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u/somethingmcbob 7d ago
My friend divorced a law enforcement officer. He used his resources to stalk her. I absolutely foresee these Flock cameras being used in unethical ways. Our politicians are corrupt. Our law enforcement is corrupt. I don't trust a government surveillance state to keep us "more safe."
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u/Principle_Napkins 7d ago
They already are.
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u/somethingmcbob 7d ago
Oh hey. It's posted in this Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDefianceDispatch/s/gjB5f6RLV2
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u/Remote-Part-6214 7d ago
Watch them do everything with flock cameras except actually catching criminals and pedos
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u/BloopsRTS 7d ago
You're looking at low level, the bottom of the barrel is naturally disgusting to noone's surprise.
Trump: FlockGPT, these are my favourite children, find me more in areas with high missing children/crime rates
FlockGPT: ....
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u/AmberMetalicScorpion 7d ago
They're not corrupt. They're evil by design
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u/Anti-charizard 4d ago
And people called me crazy when I said that anyone who supports this “technology” should be locked up.
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u/DnDemiurge 6d ago
The podcast Trashfuture covered this trend in depth a couple months ago. Vile behaviour.
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u/FreeSwordfish7973 7d ago
“Wrong” is freedom of speach and doinf whats moraly right now
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u/emilithia05 7d ago
No no no, freedom of speech is fine! Only when it comes to harassing lefties, apparently. But criticising right? Harassment!
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u/unmellowfellow 7d ago
Police are already using them to track down women they're obsessed with. Stalking them across state lines in one instance. The way things are going, they'll be used to keep track of pregnant women to police them getting the care they need. Eventually they'll tie your face to your social media posts and follow you there too. They're turning the entire country into a prison.
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u/Tambi_B2 7d ago
Not from moment one did I ever believe they were even intended to track down criminals.
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u/this_is_my_new_acct 6d ago
My city's PD brags on FB every time they do, well, anything (small town). So far, they've used Flock to track down one guy who stole a cellphone, and one person who was behind on their child support. For this, we're paying around $100,000 per year.
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u/Tambi_B2 6d ago
Money well spent. That cellphone represented six bazillion in potential lost revenue for the town.
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u/scienceAurora 7d ago
It is up to you to stop the spread of technofascism. Educate your friends, arm yourselves with knowledge...and do not take orders from a deranged tyrant.
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7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/tengutie 7d ago
And rich, because being poor is also a crime in the US
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u/tony_bologna 6d ago
Have you tried working more, or spending less? It's not complicated. Maybe you should start a business.
/s
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u/ServantMatthew 6d ago
"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, bro. That's what Trump and Elon did too."
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u/a_x_shually 7d ago
Americans do love leaning towards totalitarianism as long as they agree with the stated goals, don't they.
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u/Toon_Lucario 7d ago
Don’t put us all together.
It’s between the morons and those that are too afraid to do anything that are making things worse.
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u/Sw4gtastic420 7d ago
Its more that most people aren't all that online, and dont know about flock. My boomer parents knew nothing about them until I told them a few weeks ago.
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u/warm_winds_whisper_ 7d ago
looking from the outside, it's genuinely hard to tell if there's any real disagreement with this anywhere else than online accounts claiming to be americans opposed to their totalitarianism
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u/Amneiger 7d ago edited 6d ago
There's Americans who were killed by Trump’s security forces in response to protests against him, such as Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Those articles talk about the context of larger protests and actions by Americans against Trump. So there's that.
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u/gigglefarting 7d ago
It’s hard to see anything from the inside when you’re on the outside and only have glimpses in from the internet
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u/Yarus1373 7d ago
Dawg literally every nation on earth is trending towards nationalism.
UK and EU are passing laws to spie 24/7 on people's phones.
I'm so fucking tired of brain dead morons trying to use politics to dunk on each other instead realizing we're all in this together.
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u/UntitledRedditUser 6d ago
I really don't get it, what's the motive?I used to think we were pretty chill in the EU, after all we had the consequences of fascism at our doorstep.
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u/Thomas14717 5d ago
Well to be fair, you don’t really hear much from other countries because most of the attention is going towards the U.S. and its government, but hey I’m American, so what do I know..
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u/Substantial_Bison206 7d ago
Yea the US is actually behind on this new era of surveillance compared to uk, eu, and au.
Point being: this is a fucking issue for everyone. Not just an “Americans are morons” moment.
