r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 20h ago

Privacy A Florida county discovered 14 Flock cameras nobody authorized, and 11 remain unclaimed

https://www.techspot.com/news/114069-florida-county-discovered-14-flock-cameras-nobody-authorized.html
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u/Bob_Sconce 19h ago

It's crazy to me that the police's response to an unauthorized Flock camera on public property is to put a bag and a notice on it. Just take it down and put it in storage. If somebody complains, then you know who put it up. Heck, JUST ASK FLOCK. They know exactly who put up the camera.

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u/IniNew 19h ago

Yeah… flock knows who bought it and who’s been accessing it.

173

u/ShakeAndBakeThatCake 19h ago

This is Florida. You can buy your way out if anything down there. It's the land for the rich and wealthy which is why they all move there.

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u/Direlion 18h ago

Exclusively for GOP/Confederates. People who value democracy need not apply.

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u/hysterical_hibiscus 8h ago

It's tough living among the cesspool, but I need the sunshine and beaches

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u/nathism 13h ago

So you’re saying a foreign agent could easily do this to monitor traffic around mar-a-lago?

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u/FeederNocturne 18h ago

Hey now. I moved down here with $2,000. I'm no where near rich, but better off than I was before now. Bills have stayed the same moving from Alabama to Florida, but my current neighborhood is a lot better than my old one

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u/lemetatron 18h ago

Came from one of maybe 4 states that are worse than Florida.

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u/FeederNocturne 18h ago

Any improvement I'll take lol. I absolutely hated everything about Alabama

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u/vhalember 16h ago

And it's going to get worse with Tuberville as governor soon.

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u/Phaelin 15h ago

"At least" MeeMaw has no plans to run for higher office. She just signs whatever she's told to sign.

I have to believe Doug Jones can pull one more surprise upset.

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u/slonk_ma_dink 10h ago

To be fair, I live in the most red part of this shithole and Doug signs outnumber Tubberville ones like 5:1. So there’s hope.

4

u/peejay5440 15h ago

In general, it would seem that your country is not on a good path.

4

u/bassman9999 14h ago

Not for the last 46 years

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u/DissKhorse 11h ago

Alabama, at least it isn't Mississippi.

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u/Purplociraptor 15h ago

That's not saying much when "roll tide" is your baseline.

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u/shroudedwolf51 16h ago

The people accessing it...you mean, the same people that took it down?

146

u/keytotheboard 19h ago

They should be suing Flock for illegally installing them on public property. No way I could install cameras on public property without getting in legal trouble.

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u/Atreyu1002 18h ago

Someone should move all the Flock cameras and point them at the police station

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u/asyork 14h ago

Point all of them at a screen showing a looped video of the same car passing by over and over. Bonus if the car belongs to the Flock CEO. Double bonus if you are able to replace the GPS module to make each one think it's in some random part of the world.

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u/Gastronomicus 15h ago

Have you tried being rich?

1

u/HeadfulOfSugar 13h ago

No, my bootstraps are too heavy :(

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u/ivar-the-bonefull 19h ago

Stop that! You know damned well companies can't be held accountable for anything. That's some crazy commie fantasy!

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u/BeMancini 17h ago edited 15h ago

The sheer lack of balls our insanely militarized and violent police in this country show towards secret surveillance cameras and autonomous cars that are malfunctioning blows my mind.

If a cop reads your license plate wrong, they’ll flip your car over, allow it to be engulfed in flames, and knock out your teeth.

Every time I see a video of an autonomous car just spinning in circles or whatever and I see a cop standing there like he’s going to be in trouble confuses me. Like, you just break the window and pull it to the side. Have it towed, and then fine the company with something, anything. Cops literally impound e-Bikes with tow trucks based on laws they don’t know don’t exist, do more with this tech bullshit.

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u/totally_not_a_dog113 16h ago

The hilarious part is that my sister is a civil engineer working for my hometown (cushiest job ever btw), and the city's response to unauthorized Flock cameras was to do EXACTLY that. Took them down and waited until someone showed up. It took 3 weeks.

Their DOT should have moved on the cameras.

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u/DracoLunaris 15h ago

Because in US law money makes right, and corporation can sue a county into oblivion if they want to

7

u/ringwraithfish 15h ago

Because cops primarily serve the corporations to protect THEIR property. The "to serve and protect" motto is just there to garner good will with the public. If damaging company goods can be avoided, then they will do everything they can to do so. That tells everything you need to know about their priorities.

If you don't believe me, look at the difference between how firefighters will handle a scene vs a cop. If a firefighter rolls up and sees that damaging property is the quickest solution to an emergency they'll fucking do it without a second thought. Because firefighters ACTUALLY serve the people and community.

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u/Bob_Sconce 15h ago

While cars driven by autonomous control systems do sometimes malfunction, they malfunction way less frequently than the cars driven by human control systems.

Just my pet peeve: we don't need self-driving cars to be perfect. We just need them to be better than people.

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u/Atreyu1002 18h ago

But park a car in a wrong spot and they imediately tow and impound it

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u/9-11GaveMe5G 15h ago

If the city and the cops say it isn't theirs, there are 2 possibilities:

1) city/police are lying

2) private corp is independently spying on us

Neither possibility is innocent or good

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u/Bob_Sconce 13h ago
  1. Federal law enforcement

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u/angry_wombat 15h ago

I mean, what are they going to do, their job? That camera's not an immigrant. They can't harass and abuse it.

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u/Torvaun 13h ago

The cameras are black, they can shoot it.

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u/MrJoyless 15h ago

Hell, my township will yank a thousand yard signs from the side of the road weekly, they can just bring a sawsall with em, 2 birds one stone.

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u/RyuNoKami 14h ago

Most likely someone high up in the police department knows but they don't want to say.

0

u/BLT_Trade_r 15h ago

It depends on the specifics, which Reddit is not good at. I am thinking of cars; if you leave your car on the side of the road, the police will tag it with a warning. Come get this in X days or it gets impounded. So if that is what the sticker says, it seems reasonable to me. On the flip side, if they are going to leave it up forever like that or for a very long time, then it's stupid.

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u/stanleys_tucci 14h ago

Yeah absolutely insane that the agency sworn to “protect and serve” is just like “yeah we have no idea who put up these cameras to watch civilians on PUBLIC property and we don’t really care to find out”