53 cities dropped Flock Safety over federal data sharing, then handed identical pole mounts to Axon

In city council chambers across the country, officials have celebrated the removal of Flock Safety cameras as a privacy victory. Within months, Axon installation crews often appear on the same poles, bolting in replacement plate readers. According to TechTimes, 53 cities have canceled Flock contracts, citing unauthorized federal data access, false alerts, and mass surveillance of innocent drivers. Many aren’t abandoning license plate readers altogether — they’re switching vendors. The surveillance footprint isn’t shrinking. It’s rebranding.

How deadset the politicians are on instituting mass surveillance shows the pressure they’re getting from their donors. The Epstein class must really be afraid. Not surprising since you got 2:

and

  • artyom@piefed.social
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    2 hours ago

    Do they really think people won’t notice? Like what is the goal here? Are they really that stupid that they don’t understand that the company is not the main problem?

    • Sunflier@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 hour ago

      Are they really that stupid that they don’t understand that the company is not the main problem?

      They’re not stupid, no. They just think voters are stupid and, I mean, they’re kinda correct. They’ve defunded education for like 50 years, which materialized into electing DJT TWICE. So more ai cameras but under a different name is pretty understandable.

      • artyom@piefed.social
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        57 minutes ago

        I mean yes, voters are stupid, but they’re also showing up and causing these Flock contracts to be canceled. And if you just change vendors, they’re gonna keep showing up, right? So they haven’t even solved anything in the “placating angry voters” sense.

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          35 minutes ago

          They’re banking on people being told “but it’s not flock” and hoping that the technicality is what matters. Problem is I suspect that flock is already getting the tupperware treatment wherein it’s originally a company name being applied to all products in the same category. So it’s probably only a matter of time till all of these spyware corpos get labeled as flock.

          Also fun fact I have never seen tupperware written down and around where I am it’s pronounced tubbaware, so I had to look that up.

  • Salvo@aussie.zone
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    4 hours ago

    I’m looking forward to seeing a tear down of an Axon camera.

    I wonder what salvageable components will be inside…

    • SolacefromSilence@fedia.io
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      4 hours ago

      I hear they use a different technology than flock, so no gold or copper. I understand they use platinum extensively, so they can be scrapped like a catalytic converter.