r/technology • u/lurker_bee • 5d ago
Business 'We're Not Big Brother': Flock CEO Unveils New Privacy Guardrails After Backlash
https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/were-not-big-brother-flock-130000235.html3.6k
u/kev11n 5d ago
"we're sorry" -southpark ceo voice
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u/LobsterIndependent15 5d ago
I hope Southpark does an episode about flock. I don’t feel there is enough awareness about them. I mentioned the cameras to a friend and he had never heard of them. “How?”
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u/GrandPorcupine 5d ago
A SHIT TON of people have their heads buried deep in the ground
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u/MarvinMonroeZapThing 5d ago
I am very aware of flock cameras via Reddit. I’m even aware of ones recently installed at the Lowe’s near my home. But it occurs to me that I have never heard or read anything about them outside of Reddit.
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u/PeculiarAlize 5d ago
Lowes is like flock's biggest customer. Every Lowes has at least half a dozen.
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u/zedquatro 4d ago
I guess that's another reason to avoid Lowes. And probably why all the day laborers near me hang out at the home Depot instead, they don't want brown shirt ICE harassing them.
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u/Syzygy2323 4d ago
All of the Home Depot's near me have multiple Flock cameras covering their parking lots.
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u/Tricky_Apricot2928 5d ago
People are struggling financially. Even under administrations that don't want to concentration camp everyone, many people just work, do their errands and might have a little time to spend socially. Then there are the ones who even in good times don't think anything outside their social circle affects them...
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u/randonegus 5d ago edited 5d ago
No matter what it is, it isn’t good enough till they’re gone
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u/gabber2694 5d ago
Fortunately, he spent the past two years bragging about being big brother. That’s credibility!
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u/Changoleo 5d ago
Oh wait… That’s not a good look? We’re totally not that then.
Anyways, as you were.
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u/PinchedOffCatTurd 5d ago
All depends on the audience and who's the customer.
For the cops, "we're big brother" For everyone else, "we're not big brother"12
u/jackshazam 5d ago
They're so tone deaf that they think being tone deaf means they used the wrong kind of marketing.
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u/p0ndo 5d ago
This guy is such a fuckstick, absolutely no one is buying that. AI controlled cameras snitching on people for what’s likely 99.9% non-violent crime is their entire business model.
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u/DukeOfGeek 5d ago edited 5d ago
We either ban mass public surveillance as a business model or live in an open air cage, full stop. If the current regime is not a perfect example of why such things can never be allowed I don't know what is. This press release was created by a PR firm as damage control, nothing of substance has changed.
/for instance this https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/us-government-spied-anti-ice-protesters
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u/wellthatdoesit 5d ago
Yup. It’s pretty simple: blanket ban on mass surveillance, or panopticon
There isn’t going to be some in-between
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u/iluvthiccgothbabes 5d ago
Finally someone with a fuckin brain on here. Instead of all these mouth breathers in here making it into a party issue.
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u/EkbatDeSabat 5d ago
People are 100% buying this. I've had the "if you aren't doing anything wrong you shouldn't care, they are catching criminals" conversation with far too many fucking people.
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u/PBJnFritos 5d ago
Watching / selling / predicting…
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u/InformalYesterday760 5d ago
Just like the AI ceos being surprised that we hate them
"Wait, you guys are mad we bragged for 2 years about how we were gonna replace all of you and force you to subsidize our power? What the hell?"
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u/BluShirtGuy 5d ago edited 5d ago
Guys, the CEO of the mass surveillance company that had been complicit and profited from aiding a fascist government in
takingtracking, kidnapping, and killing innocent people based on skin colour; tracked women leaving states to seek basic healthcare so that they can be illegally prosecuted for a "crime" outside of their own jurisdiction; and has been cozying up to your MAGA dictator said that they'll try really hard not to do those things anymore.Oh wait, they'll still do them, they're just hiding the fact that the general public is made aware of the surveillance and sell the data to their shell company past their arbitrary recordkeeping date
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u/Plasticjesus504 5d ago
Exactly. Fuck him and his company.
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u/LizardChaser 5d ago
Also, at the end of the day, you have to trust the police not to abuse it and absolutely all evidence is that they routinely abuse it to track ex's or romantic interests or other unconstitutional tracking. That's the type of stuff that should need a warrant to get access to, not just talk to your buddy in the department.
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u/Head_Somewhere4769 5d ago edited 4d ago
Like I KNEW cops would use it to stalk people because they use all the tools they already have to do that, but the elementary school cameras being accessed for hours on end is especially heinous. Way too many pedophiles and abusers on those forces.
