Flock Surveillance Tracking Cameras
People keep telling me that when it comes to Flock, I need to follow the money. Starting off, I looked at the big investors- but what I didn’t expect was that any of the money would be local. I just learned that one of Flock’s private venture capital investors is former Mayor Eric Bruen. How strange to publicly admit that you have a conflict of interest in the company’s success. See his Facebook comment here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/761520543884561/permalink/27206434678966454
A friend told me once, “it’s the small towns that are the most corrupt, because they think no one is paying attention.”
Flock is not a publicly traded stock yet, although pre-IPO shares of the company can be purchased through investment firms. Here’s an explanation from JP Morgan Stanley:
“Venture capital provides financing to startups working on novel technologies and innovations with a high potential to create value—but also with a high risk of failure. Venture capital usually takes the form of equity shares or a future claim on equity, such as convertible debt, which in return allows the venture capital firm to receive a share of ownership in the business.”
One of Flocks biggest investor is a Silicon Valley backed firm called Andreessen Horowitz. Marc Andreessen is one of the founders of the firm and has the same ideology as Peter Thiel. These are not people who have your best interest in mind. These investors have an agenda to accelerate the AI machine at the expense of people’s civil liberties and livelihoods to profit.
Conservative ideals warns us to be skeptical of a government with too much power. If our community values civil liberties, why has the City chosen to hand it over to a private company who gives access to federal government and 3rd parties according to section 4.3 and 5.3 of the contract that Ron Stand signed?
4.3: “…Customer hereby grants Flock a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free right to use and distribute such Anonymized Data to improve and enhance the Services and for other development, diagnostic and corrective purposes, and other Flock offerings…”
5.3: “…Flock may access, use, preserve and/or disclose the Footage to law enforcement authorities, government officials, and/or
third parties, if legally required to do so or if Flock has a good faith belief that such access, use, preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with a legal process, enforce this
Agreement, or detect, prevent or otherwise address security, privacy, fraud or technical issues, or emergency situations…”
List of cases which Flock has aided the Ridgecrest PD:
- Identifying a vehicle in a hit and run incident
- Identification of vehicle that was involved in a crash due to racing- however the suspect turned themselves in before being arrest. See Chief Yesit’s account on YouTube.
- Finding a suspect of a burglary case where no one was harmed
- Finding a foster parent in Valencia after an amber alert was issued. But the child was not kidnapped, there was a misunderstanding about when a transfer was supposed to take place
- There is also an alleged custody case in which the parent kidnapped and threatened to kill the child, but I could find no supporting reports to corroborate this story.
Example of when the Flock system failed to solve crime:
Death of a girl struck by a car at night. Flock identified 10 cars in the area, but none of them led to the suspect.
Do the above cases justify the tools for Big Brother? License plate readers were the 1st step. A new project called SignalTrace by Leonardo now integrates LPRs, asset tags, cell phones, wearables, RFID cards, microchips, and more. Do you feel safer?
Table from Budget Meeting: Crime stats in Ridgecrest
Events
Join us next weekend, June 27th, for the “All of U.S.” rally at Ridgecrest & China Lake Blvd. We are celebrating our country’s 250’s anniversary of the foundation of its ideals to form a more perfect union. To do so, we must accept that we have a dark history, but it is with this knowledge that we can work towards a better future. You can forgive, but you can not forget. We don’t want our history white-washed and Disneyfied to remove the context of our past.
We are a strong country because we have faced struggles, learned from our wrongs, and survived despite it all. We accept that we are not perfect and there is still work to do.
We don’t need to settle for the future that is being pushed on us right now. The country isn’t supposed to be run by the Silicon Valley broligarchs who are pouring billions into the Ai to take our livelihoods, drink our water, and pollute our environment. Our country is supposed to be about “we the people.” So let’s celebrate all people working towards being the land of the free.
To support our immigrant neighbors, join us in Cal-City at City Hall on July 7th from 5-8pm. The ACLU and No Camps will present the appeal of the permits on the CoreCivic Cal-City detention center.
In the News
- Vox: The broligarchs have a vision for the new Trump term. It’s darker than you think
- Vox: The people who actually want AI to replace humanity
- Wired: Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel’s Secretive ‘Dialog’ Society
- Reuters: Andreessen Horowitz raises $15 billion, doubling down on AI and defense startups
- The Bulwark: How to Keep Loving America
- The Bulwark: Is the Trump Administration Slow-Walking DACA to Death?
- Daily Independent: Council passes budget; more controversy than expected
- Daily Independent: Council members stand by Flock as opponents turn up the heat