k-50k legal bill.
That would be detectable by the FAA and they would send the FBI after you, unless you used a junk toy drone but that would not cover much distance between charges.
What is the threshold for eye vs sensor damage and am I correct in assuming that duration is a factor. Basically less juice for a longer duration ruins a sensor but humans blink? For science.
Because destroying them sends a different message. People want them gone, not merely disabled. They're not joking or messing around with drones and tempera about it. Using a firearm to wreck the camera lens before tearing the whole thing down would be nice though.
The point of resistance is commonly to harm the counterparty in a fashion that the perpetrator finds morally acceptable such as to disincentivize them not convince them.
Vietnamese vs US Grunts not cute useless protestors holding signs that threaten to hold different signs longer.
You're both partially right, and that highlights the difference between nonviolent and violent resistance. You are incorrect in saying that a resistance is always trying to disincentivize the counterparty. Even in your example, the NVA didn't overrun their counterparty (the US military); they convinced enough of the US voting public (which is very much a separate entity from the US military) that "Peace with honor" was a viable, preferable option.
>All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint. Drone goes 'boop' on the camera lens, and the entire system is disabled until an expensive technician drives out with a ladder and cleans the lens at non-trivial expense
Americans don’t care enough
Too busy enjoying S&P500 near 7,000 and US$84,000/year median household income
> All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint
I (EDIT: hate) Flock Safety cameras. If someone did this in my town, I’d want them arrested.
They’re muddying the moral clarity of the anti-Flock messaging, the ultimate goal in any protest. And if they’re willing to damage that property, I’m not convinced they understand why they shouldn’t damage other property. (More confidently, I’m not convinced others believe they can tell the difference.)
Flock Safety messages on security. Undermining that pitch is helpful. Underwriting it with random acts of performative chaos plays into their appeal.
> flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack
We live in a free society, i.e. one with significant individual autonomy. We’re all always very vulnerable. That’s the social contract. (The fact that folks actually contemplating violent attacks tend to be idiots helps, too.)
Flock cameras are assisted suicide for dying neighborhoods. They don't prevent crime, they record crime. Cleaning up vacant lots, planting trees, street lighting, trash removal, and traffic calming like adding planters and crosswalks reduce crime.
You are hitting on the fundamental difference in political views.
Half of this country believes problems are systemic and can be fixed. The other half believes they are a natural consequence of culture, race, and invisible flying creatures that tempt you to do bad things.
The vast majority of crimes are committed by a small percentage of people. The real issue is prosecutors who refuse to incarcerate repeat offenders. But having video evidence is a powerful tool for a motivated prosecutor to actually take criminals off the streets
We spend $80 billion a year on incarceration in the US, and have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Your plan increases both. Do you honestly think that if we spend $160 billion or $240 billion a year and double or triple our incarcerated population that we'd solve crime?
Look at places and countries with low crime. They don't have the most Flock cameras, the most prisoners, or the most powerful surveillance evidence because while those may solve a crime, they don't solve crime as a whole.
You have to understand that the people who want mass incarceration/neo slavery are never going to want to stop locking people up.
Of course he thinks the incarceration rate is too low; people who express this opinion are at some level a justification for incarceration rates continuing to rise.
Who do you think those people are that are incarcerated in the USA?
I come across this rather frequently among people from sheltered backgrounds like those who graduated from mom and dad taking care of them, all the way through to Mega Corp/university taking care of them, and absolutely cannot fathom why everyone doesn’t just eat cake.
I have a working theory that this effect, whatever one wants to call it, of people being too abstracted from reality, is ultimately the source of collapse of all kinds of organizations of humans… including civilizations.
It is, for example also why America can have so many vile warmongering people, because not only do they not have to lead troops into battle, have their children drafted into the front lines, or pay for the invariable disaster and murder they perpetrated and orchestrated; but in the most grotesque way, they profit from it and immensely; usually also combining it with other types of fraud like “money printing”, i.e., counterfeiting, which they use to plunder the wealth they accumulated through murder, mayhem, and fraud.
Depends a lot on the city/state.
Check super blue cities like Seattle or San Francisco, and the people there complain that the justice system doesn't work as repeat offenders are let go, for one reason or another.
The big incarceration states are most likely deep red states.
The real problem with prosecutors is that they don't want to prosecute. When I was on the grand jury in my city a couple of years ago, there was a slow morning and the assistant DA said that there were about 4000 cases per year and that they brought 30 of those to trial. He didn't think anything of it, for him it was a story about how they loved trials because "they were so much fun". But if they were so much fun, why are less than 1% of cases going to trial?
Plea deals.
Plea deals subvert justice for both those innocent who are bullied into pleading out, and for those who are wickedly guilty and get a big discount on the penalty exacted. Plea deals give the system extra capacity for prosecution, encouraging the justice system to fill the excess capacity, while simultaneously giving an underfunded system that doesn't have enough capacity the appearance of being able to handle the load. Bad all around.
there exists evidence proving that a fraction of individuals commit the majority of violent crime. thus, incarcerating those particular individuals would inherently reduce the majority of violent crime. is something missing from this equation?
I agree. There needs to be a non racist president that just sweeps in and does a El Salvador type cleanup of the streets. I bet the 80%+ of normal black people in crime ridden cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, Memphis, Detroit, New Orleans would be in full support. Let’s be honest, young black gangsters are the main criminal element in these places. Trump can’t do this because he is a piece of shit with no integrity.