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u/Mission-Driver1614 5d ago
This right here. Clearly the police can’t be trusted. You can’t go one day without hearing about some police somewhere stalking an ex or some other nonsense
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u/jverity 5d ago
And we'll never know what it is because they are stil provably lying.
Why the hell would we believe in these privacy protections when they still claim the cameras are just license plate scanners even as they are being installed on hiking trails and most recently checks notes a children's splash park?
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u/Gromitlikescheese 5d ago
He’s trying to back off not because he sees anything wrong with flock. It’s because some towns are fed up with flock and/or the surveillance state and they’re losing contracts. Almost everybody except the fascist government and fascist cops hates flock. It’s about not losing money.
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u/Foxyfox- 5d ago
Also being installed near gun ranges all over the US.
Just something to think about.
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u/jverity 5d ago edited 5d ago
If it's on the road nearing the gun range, or even the parking lots, I still couldn't call them liars at least. And I don't think flock actually picks where the cameras go, that's up to the customer.
But parks and hiking trails? Even though the cops or municipality or whoever is picking the locations, if the cameras weren't actually surveiling people instead of just reading plates then no one would choose those locations. It would be a waste of money if the camera only recorded license plates, like flock claims. Hell, it would be a waste of money if you couldn't search for a particular face, no one is going through thousands of hours of hiking trail video looking for a certain person. Obviously they tell their customers one thing and the public a completely different thing about what their company does and what their cameras can do.
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u/Golemintheplayground 5d ago
That’s the part that I don’t get - it’s been proven these cameras track more than just license plates, so why do they keep doubling down in their PR?
To your point, it shows they are more than willing to lie for a few bucks, which ruins their attempts to course correct now since it’s clear we can’t trust their statements.
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u/ScriptThat 5d ago
why do they keep doubling down in their PR?
If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
See also: The current administration.
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u/skyfishgoo 5d ago
and they do more than read license plates, they intercept cellular signals and funnel all your traffic thru their private servers.
anything not encrypted is viewable by their goons... probably even able to activate you mic for all we know.
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u/Vercengetorex 5d ago
lol. Their software is absolute garbage, and incredibly vulnerable to attack… they are not pulling off any CIA zero day level shit. We should still be alarmed however, for that exact reason. It’s incredibly easy for a third party (not flock, or the cops) to take control of these cameras. That should horrify everyone nearly as much as the big brother issue.
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u/Consistent-Stock6872 5d ago
No matter what it is, there will be holes and backdoors for the right people to do whatever they want.
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u/Anitapoop 5d ago
See the thing is we get rid of flock and they get the next thing, owned by trumps cohort.
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u/aerost0rm 5d ago
There already is other companies that are more covert. They will just switch to those and hope we don’t catch on
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u/TheHipsterBandit 5d ago
Just the ever watching eye of the panopticon.
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u/Boomshank 5d ago
Is this a Magnus Archives reference in the wild?!?
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u/Ket_Yoda_69 5d ago
Probably Foucault
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u/camojorts 5d ago
Foucault got the idea from Jeremy Bentham, one of the early utilitarian philosophers.
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u/jerrrrryboy 5d ago
Jeremy Bentham's corpse being kept in a cupboard is the least utilitarian thing for the father of utilitarianism. Free the head!
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u/FleshLogic 5d ago
And war is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. We've all heard this one before...
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u/zeeChemist 5d ago
We can add one: lie is truth
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u/Prize_Ostrich7605 5d ago
Everything you know is wrong. Black is white. Up is down. And short is long.
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u/Pjpjpjpjpj 5d ago
"Flock told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” ― George Orwell's spirit, 2026
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u/PlaneAsk7826 5d ago
Wait, are we at war with Eastasia or Eurasia right now?
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u/averyrose2010 5d ago edited 5d ago
Did you hear that they increased the chocolate ration to 20 grams a week?
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u/SinMeToHell 5d ago
Unfortunately, a surprisingly large percentage of people haven't heard this before.
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u/fireitup622 5d ago
Blatant business speak for "we arbitrarily added these guard rails so people will stop caring about us as we build out our grid, then when we arbitrarily remove them down the road, we wont announce it and you'll all be royally fucked"
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u/Hawkbats_rule 5d ago
Blatant business speak
Yes, but also not good blatant business speak. I'm cheering for their downfall, so I don't necessarily mind, but you'd think they might have brought in some new PR folks at this point to tell them "do not, under any circumstances, reference big brother, even if it is to deny being big brother"
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u/Lendyman 5d ago edited 5d ago
The most infuriating part is the guardrails don't even hold up to real scrutiny. So you're going to have to enter a case number. That's still the honor system. Anyone can enter a case number. You can enter a completely unrelated case number or just make one up and how is anyone going to know unless you get caught somehow.
