alt Hacker NewsUS cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
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It seems like this article buried the best lede of the story on paragraph ten, which explains Flock's new business of surveillance drones launched in response to 911 calls (and also presumably triggered by other alerts configured by police and private businesses).
> Flock has recently expanded into other technologies... Most concerning are the latest Flock drones equipped with high-powered cameras. Flock's "Drone as First Responder" platform automates drone operations, including launching them in response to 911 calls or gunfire. Flock's drones, which reach speeds up to 60 mph, can follow vehicles or people and provide information to law enforcement.
I'm glad Flock made it as far as they did before the ass-handing commences. Even some my normie friends and family are aware of the scourge because of their initial success, where they would otherwise think we're talking about a group of birds.
These companies build this tech in SF and Seattle, cities with some of the gnarliest public safety problems in the country, then turn around and sell it to smaller towns where it does more harm than good.
Most places in America don't have problems that surveillance solves. They have problems they already know about and won't act on. Cameras don't fix homelessness or addiction or underfunded services. They just make life harder for regular people.
But that's the whole appeal for bureaucrats. Buying a product looks like doing something without having to do any of the actual work.
I'm surprised Garrett Langley still has a job, he seems wildly out of touch. For instance he really believes that his Panopticon as a service is the reason crime is down in cities, conveniently ignoring crime rates prior to COVID.
I realize how unpopular flock is, and I will first say that I have literally never personally looked into the privacy concerns. But one city you don’t see named here is SF, which has cited Flock as a primary driver of its 10x reduction in car break-ins, and 30% reduction in burglaries. Those were a quality of life plague while I lived there
If you want to hear from the man himself, see link below. It was a fairly soft interview. I listened mainly because it was Noah and wasn't expecting him to be so pro-surveillance. So, even though I don't agree with them, it might be worth listening to their reasoning.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2V5m4J0tjYg1shWXWrOG8k?si=k...
For those unfamiliar, you can read more about the flock safety cameras themselves here:
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Flock_license_plate_readers
And more about the company behind the cameras:
And switches to Axon - https://denverite.com/2026/02/24/denver-ends-flock-contract-...
I have not done any research if that's out of the frying pan and into the fire or an improvement
Non-US citizens - what's the situation with cameras in public spaces where you live? In my town every 2nd hour or building entrance has a private camera pointed at the street. It's very depressing because the cops don't care - I've asked 2 in a patrol car when there was a mild case of vandalism I witnessed. Technically it's illegal, but nothing happens. The public cameras are on intersection and some bus stops. Too much, if you ask me, but the private cameras are everywhere.
It's quite ironic to get an amazon ring video ad while viewing this article.
And moving to the next vendor that hopefully does a better job of staying out of the public eye...
Funny they are just trying to get this started in Toronto
Congratulations EFF I know for a fact you’ve been working hard to get these removed.
I drove into a very affluent subdivision this weekend, and like most others around here it had a flock camera recording every car on the way in. This camera, however, had the gall to advertise its presence as a neighborhood security measure. "Flock Safety watches this neighborhood" read the sign on the post, or some such. Of course the residents there had no choice but to accept its installation, as the local police support it. Nefarious framing and marketing in the name of "safety".
Our city voted them out for awhile. So the feds just put them on every bit of federal property near roads, which ended up doing the exact same thing.
It's funny, if the company had just sold cameras to cities, they probably could have avoided this whole mess. But they just had to hit some keywords for Wall Street (like "AI" "cloud" and "SaaS"), which had the side-effect of making it appear (true or not) that they were part of a Palantir-style surveillance panopticon that tracks you everywhere.
this kind of headline might have some scholarly name, because, no... actually the number of cameras and feeds in the San Francisco Bay Area is multiplying rapidly, along with the entirety of California with few exceptions.. long ago, San Diego county, a military-led area, was the exception and to many pariah on the constant increase in tracking of vehicles, people and "events".. now, what used to be thought of as harsh and creepy, is not only matched in hardware, but exceeded in backend capacity, across almost every populated area
Someone in my hometown was arrested for vandalizing them. The media chose to say "city owned security camera". It's amazing how they will rush to defend private enterprise.
Funny that. Not everyone wants to live in an open air prison.
It really is amazing how they managed to fit so much copper into those devices.
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Would crime go up, down or stay the same if all surveillance cameras were removed? The answer to that is the only one that matters.
Ironically many people who whine about surveillance cameras have their video door bells or similar setups.
So which is it?
Perhaps this venture would have been more successful as a Public Benefit Corporation.
In the USA in 2026, "capitalism", "politics", and "evil" have all become synonymous.
Maybe I am naive, and the corruption is too deep and pervasive.
Musician-turning-tech anarchist (?) Benn Jordan is making a very interesting series of videos about Flock cameras, their poor safety, and their gray-area interfacing with local governments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMIwNiwQewQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ
I recommend them.