Category: Surveillance Society

Flock News Update

Surveillance Society

And the hits just keep on coming — this time, from Sweet Home Alabama:

The company is Flock Safety, and it runs the largest mass surveillance network in American history, with more than 100,000 cameras by its own count. But don’t be confused; these aren’t run-of-the-mill red light cameras. Every Flock camera photographs every vehicle that passes by, around the clock, whether anyone suspects a crime or not.

On any given Saturday in Alabama, a man can leave his driveway, gas up, run by the gun shop for ammo, shoot all morning at the range, and be home for lunch. He hasn’t broken any law or bothered a soul. And in more of our towns than you’d guess, a camera on a pole photographed his truck at every stop and filed it in a searchable database owned by a private company in Atlanta.

And the record contains far more than your tag number. Each image becomes a searchable record containing the plate, time, location, direction of travel, make, color, body type, and other identifying features. Flock calls this part of their system the “Vehicle Fingerprint,” and their own materials advertise the ability to conduct searches using unique vehicle details, including bumper stickers and decals. That matters in Alabama. A Gadsden flag, Glock sticker, BamaCarry decal, or other Second Amendment message on the back of a truck is not just something another driver sees at a red light. It’s now a searchable data point tied to that vehicle, the owner, and your movement.

These cameras came into Alabama the way kudzu did: quietly, then… boom, everywhere.

And it gets worse:

But here is the craziest part: most of it arrived by consent agenda and contract renewal. The Legislature never voted on a statewide surveillance network. Yet ALEA’s administrative rules let plate reader data sit for five years, the longest of any state, per a 2026 legislative survey, and require every read to feed a statewide registry once ALEA stands it up.

That should stop every gun owner in their tracks. Alabama law, through Act 2024-232, prohibits the government from keeping a list or registry of privately owned firearms or their owners. Gun owners fought hard to secure that protection. Yet today, Flock has effectively created a searchable, five-year archive showing which vehicles with Second Amendment decals park at gun stores on Fridays, attend gun shows, or regularly visit shooting ranges. It may be built from “license plate photos” instead of firearm records, but for all practical purposes, it’s a hard registry of gun owners.

Got the Warm & Fuzzies yet?

Flock News Update

Surveillance Society

…in which I bring to you the latest news regarding America’s Most Hated Company.

Gun Stores Wake Up

Michael Carter, owner of Gun Commanders in Cleveland, Georgia, installed Flock cameras two years ago to combat burglars and help law enforcement nab illegal gun buyers.

He took down the cameras — which record license plate numbers and other data such as make, model and even bumper stickers to track vehicles — after his customers complained and posted criticisms on social media.

The​ir ire is but the latest manifestation of a nationwide privacy-rights backlash against​ ​Flock’s artificial intelligence-powered cameras discreetly installed on street corners, in parks, parking lots, neighborhoods or on drones buzzing overhead.

If you want to protect your premises, staff and stock by putting cameras inside your store, be my guest. But here’s where it gets sticky.

Let’s say that an ordinary citizen has, say, a website from which he has all sorts of Bad Things to say about government or universities and Commies (but I repeat myself).  Let’s also say that he’s on record, by his own account, as being a proud gun owner and supporter of the Second Amendment.  And now let’s assume that a political party comes to power, and this party is totally against the concept of an armed citizenry, and citizenry with a big angry mouth withal.

Can you see where having all sorts of information about this loudmouth shooter — his driving habits, his frequency of gun purchases and visits to the gun range, for example — may give said political party and its apparatchiks all they need to label him a “danger to society”, even though he quite clearly isn’t?

The problem with this   fucking   Flocking A.I. setup is that the data can be used for all sorts of un-Constitutional (and illegal in other ways) activities.

So well done, you, for getting rid of this excrescense in the public sphere.

Let’s hope that a whole lot of other people come to their senses, as you have done.

Keeping Up With The Times

Surveillance Society, Technology

I have often been accused of being an old fuddy-duddy, very set in my ways and against the concept of “change”.

Mostly, I would plead guilty to such charges — and proudly, at that.

However, I am very open to change in one circumstance, that being on the issue of this godless system known as “flocking” — you know, those seemingly-ubiquitous cameras installed to spy on people’s cars and movements thereof.  I proudly created this little picture, in fact (and feel free to copy or pass on, as the mood inspires):

I purposely used the word “grex” (Latin word for flock) because as a generic collective term for sheep, it doesn’t refer to any company or individual.  Also, I’m a cultural snob (likewise by self-admission) and have an abiding fondness for classical allusions.

Anyway.

So great is my hostility to these fucking things that I may once even have suggested a DIY method for their de-installation:

Of course, as any fule kno, this was merely a tongue-in-cheek suggestion because counter-surveillance (cameras spying on cameras — does it ever end?) makes such an action foolish, even though as a curmudgeonly man of the elder demographic, using something as old-fashioned as a shotgun to take down something so horrible and offensively-modern would give me great pleasure.

But no, we should move with the times, methinks, especially when contemplating the “delenda” part of the above suggestion.  So how about something like a “loitering munition“?  (I love that particular euphemism, by the way.)

Now, this is also a tongue-in-cheek suggestion, because it’s easy to see that objects like this are waaayyyy overkill — there’s no need for a loiter function, for example, and given the typical fragility of a small camera device, there’s no need for any munitions, per se.  Even a kamikaze drone (as used by the military) would be overkill, for the same reasons — and in both cases, too spendy for Mr. Average Citizen to use.

