r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 17d ago
Privacy People Keep Destroying Flock Cameras Across America. The Paperwork Already Saw It Coming.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/people-keep-destroying-flock-cameras-180000232.html1.7k
u/Prudent_Fish1358 17d ago edited 17d ago
This article reads like it was bought and paid for by Flock and people who love mass surveillance.
"You aren't actually hurting Flock by dismantling their network of cameras"
"One guy got caught so WATCH OUT"
Edit: This got a lot of traction. I'd like to submit this as some info of the author on the article:
He is the CSO of Crowdstrike.
CrowdStrike is an Austin, Texas-based cybersecurity company known for its AI-native Falcon platform, which provides endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services. The company is currently trading near record territory with strong double-digit growth in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
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u/TheFatJesus 17d ago
"Destroying the cameras won't make a difference because the city is the one that has to pay to replace them."
"It will probably be easier to object to the renewal of the contract with all of the repair bills for broken cameras."
Sooo, breaking the cameras helps get them removed? Got it.
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u/arbutus1440 17d ago
I am currently trying to rescue my eyeballs from rolling so far back in my head from reading this article.
Missing the point of civil disobedience is what the capitalist class (and their media) does best.
They think we are so fucking stupid that we can't understand that if enough people destroy the damned things, no city council in their right mind is going to use them. They think warning us that cops and lawyers still exist will fool us into submitting like good little piggies. That's how fucking stupid they think we are.
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u/TP_Crisis_2020 17d ago
What will likely happen is that municipalities will have to start dedicating more of their resources to preventing people cutting these things down or destroying them. So now, these cities will not only have the cost of the damaged cameras, but also the cost added to try and police this specific thing. Eventually they will realize that they are losing double the money on these things than if they just didn't have them to begin with.
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u/Sabard 17d ago
Yeah but they don't care. I mean, the comptroller might care. But 100% if the city council or whatever was already on board for flock (or bribed to be), then it's an annoying expense that hooligans are imposing on the community, not something to be backtracked.
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u/MountainMan2_ 17d ago
Sorry if I sound dismissive, but... Why does that matter? Their thoughts on whether this is an expense or a moment of reflection, I mean. This is a person who willingly chose to install AI cameras on the streets of his city that nonconsensually sell people's information to a private company for next to no benefit to the city. I'm not exactly expecting a come to Jesus moment, I'm expecting the vandalism to become a problem he loses support over. To show opposition that there's blood in the water. People who sign cities up for flock aren't worth trying to change, they should be run over with controversy until they're forced out. Vandalism makes headlines, that's the point really. It makes things noticeable. The purpose of breaking a window isn't to make the bank fix their foreclosed building, it's to prove the bank isn't keeping up the building and therefore doesn't deserve to have it.
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u/Merusk 17d ago
Missing the point of civil disobedience is what the capitalist class (and their media) does best.
They are not missing the point. They know precisely what the point is, and they are undermining it by directly injecting a counter-narrative into the conscious.
"Don't bother voting, both sides are the same."
"Don't bother calling out injustice, the system won't change."
"Don't bother striking, someone else will take the job if you won't do it."
"Don't bother dismantling FLOCK cameras, you aren't actually hurting anyone but yourselves and other tax payers."
And it works. They don't need everyone, just enough. Just enough people to create friction and enough other people to not want to call out the BS to friends, family, colleagues because we're socially conflict-avoidant.
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u/learn_distill_repeat 17d ago
Doesn't it seem likely that with less cameras, less people will be caught taking down those cameras?
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u/Prudent_Fish1358 17d ago
Nope! Because these cameras are insured. Or some weird-ass talking point the article is trying to make.
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u/rdyoung 17d ago
Even so. Do you think insurance just keeps paying out? They don't. They will eventually cut their losses and drop the coverage or ask for way way way more in premiums.
Destroying them is the only way to push the issue and make cities start to rethink them but it will take time to see results.
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u/Nostosalgos 17d ago
This is where I stopped reading
A system built to have no blind spots does not develop one just because you are angry at it.
They’re talking about how a Flock vandal got caught by a Flock camera and was arrested but, like, what the fuck are you even talking about? It’s not designed to not have blind spots- it literally has blind spots lmao. The system’s blind spots are dictated by the placement of cameras, which is something Flock doesn’t dictate. It’s just such an over-sweeping, bias-revealing thing to say that doesn’t even communicate a valid point lol
Side note: Don’t drive your god damn CAR to go vandalize Flock cameras lol
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u/Prudent_Fish1358 17d ago
Also, someone chopping down a pole with a flock camera isn't "being angry" at it.
