Comment by gorgonical

10 hours ago

Musician-turning-tech anarchist (?) Benn Jordan is making a very interesting series of videos about Flock cameras, their poor safety, and their gray-area interfacing with local governments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMIwNiwQewQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ

I recommend them.

28 comments

gorgonical

Reply
xracy  6 hours ago

I think his comment about "why dogs might provide actual neighborhood safety" is a good reminder that the thing that makes communities safe is "knowing your neighbors." You don't get safety by building a castle with a moat and a million cameras. You get safety by building a community with context that can respond without having to just "react" to the 6s version of "what happened".

  • snerbles  6 hours ago

    I'm reminded of prepper forum discussions. Where some do little more than hoard supplies, weapons and gadgets yet don't network and build communities. In an actual societal breakdown scenario these isolated individuals will become loot drops for others who actually band together.

    • jkestner  1 hour ago

      And the cameras can provide them with solar panels.

      I’m lucky to live in a walker-friendly neighborhood where most homes aren’t walled off by privacy fences. I’ve found our communal strength in talking to neighbors about the cameras that feed and feed off our fear in isolation. It’s a choice.

    • Morromist  1 hour ago

      Heh, I never thought about that but its so true. If society breaks down on the extreme level they anticipate the smart thing to do is probably join a super tight-knit community with lots of young people - maybe the furries or the Amish.

      1 reply →

    • Dove  2 hours ago

      I agree that there is a parallel between governments and corporations multiplying surveillance and preppers impractically multiplying gadgets. I perceive both to be responding to some sort of psychological issue relating to control or insecurity, not to be practically pursuing resilience.

      A government with aggressive surveillance ambitions but a decaying police department and justice system looks to me very much like the guy with a mountain of guns and ammo but no parallel investment in something like battlefield medicine. Whatever you're telling yourself about the reason for what you're doing, it is manifestly not correct, at least going by other investments I would expect to see and find neglected.

    • toofy  2 hours ago

      yeah, it doesn’t a lot of thought to realize that societies thrived when they were… social. this has been repeated throughout history.

      the people who go off into the woods as uber survivalists or whatever die alone and forgotten from an infected toenail or something equally as stupid while the society full of people down the mountain thrive and people remember each other.

      its wild to me how many people are suckered in by the never ending fear mongering that prepper businesses push on them without ever thinking it through.

    • IAmBroom  5 hours ago

      It's not that they'll be able to call on one another - you can't guarantee who else will be around after The Bad Event (whatever it is).

      It's that they don't have the basic strength of building alliances in the first place - something every kid is supposed to learn through the joys and pains of playing together. Bullies are not generally the popular ones, but neither are the loners.

      To put it another way: castles can't survive siege forever. They are a delaying tactic until outside help can arrive.

      "The Dauphin, whom of succors we entreated, Returns us that his powers are yet not ready To raise so great a siege. Therefore, great king, We yield our town and lives to thy soft mercy." -- Henry V, Act 3, scene 3

  • Sharlin  5 hours ago

    Many may find it unintuitive, but one of the best things you can do for the actual security of a neighborhood is to design it for pedestrian and "loitering" friendliness.

    • ultrarunner  3 hours ago

      This is extremely salient. Check out Phoenix, AZ sometime in street view. It's a brutalist grid of wide roads (even in "residential zones") where every property is lined in a six-foot block wall. As a result, sight lines are excellent for drivers (encouraging high speeds) but terrible for homeowners. Kids can't reasonably roam free, neighbors rarely meet, and everyone is viewed with suspicion. Most of my neighbors are really decent people, but I see them so rarely we might as live in different cities.

seemaze  9 hours ago

Those were great to watch, thanks!

Also, I can't help but feel like I'm watching a young Dr. Emmett Brown.. Great Scott!!

devin  9 hours ago

Benn is the best. His most recent video is about Ring cameras.

  • kgwxd  7 hours ago

    And Data center noise pollution before that. It's the only channel I subscribe to knowing full well every video is going to infuriate me.

waNpyt-menrew  10 hours ago

Someone complaining about local governments having data while directing them to YouTube, whose owner does surveillance at a scale far exceeding all local governments of all countries combined, is ironic.

Why don’t these people use Peertube at least. Fact of the matter is they’d like to personally profit off the same nonsense they complain about. This person has a million subscribers, they aren’t some random whistleblower. It’s a job, like all media, generating outrage.

If all of them used peertube maybe we’d have a solid competitor.