Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras

I'm surprised the flock cameras aren't being disabled in a more subtle fashion.

All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint. Drone goes 'boop' on the camera lens, and the entire system is disabled until an expensive technician drives out with a ladder and cleans the lens at non-trivial expense.

A handful of enterprising activists could blind all the flock cameras in a region in a day or two, and without destroying them, which makes it less of an overtly criminal act.

Obviously not advocating this, just pointing out that flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack from activists.

Flock cameras are assisted suicide for dying neighborhoods. They don't prevent crime, they record crime. Cleaning up vacant lots, planting trees, street lighting, trash removal, and traffic calming like adding planters and crosswalks reduce crime.

If you're in the bay area, on Monday at 6:30 there's a mountain view city council meeting where flock is on the agenda. If this surveillance bothers you, show up!!

There's a real distinction worth making here between surveillance infrastructure and investigative tools. Flock is mass passive collection -- camera on every corner, running 24/7, feeding a database law enforcement queries at will. What people are actually hungry for is the opposite: targeted, on-demand tools that regular people control. The same instinct that has people pulling down cameras is what's driving grassroots OSINT communities -- they want to be able to find things themselves without being watched by someone else's system. ghostcatchers.net

Here's a list of Flock's investors:

- Andreessen Horowitz

- Greenoaks Capital

- Bedrock Capital

- Meritech Capital

- Matrix Partners

- Sands Capital

- Founders Fund

- Kleiner Perkins

- Tiger Global

- Y Combinator

This will start happening to Ring cameras as well soon if it's not already.

Good. Throw a monkey wrench into their gears at every opportunity you're comfortable with. Don't let them get away with tearing down our basic needs for privacy and safety. We don't have to give in to Big Tech and its surveillance for profit goals.

This is cool and all but Ring is the vastly more important target.

I don't think we can pretend the definition of "public" didn't change, now that it means "something is likely recorded for all time and you have no control over where it goes and literally everyone in the world can see it."

Next they can work on the Adhan speakers

Meanwhile, in Brazil, a market is growing for stolen surveillance cameras. Just think how lovely: a technology created to restrict crime is actually feeding it.

Ultra-based. Fuck these creepy things and anyone who installs them.

People always hated the cameras. It's just that now that people feel comfortable that the government won't move heaven and earth to come after them for daring to vandalize it's infrastructure they're finally acting up. But they wanted to all along.

Speed cameras next. Just another privacy violating device that is also a revenue source for irresponsible local leaders.

I remember when mp3 music first became available and sharing sites like Limewire popped up.

So many people were sharing music ( depriving artists of their pay ) that it looked like a real problem. How could they possibly deter all those music takers?

It turns out they only needed to catch a few, and fine the living daylights out of them. A fine of $100,000 was sufficient to scare everybody back to honesty.

I have similar and deep privacy concerns. But I also know that cameras have helped find criminals and assist crime victims. I don't want to let fugitives go without punishment. In fact, I must admit that cameras are a realistic choice given the current technology.

Flock Safety must be under public evaluation. Tech companies tend to hide technical specs, calling them trade secrets. But most internet security standards are public. What should be private is the encryption key. The measure to protect development effort is patents, which are public in the registry.