Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras
bloodinthemachine.com
bloodinthemachine.com
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.
One or two cameras getting bashed is basically a fart in the wind for flock, and I'd argue that it doesn't actually move the needle in any direction as far as public opinion goes. Those who dislike them don't need further convincing, those who support them are not going to have their opinion changed by property destruction (it might make them support surveillance more, in fact).
But hey, it's provocative I guess.
On the other hand flock losing their entire fleet is an existential problem for them, and for all the customers they're charging for the use of that fleet. Their BoD will want answers about why the officers of the company are harming shareholders with the way they're operating the business. Cities that have contracts with them may have grounds to terminate them, etc etc.
You want to evoke the people and not the state.
Seems to be getting more popular [https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/antiulez-campaigners-v...].
Americans don’t care enough
Too busy enjoying S&P500 near 7,000 and US$84,000/year median household income
They eventually had to equip pretty much every speed camera with a speed camera camera, usually on a much higher pole to make vandalism more difficult.
Roads that are narrow in places where a lower speed is desirable.
Heavy taxation on vehicles with more mass and lower visibility.
Actual licensing standards other than driving down a couple of city streets and parking.
More crossings, with lights or bridges, instead of long four-lane arterial roads with nowhere to safely cross.
Removing automatic enforcement of speed limits would not improve the situation.
Just wait until you find out that paintball guns are considered firearms are require licensing in the aforementioned region.
You can use them under the direct supervision of the licensed owner, but it's still quite restrictive. If you were to take one and shoot at cameras on the street it would vandalism plus firearms offences, most of which start at inversion of innocence, massive fines and move pretty quickly into prison time.
NSW used to be similar, but a few years ago the state government had a rare moment of common sense and did away with most of that pointless bullshit.
The point here is that 'skyward' is where the laser's beam goes when you're trying to aim it at a camera up on a pole. It's practically impossible to point a non-fixed position laser at something a non-trivial distance higher than you without spilling a large amount of laser beam into whatever happens to be behind your intended target; which is very often the sky.
"In NSW, paintball is classified as a "prohibited firearm" under the Firearms Act 1996. However, it can still be legally played under strict licensing conditions. Unlike in some states where it is more loosely regulated, players and operators in NSW must comply with a range of legal requirements to ensure safety and legality."
These rules have changed, I think back before COVID they reclassified them as sporting equipment instead of firearms, but still brought in a whole bunch of licensing rules and requirements similar to gun ownership.
You can't just walk into KMart and walk out with a paintball gun here. |Or paintball markers.
Cynical answer: Not the kind of hellhole dystopia that has schoolkids shooting up schools twice a week.
Or that his possession and use of this gun might somehow serve as a sort of "gateway drug" to Harder Weapons that he would then use to the same end?
Neither one appears to have actually happened. In fact, I've never known a single person who has been involved in a school shooting, or heard of one happening here at all, ever. It just doesn't happen, regardless of whatever is supposedly happening on the glowing box in the corner of everyone's living room that's always portraying doom and danger everywhere.
Indeed, I don't recall a single one of my paintball playing friends (who all nonchalantly used illegal in Australia and super dangerous semi-automatic paintball guns against each other) who later went on to be involved in any kind of gun related incident.
I'm sure you've got some kind of excellent response prepared however, so we will now hear the details of how wrong I am and how Paintball Guns Are In Fact Really Dangerous Because Reasons And the Australian Government Nannies Are Right.
/s - but it wouldn't surprise me at the rate things are going.
/s (but not really)
2. As of 2026, most rednecks seem to be all for the police state. Don't expect them to come save you.
Mostly from one particularly benighted area, Easterhouse. If you extensively gentrified Easterhouse back then, it would look like Detroit in the 90s. It's improved a little since then.
- Aeroflot flights get hijacked and flown to West Berlin
- Soviets decided to put Spetsnaz (Soviet special forces) on the planes much like we have Air Marshals today
- Spetsnaz figures "we have guns and are on the plane already" so they start hijacking flights
- So Soviets put TWO Spetsnaz teams on the flight
- Team 1 decides to hijack flight, realize there is a Team 2 who ALSO agrees to hijack the flight
"On December 12, 1978, two Soviet citizens hijacked an Aeroflot Yak‑40 on a domestic route and forced it to fly to West Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, which was under U.S. control."
