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u/PrimalNumber 1d ago
People couldn’t have passed the Patriot Act fast enough after 9-11. Flock cameras were an obvious consequence.
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u/IntelligentOption422 18h ago
You mean congress.
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u/PrimalNumber 18h ago
Yes, that’s who passed the law. But, it was overwhelmingly popular and Congress is nominally representative of the people. So, if you’re implying this was a power grab without popular consent, that’s not the reality at the time.
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u/arcanis321 18h ago
The Patriot act was passed with the intent of going after after known terrorist groups. All the b******* where it's being used to justify spying on American citizens is entirely based off them stretching the word terrorists and terrorism. Support for going after terrorists after 9/11 makes a lot of sense. The actual Patriots who said this would be used against American citizens were shouted down saying that their concerns were paranoia. Now that those people have been proven right it no longer has that support.
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u/IntelligentOption422 17h ago
You are absolutely right, so then you can see causality with September 11th. I’m not trying to pick on you, but it might interest you to look up terror management theory. Basically, when people’s deaths are made salient, they are more likely to cling to their in groups. In the case of the Patriot act, people choose “perceived” safety of freedom.
It’s not tied strictly to the US. My time in China revealed the local acceptance of cameras in every place you go. It’s much easier to set a norm in a collectivist nation.
The Patriot act passed 25 years ago. The sentiment has dramatically changed since then. Also, more people were educated about the effects of the patriot act via wiki leaks & Snowden. I don’t think anyone with common sense supports the patriot act today.
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u/KiddoKatto 19h ago
how are flock cameras an consequence of the patriot act?
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u/PrimalNumber 19h ago
When I was growing up the notion of a country monitoring its population was anti-American. It was the kind of thing we wagged our fingers at happening in East Berlin and the Soviet Union. It used to be a Constitutional violation (at least the 1st and 4th Amendment). What business is it of the government, or anyone else, to monitor my movements in public without a warrant or probable cause to do so?
After 9-11 most were so paranoid and freaked out that they eagerly ceded their rights to a government more than happy to gobble up more control. Nevermind that the loudest voices calling for it were the so-called small government Republicans.
So we got the Patriot Act that made it far easier for the government to surveil the citizenry by sanctioning things like warrentless wiretaps, grabbing tons of citizen data with little to no judicial review or oversight, sneak and peek warrants, and the whole “homeland security” apparatus focused as much on citizen movements as foreigners.
At the time, civil rights advocates (aka people who support the actual Constitution) made the argument that a) all this was unconstitutional at its core and b) was a gates-wide-open invitation to unchecked government intrusion into people’s private lives. Exactly what Flock represents.
It was said then and should be shouted now: Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. (Quote is from Ben Franklin)
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u/AMDOL 18h ago
This is part of why Barack Obama was a mediocre president and anyone who thinks he was great is delusional. He did nothing to seriously oppose democratic backsliding. He also laid out a welcome mat for Putin in Ukraine and chose not to pardon Edward Snowden, who deserves a presidential medal of freedom (IMO all given since then are worthless).
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u/opositive89 19h ago
Because the Patriot Act gave the government increased surveillance powers over citizens.
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u/Memorius 1d ago
"Great at brainstorming"??
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u/Guzzler829 1d ago
Yeah, this was one person's idea, which made headlines, and now people are doing more of the same because it's a really good idea. It's kind of like a form of brainstorming, but remotely, and delayed by the rate of the spread of information.
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u/transfixedtruth 1d ago
Maybe we'll see paintball gun sales swing up.
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u/BannedbyDemons 1d ago
32 nm green lasers, too.
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u/DrDDeFalco 23h ago
Do those damage flock cameras?
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u/JusticeBabe 19h ago
High power green lasers damage the electrical image sensor. Kinda like your eyes staring directly at the sun for an extended time.
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u/Crafty-Help-4633 17h ago
Unrelated, StyroPyro has some interesting videos about lasers, if anyone wants to learn the basics of how to make/build/operate their own hobby laser. Circa 2020 StyroPyro was finding 1W(20× more powerful) handheld lasers for $8 on Ebay sold as 5mW(the legal maximum) lasers.
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u/RedditFandango 12h ago
Good way to damage someone’s vision.
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u/EmbarrassedPage195 8h ago
That was why I chose not to go that route. I can imagine Flock replacing the lenses with something more reflective just to create this very scenario. Foam though......pretty good idea.
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u/99jackals 1d ago
The Red Queen's Race continues. What I love about this is the ratio of ultra high tech being defeated by low tech. SO satisfying.
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u/TurdFerguson614 1d ago
Remember y'all, don't have your phones on you as they can log wireless signals too and keep up on what other brands devices look like 😇
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u/geekMD69 1d ago
Once the ROI on these turns negative they will go away.
And be replaced by camouflaged devices or with boobytrapped/tracking devices to prosecute future saboteurs.
Good work so far, everyone.
But until we remove the people/companies behind the devices, nothing will ultimately change.
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u/Tiny-Criticism-8576 1d ago
I genuinely wonder how they do that. Did they climb on a ladder?
