>“The city of Dunwoody is one city in our demo partner program,” a Flock spokesperson told 404 Media. “The cities involved in this program have authorized select Flock employees to demonstrate new products and features as we develop them in partnership with the city.
the two things i still dont understand are:
1) why is there not a dedicated demo environment for demos, like practically every other software? i cant think of any reason why they need live data for a demonstration. (this might be addressed in the article, but the paragraph where it looks like it might be mentioned is also where the article is cut off)
2) is the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta (MCJCCA) city-owned? if not, the city should not be able to give permission to use the cameras. if so, was the MJCCA notified that the cameras would be used for demo purposes? were the parents notified?
Presumably there are people that have access to it. And if you are demoing software that connects to cameras, then someone gave the sales guy access to those cameras.
I’m also assuming those probably weren’t the only cameras…
I imagine its for security. Ie if there are reports of robbery, you can find who did it. I know its not that popular in the states but its common elsewhere, but with better controls. (well, "better" as in controlled by shitty IoT devices)
I think the thing with flock is just how poorly put together everything is. They are obviously insecure, and the entire network has massive holes in it. Yet its still being rolled out.
Looting is done for fun too. It must suck to have kids show up for practice in the morning and some of the essential gear is gone. It doesn’t matter if it is inexpensive to replace, you still have to cancel class and take a day or two up replace it, file a police report, etc
Any sane business that has lots of random people coming in will have cameras recording (except in bathrooms/locker rooms). There is too much opportunity for crime, and a camera is cheap. If something happens you pull up the feed from the last month and give the interesting parts to the police; most often you just delete everything after a month. More than one crime has been solved this way.
That said, if there wasn't a crime the camera footage should be deleted.
> There is too much opportunity for crime, and a camera is cheap.
The camera doesn't prevent crime. It just displaces it. Even when it doesn't it will not prevent the crime from happening. It _may_ provide you an opportunity to prosecute the person who committed it.
In reality the only real reason to have one is to reduce your insurance premiums.
> crime has been solved
A perpetrator was potentially caught and now has to be tried or negotiated into a plea. I understand we use the term "solve" as a term of art but it's a particularly poor one. It speaks to the need of police to clear their books of negative indicators and not to any first order desirable social outcome.
> That said
That said, if during a demo, you access another customers equipment, I will _never_ do business with you. That's just extremely unprofessional behavior.
In many cases the people deploying these cameras have no idea the feeds are being resold to Flock. It’s not like they have a consumer brand and people are saying, “oh yeah, Flock, they’re the license plate camera folks…I definitely want one of those in my locker room.”
Most often the business hires a security contractor to take care of it, and signs the contract without understanding the terms. You should be able to trust your suppliers enough that you can do the above, they are the experts in the thing (cameras in this thing, but could be things like plumbing or accounting) and you have your own business to run. "Should" is key though, all too often someone doesn't do right by their clients.
> Or are you just saying the person placing the cameras is decoupled from the person making the decision to aggregate them all.
That's exactly what's happening.
People are buying webcams which are cheap and have in their ToS something to the effect of "we get to sell everything the camera can see". Which, in turn, allows them to partner with Flock and sell video footage directly to them.
Consider the fact that at one point, Amazon partnered with Flock to sell their ring camera footage to Flock. [1] It only got botched because of the creepy superbowl commercial selling the spying as "finding lost puppies".
I was attacked by "a good dog" and then blamed for provoking the dog (like that is valid excuse for starting an attack). I defended myself, and dog owner joined the attacked together with their dog!
After that, I have cameras everywhere, I even record many interactions on my phone. I refuse to be at mercy of random beasts and their "owners". If people start using leashes and muzzles, I may consider taking down cameras!
It's it anything like the comments I see on here defending Flock, it'll just be a bunch of attempting to scare people with the idea of crime, and disparaging anyone in favor of privacy as being pro-crime.
So there are people sitting in cubicles in various companies/orgs that flock sells the access to and they are watching your children on a screen.
Usually the government is trying to wrap the spying/privacy breaches by "save the children", but this time if you want to save your children from some older dude watching them on a screen, you actually have to be against this privacy nightmare.
Isolated information isn't a problem. If it takes effort to access information then mass information abuse doesn't scale, it is free of cost, and consequence, access that is the issue here. Flock is attempting to destroy barriers to access around real time surveillance. There is a clear distinction between someone having a business surveillance system that points at the street that the police can get access to with some sort of device specific request and no-requirement needed brows the world access that Flock is pushing. This is different. This is evil.
the two things i still dont understand are:
1) why is there not a dedicated demo environment for demos, like practically every other software? i cant think of any reason why they need live data for a demonstration. (this might be addressed in the article, but the paragraph where it looks like it might be mentioned is also where the article is cut off)
2) is the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta (MCJCCA) city-owned? if not, the city should not be able to give permission to use the cameras. if so, was the MJCCA notified that the cameras would be used for demo purposes? were the parents notified?
Why is the camera there in the first place??
Presumably there are people that have access to it. And if you are demoing software that connects to cameras, then someone gave the sales guy access to those cameras.
I’m also assuming those probably weren’t the only cameras…
I imagine its for security. Ie if there are reports of robbery, you can find who did it. I know its not that popular in the states but its common elsewhere, but with better controls. (well, "better" as in controlled by shitty IoT devices)
I think the thing with flock is just how poorly put together everything is. They are obviously insecure, and the entire network has massive holes in it. Yet its still being rolled out.
That said, if there wasn't a crime the camera footage should be deleted.
The camera doesn't prevent crime. It just displaces it. Even when it doesn't it will not prevent the crime from happening. It _may_ provide you an opportunity to prosecute the person who committed it.
In reality the only real reason to have one is to reduce your insurance premiums.
> crime has been solved
A perpetrator was potentially caught and now has to be tried or negotiated into a plea. I understand we use the term "solve" as a term of art but it's a particularly poor one. It speaks to the need of police to clear their books of negative indicators and not to any first order desirable social outcome.
> That said
That said, if during a demo, you access another customers equipment, I will _never_ do business with you. That's just extremely unprofessional behavior.
There is someone that is making the decision right?
Or are you just saying the person placing the cameras is decoupled from the person making the decision to aggregate them all.
But I still feel like the accountability is on who is giving the access to sensitive cameras.
That's exactly what's happening.
People are buying webcams which are cheap and have in their ToS something to the effect of "we get to sell everything the camera can see". Which, in turn, allows them to partner with Flock and sell video footage directly to them.
Consider the fact that at one point, Amazon partnered with Flock to sell their ring camera footage to Flock. [1] It only got botched because of the creepy superbowl commercial selling the spying as "finding lost puppies".
[1] https://apnews.com/article/amazon-flock-super-bowl-surveilla...
I was attacked by "a good dog" and then blamed for provoking the dog (like that is valid excuse for starting an attack). I defended myself, and dog owner joined the attacked together with their dog!
After that, I have cameras everywhere, I even record many interactions on my phone. I refuse to be at mercy of random beasts and their "owners". If people start using leashes and muzzles, I may consider taking down cameras!
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47772012
...is how I imagine that one goes.
Usually the government is trying to wrap the spying/privacy breaches by "save the children", but this time if you want to save your children from some older dude watching them on a screen, you actually have to be against this privacy nightmare.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47784045