But then, when asked about any reference to this event, gives this:
"1. LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 (30 August 1978) A LOT Tupolev Tu‑134 was hijacked by East German citizens seeking asylum and forced to land at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin."
Are you an AI?
No mention on Wikipedia of these terrorist activities, nothing in the history I could find online. He was a bit of a tall tale teller so I called him out on it.
He was quite upset and ended up showing me his ship log book. With the ship name and the rough date, I actually found two news articles that had been scanned by Google scholar conforming that it had really happened.
I bet there's a lot we don't know that happened behind the iron curtain, I wouldn't doubt this just because you can't easily find any references with a quick Google.
If you want the rest of how they saved the ship, they tried to get a junior officer over in a sort of swing. If they'd have succeeded they'd have actually all been entitled to a salvage payment. But it was too rough so in the end they just got the other ship to follow them back to port.
When the pilot came out to dock the ship, he found another bomb.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1734&dat=19661114&id=F...
The story is ridiculous on its face: why fly to West Berlin where you'd need to get another flight to get anywhere? The popular targets of hijackers in the USSR were Turkey, Israel and Sweden. "Spetsnaz" is not some organization, it's just an abbreviation of "special designation" similar to English "spec-op", multiple military and law enforcement organizations have their own specnaz as they had in the USSR. Aeroflot was not one of them though, its flights were protected by the "air militia" - a department of the Ministry of the Interior, which was also in charge of the airports security. And, judging by multiple hijacking attempts, there were rarely armed agents on the plane or they rarely decided to engage, which makes sense, since fights on a flying plane would put lives of all passengers into mortal danger. Putting TWO teams of armed soldiers on each plane is something only an LLM could hallucinate in my humble opinion.
Realistically that’s going to attract a lot of negative attention.
Someone who has the wherewithal to jerry rig a paintball gun to a drone is someone scary. Plus, any officer who witnesses such a drone is almost certainly going to misidentify the paintball gun as an actual gun. I can imagine the operator would be charged with several felonies.
Attaching any kind of potential weapon on a drone has no real precedent so they can dig through 19th century law and combine it with some 21st century law and punishment and screw your life over with bull crap unless you got $100K+ sitting around to throw on a good lawyer. The risk of being caught may be a bit lower, but the potential punishment if caught could be absolutely enormous.
The advertiser's operators could actually look through the camera and shout through hidden speakers at people vandalising their adverts, usually by writing on the specially-coated toughened vandal-resistant glass that ink or paint didn't stick to.
The local wee wannabe gangsters took to filling bingo markers with the stuff they use to etch frosted glass, and tagging the displays with that.
Gluing two fragile gelatin halves (designed to dissolve and break easily) once you’ve filled them perfectly full of paint and then making sure they’re almost perfectly round takes specialized equipment.
Must less recoil too.
On the list of "laws you don't want to screw with", National Firearms Act violations are high on my list. Regardless of whether something is or isn't a violation, I'm certainly not interested in paying expensive lawyers to argue they're not.
Though you either need a laser powerful enough to harm human eyes or lots of patience. Hong Kong protesters innovated a lot of these sort of resistance using lasers
But how would you see it? IR goggles?
Because advocating things which are moral/ethical but illegal is often against the TOS :(
We need laws which are explicitly based on moral principles. Barring that, we should at least have laws which treat sufficiently large platforms as utilities and forbid them from performing censorship without due process.
Oh wait... Maybe that's the problem.
No, that would likely end in a RICO or terrorism case if it continued. Just because the cameras aren't destroyed doesn't mean CorpGov won't want to teach a lesson.
Or even better yet, get arrested halfway to trying to dip your drone into paint on a sidewalk?
Just throw a rock at the stupid thing.
(Or a trebuchet?)
A well made catapult in the right hands with a good aim is deadly.
