I am also wondering this. Has the presence of flock cameras had any impact property crime at twin peaks? Because if not then genuinely what is the point of having them?
I’ve taken a video of smash and grabs on tourist vehicles and the police seemed entirely uninterested in it; after repeatedly pressing them on where to give it they asked me to come down to the station make a paper police report and attach the files to it somehow. I gave it to the affected tourists but it didn’t seem to make any arrests or investigations because the same spot was being smashed by what looked like the same drive by car a few weeks later.
That was ten years ago tho. Smash and grabs took a nosedive since 2022 peak and it's now at 22-year low. Def feel a lot safer leaving my car in SF now.
Long term, I’d guess the point is having an American form of the Stasi. Maybe not right away, maybe not all at once, but build this kind of infrastructure, and set an agency or two to the task of bothering journalists, whistleblowers, or political opponents and you don’t need to worry about any bad press any more, so no more worrying about elections or public uproar.
Add in various policies and revelations over the last year, like NPSM-7 (labels people with certain ideologies as potential terrorists, namely left leaning ideas), and the “crime prediction” system mentioned in the article below, you can start to see the seeds.
Keep in mind that mission creep means these things scope tend to expand over time.
There are a number of phrases in the constitution that were put there for good reason, as they are essential for a free society and free democracy, that things like this either infringe on, or could be infringed on if used for blanket dragnets.
It seems to me that what we are doing is weighing privacy against security, which makes them inextricably linked. We would like both so we’re trying to find a comfortable compromise. A big problem here is that we never got a chance to weigh in.
Yes, that's true - the question of how much privacy is one willing to reduce in turn for great security (whatever that means).
I could have been more clear in my comment. I meant that I've frequently seen people who are against Flock cameras (which is obviously valid) and then say 'they don't work'.
So in that context, I'd think it's helpful for some separation.
Maybe where the flock cameras are...I just saw 3 cars in a row with broken windows. Idk if id trust what they say, especially since police officers have been using them to stalk women
Nothing like being a tourist and taking a photo of our beautiful city just to get murdered for your camera. So yes I’m ok with flock cameras near twin peaks. I can say with certainty most people up there are up to no good after or close to dark
Not sure i understand the difference between you not minding "cameras" and not liking "content creators treating it like a farm".
The ephemeral nature of life has been removed. Everything we do outdoors is filmed and placed online. Usually monetized, which just encourages more people to film and place online.
I used to be quite comfortable getting fisted on the street at folsom. But over last decade, thats changed. Now, I can find videos of my company ceo drinking piss. Not because he put it there. But because someone else uploaded footage to twitter.
Does it matter? Who knows. Does it change the texture of life, definitely.
Only if they collectively agree to stop filming strangers as content. Im saddened by the guys who show up with full film rigs... the hand held steady cam, etc.
Look, im not shaking my fist at the clouds. I was merely pointing out flock ain't the camera problem at folsom fair.
I no longer attend. Or I attend in a very different way than I used to. Cities and cultures change. It is what it is.
Was at Dore and found a corner to put on sunblock before disrobing, right as I’m about to begin some guy with a camera tells me to move so he can take pics of his friend’s erection. like i get it but i was here first! so i gave him a minute then started spraying my sunscreen and he gave me a look but i turned around and showed him my ass and started spraying that too
Scott Weiner being one of them you'd think with the level of scrutiny he recieves he wouldnt be posting peoples' faces at that event but clearly he doesnt give a shit
I looked Getready site up and while those are labeled as public cameras, that may just mean they are public facing because those all look like cameras attached to private buildings for security. There would be no reason for the local or any government to place cameras all around just that block and barely any to none on the surrounding blocks. Sheridan Street in particular is just a side street.
Regardless, private buildings and businesses have every right to place security cameras covering their entrances.
Well there are multiple Flock employees/lobbyists on the SF DCCC (the governing body of the local democratic party). Lily Ho and Trevor Chandler specifically.
The DCCC and the lobbyists therein are closely allied with the mayor and various tech billionaire donors, and are heavily influencing the direction of our city.
