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US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

giuliomagnifico

Comments (374)

  • gorgonical
    Musician-turning-tech anarchist (?) Benn Jordan is making a very interesting series of videos about Flock cameras, their poor safety, and their gray-area interfacing with local governments:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMIwNiwQewQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lYhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQI recommend them.
  • Cider9986
    >[1] Would crime go up, down or stay the same if all surveillance cameras were removed? The answer to that is the only one that matters.At least 40,990 [2] innocent people died in the US in 2023, without significant outcry - that is, on the road, in car accidents. People in the US clearly value the freedom of driving over the deaths of innocent people. In 2023, there were an estimated 19,800 [3] homicides in the US. But even if you assume surveillance like Flock could prevent a meaningful fraction of those homicides - and there's little evidence it does [4] - that's still asking people to give up their most sensitive freedom, the right to move without being tracked, for speculative gains. People are not willing to sacrifice their freedom to save 40,990 people from cars, why should our constant locations be monitored?The abuse isn't speculative. Police have been caught stalking exes, tracking abortions, and innocent people [5] have been held at gunpoint due to a flock misread. The "safety" these cameras provide comes with a surveillance that's already being turned against ordinary people.[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47690237[2] https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2022-traffic-deaths-202...[3] https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/hvus23.pdf[4] Flock can't even demonstrably reduce car break-ins. The drop in San Francisco started months before cameras were installed (https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/sf-car-breakins/). If it can't prevent car beak-ins, how can we expect it to make a dent in homicides.[5] https://www.businessinsider.com/flock-safety-alpr-cameras-mi...>misreads by Flock's automated license plate readers... resulted in people who hadn't committed crimes being stopped at gunpoint, sent to jail, or mauled by a police dog, among other outcomes.
  • diogenes_atx
    It seems like this article buried the best lede of the story on paragraph ten, which explains Flock's new business of surveillance drones launched in response to 911 calls (and also presumably triggered by other alerts configured by police and private businesses).> Flock has recently expanded into other technologies... Most concerning are the latest Flock drones equipped with high-powered cameras. Flock's "Drone as First Responder" platform automates drone operations, including launching them in response to 911 calls or gunfire. Flock's drones, which reach speeds up to 60 mph, can follow vehicles or people and provide information to law enforcement.
  • schlap
    These companies build this tech in SF and Seattle, cities with some of the gnarliest public safety problems in the country, then turn around and sell it to smaller towns where it does more harm than good.Most places in America don't have problems that surveillance solves. They have problems they already know about and won't act on. Cameras don't fix homelessness or addiction or underfunded services. They just make life harder for regular people.But that's the whole appeal for bureaucrats. Buying a product looks like doing something without having to do any of the actual work.
  • jmuguy
    I'm surprised Garrett Langley still has a job, he seems wildly out of touch. For instance he really believes that his Panopticon as a service is the reason crime is down in cities, conveniently ignoring crime rates prior to COVID.
  • jdross
    I realize how unpopular flock is, and I will first say that I have literally never personally looked into the privacy concerns. But one city you don’t see named here is SF, which has cited Flock as a primary driver of its 10x reduction in car break-ins, and 30% reduction in burglaries. Those were a quality of life plague while I lived there
  • e2le
    For those unfamiliar, you can read more about the flock safety cameras themselves here:https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Flock_license_plate_readersAnd more about the company behind the cameras:https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Flock_Safety
  • thangalin
  • maerF0x0
    And switches to Axon - https://denverite.com/2026/02/24/denver-ends-flock-contract-...I have not done any research if that's out of the frying pan and into the fire or an improvement
  • AlBugdy
    Non-US citizens - what's the situation with cameras in public spaces where you live? In my town every 2nd hour or building entrance has a private camera pointed at the street. It's very depressing because the cops don't care - I've asked 2 in a patrol car when there was a mild case of vandalism I witnessed. Technically it's illegal, but nothing happens. The public cameras are on intersection and some bus stops. Too much, if you ask me, but the private cameras are everywhere.
  • stronglikedan
