Nice. Why stop at Flock though? Maybe they can do all ALPRs and speed cameras next. It doesn’t matter which company operates them.

This is just the right thing to do.

> Dayton is not the first city to cover its Flock cameras with trash bags because they can’t figure out how to immediately terminate the use of the cameras. Late last year, the city of Evanston, Illinois also covered its cameras with trash bags while it was waiting for the company to remove them from the city.

We were just discussing “1984” and “We” a few days ago, books primarily about mass surveillance and the attendant harms. Neither of those books saw profit motive, though, they were all about top-down political power making use of surveillance.

I suppose at the time of reading those I thought that would be the origin — a government decides and starts putting up cameras, like London. A for-profit entity festooning the landscape with these things, though, damn. Clearly the powers-that-be can do the math on how easy it is exfiltrate this data from private to government hands. This sympathetic cooperation between governments and corps smells very much like early fascism to me.

> both Dayton and Evanston city officials told residents that they were not sure whether they could immediately deactivate or remove the cameras under the terms of their contracts.

How could they not be sure? Surely they 1. have a copy of the contract, 2. can read, and 3. have access to counsel. If not, are city officials that incompetent?