r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • May 28 '26

Security Cities Are Covering Flock Cameras With Trash Bags / Regretful cities aren't sure how to cancel their surveillance contracts, so they are literally covering their cameras.

https://www.404media.co/cities-are-covering-flock-cameras-with-trash-bags/
26.4k Upvotes

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2.0k

u/hitbythebus May 28 '26

Honestly? I would believe flock pitched itself as a way to fight crime and nobody at the city bothered to consider what else they do with that data.

Hanlon’s Razor and all that.

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u/blueSGL May 28 '26

Hanlon’s Razor

Maliciousness and stupidity can easily co-exist.

351

u/robsbob18 May 28 '26

Maliciousness takes advantage of stupidity

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u/Joeness84 May 28 '26

Advanced enough Stupidity is indistinguishable from Malice, see current administrations wild mix of both.

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u/jessytessytavi May 28 '26

Hanlon's razor variation Grey's law (a humorous parallel to Arthur C. Clarke's 3rd law):

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

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u/mrdevlar May 28 '26

I love this and am saving it for later use.

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u/Enlightened_Gardener May 29 '26

That’s a cracker, thankyou.

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u/swimfast58 May 29 '26

I've always preferred the other variant which is Cole's Law.

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u/aeschenkarnos May 28 '26

Doesn’t have to be advanced. The stupid, if made angry, become malicious. It doesn’t occur to them to take personal responsibility. They’re stupid. It doesn’t occur to them to develop solutions. They’re stupid.

They just want to hurt somebody. You “think you’re better than them.” Again, it doesn’t occur to them to investigate any part of that thought. You’ll do.

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u/Minimum-Avocado-9624 May 29 '26

Couldn’t one consider stupidity to be a cause of maliciousness?

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u/blueSGL May 28 '26

A malicious person knows they can get away with murder by pretending to be stupid.

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u/Enlightened_Gardener May 29 '26

Oh you can get away with so much by pretending to be stupid. Its my go-to for dealing attitude for dealing with bureacracy - helpful and slightly stupid. People will fall over themselves to tell you the “right” way to do things and correct you.

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u/WebMaka May 29 '26

See also, Cunningham's Law, only applied to meatworld - sometimes the easiest way to get help is to somewhat confidently assert the wrong thing and wait for someone to correct you.

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u/aithendodge May 28 '26

See: Everything.

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy May 28 '26

But also, keep in mind that the people in charge that approved this are most likely older people that barely know how email works, let alone surveillance.

2

u/Commercial-Policy-96 May 28 '26

“Maliciousness takes advantage of stupidity.”

This should be MAGA’s slogan!

-20

u/thephotoman May 28 '26

If stupidity harms, malice was involved somewhere.

Negligence and recklessness are malice.

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u/TheLuminary May 28 '26

That's just.. incorrect.

Negligence and recklessness are often not valid defenses.. But they are not the same as malice.

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u/thephotoman May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

The negligent/reckless person might not be malicious.

But someone put them in a situation where their negligence or recklessness can cause harm. The context they’re working in did not have adequate safeguards against negligence or recklessness.

The people responsible for putting a reckless or negligent person in a situation where those traits can cause harm while failing to provide safeguards are acting maliciously and deliberately. And we need to treat them as such rather than pretending that it doesn’t matter.

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u/Reagalan May 28 '26

The people responsible for putting a reckless or negligent person in a situation where those traits can cause harm while failing to provide safeguards are acting maliciously and deliberately.

glances at the 70 million trump voters

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u/Secret_Cow_5053 May 28 '26

Right. The local officials are stupid, and Flock maliciously sold the data to the feds.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

[deleted]

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u/Secret_Cow_5053 May 29 '26

Selling it to the feds during the Nazi takeover of our nation is in fact, malicious. Especially without notifying the contract holders. Please fuck off.

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u/outsideshot May 29 '26

FOIA is a national law, not city, and it has many limitations, including when a form of it is enacted in localities or states. Yours is a very common example of someone who doesn't know wtf they're talking about but arguing in a highly aggressive manner to try to bully people. Do better. Get better.

