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Posted by giuliomagnifico 10 hours ago

US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology(www.cnet.com)
557 points | 328 commentspage 3
baggachipz 8 hours ago|
I drove into a very affluent subdivision this weekend, and like most others around here it had a flock camera recording every car on the way in. This camera, however, had the gall to advertise its presence as a neighborhood security measure. "Flock Safety watches this neighborhood" read the sign on the post, or some such. Of course the residents there had no choice but to accept its installation, as the local police support it. Nefarious framing and marketing in the name of "safety".
ggreer 4 hours ago||
It's probably the neighborhood HOA that pays for it. My HOA got Flock cameras after a string of thefts, and has similar signs up. The HOA encourages homeowners to submit their car license plate info so that if a crime is reported, it's easier to identify cars that don't belong to homeowners.

Soon after the cameras were installed, some thieves stole a gift my brother had sent me. Thanks to license plate data and images of their faces, Vancouver PD had little trouble catching the perpetrators. It turned out that in addition to stealing Amazon/UPS/Fedex packages, they were stealing USPS mail and using it to commit identity theft. IIRC they ended up getting a decade in federal prison.

It seems like only a few people are responsible for the majority of thefts, so catching them and locking them up drastically improves quality of life for everyone else. Obviously this technology could be abused, but that's also true for things like fingerprinting, DNA evidence, and ID requirements. Similarly to those technologies, we could have laws restricting certain uses, allowing us to reduce crime while preventing abuses. But if a private community wants to install cameras and allow law enforcement to access the data they record, I don't see any constitutional issues.

baggachipz 3 hours ago||
Fair point and I hadn't considered that. I just assumed that no place would voluntarily use Flock. Thanks for the info and perspective.
bob1029 8 hours ago|||
> no choice but to accept its installation

You might be shocked to discover there are subdivisions so affluent they can afford physical armed security and access control structures with far more invasive identification and logging procedures.

baggachipz 8 hours ago||
I am not shocked to know that, but there are Flock cameras all over the town. None of the other ones have this advertisement on them. This neighborhood is not gated. However, Flock decided to do announce its presence only here.
alex43578 7 hours ago||
Why is this such a surprise? It’s just like those “ADT Monitoring” signs in someone’s yard, scaled to the community.
baggachipz 7 hours ago||
Because as far as I've seen until now, Flock cameras were stealthily installed and unannounced by the local government. When somebody contracts a company like ADT, they pay money and put that sign up voluntarily.
bradleyankrom 8 hours ago|||
I saw the same thing in a Home Depot parking lot yesterday. I guess I'm glad there's some sort of notice about it, even if its intent is more, I dunno, branding? It took me a while to figure out what all the solar panel + camera on a post installations were as they popped up around my town. I even pulled over to inspect the hardware for signs of ownership and didn't find anything.
SoftTalker 7 hours ago|||
Most of the houses probably have little yard signs advertising some security service, and stickers on the doors advertising an alarm company too.
baggachipz 7 hours ago||
Ok? They paid for those.
SoftTalker 5 hours ago||
It's all just part of the scenery in neighborhoods like that. Like "Beware of dog" signs in poorer neighborhoods or "This property protected by Smith & Wesson" in rural areas.
whimsicalism 8 hours ago|||
we enforce laws presumably in the name of safety, is this really nefarious framing or marketing? seems pretty straightforward to me.
baggachipz 8 hours ago||
It is very clearly advertising on their part. They have been paid to put that thing there and added the sign to announce the presence. It's like when you get your roof replaced by a business and they ask if they can put a sign in your yard. They're not doing it to make everybody know that you're getting your roof replaced, they're advertising.
HoldOnAMinute 8 hours ago||
Monte Sereno or Saratoga?
tamimio 3 hours ago||
> means the installation of ALPR cameras

That’s a big misconception, flock is a car identification system not a license plate one. I have seen many videos of some crime documentaries where flock was used to ID cars with no license plates, and weeks later they still have them in the system to track, coupled with phone tracking, they know exactly all the details needed.

