angeldimitrov94
9 hours ago
It sure would be interesting if suddenly all of the Flock employees coming to work were being constantly watched by a network of crowdfunded private cameras. Might drive home the point of invasion of privacy if its someone other than them watching...them. Or if all of the neighbors of the CEO of Flock suddenly joined some service like this so that everyone could track his activity at all times. I'm sure he'd wouldn't mind the entire world knowing exactly what he or his family are doing always.
Teever
8 hours ago
The term you're looking for is sousveillance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance
It's a very important tool to figure out which people in positions of authority are coordinating for authoritarian purposes or just plain old corruption.
I'm instantly suspicious of anyone in government who is critical of this idea.
What are they hiding?
ToucanLoucan
8 hours ago
I mean they don't hide much anymore. Our current admin is simply awash in corruption, and nothing happens because a majority of lawmakers are also in on it, getting rich, and just aren't required to do anything. Our police rob and murder the populace, and on the rare occasion they see any consequences at all, it's paid for by the same taxpayers they abuse. And even more broadly worldwide, corporations trade in human suffering by the ton, our planet continues to be destroyed by people who will be dead long before the consequences of their greed come to fruition, and the wealthy trade children to exploit either by way of their blood or much, much darker things.
We don't need a citizen surveillance network, we already know what they're doing, perhaps not all of it but far more than enough to justify mass civil unrest. They just figured out all they had to do was get us exhausted, overwhelmed and of course fighting each other enough to make certain we wouldn't. The globe is various kinds of prison for the majority of humanity, in degrees of horror, and a theme park for the 1%.
chaps
7 hours ago
"I mean they don't hide much anymore."
heh as a foia nerd, heh.
Teever
7 hours ago
All of that may be true but I think that it's moot.
The overall goal with these kinds of projects should be to maintain parity between the citizenry and people in positions of power.
Even if it's little stuff like a person calling out "Hey how come he doesn't have to wait in line?" when small town city councillor gets special treatment at a local restaurant. We want to close the gap between the every-man and people with power wherever we see it.
In the bigger picture as it pertains to this kind of sousveillance introducing as much friction in these kinds of things as possible causes the people you're opposing to need to exert more force to do what they're doing and it distracts them and throws them off guard. It's a death by a thousand cuts sort of thing.
Take the opposition to datacentres and the protests and resistance to it, if the protesters really wanted to gum up the works they'd target the finite number of anonymous professionals who are involved in the approval and development process for these megaprojects. There are a lot of paper-pushing accountants, lawyers, and civil engineers who just want to cash a fat cheque and make it to retirement who will back the fuck out the second they hear about people publishing the full org-chart and comings and goings of the professionals involved in these projects.
ToucanLoucan
7 hours ago
> The overall goal with these kinds of projects should be to maintain parity between the citizenry and people in positions of power.
Oh for sure, I'm not disagreeing with the principle being discussed, I'm saying in our current social moment this feels like saying the floor trim on the bridge of the Titanic needs some paint.
The president has been convicted of 39 felonies and is (trying to?) sell advance access to his stock market manipulating tweets for a subscription.
Parity at this point feels like a joke. I'd settle for literally any consequences at all for someone in power right now.
Teever
6 hours ago
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Vibecode an app that builds a list of corrupt law enforcement officials and that finds their mistresses or other unscrupulous behaviour. Have it determine when the exact most damaging moment to release this information to their families and /or the public is.
Agentic muckraking.
unselect5917
7 hours ago
>Our current admin is simply awash in corruption
Every administration since JFK has been awash in corruption. No exceptions. America hasn't had an America-first President since JFK. The people who obsess over Trump need to read 1984 again and pay particular attention to Emmanuel Goldstein.
Our awful government includes most of Congress, 93% of which take pro-Israel bribes. If you want to find the problem, look East at our mortal enemy that brands itself as our greatest ally in their hasbara.
throw376222
2 minutes ago
Love how the foreign haters of America pretend to be American in online comments.
aorloff
7 hours ago
Just wait until the hearings start
dylan604
9 hours ago
How would the video captured from those cameras be used? These people are already driving on the same streets you and I do, so how would they not also be in the Flock footage? If you capture TBs of video footage and nobody sees it, what's the point? Are you going to start sending harassing posts to employees with footage of the car driving by your camera?
The anti-flock movement is real, but half baked ideas don't really serve a purpose to actually doing anything. Not sure how I feel about those destroying Flock cameras, but that's action moving the needle a lot further than establishing an entirely new anti-Flock camera network.
jspank
9 hours ago
you don't store TBs of video footage... You process it and store the instances of each object/license plate detection.
dylan604
9 hours ago
great, so now what? who are you giving access to that data that will mean anything? the cops aren't going to do anything with it as it does not pertain to anything within the purview. the only thing I could think that would be done with that information is not good with people showing up to their house or some such.
judge2020
8 hours ago
This is irrelevant.
Flock operates on the foundational constitutional model of "Our cameras are in public, there is not an expectation of privacy in public, therefore we can capture anything/everything our camera sees in any way possible" (including LPR logging and even video recording).
And thus, so does any other system of recording public activity and processing/storing data collected from it.
It quite literally does not matter what people do or don't do with the information. If someone does use the information for something illegal (like stalking) them the police aught to take a police report filed by said Flock employee seriously and perform an investigation within the bounds of the law and constitution.
AuthAuth
8 hours ago
So then flock employees are unlikely to care at all since they are already being tracked by flock. The it will concern them once some crazy person is driven to the point of enacting real world violence. The entire point of this project is to collect that data in hopes that someone acts on it.
bloqs
7 hours ago
I think the presumption of harassment is a little telling, but if your post was in good faith, merely advertising people's cars (as in the group pays for ad space etc) freely and legally very much like the musk plane tracking app would have the desired effect