alt Hacker NewsLAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire
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I don't understand flock cameras in high crime areas. Every time somebody commits a heinous crime it's always like "they were arrested 72 times and were well known by the police"
What's the point in helping the police catch criminals when they don't do anything after the fact!
it needs to be illegal for the government to buy data or intelligence that it could not otherwise legally collect itself.
Are there any privacy-first security camera provider where it's the city that manages data access and uses it purely for local law enforcement purposes?
What's really surprising is that it's the LAPD, of all agencies, that are making this decision while violating civil rights concerns. https://lapublicpress.org/2025/11/lapd-settlements/
> The top three payout categories totaled $345 million. Civil rights violations, police shootings, excessive use of force, and illegal searches collectively accounted for $183 million, almost half of the claim amounts.
Plenty of civil rights violations, but Flock is too much even for them.
They aren't crash compliant, aren't tagged with inspection stickers for signage, and the county/state road agencies could remove them for that alone.
One of the best sound designs ever invented was the 'you just lost' melody created for The Price is Right.
That is not a non sequitur.
I stayed in downtown LA recently and looked like the set from the walking dead. Literally blocks of people wandering in traffic. I guess you could argue you definitely don't need flock cameras to see the problem, but also I don't know how anyone would not do everything possible to stop it.
Does it say how many cameras the LAPD pays for or if they are getting rid of the flock software from their org? Folks conflate this a lot but often times most regions have a substantial number of private flock deployments, city owned, rarely directly with the police.
Police get access to software no costs (AFAIK) for BOLO alerts on tags.
This is good. But unfortunately it doesn't mean the Flock cameras will be removed because the city doesn't own them. Flock does. And Flock will likely want to keep them there. In other cities when the contract is canceled or let expire Flock prevented those cities from removing the cameras. Some had to resort to covering them with trash bags because they could not legally remove them. This happened in Dayton, Ohio and many other cities. https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/cities-covering-flock-surv...
> "Some locals have taken matters into their own hands by dismantling Flock cameras and covering them with trash bags"
This techcrunch article incorrectly characterizes this need and required behavior as something done by random citizens. But it is actually the cities themselves having to resort to it, totally officially and legally, because of Flock behaving badly.
Fun fact: When they switch to Axon Outposts instead, just know that they have Amazon Sidewalk modules inside them, too for backdoor C2 to Axon.
(Go check the FCC docs for X4GS06009 and note that there's a Quectel KG100S sitting on the power supply board. https://fccid.io/X4GS06009)
Honestly, if Flock forces people to enforce speed limits and follow the rules of the road, its expansion can't come fast enough. I realize how contrarian of a view this is to the mainstream, but car accidents are a leading cause of death worldwide, and it's my belief that many of them wouldn't have happened if driving rules were respected.
Flock has been critisized a lot. Unfortunately it seems that technology will overrule civil rights; there are a ton of youtube videos about that topic from all involved views.
Anyone know the proper ritual for summoning tptacek to this thread?
They should hire some juniors to patch together analysis with local LLMs and do that on an as needed basis to avoid the creepiness. Networks of cameras remain a highly powerful way of holding evildoers accountable.
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I'm not defending flock, and have mixed feelings on the matter due to having personal experience with flock. My neighborhood was being hit by sophisticated robberies one after another. Police could not catch the guys. The police confirmed that it was a Tren de Aruagua operation. They would buy cars mainly BMWs off Facebook marketplace. Go rob a house and sell the car within 24-48 hours. Our neighborhood had cameras, but by manually going through the footage to find what was relevant, it was too late. After working with the police, the HOA decided to install a flock camera set at each entrance. Once it was installed, which was over a year ago, we haven't had a break in since. I know they are tracking my car going in and out but my phone and car also do this. Objectively, my neighborhood is less private but more safe. I think if I had to choose, this would be my choice. I wish I could have a safe and private neighborhood, but this isn't the world we live in.
This is easily solved by paying homeless people to destroy the devices.
The best part is that flock owns the cameras and the poles so even when the contract expires the cameras keep running and recording data that flock can sell to e.g. CHP, LASD, FBI, Palantir; and LAPD can just call them and access the data
the flock scam was engineered to be resilient to political pressure by giving departments and jursidictions this fake exit ability while the data continues to be harvested, it is a noose that only tightens; the amount of flock cameras recording only ever goes up not down.