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| ▲ | tptacek 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is all very silly. Flock is not a scheme to install forever-cameras. They get paid primarily by municipalities. If your muni votes to shut the cameras off, they will shut the cameras off. If it votes to take the cameras down, nobody is going to stop public works from doing that. The problem is that the First Law Of Message Board dictates that the most interesting narrative wins, and the narrative where Flock has deviously come up with a surveillance "forever chemical" to attach to every municipal road is much more interesting than "this is a service and if you stop paying for it it goes away". | | |
| ▲ | lokar 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I thought what was going on was they would keep them up after the local contract as they could still get value from them as part of the national network. | | |
| ▲ | tptacek 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't doubt that they will, if all your muni cares about is "not paying anymore", they'll take advantage of the easement or whatever. Kind of the same way DirecTV was happy for you to leave the dish installed. |
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| ▲ | mistercheph an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > If your muni votes to shut the cameras off, they will shut the cameras off. That's simply not true: there are numerous instances of municipalities having to fight flock to get cameras removed or shut off, and instances where local governments pass ordinances that local law enforcement refuses to enforce because the cameras, which have been banned, are not off, as you allege is what happens, and law enforcement continues to use the data the cameras provide despite the contract being terminated. Just google e.g. "flock trash bag" to see how cities are having to deal with Flock. There are links elsewhere in this thread to a few of the many instances where this happens but I'll link to something that hasn't been mentioned yet, where flock cameras are turned back on and used by law enforcement in Springfield after contracts are cancelled, and cameras are left up that flock pinky swears are off that turn out to be on and accessible by law enforcement: https://www.kezi.com/news/local/stolen-car-found-in-springfi... And again, that is just talking about the instances where the municipality actually wants the flock cameras turned off or removed, there are many instances, like TFA, where the local government wants them on or doesn't care, and they remain on and used by other agencies, despite the termination of the contract with one of the client agencies. | | |
| ▲ | tptacek an hour ago | parent [-] | | When a municipality passes an ordinance prohibiting ALPRs, and the municipal police force refuses to shut off the ALPRs, and the municipality does not then fire the chief (or the muni executive, if needed), then the muni was full of shit about being opposed to the ALPRs in the first place. I'm deeply involved in municipal politics and was for many years involved in national politics (and, more to the point, discussions of national politics online) and I see this all the time: people crossing the streams between the two, as if the levels of responsibility and accountability were comparable. A municipal sworn law enforcement official that ignores a duly passed ordinance that has gone into effect is breaking the law and their contract and can trivially be fired, not after a long drawn-out procedure but immediately. I watched us shut our cameras down. As I said: there was no drama, at least procedurally. If our chief had tried to prevent the cameras from coming down, she'd have been out on her ass the next day. I'm sure there are places where there was drama, but I'd need to see the full story before drawing the conclusion that you're drawing. What I see here is the more interesting narrative ("the cameras are impossible to take down, they're a virus!") asserting itself in its natural habitat, the online message board. I don't know what this story about a misconfigured camera (it strobed an "outage" alert after being deactivated) being reactivated by a technician is supposed to tell me. The theory here is that Flock is running a scam where they're rolling trucks to surreptitiously enable individual cameras? | | |
| ▲ | mistercheph 17 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Flock's value proposition is having a national surveillance network, local PD are not their only customers, here is yet another instance where oops, a camera that they promised was off, turned out to be on in Eugene: https://www.klcc.org/crime-law-justice/2025-12-09/eugene-pol... And here is flock getting caught installing cameras in Cambridge after contract termination: https://www.cambridgema.gov/news/2025/12/statementontheflock... Here is flock getting caught installing cameras in Evanston after contract termination: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/29/after-evanston-fir... And obviously these are only the cases where they were caught making convenient mistakes, there is very little incentive for the likeliest parties to know (Flock, law enforcement) to bring to light the fact that flock cameras are still on, being serviced, and the data is still accessible despite local ordinance. | | |
| ▲ | tptacek 11 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I don't know what you think these links are accomplishing for you. I'm not talking about Flock in the abstract; I have firsthand experience with it. I'm part of a group of people who ultimately got the cameras taken down in my municipality, and before that, I spent years helping craft local rules and ordinances limiting them. There are tens of thousands of Flock cameras all over the country. It would be weird if there weren't misconfigurations. The Evanston story is a great example: the reinstallation of cameras happened the week the contract was expired, and Flock notified the city of Evanston (which, for what it's worth, is our twin sibling city in Chicagoland), at which point Evanston said "you've made a mistake" and Flock said "ok we'll take them down". |
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