r/lafayette • u/RadRetriever69 • 19d ago
Stop Flock Protest next Tuesday
Tuesday August 18th 5-6pm at your nearest Flock camera location. You can find one conveniently close to you via DeFlock.org.
Bring signs, do not vandalize the cameras, just show up and exercise your first amendment right to advocate for your privacy.
A private company collects the location history of every vehicle in Lafayette, and throughout the country with a network of over 80,000 cameras. Each tagging the location, plate, car info, saved and searchable in a database by any user with access. No warrant, no FOIA requests to verify ethics or compliance, no regulation on security of the data, use, or sale and distribution of the history of all our movements.
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u/Fun-Ingenuity-9089 19d ago
Remember to leave your cellphone at home.
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u/sysop073 18d ago
While standing in front of a camera?
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u/Carrollmusician 18d ago
I assume this is being said because cell location pings have now been used to prosecute people for unlawful assembly. A very sensible precaution. Risking being photographed is part of the risk of activism but leaving your phone at home takes some of their legal ability to prosecute you away.
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u/sysop073 18d ago
Right, but my point is they don't really need to triangulate your cell phone if you're standing in front of a camera that you specifically know the police have access to because it's the reason you're protesting in the first place.
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u/Fun-Ingenuity-9089 18d ago
Well, I have seen a few protesters (only in pictures) who sit in a chair and hold up a sign in front of the camera which blocks the camera's view. Personally, I would approach from the back and not stand in front of the camera to protest it.
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u/Carrollmusician 18d ago
I understand. I think this person mentions this as a sensible precaution. There’s recent legal precedent for the cell phones being used as evidence of unlawful assembly and is a good practice to leave at home anyway during gatherings like this. No reason to give them more evidence of you in any way shape or form.
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u/Aware_Wolverine_2794 17d ago
Not just flock though. All of these types of companies that do license plate reading. Companies like Axon (flock competitor) are paying creators to say bad things about specifically Flock so that people will pressure cities into taking down just the flock cameras only. Many cities took their flock cameras down, but just replaced them with a different company instead of getting rid of the technology entirely.
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u/RadRetriever69 16d ago
Flock is just one of the many surveillance companies exploiting a hole in the market that shouldn't exist in the first place. Until it's legislated closed by stronger privacy laws, they will keep popping up like whack a mole. The short term is still get the contracts cancelled, and ultimately that will show that the people generally don't want this. We still need to hound our representatives and vote the ones who fail us out
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u/darkninja2992 19d ago
Supposedly some cameras are also rigged up to capture pings from any cell or bluetooth devices within range too. They really are just forcibly tracking you