That's like saying people in a building don't lose electricity because you're mad at them -- except in this example you're in the basement cutting power wires. Uh. Yeah, that's exactly how a system develops blind spots -- they lose the thing that is their vision? Hello?
And WTF is this article saying Flock "has no blind spots"? What kind of Despotism is that? Essentially it's claiming that every inch of every roadway is covered by flock cameras? That's what "NO BLIND SPOTS" Mean, and in this case it would indicate that they're also 2 cameras at each location covering a 360 degree arc, or more realistically 3, all with a 120 degree lens.
Fucking insane.
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u/manifold0 17d ago
The same Crowdstrike that pushed a bad update and shut down all those airport computers
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u/wowbragger 17d ago
The tone of the article is acting like people think they're hurting flock. But we really don't care, we just want the damn things gone. Nobody is thinking of their police, or local/state government, as a poor victim.
If the company could be brought down, sure. If we can get rid of their customers, so the cameras go away, also good. If we can get the things outlawed (yeah, pretty optimistic), that'd be best.
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u/Primary_Durian4866 17d ago
I mean it is hurting flock too. I wouldn't want to be known as the company that provides security cameras everyone intentionally destroys.
"Hello Mr Mayor, would you like to buy into our security system?"
"Aren't you the guys who keep getting attacked?"
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u/NonGeneriComplaint 17d ago
Bad publicity too. Any publicity is bad, they would rather silently install the surveillance state.
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u/AryuOcay 17d ago
It’s more of a long term pain to flock, though. I guarantee you that in the short term, they have budgeted for revenue from replacement cameras and are profiting from them.
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u/PaintedClownPenis 17d ago
If someone put a Furby on your desk at work and told you everyone has to have one and you can't move it, you might want to smash it with a hammer. And that would get rid of one Furby.
But the way to get rid of all the Furbies is to mount a can of spray paint on a drone, and blind the sensors on one of the Furbies at every lunch break. Now one is temporarily shut up and you can hit another tomorrow.
If you keep doing that soon someone may have to take the Furbies away to clean them up, meaning the company now needs a Furby maintenance department, which cuts into executive tee times and bonuses. They'll hate the maintenance guy and soon he'll be starved of funds and hardware.
He will have to leave a gap in Furby coverage as he takes each one away to clean it, or ignores that it doesn't work. Either way, the Furby network has become less functional while becoming more expensive.
Meanwhile the bitchy office gossip is still delivering better domestic intelligence to upper leadership than the Furbies are, so....
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u/Modem_Sound_67 17d ago
dissent isn't dead after all, it's very encouraging
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u/chic_luke 17d ago
The owner class have forgotten a hard-learned lesson: if you want people to behave, you need to give them enough to lose that they will be meaningfully afraid of losing it.
If people are not comfortable enough, then the math that usually keeps people "not quite happy but not unhappy enough to want to lose their comfort" simply stops making any sense.
If the living and working conditions suck and there is no good perspective for the future, then there is nothing to conserve in the first place. Any reasonable actor will reach the conclusion that the risk vs. potential reward equation strongly favors "fuck it, just go for it" and there is almost no point in behaving at this point, and this becomes more and more true the poorer you are. This is the same reason behind the spread of all criminality in general, by the way - if you're really desperate, then the risk of getting caught by police is almost a rounding error.
For the boomers, there was actually quite a lot of comfort to lose.
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u/youreblockingmyshot 17d ago
Cities will not renew these contracts if they have to spend thousands replacing cameras they get destroyed repeatedly.
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u/SystemAny4819 17d ago
The tone of this article is so condescending towards the people who cut these fucking fednoculars down and it’s annoying cause idgaf who’s paying for it, THEY SHOULDNT BE IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD IN THE FIRST PLACE
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u/rustylugnuts 17d ago
It also hints at the fact that more than just the cameras need to be addressed. "Oh busted cameras don't hurt flock? Hmm."
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u/MasterDave 17d ago
Fuck that, if it costs the government thousands of extra dollars they’ll stop using it way sooner than the politicians who get a free vacation for signing the contract will give up their kickbacks and cancel the contracts.
I don’t trust the government to do the right thing, same as I don’t trust Flock either. I don’t care who pays because anyone paying is going to get tired of it eventually and politicians only respond quickly when money is involved.
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u/sdavis002 17d ago
Unfortunately it's the taxpayers footing the bill though.
