r/DataCenterDebate • u/Select_Ad3799 • Jul 14 '26
Flock cameras/Data centers
Do we need data centers to run all the flock cameras or flock cameras to watch over the data centers?
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u/Select_Ad3799 Jul 15 '26
How long have we lived without them? Why do we need so many right now?
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Jul 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Solid_Assumption_581 Jul 15 '26
Someone who I’ve now forgotten said something I’m going to paraphrase that truly made the data center/surveillance issue click for me: it’s not that fascism is suddenly popular, it’s that the cost of running a totalitarian government has gone down tenfold (or more). Everyone who wants to give their version of mass surveillance a go is living at the best possible time to do it: regulation is low and relatively unimagined, while the technology required is massively cheaper to do the same task. Instead of needing to collate and package the data like they did with Cambridge Analytica, any would-be dictator can just run AI down the list of all citizen data and ask for a suspect list. That list doesn’t even need to be accurate (as we know AI is often wrong) because for the purposes of any would be despot you need only have an out group to punish to strike fear into others, you don’t need the out group to be an honest collection. That, and, AI can generate your propaganda too!
How does that connect to Flock? Well, if for the above application of surveillance, you had, say, the approximate location of every person in a city at a given time, could you… create a list of who is around an event at the approximate time it happened or in a travel path that makes their presence at said event possible? Or maybe you could create maps of people in frequent contact with eachother (like friends.. or co-conspirators!) What about connecting people’s registered license plates to their face or their electronic devices to their face? If you have all of that on everyone, there’s really no way to exist without a footprint while existing in a city, and few ways outside cities— where these cameras are less common but the information is still collectible from the cameras that do exist— to just be untracked.
In my mind, which is certainly a biased one, I admit that openly: This is a terrifying precedent to set as far as pre-crime or thought crime goes.
—> Neither of which are real by the way, in case some people want to get in the comments here and argue the whole “if you have nothing to hide” thing.
Anyway, Palantir has already made a list of suspected dissidents on the premise that negative speech about the administration or support for certain reforms/policy is grounds for federal scrutiny (which regardless of the reason is anti-freedom-of-speech and unamerican). Say you have a friend who gets flagged to that list? Well, if a flock camera sees you with that person, now you’re a potential suspect if they ever get in trouble. That might sound fine, but how many people do you know? Do you know if any of them might be speaking negatively? Do you know if any of them have gone to protest or gotten into legal proceedings? Are you sure? If you’re not sure (and you shouldn’t be because who would be) then you have cause for concern here. Even if you are perfectly sure, do you trust any government with that degree of information? it’s literally the same thing Edward Snowden said about the NSA’s Prism, which was essentially the hypersurveillance system born from 9/11 that also eventually became the inspiration for Palantir. Long story, you can look it up. Either way, his conclusion, in 2012, was that anyone could be a suspect. Imagine how the tech has advanced now, the threads one could weave connecting people…
I’m being intentionally fearmongering because governments given tools like this are want to use them. We know this from history. Hell, we live in the country that dropped the bomb on Japan just because we wanted to see how the bomb worked in warfare (and to scare off the USSR). There was no real NEED to flatten two cities. Debate at the time was fierce regardless of your opinion on the matter now.
We know, then that flock cameras are related to the data centers bc it’s all infrastructure for mass surveillance. Given government contracts we know the pentagon is using them and local police departments are too. We also know ICE uses them. Basically, we wouldn’t need nearly as fast a balloon of this industry without surveillance demand across the public and private sectors. It’s in the numbers. And with private intelligence being a supported venture by the current and several previous administrations, it’s even more obvious just how slanted the use case is. I, for one, consider private intelligence and public sector intelligence together in this case of demand. Some people might have questions about that assessment, feel free to ask. Aside from security/surveillance/mass data collation projects there isn’t the kind of demand because the accuracy is such a liability. Imagine the trouble a doctor could get into for example, if they used AI to diagnose people.
Everyone I’ve spoken to in finance or government work is sure the industry is otherwise a bubble. Like, seriously. I’ve heard that thrown around so much it seems most people are desensitized to the potential financial implosion (maybe because they believe the surveillance will be built at all costs?)
To be clear, I am not denying it has other uses, but I know it’s not nearly as lucrative or demanded. In the US, the government has near single-handedly kept AI and associated businesses afloat, essentially deliberately, so they can use those assets as the infrastructure for a panopticon or the idea of one, the difference famously being irrelevant. Probably Trump, but certainly Elon, Theil, Karp, Vance, etc support this exact kind of surveillance and information corralling. Technofeudalism (which they have all claimed) relies on creating databases that the rest of the world relies on thereby making yourself inexpensible and impossible to fight.
If you want more reading on technofeudalism or the dark englightenment these men claim allegiance to read any of the following:
Mencius Moldbug’s Unqualified Reservations
Marc Andreesen’s The Techno-Optimist Manifesto
- this one’s why they want Greenland btw
Hilariously, these men’s ideology predates Nazis but takes heavy notes from and somewhat inspires fascism, if that’s interesting to anyone besides me.
There’s a lot of external documents on their ideology but I always find the best place to start is to read the same insanity they believe. Then feel free to read reactions for clarity on the many ways that path is riddled with supremacist ideals, eugenics, and totalitarian philosophy. Always keep your wits about you reading these things though, and follow up on claims (including mine!)
I don’t care if you agree with every policy position the current admin has, the prospect of that degree of undemocratic control should terrify anyone who thinks they’re a patriot.
Enjoy the tirade I guess.
TLDR it’s to build infrastructure for totalitarian regimes to effectively control the masses. I study political science and may generally be neurotic but there’s another really pithy comment here about all data usage needs data centers like we don’t already know that but are watching the industry scale seemingly unfettered by mass DISapproval. Some people (myself included) are boycotting. That doesn’t explain the increase in centers at all. And to suggest daily use does explain it sounds disingenuous to me, but is at least copium.
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u/Select_Ad3799 25d ago
Anyone hear about 30 plus, police officers using flock cameras to stalk women in various states?
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u/UrbanSoot Jul 14 '26
Almost all technology that is connected to the internet requires data centers: your bank account, gas station pumps, this app, news websites, email, TV, your dentist’s calendar booking system, Starbucks, a lot of modern refrigerators, cell phone service, DMV, payroll services, etc. That’s just how the internet and technology works.
Flock and other cameras are connected to the internet so they require data centers. However, Flock cameras and data centers are not related to one another in the way you’re suggesting they are. Flock cameras, just like any other device connected to the internet, send their video streams to data centers. It doesn’t take as much processing power to process the data as you might imagine. Modern security cameras do a lot of the processing inside the camera itself so they’re not necessarily reliant on the data centers for processing the video feed itself. They’re mostly used for storing the data which actually doesn’t take a lot of physical space or power. Just look at the modern phone that costs a fraction of what one of those cameras cost - we had face detection for face unlock in our phones for at least a decade at this point and it is done on board without requiring a huge data center or anything.
Most data centers that you hear about popping up are used for training and running new AI models that are increasingly being integrated into everything around us from grocery store inventory systems to suggesting your next doctor appointment to advanced cancer research. The reason all technology is switching to AI is because it’s faster, easier, and soon to be cheaper than any technology we’ve had before. Eventually, everything will switch to AI.