We need “flock” to come to be understood as generically referring to any surveilance camera. People need to think of axon cameras as “a flock”
Axon, the boot licking company that invented the “excited delirium” fake medical diagnosis as cover for cops killing people with their Tasers.
This is exactly the scenario I am concerned about in regards to the Flock blowback. That the public’s campaign against pervasive surveillance has relied too heavily on Flock as an example that many confuse the problem as being Flock the company and their behavior specifically, rather than pervasive surveillance as a whole and the wider ethical problems it entails. A lot of local activists all over the country are demanding “No Flock!” from their representatives and municipal / county agencies which results in a game of whack a mole when the next surveillance outfit takes Flock’s place, rather than general sustainable anti-surveillance policy.
Axon is actually the Taser company that pulled a Facebook-style name rebrand because their earlier name was getting to be unpopular and associated with bad shit. They also do body cams.
Axon is AT LEAST as evil as Flock, if not worse. I’ve seen job openings for building out surveillance software and infra, so they are not even remotely a better alternative.
Not that any alternative to surveillance is acceptable other than dismantling it.
The apps for alerting you for the BLE IDs of pervert glasses also serve as proximity alarm for dangerous gangs since basically every person wearing an Axon product emits Axon Bluetooth IDs.
They don’t have a national database yet, I guess that’s the best we can get :(
they could probably “plug in” to palantir pretty quickly tho. in fact I’d be surprised if that isn’t already happening en masse even if it’s not an “official partnership”
Any camera can, in theory. Ai mass surveilance is a generic property of security cameras
Absolutely
Changing the lipstick will surely make the pig look better
Their platform lacks some big capabilities that the feds / ICE like to exploit. Most importantly, a national network. It’s all local.
Still creepy surveillance, but Flock is much worse.
Axon, simply, does not have a national network. Meaning that it would not be possible for cops in one jurisdiction to search cameras across the country.
Does not have a national network*
*For now
Yea, YET!
My government does nothing but lie to me of late.
Of late???
Buddy, the government has been lying since it’s inception! The government on day 1 said “All men are created equally”.
They signed those exact words into a legal document that defines the identity of the newly born country.
Then, after they all agreed that all men are equal, the work day was over, and they all went home where they all owned slaves.
Yea, I’m a big Will Rogers fan.
Of late, they’ve come out of the closet and doing stuff in broad daylight.
Axon, simply, does not have a national network. Meaning that it would not be possible for cops in one jurisdiction to search cameras across the country.
Yet.
Even if they don’t have that capability in their own products, the information collected will be put into larger shared databases. It will just mean extra steps.
Maybe.
I was poking around to read about this, and it looks like Axon is leaning into this. Flock used to brag about Axon lacking in this capability, now Axon brags about being local-only.
But who knows, maybe they become a market leader and the feds push them to develop a national network in the future.
Samsung bragged about still having a headphone jack to dunk on Apple up until about 6 hours before they removed theirs. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Agreed. This could be a slippery slope. That said, I don’t know how the network and local data governance systems work. It could be designed in a way that makes a national network difficult.
That said, I’m not a fan of surveillance cameras everywhere. It’s too hard to know what is happening behind the scenes.
It’s all local.
For now.
This is my concern. One day, there will be a silent update that will only be released to police stations. Citizens will never know about it and itll just be Flock 2.0
Like always seems to happen. The issue was pushed a few months down the line in these areas
Well we solved the problem of using flock branded cameras by using another camera
Good news, deflock is brand-agnostic and maps all ALPRs in the OpenStreetMap dataset. Just keep adding them to OSM, someone will deface them eventually.
For those who read the headline and not the article.
The big difference between Flock and Axon is the scope of the network. Flock can operate on a national scale. Axon doesn’t have that capability. It only works at a local jurisdiction level.
I wonder if this is a feature gap that accidentally turned into a differentiator for Axon. Flock has bragged about Axon not having a national network. Now the tables are turning.
The thing with network-connected components is that who they can talk to and what data they can correlate is almost entirely a function of software and configuration. The Axon cameras today could be part of a national network tomorrow if the company were so inclined.
This is a company. If that company believes it can make more money by pushing an invasive, legal, software update, they’re very likely to do that. The fact that they’re touting the fact that they don’t do that is not an ethical stance, it’s a marketing strategy.
Oh, it’s 100% a marketing strategy now.
My guess is that they simply didn’t have their shit together to build out a national network, and product development incompetence accidentally created a desirable “feature.”
Axon absolutely has their shit together, they’re just better at manipulating the public than Flock. They managed to invent an entire fake medical condition that is accepted by the courts and public as real, just to avoid consequences from their defective products and false advertising. Look up “excited delirium”.
Yeah, Flock’s PR has been pretty bad. I don’t know who is leading their media strategy there, but they’re clearly doing some rookie stuff like calling opponents terrorists and whatnot.