El Salvador doesn't have the type of Constitutional rights that America has. That type of sweep would not be legal.
And that doesn't even get into jurisdictional issues. The federal government doesn't have jurisdiction over local crimes that do not cross interstate boundaries.
If you're in the bay area, on Monday at 6:30 there's a mountain view city council meeting where flock is on the agenda. If this surveillance bothers you, show up!!
Id argue they run this site as a forum for tech discussions, because that alone gives them a huge boost to their image and name recognition, without any need for meddling.
flock safety were in one of y combinators incubator programs but to be fair, saying you want to make a camera company to improve public safety but then being used in a dystopian way... well it should have been foreseeable shouldn't it? Im conflicted in this, I love camera tech and its probably not going away any time soon, but wonder how it could be used responsibly for public safety only.
Good. Throw a monkey wrench into their gears at every opportunity you're comfortable with. Don't let them get away with tearing down our basic needs for privacy and safety. We don't have to give in to Big Tech and its surveillance for profit goals.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, a market is growing for stolen surveillance cameras. Just think how lovely: a technology created to restrict crime is actually feeding it.
Yeah right. Destroying cameras owned by a HOA in a wealthy area is one thing, destroying people's private cameras is another. A good way to get in a fight, though, if you're into that.
People always hated the cameras. It's just that now that people feel comfortable that the government won't move heaven and earth to come after them for daring to vandalize it's infrastructure they're finally acting up. But they wanted to all along.
Is funny reading this from the UK because this ship sailed here years ago, you just have to assume if you drive a car anywhere except small roads in the countryside you are potentially being tracked by ANPR.
Of course, actual serious criminals who are actively committing serious crimes just use fake plates so they aren't affected, it only really helps catch people who commit crimes on the spur of the moment (while also obviously eroding every "normal" person's privacy)
Big difference though is that in the UK these cameras are publically owned, and the data feeds into a publically owned ANPR database. Whereas Flock cameras are owned by flock and all the ANPR records are stored on their own infrastructure
> except small roads in the countryside you are potentially being tracked by ANPR.
They do put them specifically whereever those roads join major roads though. Meanwhile the crime stats in the UK make chilling reading, as the focus on replacing Police officers with cameras, replacing courts with... nothing has lead to many crimes skyrocketing, especially those that are not associated with driving a car.
Yep, I mean "proper" countryside - I grew up out in the villages (all little B roads and unclassified roads) and it's still like the Wild West out there really.
A lot of people still habitually drink drive (not getting completely smashed, but a few pints at a country pub then drive home) and realistically as long as you don't crash you could do that for decades and probably get away with it.
There's almost no cameras and also almost no actual police
There's almost no cameras and also almost no actual police
That is starting to change. Porch pirates incentivized a lot of people to invest in cameras and placing them in discrete locations. Some are getting clever making them look like owl nest boxes on poles, bird feeders and other benign boring objects.
We have (a relatively recent phenomenon) elected Police and Crime Commissioners. They are elected with a tiny turnout. Next election in your area see if a candidate is anti-surveillance and run a campaign to support them. 10,000 extra votes to any of the mainstream candidates will get them elected.
Another addition to this thread of things that will never happen.
I don’t believe Flock cameras are used anywhere in the UK?
Pretty much all public cctv cameras that are installed on the side of public roads, like Flock are in the US, are publically owned, either by Police forces, Local Councils or National highways.
This is cool and all but Ring is the vastly more important target.
I don't think we can pretend the definition of "public" didn't change, now that it means "something is likely recorded for all time and you have no control over where it goes and literally everyone in the world can see it."
It seems odd though. Don't you have the right to bear arms, with some idea that it is needed to prevent the government from exercising excessive powers over you, yet actually doing anything with those guns to protect yourself from tyranny is a crime?
I remember hearing once that the constitution, having been written by a bunch of insurrectionists, intended people to have the power to keep the government out of their business. It seems they have lost that?
> Don't you have the right to bear arms, with some idea that it is needed to prevent the government from exercising excessive powers over you, yet actually doing anything with those guns to protect yourself from tyranny is a crime?
Because when it comes to that, the government is a failed state and no one will be worried about what’s legal.
It’s not meant to be a means of legal recourse, it’s a last resort.
> In Chicago, where speed cameras are abundant, the camera program improperly gave out over $2.4 million in fines from 2013 to 2015. Using a random sample analysis, the Chicago Tribune estimated the number of bad tickets to be somewhere around 110,000. The erroneous fines were issued in areas without proper speed limit signs or during times when the cameras should have been turned off. (Cameras near parks and schools operate within a specific timeframe.) The Chicago Tribune found that over half the cameras in use were giving out faulty speeding tickets.
> Unsurprisingly, the misuse of speed cameras has also become a massive source of revenue for local government. In Chicago, 300 of the city's speed cameras would bring in about $15 million each year.
> In March, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lowered the speed limit threshold for speed cameras to trigger a citation. Cameras now trigger when a driver goes over the limit by 6 miles per hour, rather than 10 miles per hour, the previous threshold.