I (EDIT: hate) Flock Safety cameras. If someone did this in my town, I’d want them arrested.
They’re muddying the moral clarity of the anti-Flock messaging, the ultimate goal in any protest. And if they’re willing to damage that property, I’m not convinced they understand why they shouldn’t damage other property. (More confidently, I’m not convinced others believe they can tell the difference.)
Flock Safety messages on security. Undermining that pitch is helpful. Underwriting it with random acts of performative chaos plays into their appeal.
> flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack
We live in a free society, i.e. one with significant individual autonomy. We’re all always very vulnerable. That’s the social contract. (The fact that folks actually contemplating violent attacks tend to be idiots helps, too.)
Was this a typo? If not, what does "haste" mean in this context? (I'm not messing with you; I'm genuinely wondering.)
If they do it right. If they don’t, it doesn’t. And between the action and the next rain, Flock Safety gets to message about vandalism.
It'd be more likely to make more people do it.
Anyone can go that far. The question is if it’s smart. The answer is it’s not. Acting out one’s need for machismo on a good cause is just selfish.
If I were a Flock PR person, I’d be waiting for someone to pull a stunt like this. (Better: they shoot it.)
Vietnamese vs US Grunts not cute useless protestors holding signs that threaten to hold different signs longer.
This must be the most hi-tech solution to a low tech problem I've seen this week ;)
Maybe some spray foam?
Alright you buy one for me and I’ll consider it
Sometimes judges contribute as well.
Plea deals.
Plea deals subvert justice for both those innocent who are bullied into pleading out, and for those who are wickedly guilty and get a big discount on the penalty exacted. Plea deals give the system extra capacity for prosecution, encouraging the justice system to fill the excess capacity, while simultaneously giving an underfunded system that doesn't have enough capacity the appearance of being able to handle the load. Bad all around.
Decades of historical evidence to the contrary.
If you’d like to have an informed opinion, at least engage with the academic material. Otherwise you come off sounding naïve, insisting that complex problems have simple solutions.
Edit: maybe my ears are a bit sensitive, but I can’t help but hear a faint whistle in the wind, maybe only at a frequency a dog could hear. But no, surely not here in gentlemanly company.
I mean, trivially, using our brains for a nanosecond, what if that 1% of the population is almost always 16-18 year olds when they commit those violent crimes. The 16-18 demographic is roughly 4% of the US population (Google). That would mean locking up 1 in 4 high school students for 6-20 of their most formative years, and thrusting them back into society with a “Mission Accomplished” banner hanging behind you.
Play with the numbers a bit (maybe it’s 1 in 20), but the point stands. Using imprisonment to try to quarantine a demographic that is perceived as irreparably violent is a barbaric, sophomoric idea that has very little evidence of success in the modern era.
The reason I brought up youth is because, unsurprisingly, most violent crime is performed by people who don’t have a fully-formed prefrontal cortex. Feelings of invincibility and a sense of not having much to lose.
Sure. US prosecutors are so lenient that the US is the capital of incarceration
The big incarceration states are most likely deep red states.
Of the exceptions I have listed, Turkey has the highest incarceration rate of 366 per 100k. Even so, it is still lower than that of 41 states, falling between Hawaii (367) and Connecticut (326).
Look at places and countries with low crime. They don't have the most Flock cameras, the most prisoners, or the most powerful surveillance evidence because while those may solve a crime, they don't solve crime as a whole.
I said 74.
74?! That's way to many mouse traps. No one would ever need that many mouse traps.
But sir, I haven't told you how many mice I have.
The number of incarcerated individuals is not a relevant statistic if you're also not including the number of criminals there are.
If your 74 traps solve your problem and in a month you have no more mice, then congratulations.
But it sounds like rather than buying more and more mouse traps, you should find and fix the underlying cause.
a) much more time and effort should be focused on catching and stopping the most persistent repeat offenders (sometimes by locking them up); and
b) orders of magnitude too many Americans are currently in prison.
