cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/45730883
With more than 80,000 AI-powered cameras across the U.S., Flock Safety has become one of cops’ go-to surveillance tools and a $7.5 billion business. Now CEO Garrett Langley has both police tech giant Axon and Chinese drone maker DJI in his sights on the way to his noble (if Sisyphean) goal: Preventing all crime in the U.S.
In a windowless room inside Atlanta’s Dunwoody police department, Lieutenant Tim Fecht hits a button and an insectile DJI drone rises silently from the station rooftop. It already has its coordinates: a local mall where a 911 call has alerted the cops to a male shoplifter. From high above the complex, Fecht zooms in on a man checking his phone, then examines a group of people waiting for a train. They’re all hundreds of yards away, but crystal clear on the room-dominating display inside the department’s crime center, a classroom-sized space with walls covered in monitors flashing real- time crime data—surveillance and license plate reader camera feeds, gunshot detection reports, digital maps showing the location of cop cars across the city. As more 911 calls come in, AI transcribes them on another screen. Fecht can access any of it with a few clicks.
Twenty minutes down the road from Dunwoody, in an office where Flock Safety’s cameras and gunshot detectors are arrayed like museum pieces, 38-year-old CEO and cofounder Garrett Langley presides over the $300 million (estimated 2024 sales) company responsible for it all. Since its founding in 2017, Flock, which was valued at $7.5 billion in its most recent funding round, has quietly built a network of more than 80,000 cameras pointed at highways, thoroughfares and parking lots across the U.S. They record not just the license plate numbers of the cars that pass them, but their make and distinctive features—broken windows, dings, bumper stickers. Langley estimates its cameras help solve 1 million crimes a year. Soon they’ll help solve even more. In August, Flock’s cameras will take to the skies mounted on its own “made in America” drones. Produced at a factory the company opened earlier this year near its Atlanta offices, they’ll add a new dimension to Flock’s business and aim to challenge Chinese drone giant DJI’s dominance.
Langley offers a prediction: In less than 10 years, Flock’s cameras, airborne and fixed, will eradicate almost all crime in the U.S. (He acknowledges that programs to boost youth employment and cut recidivism will help.) It sounds like a pipe dream from another AI-can-solve- everything tech bro, but Langley, in the face of a wave of opposition from privacy advocates and Flock’s archrival, the $2.1 billion (2024 revenue) police tech giant Axon Enterprise, is a true believer. He’s convinced that America can and should be a place where everyone feels safe. And once it’s draped in a vast net of U.S.-made Flock surveillance tech, it will be.
We need to start badgering our local politicians to remove this shit. This is one area where local action could feasibly make a big difference. If a few towns start becoming “flock dark zones” then the network, and value prop of the company, as a whole loses efficacy.
Also, I suspect there would be bipartisan support for this among the people.
I wonder how they intend to tackle white collar crime.
By eliminating all free people, yes you can technically do that.
Haven’t there been countless sci-fi movies and novels warning us about the many ways this approach can go horribly wrong?
I would put less credit to SciFi movies and more interest in cities that have gone all in on CCTV cameras as crime prevention. They rarely work, as folks desperate enough to commit regular street crime simply aren’t deterred. Combine that with the Candy Crush style of modern policing, particularly in dense areas like the NYC Subway or London city center, where the (relatively infrequent) crimes can happen within spitting distance of an officer and they’ll just stand around doing nothing in response.
What these enormous surveillance technology budgets mostly do is soak up money from paranoid business owners and politicians looking for a kickback. They’re a great source of patronage and a regular font of policing propaganda. And that’s really what they’re selling - security theater.
Just like with the TSA or the modern iteration of Mall Cops, they function more as a CYA move that lets you become seen as “doing something” (while fattening the wallets of a few insiders) in case of an unpredictable eventually. Now you can claim “We did everything we could” and “We’re going to find this person and really get’m!” So long as you keep the right people on your side, that’s normally enough to satisfy.
CCTV cameras as crime prevention. They rarely work, as folks desperate enough to commit regular street crime simply aren’t deterred.
Combine that with the reality that identifying people from surveillance footage can easily be defeated be employing advanced counter technologies such as “generic black/grey hoodie”
Yeah but obviously that can’t happen here. That’s why we don’t like schools teaching any kind of history other than 'Merican. And even then, there seems to be a lot of fuzzy details.