I think we need to make it easier for people to fight back against automatic tickets like this. The onus should be on the state not the individual. And individuals should still be entitled to their data
I personally wouldn't want police to have access to Flock's data unless they have a warrant to follow the movements of a specific individual. If private organizations and citizens had at-will access to this kind of data it would be worse than a panopticon. It'd be a prison where every inmate is under constant surveillance, not just by guards, but by other inmates. There would be criminals using this data to track down and harass judges. Burglers using it to find empty homes. Rapists using it to track down victims. You name it.
Surveillance systems are, normally, a trade-off between privacy and safety. You lose one but gain the other. The reason Flock cameras are being torn down now is because they take away privacy while simultaneously reducing safety.
Hmm, I think it was more the rise of streaming services which were more convenient and offered a better experience with less risk than illegally downloading music or movies.
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or you know... the rise of itunes/ipod at that exact time. present the public with an option that is not in a grey area and is not a massive inconvenience, and a large amount of them will happily go the legal route.
Its leaning that direction again, video streaming services are becoming a massive inconvenience, much like needing to buy a CD if you wanted 2 total songs off it. Doubt it will be as iconic of a moment in time as the limewire/napster era was, but who knows, im so bad at predicting the future i assumed nvidia was gonna be hard declining after the end of the crypto mining craze.
> sufficient to scare everybody back to honesty.
idk how you thought this would land here, but saying everybody was a rough choice of words.
I am unsure how you think this makes your point? thats from 2010. the end of that era. Perhaps you think this was the nail in the coffin? but itunes/ipods had been around for nearly 10 years at that point and a ton of the approachable programs such limewire napster etc, were becoming tougher to use, and it was a transition to torrents instead. in 2010 there was even spotify in the mix.
Regardless of all of that, stating that one person's lawsuit is why music piracy ended for EVERYONE is a massive massive stretch of the truth. piracy literally never ended, it just became less approachable, and the mainstream offerings became more what the public desired(CD sections are pretty dead in modern day).
I have similar and deep privacy concerns. But I also know that cameras have helped find criminals and assist crime victims. I don't want to let fugitives go without punishment. In fact, I must admit that cameras are a realistic choice given the current technology.
Flock Safety must be under public evaluation. Tech companies tend to hide technical specs, calling them trade secrets. But most internet security standards are public. What should be private is the encryption key. The measure to protect development effort is patents, which are public in the registry.
Why are tech specs relevant here? The problem with Flock is that once the data is collected, and once it's made accessible to law enforcement without any legal review, it's going to be used for solving heinous crimes, for keeping tabs on a vocal critic of the police commissioner, and for checking what the officer's ex-wife is up to.
If the cameras were installed and operated by the DHS or by the local PD, would that make you feel better? The data should not exist, or if it must, it shouldn't be accessible without court approval. The model you're proposing doesn't ensure that; in fact, it moves it closer to the parties most likely to misuse it.
This has nothing to do with the actual problem, which is Flock itself.
The fact that Flock controls all of the cameras, all of the data and said data is easily accessible means police and the state have access to information that they should only get with a warrant. A business having a camera storing video data that's completely local isn't an issue. A business having a camera which is connected to every other business that has a camera is.
Since when are warrants required for footage of people in public? Does a red light camera need a judge's warrant before it snaps a photos of a car running the light?
When it violates reasonable expectations of privacy. Being in public isn't a get out of jail free card. I mean, I could put up a camera right outside your house. It is 'public streets' monitoring your coming to your house is the sort of thing that does require a warrant.
There's no money to be made arresting criminals. Sure you get a few police contracts, and you need to show enough results to keep them.. but your moat is mostly how hard it is to even submit bids.
There's a lot more money to be made knowing that Accountant Mary's Lexis is looking kind of banged up and she could be sold on a new one.
The cameras aren't the problem, it's the companies behind them.
Everybody wants murderers and rapists in jail, nobody wants to 24/7 share their location and upload their every thoughts to palantir and other companies operated by degenerates like Thiel
I'm surprised the flock cameras aren't being disabled in a more subtle fashion.
All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint. Drone goes 'boop' on the camera lens, and the entire system is disabled until an expensive technician drives out with a ladder and cleans the lens at non-trivial expense.
A handful of enterprising activists could blind all the flock cameras in a region in a day or two, and without destroying them, which makes it less of an overtly criminal act.
Obviously not advocating this, just pointing out that flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack from activists.
The goal here by activists isn't to directly physically disarm every camera. Like with any act of protest, it's at least as much about the optics and influence of public opinion. Visibly destroying the units is more cathartic and spreads the message of displeasure better. Ultimately what needs to change is public perception and policy.
There has been a pattern in the UK of destroying speed cameras for the same reasons - including in some cases throwing an old car tire around the pole and setting it on fire.
Seems to be getting more popular [https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/antiulez-campaigners-v...].
Those are not "speed" cameras, they're to enforce daily payment (or fines) for driving in "Ultra Low Emissions Zone" areas in non-compliant vehicles. The area covers all 32 London Boroughs, around 1,500 km² (580 square miles), - affecting approximately 9 Million people.
If it's about sending a message, I think using a drone to defeat mass surveillance is quite evocative.
Yes. It will invoke the state to pass even more draconian laws surrounding useful technology.
You want to evoke the people and not the state.
Sure, but por que no los dos.