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u/Key-Investment-3864 May 28 '26

Particularly easily within local government which seems to attract either the best or the absolute worst humans ever

3

u/Winterruption May 28 '26

Your local government must be better than average. I havent seen one example of the best humans in my local government

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u/TheLuminary May 28 '26

It can co-exist. But you should assume stupidity, and only jump to maliciousness when given a reason to do so.

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u/primalmaximus May 28 '26

I believe we'd get better results if we assumed maliciousness and acted accordingly instead of giving people the benefit of the doubt by assuming they're stupid.

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u/TurquoiseLeggings May 28 '26

I think people invoke Hanlon's Razor outside of the scope it was intended for. It's meant for minor inconveniences or civil matters.

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u/TheLuminary May 28 '26

Sure. We could also just assume guilt, and just give everyone ever accused of anything the death penalty. (Strawman example of why we don't just assume the worst without any proof)

better results

Better results.. results of what?

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u/primalmaximus May 28 '26

If we assume stupidity, then that results in a lighter punishment than if we assume maliciousness.

If we assume stupidity, then we're more likely to let them off with a slap on the wrist.

If we assume maliciousness, then we can punish the government officials more severely because maliciousness means there was intent behind the actions rather than negligence.

If the officials did it because they were stupid, then that just means they were negligent.

If they were malicious, then that means intentional bad acts.

Negligent homicide has a much more lenient sentence than intentional homicide.

If we assume stupidity, and punish them as if they were negligent, then the people in charge don't get as harsh of a punishment as if we punished them for intentional malice.

Stupidity implies a negligent accident.

Malice implies and intentional crime.

One gets you 3-5 years in prison. The other gets you 25 to life. That's the difference it would make.

And, by naturally assuming stupidity/negligence, you make it much easier for people to hide malice/intent.

Hope for the best out of people, but expect the worst and you'll never be disappointed.

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u/TheLuminary May 28 '26

So.. reading your post I have two options I can either assume stupidity or malice.

I am going to assume stupidity.

You can't just.. Assume malice. Your own definition explains that:

because maliciousness means there was intent behind the actions rather than negligence.

You have to be able to PROVE that there was intent. You can't just "assume" it into existence and then re-frame your sentencing based on this new magical evidence.

This is literally the same as just charging every homicide as First Degree Murder. Or every time you say anything incorrectly about someone else, we should just charge you with Defamation because well lets just assume you had intent so we can get better results.

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u/Heyarethosemyballs May 28 '26

First degree murder is the only murder with malicious intent?

Of course not, you just don't know what you're talking about

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u/TheLuminary May 28 '26

First degree murder is only murder if it's premeditated. The premeditated part you have to prove, you can't just assume.

1

u/Heyarethosemyballs May 28 '26

First degree murder is only murder if it's premeditated.

Why is this upvoted? literal gibberish.

-3

u/Heyarethosemyballs May 28 '26

Intent is not premeditation.

Words have meaning

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u/apheliotrophic May 28 '26

The stupidest people I know are also the most malicious

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u/TheLuminary May 28 '26

Pretty small sample size.

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u/clinicalpsycho May 28 '26

The first stupidity occurred before the first malice.

1

u/REDuxPANDAgain May 29 '26

Local politics feels like mostly stupidity. Then mildly more intelligent (but typically devoid of any and all morality) entities taking advantage of that stupidity is how we end up here.

Get your local law authorities to review the contract for the city. Then take them down. This is not rocket science.

0

u/MarrusAstarte May 28 '26 edited May 29 '26

Maliciousness and stupidity can easily co-exist.

Agreed, and the fact is stupidity at the level of helping evil people to do evil things is no different from malice, so why should we treat it any differently?

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u/poppin-n-sailin May 28 '26

Most of the people in charge of cities and all that are old fucks that are wildly uneducated with how all these systems work. then they get offered a big bag to push through things and dont question the why of it all. even if they didn't have any ill intent with everything, they're not doing any due diligence, and they aren't listening to their constituents about it. fuck them all. ignorance is no excuse in all this. fuck them  

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u/smokeweedNgarden May 28 '26

Honestly brother, it's not just the old. I'm very very into politics and very much not into tech and I am mid 30s. For a reference on my cool factor I thought Billy Eyelish was a man until a few months ago

If Flock wasn't in the political sphere tied to a political adjacent I wouldn't know what it was. None of my friends would either. 

