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.
uk has cameras on every street corner and there’s still crime.
Maybe those cameras should have gins attached to them so they work better to reduce crime. 😒
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
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.
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.
The only way you could actually come close to eliminating all crime would be if you eliminated poverty. But that would make the rich less rich, so not gonna happen.
Or if you just kept everyone in a closely monitored prison so that only people above the law could commit crimes without fear of consequences.
Like in China there isn’t really much of an issue with petty theft anymore bc people are afraid of getting caught, but corruption is through the fucking roof. Just not a crime you would be punished for bc it requires a position of power to commit it in the first place
Yup, just like how wage theft is an order of magnitude or two bigger problem than petty theft and shoplifting, but they just ignore it or even worse legalize / normalize it.
I’d like to focus the existance on J. Epstein, D. Trump and the concept of wage theft to illustrate my point of poverty and crime not being inherently related.
Eliminating poverty will help reduce some crimes- those of need- but those of greed or malice will be unimpeded.
Thats why I said “come close” - there are plenty of crimes committed by the ultra wealthy.
However, those aren’t the kind of crimes this kind of mass surveillance is targeting either. They are trying to get rid of petty crime, gang violence, theft… stuff like that. And those kinds of crimes would almost dissapear entirely if you eliminated poverty.
If money was no object there would be a lot less poor people selling their kids to human traffickers
Before reading anything else, I’m going all in on this only mentioning violent or public crimes and ignoring financial or corporate crimes
Cameras + Drones + AI. Yup, nothing to solve the real crimes.
Financial and corporate mistakes are not crimes! How dare you, these are decent people, shame on you!
it can eliminate all crime by locking up all citizens
I gotta admit, that is a great idea!
The finale for liberty in the U.S. is going to be like the last episode of Seinfeld. “What’s the deal with due process these days?”
Americans when you talk about gun control: NOOO mah freedom, I need it to protect myself from the government.
Americans when you tell them a private company is going to monitor and track every citizen, basically making a dystopian police state: I have nothing to hide so it’s fine.
I feel Europe is basically the other way around, less guns, but more privacy.
eu is trying to turn into surveillance state too. There is some group that is CONSTANTLY pushing this chat control law, that would make encryption illegal, if i have understood it correctly. They have been held back for now, but they can just keep trying until they succeed.
I was going to say have you looked at the shit the U.K. is doing lately, but sometimes I forget they voted their way into authoritarianism
I will say though, I’m very surprised there have been so many local governments within Europe that seem to be allowing this kind of shit.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-expands-use-of-palantir-surveillance-software/a-73497117
Yeah this is where the EU has a problem, because our intelligence agencies don’t really have great alternatives. For police we can probably just go without palantir
But we went a long time without intelligence agencies having access to a giant data platform that provides every piece of data available for every single citizen at the push of a button.
Kinda seems like we don’t really need that for any reason other than to keep humanity on a short leash. Like if you need to look at my medical history, maybe you should have to take the time to go through a subpoena and other channels instead of just clicking a link below all my traffic tickets.
Don’t be so sure about the privacy part. Sure Europe so far seems to have had a privacy first policy, but that’s about to change in the coming days https://fightchatcontrol.eu/
Yeah we (Europeans) should also constantly keep fighting for our privacy and freedom. Thanks for sharing the link I’m glad the Netherlands is against it.
🎶 It’s beginning to look a lot like a dystopia
Everywhere you go
There’s drones flying around
Recording all the sounds
And reporting on your every move
Liberty is just the cost I have to pay for muh safety! /s
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. /s
Anyone have any intel on how well these cameras hold up against buckshot?
I’m just as curious about the drones. Do they have a ‘stop-and-hover’ mode if you jam them temporarily, or do they set down? As to the cameras, well… it’s a nice fantasy that you’d get away with it, but unless there’s a civil war going on, you’re going to be caught shooting buckshot at them. That’s what they’re truly trying to build, and they’ve gotten there if they can monitor your car from nearly at your home until you leave it (the car), track you walking to wherever you commit the crime and back to your car, then track you as you drive away until you get nearly home.
Oh I agree that you won’t be able to fire your shotgun in a large urban area, but if you’re someplace less densely populated I can imagine being able to drive up from behind in the middle of the night…
It’s too bad there isn’t an easier way to deal with this problem, especially in the instances where the cameras are being installed without consent.
Akin to having foreign adversaries set up a spy network within our borders, and instead of being punished for it, many law enforcement agencies are choosing to buy the subscription plan!
that picture looks like a master race advertisement.
They’re going to build a society in which all basic needs such as access to food, water, education, housing, and health care are provided to all people making the need for most crime unnecessary???
That would actually be cheaper than what they’re trying to do.
Oh look, it’s the main villain in a Cyberpunk novel.
since there have been laws, there have been criminals
And pretty soon many of those laws are going to exist only to benefit corporations on the rich and to harm everyone else.
The people in power are going to continue making laws that pushback against the fabric of society.
I mean look at Nazi Germany. It was legal to imprison Jews and it was illegal to protect them. The law is not moral and it’s only going to get worse.
Since there has been people, there have been people trying to steal stuff from other people.
Oh yeah, I can’t wait to become a digital slave…
Yeah, I’ve seen this movie already: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11542920/
adding to the list: SHIA LABEOUF
