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Posted by latexr 4 hours ago

Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras(www.bloodinthemachine.com)
172 points | 60 comments
odie5533 27 minutes ago|
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.
monero-xmr 14 minutes ago|
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
loeg 9 minutes ago||
> The real issue is prosecutors who refuse to incarcerate repeat offenders.

Sometimes judges contribute as well.

mullingitover 2 hours ago||
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.

idle_zealot 2 hours ago||
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.
andrewflnr 1 hour ago|||
If it's about sending a message, I think using a drone to defeat mass surveillance is quite evocative.
themafia 44 minutes ago||
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.

mullingitover 1 hour ago|||
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.

stavros 1 hour ago|||
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?
shawn_w 1 hour ago|||
So you can do it without your image being captured by the camera?
stavros 1 hour ago|||
The camera doesn't have a 360 field of vision, besides COVID masks aren't uncommon now.
bigiain 51 minutes ago||
Where I am (Sydney Australia) we have fixed speed cameras that automatically create speeding fines to drivers going too fast (well, technically the registered owner of the vehicle via ANPR).

They eventually had to equip pretty much every speed camera with a speed camera camera, usually on a much higher pole to make vandalism more difficult.

stavros 50 minutes ago||
Oof, I really hate this automated enforcement. Might be time to get a paintball gun.
seanmcdirmid 40 minutes ago|||
And this is the reason I can’t wait for self driving cars that just follow the speed limit.
lotsofpulp 45 minutes ago|||
What else could make life safer at a realistic cost for people outside of vehicles?
redwall_hp 1 minute ago|||
Urban planning that separates pedestrians and vehicles.

Roads that are narrow in places where a lower speed is desirable.

Heavy taxation on vehicles with more mass and lower visibility.

Actual licensing standards other than driving down a couple of city streets and parking.

More crossings, with lights or bridges, instead of long four-lane arterial roads with nowhere to safely cross.

stavros 37 minutes ago|||
Where I live, the speed limit keeps getting reduced so the city can make money off of fines, especially because nobody follows speed limits that are ridiculously low for wide, straight roads where following the limit would make traffic ground to a halt.
dyauspitr 1 hour ago|||
Drones with a paintball gun attached?

Realistically that’s going to attract a lot of negative attention.

BuyMyBitcoins 40 minutes ago||
The use of a drone also ups the ante from a prosecutor’s perspective. Charging a vandal caught with a paintbrush and a ladder is nothing out of the ordinary. A routine misdemeanor.

Someone who has the wherewithal to jerry rig a paintball gun to a drone is someone scary. Plus, any officer who witnesses such a drone is almost certainly going to misidentify the paintball gun as an actual gun. I can imagine the operator would be charged with several felonies.

dyauspitr 1 hour ago||||
I don’t think they make commercial paintballs with hard to remove enamel or tempura paints.
martin-t 1 hour ago|||
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.

Arainach 1 hour ago||
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.

robotnikman 1 hour ago|||
Somewhat related, I'm pretty sure there was a guy in China who did exactly this as protest against their surveillance. Seems effective.
api 18 minutes ago|||
In Minecraft it’s well known that lasers of even moderate power can ruin camera sensors. Only in Minecraft though.
tiagod 2 hours ago|||
Goring them is about sending a message.
vorpalhex 50 minutes ago|||
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.

logankeenan 47 minutes ago||
Do all drones do this now? Is this required by law for manufacturers to implement?
soulofmischief 58 minutes ago|||
> 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.

toomuchtodo 1 hour ago|||
You can put a garbage bag over them if you don’t want to sawzall the pole and dispose of the hardware.
dyauspitr 1 hour ago|||
Why wouldn’t you advocate it? A much easier way of doing this is using paintballs with the appropriate paint.
martin-t 1 hour ago||
> 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.

cheonn638 1 hour ago||
>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

kdogkshd 1 hour ago||
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!!
cheonn638 1 hour ago|
> If this surveillance bothers you, show up!!

Bothers me, but not enough to drive to city hall

Doesn’t even bother me enough to send an email quite frankly

soulofmischief 56 minutes ago||
Political apathy is not an aspiration. It's the reason we're in this mess.
ghostclaw-cso 35 minutes ago||
There's a real distinction worth making here between surveillance infrastructure and investigative tools. Flock is mass passive collection -- camera on every corner, running 24/7, feeding a database law enforcement queries at will. What people are actually hungry for is the opposite: targeted, on-demand tools that regular people control. The same instinct that has people pulling down cameras is what's driving grassroots OSINT communities -- they want to be able to find things themselves without being watched by someone else's system. ghostcatchers.net
grensley 1 hour ago||
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

maximinus_thrax 1 hour ago|
I am absolutely shocked
sli 28 minutes ago||
This will start happening to Ring cameras as well soon if it's not already.
asadotzler 1 hour ago||
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.
diego_moita 2 hours ago||
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.
givemeethekeys 1 hour ago|
Why is the market growing for stolen surveillance cameras in Brazil?
diego_moita 1 hour ago||
Because they're easy to steal.
Lammy 1 hour ago||
Ultra-based. Fuck these creepy things and anyone who installs them.
cucumber3732842 3 hours ago|
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.
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