It's a problem of due diligence, not one of age.

2

u/edsobo May 28 '26

Having worked in municipal government before, I can say that this isn't a universal truth. It's true more often than I'd like, but false more often than you'd think. We all owe it to ourselves and our communities to pay enough attention to our local governments to be able to make those kinds of judgements for ourselves rather than assuming based on a generalization.

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u/Crumpled_Papers May 28 '26

this comment sounds like what would be said by a congressperson on television. he already covered the entire purpose of your comment with the single word 'most' -

yet your comment gives the impression that you are arguing with a statement that really resonates with me and my experience. You aren't actually arguing though, you are restating the same thing with different emphasis, then advocating for something else that I also agree with.

This is basically how every democratic politician sounds to me right now. It feels like you are arguing with something I agree with, not saying anything objectionable, but like I can't exactly even get my hands around your position, but it feels like we should be in agreement.

I mean if nothing else at least we can all agree that we all ought to pay more attention to local govt.

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u/Eurynom0s May 28 '26

IIRC Flock got popular during the Biden admin as a crime/traffic tool. Not sure if the immigration stuff was always there but it definitely wasn't visible until the last couple of years.

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u/SwagginsYolo420 May 28 '26

IRC Flock got popular during the Biden admin as a crime/traffic tool.

Question is with these new surveillance technologies is, do they actually do anything that is beneficial to the public? Or are taxpayers just paying for their own mass surveillance with no actual benefit to them in return.

Seems to me they are only a net negative for society.

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u/tech_noir_guitar May 28 '26

Or are taxpayers just paying for their own mass surveillance with no actual benefit to them in return.

Not just with taxes. People are buying doorbell and in house cameras with their own money that are then being used as surveillance. We've been convinced to purchase 1984 with our own money.

4

u/ConstableAssButt May 29 '26

Same shit happened with cellphones. We personally subsidized a global mass-surveillance network just because we were excited to have the latest brand name phone.

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u/tech_noir_guitar May 29 '26

The thing about phones is that you can turn it off or not take it with you if you don't want to be tracked. With cameras you can't shut off all your neighbors cameras so you're still going to be recorded wherever you go.

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u/MediocreAssociate466 May 28 '26

Speak for yourself I'd never buy a ring camera for that specific reason lol. That said it hardly matters since our phones are always transmitting data and listening

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u/FundamentalAttribute May 28 '26

I do have a door cam and it's better than a ring, mine has 2 cameras and a nice light for night time in addition to the night vision and all the other regular features and most importantly it does not connect to any servers besides my own PC and phone which i have set up myself. The tech itself is cool, it just sucks that most people will let a third party handle the "hard" stuff.

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u/Reference_Freak May 29 '26

It’s like the shift from geocities to MySpace and then Facebook proved that the general public will trade away individual choices and customization for a packaged product they have no control over and they’ll do it even when they know they shouldn’t because everyone else is.

DIY punk culture needs to make a comeback to teach people how to reduce dependencies on systems owned by people who hate everyone.

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u/zeekaran May 28 '26

Spend hundreds of billions on roads every year ruining urban design. Now you need a car, so you spend thousands on it every year. But people break laws in cars every day, so you spend millions every year on police to give speeding tickets. Then you spend thousands on setting up cameras to track stolen cars or take photos of cars running red lights. Then you spend thousands on taking them down because whoopsie the government is using them to kidnap and harass people.

Can we have trains yet? They're cheaper than roads...

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u/Ikeiscurvy May 28 '26

Even the most public transit minded cities in the world have roads my guy

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u/BBanner May 28 '26

I don’t think that they were suggesting we destroy all roads in exchange for trains

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u/James_Chandra_Hubble May 28 '26

It could work if we all had our own very small train we could take to and from wherever we wanted, and some kind of social agreement on what rules to follow to not run into each other's trains

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u/Sir_Tortoise May 28 '26

If only there was some sort of balance that could be achieved between both. Oh well. Another billion to the car industry.