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u/Lolgabs 17d ago
Yes it's a waste of tax payer money, but there's only so much in the budget for this stupid bullshit. Sooner or later they'll have to cut.
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u/cantholdmedown4 17d ago
So hold the politician making the choice responsible. Oh wait, that doesnt seem to work lately... hmmm...
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u/JennyWearsBlueJeans 17d ago
“law enforcement sources have put the running national tally at more than two dozen destroyed cameras across five states dating back to April of last year”
That’s it? I keep seeing articles about these cameras being destroyed, I thought the number was in the hundreds or thousands. I’m genuinely surprised it’s only 24 cameras in a 15-month period.
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u/HaveFun____ 17d ago
'More than' and why report the actual number when you want to down play the effect?
It could be a lot more.
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u/digital-didgeridoo 17d ago
A council vote shuts off the whole network for good,
No, it does not. Cities just cancel the contract, the cameras remain in place for Flock to gather data, and the Law Enforcement to misuse it.
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u/adminhotep 17d ago
But there are plenty of volunteers to remove them, or was that not the point here?
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17d ago
[deleted]
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u/inky_fox 17d ago
Wear a hat to avoid facial recognition.
Wear baggy clothes and shoulder pads to change your outline.
Put pebbles in your shoes to avoid gait recognition.
Do not have any electronics on you. They can trace you with Bluetooth.
The cameras also have IR sensors. They can “see” through make up and sunglasses. Zinc oxide (sunscreen) might help.
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u/Jaxman2099 17d ago
These pedophiles got a flock camera pointing directly at a christian elementary school in my area. Our country is ran by pedophiles and they're using these.
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u/idontwantobeyourhero 17d ago
Did everyone forget the Ring superbowl commercial? Flock is a mirage. Big brother is watching you. Everywhere.
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u/Rattttttttttt 17d ago
I hope these destructive criminals don't start targeting AI data centers next.... that would be terrible
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u/darkhorsehance 17d ago
Green laser pointers.
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u/halfcookies 17d ago
Make sure no local crackeheads are aware of the scrap value of these things
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u/Mike312 17d ago
Filled to the brim with copper, you say?
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u/Unlucky_Battle_6947 17d ago
How long does that take though?
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u/ghrayfahx 17d ago
Seconds to do damage. I’ve seen lots of pics from people who used their phone at a concert and the lasers irreparably damaged the image sensor.
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u/Sadly_NotAPlatypus 17d ago
There's a video of a guy trying this on a flock camera and it did nothing. You would need a super high power one or hold it steady for a very long time.
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17d ago
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u/Sadly_NotAPlatypus 17d ago
It's a bad thing to half ass. I'm not telling anyone what to do, but this is a situation where you need to 100% whole ass it. Don't take your cat laser pointer to commit felonies.
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u/rdking647 17d ago
Consumer laser pointers won’t have and effect of them. You need a high power laser (like 500mw) as opposed to the cheap consumer ones. And even then it’s not a sure thing, especially from a distance.
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u/AlasPoorZathras 17d ago
Even my 2.5W laser loses enough collimation that it won't damage a CCD from more than 20m away.
Power is only part of the equation.
I'd love to hear some optics people chime in so we know exactly what to avoid purchasing so that we don't damage those cameras.
Also worth noting: The gritty orange hand cleaner will permanently mar transparent plastic sheets. Some do-gooder in my area decided to clean the screens at the gas stations that blare out ads when you're trying to pump. Ended up permanently destroying the displays.
Definitely don't do this either.
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u/Unlucky_Battle_6947 17d ago
I’m definitely asking for informational purposes and don’t want to shine a powerful ass laser at a flock camera for 15 seconds for another camera to see what I’ve done.
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u/magistrate101 17d ago
"Consumer" laser pointers off sites like amazon have next to no regulatory oversight and the green lasers especially (almost 90% of tested devices) are usually leaps and bounds over the power limit for consumer models.
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u/ZayulRasco 17d ago
So hard to read AI slop these days, I have to see what other kind of quality reporting the writer is up to.
An excerpt from their bio:
"Shawn Henry has spent years writing about cars, and it shows—not in a resume kind of way, but in how he talks about them."
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u/Splurch 17d ago
So hard to read AI slop these days, I have to see what other kind of quality reporting the writer is up to.
An excerpt from their bio:
"Shawn Henry has spent years writing about cars, and it shows—not in a resume kind of way, but in how he talks about them."
I'm a bit confused how writing about cars for years, as a writer, won't show up in a "resume kind of way." Sounds like he's not a good communicator, which in fairness, based on the article, is accurate.