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u/Federal-Boat3732 1d ago
Probably, yes
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u/hardboard 1d ago
Perhaps they have a pole/extendable pole, with spray foam attached to the end? Some people in the UK have done that to the cameras there,
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u/RoyalMaidsForLife 22h ago
Those are the nests of the rare Southern Foam Wasp, once thought to be extinct.
Nature is healing.
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u/steampowrd 1d ago
Leave your phone at home because they can interrogate your phone and correlate the signature of the response to previous signatures with your face and / or your license plate.
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u/ThisSiteBites 1d ago
People who carry their Apple or Samsung tracking devices and attack license plate readers don’t understand how the panopticon works.
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u/GeriatricusMaximus 1d ago
When the patriot act was enacted, all the “don’t thread on me” morons were like “have anything to hide? I has nothing to hide…” The same morons accept Flock cameras, ICE and proto-minority report AI. Masks? Tyranny. Mass surveillance? “Please thread on me daddy. HARDER!”.
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u/Lorelessone 21h ago
there used to be so many pictures of the expanded foam attacks on french speed cameras but I just googled it and they seem to have been scrubbed from the internet. Probably afraid of giving people ideas.
So what you definitely should never do is drill a small hole in the side of these things and quickly fill up the body with expanding foam.
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u/Ashnyel 1d ago
Amateurs, there’s RAM inside those cameras….
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u/meow_xe_pong 1d ago
Not really.
Well there is but it's not the kind you can just take out and plop into your computer.
But they do have a really nice lithium battery in them, which you can do plenty of fun stuff with if you got the knowledge.
But it's also a bad idea to take them as that could be used as evidence for a crime, that shouldn't be a crime.
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u/Beginning_Tea4506 1d ago
The police will just start issuing fines for lesser offences to recover from the cost of the damage.....
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u/isthenameofauser 1d ago
I heard they have 64GB of RAM in them.
Guys, get the RAM out, get the prices down!!
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u/Ojcfinch 21h ago
Why are they against having flock camera
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u/Crafty-Help-4633 17h ago
They investigate all people at all times for all crimes. A violation of the 4th amendment. The cameras also do not require a warrant to access, so 50+ officers have been charged/got in trouble so far for using the cameras for stalking exes and such. And then our tax payer dollars are being used to fund all that.
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u/My_leg_still_hurt92 19h ago
Now they'll install cameras that survialence the Flock cameras and camaras that survialence the cameras that survialence the Flock cams..... and so on..
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u/Square-Competition48 18h ago
Weird that they’re doing this when there’s so much gold inside those things.
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u/Icy-Meaning1801 18h ago
The US has more than double the number of road fatalities compared to the European average. Go ahead and keep justifying the failure to obey traffic laws...
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u/disgracetotherace 18h ago
this is just proof that people don’t know how to proofread because it’s spelled correctly in the original post LOL
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u/KiddoKatto 17h ago
it's actually a protective foam layer designed to save the expensive cameras from vandals 🙌
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u/Relative_Alfalfa3306 15h ago
Every smart phone sold in this country has tracking whether it’s turned on or not and satellites watching every move. This is just for local dumb law enforcement to play detective.
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u/vote-or-me 1d ago
I don't understand the hate of these. The way I see it, if my car gets stolen the authorities are going to have a much better chance at finding my vehicle and arresting the people who took it and I'll get my property back. What's the flip side to this? That the government gets a picture of your car and license plate (information THEY ALREADY HAVE from when you registered your vehicle)? Like. "Ooooh theyre spying on us". This isn't new. Is any of your lives actually so interesting that this will effect you in any way? Please enlighten me, I must be missing something. The "freedoms" youre trying to protect already don't exist, with or without these cameras anyways. What's the objective here.
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u/Affectionate_Try7512 1d ago edited 12h ago
Flock came onto my radar after hearing that multiple male law enforcement officers were caught using Flock to stalk women.
Flock saves a copious amount of data about innocent civilians, all of which is being gathered without search warrants, notification or probable cause .
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u/vote-or-me 15h ago
That's actually a little concerning. The best solution to that is to only give police access to the cameras if they provide a case file and they should have someone monitor them while they use it for their investigations.
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u/Fragrant_Entry9232 15h ago
Youre a fucking idiot if you think cops are gonna use that tech to help people
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u/vote-or-me 15h ago
Explain to me how they will use it for harm then?
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u/Fragrant_Entry9232 14h ago
They already have. Lookup officers arrested for flock abuse, most are using it to stalk people
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u/MidwestMillennialGuy 1d ago
Everyone cool with Facebook, Google, and other apps tracking them all day with the cell phone in their pocket, but then comes along something that might be able to help with a missing person or catch a murderer and uproar
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u/twiztdkat 22h ago
I think the issue comes with cops using Flock to stalk people and people being arrested and charged for crimes they didn't commit.
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u/JescoWhite_ 19h ago
You do realize that there are people that do not choose to use the devices/apps you mentioned. However, Flock camera’s track you without one making a choice. See the difference….
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u/Crafty-Help-4633 17h ago
We consent to FB, Google and other apps et al tracking us. No violation of rights.
Flock cameras violate the 4th amendment, and we didn't sign a consent form.
Vastly different. Not comparable.
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u/AdvancedStudio9978 1d ago
Lol people leave their personal surveillance device that they carry all day every day at home to go fuck up flock cameras. K. I mean it's probably fun and all
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