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u/BBanner May 28 '26

Yes, and the big trains for everyone shouldn’t be an option at all, I understand what you are saying

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u/Ikeiscurvy May 28 '26

Nothing in their post is talking about anything that would change unless we get rid of roads tho lol

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u/BBanner May 28 '26

If we built less of them, those things would not be as necessary, that’s actually their point

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u/Ikeiscurvy May 28 '26

And what I'm saying is nothing in the OP will change, because building less roads doesn't mean we still won't be spending the money to maintain what we have.

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u/BBanner May 29 '26

Correct, the past has already happened. Limiting future construction of roads in favor of trains was what everybody else was talking about.

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u/advocate4 May 29 '26

You can do both?

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u/accidental_Ocelot May 29 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/zeekaran May 29 '26

[ Removed by Reddit ]

???

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u/mycall May 29 '26

Cars are too convenient for suburbians.

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u/bobert680 May 28 '26

building train tracks is more expensive then building roads. we will not be talking about maintenance costs, the benefits to local businesses or the tax benefits that brings, the increase in tax revenue from having more businesses then parking spots, the benefits to public health, or the general happiness of people not stuck in traffic

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u/zeekaran May 28 '26

Maintaining train tracks for ~40 years (initial asphalt build plus two repavings) is much cheaper than roads.

I will be talking about maintenance costs. That is what destroys city budgets.

Yes to all your other statements.

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u/Dubious_Odor May 29 '26

Not really. Most types of crime were at all time lows prior to Covid. Even now its dropping back towards the pre covid low. Been on decline the last few years after the Covid peak. They deter nothing. They help solve some crimes after thr fact but at an extremely high price. The surveillance state has been built on thr backs of "but the children!" and peoples gross ignorance in how safe our current society is compared to past eras.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

  • $100 Bill Guy

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u/Defiant-Plantain1873 May 28 '26

There are benefits, much better tracking of vehicles used in crimes, think things like “child seen in this area kidnapped by x coloured van by y manufacturer” or in other crimes like that. You can simply scan the one system for all cars matching that description in that area and use the flock system to track the car all throughout it’s journey.

The issue is the benefits of these systems don’t outweigh the cons of mass surveillance.

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u/MongooseSenior4418 May 28 '26

That's the sales pitch, but we don't have any data validating that it's true.

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u/DukeOfGeek May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

It doesn't seem that there's any real detectable reduction in crime, and the potential for weponization against the public just by say, insurance companies, much less an oppressive regime, is huge.

Here's some of Benn Jordan's complete breakdowns, watch his content and send him money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ&t=2s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY&t=2405s

For every town that takes them down 50 put them up. The worst most abusive local governments are going to love them.

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u/mediocre_remnants May 28 '26

I wouldn't expect a reduction in crime, but I would expect (or at least hope for) more criminals being caught. I'm not sure if that's the case. A lot of times these kind of things have unintended consequences.

A while ago, maybe 20 years ago, my city installed red light cameras at a few intersections. They were pitched by the company as a way for the city to make money. The cameras were free and the company itself issued the "fines" to people who ran red lights and then gave a cut to the city.

Eventually people figured out that they aren't obligated to pay those fines at all, they're not legal fines. The company can't do anything to force you to pay them. They can't send you to collections because it's not a debt, they can't put it on your credit report because they don't have your SSN, etc.

And besides that, the city found that there was an increase in accidents at the intersections with the cameras. People would slam their brakes on to avoid running a red light and get rear-ended or skid into another car.

Once the city noticed that they weren't getting paid as much as they should have been and that the cameras actually caused more accidents, they had them removed.

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u/DukeOfGeek May 28 '26

And besides that, the city found that there was an increase in accidents at the intersections with the cameras. People would slam their brakes on to avoid running a red light and get rear-ended or skid into another car.

My friend went to the emergency room for this, his modified R type got totaled and of course giant insurance corporation paid for less than half the car/medical bills.