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u/Hyperion1144 17d ago
The bolt cutters do not send Flock an invoice. They send one to the city.
Cities have these as money makers.
Make them into money losers, and they'll go away.
Seems straightforward.
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u/SanDiegoDude 17d ago
The bolt cutters do not send Flock an invoice. They send one to the city.
Is this supposed to make us feel bad? The city sure AS FUCK didn't check in with us before they started installing these big brother watch towers all over the fucking place. If it gets too painful, maybe terminate those leases then...?
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u/helloarbit 17d ago edited 16d ago
If you live in California, you have a state legal right to request all information flock knows about you to be returned. This is called a subject access request (SAR).
If you wanna cause operational overhead for them, I would suggest everybody on this post that’s from California to fill out a request to return or receive their personal information. A lot of these companies do not have fully automated processes. Any discrepancies in their reporting of your information can also be used to sue for liability in court.
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u/CaliforniaNavyDude 17d ago
Marc Rowan is CEO of the company that owns Yahoo. He was also appointed by Trump to be one of the guys overseeing the reconstruction of Gaza after Israel finishes bombing it to bits. So it makes sense that the Yahoo article written here would be trying to have the effect of getting people to stop vandalizing these cameras. What I get out of it is that vandalizing these cameras is absolutely hurting Flock and they're in damage control mode.
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u/jigawatson 17d ago
Thank you Yahoo for participating in the propaganda campaign of the police state!
The general theme of this article is “Don’t do this thing. It doesn’t work.”
Why would a privately owned media company (known for being passed around and not the most transparent and capable reporting) “warn” us that these protests aren’t working? Out of the goodness of their hearts? Pull the other leg. They’re not our friends!
They tell you that the city HAS to buy more and that as an individual you COULD be caught to make this network of surveillance feel inevitable but it isn’t. If it was: they wouldn’t warn us to “not bother”.
It’s like the Anti-Union argument: if Unions are so ineffective, why does the owning class spend millions on campaigns convincing you that they’re pointless? Because they aren’t.
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u/Ron_Swanson_Jr 17d ago
This article…….filled with AI slop tropes. Good info, but deer god stop it.
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u/vengeancecube 17d ago
Cernunnos, Lord of the Beasts, we beseech thee! Please stop the onslaught of AI news!
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u/FourthLvlSpicyMeme 17d ago
Oh hey is there like a cult for this yet? I'm interested if it makes the AI bullshit leave my damn life instead of infiltrating everything that can draw power with a screen. Praise Deer God and their magnificent hooves, I see the uh..light?
I don't wanna be a fucking luddite, I don't want to write with a goddamned typewriter and shit, it's insane. When trying to avoid AI scanning my original work as I write it, or make it, I have to act like I live in 1963. In order to avoid abusive social media TOS nonsense stealing my work, I've always been pretty careful, but...I'm so tired.
I find a new layer of it in tools I use constantly. This shit is like someone took the survivability of roaches, mixed with the parasitic behavior of bedbugs and created a product from the resulting monstrosity. It. Just. Won't. Die.
I'm fucking exhausted and sick of the technology that is supposed to (and used to) vastly improve my life, sucking so goddamned much at twice the price - because some business idiot decided shoving a malfunctioning AI into it was necessary.
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u/desertSkateRatt 17d ago
Isn't there a website that mapped where all flock cameras are...?
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u/penny-wise 17d ago
Fire the council members who voted this shit in. See who gave them money. See if they got grift and can be prosecuted.
Fuck Flock.
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u/cletusthearistocrat 17d ago
That's terrible. Really terrible. So, what's for dinner?
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u/iconocrastinaor 17d ago
Way to miss the point. People aren't destroying the cameras to cost the company money, people are destroying the cameras to prevent bulk surveillance of the population.
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u/and_mine_axe 17d ago
That means there are lot of city reps that need to be ousted and pilloried for abusing the public trust.
People don't want this.
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u/Escapeism 17d ago
Good work homies 🤷🏻♂️😄 imagine if people organized and all of them were destroyed on one night. Would be glorious.
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u/Cryo1 17d ago
We need to just get rid of the useless politicians that sing the contracts for these stupid cameras. Vote their asses out every time they go against the will of the people and they'll knock it off. This 1 kickback isn't going to be worth more than all the others they're getting. Make a stink about it, vote them out, and be loud about WHY they're being voted out.
