Who'd have thought that warrant-less mass surveillance that treats every citizen like a potential criminal would eventually hit a tipping point where people began to fight back against it?
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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Along with it incorrectly labeling people as a criminal so cops harass innocent families
That's a feature, not a bug.
The whole point of warrantless mass surveillance where you collect a person's entire life history from birth to death is to be able to go back through that history at any point they become an inconvenient person, whether because they are protesting or are a whistleblower or anything else that endangers the existing power structures. They can and will use your history to fabricate a "reasonable" narrative to turn you into whatever type of criminal they claim you are.
This is exactly why they're pushing the "antifa is an organized terrorist organization" so hard.
And they wonder why people have anxiety disorders
"You'd have anxiety too if you knew that entire government organizations were dedicated to watching your every move while everyone told you that you were crazy."
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I watched a video last night. Some guy was banned from a casino. All they had was a blurry surveillance camera photo of him.
The AI tagged some other guy as him. Cops came and arrested him. Said the man's ID must be fake, or he used a fake ID last time because there's no way their high-fallutin AI could be wrong! It was >99% certain!
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What’s funny is someone at flock is likely seeing this as a business opportunity. “With flock+ we will detect downed cameras and send a technician out to replace them instantly. Subscribe now!”
Meanwhile, municipalities are less than thrilled about defending throwing money at something literally no taxpayer wants.
This problem might solve itself really. Let the buisness majors sell the hangman their own nooses.
Sadly some people do want flock cameras because they think it's worth it to have a better chance of catching criminals even if our personal liberties get taken away. It's the age old freedom vs safety discussion.
Those who sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither
Maybe a year or so ago, but now those same people are starting to understand the definition of criminal is flexible.
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Meanwhile, new age Glassholes Flock to their new Meta glasses.
That's because they want to be the ones doing the surveilling. There's loads of disgusting threads you can find online about them discussing ways to disable or hide that their devices are recording so they can surreptitiously record others while claiming they're not. Most often filming vulnerable women.
There's nothing more American than destroying a Flock camera
I was almost gonna say something about killing nazis, but..
nah, not as american
Killing Nazis is a Soviet thing. In the US, we hire them for important government jobs and fold them into our culture.
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Any RAM or storage in those things? That solar panel looks useful.
That solar panel looks useful.
Since I have never gone out in nondescript black clothing at night to destroy these things, I can't say from firsthand knowledge....
But yes, yes they are. They make great trickle chargers for large batteries that only get used intermittently. Or string several together and enjoy an ebike battery charger. I have a similarly sized and shaped panel I found somewhere that I use to charge my 18650 bank.
“That I found somewhere” is funnier than usual given the context
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I am tempted to snatch the solar cell for meshtastic nodes. They do look like they are high quality.
Could you replace the insides with a node?
Get a high vis jacket over a black polo shirt with an iron-on logo, a face mask, and sunglasses. Park out of sight or bike or walk up. You could probably swap most public hardware things with mesh node guts in broad daylight. Just sayin’. This is not advice.
Looks like a small camera and IR LED's too.
Stealing them is felony grand theft.
Vandalizing them is a misdemeanor (typically, check your local laws and also don't do crimes).
If they were all stolen, it's an easy PR 'woe is us, think of the children' win for Flock.
If there's a bunch of social media posts that are showing chopped down flock cameras just laying on the side of the road then it has better optics from the point of view of 'We don't want country-wide surveillance networks'.
GOOD.
If we won’t defend our 4th Amendment rights the sold out politicians sure as hell won’t
Ive thought about getting a stick with a cardboard sign that says fuck flock and putting it right in front of all the cameras around me that i know of
I could've sworn 2 weeks ago there was an article about people breaking into them to steal the wires and components.
I hear tell them cameras is full of valuable minerals like gold and copper!
ANYTHING cloud-connected - your doorbell, your security system, even all f**king post-2006 vehicles, regardless of manufacturer - are suspect.
And are highly likely to be actually spying on you.
I’ve been working with computers since 1982, on the Internet since 1988, on the Web since 1992, and in the IT industry since 1997. The proportion of average people who don’t realize how much of their stuff is exposing them, and by how much, is frankly astounding. It’s almost 100% of normies who are woefully ignorant. Even IT people who have no clue is in the majority.
And the security on this stuff that tracks you tends to be - except in rare circumstances - absolute dogshite. Sometimes it comes without any security at all, such as all devices sold having admin creds baked in, or all remote-access credentials being identical and non-user-editable.
This is why almost all of my stuff is hardlined, I have no IoT devices at all, and the wifi for my family’s devices is physically separate from everything else.
Don’t get me wrong, as IT for almost three decades I love all the new shinies. But I’m not blind, and I’m not stupid.
Much later into the career than you but honestly in the same boat. I don't fucking let any of that shit into my house, I don't use any of the big tech companies software, FOSS on everything I own and I honestly have become so disillusioned with mainline consumer tech because it's honestly mostly trash imo. The older I get the more I realize I just want a fucking laptop with a decent keyboard, decent screen and good battery life.
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But but but...the internet told me that Americans welcome this with open arms! /s
This is the Mirror's Edge type rebellion shit I would imagine myself doing when I was a kid as a future hacker. This is fucking sick as.
It's every American's duty as an American to do so.
Tech crunch indeed.
hell yeah they are 🤘
Based.
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