Watch out for them immediately contracting with Axon instead, which is just as bad.
post
Way too much unethical shit is getting implemented without community involvement.
I don't understand why here in Europe people are not standing up to it, even usa people hate it!
TBF we already have hugely invasive surveillance, at least here in the UK. Successive governments have cut policing and invested in cameras instead. It hasn't made us safer, but we kind of got boiled-frogged into living in a panopticon. There was a bit of negative publicity recently about use of facial recognition at choke-points like major public transport hubs - but it never really went anywhere. Make people feel scared and they will give up their rights for the illusion of security.
It's actually a good idea? You don't have expectation of privacy when you're outside. It's legal for anyone to install a camera pointing outside.
One camera isnt the problem.
A whole network of cameras tracking your every move, logged in a national database that doesn't require a warrant or oversight is.
Police require a warrant to get your phones location data, but they don't require one to ask Flock for your every move. This has already been abused hundreds of times by police and city employees to stalk their ex partners and more..
Unless they're Intel.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/04/trump-congress-fisa-spy-court-fbi-bill/
Not every move. Only moves in public where recording with your phone is already legal
Flock effectively follows you around like a stalker.
If I was to follow you around all day, recording everything you do (even if I just stay in public spaces), I would be guilty of harassment and potentially criminal stalking. Flock does the same thing, just via a network of cameras instead of literally following you in person.
There are tons of public cameras, but they're owned by seprate individuals/companies. You'd be required to get permission from each ones owner to collect their footage, which in itself provides saftey against stalkers. The owners of that footage are in no way obligated to provide it and will likely refuse without being given a good reason. They may even still refuse until provided with a court order. That oversight, from both the footage owners and the courts that order it to be handed over, protects people from unlawful harassment, particularly stalkers.
The fact that Flock provides anyone with a badge/title the ability to freely search a massive database for every public location a person has been, what they were wearing, how they walk, what bluetooth devices they had, their mode of transport (plus every detail about it Flock can extract), facial recognition data, and more - is terrifying. 0 oversight: no warrant, no reasonable suspicion, no evidence of a crime; just following you around hoping to catch you doing something they don't like (regardless of whether it's illegal activity or not).
If you haven't yet, you should really read that article I posted above.
A single search query recruits that entire network as a passive tracking apparatus. An officer who sets a specific plate on a "hot list" receives an automatic alert whenever that vehicle appears anywhere in the system — across city limits, across state lines, across jurisdictions the officer has no authority in. The abuser does not need to be present. The cameras do the watching for him.
We need 1 good lawyer to take up the 'Flock is stalking me' case. Prove mass surveillance = stalking.
I see nothing wrong with what you're doing in public being available to law enforcement. It's already legal to record it, a cop can pull out his phone and record you and it's not illegal already
Did you read the article provided?
Even a police officer cannot just follow someone around all day every day, without reasonable articulable suspicion. They would also be guilty of harassment and/or criminal stalking.
Again, it's not that a camera is recording that's the problem. It's the infrastructure behind those cameras that aggregate all the data into a single database which requires no cause to search. Anyone with a badge/title can track anyone throughout the whole country, with no probable cause, no warrant, and no oversight. They don't even have to say why they're searching the system.
An ex partner fleeing an abusive boyfriend/girlfriend that happens to be a police officer (or that has a police officer buddy) can and will be hunted down by that ex, and nobody will know until it's too late. This system directly puts people in danger.
at least 50 documented cases across the United States in which law enforcement officers have been charged with or accused of misusing AI-powered automated license plate reader systems to conduct unauthorized surveillance of intimate partners, ex-partners, or women they wanted to meet. In 26 of those cases, prosecutors and investigators concluded that officers used the technology specifically to spy on wives, girlfriends, former partners, their exes' new partners, or women they sought to approach.
These systems also get used by government agencies (on both sides of the spectrum) to track anyone that disagrees with their political stance, fishing for ways to harass, jail, or run them out of town/state. Governments given this type of power stop being democracies and become dictatorships; because anyone that could or would challenge them get hunted down.
I see nothing wrong with what you're doing in public being available to law enforcement.
It wouldn't be a problem if every person with access to this system was 100% honest and just; but thats simply not the reality of the world. There are ALWAYS people that will abuse these types of tools for evil purposes. That's why we have a court system instead of just making every police officer 'judge, jury, and executioner'.
Flock removes the court system and puts all the power in every single officers hands. That is NOT a good thing.
'Every police officer has good intentions' is a fantasy. If you can't see that, you've spent way too much time inside.
There are thousands of cases of finding missing persons using cameras
https://www.whsv.com/2026/08/01/deputy-uses-flock-cameras-find-missing-girl-less-than-30-minutes/
If you compare to 50 instances of abuse, is that a good tradeoff
It's not a good trade off. Just because dystopian surveillance sometimes does something good does not outweigh all the bad it does on a regular basis
Your forefathers are weeping from the grave. Land of the Free. Lol.
so you are ok with the police officers who used Flock to stalk and rape people.