One or two cameras getting bashed is basically a fart in the wind for flock, and I'd argue that it doesn't actually move the needle in any direction as far as public opinion goes. Those who dislike them don't need further convincing, those who support them are not going to have their opinion changed by property destruction (it might make them support surveillance more, in fact).
But hey, it's provocative I guess.
On the other hand flock losing their entire fleet is an existential problem for them, and for all the customers they're charging for the use of that fleet. Their BoD will want answers about why the officers of the company are harming shareholders with the way they're operating the business. Cities that have contracts with them may have grounds to terminate them, etc etc.
That poor printer in Office Space…
It had it coming.
Why would I fly an expensive drone close to a camera, fumble about for a minute trying to get it painted like a renaissance artist, when I can get a paintball gun for much less?
Or use a powerful enough laser pointer. Bonus points if you use infrared since other humans can't see the beam and won't know what you're up to.
Though you either need a laser powerful enough to harm human eyes or lots of patience. Hong Kong protesters innovated a lot of these sort of resistance using lasers
> Bonus points if you use infrared since other humans can't see the beam
But how would you see it? IR goggles?
So you can do it without your image being captured by the camera?
The camera doesn't have a 360 field of vision, besides COVID masks aren't uncommon now.
Drones with a paintball gun attached?
Realistically that’s going to attract a lot of negative attention.
Mitch Altman should make a "Flock-B-Gone".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV-B-Gone
Palantir makes a nice Vandal-B-Gone product too. Works a treat for linking vandals to Flock camera crime incidents.
I don’t think they make commercial paintballs with hard to remove enamel or tempura paints.
True but maybe you can fill them yourself?
Why get an expensive paintball gun when you can get a mask and a can of paint and a mask for much less?
You also need a high ladder.
Last I heard, putting a glock on a quadcopter was creating an "illegal weapon system" or similar fancy sounding BS but I wonder what the accusation would be for a paintball gun on a drone?
Must less recoil too.
I don't think there's a drone in this proposal.
On the list of "laws you don't want to screw with", National Firearms Act violations are high on my list. Regardless of whether something is or isn't a violation, I'm certainly not interested in paying expensive lawyers to argue they're not.
You want to fly a multi-hundred dollar device loaded with radios that constantly broadcasts out a unique ID and possibly your FAA ID and use it for crime?
Or even better yet, get arrested halfway to trying to dip your drone into paint on a sidewalk?
Just throw a rock at the stupid thing.
In 1950s UK every country kid had a catapult in their pocket. Maybe that is what we should do. Give the kids catapults and tell them not to use them on Flock cameras. That is usually effective at making kids so stuff
I was thinking the same thing, much cheaper than a paintball gun, and less conspicuous.
A well made catapult in the right hands with a good aim is deadly.
You mean a slingshot?
(Or a trebuchet?)
Do all drones do this now? Is this required by law for manufacturers to implement?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_ID in the US (FAA) at least.
Had a friend who worked on designing systems to pick these signals up around airports
Drones over 250 grams or for any drone operated commercially under part 107 registration is required. But, its easy to just build your own or desolder the id chip if you dont want it.
>All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint.
This must be the most hi-tech solution to a low tech problem I've seen this week ;)
Somewhat related, I'm pretty sure there was a guy in China who did exactly this as protest against their surveillance. Seems effective.
I wouldn’t suggest doing that, it will result in more regulation restricting drones. I joined before few workshops that included the government too, and there were discussions about requiring a whole license every time you modify the drone, not limited to the airframe, but the flight purpose and payload. So you can imagine in the future, modding or repurposing your drone could be a “federal crime” if you don’t go and re-license the drone every time you change the payload.
> A handful of enterprising activists could blind all the flock cameras in a region in a day or two, and without destroying them, which makes it less of an overtly criminal act
No, that would likely end in a RICO or terrorism case if it continued. Just because the cameras aren't destroyed doesn't mean CorpGov won't want to teach a lesson.
Why wouldn’t you advocate it? A much easier way of doing this is using paintballs with the appropriate paint.
> Why wouldn’t you advocate it?
Because advocating things which are moral/ethical but illegal is often against the TOS :(
We need laws which are explicitly based on moral principles. Barring that, we should at least have laws which treat sufficiently large platforms as utilities and forbid them from performing censorship without due process.
You think we should give people being moderated on a forum due process? How would we ever run forums if every contentious and necessary moderation action could lead to a 5k-50k legal bill.
That would be detectable by the FAA and they would send the FBI after you, unless you used a junk toy drone but that would not cover much distance between charges.
In Minecraft it’s well known that lasers of even moderate power can ruin camera sensors. Only in Minecraft though.
Reflections are a concern regarding bystanders' eye safety, be safe.
What is the threshold for eye vs sensor damage and am I correct in assuming that duration is a factor. Basically less juice for a longer duration ruins a sensor but humans blink? For science.
LIDAR has been screwing up traffic cameras.
Because destroying them sends a different message. People want them gone, not merely disabled. They're not joking or messing around with drones and tempera about it. Using a firearm to wreck the camera lens before tearing the whole thing down would be nice though.
You can put a garbage bag over them if you don’t want to sawzall the pole and dispose of the hardware.
What you want is for this to become a Tiktok craze.
