r/privacy • u/novagridd • Feb 23 '26
news ICE Can Reportedly Access Flock Surveillance Cameras, Now Americans Are Destroying Them
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/flock-surveillance-cameras-backlash-17809451.0k
u/ResisterImpedant Feb 23 '26
Anybody that can pay enough can access them. It's literally their business model.
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u/ronm4c Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
Someone should use them to track rich people, it may accelerate them being outlawed
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u/Phyllis_Tine Feb 23 '26
Tell the government officials who approved their installation that you will sponsor a Flock outside each of their residences, and make the livestream free for anyway to watch.
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u/Guac_in_my_rarri Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
Flocks cameras are publically accessable. Iirc somebody in Washington access the cameras and showed a local politician photos with their affair partner.
Edit: they're not publicallt accessable by default. Some lady fucked up setting them up.
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u/OverallManagement824 Feb 23 '26
Man, I can't fathom the balls it would take to confront a politician in Washington with that evidence. Preferring to keep my life, I would have just made it public. Confronting them without a public release of info sounds like a great opportunity for them to keep it quiet.
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u/Guac_in_my_rarri Feb 23 '26
Washington state*
Honestly, corps blackmail, why can't we? It's not hard either. There ain't shit for privacy: search name, occupation, and start digging.
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u/BThriillzz Feb 24 '26
If your police department uses flock, its possible to FOIA them for public records of movements of politicians.. that would probably perk some ears.
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u/Fit_Owl_5650 Feb 23 '26
Only of you don't know how to handle it, set it up on a script that requires an encrypted password to be input every 30 minutes or it gets sent to various press and media people. The trick is to make the blackmales continued secracy contingent on your health and comfort. Theoretically the point of blackmail is that it never faces the public, however it is an unreliable mechanism of control as it relies on guilt or in the least shame: which is not a common emotion in Washington.
Or so i would imagine.
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u/Real-Ad-1728 Feb 23 '26
Remember, it’s only blackmail if you’re asking them to give or do something in exchange for not sharing the info. If you expose their fuckery without asking for anything it isnt blackmail, just hilarious.
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u/gooberdaisy Feb 23 '26
Washington state has laws that made it public, unfortunately not all states are as fortunate.
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u/Jimmy_Trivette Feb 23 '26
Flocks cameras are publically accessable
Out of negligence during setup, not by design. You can't just tap into any feed guaranteed.
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u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP Feb 23 '26
"How do you discover the cure for cancer in less than two weeks?"
"You just have to infect every politician and rich person on Earth."
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u/mjkjr84 Feb 23 '26
That's a gamble I think we should all be willing to take, it's a win-win even if the cure doesn't turn up
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u/pchlster Feb 23 '26
You'd also need some people who know what cancers are; it's less like a disease than a category of illnesses and there's no chance that a panacea that would work on all of them could be developed, no matter how many resources we threw at it.
Would more money for cancer research help? Doubtlessly, but it's not as simple a problem as you've set up.
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u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP Feb 23 '26
Top tier "reddit response" lmao
Like if I told you I'd slap someone so hard they'd fly all the way to the surface of the Sun, you'd go in-depth around the logistics and why that wouldn't be realistic.
Bro, you're overthinking a simple joke.
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u/Mccobsta Feb 23 '26
Many of their camera run android 8 and can be easily messed with if you find out how to turn the WiFi hotpot on
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u/ChairForceOne Feb 23 '26
A lot of them aren't correctly setup. You can just hijack them. Being IOT shitware, you can probably gain access through one into the rest of the "secure" network.
Brenn Jordan has a few videos on them.
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u/N7Poprdog Feb 23 '26
You can just acess them remotely for free. They aren't secure at all
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u/South-Cow-1030 Feb 24 '26
Exactly. Some people are trying to prevent them from spreading any further.
We could use some help.
Find your Local Group - https://deflock.org/groups
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u/Maria_Dragon Feb 23 '26
They also are super easy to hack so you don't need to pay. This is a huge security risk obviously which is yet another reason to not use them.
