I hope they sue the daylights out of Flock

So glad someone in my town has been cutting these things down. We had fewer than a dozen to begin with, and now the only two that I'd personally seen are gone (just the roughly cut stump of the pole is left of one of them). I doubt the city will be looking to put in additional cameras.

All flock bullshit aside, why do we need guns to arrest someone that did steal a car? When they grabbed trump for crimes that far exceeded the cost of a car there were no guns. Why do we stand for shooting people over theft? It's insane

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film)

There are so many timelines where this guy ends up dead or in jail. This timeline depended on his ability to get a rep from Jaguar on the phone on a weekend. I can kind of understand the four car response; the system kept dropping him and they finally had positive confirmation this was the car and where it was. I wonder how often clerical/technical errors happen and how early in the process they normally get caught. This could've ended as badly as some of the swatting cases have and started out much the same way: an input into a system drives a forceful output. It doesn't matter to the recipient of the force if it was a prank, a malicious act by someone, or a glitch in the matrix. If someone dies because a bad actor swatted someone there are consequences. What are the consequences if the entire Flock system is pure happy path from lens to server?

While I agree that Flock sucks, using alternate timelines as arguments isn't helpful

So many fucking horror stories about Flock and how their cameras are misused. The one that makes my skin crawl the most was the Texas cop who stalked someone traveling out of state for an abortion, seeing as how one's geographical location here in the US largely dictates their right to privacy and bodily autonomy. (And it's a clear violation of civil liberties to stalk them using a nationwide dragnet.)

If anyone's bored, I made a video this week about a vigilante in Suffolk Virginia who (allegedly) destroyed more than a dozen of them.

That was worse than i expected:

"As we all stood there shaking our heads, including my wife, who was finally allowed to join me, I connected the final dot. A lot of vehicles in JLR’s media fleet have a New Jersey manufacturer plate with the same alphanumeric structure—34 ## DTM—and Officer Ganshyn observed that meant it was now a nationwide issue. Anywhere a police department has a partnership with Flock, any other JLR-owned car with the same plate structure is going to get flagged as stolen. In fact, four other 34 ## DTM cars were being tracked around Minnesota that week, according to Officer Ganshyn. I was just the first one to get nabbed. The only way to stop it would be for the LAPD to correct their initial report and update Flock’s system, which Jaguar Land Rover was now racing to make happen following the phone call."

Flock was literally built for this (to track stolen cars), not how it's frequently used (for police to stalk ex girlfriends)

...and they can't even do the one thing they were designed for.

we’d just gotten back in the Range Rover and reversed maybe two feet out of the spot when four cop cars came flying out of nowhere and boxed us in. The officers jumped out and started shouting

OP is sooooo lucky to be white

It’s time people started to pack a dark hoodie and a battery powered angle grinder wherever they go.

These cameras need to be taken down the instant they appear.

It should be legal to obscure your license plate until all flock cameras are dismantled, and AI usage is banned for use by police

Flock continues to shoot itself in the foot

His parting words were ominous: “You’re lucky we’re in Plymouth. If you were in Minneapolis, they definitely would’ve come at you with guns drawn.”

First of all, that's messed up for a "stolen" vehicle. Second, that's not really comforting in any real way.

And the reason I was ID’d as a dangerous car thief was a simple data error made 2,000 miles away in California, creating an edge case within an edge case that Flock’s AI camera network was unable to handle.

Guess the author never heard of "corner case." Or thought his readers might not have.

This is way too kind in the way it speaks about the whole situation. I understand that you don't want to piss off your local cops, especially when you drive shit for a living.

But the sheer fact that a clerical error in fucking LA can cause this kind of police interaction to occur is fucking ridiculous. So many steps along the way where having the right people involved asking some basic ass questions could have prevented what could have easily been a fatal scenario.

Why, if it isn't one of those idiotic half assed poorly though out "solutions" that just creates more problems and that the powers that be love so much, especially in the US (coming soon to a country near you!). All in the name of so called security while actually giving little to none.