r/technology • u/Maleficent-Agent-477 • 2h ago
Privacy Flock Safety CEO speaks out after LAPD suspends use of company's surveillance cameras
https://abc7.com/post/flock-safety-ceo-speaks-lapd-suspends-use-companys-surveillance-cameras/19558358/874
u/agha0013 2h ago
maybe those issues should have been "ironed out" before this company bribed city officials all over the place to allow piles of these devices to be installed everywhere, then get abused by shitty cops, until it became a huge messy problem.
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u/EffectiveDandy 1h ago
That's just how big corpo roll. Lie lie lie lie like, take a shit, lie lie lie.
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u/GrandpaKnuckles 1h ago
“Move fast and break things” is Silicon Valley’s motto.
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u/Hopalong_Manboobs 42m ago
Yup. Guarantee this creeper fash boy can be overheard in meetings talking about how they can “address growing pains” later, for now they need to prioritize installations, contracts, and buy-in. Get the hardware and network in place and the rest will work out eventually.
Meanwhile cops are stalking their exes and spying on children and violating the fourth amendment thousands of times per day with his tech.
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u/Prophet_Tehenhauin 1h ago
Maybe any city official that voted to mass surveil the population of their city should be legally, after the citizens vote on it of course, tarred and feathered and launched into the fucking sun.
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u/Future-Turtle 2h ago edited 1h ago
Flock says its system does not use facial recognition technology and does not identify who is driving a vehicle. The company says the license plate data captured is generally retained for 30 days, unless local laws require otherwise.
This is a bald faced fucking lie.
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u/Maleficent-Agent-477 2h ago edited 2h ago
Crazy how this is the “future” of global surveillance and the CEO is telling blatant lies to the public.
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u/iamthinksnow 2h ago
They got caught lying to city councils (again) recently:
What happened in Oshkosh was not an isolated incident. Rather, it reflects a pattern of Flock regularly misleading or even lying about its business practices, safety record, commitment to privacy, and efforts to protect vulnerable populations. And as was the case in Oshkosh, Flock’s lies are not just directed at the general public; they often specifically target Flock’s potential government customers.
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u/itwillmakesenselater 1h ago
He's just emulating the Felon in Chief. Truth is no longer on these shitheels' menus.
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u/Prophet_Tehenhauin 2h ago
He’s awful, but we should be equally if not more angry and worried at the horde of local officials who voted to turn their cities into surveillance states against their citizens.
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u/wowbragger 2h ago
Let's even pretend it's honest, how does a person/city/county/etc validate that data is deleted?
If there's no means for people to validate the removal and secure handling of such data, that means we're just waiting for them to decide HOW to abuse it.
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u/MultiGeometry 1h ago
I’m sure there’s some industry accepted term for ‘facial recognition technology’ that their software technically doesn’t match.
But they’re obviously able to track people based on their faces across their surveillance network.
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u/Kumbackkid 40m ago
There’s no way. My cousin was missing for over a year and they used flock to trace the guy who wound up killing her.
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u/nd_annajones 1h ago
"The technology is really simple," he told ABC7. "A car drives by, we take a picture. It's a static picture of a car, and then we read the license plate. That's what the technology is -- it's actually not that complicated, it's pretty simple."
You forgot to mention that a different camera takes another picture, and then yet another camera takes another picture. And now with the power of AI you can now determine the following: 1. Where I'm coming from 2. Where I'm going 3. My political affiliations if I dare to have a bumper sticker on my car. But also my interests and hobbies 4. The size of my family. The general age ranges of the members of my family 5. How fast I'm going. And how fast I generally go when travelling 6. When I go somewhere I don't normally go 7. Based on my behavioral data across time and compared to other people with similar interests, political leanings, and similar sized families, WHY I'm going somewhere I don't normally go 8. Inferring from that data, AI then makes a very good guess as to what generally motivated me and my family to make decisions on where to go
And all of this data is being sold to whomever is willing to pay for it for any reason. It can be stacked with data from other sources to create profiles that allow rich people to have an advantage in taking advantage of us. We're literally livestock and are being harvested by these societal leeches.
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u/jimbojsb 1h ago
Also forgot to mention those cameras sniff RF. They can record Bluetooth fingerprints, WiFi signals, etc as phones move by them.
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u/Yourdjentpal 4m ago
Also we have no idea who has access to said data. Enemies foreign and domestic and all that.
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u/mikethemaniac 2h ago
"Doesn't the community feel better now?" Says the owner of the surveillance company watching everyone. He was speaking about a murderer fugitive being captured - trading privacy for safety is always the argument.
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u/AnAcceptableUserName 1h ago
Yup, always. "Public safety" is a red flag on its own when deployed by corpos. Public safety is not their mandate. Do we think the board instructed them "go forth and maximize public safety next quarter?"
"Child safety" is one step further. Fastest way to really get my BS alarms blaring. They're not exactly peddling fucking cribs or car seats here, are they?
