17 comments

  • yonran 2 minutes ago

    The article is very one sided, implying without evidence that Flock is for recreational tracking of individuals. With San Francisco SFPD’s ALPR cameras at least, this would be an abuse of the cameras according to the policy linked from https://transparency.flocksafety.com/san-francisco-ca-pd. Here are the Authorized purposes:

    Locate stolen, wanted, and or other vehicles that are the subject of investigation

    To apprehend wanted persons subject to arrest warrants or who are otherwise lawfully sought by law enforcement.

    To locate victims, witnesses, suspects, missing children, adults, and/or elderly individuals, including in response to Amber Alerts and Silver Alerts and others associated with a law enforcement investigation.

    To assist with criminal investigations initiated by local, state and regional public safety departments by identifying vehicles associated with targets of criminal investigations. Counter-terrorism: Identify potential threats to critical infrastructure sites.

    For other law enforcement purposes as authorized by law: Investigations of major crimes.

    Which of these uses do people not like? Or which other policies are people concerned with in other jurisdictions?

  • CqtGLRGcukpy an hour ago

    Non-cloudflare link that basically says the same thing: https://mstdn.social/@stux/117186158784673388

    • totallymike an hour ago

      Why is cloudflare a problem?

      • JohnFen 12 minutes ago

        Cloudflare doesn't reliably let me through.

      • zbrozek 35 minutes ago

        Because they slow down and often block access to websites, particularly for people that try to avoid being fingerprinted or otherwise tracked. Pretty evil behavior.

        • nickff 22 minutes ago

          It is very challenging to distinguish individuals interested in privacy from bots acting maliciously or with reckless indifference. If you devise a way to do this more effectively than Cloudflare, you should start a business to sell this as a service.

          • lynx97 5 minutes ago

            Sure, I am practicing understanding for the tyranny around me everyday when I wake up, as a meditation exercise.

            Answers like yours kill the little remaining faith I have in people.

            This same argument has been used to defend sloppily implemented CAPTCHAS destroying accessibility since what, 20 years.

        • neya 5 minutes ago

          "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

        • webdoodle 15 minutes ago

          Don't listen to these hecklers, you have every right to your privacy, and should demand it. Anonymity is paramount if people want to be able to talk without repercussions. Gaslighting, heckling and other forms of harassment are to convince you to self censor. Don't take the bait. Ignore them.

        • esseph 32 minutes ago

          > Because they slow down and often block access to websites, particularly for people that try to avoid being fingerprinted or otherwise tracked. Pretty evil behavior.

          Bots and scrapers and hackers also try and avoid being tracked, which is by far a bigger problem for them and most websites than the 15 of us using tons of antifingerprinting techniques. Evil? No, that's silly.

  • artisinal 24 minutes ago

    In the USA, is it really that easy to find the home address of a business owner?

    The EU briefly had a similar registry but that got shut down quickly.

    • stingrae 15 minutes ago

      Basically yes. There are a large number of public repositories of data that can dox a persons address. Like property tax rolls, company filings etc. some of these are actually required by Europe (https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-co..., which I do not appreciate)

    • lotsofpulp 16 minutes ago

      Land records are public in most US locales. You can type in almost any residential address on homes.com and it will show you who owned it when and with what loan terms.

    • hattmall 16 minutes ago

      Not really, it looks like this guy originally registered the business at his personal residence which is not really common. Kinda surprised if he still lives there considering how FLOCK has expanded.

  • webdoodle 13 minutes ago

    Ironically most of the people reading this are doing so on an always connected phone with a fused battery, that they can't trust, because they don't control it. It also has significantly more capabilities that a flock camera, and they likely pay for it too.

    • ethanwillis 8 minutes ago

      It's called choice. Maybe a dumb choice, but a choice!

  • ChrisArchitect 2 hours ago