Bob also has some interesting searches. On September 30th, 2025 - Bob looked at just one camera. This camera is in the gymnastics room of the JCC. I personally am curious about why a sales employee from Flock would be viewing the gymnastics room. I think this also deserves an explanation.
I think it's worth speaking plainly and specifically about this.
The implied and speculated motivation is that Bob, and the other Flock employees watching people without their consent, is voyeurism. That means to look at people in otherwise-private places and in various states of undress, for sexual gratification. It is not uncommon for someone who believes nobody is looking to even adjust their clothes on their body, briefly exposing genitals, nipples, etc.
This is very concerning, but even more so because this includes children.
I think the answer is better technology, not less of it.
This stuff is more easily available in rudimentary systems. Consider the model of recording everything and just dumping tapes somewhere. Much harder to monitor abuse than a well designed system with an audit log. Better yet, have computers process the data and only expose what's absolutely necessary. Technology lets you do that.
But I want to push back against this idea that we have anything resembling a police or surveillance state. Nothing will dispel this myth more than an experience reporting a crime to police. Think about thefts in drug stores. They have security guards, cameras, security devices, etc, but every day the same group of people walk in and walk out with stolen goods. Everyone knows who they are, but police do absolutely nothing to stop them, because there is no political will. So the solution is to put deodorant behind lock and key and close down stores in high crime areas.
So besides these one off creepy stories of people abusing the system, this stuff amounts to nothing. I want to use technology more and perhaps our murder clearance rate can stop going down.
Heart disease accounts for 22% of all deaths in the US; cancer is 19.8%; injuries like car accidents come in third at about 7.8%. Homicide doesn't make it anywhere near the top 10.
When it comes to firearms, the vast majority of deaths are suicides with homicides being about a third of that. And the majority of homicides are domestic violence which usually happen inside the home.
The fact that the homicide clearance rate has decreased DESPITE turning our entire society into one of the most advanced surveillance states in human history pisses me off. That's MY tax money going to subsidize these companies that are taking away ALL OF OUR rights. In 2021 China's supreme court banned the use of facial recognition technologies in public places and then further strengthened that ban in 2025. They also got the PIPL in 2021 which is an even stronger version of the GDPR. In these respects, the US has regressed beyond The People's Republic of mf'ing China.
Your answer is to give these companies MORE of my money. I think the answer is to force them to pay us all back and let us reinvest it into problems that are actually relevant to anyone who doesn't obsessively consume True Crime podcasts
My quality of life is affected by crime. Sure no one is going to kill me. But why should we accept crime? It's easy to solve. Arrest people and keep them locked up, especially for anti-social crimes. Just yesterday, Noemi Guzman, took a large kitchen knife from a Walmart, kidnapped a 3yo and nearly stabbed him. In 2024, she was involved in another violent incident (including attacking her father and breaking into a church) and was found not responsible by reason of insanity. So too insane to throw in jail so we let her out in the street?
My answer is to arrest and prosecute the people that are destroying polite society. I don't get your point in China. I could care less.
Noemi Guzman does not have nearly the impact on your life that your neighbor driving a car with the catalytic converter removed or the CEO of a company that has a facility near you that made the decision to cut corners on holding tanks for their trichloroethylene
My children going to a park with regular drug users with convenient needle drop (remove needle drops and arrest the handful of drug users that hang around children's parks with dangerous drugs on them)
Package thefts (sting operation to arrest the handful of people organizing these thefts)
Crazy people on subway (end "showtime" and people sleeping on the train)
People driving dangerously (cameras)
Smell of weed everywhere (don't allow smoking weed in public)
But I guess the few random fully avoidable deaths is acceptable because its not that often? Kind of like a child sacrifice we have to endure because its somehow compassionate to let crazy people roam the streets and assault people randomly?
None of this involves corporate CEOs and is relatively simple to solve.
If we want to reduce avoidable deaths, you can get a lot more bang for your buck investing in almost ANYTHING other than this extremely rare event. We've already invested way too much of it. And you're paying for it with MY taxes
You are overindexing on it because you watch too much TV.
Your kids would be a lot safer and better off if we moved some of our money away from surveillance and put it into cleaning up superfund sites on the NPL
There's no buck here. You just enforce the law and prosecute. They're already in the system being arrested for the umpteenth time. Just leave them in prison, society would improve considerably.
Cops already exist, they are just told they can't enforce the law.
The fact that the police won't use surveillance data in a way you would consider good and effective does not mean you don't live in a surveillance state.
One of the key aspects of police and surveillance states is that the incentives are structured so that the policing and surveillance need not be done with the interest of public welfare in mind. As you said there is no political will.
I believe American rail companies used to built whole towns. I am kinda surprised why a hyper capitalistic country like the US never developed this concept further?
It's brilliant if you think about it. By building super convenient rail transport you essentially lock people into your territory and businesses. They go by foot so they can't get far. If they want to go somewhere else, they probably have to take your rail network and only end up at your other properties. With some aggressive horizontal integration, you can essentially built a small kingdom.
I postulate that if AI models get better, they also become more fungible. If you want to rule the world, you should make dumb software that takes time to learn. The world economy pretty much runs on MS Excel.
Nobody is saying you can't relate your experience with this equipment. What we're saying is consumer action is enough to solve this problem. It just takes some time.
There's a certain type of customer that wants the dealer to handle parts and repair. But those guys aren't the lawn mower segment.
I have not been to a grocery store that sells "Deere-brand Large Ag Equipment"[0] - aka $200k-1M John Deere tractors/harvesters/combines - that are the subject of the settlement. Have you?
You're posting in a thread discussing news of a legal outcome that showed that free market competition did not prevent anti-competitive practices and instead required legal/regulatory intervention to solve.
To say that these are "anti-competitive practices" is stretching the phrase beyond all meaning. If you don't like Deere's policies, you can always buy from Case IH or New Holland. There is plenty of competition in farm equipment.
Most can't "always" immediately replace an incredibly expensive business asset that is only retroactively discovered to have been sold under deceptive terms. The free market works well in many instances, but it needs checks to ensure that it remains truly free and not captured by fraudulent actors that harm consumers and society at large.
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