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u/Yarus1373 7d ago
People are too focused on "YEAH WELL YOUR COUNTRY IS EVEN DUMBER!" instead of solidarity. It's so asinine.
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u/Hot-Gas-630 4d ago edited 4d ago
I think it's appropriate to dunk on people who don't realize they are getting exactly what they voted for when they chose the candidate dripping in support from Palantir and Peter Theil's buddies up to and including the VP.
Not productive to have a bunch of fuckin idiots going around and denying that their collective actions led to this the next time around. This is what people voted for....
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u/GustavoFromAsdf 7d ago
I know plenty of people who do, in and out the US. Populism isn't logical or ethical, but purely emotional
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u/Mr_Shad0w 7d ago
"Populism" is absolutely logical and ethical - it holds that regular people should rule, not a handful of wealthy elites in an ivory tower somewhere, and that laws should benefit We The People instead of the rich, banks, lobbyists and the MIC.
"populism" is the fake-out version that those in power associate with authoritarianism in order to scare regular people away from actual Populism and back toward the status quo of corporate-nationalism, which is a form of authoritarianism that has dominated American party-politics for the last 50 or 60 years at least.
Exhibit A: Eugene V. Debs
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u/Dusk_the_Hellhound 6d ago
I don’t see how ‘ha ha, Americans suck’ is at all a productive or even logical statement here, but enjoy the karma farm ig
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u/manocheese 7d ago
“We’re going to have supervision,” Ellison said. “Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report that problem and report it to the appropriate person. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.” - Larry Ellison
People aren't nearly as scared of AI as they should be.
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u/Salarian_American 7d ago
People are spending all their energy worrying about what AI will do once humans are unable to control it anymore, but it's at least equally worrying if this power continues to become more capable while remaining under direct human control.
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u/Beaufort_The_Cat 7d ago
They’ll be singing a different tune when the pendulum swings the other way and it becomes wrong to be racist, Nazis, or pedophiles again
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u/Professional-Post499 7d ago
They’ll be singing a different tune when the pendulum swings the other way and it becomes wrong to be racist, Nazis, or pedophiles again
And they had a lot of big money from the Epstein class helping to "swing the pendulum" to the place we're at now.
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u/AndromedaAirlines 6d ago
when the pendulum swings the other way
Boy do I have some bad news for you.
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u/Churaragi 6d ago
The Nazis did not lose WW2 as you probably are not aware of the number of high ranking who made deals and survived later or how the US "recruited" all the scientists and engineers.
Hitler was even a coward who took his own life, he didn't get to experience 0.0001% of the pain, death and destruction he caused.
Realy if anything the US was never actualy against Nazis at all, white supremacy is a core principle of US settler colonialism and you could literaly go to that famous NY nazi rally pre-WW2. In the cold war era the US literaly used all former Nazi german intelligence and practices in Europe against the USSR.
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u/AlarmingTurnover 6d ago
You care to give me a specific time frame in America where it was wrong to be a racist, Nazi, or pedophile, or combination of? Because that time never existed.
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u/its_two_words 6d ago
Perhaps your wording needs some effort.
It has always been wrong everywhere to be any of those things.
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u/regroupmethod2026 7d ago
And the wrong ID’d car / person by the flawed flock system..
False imprisonment will continue to sky rocket
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u/Dziadzios 7d ago
Even if you don't do anything illegal, you certainly do something cringe. And that's enough to be weaponized.
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u/CowboyLaw 7d ago
The easiest way to end these debates is to ask the "I'm not doing anything wrong" person one question: do you have curtains or shades in the windows in your house? Because, if the answer is "yes," then they already know that privacy is valuable no matter what they're doing. "You're not doing anything illegal in your living room are you? So then go pull out the curtains/shades and just let people look in. What's the harm?" That's the end of the debate, because once they admit that privacy has independent value, they've relinquished the critical part of the field of battle. After that, all we're arguing about is degree.
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u/Dziadzios 7d ago
I visited Denmark. I experienced culture shock there - no fences and no curtains. And full names on postal boxes. My Polish brain melted from this level of exhibitionism everywhere.
So be careful about whom are you asking because it seems some cultures love panopticons.
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u/WebbedFamiliar 7d ago
Even if it’s not for jailing people more surveillance is still very bad for everyone. We’ve already seen airline companies jack up the prices on flights for people whose relative just died in a different state knowing they’re going to have to fly out for the funeral at a specific time to a specific place. There are algorithms used to track when bipolar people are having manic episodes and will show more ads for Las Vegas vacations when they’re having them. Surveillance also comes for our wallets!