So looking at the matter from a clinical perspective, there’s no need for such things.

But blessed as we are by living in the U.S. of A., there are always other options, such as this one, at only $40 per pop (so to speak):


(link in pic)

I would imagine that an accidental collision between a flocking camera and a drone controlled by a fumbling amateur first-time user might indeed compromise the camera’s operation somewhat.

If you see what I mean.

Progress:  not always a Bad Thing, no?

Lickspittle

Asshole Cops, Government Thugs, Gummint, Surveillance Society

In this specific case, the above insult is directed at that girlyman Rich Lowry at National Review.  (Back in the Buckley Days, I actually had a subscription to the Dead Tree National Review for many years.  Now?  I’d drink old motor oil first.)

Basically, Lowry is fawning all over the foul Flock company and their little snooping cameras, signing their praises to the heavens because:

There’s a reason, though, that police departments so rapidly adopted the cameras — they are an extremely useful investigative tool.

I bet they are.  How much so?

The cameras routinely aid in the identification and apprehension of the perpetrators of serious crimes and the location of missing persons.

According to the Jacksonville, Fla., sheriff’s office, the cameras since 2024 have “helped solve 15 murders, 17 kidnappings, 6 forcible sex offenses, nearly 100 shootings, and 172 missing-persons cases.”

That’s over two and a half years, which, compared to the crime stats of said area, is not so great a proportion — and let’s not kid ourselves, we’ll never know how many of those would have been solved anyway, without the “assistance” of Flock..

Here’s the thing.  Unlike Lowry, I’m not interested in the entire country surrendering their privacy just to help the fucking police solve a few crimes, any more than I support universal gun confiscation to help the police (I know, it wouldn’t, but it’s the principle I’m arguing here).

You can make an argument for any kind of totalitarian abrogation of rights for the same reason — the old “security vs. freedom” argument we’ve heard so often before.

And finally, we all know that this wholesale collection of individuals’ private information is going to be abused.

“Really, Kim?”

Newsflash:  it’s already being abused.  From Lowry’s selfsame article:

According to The Washington Post, “Authorities have charged or accused at least 50 law-enforcement officers of using license-plate readers for unauthorized purposes, including to stalk their exes.”

I know that’s not a large number:  but it’s a lot greater than zero (which is what it should be).

Lowry’s idiocy continues:

But license plate readers aren’t the only offender.  There are all sorts of other surveillance cameras, many of them privately owned and operated, that the police access during investigations.

We let our mobile phones and various apps track us all day long.

And something like 60 million households have Ring or other security cameras that record what’s happening on their property, and often in the immediate surroundings.

Good grief:  this idiot can’t even tell the difference between private security activity and State steamrolling.  Just because we (voluntarily) do it for ourselves, does not justify the Gummint doing it to us all, without our consent.  And the final insult:

The only reliable way to ensure that you aren’t being recorded is to stay inside — and draw the curtains.

Fuck you, you supercilious, condescending little turd. Do you even know what you’re saying?

It’s bad enough when the Commies want to fuck us all over;  but to have a nominally “conservative” commentator spew nonsense like this?

Somebody reserve Lowry a seat on the next Air Pinochet flight.

Never Mind, It’s Just A System Glitch

Asshole Cops, Surveillance Society

…or, Flock Off, Part 2:

A Wisconsin woman was pulled over at gunpoint twice in one week after Milwaukee Police Department staff failed to remove a vehicle alert from the Flock license plate camera system.

Fox 6 Milwaukee reports that on Thursday, police in the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield, Wisconsin, conducted a high-risk traffic stop on Interstate 94 after a Flock camera flagged a vehicle in connection with a Milwaukee homicide investigation. Video footage from the incident shows multiple officers with weapons drawn and a passenger extending their hands out the car window in compliance with police commands.

The vehicle’s driver, Amber Newell, and her passengers were detained during the stop. However, when Brookfield Police contacted the Milwaukee Police Department to coordinate the arrest, MPD informed them they no longer needed the vehicle or its occupants. The officers immediately released Newell and the other individuals.

And if anyone in this party of “desperadoes” had been accidentally shot, it would have resulted in an “Oops, my bad” response from the cops, no doubt.

Remember:  “If you’ve done nothing wrong, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Uh huh.

Grex delenda est.

Flock Off

Surveillance Society, Technology

And then we have this little collection of reindeer games:

A quiet battle is happening across the US right between towns working to adopt Flock Safety systems and those trying to ban them entirely. From major cities like Los Angeles canceling its Flock contract to towns wrapping Flock AI cams in plastic bags because Flock won’t take them down, it’s a wild time for surveillance and questions about government accountability.

But what happens when you start seeing Flock’s now-recognizable solar panels and AI cameras going up in your neighborhood? What happens when they start to recognize your car or even individual people?

I don’t want to say what I really feel, at this point, because I may get into trouble.  Still, being who I am, I can’t help thinking of this kind of solution:

Then, purely in the spirit of scientific inquiry, I’m wondering if this might work:

Curious, that’s me.  But if you’re going to test the stuff, you may want to get some soon before it mysteriously starts to vanish off the shelves at Home Depot, or from Amazon’s warehouses.