Shooting them with a paintball gun might be a lot simpler and has the same effect. Just needs paint that's a bit harder to remove
The should disable them all in an area and pile them on a platter in a public space. Like a CiCi's takeover.
Silly string is fast, cheap, easy, and fun when it freezes onto the camera in colder environments.
Maybe some spray foam?
Seems like it would produce a lot of litter on the ground before covering up the lens adequately.
Goring them is about sending a message.
> soaked with tempera paint Or even etching liquid, then you need to replace the lens.
“All it takes is a tiny drone”
Alright you buy one for me and I’ll consider it
The point of civil disobedience is to get arrested. That's what calls attention to the injustice of the thing being protested against.
The point of resistance is commonly to harm the counterparty in a fashion that the perpetrator finds morally acceptable such as to disincentivize them not convince them.
Vietnamese vs US Grunts not cute useless protestors holding signs that threaten to hold different signs longer.
You're both partially right, and that highlights the difference between nonviolent and violent resistance. You are incorrect in saying that a resistance is always trying to disincentivize the counterparty. Even in your example, the NVA didn't overrun their counterparty (the US military); they convinced enough of the US voting public (which is very much a separate entity from the US military) that "Peace with honor" was a viable, preferable option.
>All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint. Drone goes 'boop' on the camera lens, and the entire system is disabled until an expensive technician drives out with a ladder and cleans the lens at non-trivial expense
Americans don’t care enough
Too busy enjoying S&P500 near 7,000 and US$84,000/year median household income
> All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint
I (EDIT: hate) Flock Safety cameras. If someone did this in my town, I’d want them arrested.
They’re muddying the moral clarity of the anti-Flock messaging, the ultimate goal in any protest. And if they’re willing to damage that property, I’m not convinced they understand why they shouldn’t damage other property. (More confidently, I’m not convinced others believe they can tell the difference.)
Flock Safety messages on security. Undermining that pitch is helpful. Underwriting it with random acts of performative chaos plays into their appeal.
> flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack
We live in a free society, i.e. one with significant individual autonomy. We’re all always very vulnerable. That’s the social contract. (The fact that folks actually contemplating violent attacks tend to be idiots helps, too.)
Oh no! Not property damage! We can't possibly go that far!
> Not property damage! We can't possibly go that far!
Anyone can go that far. The question is if it’s smart. The answer is it’s not. Acting out one’s need for machismo on a good cause is just selfish.
If I were a Flock PR person, I’d be waiting for someone to pull a stunt like this. (Better: they shoot it.)
> I haste Flock Safety cameras.
Was this a typo? If not, what does "haste" mean in this context? (I'm not messing with you; I'm genuinely wondering.)
It was a typo. Fixed.
Oh please. Its tempera paint. It'll probably wash off in the next rain.
> Its tempera paint. It'll probably wash off in the next rain
If they do it right. If they don’t, it doesn’t. And between the action and the next rain, Flock Safety gets to message about vandalism.
Flock cameras are assisted suicide for dying neighborhoods. They don't prevent crime, they record crime. Cleaning up vacant lots, planting trees, street lighting, trash removal, and traffic calming like adding planters and crosswalks reduce crime.
You are hitting on the fundamental difference in political views.
Half of this country believes problems are systemic and can be fixed. The other half believes they are a natural consequence of culture, race, and invisible flying creatures that tempt you to do bad things.
> Half of this country believes problems are systemic and can be fixed.
So then why don't they vote for the party that offers systemic solutions? Oh, right, because neither corporate party offers such.
We can't elect systemic solutions when the election and education processes are systemically hijacked by capital interests.
The vast majority of crimes are committed by a small percentage of people. The real issue is prosecutors who refuse to incarcerate repeat offenders. But having video evidence is a powerful tool for a motivated prosecutor to actually take criminals off the streets
We spend $80 billion a year on incarceration in the US, and have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Your plan increases both. Do you honestly think that if we spend $160 billion or $240 billion a year and double or triple our incarcerated population that we'd solve crime?
Look at places and countries with low crime. They don't have the most Flock cameras, the most prisoners, or the most powerful surveillance evidence because while those may solve a crime, they don't solve crime as a whole.
I was at work the other day and we were talking about my mouse problem in my basement. My coworker asked how many mouse traps I had.
I said 74.
74?! That's way to many mouse traps. No one would ever need that many mouse traps.
But sir, I haven't told you how many mice I have.
The number of incarcerated individuals is not a relevant statistic if you're also not including the number of criminals there are.
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It's wild that you think the problem with the US is too low of an incarceration rate. 25% of all prisoners in the world are in the US
You have to understand that the people who want mass incarceration/neo slavery are never going to want to stop locking people up.
Of course he thinks the incarceration rate is too low; people who express this opinion are at some level a justification for incarceration rates continuing to rise.
It can be true (and likely is) that both:
a) much more time and effort should be focused on catching and stopping the most persistent repeat offenders (sometimes by locking them up); and
b) orders of magnitude too many Americans are currently in prison.
Or maybe repeat offenders can be put in jail, and other people could be let out. Just a random thought that occurred to me.
Who do you think those people are that are incarcerated in the USA?
I come across this rather frequently among people from sheltered backgrounds like those who graduated from mom and dad taking care of them, all the way through to Mega Corp/university taking care of them, and absolutely cannot fathom why everyone doesn’t just eat cake.