Got it. when you are a victim of Flock and get raped/killed by a stalker who used Flock. I'll remember to point out that you were ok with Flock before you were personally affected. typical fucking Republican... you don't give a shit until it affects you.
Your presumptions aren't helpful in the slightest. Educate, don't enflame.
Being unaware of the ramifications is not even remotely the same as being ok with them.
being unaware in an age of information is like being ignorant of the law. you can still be convicted of a crime even if you didn't know it was a crime.
and flock's lawsuits are both public information and in the fucking news.
at this point you have to be a filthy maga pedophile watching fox news, in a coma and just woke up yesterday, or dead.
dumbass either is willfully ignorant or a filthy supporter who got caught out and doesn't want to be harassed.
I didn't say that
But that is the reality of the situation
then why support letting a private company track everyone and anyone while handing that information over to cops without a warrant... letting hundreds of cops stalk and rape people?
Let's not pretend there's only downside
what are the upsides to a camera that can be accessed by the pedophile ceo?
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/how-effective-is-flock
Flock claims to have helped find 10,000 missing persons
let me guess... source: Pedophile Flock CEO told you so.
I said the source in my post and linked to it
a source from the company itself is not a valid source. it's like saying that Germany is now a USA state because Trump posted it on his truth social.
are you that fucking stupid? wait don't answer that... I know it's a very disappointing "YES".
It's not people who were directly found using them, but how many cases the law enforcement actually searched flock data. Whether or not that data actually caused the law enforcement to find anyone is going to be hard to actually track.
You have to look at individual cases to see if the cameras made a big impact on the case
Soon they will start spinning up the corporate owned media to manufacture the appearance of support for having the cameras. Which city councils can then cite when they start the contracts again and accept their bribes.
I was debating someone about this. I said we need for of the pole cutting and destruction while the other person said that's not okay and we need to go through proper channels. I said we tried and were shut down. Glad to see I was right.
Great start! Make no mistake that they will use other surveillance companies or even return to flock if the controversy dies down.
If you're in one of these cities, schedule an email to your councilperson to send in a few weeks about it. Remind them we don't want any other surveillance on your streets. (Maybe a calendar reminder for you too, to check and see what nonsense they've gotten to.)
How can I get started making this an issue with my city council?
Step 1: build a guillotine.
Step 2: bring it to a town hall.
Yeah they’re given their contract to an other company
So, we've proved that we can put pressure on Flock. Now let's put pressure on this other company.
I am begging lemmy to learn how to take a win.
The absolutists here have trouble accepting positive things in this grey world at live in
There are a LOT of right-wing agents on reddit and lemmy both posing as leftists. Their goal is to get American leftists to demand perfection or nothing, resulting in them spending their efforts trying to get others to vote third party instead of voting Democratic, which is the only way to mitigate the damage being done right now.
We can vote for leftists in the primaries, but we have to vote Dem in the general election, even if the candidates aren't our first choice.
Revolt against your government then we'll talk
that's very easy to type
Nobody on lemmy is ever going to know what actions I do or do not take outside of voting and legal protest, and anyone baiting you into posting more is a fed.
This is a win. Now, if your city did this: Set a calendar remainder (scheduled email, alarm, I don't care what) for in 2 months to check that your city doesn't return to Flock or one of their competitors. Demand real reduction of surveillance.
Gadget Review gets articles out at an impossible frequency and often simply recycles other sources. Yahoo News is a feed reader that only displays news from other websites (while obscuring source information that could be gleaned from URLs), whose identity it displays at the top of each article (in this case, Gadget Review).
You people are relentless, except on Democrats being your savior.
Whoops, just checked your profile, didn't realize that's what your account's purpose. My b, g.
Since I'm not sure what this means, I must have not be clear enough; apologies. Gadget Review's articles (one of which is your link) are very likely to be AI-generated.
- Until this summer, the frontpage showed articles being published on average every ten minutes: https://web.archive.org/web/20260326105948/https://www.gadgetreview.com/
- Over-hypey phrases as headings: "The Only Fix That Sticks", "You Can’t Just Hardcode Safety Into a Probability Machine"
- Characteristic bolding
- Unexpected bulleted lists in every article
- Overuse of spaced em-dashes
- Familiar sentence structures:
Flock's brand is damaged. Axon is winning contracts. The underlying infrastructure — persistent, automated tracking of where every car travels — keeps running, like a streaming service that changes its name while keeping the same content library.
Non-deterministic models resist fixed rules, so the answer is containment and monitoring — not commandments.
Data collected by the Washington Examiner shows
Here's the missing link to said Washington Examiner article:
So, nearly 1% of flock contracts are cancelled.
If this is uplifting news you must be REALLY going through it
We are really going through it, and it is uplifting. There's more to be done but this is progress.
Oh man, there's been progress made. You must REALLY be going through it if progress is uplifting news.
1% is enough for shareholders to notice... Surely it's enough for us to notice.
I don't understand. Are you suggesting this is a simulation? Are you pissed that more progress isn't being made in this game we're playing? Like, I DON'T UNDERSTAND. I DO NOT. UNDERSTAND. YOUR COMMENT.

all 48 comments