    I'm glad Flock made it as far as they did before the ass-handing commences. Even some my normie friends and family are aware of the scourge because of their initial success, where they would otherwise think we're talking about a group of birds.
  • Dezvous
    It's quite ironic to get an amazon ring video ad while viewing this article.
  • chermi
    If you want to hear from the man himself, see link below. It was a fairly soft interview. I listened mainly because it was Noah and wasn't expecting him to be so pro-surveillance. So, even though I don't agree with them, it might be worth listening to their reasoning.https://open.spotify.com/episode/2V5m4J0tjYg1shWXWrOG8k?si=k...
  • anon
    undefined
  • ozlikethewizard
    Getting involved in local decision making is great, but theres always wire cutters and spray paint for those more inclined on a direct approach. Resisting an the rule of unjust law is always acceptable.
  • throwaway85825
    Washington just exempted flock data from freedom of information requests. Yay democracy.
  • ourmandave
    According to DeFlock.org, my local Lowe's store has 4 of them covering every entrance point.https://deflock.org/map#map=17/41.468996/-90.483817
  • a456463
    Axon has similar spyware surveillance tech too
  • kevincloudsec
    flock says customers own their data and control access. but their national lookup tool means 5,000+ agencies can search your city's cameras without your city's permission. 'customer-owned data' that anyone in the network can query isn't customer-owned in any meaningful sense.
  • JumpCrisscross
    Is the number of Flock Safety cameras in America going up or down?
  • jcstryker
    And moving to the next vendor that hopefully does a better job of staying out of the public eye...
  • Cipater
    Y Combinator CEO Gary Tan evangelises this company every chance he gets and YC was an early stage seed funder (Summer 2017)
  • Cipater
    Y Combinator CEO Gary Tan evangelises this company and YC was an early stage seed funder (Summer 2017)
  • gegtik
    Funny they are just trying to get this started in Toronto
  • a456463
    Couple that with age verification at the OS levels.Devices tracked on the internet Car tracked outside the house Wifi 7 to track you in the houseThink of the children, the few deaths. Instead we need better policy enforcement. Expire licenses sooner, stricter driving tests, penalties on big tech, breaking up of monopolies, better social care programs, police that are trained in descalating and have empathy towards the community being policed, law makers listening to people and not lobbyists.All of the right solutions require work. So we are left with an authoritarian fear driven state
  • taobility
    Should we remove logs from service running?
  • baggachipz
    I drove into a very affluent subdivision this weekend, and like most others around here it had a flock camera recording every car on the way in. This camera, however, had the gall to advertise its presence as a neighborhood security measure. "Flock Safety watches this neighborhood" read the sign on the post, or some such. Of course the residents there had no choice but to accept its installation, as the local police support it. Nefarious framing and marketing in the name of "safety".
  • iwontberude
    Congratulations EFF I know for a fact you’ve been working hard to get these removed.
  • tamimio
    > means the installation of ALPR camerasThat’s a big misconception, flock is a car identification system not a license plate one. I have seen many videos of some crime documentaries where flock was used to ID cars with no license plates, and weeks later they still have them in the system to track, coupled with phone tracking, they know exactly all the details needed.
  • gnerd00
    this kind of headline might have some scholarly name, because, no... actually the number of cameras and feeds in the San Francisco Bay Area is multiplying rapidly, along with the entirety of California with few exceptions.. long ago, San Diego county, a military-led area, was the exception and to many pariah on the constant increase in tracking of vehicles, people and "events".. now, what used to be thought of as harsh and creepy, is not only matched in hardware, but exceeded in backend capacity, across almost every populated area
  • mothballed
    Our city voted them out for awhile. So the feds just put them on every bit of federal property near roads, which ended up doing the exact same thing.
  • phendrenad2
    It's funny, if the company had just sold cameras to cities, they probably could have avoided this whole mess. But they just had to hit some keywords for Wall Street (like "AI" "cloud" and "SaaS"), which had the side-effect of making it appear (true or not) that they were part of a Palantir-style surveillance panopticon that tracks you everywhere.
  • josefritzishere
    Funny that. Not everyone wants to live in an open air prison.
  • anon
    undefined
  • gosub100
    Someone in my hometown was arrested for vandalizing them. The media chose to say "city owned security camera". It's amazing how they will rush to defend private enterprise.
  • lenerdenator
    It really is amazing how they managed to fit so much copper into those devices.
  • cboyardee
    [dead]
  • waNpyt-menrew
    [flagged]
  • HoldOnAMinute
    Perhaps this venture would have been more successful as a Public Benefit Corporation.In the USA in 2026, "capitalism", "politics", and "evil" have all become synonymous.Maybe I am naive, and the corruption is too deep and pervasive.