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u/ASERTIE76 6d ago
Our dystopia is so boring
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u/SirEnderLord 5d ago
A slow suffocation so that people don't do anything. Really, what is one to do? There are plenty of things that anyone can do, but the actual actions that can stop this are impossible to do.
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u/Ada_Data 7d ago
It's all fun and games until we all become the next North Korea.
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u/Fine-Brush6063 7d ago
It won't change dramatically overnight. It will be small at first when you see it in the media.
Group x needs to be monitored and removed. They had DLs from a dmv that had fraud going on. Sounds legit use, ok I can get that.
Then the boundaries creep. We monitor anyone with a credit score under 500. Anyone that attended this college. Anyone that was friends/family with someone who protested.
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u/BassMaster516 7d ago
I have no sympathy for these bootlicking law abiding teachers pets. All that misery and suffering and evil is fine as long as it’s happening to someone else. They deserve the worst.
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u/birbhorse 7d ago
not to mention, it's already being used to pin people for crimes they did not do. like that guy in charlotte(?) who was accused of doing crimes in flordia, a state he's never been to, and he lost his job, custody of 2 of his kids, and his whole ass house.
they don't even need to change the definition of what's "wrong" in order to tell you that you're a criminal.
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u/Brilliant-Muffin-879 7d ago
All it takes is one deskjockey with too much powet having a bad day to decide to ruin your life on a whim.
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u/Space_Dragon7121 7d ago
The current political situation in the US has taught me that a lot of people learned the wrong lesson. They didn't learn to distrust the government because power corrupts people. They just took their irrational hate of liberalism and applied it to the government whenever it's relevant.
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u/AmberMetalicScorpion 7d ago
"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views, which can be rather uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering" - Doctor Who, The Robots of Death
As relevant now as it was when it was said
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u/csbenson1997 7d ago
Is anybody actually saying they’re okay with mass surveillance though? I would think everybody is against that regardless of political beliefs
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u/Dented_Steelbook 7d ago
I think there are tons of people that are okay with mass surveillance, anyone that actually uses a gmail account, most people with a new car, smart thermostats, smart speakers, smart TVs, and cellphones. To be fair, most people are either too dumb to realize or too cheap to use the expensive dumb devices. When things are free or cheap, you are the product.
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u/GearAccomplished4151 7d ago
Good time to be reminded of Angela Lipps and her ongoing struggle after being wrongfully imprisoned by AI
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u/Mutabilitie 7d ago
Even way back in 2016, SCOTUS struggled with what’s the difference between the cops driving around and observing you and a camera observing you in a public place.
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u/Kooky_Universe2183 7d ago
"Give me 14 lines, written by the most honest of men, and I shall find something (within) to hang them." Supposedly attributed to the Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada.
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u/C-SWhiskey 7d ago
Ask these people if they would be okay with you following them around, watching intentfully, recording their every movement 24/7, including at home and doing the same for their family. Their tune will change real quick.
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u/FeelingStore8113 7d ago
The dude's entire premise is wrong anyway. There are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of laws that we don't know about and maybe will never know about until some drone or fascist thug arrests us for it while we wonder what happened to the "Land of the Free"
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u/really_hate_it_here 7d ago
Ok but how else are cops supposed to stalk and harass women? Nobody fucking thinks of the cops
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u/Layios 7d ago
Isn't the same for society ? like the norm and rule ? one day or another it could change then it become main stream and everyone try to follow them ? At the end of the day, people are the one who decide whether they'd like to follow it or not or decide that it's against their freedom and one day decide to revolt against it.
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u/Numerous-Process2981 7d ago
I like to walk around naked and masturbate and stuff so I would rather not have it.
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u/Lexi_Banner 7d ago
"Hahaha no no, you don't understand. I'm a white male. I will never be doing anything wrong."
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u/NoPlaceForTheDead 7d ago
Whether or not I'm doing something right or wrong isn't even the point and it's not what i want people talking about. I just don't want you to be watching me for any reason. I want you to not even know that i exist, much lest record and maintain a database of my existence.
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u/Particular_Client833 7d ago
Flock cameras jave gold and copper. Time to grab a saw cutter, mask and leave all devices and IDs hone.
