alt Hacker NewsThis isn't said in bad faith but there is a few things that seem to be unanswered here besides surveillance is bad.
1. You have no expectation of privacy in public.
2. People carry surveillance devices in their pocket.
It is somehow simultaneously bad that the government uses public surveillance, but completely fine the public does. I don't think it's acceptable these target "flock". It's completely useless doesn't solve the greater problem. The greater problem in my eyes is:
1. I can't move around my own neighborhood without being recorded by 200 personal cameras whose data is uploaded an analyzed by various security companies.
2. I can't go to someone's house without their internal cameras recorded my every move and word.
3. I can't go outside without some subset of morons, that seem to always exist, bringing out their pocket government tracking device to record everyones face, movement, location, and action.
4. I can't say or do anything in public without risking some social justice warrior recording me, cutting it up, and using it to destroy me.
The greater problem is the proliferation of surveillance devices in every day life. Flock is such a small player in the grand scheme of this. These websites are simply art pieces and do nothing to solve the actual, pervasive, problem we face.
So do we just stop at Flock and raise the Mission Accomplished banner? Or do we forget this nonsense and target the real problem.
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Just saying, this isn't said in bad faith, doesn't make it so.
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Private entities surveil you to make money off you or protect their property. Law enforcement surveils you to arrest you and charge you with crimes. These are not the same, and that's why some people care more about surveillance by law enforcement.
As an example, see the recent case of the woman who was arrested simply for driving through a town at the same time as a robbery occurred. That sort of thing is why people care.
If the data collection is performed by a private entity and then sold to the government, that is government surveillance. I agree that this is more widespread than Flock and other big names. However, Flock and its ilk currently stand to do far more damage in practice. They offer integrated turnkey solutions that are available to practically any law enforcement, from shithead chud officers in tiny shithole towns to the NYPD and all its grand history of institutionalized misconduct, and we are already seeing the effects of that.
See, also, the recent case of a teenager who was arrested because a Flock camera or similar thought a Doritos bag in his pocket was a gun. I'll let you guess what color his skin was.