My doorbell is a mechanical button that triggers an electric chime.
My husband gave me an Alexa for Christmas one year, but after having it play Christmas Carols on Christmas Day, i unplugged it.
But… I do carry a cell phone. If Google wants to bug me, it can.
You know, when Bush the younger became president, i observed that he cared a lot about his personal privacy and hoped that would improve privacy for the rest of us. I was disabused of that notion very quickly.
How do you propose we force transparency on the powerful?
This says gift article. I hope it works. Pretty long detailed article about people who have been surveilled and those cops miss using the surveillance apparatus. Pretty sure they were all cops but now I wonder who at Home Depot and Lowes and others have access and what they can access.
How rogue officers turned a nationwide camera network into a tool for stalking
Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems.
I’m sure they know the risks. If you followed the cop city news at all, police and prosecutors here will go to extreme lengths to go after general unfriendliness towards law enforcement
The two closest to me seemed odd at first - near a major road, but aimed directly away from it. Then I realized what it is is that they are aimed away from a small group of Section 8 apartments. So they’re not watching the Section 8 housing, they’re watching if some leaves the Section 8 housing and drives toward more expensive housing.
The next closest one is odd. There are two cameras at pretty much the same location aimed in exactly the same direction. Why would they do that?
No. It dawned on me later that maybe two people reported the same camera with slightly different locations, so it appears as two but there is only one.
I have on my list to drive there and spot the actual camera(s) to verify.
A vehicle of interest approaches an intersection. They turn left, turn right, or proceed straight.
The installation not only picks up on the vehicle having passed the camera; it may be able to tell what direction it went from there.
From what I’ve heard on the police scanner, when there’s a retail crime issue (the ones I hear are usually shoplifting), the retailer can frequently only reliably communicate a vehicle description (e.g. “Green Nissan”). Put in a query to Flock for green Nissans that were seen by the nearby camera close to the time they were reported as fleeing…and you’ve got a license plate, and possibly photos of the front-seat occupants.
Big Brother…I mean Google…caused the YouTube algorithm to serve this video to me, which may be of interest in the context of this thread:
I never encountered this YouTuber’s videos before, so I can’t attest to their credibility and am inclined to take with a few grains of salt…but it’s interesting at least.
It’s a lawyer going into some of the legal considerations around Flock vs privacy. The actual content seems plausible to me, but there’s a bit of content creator fluff garnishing it (e.g. the clickbait thumbnail).
Dude’s no Legal Eagle, but it’s not giving me excessive wingnut vibes either.