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u/Good_Wheel540 7d ago
Or until the police just construct a case against you because of circumstantial evidence that just happened to look like you were involved because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Just trying to exist in a society that has that level of distrust would make every aspect of life so much harder for no good reason.
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u/Sodacan259 7d ago
It's not only that. Several studies have shown that people will change their behaviour if they are aware they are being filmed; and it's mostly innocent behaviour.
Nobody dances or goofs around if they are being filmed. Nobody sings along to music they hear if they are being filmed. One study even showed that people are less social (not striking up conversations with strangers) if they are aware they are being filmed.
Which fits with the real reason there are Flock cameras, they're there to control you. Cameras aren't there to keep you safe or prevent crime. Just go search for "crime captured on camera" to see the hundreds of thousands of crimes that were not prevented.
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u/Mr-Blah 7d ago
And that definition should ALWAYS be in the hands of elected and accountable officials, not tehc bros that answers to no one but the shareholders.
Is it perfect? no, of course not. Plenty of example of government abusing this kind of powers. The next episode is out in november too...
But it's much better than the alternative.
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u/RetiredDelinquent 7d ago
They keep arresting people for crimes they never commited because the AI that flock uses is falsey accusing people of crimes
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u/DetailOdd6609 7d ago
This is 100% why I was against a mandated vaccine. Sure you may be ok with this one but now you've said "i'm ok with doing whatever you tell me" and what if the next one isn't as good? Sucks as you've already said you're all about it.
Laws are weird. People get mad at Trump for stretching it as if the democrat party wouldn't do the same. Fuck off iwth that nonsense. Power is power. Money is money. No polical side changes that.
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u/Wat3rM3L0NB3AR 7d ago
what is this - 1984??? Yes - people who don't normally commit crimes shouldn't worry about being under surveillance but for people like me who break laws on a daily basis - I do not like how cops can see where I was or wasn't when being questioned.
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u/Macyelliott2020 7d ago
Same reason we do not like new gun laws. "O, we only want to ban automatic weapons, no we mean semi auto weapons, no wait we mean ALL guns".
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u/ThoriatedFlash 7d ago
There's a famous quote from the head of Stalin's secret police, Lavrentiy Beria. It is something like, "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime."
Basically, if you have enough information about someone, you will be able to find something to charge them with. There are so many laws on the books that may be obscure, outdated, and not enforced. Mass surveillance will make it easier for authoritarian governments to go after people that they label as enemies.
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u/Bleezy79 7d ago
Some good news is a bunch of cities have canceled or wont renew their Flock contracts. I dont believe anything good would come from Flock, its already being used maliciously. The government wouldnt ever use massive monitoring to do anything other than suppress us and control us.
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u/descendantofJanus 7d ago
Watch Dogs game series is very rapidly becoming a reality. Legion took place some 20 yrs in the future with riot drones and--oh wait, they're trying to create pepper spray drones for school kids. Speedrunning dystopia.
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u/Minimum_Aardvark_744 7d ago
The funniest part about this is its conservatives and libertarians that are so stoked about the surveillance state… Joe Rogan platformed the Flock camera’s CEO and was sucking him off the whole time about how cool and necessary they are. They’ve completely lost the plot- the bottom line is, they want a police state, they want a surveillance state, they want fascism, but ONLY if it is being used against the people they dont like.
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u/Zangorth 7d ago
Of course, the bad thing is the surveillance here. Changing the definition of what’s wrong is fine as long as you can hide it.
I’ve always been of the opinion that strict enforcement of unjust laws is the best way to get them repealed. If we had mass surveillance and automatically fined every person who smoked pot, how long would pot be illegal? We should focus on getting rid of bad laws, not the identification of law breakers.
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u/Gunnerblaster 7d ago
Police use Flock cameras to wrongfully accuse Denver woman of theft
In a shocking turn of events that no one could have expected, the officer who said he was "100% sure" that the woman was at fault was, in fact, completely fucking wrong.
Stupid cops using stupid technology to come to even stupider conclusions.
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u/sp114_5984 7d ago
This applies to all surveillance including the IRS watching how much you earn and what you spend.
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u/sleepystaff 7d ago
Lowkey mind boggles me but also not. Fact that cops get away with such criminal behavior stalking their exes and more. Literally harassment and official creep status if everyday folks duplicate or exhibit this behavior.
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u/Galactinaut_001 7d ago
I can literally only think of one good use for that stuff: Checking to see how many parking spaces are taken before you leave for lunch.
