• givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    It’s not as good as the headline sounds, but it’s even more important:

    The city of Dayton, Ohio has covered its Flock automated license plate reader cameras with black trash bags in part because police there are unsure whether the cameras are still active and the city also doesn’t seem to know whether it is allowed to take the cameras down. The move comes after months of resident outrage, a scandal in which the city was sharing Flock camera data for immigration enforcement apparently on accident, and a $30,000 audit into how the cameras are being used.

    It’s incredibly fucked up that cities don’t know who’s accessing the cameras and don’t know if they can legally remove them

    We need to dismantle this shit and prosecute all the people who bribed them into the system. The reason it’s happening everywhere, is no one is being held accountable.

    Start throwing people in actual blue collar prison for this shit, and the people giving and receiving the bribes won’t be so quick to do it.

    • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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      9 hours ago

      As an aside, I grew up using the phrase “by accident” and I find that it has been slowly replaced with “on accident”. Back to the issue at hand, I totally agree with your sentiment.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        They mean two different things…

        The airplanes engine went out by accident when a part failed.

        Or

        The pilot forgot to deploy landing gear which caused a crash landing on accident

        It’s about if someone made a mistake or if it was random chance.

        People don’t understand it means two different things, and use them interchangeably. It was used incorrectly here, it should be “by accident” because that implies a human was at fault, “on accident” absolves everyone involved from blame.

        • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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          9 hours ago

          Never thought of it that way. Makes sense, now I don’t have to think it was the Mandela effect.

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            8 hours ago

            Yeah, it’s honestly super interesting how language and word choice change perception.

            I remember reading something a while ago that just due to the English language’s structure and various idiosyncrasies, just using it makes people more selfish.

            And it’s happening on such a basic level, it’s almost impossible for people to notice. It just colors every communication in a veneer of “me first”.

    • iltoroargento@startrek.website
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      1 day ago

      They will never see prison or justice until the common people take back the power to put them there. This is their plan. Same shit, different venue. Financial, wage, privacy, surveillance, due process, and enforcement violations/transgressions/iniquities, all, point in the same direction.

      Basically, “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.” Can only change through direct and persistent opposition and action against bad faith actors.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Basically, “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.” Can only change through direct and persistent opposition and action against bad faith actors.

        The trick is noticing when it happened two years ago…

        Or at least realizing that as soon as billionaire media started shitting on the DNC was when people need to support it.

        It’s just wild after finding out mainstream media covered for Biden and enabled trump…

        They believe the billionaire owned media are really on our side for some stupid fucking reason

    • axx@slrpnk.net
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      1 day ago

      Essentially (and as usual), there needs to be consequences.

      No consequences, no change.

      So yes, you are right.

      • Ooops@feddit.org
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        1 day ago

        No consequences, no change.

        That’s wrong. Without consequences there will be change, always to the worse, always seeing if they can get away with even more insane things.

        • axx@slrpnk.net
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          13 hours ago

          This hardly feels like a useful comment. It’s implied from the context that change here is shorthand for desirable change.

          And if we are being pedantic, you are also wrong: there will be unspecified change, changes in fact, which may be good, bad, neutral or irrelevant. Also not a very constructive point to add: we all know this.

  • frongt@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    The fuck you mean “legally allowed to remove them”? You put them up, you’re paying to use them, just take them down and don’t use them!

    • turtlesareneat@piefed.ca
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      1 day ago

      Contractors put them up, a private contract is in place, tampering with the 3rd party equipment could make the city liable. It’s incredibly dumb that someone signed the agreement in the first place, but also every city near me has done so and my own city is adding more constantly. So they have to get lawyers to break the contract and get contractors to come remove the equipment. Sigh.

    • OwOarchist@pawb.social
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      1 day ago

      I’m sure they signed some really stupid long-term contract with Flock, which may limit their ability to take them down and/or stop paying for them.

        • sportsjorts@lemmy.zip
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          1 day ago

          Flock is part of the authoritarian state apparatus. I’m sure you would get a visit from ICE or the cops. They have these things fucking pointed at each other there are so many in my city. I just wish the meth heads would start dismantling them for parts. Fuck flock and ICE.

    • turtlesareneat@piefed.ca
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      1 day ago

      Yeah and they also have trackers in them and batteries, so folks have discovered you need to negate these features before doing anything else, even moving to another location.

      • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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        23 hours ago

        The UK found a good way to deal with automated speed cameras. Hang a used tire over the camera, fill the bottom of it with diesel, toss in a match. Camera gets roasted extra crispy and pretty much everything inside is garbage so the whole thing has to be replaced.

        I wonder if that would work here?

        Jokes aside, it is really disturbing that cities are afraid of this company. Doesn’t say good things.

        • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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          10 hours ago

          If the pieces can fit through a 1mm mesh screen, you won’t be having any more traceability problems.

          Though I’ve always been partial to a nice big scoop of thermite for that purpose.

    • Footer1998@crazypeople.online
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      1 day ago

      Use the cameras for target practice, just make sure you’re either not caught on camera or you’re not identifiable. There’s also a bunch of valuable metal inside them, including gold and copper.

      • sportsjorts@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        How? The voting populace in my city is dumb and rich and neoliberal. They drive expensive cars and shit on the poorer parts of the city and generally make life hell for people who aren’t white or aren’t rich.

        • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          As long as minorities keep voting Republican, they can’t put all the blame on white people.
          Yes of course they are the most guilty, but minorities should join the democrats, and help move them more to the left together with AOC, Berni Sanders, Ilhan Omar etc. As it is it’s the only option to change things. As USA has a 2 party system that is near impossible to break except from within those 2 parties.

          Minorities had the power to prevent Trump, but they 100% failed to do so, especially Hispanics that from what I understand now seriously regret that they didn’t.

          • sportsjorts@lemmy.zip
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            1 day ago

            It’s really hard to rally anyone right now because from the DNC to the Dem leadership it just seems like they are hell bent on catering to their donors and telling the rest of the “big tent” to eat shit and love it. Vote blue no matter who peasants doesn’t seem to work. And I get it. As a progressive I am fucking furious with the democrats because at every turn all they do is shit all over everything that isn’t Trump enabling or donor backed or fawning over Israel. I don’t have a lot of hope because our leadership seems to be out of touch to the point where the party is almost an irrelevant quagmire.

            Minorities actually vote like crazy in my town. But they are mostly ghettoed into parts of town that the city disdains because they are poor neighborhoods. The residents of my city are quite segregated by an east and west divide. East has all the money and power on the council while the west and poorer districts are squelched and diluted by poverty and the city council.

            • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              Isn’t the democrats a democratic party? My guess would be that the DNC is run by who the members vote for to do it.
              That’s how ALL parties work in my country.

              quite segregated by an easy and west divide

              Gotta protect them privileges. 🤮

              • sportsjorts@lemmy.zip
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                1 day ago

                The DNC and RNC aren’t actually part of the parties or government it’s weird. They are private entities that back candidates and kind of officially unofficially run the parties (well Trump runs the republicans.) I still don’t totally understand why they exist. Specifically why the DNC exists and as a non democratic or representative entity, exerts so much control over the democrats.

                • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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                  10 hours ago

                  So if the DNC were to disappear, the Democratic Party would still exist, with far less baggage.

                  Good to know.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    A neat protest for these cameras would be replicate local officials license plates, place them on vehicles and just drive them all over the place, speeding, running lights and all kinds of crap

    Or just place a dozen license plates on one vehicle …

    or on the back of a truck with an automatic window -> only show all the license plates when in front of a flock camera, hide them again after

    • who@feddit.orgOP
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      1 day ago

      Unfortunately, license plates are but a small fraction of what these things can capture. Your face, gait, and voice, for example.

      • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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        10 hours ago

        You know the ankle weights that meatheads wear while running? Put two on one ankle. That’ll screw their gait algorithm. Face: a ski mask, a bit of paint, or some dangly reflective decorations hanging off the front of a hat. Voice: STFU.

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        simple … get a rubber mask of Richard Nixon … buy a few and give them to all the people that are running the same plates that you are mimicking … and don’t forget to give double peace signs every time … because you’re not a crook!

    • ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip
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      1 day ago

      These things also identify paint scratches and dents/stickers for when it can’t read the plates. I’m not so sure this would do much to poison the data

        • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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          10 hours ago

          Some tires have RFID chips embedded in them with recycling information. But I don’t believe that RFID tags can be read with any reliability from the distance a plate reader operates at. Could the magnetic loop detectors embedded in the street be modified to do it? Maybe.

          • Nouvellalia@lemmy.world
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            8 hours ago

            I’m not familiar with the ones you are talking about. The tire pressure sensors are meant to be read at a distance though.

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        You flood it with all kinds of info and let them sort it out … give fake plates, funny plates, dumb plates, non plates, funny characters, random characters … if enough people did it all over the place, the system would get flooded with nonsense data that they would all have to sort through. Sure an electronic system could sort right through it in seconds … but it would be humans that would have to verify the computers confident answers (even if they are wrong).

  • extremeboredom@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Remove the cameras, but the people who put them there are still in place. You think they’re just going to give up on their dream of omniscience?

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    How much are those things worth if you strip out its components (ram) and rare metals (copper, gold)?