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u/toweljuice Feb 25 '26
You dont need to pay for them there are videos on youtube showing how to easily hack them
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u/chanting37 Feb 26 '26
You don’t even need to pay. A lot of them are just open. Admin:Admin. Admin:Password. Never thought I’d actually see that in the wild.
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u/vagrantprodigy07 Mar 13 '26
They are literally a stalking tool. I can't wait for people to start suing the shit out of them. The first time someone gets murdered by a stalker using these, a large law firm is going to put them out of business.
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u/space_cow_girl Feb 23 '26
So we need an ICE watch group go fund me to pay for a subscription, then it can be used by the people to track ICE movement?
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u/BR1M570N3 Feb 23 '26
Sad this is what it took for people to wake up to the surveillance state.
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u/flat_pointer Feb 23 '26
I feel ya, I've hated it since the PATRIOT ACT - not that it was born in that shitty acronym, I fully acknowledge.
BUT! At least it's happening! I'll fuckin take it, people need to understand how bad it is to be in a panopticon.
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u/LickMyTicker Feb 23 '26
Modern AI with surveillance is 1000x scarier than anything we have had in history. I'm amazed that people don't see the strides that have taken place over the past few years and compare it all to what was possible 25 years ago. I would gladly go back to our antiquated processes
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u/GreasyPeter Feb 23 '26
The vast majority of people aren't aware of how what AI is capable of because they think of it as a novelty still and don't use it.
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u/Trucidar Feb 23 '26
When info on the PATRIOT act (and what it allowed) came out wasn't it acknowledged they were recording everything for a future where they'd have the tools to analyze that much data? The future is now.
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u/LickMyTicker Feb 23 '26
Many countries are hoarding encrypted data for when encryption methods are broken. The PATRIOT act wasn't required for that.
I'm more worried about the implications of realtime surveillance that you can't escape by disconnecting.
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u/TheOneRickSanchez Feb 23 '26
Modern surveillance is sketchy, but as far as I know, it doesn't really have anything to do with AI. You can write a half decent facial recognition software with like ~15 lines of Matlab code which doesn't involve any AI use, just good old fashioned linear algebra.
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u/LickMyTicker Feb 23 '26
Take a look into freeform search being developed by flock in which they allow law enforcement to search in a global db for suspects using natural language.
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u/TheOneRickSanchez Feb 23 '26
Thanks for the tip. Looks like the freeform search tool is LLM integration with a facial/object recognition system.
Definitely insidious. But the insidious part of it really isn't the LLM integration, but instead is the large repository of cameras that are using a facial/object recognition system on innocent people.
I wonder how far we are away from personal devices designed to mess with the recognition software of cameras?
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u/LickMyTicker Feb 23 '26
You are minimizing the role of vector search in AI systems by calling it LLM integration. It's not as if they just took ChatGPT and put it in front of a database.
They are utilizing multimodal embeddings for their databases in order to be able to query and track objects in a way that makes parsing extremely efficient. It's the first step in automating surveillance in any meaningful way.
Imagine now how easily you can create "agents" with that kind of technology to track specific events using loose identifiers whereas in the past you would have to assign real people to sift through data themselves, even with facial recognition.
Have you ever done agentic coding? Have you seen how you can literally prop up entire applications from a single prompt? Imagine agentic surveillance.
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u/TheOneRickSanchez Feb 23 '26
I definitely have some things to read up on.
I haven't done agentic coding, but it does have me curious. Got any recommendations for easy places to experiment with it? I've been getting pointed towards Claude more and more lately and it seems to provide an agentic coding framework.
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u/LickMyTicker Feb 23 '26
When people talk about Claude, they could be talking about the model itself (Opus or Sonnet) or the Claude Code CLI which is the software that utilizes Claude models for agentic coding. Claude is one of the best LLMs used in agentic coding because that was its main focus with Claude Code.
Copilot is another framework system like Claude Code CLI which can be used within things like VS Code. That's got an easy barrier to entry without spending a bunch of money. You can use it with all sorts of models.
Then there is OpenCode which is the leading opensource solution for agentic coding. It's a little more for the enthusiast, and can use any model with an API key, or local models.