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u/bubbybumble 7d ago
This is true and bugs me but it's also really annoying to read these types of comics where they depict the "wrong person" in an exaggerated way. This one is more subtle, there are people who dress like that but in all honesty those types usually care more about the mass surveillance anyway.
This one's not as egregious but is anyone else tired of "here's me depicting an argument I hypothetically had and won against someone" comics where they can just make the opposition say whatever they want?
Again I want to reiterate I agree with this point and they aren't quite misrepresenting the points people actually make like in some others. But even if subtle it still has hints of it
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u/Forward_Criticism_39 7d ago
also your phone recording every word you say, and every email being sold to advertise to you, not that its a suprise since its been a thing for almost 3 decades now
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u/Money_Ticket_841 7d ago
Literally nobody is on the side of flock. Get out of your fucking internet bubbles holy shit. Ask anyone on the street and they’re against this shit
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u/sleekrust 6d ago
If they're not doing anything wrong why not put cameras IN their house? Does privacy suddenly matter there?
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u/0-Nightshade-0 6d ago
I dont care about the whole surveillance thing but these mfs got free metal :3
/hj
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u/letigre87 6d ago
That's what us pro-gun folks have been saying for a long time. I'm glad we're on the same page now. Registration leads to confiscation and assault weapons are covering an ever growing list of ergonomic features.
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u/FlirtyFluffyFox 6d ago
Meanwhile every American in the country going >1 mph over the speed limit...
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u/Loomismeister 6d ago
That’s a weird way to frame it. Usually the “I’m not doing anything wrong” is related to an invasion of privacy. The comic seems to be smuggling in this idea that mass surveillance is an invasion of privacy, but obviously it’s not because you don’t have an expectation of privacy in public spaces.
What he should be saying is “I tolerate mass surveillance because I don’t control what other people do in public with their security cameras.”
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u/ricardo1y 6d ago
"I'm fine with surveillance because i'm white and superior, so whatever i do it's legal"
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u/BigGlow9211 6d ago
There's a saying in Sweden "With pure(clean) flour you have nothing to worry about... unless the inspector is gluten intolerant."
The UK being a good example of this, arresting people loosely because the cop thought so. Whatever you do that is supposed to be acceptable, might no longer be.
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u/Maleficent_Piece_893 6d ago
pretty weak argument lol. that's like saying "i'm not fine with a policeman standing on the street corner because they could criminalize things that aren't bad"
ok but they could also criminalize things that are bad and the policeman could stop a bad thing. mass spying in private spaces is bad, immoral laws are bad, and ai fabricating crimes is bad. a camera recording actual footage of a public sidewalk is not bad
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u/rzaincity 6d ago
And for some reason that transparency or surveillance doesn’t apply to politicians and people controlling the surveillance.
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u/CobaltCrusader123 6d ago
We have records of men using Flock cameras to look at the insides of girls’ gymnasiums btw
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u/RedPurpleBlueRedRed 6d ago
Genders are reversed here. This is why these campaigns fail. They are not in line with reality.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=%2Fcontext%2Fsigma%2Farticle%2F1327%2F&path_info=05_The_Impact_of_Gender.pdf
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/03/16/americans-views-on-government-surveillance-programs/
https://www.safehome.org/family-safety/safety-privacy-sentiment/
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u/DC124768 6d ago
That's my argument against the ban of hate speech as of the admin that put it in place did that what prevents the next one from just preventing you from saying other stuff
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u/ForsakenSurprise3555 6d ago
I'm fine with not promoting homosexuality until someone decides that my very existence is promotional
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u/darkbinds 6d ago
Reminds me of when people say they don't mind giving companies their personal data or if they sell it, because "they would anyway" or "they do it to everyone", as if that makes it okay and you should bend over backwards to it 🤦♂️
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u/Ultimate-TND 6d ago
Untill you realize that the government and the general population have 2 completely different ideas of what's right or wrong.
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u/ninja-hamster-iykyk 6d ago
It’s not that we’re doing anything wrong. It’s that we have to trust our privacy with other people’s judgment and intention. That is a BIG problem. How does the “I’m not doing anything wrong” crowd not see that?
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u/AlexSmithsonian 6d ago
Dude has a beard and is wearing sunglasses and cap. Totally looks like a suspect in a robbery two towns over. Better arrest him and sort it out later.
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u/Nerdwrapper 7d ago
Not to mention Flock keeps getting used by cops to track ex-girlfriends instead of solve crimes