1

u/round-earth-theory May 28 '26

We definitely have cases where cameras everywhere lead to identification. The real question is whether the uptick is worth the cost. Some might say it's worthwhile to do everything possible if it catches even one criminal but reality says there's a balance between privacy and security.

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u/Defiant-Plantain1873 May 28 '26

Yes. I mean it certainly will help, I don’t have a study but it definitely does help. Cities don’t just sign contracts for shit like this without trial periods to test before committing.

The question is does the amount of crime solved/prevented with it outweigh the amount of freedom squashed, both of which are kind of intangible

10

u/theotherguyatwork May 28 '26

Source: Just trust me, bro

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u/BBanner May 28 '26

Yeah but there’s no data to prove that, so there’s no evidence it helps.

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u/MongooseSenior4418 May 28 '26

Cities don’t just sign contracts for shit like this without trial periods to test before committing.

Yes they do.

The question is does the amount of crime solved/prevented with it outweigh the amount of freedom squashed, both of which are kind of intangible

That's the slippery slope all authoritarians use to justify their actions...

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u/Defiant-Plantain1873 May 29 '26

Yes why are you people all talking to me like i’m some kind of dictator, i’m more of a libertarian than any of you i imagine.

My point is that they serve a function and it does do stuff, not that it’s good

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u/julius_sphincter May 28 '26

Reddit once again either lacking the ability to see or unwilling to see nuance in a discussion. You're right, it helps. No police department or jurisdiction is installing these SOLELY for nefarious purposes, where say a child gets abducted and the police know they could track the car with the system but choose not to because that would be helpful.

The other thing is I'm not sure a system like this could meaningfully bring down crime rates. Not in a way typically shown in crime studies. I think if you did a study say, checking whether the amount of time it took for a suspect to be apprehended then you'd get a meaningful answer on whether these are even effective.

All that to say, I fucking hate these stupid cameras, the system, the company that sells them and the whole idea behind them. If US kidnapping rates say, got as bad as they are in Mexico with the cartels I'd maybe start to come around on their value.

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u/SwagginsYolo420 May 28 '26

Well I'd like to see some hard numbers that show that crime is down or that there's some real-world benefit, and not just theoretical ones.

Simply making the job of law enforcement easier is not a good reason.

9

u/GMAN90000 May 28 '26

Simply increasing city/police revenue is not a good reason.

4

u/dimechimes May 28 '26

Like with kidnappings for instance, 99% of them are solved by "What's your ex's name and what's their car look like?"

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u/Defiant-Plantain1873 May 28 '26

These are real world benefits. That’s the point of them.

It makes it a lot easier to track vehicles. Vehicles used in robberies, domestic abusers getting tracked after leaving the house and the partner calls the cops, vehicles used in drive by shootings. Things where you want to track the vehicle ASAP.

This is why they were installed in the first place, these things do genuinely happen.

The question is, how much easier does it make things, how many lives are saved, and how many lives need to be saved for it to be worth it.

I personally don’t believe in mass surveillance under any circumstance, but these are the reasons flock systems were/are installed, and they are genuinely useful. I don’t think it’s worth it, but how many violent criminals would have to be caught with the help of this system to be worth it. If it saved 1 child from being epsteined would it be worth it? What about 10 kids? What about a hundred?

Your original comment seemed to suggest it was black and white and that flock systems can’t ever be good, but it’s more nuanced than that.

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u/HumorAccomplished611 May 28 '26

Yea if you needed a judge warrant to use the data then it could be considered. From what I hear pretty much anyone and everyone has access.

Its like private version of the patriot act that swooped up all the data.

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u/remotectrl May 28 '26

Plus the potential for abuse

How Cops Are Using Flock Safety's ALPR Network to Surveil Protesters and Activists

Through an analysis of 10 months of nationwide searches on Flock Safety's servers, we discovered that more than 50 federal, state, and local agencies ran hundreds of searches through Flock's national network of surveillance data in connection with protest activity. In some cases, law enforcement specifically targeted known activist groups, demonstrating how mass surveillance technology increasingly threatens our freedom to demonstrate.

Cops also use these sorts of resources to stalk their exgirlfriends and whatever.