I have a working theory that this effect, whatever one wants to call it, of people being too abstracted from reality, is ultimately the source of collapse of all kinds of organizations of humans… including civilizations.
It is, for example also why America can have so many vile warmongering people, because not only do they not have to lead troops into battle, have their children drafted into the front lines, or pay for the invariable disaster and murder they perpetrated and orchestrated; but in the most grotesque way, they profit from it and immensely; usually also combining it with other types of fraud like “money printing”, i.e., counterfeiting, which they use to plunder the wealth they accumulated through murder, mayhem, and fraud.
You can get video evidence without sending it to a massive, opaque national database of non-suspects.
>"The real issue is prosecutors who refuse to incarcerate repeat offenders"
Sure. US prosecutors are so lenient that the US is the capital of incarceration
This is literally true and you think you are being snarky but just look ignorant.
Depends a lot on the city/state. Check super blue cities like Seattle or San Francisco, and the people there complain that the justice system doesn't work as repeat offenders are let go, for one reason or another.
The big incarceration states are most likely deep red states.
> The real issue is prosecutors who refuse to incarcerate repeat offenders.
Sometimes judges contribute as well.
The real problem with prosecutors is that they don't want to prosecute. When I was on the grand jury in my city a couple of years ago, there was a slow morning and the assistant DA said that there were about 4000 cases per year and that they brought 30 of those to trial. He didn't think anything of it, for him it was a story about how they loved trials because "they were so much fun". But if they were so much fun, why are less than 1% of cases going to trial?
Plea deals.
Plea deals subvert justice for both those innocent who are bullied into pleading out, and for those who are wickedly guilty and get a big discount on the penalty exacted. Plea deals give the system extra capacity for prosecution, encouraging the justice system to fill the excess capacity, while simultaneously giving an underfunded system that doesn't have enough capacity the appearance of being able to handle the load. Bad all around.
Any evidence of what you're saying about prosecutors and video surveillance?
there exists evidence proving that a fraction of individuals commit the majority of violent crime. thus, incarcerating those particular individuals would inherently reduce the majority of violent crime. is something missing from this equation?
I agree. There needs to be a non racist president that just sweeps in and does a El Salvador type cleanup of the streets. I bet the 80%+ of normal black people in crime ridden cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, Memphis, Detroit, New Orleans would be in full support. Let’s be honest, young black gangsters are the main criminal element in these places. Trump can’t do this because he is a piece of shit with no integrity.
El Salvador doesn't have the type of Constitutional rights that America has. That type of sweep would not be legal.
And that doesn't even get into jurisdictional issues. The federal government doesn't have jurisdiction over local crimes that do not cross interstate boundaries.
> There needs to be a non racist president that just sweeps in and does a El Salvador type cleanup of the streets.
Sounds like a certain, controversial federal law enforcement agency in the US
What is crime anymore when a felon is the president?
What is a felony anymore when the felony is "submitted bad paperwork"?
I love how we in Africa can finally see open corruption in US. You guys can't be high and mighty anymore. You are one of us now.
And what was the paperwork about you disingenuous asshole?
If you're in the bay area, on Monday at 6:30 there's a mountain view city council meeting where flock is on the agenda. If this surveillance bothers you, show up!!
Always trust anonymous accounts to tell you how to organize!
Do you have a link to the agenda? The only Monday meeting I see on the mountain view site is a Board of Library Trustees meeting
It’s listed on the agenda here as “Automated License Plate Reader Contract.” https://mountainview.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1352...
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What bothered you to make this comment?
Political apathy is not an aspiration. It's the reason we're in this mess.
Learned helplessness is contagious. So is hope.
Here's a list of Flock's investors:
- Andreessen Horowitz
- Greenoaks Capital
- Bedrock Capital
- Meritech Capital
- Matrix Partners
- Sands Capital
- Founders Fund
- Kleiner Perkins
- Tiger Global
- Y Combinator
Y Combinator's CEO promotes and praises them almost every day.
Pretty clear already that Ycombinator runs this very site as a community fueled decoy for their actual values (or complete lack thereof).
Id argue they run this site as a forum for tech discussions, because that alone gives them a huge boost to their image and name recognition, without any need for meddling.
Well, that’s what I meant for community-fueled decoy. We’re all, me included, our own unique bredd of useful idiots.
More like a crowd-sources think-tank and SEO magnet.
I am absolutely shocked
flock safety were in one of y combinators incubator programs but to be fair, saying you want to make a camera company to improve public safety but then being used in a dystopian way... well it should have been foreseeable shouldn't it? Im conflicted in this, I love camera tech and its probably not going away any time soon, but wonder how it could be used responsibly for public safety only.
They actively WANT the dystopian surveillance state.
Lot of money to be made for anyone who gets to pull the strings in such a state.
Source? That’s a substantial claim on a platform run by Y Combinator.
Good. Throw a monkey wrench into their gears at every opportunity you're comfortable with. Don't let them get away with tearing down our basic needs for privacy and safety. We don't have to give in to Big Tech and its surveillance for profit goals.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, a market is growing for stolen surveillance cameras. Just think how lovely: a technology created to restrict crime is actually feeding it.
Why is the market growing for stolen surveillance cameras in Brazil?
Because they're easy to steal.