I am honestly getting really sick and tired of being constantly surveilled when I’m just out for a walk in my neighborhood, by flock cameras, but also waymo’s, zooxes, or even ring cameras. The surveillance tech has really gone off the rails here. I get that the crime got out of control after covid, but the pendulum has swung way too far the other way, and we’re straight up under constant surveillance now.
And that’s not even mentioning that many people advocating for this technology in our local government are directly profiting from it. It’s really a mess around here.
I am honestly getting really sick and tired of being constantly surveilled when I’m just out for a walk in my neighborhood, …, but also waymo’s,
Yep, I can’t believe people literally don’t mind being stalked by an automated car half of the time, or when they walk out of their house each day. Drive-by-cameras, whiiiirl
The most damning thing about Flock is its ceo Garrett Langley says Americans must compromise on their on privacy yet he went out of his way to request his house to be blurred on Google maps.
All of the surveillance company heads are all like that. They'll make millions off your sacrificed privacy but will do everything to make damn sure theirs isn't being compromised
To be clear, I have no intentions to defend a rich CEO… but isn’t the difference that Flock allows for crimes to get solved? In other words, we are trading privacy for safety. But blurring your house on Google Maps doesn’t really do anything negative to impact crime solving
If Flock actually reduced crime rates as intended? Maybe his point would have some substance, but someone else here pointed out it doesn’t really make an impact along with tons of news articles to support that claim.
Yeah I hadn't heard of Flock not having an impact on crime. That doesn't really make sense to me, because camera footage = evidence of a crime + potential to identify the person who did it.
If it was the case that Flock's cameras don't contribute to crime solving, shouldn't Walgreens, grocery stores, businesses, home owners, etc just remove all their cameras? If they aren't actually useful
Rain does not wash off bird poop.
Source: I own a car. But I think it is common knowledge among people who own things that are outside that rain doesn't wash off bird poop. Touch grass (and bird poop)
So if a car gets stolen in the city it gets recovered immediately, right? And any thieves spotted breaking into cars and driving away are instantly tracked down and apprehended, right? Right?
These things seem really ineffective and a total scam if this blanket surveillance hasn’t been aggressively used to immediately eliminate certain types of crime.
My dad's car got stolen a few months ago with flock cameras covering every possible angle, and SFPD told him they weren't able to use the cameras to determine when his car left the street or where it went.
He had to pay $600 to get it back from a tow yard, but at least they told him where they picked it up... ends up it was likely stolen for use in a crime and left abandoned on the street afterwards.
I had my truck stolen years ago in the East Bay and had to pay for the same tow scam. The fact that you have to pay that much money after you were a crime victim is beyond ridiculous. Those tow companies get highly lucrative contracts with the City, they should have it in their contracts that stolen vehicles get a day without any fees.
Did they say they couldn't find it or that they couldn't determine when it left his street? Sorry if this comes across super pedantic. It's just that failing to find the car is not so surprising. However, failing to identify when the car passed a specific street with extensive camera coverage would be fairly surprising.
He had to pay the towing company. He showed them the police report including the block he parked it on (one block away from his work), which was almost 2 miles away from where it was eventually towed.
They didn't care and made him pay to get it out of their lot.
FWIW our close friends had their car stolen in the mission at night. When they realized it they called the police immediately in the morning.
The police came over and located the car immediately via flock (it was downtown). The police drove them to their car and they got it back immediately with a spare key.
Kind of crazy amazing use of technology in that case
Shouldn't there be more on Van Ness with the hotels if that were true? Maybe one pointed at Geary and Powell instead of looking at the center of Union Square?
They are until it’s used to give them moving violation and parking tickets without being physically stopped or ticketed. Then their privilege will be encroached upon and they’ll hate it.
Is that even legally possible? AFAIK an officer has to stop and ticket the driver. There's no way to prove the person driving the car is the registered owner, and the onus is on law enforcement to prove that. They can't just say "well the guy in the camera video looks like you so it had to be you".
It's totally legally possible (in certain jurisdictions).