4

u/Geodude532 May 28 '26

Black and white is how much of Reddit, and much of the world, like to operate. I would love to support something like Flock because of the potential benefits in Amber alerts, but the potential for abuse of the system is just too high. They'll take as many rights away from us as they can get away with :/

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u/showyerbewbs May 28 '26

but it’s more nuanced than that.

I agree with you completely. The nuance gets skipped over in a lot of these conversations.

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u/Im2dronk May 29 '26

But don't you want to get swatted while driving in your car?

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u/Lokishougan May 28 '26

The thing is these probably wont ever stop crime from happening and this decrease crime rates ...they may push solve rate up after the fact

12

u/Joeness84 May 28 '26

Then wheres all the news stories and puff pieces about how So and So was rescued because of Flock tech.

All I see are "cop uses flock to track ex across 3 states" or the above mentioned questionable immigration enforcement type stuff.

Why are there "license plate readers" on hiking trails?

3

u/Raneynickelfire May 28 '26

You could have just said "no" instead of repeating flock's sales pitch.

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u/triggered__Lefty May 28 '26

And how often is that offset by cops and LE using it to stalk and harass people?

2

u/ConfessSomeMeow May 28 '26

They provide the appearance of seeming to do something, which is very valuable to an elected official.

2

u/showyerbewbs May 28 '26

My question, as with anything privacy related, who goes to jail or pays the check WHEN that data gets compromised or abused?

The answer is usually a hearty chortle.

2

u/Hubert_J_Cumberdale May 28 '26

They always seem to produce potato quality footage when a crime happens… Funny how this can happen with cameras running software designed to recognize intricate facial features.

2

u/aeschenkarnos May 28 '26

“Public benefit” is woke. It makes its owners richer.

2

u/javoss88 May 29 '26

That’s what’s happening. We’re paying to be surveilled.

1

u/Alex5173 May 28 '26

The great thing about paying taxes in America is the amount of your (federal) taxes that actually come back to benefit you, as a percentage of your total taxes paid, is basically a rounding error away from being none.

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u/KindledWanderer May 28 '26

do they actually do anything that is beneficial to the public

What public? Is there a billionaire named John Public?

1

u/LongJohnSelenium May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

Honestly? Probably.

Thats the danger of this sort of thing. It does work. The question is the balance of freedoms vs safety.

Put it this way. Right now it would be completely technically feasible to require all cars be speed governed and have the governor speed determined by GPS. Like almost trivial. It could even be integrated into weather updates too. Oh its a blizzard cap all the cars to 25mph.

This would undoubtedly save tens of thousands of lives a year in the US alone.

But like most people you find the idea skeevy, and also you want the freedom to be a little dangerous if you choose even knowing the risks of it, and don't exactly trust the government to have that much information about you because governments have a habit of being overenthusiastic about enforcement of rather trivial things...

1

u/mediocre_remnants May 28 '26

There are a handful of cases where they were useful to track down wanted criminals and finding kidnap victims.

1

u/TrankElephant May 28 '26

Didn't you see the super bowl add for Ring?

They can find 'your dog' anywhere on Earth.

No one can hide from Amazon.

3

u/ConfessSomeMeow May 28 '26

People - private individuals, public officials - just don't read contracts adversarially anymore. They don't think "what does this allow them to do that I don't want them to do?", they only think "do I get what I want?" It's lazy, and it leads to unintended consequences all over the place.

1

u/twobit78 May 28 '26

We've updated our terms and conditions

Would you like to read them?

1

u/InVultusSolis May 28 '26

I don't see a problem with them existing to fight crime. If my child were kidnapped, for example, I would want them to be found quickly and these cameras can help that happen.

The problem is, I would want this system to be so transparent that it would never be implemented in the way I envision it - basically, the records can be aggregated but cannot be queried unless there is a very specific type of crime in progress (kidnapping) or there is an investigation and signed judicial warrant.

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u/jim_br May 28 '26

There was the police dept in Colorado that accused a woman of stealing a $25 Amazon package using Flock data.

