S2 Underground@s2_underground
First of all no, we're not doing this. I do not answer DMs from a company that is trying to do damage control AFTER they have ruined the trust of Americans. I do not have "good faith" debates with people who want to enslave me in a fishbowl that they can monitor at all times.
Guess what guys: We don't actually have to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, or engage in "good faith" debates with bad actors. I don't have to justify my concerns about Flock to anyone. But since this condescension pissed me off, I will respond publicly, since Flock seems to want to keep our voices in the shadows and out of the public eye.
Note the argument:
"You see, King George specifically authorized quartering troops among you, I don't know what you're complaining about it's ALL LEGAL".
Well, golly gee guys, I guess it's all right then, they made it legal.
That's exactly the problem. Notice how nobody has a problem with standard security cameras. Public security cameras are not the problem...directly pumping the feed of every square inch of the country into a centralized federal database is one HELL of a problem and we must do everything within our rights as Americans to push back against efforts like this, if we are to have a future as a nation.
Flock, much like Palantir, took the decently good idea of improving security, and implemented it in the most cartoonishly evil way possible at nearly every single step. They are working directly for all levels of government....not the citizenry. They use subterfuge, legal technicalities, and every single trick in the book to put up hundreds of cameras every single day. They constantly mislead the public about what databases their sensors feed into, and who they sell the metadata to.
They have so little oversight that it's laughable, and ALL oversight involves the classic case of "we investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing". Flock has been caught lying MANY times, and misleading the public regarding what their cameras actually do. Newsflash...they don't just read license plates.
They are also concealing which agencies purchase their data specifically so as to avoid getting warrants, and in doing so they have turned the ENTIRE COUNTRY into an open air prison....where THEY get to provide the intelligence data to those who enforce the laws as selectively as they please.
And their defense for doing so? "Aww look at the cute puppy we rescued" or "We arrested one guy using our camera network, we're so AWESOME".
You don't get to arrest one genuine criminal, and use that as justification to set up and entire Minority Report-esque surveillance system to surveil the entire country. You don't get to betray trust, and then be sad that people don't trust you. You don't get to cozy up to the boot of tyranny so much that you become the boot yourself, and then pretend to be just "one of the guys".
We will not fall for this gaslighting, no matter how hard they try.
For some reason, many people think that private companies can't be tyrants, which could not be further from the truth. At a certain point, a private company can be so heavily embedded within government, that they might as well BE the government. Except they are worse, because we don't even have the tiniest way to hold them accountable except for taking the billion-dollar company to court.
That's my problem with Flock, Palantir, and pretty much every single other defense contractor in existence. I will NOT accept every single facet of my life being monitored, just in case a criminal commits a crime somewhere near me. I will NOT live in "ze pod", no matter which politician is in power, and I will not accept a future where people like this will dictate to me what my country should be.