Before reading anything else, I’m going all in on this only mentioning violent or public crimes and ignoring financial or corporate crimes
Financial and corporate mistakes are not crimes! How dare you, these are decent people, shame on you!
glances at white house
might wana start with that… 👀
34x convicted but not sentenced criminal in there.
This is just an ad for obvious bullshit. Forbes may as well be running articles about how ozempic is done because of this one weird trick a local veteran discovered.
There’s just not much coverage (probably intentionally) but I wanted to post about it bc the only other recent story I could find was this one and didn’t know if it would be deleted for not being a typical news source
No people, no crimes. Should I be concerned?
Are you people?
I’m not legally allowed to say yes.
“They want to build a prison” “They want to build a prison” “Another prison system” “Another prison system” “For you and me to live in”
This feels like fanfiction where one of the hardy boys goes to the extreme to solve crimes by creating a dystopian future.
The Hardy boys don’t even realize they’re being backed by the CIA. Ugh I don’t even want to make a joke bc I can see this being a propaganda movie that gets made in the next year
So they’re gunna use AI to find ways to better fund public education and harm reduction programs to keep people out of prisons while eliminating the pretext for hyper-militarized policing forces? Right?
…Right?
This company has illegally installed their cameras in more than one town, then tried to sell the local police force on them.
They have lawyers on staff that they use to coach local politicians on how to hold the votes to establish contracts with them in ways that aren’t technically illegal, but ensure that no community opposition has a way to have their voices heard.
You can find a lot of these sprts of stories by searching online. In local subreddits, ones dedicated to talking about flock, and local news.
Benn Jordan has a good 40 minute video giving an overview of these systems, how they work, what they track, and why they are a problem. He highlights some cases where families were held at gunpoint by police due to failures of these systems. He also experiments with defeating the AI that reads plates.
Louis Rossman is currently leading a campaign against their installation where he lives in Austin, Texas right now. Has a number of videos on it.
Overview before the Austin City Council vote: https://youtu.be/4RM09nKczVs
Call for people to show up at the Austin City Council session to discuss the potential contract with Flock, and showing how difficult it is to find this sort of stuff and be involved with your local government: https://youtu.be/g4vL1ERdZ9Y
Call to action 2: https://youtu.be/hDOmYqlwxD4
Austin City Council reschedules the vote (in a questionably illegal fashion) with less than 24 hours notice when they realize they kicked the hornet’s nest: https://youtu.be/iscDYp6dtl8
Minor followup during the wait for the revised time, at two of the three parks with 90% of reported car break ins these cameras are meant to deter: https://youtu.be/2QbtDWrlPpc
Also, yeah there really isn’t much out there about this surveillance AI company that just kind of appeared out of nowhere ~2017.
Kinda like this other one that appeared out of nowhere ~2015
I wanted to share this article but wasn’t sure if it would be allowed bc it’s not a typical source https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/ai-surveillance-flock-safety-privacy-us-dunwoody-125090900393_1.html
They were coming up all over the place when I was looking for a new job ~3 years ago. Everything about them skeeved me out and I had to keep ignoring their postings.
Do you remember any names/locations?
Sorry, I meant Flock specifically was doing a lot of recruiting.
He also experiments with defeating the AI that reads plates.
Whoever figures out how to make this shit worthless is going to be given king like status very quickly
BTW have you heard of this new tx law targeting “jugging?”
It sounds like a made up excuse to pull people over for trying to fool plate readers https://sh.itjust.works/comment/20899084
We already know the answer
While the laws are probably fucked in their ability to be applied, jugging is a pretty common thing in texas. A town of about 70,000 had about 3 of them a week, when I was following police reports. It was a pretty common pattern, too (one atm at the back end of a parking lot for a walmart that had a bank between the parking lot and the street, then the victim drove to another store like fast food or any of the strip malls up and down that street, and then the car’s window was broken and the money removed from the atm taken if it was still in an easily grabbed envelope), so this was despite the police caring enough to scope out the particular atm where it would happen.
But what are the chances the law goes into effect on the 1st on and the 5th they make all of these arrests. And also every single arrest seems to be somebody who is using multiple license plates.
You need 2 crime items to be arrested. So like one guy had multiple license plates and a screw driver in his car. One guy had a medical mask and an extra license plate…?
Great resources! I’d like to add the ALPR Map of Flock Cameras, DeFlock.
there’s a lot of mid-century French theorists spinning in their graves right now
This company needs to get shut down. Invasive. Illegal. Immoral. They are ushering in a police state and anti privacy world, and of course profiting from it.
You can piss on us, but don’t tell us it’s rain.