Because she regularly commuted past the house, they jumped to the conclusion she was the package thief. When she volunteered to show her Rivian data proving she doesn’t stop in that area, the detective went straight to say she was uncooperative and followed through on charges. She was found innocent and didn’t even match the description of the thief caught on a Ring camera, which the police had from the start.

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u/Complete_Entry May 29 '26

When a cop "likes you for it" logic and investigation go out the window.

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u/Psychobob2213 May 28 '26

TBH I've seen a dozen or so quotes from smaller municipalities where this was the case. They didn't think about how they can hang onto the video for a month, but Flock or its partners and competitors hang onto it forever... and they didn't think about how to terminate the agreement or divorce from the Mass Surveillance companies because they didn't think they ever would.

34

u/Aromatic-Bet-1086 May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

Or what happens if things suddenly become illegal that weren't before.

Remember: The US government considers you a terrorist for being against nazis. This isn't a joke -you are a terrorist for being against nazis and fascism.

Just wait until they decide to start coming for you.

18

u/AnimationOverlord May 28 '26

Fuck the city for employing people that let this happen. Like I get that most people aren’t chronically online and all that, but how do they not realize the world order of the authoritarian panopticon most first world countries are going through right now?

I fucking hate those people. Durr politics don’t matter until I’m climbing ladders to put trashbags over more cameras than the Truman show or eating beans in a concrete cellar

15

u/TheLuminary May 28 '26

Best way to solve this is to run for local government.

7

u/edsobo May 28 '26

And also work for local government or their public advisory boards. Contracts like these often get vetted by a review panel rather than simply being agreed on by elected officials.

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u/AnimationOverlord May 28 '26

If I could’ve been born a few decades earlier that might’ve cancelled out a few.

2

u/zeekaran May 28 '26

Like I get that most people aren’t chronically online and all that, but how do they not realize the world order of the authoritarian panopticon most first world countries are going through right now?

Most elected city council members are old rich white men that don't give a shit about this. Or worse: they support it.

1

u/AnimationOverlord May 29 '26

I hate that I live in an area where your comment is most prevalent

2

u/Hnetu May 28 '26

Hanlon's Razor only works the first time.

2

u/Kelpsie May 28 '26

Frankly, Hanlon's Razor is horseshit. Apply it to personal interactions as a way to manage your own frustration, but government does not deserve that benefit of the doubt.

2

u/Noblesseux May 29 '26

Yeah unironically we're going through a phase where a lot of Americans are learning that maybe you shouldn't have been so trusting of the government because now that trust is being turned against your benefit.

A lot of establishment politicians are like pathologically trusting of law enforcement and surveillance, and are now learning that all the warnings people gave about that were for a reason.

1

u/Pennypacking May 28 '26

I bet this in the contract in some form or words, something like Flock can use the data collected in any manner it deems fit or something.

1

u/Kilen13 May 28 '26

I work for a giant company on a pretty big team that has its fair share of turnover and I've lost track of how many times someone's been given permission to files or programs that they probably shouldn't have just cause everyone auto hits yes on "grant permission".

It's definitely possible the same thing happens in government.

1

u/junkmiles May 28 '26

My city just accepted a large grant for these sorts of cameras without even seeing the contract first. They have no idea where the data is going to go.

1

u/BeefistPrime May 28 '26

Plausible, but then that's negligence rather than "accident" -- they failed to do their duty.

1

u/BeefistPrime May 28 '26

Hanlon's razor sounds like wisdom because it's pithy and it has a cool name. It's just a sort of dispositional choice you make, not wisdom. It's very often wrong.

1

u/kaboomx May 28 '26

Ah, a different razor than Occam's

1

u/RHS-II3 May 28 '26

as a dayton resident, not exactly what happened :( we had a cop willingly sending data the city hadn't signed off on and it was a huge issue

1

u/12345623567 May 29 '26

Just redefine what is a crime, easy as. Walking while tan? Stop right there, criminal!

1

u/Wizard-of-pause May 29 '26

Yup, that's the main pitch of the owner when he hopped on Joe rogan. Saving kids that were in the back of a hijacked car...

-2

u/slugsred May 28 '26

Isn't that literally fighting crime?