Flock cameras have become such attractive targets for destruction that some police have become protective of information about where they’re mounted. A local news story Friday in Louisville, Kentucky detailed the Louisville police’s effort to keep the locations secret.
The story also mentions that when the locations of some of the cameras were released, they were almost immediately destroyed.
On Saturday, Brian Merchant of the tech criticism newsletter Blood in the Machine catalogued a wider trend regarding Flock, the company famous for its networked, AI-enhanced, solar-powered license plate readers, video cameras, gunshot detectors, and “drone as first responder” tech: vandalism against Flock equipment is happening all over the country, seemingly without coordination.
Most recently, on February 16 in La Mesa, California, a city in the San Diego metro area, a local news outlet reported two destroyed Flock cameras—one smashed, the other sabotaged.
But most entertainingly (that is if you’re the kind of sicko who is entertained by acts of vandalism) in October of last year in Eugene and Springfield, Oregon, six Flock cameras were apparently cut down from poles and destroyed. A sticker with the note, “Hahaha get wrecked ya surveilling f***s” was applied to one of the poles below the spot where it was cut.
In and around Suffolk, Virginia, last December, an arrest was made after 13 cameras were destroyed. 41-year-old Jefferey S. Sovern, acknowledged, according to the local news, that “he used vice grips to help him disassemble the two-piece mounting poles,” and that he had kept things like wires, batteries and solar panels from the camera assemblies.
Sovern started a gofundme, where he wrote: “I appreciate a quiet life and am not looking forward to this process, but I will take the silver lining that this can be a catalyst in a bigger movement to roll-back intrusive surveillance.” He also links to an activist site called deflock.org.
Last month in Lisbon, Connecticut, police said they were investigating a destroyed Flock camera.
The Sheriff’s department in Greenview, Illinois said last month that two of its Flock cameras were cut down and destroyed.
Some other interesting facts about Flock: Its CEO Garrett Langley was 38 as of last September, and has indicated that he believes sufficiently widespread use of his mass surveillance technology, along with the deployment of his other ideas, can eliminate all crime in America. He has all sorts of ideas (Forgive people’s student debt if they become cops, for instance) and talked all about them two months ago on the YouTube channel of the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen Horowitz, by the way, has invested $275 million in Flock.
But if you’ve heard only one thing about Flock lately, it probably has something to do with Ring’s eerie Super Bowl commercial involving its since-aborted partnership with Flock.
The intention behind the ad, in which Ring doorbell cameras are integrated into Flock’s law enforcement-affiliated footage-sharing system, seems to have been to sell people on the idea that mass surveillance in their neighborhoods is good because it will help more lost pets get found. People and politicians evidently disagreed, and a fierce backlash ensued. The relationship between Flock and Amazon-owned Ring ruptured in short order.
When reached for comment, Holly Beilin, chief of staff to Flock’s chief communications officer provided six links to news stories and the following statement:
“We respect and value concerns and feedback raised about our technology, and building trust is important to us. We are regularly on the ground in communities across the country answering questions and providing education on what our technology does and does not do.”
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