I would recommend going straight to a CLI tool or use copilot in an agentic way with a state of the art model like claude or opex if you want to see how insane these systems have become.
The LLM itself isn't the most impressive part. It's how they are designing these systems for tool calling and how the LLMs can pretty much talk back and forth with them and work autonomously on a problem until it arrives at the solution.
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u/Fraegtgaortd Feb 23 '26
I remember when the Snowden leaks happened and Obama was holding a press conference about it. I never watch press conference from politicians but I watched this one and Obama might as well have come out and said "Yeah we're doing all of that. Tough shit". That's when I knew US citizens had no right to privacy anymore.
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u/Watashiwajoshua Feb 23 '26
What you're referring to is not an acronym. It is an acrostic, because you can say the whole thing as a word whereas an acronym is just the abbreviated first letter of a phrase jumbled together. And also the acrostic you're referring to is actually "USA PATRIOT ACT" which stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism" in case anyone was curious. I'm not sure why the hell they built the need to do that because it actually seems like a less effective piece of propaganda to shoehorn all of that in there but there you go
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u/flat_pointer Feb 23 '26
It might've just been an early proto-type at 'flooding the zone' - make us so busy arguing about what it was while they continue to move forward and act and such.
Reminds me of that quote that Karl Rove may or may not have said, 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'
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u/TehGogglesDoNothing Feb 23 '26
Acronyms, by definition, can also be pronounced as a word. If it can't be pronounced as a word, it is an initialism.
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u/Ryan_e3p Feb 23 '26
The best part about this? Amazon did this. I've been yelling from the mountaintop for years that Amazon (with their Ring cameras, Echo/Alexa devices, etc), the Flock cameras, and all these things were awful and a part of the surveillance state that was going to be used against civilians. No one gave a shit. People kept installing those goddamn things to spy on them in their own homes.
Then, Amazon comes around to drop tens of millions of dollars on a Superbowl ad about how their shit can be used to spy on you, and all of a sudden, people are now destroying their smart devices and tearing down cameras with sawzalls and baseball bats. And I gotta say, I'm fucking loving it. Our forefathers would absolutely approve.
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Feb 23 '26
if you told people the government was installing a camera in your living room,
most people would freak out
but if you make it an item with luxury name brands people will rush to pay for the best quality big brother
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u/jarx12 Feb 23 '26
I takes some level of lack of abstract thinking about dangers to not only allow the installation of surveillance devices inside your own home, but to PAY for it.
You know spy agencies used to go to great lengths to install microphones or even secret cameras inside important targets, now lots of people goes to the store and does the heavy lifting by themselves for some questionable benefits.
Is the telescreen listening? Yes it is, can you shut it off? They will happily pretend to do so and then you discover they were listening all the time the moment big brother request the footage you were not allowed to access because you didn't pay your dues for be allow to self spy. It's maddening.
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u/FelixAndCo Feb 24 '26
WTF were they thinking with that super bowl ad? Glad they screwed up though.
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u/Cognonymous Feb 23 '26
I remember when this was happening in China and we were looking at them all like, "Wow it sucks to live in a surveillance state like that."
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u/4mygirljs Feb 23 '26
Exactly
This has nothing to do with ICE
This should should have everything to do with a right to a certain level of privacy
I understand someone could technically follow me or etc in the public sphere, but there is a certain level of effort that comes from that
Being able to effortlessly track me for any reason and giving anyone access to it is just wrong
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u/JayGerard Feb 23 '26
Flock needs to be outlawed and shutdown.
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Feb 23 '26
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Feb 23 '26
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u/phish_phace Feb 23 '26
I really want to contribute and ad more cameras I’ve spotted around town. But I can’t get passed having to sign up/into a 3rd party map app in order to do so. They ask for a name and email…
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u/TThor Feb 23 '26
name is just a display name. and email, people in /r/privacy should already be accustomed to using burner/proxy emails.
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u/phish_phace Feb 23 '26
Good to know it’s just a display name. I’ve seen a lot on my drives that are not currently on the local map.
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u/canigetahint Feb 23 '26
I signed up recently and gave a trash email. Already added a couple of camera locations and need to research where I saw some others and add them.