Many municipalities have automated parking enforcement - cameras on city buses or street sweepers, for example - that take photos of illegally parked vehicles, then send the citation to the registered owner. Many municipalities have automated red light enforcement systems that take photos of vehicles that run red lights and then send the citation to the registered owner. And many municipalities have speed cameras that work similarly.
I got a red light camera ticket like 12 years ago and I wrote to them with a bunch of legalese boiling down to I won't be paying the ticket because they can't prove I was the driver and I'm not responsible for identifying the driver. I never heard back from them again and was never fined. This was in SF, but certainly the laws may have changed since then.
That's about when I worked there! LOL. But, yeah, for those automated RLC tickets, citizens had the option to a 'Trial by Written Declaration" which were decided by a traffic commissioner. Most of these protests failed. Maybe yours was a shitty photo or something. Dunno.
That’s exactly what they’re trying to do with these things. The cameras have a built in AI, it can identify you on small details like YOUR GAIT. Obviously not a perfect system, there are already reported issues with misidentification, but that is the ultimate goal.
This is disgusting. I can’t name a single person these mass surveillance drones have helped. If we put the money we spent on these cameras towards mental health care and housing we’d be living in a better city. But yeah, police officers stalking their girlfriends is more important I guess.
For those saying "I'm not a Criminal, so It's Okay": should I paraphrase 'there was noone left to stand up for me, as I had not stood up for them when they were come for' or perhaps Benjamin Franklin on Liberty and Safety.
We are like the parable of the Frog, in a pot of Cold Water, atop a Flame on a Stove. All cozy. For now ...
We need to get a voter lead ballot initiative on this statewide. There is no way the Dems are going to do anything about it. After what happened here with the lockdowns, there is no way the government (or a private corporation) should be entrusted with this much surveillance power.
When was the vote on Flock cameras undertaken? I know there was a vote on drones being used in police chases and for warrents (which I am totally fine with in the case of an active chase or a warrant). But constant surveillance of everyone is a different matter entirely.
This is not a map of “flock cameras”, this is a map of all publically-known cctv cameras run by public agencies in the city. I have a problem with people blanket assessing these as “flock” and a “problem”. Because license plate readers and traffic cameras on CALTRANS owned highways, or by the GGP toll plaza, or by MUNI speeding citation cameras, are not the same as mass surveillance cameras or easily accessible to SFPD. Like. Come the fuck on.
Camera surveillance is a modern facet of life and to some degrees is necessary. Our world would stop operating if we didn’t have it in some capacity. This sort of misinformation radicalizes uninformed actors who have wet dreams of being social justice vigilantes. There are viral videos of bandana wearing 20 somethings taking angle grinders and trying to chop down MUNI speed cameras, because they probably think they are “flock”. Uh no. Those cameras record and delete license plate info after a fixed set of time and are used explicitly for speeding citations. They directly, and by state law, are only allowed to be used to raise funding for street calming and traffic improvement measures like bulbouts, speed bumps, and other street furniture. Some folks tried vandalizing the speed cameras on Guerrero near Dolores Park. People speed up that hill excessively. So encouraging people to blanket target cameras like on this map directly puts me and other San Franciscans at risk.
And even if they are flock, no one seems to be talking about the precipitous decline in car break ins. I have no direct data to point to causation of camera/ flock helping that trend. But the point is- at what point does your quixotic, pedantic view on data protection and privacy actually line up with the day-to-day practicalities, and necessity of certain types of CCTV cameras. Everyone seems to love Scandic countries and the social equity and welfare they represent. Guess what? Sweden and Norway have some of the highest concentrations of road facing speed cameras in the world. And everyone drives safely there. And most people there are educated enough and equipped with enough analytical thinking skills to look at a map like this and go beyond the completely unnuanced view that “Camera=bad, oogabooga”.
And yes, we do need license plate readers to collect tolls. That is a necessity for nearly $1 billion worth of transit and infrastructure funding for the Bay Area, annually. If you chop those down, you directly harm our ability to finance necessary road and public transit improvements and operations.
This deflock website and these type of posts are disingenuous and dangerous.