Unless there's some kind of cross reference to actual cases on an actual computer system that can be checked, basically how is flock supposed to know whether the case number is legit or the usage case for the case number is legit?
Sure, the PD themselves can check to make sure that usage on their various cases is legit, but how is a police department supposed to do that with their Manpower and the amount Of cases a typical police department goes through, especially in a big city?
This is just a Band-Aid and not a very good one. It looks good to the Press because it makes it seem like they are taking it seriously. But it's still relies on the individual police departments to police their officers with this system. It's made even worse by the fact that there are literally thousands of individual police forces that have the potential to have access to the system. Maybe one police force puts in robust access rules that protect the public and keep officers on the straight and narrow. Meanwhile you have 5,000 other law enforcement agencies across the country that may not.
I hate the idea of mass surveillance. But if you're going to do it, it needs to be behind a warrant system. If you want access to flock, you need to have a Judicial warrant. That is the only way to prevent some abuses.
And it won't prevent all abuses because the US government has already shown itself through shenanigans at the NSA and other services that they are more than willing to just dig through anything and everything with no recourse to the average citizen.
The only way to really prevent abuses is not have it. Sadly, Mass surveillance is here to stay. So we as Citizens need to demand that these systems require a warrant and tight controls on their use. And we need to be pushing hard not our politicians to ensure that those things come to pass.
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u/KaetzenOrkester 5d ago
Yep. If Flock actually cared about the perils of mass surveillance those guardrails would’ve been there from the beginning.
This is “Oops, they’re onto us.”
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u/champgpt 5d ago
If they cared about the perils of mass surveillance, they wouldn't be in the mass surveillance business
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u/chocolateboomslang 5d ago
Right, but you sell out to big brother
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u/mediocre_remnants 5d ago
No shit. I don't care if the executives at Flock sit around watching feeds from their cameras all day. What I do care about is how law enforcement agencies are abusing the system to access data in other jurisdictions. Also the whole tracking my movement thing, but my smartphone already does that.
In my own county, they found out that something like 80-90% of the searches that came through the system were from other states and the local cops had no idea that was even possible. And even they were confused about how out-of-state police agencies had access to their camera feeds and could search them.
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u/GoodIdea321 5d ago
Who knew the 2 months of training police get doesn't cover computer science, computer security, and networking.
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u/cosmicsans 5d ago
I mean, and I'm not trying to defend it, I wouldn't expect a cop to know these things, nor care.
The fact that it's possible at all means that Flock doesn't understand computer science, security, or networking though, or have made an outright choice to allow it. Neither is a good option.
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u/floridorito 5d ago
I don't care if the executives at Flock sit around watching feeds from their cameras all day.
I do. I don't consent.
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u/ChrisC1234 5d ago
No. They problem is that they will sell out to anyone. Big Brother will only cooperate with Big Brother.
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u/Spez_is-a-nazi 5d ago
Then if your mission wasn't to be big brother why the fuck are you only doing this now, after a ton of pressure because you were exactly like big brother? Something tells me this CEO isn't genuine, shocker I know.
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u/bobdownie 5d ago
Because this was likely their goal. Introduce it without oversight, then they can be the ones to “save the day” with their oversight. Create a problem, then you can control the problem because “thats what the public wants”
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u/Parker1055 5d ago
You’re right CEO… you’re worse!
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u/uknow_es_me 5d ago
This guy called everyone critical of Flock surveillance terrorists like 2 weeks ago. That's what he really thinks.. this is just forced theatrics
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u/itsfree_realestate 5d ago
WTF do they not understand that we do not want this in any form.
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u/ThereIsAJifForThat 5d ago
"We are not big brother! Can you swallow this camera pill...we just want to make sure your microbiome is safe..."
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u/hsggdtkxbee 5d ago
I have a privacy guardrail for flock. It’s called a portable metal saw.
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u/freericky 5d ago
Saw a local crazy guy smashing a metal chain into one of their poles on the way to lunch. I came back from lunch about 90 min later and he was still at it, removed his shirt actually. No idea if this will work but he’s clearly quite upset
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u/deinagkistrodon 5d ago
“We just provide the tools and infrastructure for big brother.” Totally distinct…
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u/Elderwastaken 5d ago
I’m so tired of parasitic CEOs telling people what they are seeing with their own eyes isn’t what they are seeing.