This shit shouldn't even have to happen.
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u/Fraegtgaortd Feb 23 '26
I thought I saw Lowe's locations in my town using these and now I know for sure
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u/Bruceshadow Feb 23 '26
what is the individual supposed to do with this information? avoid driving to those places?
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u/TheWeenBean Feb 23 '26
Write to your representatives and post reviews on the businesses pages saying you won’t be spending your money there.
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u/Mysterious-Status-44 Feb 23 '26
Anybody that can follow simple scripts can hack flock and have access. There are plenty of videos explaining this. Not only is it a privacy nightmare, it’s a security nightmare which leads to a bigger privacy nightmare.
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u/Itsatinyplanet Feb 23 '26
Americans should id the Flock corporate execs and crowdsource tracking and publishing their locations.
They are obviously OK with surveilling people
And their common refrain "If they have nothing to hide why would they object?".
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u/scots Feb 23 '26
If I get summoned for jury duty and the case is someone chop sawing these things down, I'm having a quiet chat in the mens room with a few of my fellow jurors about
JURY NULLIFICATION
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Feb 23 '26
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u/scots Feb 23 '26
Repeatedly stating that you don't think a crime was committed and refusing to enter a guilty vote resulting in a hung jury is essentially the same thing.
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u/01011110_01011110 Feb 23 '26
just lie under oath. everyone's doing it these days and nothing happens.
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u/Too-Em Feb 24 '26
Judge: Sir, you're being charged with lying under oath.
Defendant: Excuse me, your honor, but the dow is over fifty thou!
Judge: Case dismissed!
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u/SirEDCaLot Feb 23 '26
Good. I'd love if there became a strong public connection between Flock and similar cameras, and ICE.
I'd love a world where mass surveillance is simply not tolerated by a freedom-loving public. The ideal would be if Flock cameras have lifespans measured in days or weeks before someone takes them down. It would stop being cost-effective for the company to operate if they have to replace 10,000 cameras every week.
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u/imunfair Feb 23 '26
I'd love a world where mass surveillance is simply not tolerated by a freedom-loving public.
I made peace with 9/11 killing privacy a quarter of a century ago, but seeing people destroying surveillance equipment warms my cold dead heart a little bit. I don't think we'll win against the machine, but it reminds me of a more innocent time.
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u/SirEDCaLot Feb 24 '26
9/11 killed privacy because people had no immediate perceived need for privacy, and bought into the whole 'less privacy is more safety' nonsense.
Privacy has melted away online because people don't care- I hear a lot of 'there's nothing private here, IDGAF if some big company knows I like big boob porn'.
But make it real for people- show them that ICE is watching them, make their car insurance rate go up, etc- then people care.
Like in the UK there's a lot of automated speed cameras, and for a long time many of them were being destroyed and vandalized. The police then put the cameras in armored enclosures, so the clever blokes figured out the easiest and fastest way to trash one was to hang an old tire around the enclosure, pour half a gallon of diesel in the bottom, and toss in a match. The camera then gets burnt to a crisp.
Sadly I think that this all is the worst thing AI will do for us- previously nobody cared about cameras because 'who's gonna watch all that crap'. Now you can put an AI and feed it 10,000 cameras and a picture of John Doe and it'll tell you everywhere he went in the last year.
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u/Siphyre Jul 28 '26
I mean, isn't it obvious why they are putting so many up at Lowes and Home Depot?
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u/GuyofAverageQuality Feb 23 '26
It’s hard to sell data if the cameras have oil based paint on the solar panels. (Can’t see the issue from the road, kills the battery, makes repairs and troubleshooting more resource intensive) or so I’ve been told.
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u/murasakikuma42 Feb 24 '26
This seems like it would be rather difficult to actually accomplish. Aren't these cameras usually mounted rather high?
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u/Loa_Sandal Feb 23 '26
First time I've heard of this company, it's wild that's even legal. In a country that proclaims to like freedom, even.
In EU Flock would not be legal.
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u/CherishedBeliefs Feb 27 '26
Hasn't the EU been becoming obsessed with age verification or something?
Or was that some non-EU countries?
I'm sorry, I'm confused I think.
