Nice to see some pushback in the most egregious abuses of privacy. I wonder why we are getting this with Flock but not seeing the same with private security cameras such as Ring, pervasive tracking of mobile devices by carriers and apps, and internet browser tracking. Is it just that there's a direct personal benefit with those devices, and people view the trade-off as being worth it?
I don’t think people realize that these devices can even be used that way. I talk with people outside of the tech scene frequently, and they are routinely surprised when I tell them about this sort of capability. The ring doorbell Super Bowl commercial about finding lost dogs was a genuine shock to people! I think there’s a degree of visibility you need to get people’s attention on an issue, and it’s just difficult to see a doorbell as a threat for the average person.
I so want to push back that all this is too little too late, because the system ,though still distributed , is effectively in place already. But.. I also don't want to be the old guy telling kids not to rebel. After all, being young and thinking ( knowing! ) one can change the world, is what being young human is all about. FWIW, it may well be their version of decss, ows and so on.
On the other hand, come to think of it, despite OWS being broken up by fancy new approaches ( rumor has it, Walls Street got spooked enough to see what effective methods can be employed given that Pinkerton approach would have been frowned upon then ), I don't recall FBI marking the participants in any special way ( please correct me if I am missting anything ).
With a nationwide effort in swing to dismantle corporate surveillance, the follow up is to pass legislation state by state that prohibits its implementation in the future. Federal legislation on this matter is unlikely to occur until sometime after midterms, and so state legislation is the path to success in the interim.
We voted out the cameras locally, the feds just installed them at every nook and cranny they had available. Turned out, there was a lot of federal property, so it was back to square one.
Regime change is coming, its harm reduction until then.
> Is it just that there's a direct personal benefit with those devices, and people view the trade-off as being worth it?
I think that's mostly it. Basically since Flocks only use is for the systematic tracking of people for use by police and government agencies, it's a lot easier to get people to turn against it. There's just no upside to them that any individual would ever benefit from.
It's sad because if/when Flock dies the death of deserves, the software/infrastructure will likely just get sold off and reapplied to some other deployment scheme like Ring quietly forgoing the big Superbowl Ad.
>the most egregious abuses of privacy
wait until you hear about EU's EES
do you really believe your biometrics being checked once when you enter a continent as a foreigner is the same as being videotaped at every moment in your own country as a citizen?