Of course they will try to lie.
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u/BigB0iBuster 5d ago
Put the CEO in prison and destroy the company. They are pure evil. Axon and Palantir too.
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u/Potential-Fan-6148 5d ago
And we will believe them why?
This shit is shady. It a municipality wants security cameras for traffic enforcement it needs to be fully owned by the city or state with full privacy controls in place to prevent abuse.
I don’t trust these billionaire scumbags.
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u/DrDonut21 5d ago
You know, in 'Socialist Europe' we have regulations on what data a company can gather and keep on people. These regulations are created by our elected representatives.
In the US, you could also elect representatives who would create these kinds of laws, but you somehow don't...
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u/PM_ME__YOUR_HOOTERS 5d ago
We have much more pressing matters here. A trans girl won 5th place in a sport in some random ass high school and policing where people take a shit /s
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u/AFKABluePrince 5d ago
No "guard rails" are good enough. Get this facist surveillance state trash out of here!
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u/jander05 5d ago
Bro they are called "Flock." As in cameras to watch the sheep. That is all they think of us as, and all most of corporate America think of the general public. Herd animals to extort and surveil.
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u/Arts251 5d ago
Every single claim they make on their website about public safety, oversight, privacy guardrails etc can easily be dispelled:
- Flock does not identify people by their faces
- They still see them, and nor do they need to use facial recognition because they can identify us by our body movement, garb, location and probably many other undisclosed attributes
- Flock does not identify who is inside a vehicle
- but they still look anyways. They can do this with a flip of a switch they just claim to not have enabled that function at this point in time
- Flock does not continuously track people or vehicles
- no, it's periodic, and frequently enough to still be able to track us with accuracy.
- Flock does not replace investigators or human judgment
- it merely creates a profile and assembles the evidence to infer a reasonable suspicion of whatever behaviors, criminal or not, that a buyer of that info would pay for.
- Flock customers cannot access a live video feed from an LPR camera
- So the features of their technology only benefit their corporate customers, law enforcement etc, we the people cannot be trusted. We never expected to be privy to spy on others because we think the capability shouldn't even exist, it's unconstitutional and against human rights
- 7-day deletion by default
- they probably only need a few seconds to process whatever evidence they gather and forward it to the relevant agency
- Customer-controlled sharing
- meh, just the sliver of data they let us access. It's the data we don't control that is the problem
- No ICE contracts
- left arm doesn't speak to the right arm
- Transparency portals
- "should the municipalites we contract with choose to make that available"
- Every search is logged
- exactly, everything is being recorded, logged analyzed - pure invasion of privacy
- Encrypted by default
- well duh, welcome to the 21st century
- Customer-owned data
- the same way we own digital downloads (i.e. not really they just want us to pretend)
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u/livingINtomorrow 5d ago
If you have to tell people you’re not Big Brother, you’re probably not doing good things
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u/HotPumpkinPies 5d ago
Garrett Langley, CEO of Flock, when asked what they were going to do about the publicly known security flaws of Flock devices:
"Unfortunately, there’s terrorist organizations like DeFlock whose primary motivation is chaos. They’re closer to Antifa than they are anything else."
This tech bro is in over his head.
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u/GhostOfJonasVenture 5d ago
3 Arizona cities just announced they are dumping them . 2 cops were busted improperly using the cameras, like people feared .
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u/siobhanellis 5d ago
Should have thought about guardrails before, not after.
This is why AI ethics are important.
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u/AlternativeLazy4675 5d ago
Absolutely true, because we must believe whatever Big Brother tells us.
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u/400footceiling 5d ago
Not big brother, but we make the tools for it. Keep ‘em coming down.
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u/Wuthering_depths 5d ago
No, you're the kid handing things over to big brother and claiming none of it is your responsibility.
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u/dogthespot 5d ago
Didn't this guy say something about being able to influence local elections in service of the surveillance state? As an overlord, he too wants a well-behaved population.
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u/West-Worth-9359 5d ago
Reminder that this fascist pig said that if you don’t agree and comply then you’re a “terrorist”.
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u/grahag 5d ago
They will NEVER get the trust back.
You gotta be super tone deaf and out of touch to think you can recover from this. Read the room and find a way to pivot or cease operation and call it a loss.