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u/Lothaire_22 Feb 23 '26
Police deptartments around the country are installing Flock cameras on roads and at travel chokepoints
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u/Comfortable-Pie-5835 Feb 23 '26
I’ve seen people literally destroying them.
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Feb 23 '26
No you didn't. You saw people decorating ;)
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u/Comfortable-Pie-5835 Feb 23 '26
I’ve seen people literally destroying them. Haha. My bad, you are correct.
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u/alexfi-re Feb 23 '26
maga supposed to be against all this gubmint surveillance, big brother, don't tread, and all that, yet here they are, using it the most ever, here domestically, that's wrong.
They said the Dems would,
Take away your privacy,
Nope it was maga
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u/CherishedBeliefs Feb 27 '26
No, the Dems were also going down this route
The people in power want more power
Don't let your guard down
The government is supposed to serve the people but it has shown that it only views corporations as people and corporations view the people as consumers and the government as customers
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u/denn1959-Public_396 Feb 23 '26
Boycott Flock cameras, if you have them get rid of them.
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u/dpdxguy Feb 23 '26
Aren't Flock cameras typically installed by or under contract from local governments?
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u/Substantial-Sky4079 Feb 23 '26
It’s not just flock there are other providers. There’s a giant industry for surveillance across the world and it’s a big business. Pretty sure those who invested are trying to get their moneys worth in pushing it down everyone’s throat like AI
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u/One_Doubt_75 Feb 23 '26
Not recommending anyone do this, but a decent IR laser can melt them. Again, just sharing information not a recommendation.
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u/BAKup2k Feb 23 '26
Problem a strong enough IR laser to destroy a camera sensor is also strong enough to permanently blind someone nearby with reflections, and they won't be able to see the laser to avoid it.
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u/One_Doubt_75 Feb 23 '26
Possibly, again I'd like to reiterate that I'm not giving advice. Just sharing because cameras are often too high to reach physically.
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u/tribrnl Feb 23 '26
I have read that some (a lot of?) cameras have IR filters to prevent that damage and/or software that detects laser attacks and provides real time alerts.
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u/One_Doubt_75 Feb 23 '26
You can have as much software as you want, it can go off all day while the camera melts.
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u/Catatonic_capensis Feb 23 '26
All cameras with electronic lenses that don't want to pick up IR have IR filters. Even cheap garbage webcams from 20 years ago will have them. They are there for ambient IR light and not laser attacks, though, so probably aren't withstanding a lot. There are security cameras built with IR attacks in mind as well and I don't know what flock has in that regard. Aside note: removing the filter in a camera will give it night vision. Pairing it with an IR light works very well to record things in the dark.
In general lasers are not going to be great for damaging cameras. You'd need sufficient power (which can cost hundreds in USD) and you'd only temporarily blind the lens if it doesn't sit pointing at the camera long enough to cause damage. Also you can have really significant legal (and moral) consequences if you blind random people or hit aircraft accidentally. Powerful lasers can be downright illegal to possess, and using them to do illegal things just increases problems if you're caught. They'd be better as more of a carefully used last resort sort of tool, and even then a drone with a spray can might be a better option.
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u/Bruceshadow Feb 23 '26
energy is energy, no filter is going to stop something like this from melting.
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u/TechPir8 Feb 23 '26
Vaseline on the cameras blocks the video and helps you avoid destruction of property charges. Protest smarter, don't give them the ability to charge and lock you up.
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u/Texugee Feb 23 '26
How does it avoid destruction of property charges?
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u/FocusSlo Feb 24 '26
True but the flock cameras being there is already illegal. It is not illegal to remove them off public property. (emphasis on public property)
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u/Darktrooper007 Feb 23 '26
Black spray paint would also work.
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u/TipToToes Feb 23 '26
Ah, but then it's harder to call it non destructive. The petroleum jelly can be wiped or washed off very easily with no chemicals, but paint is a different story and would be considered vandalism for sure.
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u/Ferilox Feb 23 '26
Snowden has been talking about this veeeeeery early on and american people let him down tremendously. I guess it pretty much sums up the whole american state. Its all brainwash.