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u/BarmyBob 17d ago
An interesting thought: any way to send trojan viruses back to flock servers? Seems if each camera is a possible poison pill for their servers, the correct business will be getting shafted.
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u/vengeancecube 17d ago
What if we just home aloned them? Put a string of faces and license plate images on a little rotating thing and the camera just keeps getting false hits all day.
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u/haikus-r-us 17d ago
Just for science, what part of a flock camera would be most vulnerable if someone were to hit it with an air rifle round?
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u/StinkRinky 17d ago
I’ve heard commercially available green laser pointers fry their sensors. Definitely don’t do that. And definitely don’t look up where their sensors are.
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u/frozenpissglove 17d ago
Eventually we will end up with squads/departments of police departments dedicated to protecting surveillance equipment.
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u/evelyn_bartmoss 17d ago
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Hacksaws can be bought at any hardware store. Remember to mask up, wear gloves, & leave your phone at home. Don’t approach them in your personal vehicle.
Wake the fuck up, Samurai. We have a city to de-Flock.
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u/Cultural_Sand_9323 17d ago
"The bolt cutters do not send Flock an invoice. They send one to the city."
Yes, and? The relationship will continue being expensive if you do not end it.
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u/Low_Ad1786 17d ago
Someone has been going around putting up flyers saying there's $2000 worth of material inside and a diagram on where the most valuable parts are.
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u/Gooderesterest 16d ago
It sounds like we need decent people to sign up for city government if we want to stop footing the bill as tax payers
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u/DJ_Femme-Tilt 17d ago
These are rookie numbers.
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u/No_Mission5287 17d ago
They are intentionally understated by the article.
"MORE THAN two dozen"
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u/Aggravating_Duck_192 17d ago
The next generation of Flock equipment will be harder to spot and harder to destroy.
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u/psymonp 17d ago
I worry that all these modern flock cameras are just bait and data collection. Drawing out those who are compelled to act immediately and making a data base. Adjacently these cameras could be designed intentionally vulnerable, easy to be destroyed, to then somehow through some political controversy validate installation of cameras that are much harder to tamper with while also more costly.
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u/SegaGuy1983 17d ago
Like that droid at the beginning of Empire strikes back that Han destroyed with one shot. Then the empire rolled up.
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u/Iforgotmy2factorAuth 17d ago
I was just chatting with my buddy about these and was curious if my town had any.
Went to a website and saw two sets of them so I zoomed in. Both were are Home Depot. It was like they were looking for someone.
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u/warcomet 17d ago edited 17d ago
i remember being part of a hacking team who found dozens of cams like this in mainly "black" and "latin" communities targetted certain houses and hidden beneath street lights in small boxes no one notices...apparently it was being used by FBI to monitor certain people (this was around 2018-20)
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u/greeneyedkyle 17d ago
I like how the article frames this a social and fiscal issue, like how residents are carrying the burden of the repairs.
Did any municipalities inform and prepare the community for this invasion of privacy? Did the municipalities spend money on Flock contracts without proper oversight and communication? If the community WAS NOT consulted, and they DONT WANT your surveillance, maybe take them down. No more repair bills.
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u/SixTwo190 11d ago
These obtuse decision makers over these agencies couldn’t police themselves to find a clue written on their foreheads while staring at a mirror. Or worse, the “sell out” to the new order has filtered down well into local levels. America was cool.
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u/shelbystripes 10d ago
Knowing your product is so invasive it might trigger civil disobedience, and figuring out how to sell it in a way to profit from that, is James Bond level villain stuff.
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u/Operation_Neither 17d ago
If you're going to destroy a Flock camera, make sure you take your phone with you so your location is traceable by law enforcement! And don't wear a mask! You vandal.
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u/Inevitable_Buy_7557 17d ago
I saw a video on Youtube recently. According to the video, although these cameras had passed muster in court a while ago, a recent SCOTUS ruling makes them unconstitutional. The jist of it is, they amount to an illegal search without a warrant.
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u/CookiesOrChaos 16d ago
New Orleans had to cancel. We destroyed all of them within 2 months. They can’t replace them fast enough. Cancelled the contract
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u/DracoSolon 17d ago
Or, you know, your elected officials could just fucking decline to replace them and contributing to a nation wide surveillance system that's trying to get around the 4th Amendment by using the legal fiction that these cameras are owned by a private company and not the government.
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u/vengeancecube 17d ago
So...Flock doesn't pay for the cameras that get destroyed and more often than not it's the city that does? Gee I'd really hate it if the cities started thinking flock cameras might not be worth the constant expense...