Posted by chaps 12/22/2025
Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo – This Flock Camera Leak is like Netflix For Stalkers
It's all a matter of perspective. I'm sure to some executive somewhere, the person/s who approved all of this is seen as heroes, as they shaved of 0.7% or whatever from the costs of the development, and therefore made shareholders more money.
Until there are laws in place that makes people actually responsible for creating these situations, it'll continue, as for a company, profits goes above all.
Remember that ISPs often have people who come to your home to hook stuff up.
> Remember that ISPs often have people who come to your home to hook stuff up.
I can't recall a single time a technician wasn't required to come to my flat/house to install a new router. I'm based in Spain, maybe it's different elsewhere, but I think it's pretty much a requirement, you can't setup the WAN endpoint or ISP router yourself.
Worked 4/5 times (all with cable), only time it failed was because I had apparently subscribed to a DSL plan from CenturyLink without realizing and they needed to wire up the extra lines upstream for the "modern" version of DSL to work in my apartment. After insisting multiple times that the self-install kit was 100% plug-n-play at my new address despite my intense skepticism since I really needed reliable internet from Day 1 during COVID remote work.
I was seriously missing Comcast/cable by the time that 1 yr contract was up, the devil you know and all...
Anyone that cares about their perspective has missed the point.
Personally I think tech CEOs should be put in stocks in the town square on the regular but they're protected from any form of repercussions besides extreme cases of fraud. Even then, they're only held accountable when the money people have their money effected, not when normal people are bulldozed by the abuse.
Regarding remedy, we really need laws on this stuff yesterday. The problem is that we have to gut first amendment freedoms for some of this stuff, which wont go anywhere because there will always be too much overreach with today's representatives.
> Until there are laws in place that makes people actually responsible for creating these situations, it'll continue, as for a company, profits goes above all.
They obviously meant that we ought to be holding these people responsible.
Congrats you spotted the thing we agreed on between comments. If you fail to see the agreement through parity of the part that was echoed, idk what to tell you. Education system is failing everyone in it these days.
You maybe need to read your own comments then? Idk man, they clearly aren't justifying anything, they're being critical and you're just spouting off about the education system
Don't know how you reached that conclusion, I obviously isn't trying to justify anything. But maybe something I said was unclear? What exactly gave you the idea I'm trying to justify anything of this?
At the end of the day your rationalization only affords comfort to those that have a vested interest in this stuff being successful and it needs to be clear to those people driving this that they’re not doing something popular or even good.
Fix the corporate incentives and engineers will be able to do the right thing without suffering. Not everyone gets the luxury of a secure career doing morally ok things.
t. Former QA veteran
Is mass vandalism the final answer to this problem?
But if your spouse/SO/sister/mother/girlfriend/whatever was assaulted while jogging in a park that had Flock cameras, and it allowed law enforcement to quickly identify, track, apprehend and charge the criminal, you'd absolutely be grateful for the technology. There's nothing worse than being told "we don't have any leads" when someone you care about has been attacked.
“It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.” - Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
> There's nothing worse than being told "we don't have any leads" when someone you care about is attacked.
I'd argue worse is "we know exactly who did it and we're not going to do anything about it (but we would do something if you try to do something about it yourself)".
Anyhow, if you read the flock database, they're overwhelmingly not using them for the purposes of public safety or random crime.
That would seem to be very relevant information.
Appealing to emotions, tsk tsk, but going right for the jugular? Yikes.
Also, elephant in the room: if your sister was going to be raped or beaten, it would probably be by someone in her home, in her family. Like her cop husband.
No, I don't want these cameras. I don't care if they make law enforcement's job easier. They are an invasion of privacy and a part of the disgusting dragnet surveillance state.
They need to go.
A decade ago, I was attacked on a public sidewalk by three men, who roughed me up a bit and stole from me. The police were utterly unhelpful, and as far as I know, they never caught anyone. But ultimately, that didn't really matter. I was traumatized for a while, but eventually worked through it. Whether or not they were caught would not have changed any part of that process.
I get that, emotionally, we want some sort of justice when things like this happen, but I am not willing to put up with even more constant surveillance in order to feel a little bit better about a bad thing that happened to me. I would much rather criminals sometimes went free.
As though personal rights/liberties are trumped by a cop needing to do paperwork or leave his desk.
Plus, when you follow this to its natural/extreme conclusion, the absolute easiest thing for law enforcement would be to arrest you for no reason at all.
The rationalization for this policy of course could simply be that probable cause is "inconvenient."
We can make up situations all day where it can or can not be validated but the reality is that this is a defacto surveillance state. If every move you make can be monitored, you should assume that the state can and will abuse it to hurt innocent people in the name of politics or whatever.
And what a dumb way to frame it. "Think of the woman" is the same argument as "think of the children". Why not just say if you were attacked you'd want it to be on camera? Afraid it'll make you sound weak? Well, so does bootlicking.
There is freedom to and freedom from as they say in The Handmaid’s Tale.
Not-that-easy solution is legal ban for such surveillance.
None of these both will happen though.
You accepted TSA and PRISM, you will get used to Flock too.
Next is Flock but for people, with face recognition.
> if the object class of the identified object is that of a human being, then the object detection module 154 may further analyze the image 501 using a neural network module 507B configured to identify different classes of people (male, female, race, etc.)
Don't complain when it eventually happens.
So... you could also just walk or drive by the playground to see "unattended kids"?
The main issue is that we have a different set of laws that govern businesses and that govern private citizens.
If I set up a camera in a local park and programmed it to zoom into children's faces and stream it directly to my computer, I am surely going to jail.
But if I set up 100 cameras to do just that, baby, that's just business.
It's almost paradoxical. The more evil I do, the less illegal it becomes. The greater the scale of harm I inflict, the more palatable it is. It's a get out of jail free card.
Are you a psychopath? Love to kill people? Well, don't use knives or guns silly! Instead, form an LLC and give people poison. You'll kill 100x more people with 100x less consequences!
[citation needed]
You might be called a creep, and you might be asked to remove the camera (because you can't leave random cameras on public property without permission), but operating cameras in public and recording stuff isn't illegal. Paparazzis do that all the time.
If I use that information to track someone and watch them specifically, that is stalking and is illegal. I know it's illegal here in Texas.
The law is not an algorithm, it's very complex. Recording people in public is absolutely illegal in many instances.
From Stalking Prevention, Awareness, & Resource Center (SPARC): " A pattern of behavior directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to fear for the person’s safety or the safety of others; or suffer substantial emotional distress."
Flock is helping the rapists stalk their ex-wives.
Signal is helping cartels organize hits."
Criminals use Flock to stalk public figures, celebrities, women and children.
> The financing was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with backing from Greenoaks Capital, Bedrock Capital. Meritech Capital, Matrix Partners, Sands Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator also participated.
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-secures-major-...
If that happened, then yes, they should be arrested.