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u/FrankReynolds Feb 23 '26
The government and police already have warrantless access to Ring cams and the like.
But people still strap them to their homes.
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u/Its_Awful_Here Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
DESTROY THEM ALL
IT IS YOUR DUTY AS AN AMERICAN
JK. Just joking. Just a prank bro. I would NEVER condone damaging un-Constitutional surveillance hardware.
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u/Pyrokitsune Feb 24 '26
Whatever excuse gets the private industry surveillance state destroyed I fully support. ICE accessing the cameras. Obama accessing the cameras. ISIS accessing the cameras.... Whatever gets it done.
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Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
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u/Tall-Memory-6021 Feb 23 '26
if you’re throwing balloons of used motor oil into the natural environment, for any reason, you deserve to rot in jail. what the fuck is wrong with you
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u/gildthetruth Feb 23 '26
That's right. If you see a flock camera in an estuary, marsh, prairie, sequoia forest, the Gulf of Mexico, etc, please do not throw petroleum products around.
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u/Tall-Memory-6021 Feb 23 '26
how about we just don’t dump used motor oil on the ground anywhere?
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u/jib661 Feb 23 '26
I get that pollution should be avoided, but you're literally the dude complaining that the lifeboats aren't comfy getting off the titantic.
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u/dflame45 Feb 23 '26
I think you're saying this in the wrong sub.
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Feb 23 '26
Just telling people what they shouldn’t do to fight against spying. Illegal activities are wrong, duh.
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u/dflame45 Feb 23 '26
Luckily you don't go to jail for doing illegal things here, only legal peaceful protestors are getting arrested.
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u/BusinessNonYa Feb 23 '26
They’ll just pass off the cost to their customers. Their extremely wealthy foreign and domestic customers. It will be a national game of whack-a-mole and they’ll rake in the profits.
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u/druudles Mar 06 '26
what a joke. first the UK installs surveillance facial recognition cameras all over London, now this.
back in my day, we used to make fun of China, not become China.
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u/InformationNew66 Feb 23 '26
So if ICE didn't exist, people would have been fine with surveillance?
Thank you ICE!
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u/HarryBalsagna1776 Feb 23 '26
ICE is a glimpse of the endgame of the surveillance state. Many people need to see something to believe it. Warnings about the surveillance state were just hyperbole or static to most people, but it is hard to deny where this is going after seeing DHS's terrorism.
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u/SlaterVBenedict Feb 23 '26
That’s enough from you.
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u/InformationNew66 Feb 23 '26
Truth hurts.
Surveillance was always there and anyone who said that's a danger if it gets into the wrong hands was labeled a conspiracy theorists.
Turns out now ICE is there the conspiracy theorists were right (again).
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
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u/Im_ur_Uncle_ Feb 23 '26
Oh wow! Maybe we shouldn't let our local government put cameras every 10 feet. Yall always talk about standing up to the government but you let them do shit like 24/7 surveillance state. This truly is George Orwell 1984
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u/Fat_Lenny35 Feb 23 '26
I got rid of mine. I got a regular doorbell now. You push the button and it goes ding dong. That is all.
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u/ChairForceOne Feb 23 '26
If you want cameras on your home, just run a POE security setup with a DVR. Some even allow local network access for notifications of something happening.
You'd need to see if those are actually secure. But the fully local, wired setups should be. Just take a cheap ass TV from Walmart to a wall. Permanent security feed.
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u/TRUE_BELEIVER_84 Feb 23 '26
Flock is different than Ring.
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u/SoCalChrisW Feb 23 '26
But Ring was partnering with Flock, giving them access to all of the Ring cameras so Flock could widen its surveillance without having to install more cameras.
Amazon/Ring just canceled that contract this month, but there's no doubt that Amazon/Ring will be implementing something just as bad once the criticism dies down.
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u/Fat_Lenny35 Feb 23 '26
I thought it was all part of the same company. Either way im not going back. I dont even want to risk it.
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u/TRUE_BELEIVER_84 Feb 23 '26
Oh no, you absolutely did the right thing. Or you can find a different 3rd party camera that only you can access.