iwontberude 6 hours ago||
Congratulations EFF I know for a fact you’ve been working hard to get these removed.
gnerd00 7 hours ago||
this kind of headline might have some scholarly name, because, no... actually the number of cameras and feeds in the San Francisco Bay Area is multiplying rapidly, along with the entirety of California with few exceptions.. long ago, San Diego county, a military-led area, was the exception and to many pariah on the constant increase in tracking of vehicles, people and "events".. now, what used to be thought of as harsh and creepy, is not only matched in hardware, but exceeded in backend capacity, across almost every populated area
mothballed 8 hours ago||
Our city voted them out for awhile. So the feds just put them on every bit of federal property near roads, which ended up doing the exact same thing.
loteck 7 hours ago|
Where is this?
phendrenad2 9 hours ago||
It's funny, if the company had just sold cameras to cities, they probably could have avoided this whole mess. But they just had to hit some keywords for Wall Street (like "AI" "cloud" and "SaaS"), which had the side-effect of making it appear (true or not) that they were part of a Palantir-style surveillance panopticon that tracks you everywhere.
alex43578 8 hours ago|
A big part of the value is the network: track a stolen a car or a suspect in the next town over or across the country.
kennywinker 7 hours ago|||
A car, a suspect, an ex lover, a union organizer, a journalist going to meet a source, an activist headed to a rally. All kinds of things, really!
phendrenad2 3 hours ago||
[flagged]
kennywinker 2 hours ago|||
Replying in a separate comment, since you seem to have responded to my reply by editing your comment.

If you can’t disagree without belittling, maybe stick to reddit?

Either way, a networked array of license plate readers is an issue because it’s low friction and easily abused, with little space for oversight. A non-networked setup? Yeah i’m ok with that. If the gov needs to physically go to each camera and load data off them? Sounds fine to me. But somehow i don’t think that’s what you are suggesting when you say “non-cloud”. Once it’s networked, it doesn’t really matter if the network is a “cloud” based one or not.

But also, most of my comment was actually directed at alex43578‘s remarks, not yours.

kennywinker 3 hours ago|||
My post contains only the thinnest crust of sarcasm, the rest is fact based content.

Ex lovers (using flock): https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article29105...

Protestors (using flock): https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/how-cops-are-using-flo...

Union organizers (not using flock): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/21/amaz...

https://fedscoop.com/social-media-ai-surveillance-unions-sta...

Journalists (not using flock): https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/source-leaked-documen...

Examples using flock are directly applicable, examples not using flock require a little bit of imagination to see that if they are not currently happening, they will be soon.

And a bonus i didn’t mention a woman leaving the state to obtain a legal abortion: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/te...

Larrikin 8 hours ago||||
Or a woman who got an abortion
cucumber3732842 8 hours ago|||
And they will either quietly rebrand and build it or someone else will.

Government loves the product. What it doesn't like about Flock is that the peasants are aware about it and complaining.

josefritzishere 9 hours ago||
Funny that. Not everyone wants to live in an open air prison.
gosub100 9 hours ago||
Someone in my hometown was arrested for vandalizing them. The media chose to say "city owned security camera". It's amazing how they will rush to defend private enterprise.
Zigurd 9 hours ago||
Legacy local news is highly dependent on the police for content and access. No surprise.
knowaveragejoe 7 hours ago||
More likely: the local news reporter doesn't know the difference, or didn't think there was a difference.
anthonypasq 8 hours ago||
the alternative is to not punish vandalism? what are you even saying?
hackable_sand 3 hours ago|||
It's unfortunate they got caught. It is nice to be reminded that every community has people willing to fight for freedom though.
alex43578 7 hours ago|||
[flagged]
lenerdenator 9 hours ago|
It really is amazing how they managed to fit so much copper into those devices.
therobots927 9 hours ago|
Would be a shame if it became common knowledge.
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