That's honestly kinda beautiful. If they want more useful/advanced cameras, it just makes them more worth stealing
Who is buying?
This will start happening to Ring cameras as well soon if it's not already.
Yeah right. Destroying cameras owned by a HOA in a wealthy area is one thing, destroying people's private cameras is another. A good way to get in a fight, though, if you're into that.
Hello! You are being recor--hey what are you doing stop that, I'm afraid, Dave, I'm afraid...
People always hated the cameras. It's just that now that people feel comfortable that the government won't move heaven and earth to come after them for daring to vandalize it's infrastructure they're finally acting up. But they wanted to all along.
Is funny reading this from the UK because this ship sailed here years ago, you just have to assume if you drive a car anywhere except small roads in the countryside you are potentially being tracked by ANPR.
Of course, actual serious criminals who are actively committing serious crimes just use fake plates so they aren't affected, it only really helps catch people who commit crimes on the spur of the moment (while also obviously eroding every "normal" person's privacy)
Big difference though is that in the UK these cameras are publically owned, and the data feeds into a publically owned ANPR database. Whereas Flock cameras are owned by flock and all the ANPR records are stored on their own infrastructure
It also encourages councils to regularly change their road signs for side roads, to catch suddenly new trespassers in real time.
> except small roads in the countryside you are potentially being tracked by ANPR.
They do put them specifically whereever those roads join major roads though. Meanwhile the crime stats in the UK make chilling reading, as the focus on replacing Police officers with cameras, replacing courts with... nothing has lead to many crimes skyrocketing, especially those that are not associated with driving a car.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...
Yep, I mean "proper" countryside - I grew up out in the villages (all little B roads and unclassified roads) and it's still like the Wild West out there really.
A lot of people still habitually drink drive (not getting completely smashed, but a few pints at a country pub then drive home) and realistically as long as you don't crash you could do that for decades and probably get away with it.
There's almost no cameras and also almost no actual police
There's almost no cameras and also almost no actual police
That is starting to change. Porch pirates incentivized a lot of people to invest in cameras and placing them in discrete locations. Some are getting clever making them look like owl nest boxes on poles, bird feeders and other benign boring objects.
In the UK these cameras are everywhere.
We have (a relatively recent phenomenon) elected Police and Crime Commissioners. They are elected with a tiny turnout. Next election in your area see if a candidate is anti-surveillance and run a campaign to support them. 10,000 extra votes to any of the mainstream candidates will get them elected.
Another addition to this thread of things that will never happen.
I don’t believe Flock cameras are used anywhere in the UK?
Pretty much all public cctv cameras that are installed on the side of public roads, like Flock are in the US, are publically owned, either by Police forces, Local Councils or National highways.
PCCs are being scrapped and their role reverted to national government
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93d4dd3l3lo
Party because people haven’t got a clue what they do, partly as they have very little power, and party as it’s just a popularity vote on the rosette.
Personally I’m more worried about ring door bells, but I’ve spent years being told I’m paranoid.
> In the UK these cameras are everywhere.
We don’t have as many (per capita) as the US.
Pales in comparison to the disgruntlement around the ultra low emission zone around London https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz7y2xyxg7vo
> The explosion damaged a van opposite and blew out the tyre of a car as well as damaging a wall, front porch, shed and a Wendy house.
> Shrapnel also shot through a passing car into a passenger seat, while another piece of metal damaged the window frame of a child's bedroom.
Wtf. That was a “homemade” bomb to bring down one camera.
This is cool and all but Ring is the vastly more important target.
I don't think we can pretend the definition of "public" didn't change, now that it means "something is likely recorded for all time and you have no control over where it goes and literally everyone in the world can see it."
False dichotomy. Both are bad.
In US law, if the camera is doing something unconstitutional, is damaging it a crime? Genuine question.
Almost certainly. Random people are not the legal arbiters of what’s unconstitutional.
I can’t say I disagree with what they’re doing, but it’s absolutely vigilante justice, not legal.
It seems odd though. Don't you have the right to bear arms, with some idea that it is needed to prevent the government from exercising excessive powers over you, yet actually doing anything with those guns to protect yourself from tyranny is a crime?
I remember hearing once that the constitution, having been written by a bunch of insurrectionists, intended people to have the power to keep the government out of their business. It seems they have lost that?
> Don't you have the right to bear arms, with some idea that it is needed to prevent the government from exercising excessive powers over you, yet actually doing anything with those guns to protect yourself from tyranny is a crime?
Because when it comes to that, the government is a failed state and no one will be worried about what’s legal.
It’s not meant to be a means of legal recourse, it’s a last resort.
Next they can work on the Adhan speakers
Wait til they hear about Obvio https://www.obvio.ai/
Ultra-based. Fuck these creepy things and anyone who installs them.
Speed cameras next. Just another privacy violating device that is also a revenue source for irresponsible local leaders.
Hmm your comment made me curious so I looked into it. I guess the error rates are so incredibly high it seems likely they aren't "errors" at all.
https://reason.com/2022/02/03/unreliable-speed-cameras-line-...
> In Chicago, where speed cameras are abundant, the camera program improperly gave out over $2.4 million in fines from 2013 to 2015. Using a random sample analysis, the Chicago Tribune estimated the number of bad tickets to be somewhere around 110,000. The erroneous fines were issued in areas without proper speed limit signs or during times when the cameras should have been turned off. (Cameras near parks and schools operate within a specific timeframe.) The Chicago Tribune found that over half the cameras in use were giving out faulty speeding tickets.