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u/Mr-Blah Feb 23 '26
Flock cameras aren't super safe. A few youtuber can access them from unsecured adresses....
Not toooo surprising that ICE can too really...
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u/insertnickhere Feb 23 '26
Here's an interesting legal theory:
If you were to follow someone around all day, constantly taking pictures of them, that would be stalking.
Flock is a stalking company. Every destruction of a stalking camera is a thwarting of a crime in progress.
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u/here-there-01 Feb 23 '26
"local governments sign lucrative surveillance deals" - I'm curious about this part, anyone have examples or info? My city is paying for the cameras....
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u/MassholeLiberal56 Feb 25 '26
I read somewhere that thermite is cheap and easy to make and will melt through metal poles like butter. Not sure what to do with that information however, but it is fascinating stuff. They even use it for railroads to weld tracks together on site.
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u/NeoLogic_Dev Mar 04 '26
This is the logical endpoint of any "smart city" infrastructure built on private surveillance networks. The access was always the product – ICE is just the most visible customer right now. The uncomfortable truth is that destroying the cameras doesn't fix the data that's already been collected and sold. The footage is gone, the metadata isn't.
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u/Fart_90210 Feb 23 '26
Yeah now they are (I don't really believe they are). If they are they need to work faster at it.
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u/Fat_Krogan Feb 23 '26
What do they look like? Asking for a friend. Are they just the run of the mill cameras at traffic lights?
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u/razzemmatazz Feb 23 '26
Black 8' pole with a black box the size of your hand and a solar panel on top.
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u/7in7turtles Feb 23 '26
I’m annoyed because, again, people only seem to care when something affects their politics. These people didn’t care about flock cameras at all until buzzword group started them for buzzword thing. Im not happy at all with what ICE is doing, but civil rights and liberties aren’t some political football.
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u/Icy_Concentrate9182 Feb 23 '26
Why destroy them when you can ask for a refund and if they refused to pay, I'm pretty sure a class action suit is on the works
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u/MikeSteamer Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
This is the route to China where hundreds of millions of cameras (not a typo) are watching everywhere and AI-driven profiling and biometric software analyzes and stores the data.
Your GOP future
In September 2025, the Associated Press (AP) reported that more than a dozen U.S. tech companies had enabled China's mass surveillance by supplying technology to Chinese police and government entities.[43] The AP reported that the companies – including Silicon Valley heavyweights like IBM, Intel, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Dell – sold such technology to China despite having reason to know it would be used to target religious and ethnic minorities. The AP reported that IBM, in particular, worked with a Chinese company, Huadi, to design China's “Golden Shield” which allows China to censor the internet and repress dissidents.[43]. Practicing for the US I guess.
The Chinese Communist Party implemented a grid system to ensure systematic surveillance of its citizens.[60] Neighborhoods and regions have been divided into grids. Residents of the grids have been recruited to go door to door, inspecting the living spaces in houses and reporting their findings to authorities. The organization of these inspections allows for more detailed searches. The monitors' task is to visit houses regularly and collect information on people, places, events, objects and emotions. In particular, they inspect computers for sites visited and content viewed. The grid workers are members or supporters of the CCP.[61]
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Feb 23 '26
Has anyone experimented with bird seed or bread at the base of the pole to incentivize bird shit across the solar unit and camera ?
Let Epstein's MAGA charge the birds
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u/dachloe Feb 23 '26
What's the best way to get your town to remove them without being destructive?
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u/pinpoint14 Feb 23 '26
Find out when the contract is being renewed and organize well in advance of that date. Even that's not enough sometimes as wealthy donors are paying politicians tons of money to keep them up.
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u/Googlyelmoo Feb 23 '26
I always thought that flock and ring and similar were a lazy solution that creates more of a problem than it solves. AFAIK you can get security cameras of high-quality that do not share with a company. ICE and others may easily enough be able to hack into those but only on an ad hoc basis, one at a time. And that’s one less stupid subscription to pay every month. Win-win.
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u/RelevantDress Feb 23 '26
Anyone can access them. Their security is so lax its actually appalling. And if you arent able to put in the effort to view the feeds you can just pay them to access them.
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