Even so, there’s going to be just as little restraint and oversight in this product as the last one. Scope wasn’t the issue, it’s that the companies are collecting more data than they say they are and police are using them to find crime, not just investigate crime.
“Everyone should use System X! It’s preferable because not many people use it!”
:-)
Changing the mob skin doesn’t change the game.
Rip and Tear until it’s done.
New enemy type added
When devs tease a new enemy mob but it’s just a recolor…
And lookie, the DHS is putting in huge orders for body cameras from that same company, which Donald Trump buys/sells stock in.
Further proof that our election systems are so corrupted that picking people at random would yield better results.
I will never run for any office. I feel like the campaign part would kill my chances of being elected.
The people who are forced to get to know me always say the same thing.
“I thought you were like some kind of animal abusing serial killer! You just give off serial killer vibes. But now that I know you, I know that’s way off.”
So I don’t think the people would ever choose me.
But if I were in a place of power, first thing I’d do is introduce the 20% tax rule. I don’t care if you make 10 dollars a year, or 10 trillion dollars a year. You pay 20% flat for everyone.
Next thing I’d do is beef up the IRS.
I’d have the IRS preparing a temporary tax return before you even get your W2. The IRS would know what your tax return is supposed to look like. So it you don’t file, or you file very wrong, the IRS moves your return to a team to review. This would be done on a case by case basis.
A lot of these reviews would be correcting simple mistakes. There would be no penalty for these mistakes, though you would need to pay any taxes that hadn’t been paid.
If you’re found to have tried to cheat the system, either through unclaimed earnings, or offshore accounts, or whatever, 20 years in jail. No bail.
And here’s the thing. That money would then go back into the communities. I’d set up food banks in any city that doesn’t have them. I’d fund them. I’ve only ever been to one food bank. The shelves were bare. All the food was off brand. People were treated like cattle. It was very dehumanizing. Which I’m sure is the point.
I’d make them feel like any other grocery store.
I’d also put EVERYONE on snap. Yes, even elon musk. Regardless of your earnings, you get SNAP too.
I’d also include SNAP to include things like toilet paper, and toothpaste, and soap, and any other product that may not be food, but is something that people have a need for daily living.
Then, I’d buy either land, or apartment buildings in really rich areas. I’d make these apartments free for everybody. It would be a slow shift, but studies have proven that cities grow when lower class and upper class people live in and routinely share the same environment. I suspect it would also lower racism. Can’t be mad at “all these immigrants”, if they’re also your neighbors and friends.
I would set up daycares with free daycare. And I’d want these daycares to be under-utilized. I want there to be a situation where if some parent had an emergancy, and needed daycare for 1 day, the daycare would be able to accept the extra child no problem.
I’d also set up universal basic income. It would be paid for by taxes leftover after all the other programs. And it may not be much. It would fluctuate every month. It would also come with a warning NOT to rely on UBI as your only source of income. Because some months might be WAAAAAY lower than other months. It’s basically the remainder.
It also means that rich people won’t like UBI. As they’ll pay 20%, same as everybody else, but they’ll recieve a fraction of what they paid. Whereas a poor person will feel rich.
I’d also have to find a way to control inflation, as these policies will make things go crazy in the short term.
But when voters see me? They’d probably think I was going to take out a rusty hook and peel their skin off.
But when voters see me? They’d probably think I was going to take out a rusty hook and peel their skin off.
I think a not insignificant portion of voters are comfortable, if not excited, about that. Just keep your policy talk vague and you’ll be fine.
This is the issue with using a catchy brand name…
The same thing just shows up as a new name and it starts over.
It needs to be deeper than catchy slogans, people need to understand that any widespread surveillance will have the same issues.
I dont know that many of the vigilante camera removers are going to make the distinction of who makes the camera when they’re standing there in the dark with a band saw, for what that’s worth.
Correct…
But that’s part of the public outcry.
A public outcry that focuses on “flock” and “deflocking”.
So (as the article points out) when the pressure works, the result isn’t no more surveillance.
The result is they sign a contract with a different company, usually for even more cameras.
And it’s not much of a logically leap, to assume that once the new company becomes large enough, they will also expand what they do with the cameras just like Flock did.
True, though I imagine that kind of successful and effective vigilantism feels empowering. In addition, their actions are widely regarded as heroic and lauded, so I think they may continue their efforts regardless of any changes to window dressing on their opponents (the surveillance complex industry). We’ll see! People do seem to be slowly becoming aware of the implications of dragnet surveillance and responding to it negatively in a way that I didn’t expect, so it may continue in that manner. Changing the sign out front of your evil enterprise only throws people off that are not paying attention, and a surprising number of folks seem to be this time.
I’ve already heard of the name before, I know them for their police body cameras. One can make an argument that Axon’s systems don’t have the same extensive and interconnected surveillance network that Flock has, but the same type of data on people’s personal lives seems to be collected for a similar end-purposes which is the problem, more than the specific brand of the tech.
Plus, what’s stopping Flock from acquiring Axon and obtaining the data that way?