For developed countries, none but America have such high levels of immigration nor the racial diversity America has. It is much easier to convince society to promote high-trust empathetic solutions when society is racially homogenous and shares cultural background. It’s impossible to compare America to any European country, although soon it may be possible if immigration continues
America has a lot of criminals and therefore America needs a lot of incarceration.
I come across this rather frequently among people from sheltered backgrounds like those who graduated from mom and dad taking care of them, all the way through to Mega Corp/university taking care of them, and absolutely cannot fathom why everyone doesn’t just eat cake.
I have a working theory that this effect, whatever one wants to call it, of people being too abstracted from reality, is ultimately the source of collapse of all kinds of organizations of humans… including civilizations.
It is, for example also why America can have so many vile warmongering people, because not only do they not have to lead troops into battle, have their children drafted into the front lines, or pay for the invariable disaster and murder they perpetrated and orchestrated; but in the most grotesque way, they profit from it and immensely; usually also combining it with other types of fraud like “money printing”, i.e., counterfeiting, which they use to plunder the wealth they accumulated through murder, mayhem, and fraud.
Instead of identifying and addressing the real problems--mass unemployment, homelessness, hopelessness--your dystopic "solution" is simply more and bigger jails, more and better armed cops with surveillance cameras attached, more laws, more weapons, more bondage and discipline, more "you will do what I say or else."
Doesn't work. Never works.
Read the essay "Fate of Empires" by Sir John Glubb to see how things this time are not in fact any different than what came before.
Say it then cowardly racist. Stop hiding behind rhetorical devices to justify an institution that has its historical origins in slave patrols
Sounds like a certain, controversial federal law enforcement agency in the US
And that doesn't even get into jurisdictional issues. The federal government doesn't have jurisdiction over local crimes that do not cross interstate boundaries.
Every single one of my ancestors who were in the war--except one--fought for the Confederacy in the War Between the States. (Or the War of Lincoln's Aggression, according to some. Yankees call it the "Civil War.")
Going further back, my Cherokee forefathers (the Chickamauga) were equally unimpressed by what they saw and experienced of this entity (they viewed it as a malignant tumor) that calls itself the "United" States of America.
I believe my ancestors are envious that I get to see the day when the truth of the Empire of Lies is finally exposed in front of all the world.
With a tiny little wall of text, you might even manage to tell me why you think the paperwork was so horrible that he should be in prison for it, I suppose. But no one would read your wall of text, because if it takes you a wall of text to explain it, they figure it's all bullshit anyway. And this is why he won in 2024, and why his successor will win in 2028, and likely in 2032. It's why this November is going to shock you even though there's virtually no room left for surprises. Just remember, it's like 96% certain Hillary's going to beat him if you need to fantasize about a better time...
Half of this country believes problems are systemic and can be fixed. The other half believes they are a natural consequence of culture, race, and invisible flying creatures that tempt you to do bad things.
So then why don't they vote for the party that offers systemic solutions? Oh, right, because neither corporate party offers such.
We can't elect systemic solutions when the election and education processes are systemically hijacked by capital interests.
- Andreessen Horowitz
- Greenoaks Capital
- Bedrock Capital
- Meritech Capital
- Matrix Partners
- Sands Capital
- Founders Fund
- Kleiner Perkins
- Tiger Global
- Y Combinator
Of course, actual serious criminals who are actively committing serious crimes just use fake plates so they aren't affected, it only really helps catch people who commit crimes on the spur of the moment (while also obviously eroding every "normal" person's privacy)
They do put them specifically whereever those roads join major roads though. Meanwhile the crime stats in the UK make chilling reading, as the focus on replacing Police officers with cameras, replacing courts with... nothing has lead to many crimes skyrocketing, especially those that are not associated with driving a car.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...
A lot of people still habitually drink drive (not getting completely smashed, but a few pints at a country pub then drive home) and realistically as long as you don't crash you could do that for decades and probably get away with it.
There's almost no cameras and also almost no actual police
That is starting to change. Porch pirates incentivized a lot of people to invest in cameras and placing them in discrete locations. Some are getting clever making them look like owl nest boxes on poles, bird feeders and other benign boring objects.