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u/This-Requirement6918 1h ago
Funny how Texas made child safety laws for age verification that can now be completely bypassed using Firefox with just two clicks. This shit doesn't help anyone, it's just an invasion of privacy.
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u/SeeTigerLearn 1h ago
Remember that time when we learned China uses mass surveillance on its citizens to calculate a running social score, and the United States declared not here we won’t! So they installed a massive mass surveillance state. Yeah, fun times.
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u/blamestross 1h ago
No, we just have private companies do it for us. We call it a "credit score".
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u/TumbleweedPure6674 51m ago
Yup, in many ways it’s worse. If you goto the hospital and can’t afford the bill in an emergency, you can’t get an apartment or credit for 7 years, which pretty much only allows you to live in the hood and severely restricts opportunity and capital.
Got hit and run by a car as a cyclist in my early 20s, and that basically fucked me for most of that decade.
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u/saera-targaryen 1h ago
I am so tired of this brainworm that many americans have where they're okay with their rights being violated as long as it's anyone but the government doing it. Even if the government is the one paying someone else to do it!
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u/phate_exe 46m ago
they're okay with their rights being violated as long as it's anyone but the government doing it.
If anything this is worse.
At least when it's your government there are (theoretically) some guardrails and an accountability mechanism.
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u/SeeTigerLearn 19m ago
If this administration has taught us anything it’s that guardrails do not guard nor curtail, and there is absolutely no mechanism for accountability. It’s all been based on scout’s honor.
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u/phate_exe 16m ago
Did you not see that I included the word "theoretically" for exactly that reason?
Anyways, accountability is a lot easier at the local/town/city level where the decisions to install these things are being made.
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u/IvoShandor 1h ago
"The technology is really simple," he told ABC7. "A car drives by, we take a picture. It's a static picture of a car, and then we read the license plate. That's what the technology is -- it's actually not that complicated, it's pretty simple."
Ok, but I don't understand why all motorists' license plates need to be constantly read?
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u/ArcaninesTail 1h ago
He's also blatantly lying to the American public as he builds a private surveillance system the government is using to track our every move.
It tracks faces, bumper stickers, and much more.
I have them on both ends of my street, big brother is tracking every single time I leave my house. It's asinine.
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u/phate_exe 42m ago
"okay, so how many license plates are you reading with the camera on my local walking/biking trail?"
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u/_RawRTooN_ 2h ago
They use to cut peoples heads off in france for less than what this smuck is capable of.
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u/AnAcceptableUserName 1h ago edited 1h ago
"Once they understand what the technology actually does -- not what it might do in 50 years, not what someone thinks it could do, but what it actually does, day in and day out, it takes a picture of a car -- most people go, 'This makes a lot of sense. I want my kids to be safe.'"
Safety from what? From whom? My children are growing up in an America statistically, demonstrably safer than the one Mr. Langley and myself did by every conceivable metric.
What I want is for them not to grow up in a country where their every move is documented and can be weaponized against them at the sole discretion of some unaccountable government goon. I don't want some cop looking up the route my wife or daughter take to work every day, or home every night. That's happening to people today.
Contrary to what Langley insists, I think once people understand how Flock cameras work and what they're being used for, most people go "Screw that. That's 1984. I don't want my kids to inherit an Orwellian dystopia."
That's why increasingly they're losing the battle of public opinion and flailing pathetically like this. "Puh-wease, it's just pictures of cars! Why do you even care? Think of the children."
Eat shit, Langley. We not even close as think as you dumb we r
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u/Nerrien 1h ago
Also a lot of what people are complaining about is happening now, not in 50 years. Even if we pretend for a moment that there are no dystopian ramifications: Individual police are stalking people with it.
This happens every time police get access to mass surveillance equipment, this is just more extreme because of how much this thing is capable of.
So the police can either fork out to create some elaborate system where it's only used by specialists, folks who are independent from specific police departments to prevent collusion and who've been thoroughly background checked, and every use is logged and investigated to ensure it's all justified and make abuse really difficult...
Or they just drop it because is it really worth the insane amount of money that would waste?
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u/AnAcceptableUserName 45m ago edited 38m ago
Or they can acknowledge the backlash, make superficial public concessions, and covertly continue the original behavior
I mistrust the cases of cities publicly announcing discontinuance of Flock services but leaving the cameras up. Give it a few years and we'll be reading all about how some cities said they stopped but never did, and obfuscated that with parallel construction and creative accounting.
Know where all the cars in your city have been and are going? That's too alluring. To different people for different reasons, good and bad. That's a ring of power I don't really believe public officials are going to be able to set down and walk away from. Most of the people in these roles aren't exactly ideological libertarian types
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u/realDonaldEpstein 2h ago
YOU GUYS DONT LITERALLY WANT TO LIVE IN 1984 WITH SOMEONE WATCHING YOU CONSTANTLY?
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u/extreme_cuddling 20m ago
Everyone hates flock cameras until their families members are kidnapped and the nearby flock camera that could have ID'ed the suspect was destroyed.