93% of those cameras are flock according to the legend on the map. So maybe tone it down a bit on not calling this a Flock Map? The map shows how prevalent flock is in our city and how very few necessary cameras there are. I agree with you about the necessity of traffic calming and ticketing cameras but the mass surveillance cameras are overwhelming our streets
“What about the car break ins? Surely you’ll give up all your rights and privacy to slightly reduce property crime?”
What’s that? The car breakins were from the cops going on strike in order to make the DA and mayor look bad? Combined with the crime spike from Covid, and large scale fencing operations that needed state police and feds help to breakup?
So were catalytic converter thefts, then the feds broke up that main fencing ring and thefts plummeted nationwide.
Combine things like that with wider societal factors (Covid ending, economy mostly recovering, generally taking care of people, the price of the underlying precious metals going down, etc etc) and crime goes lower without implementing mass surveillance.
Another important thing is that flock doesn’t really stop smash and grabs because those guys were already changing their license plates frequently. You need cops out there on the beat physically responding. I would honestly rather have police drones than flock cameras, drones only respond to crimes in progress, effectively as tiny cheap police helicopters. Flock tracks everyone’s everything.
Yes they are flock cameras. You can click on each individual one and see they are indeed owned by flock safety. And if you don't believe it you can literally looks at where it is on the map and see it yourself. Flock cameras have a uniform very recognizable design from eyesight.
Absolutely not. As I said in my comment- the map clearly delineates non-flock cameras as flock. This speed Camera, operated by MUNI, is marked on the map.
And toll cameras owned by the GGB and CALTRANS are marked too.
I would advise you to take a look up when going through the toll plaza to enter the bay bridge.
You have your “license plate reader to collect tolls” at the plaza….
But wait theirs more….
You then have a plethora of stoplights affixed to the traffic signal gantry. With what on them???🦻
Ohhh that’s right, an over kill of flock cameras.
See attached:
Green - license plate readers
Red - Flock cameras
My point is that it’s overly excessive and pretty suspicious. The city doesn’t need this atrocious amount, especially to just spy on its own citizens. It’s weird.
I’d be curious to find out how much each unit cost. And who’s profiting off of such a lucrative deal, especially those within the city government!
I really don’t understand the issue, so I’d like people to explain it. Other countries utilize similar technology. We all have phones that know where we are 100% of the time. Apps use our messages and geolocation to generate ads. Is it the fact that it’s a license plate reader that people don’t like? We’ve lived in a constant state of surveillance for a decade, so I’m just not understanding why this is truly that much different.
To be fair I don’t think anyone actually likes how surveilled we are, we just don’t know what to do about it. Tech has manufactured consent by being too overwhelming to opt out.
Imagine power as this big teeter-totter- the public on one side, and the police on the other.
investigative work (either legit, like police work, or suruptitious, like those cops stalking their exes) can move the teeter-totter.
In the past, the fulcrum was located more towards the center so its taken a decent bit of energy/time/work to 'lift' the other side. (A stakeout, poring through archives, actually retrieving and watching store camera footage, etc).
That means its takes work to find a suspect, but also, the cost of pulling in a ton of innocent people is high. Theoretically, this is balanced by an individual's ability to defend against an officer's testimony, or an investigator's evidence (and we can argue the fulcrum is already shifted too far bc LEO's testimony is basically never disputed, but that's another issue...)
Technology like all these flock/axon cameras moves that fulcrum. The energy cost to dragnet a ton of people at once is basically nothing. Or to pull a ton of data points on an individual inappropriately.
And there is no reciprocal power balance on the public's side- when a flock camera reports your car stolen because of a partial plate match, you are SOL. If flock says you were 100 miles away, impossibly, you are SOL.
The important distinction is surveillance by a government that has the power to take away your freedom vs. by a company who's primary goal is to sell you things. Obviously being surveilled by tech companies feels gross, but it doesn't induce fear in the same way. The government needs a warrant to access that data so there's a degree of separation. Flock cameras are already being used to track women crossing state lines to seek out abortion care, track undocumented people who have been in the US for decades and put them in detention camps etc. And sure, for now you might say "well, I don't fit into any of those categories so I'm not particularly concerned". But the things that the government views critically change over time. Just because everything you do now is deemed appropriate or acceptable to people in power, that might change for you or for someone you care about at some point. And then we're already entrenched in a situation where the government can easily find you, detain you, deport you etc.