> Unsurprisingly, the misuse of speed cameras has also become a massive source of revenue for local government. In Chicago, 300 of the city's speed cameras would bring in about $15 million each year.
> In March, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lowered the speed limit threshold for speed cameras to trigger a citation. Cameras now trigger when a driver goes over the limit by 6 miles per hour, rather than 10 miles per hour, the previous threshold.
I think we need to make it easier for people to fight back against automatic tickets like this. The onus should be on the state not the individual. And individuals should still be entitled to their data
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I personally wouldn't want police to have access to Flock's data unless they have a warrant to follow the movements of a specific individual. If private organizations and citizens had at-will access to this kind of data it would be worse than a panopticon. It'd be a prison where every inmate is under constant surveillance, not just by guards, but by other inmates. There would be criminals using this data to track down and harass judges. Burglers using it to find empty homes. Rapists using it to track down victims. You name it.
Surveillance systems are, normally, a trade-off between privacy and safety. You lose one but gain the other. The reason Flock cameras are being torn down now is because they take away privacy while simultaneously reducing safety.
So it's ok for a privately held company to have this data but not the police without a warrant?
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Hmm, I think it was more the rise of streaming services which were more convenient and offered a better experience with less risk than illegally downloading music or movies.
That's not remotely true.
No it definitely happened. There is famously no copyright infringement on the internet now.
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or you know... the rise of itunes/ipod at that exact time. present the public with an option that is not in a grey area and is not a massive inconvenience, and a large amount of them will happily go the legal route.
Its leaning that direction again, video streaming services are becoming a massive inconvenience, much like needing to buy a CD if you wanted 2 total songs off it. Doubt it will be as iconic of a moment in time as the limewire/napster era was, but who knows, im so bad at predicting the future i assumed nvidia was gonna be hard declining after the end of the crypto mining craze.
> sufficient to scare everybody back to honesty.
idk how you thought this would land here, but saying everybody was a rough choice of words.
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I am unsure how you think this makes your point? thats from 2010. the end of that era. Perhaps you think this was the nail in the coffin? but itunes/ipods had been around for nearly 10 years at that point and a ton of the approachable programs such limewire napster etc, were becoming tougher to use, and it was a transition to torrents instead. in 2010 there was even spotify in the mix.
Regardless of all of that, stating that one person's lawsuit is why music piracy ended for EVERYONE is a massive massive stretch of the truth. piracy literally never ended, it just became less approachable, and the mainstream offerings became more what the public desired(CD sections are pretty dead in modern day).
I have similar and deep privacy concerns. But I also know that cameras have helped find criminals and assist crime victims. I don't want to let fugitives go without punishment. In fact, I must admit that cameras are a realistic choice given the current technology.
Flock Safety must be under public evaluation. Tech companies tend to hide technical specs, calling them trade secrets. But most internet security standards are public. What should be private is the encryption key. The measure to protect development effort is patents, which are public in the registry.
Why are tech specs relevant here? The problem with Flock is that once the data is collected, and once it's made accessible to law enforcement without any legal review, it's going to be used for solving heinous crimes, for keeping tabs on a vocal critic of the police commissioner, and for checking what the officer's ex-wife is up to.
If the cameras were installed and operated by the DHS or by the local PD, would that make you feel better? The data should not exist, or if it must, it shouldn't be accessible without court approval. The model you're proposing doesn't ensure that; in fact, it moves it closer to the parties most likely to misuse it.
> I don't want to let fugitives go without punishment.
There is a famous quote about this that needs to be updated for the modern age.
"I'd rather let ten fugitives go unsurveilled, than to surveil one innocent person."
This has nothing to do with the actual problem, which is Flock itself.
The fact that Flock controls all of the cameras, all of the data and said data is easily accessible means police and the state have access to information that they should only get with a warrant. A business having a camera storing video data that's completely local isn't an issue. A business having a camera which is connected to every other business that has a camera is.
Since when are warrants required for footage of people in public? Does a red light camera need a judge's warrant before it snaps a photos of a car running the light?
When it violates reasonable expectations of privacy. Being in public isn't a get out of jail free card. I mean, I could put up a camera right outside your house. It is 'public streets' monitoring your coming to your house is the sort of thing that does require a warrant.
Follow the money.
There's no money to be made arresting criminals. Sure you get a few police contracts, and you need to show enough results to keep them.. but your moat is mostly how hard it is to even submit bids.
There's a lot more money to be made knowing that Accountant Mary's Lexis is looking kind of banged up and she could be sold on a new one.
The cameras aren't the problem, it's the companies behind them.
Everybody wants murderers and rapists in jail, nobody wants to 24/7 share their location and upload their every thoughts to palantir and other companies operated by degenerates like Thiel
> 24/7 share their location and upload their every thoughts to palantir and other companies operated by degenerates like Thiel
It's so funny though that the majority of all people are doing exactly this, 24/7.
A significant number of people do not seem to want copper thieves, porch pirates, and organized retail thieves in jail.
If it requires constant public surveillance to catch them then yeah they can stay out of jail.
Was porch piracy, copper theft and shoplifting impossible to catch pre-flock?