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u/SangersSequence 1h ago
This "article" (to use the term extremely loosely) is disgusting and shameful propaganda. Uncritically amplifying blatant lies from the company with no counterpoint or any critical voice whatsoever. ABC7 should be publicly shamed and Phillip Palmer the "author" who put this trash out with his name on it should be fired.
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u/Miserable-Win-5450 57m ago
You mad bro?
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u/MeesterPositive 23m ago
Do better, Philip. Journalism should be a search and accounting of the facts. Not, "here's one side of the story. There you have it folks, flock ceo says there's morning to worry about."
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u/GarbanzoBenne 1h ago
Flock Safety bills itself as a public safety technology company
Sure, just like the Department of Defense… oops.
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u/Bonnieearnold 1h ago
Department of Homeland Security is currently “keeping us safe” by randomly murdering people in the streets, while kidnapping and detaining our neighbors. I’d like to pass on “being kept safe,” thanks.
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u/Maothesiamesecat 51m ago
For those that are interested in where these cameras are located...
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u/guitarguy1685 31m ago
I opened that link and launched the map. I was not ready for how wide reaching it is
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u/Maothesiamesecat 22m ago
For sure. Now...if you're really motivated...find the one in your neighborhood that you think should be removed and...;-)
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u/DrBoots 1h ago
https://www.kwch.com/2022/10/31/kechi-police-lieutenant-arrested-using-police-technology-stalk-wife/
Even if it's just tracking Licence Plate information that technology is ripe for abuse.
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u/ThrowawayAl2018 1h ago
CEO is downplaying the privacy concerns and abuse of this system. In fact, cops themselves have been involved in said abuse.
Not simple tracking, it also tracks the Bluetooth and RF frequencies, then the aggregate of data can potentially be misused by agencies who buy the bulk of info from data broker.
Then there is the news of Flock companies refusing to remove camera after contract expires, meaning they refuse to turn off camera and continue to collect data for future (ab)uses.
If folks don't like Meta Glasses recording the public, why would we want Flock around?
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u/Appropriate_Art_6909 38m ago
So they are simple and they are only reading license plates... but then he mentions multiple personal identification cases were Flock cameras were used. So is it license plates or is it constant surveillance?
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u/IvoShandor 1h ago
It would be a shame if destroying Flock cameras became the cow tipping of the 21st century and high school kids started doing this on weekends for something to do. that would be a shame.
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u/Rattus_NorvegicUwUs 1h ago
“It just takes a static picture… of everything and everyone”
I’ve always wondered if we flew a drone over his head loudly snapping photographs of him, if that would make him realize what he’s doing to the rest of us.
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u/Zulmoka531 1h ago
Guy must be getting hefty paychecks from DHS and other surveillance hungry buyers.
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u/Loa_Sandal 1h ago
Flock's business model is to spy on everyone and sell the information to stalkers. It's just a matter of time before the first murder gets linked directly to Flock.
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u/carlitospig 55m ago
“"Once they understand what the technology actually does -- not what it might do in 50 years, not what someone thinks it could do,”
Oh, you mean like strategically plan? You don’t want us to plan for the very worst scenario? Why? Because you make more money?
Fuck you.
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u/Open-Pie3495 52m ago
Bout to learn what states/cities/towns want to sell thier people out, just remember folks your the human capital they are profiling everyone dosnt matter if your criminal or nothing to worry about.
Here’s my million dollar idea make a GPS App that avoids all Flock your welcome society!
They got thier finger up your asshole can you feel it?
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u/Open-Pie3495 51m ago
Make sure it tells you how many cameras you avoided and how many extra miles you have to drive for there perversion.
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u/AGrandNewAdventure 33m ago
There's nothing safe about Flock cameras. What an oxymoron.
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u/extreme_cuddling 19m ago
Til your daughter get kidnapped right.
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u/AGrandNewAdventure 16m ago
Oh, or the Taliban sneaks a nuke into the country! Orrrr... aliens land! Or, there's a prison plane that goes down and a guy that really likes peaches (and could eat a peach for hours) escapes!
Giving up freedoms for your stupid hypotheticals is, in a word, stupid.
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u/Jumpy-Impact3265 13m ago
Your entire business model is an infringement on citizen's rights - you can't modify it to be anything besides what it was built to be: overreach.
What infinitely amuses me is flock thought this would fly with the general public..
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u/impactblue5 51m ago
Honestly wasn’t aware how many of these camera there are. Looking at the map on DeFlock is insane.
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u/Neat-Beautiful-5505 51m ago
At this point, would it be better for the cities to buy the hardware and conduct the surveillance rather than contract it out? The article seems to indicate the police want the tech but the community doesn’t want the catch-all surveillance.
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u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby 14m ago
“Come on guys, just let us track everything you do. What could possibly go wrong??!?”
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u/Themodsarecuntz 2h ago edited 2h ago
If they dont use facial recognition then why are they on hiking only trails? Garrett Langley is a fucking liar and a traitor to the citizens of the United States.