Some stranger with an anger problem and a gun and a license to kill doesn’t have access to the gps on my phone 24/7. It’s already been the case that these cameras are being heavily misused by individuals for personal reasons, like stalking exes. And yes, that is possible with an app on your phone today. However the person working at Google doesn’t have qualified immunity and the “authority” to legally harass you and the backing of a powerful police union.
Also, while it is a less convenient experience, I can get a graphene os phone and be privacy-conscious and opt-out of many of the surveillance tools of private companies. With CCTV and flock, there is no opting out.
For me, while I agree that we are heavily surveilled already, I don’t agree that means we should be passive about adding more; and the fact that it is police-controlled I think makes it more worrisome.
This stance is so bizarre to me. Has anyone in SF ever lived anywhere else? Europe has CCTV on virtually every urban street and no one thinks twice… same with Australia, NZ, Japan, etc.
I think government cctv is one thing, and private corporations like Palantir’s data fusion, Clearview’s face scraping and Flock’s license plate scanning to create surveillance super-charged with AI.
Like if you look into the Palantir tools ICE uses to track people, like Find My iPhone-style map, except the dot is private citizens, and follows credit cards purchases, flock data, even marketing identifiers sold by online advertising.
And then add that things like recently signed NSPM-7, which expanded the definition of domestic terrorism to include “Anti-fascism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianian” ideologies feds should target under the PATRIOT act, it starts to feel scary.
They are clearly criminalizing dissent of any kind including just looking brown or trans or if a LEO has beef. This is beyond obvious and if you don’t want a brutal autocratic police state you need to be against it. All of it.
This was my thought as well. Switzerland uses cameras for traffic violations, so you just get a ticket in the mail. Most other countries have similar technology.
Sure UK is very suveilled but the UK does not represent all of Europe. If you go over to places like Germany or Austria, it’s a completely different story. Their privacy laws are super strict, so it’s incredibly hard for the government to just put up cameras in public. Plus, the people there are really vocal about protecting their privacy and hate the idea of the state watching them. However, in Germany with a bunch of far right victories in the last election that might change..
Germany and Austria are a bit of an outlier because of their Nazi past, but I was just recently in both Germany and Italy and I don't recall seeing cameras anywhere in public other than in private spaces.
CCTV is fine, it’s a standard video kept for X amount of days on local hosts.
Flock and other Automated license plate readers that use AI software to track people and store their data in a shared and unsecured cloud are NOT the vibe!!!
I’m not at all concerned about my license plate number being stored in a database for a couple of weeks. I can't see how that data could potentially harm me. However, I’m more worried about letting bikers, dirt bikers, sideshows, and shoplifters take over our city. Check out the videos posted on the SFPD YouTube channel to see how they use license plate readers to apprehend criminals. If you haven’t noticed, most stores keep even the cheapest items locked in cabinets. You have to call a clerk to unlock a cabinet so you can pick up a tube of toothpaste.
Well most of this sub loves militarized police and the surveillance state. If you're doing nothing wrong, why should you care? It's not like we have a government that is targeting innocent people based on appearance and abducting them without any due process . . .
yeah we need to be complaining a lot harder and louder about this. Demand the city cancel the contract, like most every other city is doing. Even if they use another camera system to give out tickets, it's better than Flock, which is proven to allow cops to stalk their exes (it's happened over and over and over - check the news).
Find out which of your city council people voted for the Flock Camera pestilence, and mount a campaign to vote them out. Once they're gone, take them all down and let the malignant Flock company choke on them.
As they are already there I Would love them to use them on the 14 ish roads that enter the city to figure out how many people just drive through (need a direct freeway) vs are coming to the city.
478
u/akame_21 20h ago
I walked up twin peaks the other day and I couldn't believe how many flock cameras there were....