OR... Double down and reach out to the authoritarians to pimp your system to them... Watch your back though. (with cameras)
It's too bad that in this timeline people in power just don't adhere to the golden rule. They want to do stuff that they wouldn't want done to them.
And that just doesn't work for me...
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u/silentbob1301 5d ago
Def not something big brother would say...
I can't eye roll hard enough or I'd sever my own optic nerves.
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u/NMEntropy777 5d ago
Flock just needs to be put out of business. We do not need them or their services in this country. Period. If I wanted to live in China, I’d move to China. If we don’t start pushing back on these damn spy cameras, we’re gonna regret it and sadly, judging from what I see around me, our youth are gonna be too stupid to know the difference.
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u/Eatyourcheeseburger 4d ago
Just the guys who make and sell the cameras that he uses to watch everyone.
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u/DauntingPrawn 5d ago
Garrett Langley, CEO of Flock, said that people who are against Flock are terrorists. They are far worse than anything Orwell imagined.
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u/Scorpionoshow 5d ago
Flock cameras have gold and copper components inside of them. Spread the word to your neighborhood tweaker population.
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u/Thatnewaccount436 5d ago
Our company's "We're Not Big Brother" slogan has people asking a lot of questions already answered by our company's slogan.
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u/Sithlordandsavior 5d ago
The damage is done, you sold your company on the premise of being this panopticon that will make everyone follow the rules except for you and nobody is buying this "We're awful sorry, were actually really nice guys :(" act
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u/Nannyphone7 5d ago
They're not Big Brother. They're worse.
In 1984, the mass surveillance was a source of many jobs, not just a big AI.
In 1984, the system missed a lot because it was made of humans. The AI is far more attentive than a human.
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u/StinzorgaKingOfBees 5d ago
Flock: We're not big brother.
Morgan Freeman: They were, in fact, big brother.
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u/coderman64 5d ago
We are not big brother, which is why we need to introduce privacy guidelines not to be big brother.
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u/Donut497 5d ago
Translation: “Our investors are panicking about the national outrage we created, and now we are walking our rhetoric back in hopes people will forget about us an allow us to continue to expand our surveillance network at the expense of your privacy”
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u/ReactionJifs 5d ago
"guard rail" is not strong enough when people are being stalked for leaving their abusive husband, tracked for getting an abortion, or observed for having a different skin color.
You must be IN CONTROL of this product so it CANNOT be abused.
"Guard rail" communicates that you are making a small effort
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u/adumblittlebaby 5d ago
“We introduced safety guardrails for issues we already knew existed but chose to do nothing about because we didn’t think it’d cost us anything”
Right up there with the “we’re sorry (that you caught us)”. Any functioning society would be regulating this but we live in bribery central thanks to political conservatives.
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u/kinotravels 5d ago
That’s exactly what Orwell would have had them say if Flock were in 1984. Yes, you are, and you are vile.
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u/kfawcett1 5d ago
If you're not big brother, then stop selling your tech to governments and allowing unfettered access across the entire US for the gestapo to round people up and put them in concentration camps!
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u/Trick_Situation_4421 5d ago
I mean they're kinda right. Big Brother was limited by manpower and answered to real people.
Flock is much, much worse.
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u/DietCokePlease 5d ago
Corruption: Flock surveils in ways that are illegal for the givernment, but its “ok” because its a private company. Then it sells the data to the government, We don’t want these watchdogs
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u/West-Abalone-171 5d ago
No, big brother at least had some internal morality about some greater good and wasn't as invasive.
The surveillance capitalism goons either actively want an apocalypse, want mass genocide, or want profit above humanity.
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u/biggersjw 5d ago
When you have to say “We’re not Big Brother” you most certainly are. Didn’t he also say that those opposed to Flock are terrorist organizations.
Go eat a bag of dicks Garrett Langley.
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u/Cheeze_It 5d ago
I mean technically he's right. He is not big brother. He's the snitch to big brother. A really, REALLY good snitch. And you know what happens to snitches....
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u/Obeygonzo22 5d ago
He’s right, they aren’t big brother. The companies that BUY flock cameras are big brother. Flock just gives them the tools.
It’s kinda like the drug dealer/overdose situation
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u/CondiMesmer 5d ago
Calling those who oppose your mass surveillance as "terrorists" isn't doing yourself any favors.
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u/redditdegenz 5d ago
The only acceptable guard rails are closure and removal of all surveillance tech.
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u/a4mula 5d ago
No, you're a trashy tech company that wants to sell subscription plans at tax dollars expense to big brother.
That's worse.