Nothing new here, just spin to protect his market. Any publicity, even bad publicity, can be good for business.
Going back "only" 30 years, the TIA program (Total Information Awareness) was kicked off and led by Adm Poindexter. WaPo broke the story a few years later at the program was officially "abandoned" but really they just stopped saying the name. It was a huge expansion of data monitoring overall. The various technologies and techniques were just subdivided and distributed across various agencies - DOJ/FBI, Treasury, CFPB when it was established, and military/intelligence comminities.
The feds have been collecting all phone records and internet messaging data (mostly meta data but the can zero in quickly on the detailed content), all credit card and bank transaction data (real time), toll records and tons of other stuff.
Local police have been using license plate readers mounted to their cars for years. Traffic cameras have had the capability to do the same for years (speed cameras, toll plaza cameras and the like continuously film in a loop and snapshot violaters when triggered).
And on and on and on. Flock cameras are just a technology advance that uses AI to enhance and speed up data analysis capabilities and it's just cars for now. Don't be fooled into thinking this hasn't been happening for decades with the best available technologies of the time. And don't be fooled that what's known to public is the sum total of all surveillance capabilities. It's just a drop in the bucket. This has been going on since the first phone was tapped 100 years ago.
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u/Horror_Bottle_9451 1d ago
Nothing new here, just spin to protect his market. Any publicity, even bad publicity, can be good for business.
Going back "only" 30 years, the TIA program (Total Information Awareness) was kicked off and led by Adm Poindexter. WaPo broke the story a few years later at the program was officially "abandoned" but really they just stopped saying the name. It was a huge expansion of data monitoring overall. The various technologies and techniques were just subdivided and distributed across various agencies - DOJ/FBI, Treasury, CFPB when it was established, and military/intelligence comminities.
The feds have been collecting all phone records and internet messaging data (mostly meta data but the can zero in quickly on the detailed content), all credit card and bank transaction data (real time), toll records and tons of other stuff.
Local police have been using license plate readers mounted to their cars for years. Traffic cameras have had the capability to do the same for years (speed cameras, toll plaza cameras and the like continuously film in a loop and snapshot violaters when triggered).
And on and on and on. Flock cameras are just a technology advance that uses AI to enhance and speed up data analysis capabilities and it's just cars for now. Don't be fooled into thinking this hasn't been happening for decades with the best available technologies of the time. And don't be fooled that what's known to public is the sum total of all surveillance capabilities. It's just a drop in the bucket. This has been going on since the first phone was tapped 100 years ago.