We have (a relatively recent phenomenon) elected Police and Crime Commissioners. They are elected with a tiny turnout. Next election in your area see if a candidate is anti-surveillance and run a campaign to support them. 10,000 extra votes to any of the mainstream candidates will get them elected.
Another addition to this thread of things that will never happen.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93d4dd3l3lo
Party because people haven’t got a clue what they do, partly as they have very little power, and party as it’s just a popularity vote on the rosette.
Personally I’m more worried about ring door bells, but I’ve spent years being told I’m paranoid.
We don’t have as many (per capita) as the US.
Pretty much all public cctv cameras that are installed on the side of public roads, like Flock are in the US, are publically owned, either by Police forces, Local Councils or National highways.
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."
> Shrapnel also shot through a passing car into a passenger seat, while another piece of metal damaged the window frame of a child's bedroom.
Wtf. That was a “homemade” bomb to bring down one camera.
I can’t say I disagree with what they’re doing, but it’s absolutely vigilante justice, not legal.
I remember hearing once that the constitution, having been written by a bunch of insurrectionists, intended people to have the power to keep the government out of their business. It seems they have lost that?
Because when it comes to that, the government is a failed state and no one will be worried about what’s legal.
It’s not meant to be a means of legal recourse, it’s a last resort.
Guns are a first line defense for millions of people. A lawyer with a briefcase and a judge wearing a gaudy robe+wig is not a defense at all.
Though the imagery of it would be funny of blasting each of those out of a cannon.
Even the government agrees, issuing a firearm to their officers who go out into the field (read: where everyone else is).
In failed states, sure.
In many countries police officers may not even carry guns all the time.
The gun and violence situation we have here in the US is not normal for first world countries.
If you're describing the US as a failed state then we have nothing to talk about. Notwithstanding the fact the essence of the state at question even being relevant.
Enjoy your day.
https://reason.com/2022/02/03/unreliable-speed-cameras-line-...
> In Chicago, where speed cameras are abundant, the camera program improperly gave out over $2.4 million in fines from 2013 to 2015. Using a random sample analysis, the Chicago Tribune estimated the number of bad tickets to be somewhere around 110,000. The erroneous fines were issued in areas without proper speed limit signs or during times when the cameras should have been turned off. (Cameras near parks and schools operate within a specific timeframe.) The Chicago Tribune found that over half the cameras in use were giving out faulty speeding tickets.
> Unsurprisingly, the misuse of speed cameras has also become a massive source of revenue for local government. In Chicago, 300 of the city's speed cameras would bring in about $15 million each year.
> In March, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lowered the speed limit threshold for speed cameras to trigger a citation. Cameras now trigger when a driver goes over the limit by 6 miles per hour, rather than 10 miles per hour, the previous threshold.
I think we need to make it easier for people to fight back against automatic tickets like this. The onus should be on the state not the individual. And individuals should still be entitled to their data
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.
Everybody wants murderers and rapists in jail, nobody wants to 24/7 share their location and upload their every thoughts to palantir and other companies operated by degenerates like Thiel
It's so funny though that the majority of all people are doing exactly this, 24/7.
If the cameras were installed and operated by the DHS or by the local PD, would that make you feel better? The data should not exist, or if it must, it shouldn't be accessible without court approval. The model you're proposing doesn't ensure that; in fact, it moves it closer to the parties most likely to misuse it.
The fact that Flock controls all of the cameras, all of the data and said data is easily accessible means police and the state have access to information that they should only get with a warrant. A business having a camera storing video data that's completely local isn't an issue. A business having a camera which is connected to every other business that has a camera is.
There is a famous quote about this that needs to be updated for the modern age.
"I'd rather let ten fugitives go unsurveilled, than to surveil one innocent person."
There's no money to be made arresting criminals. Sure you get a few police contracts, and you need to show enough results to keep them.. but your moat is mostly how hard it is to even submit bids.
There's a lot more money to be made knowing that Accountant Mary's Lexis is looking kind of banged up and she could be sold on a new one.