• melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    1 hour ago

    So, to compare logic, people selling chocolate bars and cigarettes are calling the health industry terrorists. Profit should always come first. /s

  • Hylactor@sopuli.xyz
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    22 hours ago

    I don’t know why I thought of this, but they make telescoping poles for wasp spray. I wonder if any other type of aerosol can would fit in them, or why you would even want to do that?

  • fiat_lux@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    It’s a wonder people haven’t started throwing water balloons filled with mud and flour at the cameras. Perhaps he should be grateful that’s not a trend?

    • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      I think a drone with a remotely-actuated spray can of black paint would be more fun. Come down from above so nothing is caught by the camera. Control it by a fiber link so that there’s no signal to identify the drone.

      Funny you should ask, yeah, I was discussing this the other day with some fellow techies down the pub.

      • bluesheep@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        I would’ve guessed that wireless would be the way to go since a fiber cable is quite literally a physical trace to your position. Are drones that easily identified by their wireless signal?

        • Tiger_Man_@szmer.info
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          24 hours ago

          setting up 2 recievers to calculate the signal source position is significantly easier than tracing a cable as thick as spider’s web

          • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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            23 hours ago

            So don’t do it from your house, go to a remote, unrelated location. By the time they get the video, analyze it, track back the signal, the camera is painted, and you’re long gone.

            Of course there may be cameras near that remote, unrelated location, so be careful of anything identifying, like a vehicle or your face.

  • youmaynotknow@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    Can someone explain how this makes any sense? They were ordered legally to deactivate and remove, unilaterally decide to put them back up and reactivate, the authorities (whomever those are) resort to covering them instead of removing and destroying them because “removing them is illegal”?

    What the actual fuck is this?

    • 7101334@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      My guess (emphasis “guess”) is either some contractual bullshit or a result of state law superseding local law.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        This is why when my city installed them (with a 3-2 vote from Council) they required them to all be installed in the Right-of-Way, which gives the city more authority to remove them if the contract is terminated (which it likely will be soon).

  • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    Does he care to explain why they leave town when cities or states simply tell them that all the data they collect becomes public domain?

    Oh, so they aren’t providing a public service, the only thing they care about is selling my data and keeping it secret.

    • Otter@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      I had to double-check what Deflock was for:

      DeFlock’s mission is simple: to shine a light on the widespread use of ALPR technology, raise awareness about the threats it poses to personal privacy and civil liberties, and empower the public to take action.

      This app makes it easy to view and report AI powered surveillance cameras, automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), and other surveillance infrastructure near you.

      Sharing information about where cameras are located is terrorism now?

      🙄

    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      It means ‘Enemy of the rich’ now

      e: important clarification, by rich I mean billionaires who own the majority of everything and not successful doctors, engineers or movie stars. Know your classes, kids

    • chisel@piefed.social
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      2 days ago

      That’s partly the point. Use words that accurately describe your evil group to incorrectly describe other groups and all of a sudden the words lose meaning and nobody can call you that anymore. Hooray!

    • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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      2 days ago

      It never had any meaning. Reagan had them redefine it in a way that didn’t implicate America.

    • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 days ago

      In the UK the term is defined by the government as anyone who is deemed by the government a threat to the government or the people or someone’s property or the predominant local religion. But recently it’s been exclusively used for the first one. In this country state law is valued higher than corporate, moral, ethical and religious laws, so YMMV

      "
      Terrorism: interpretation. (Terrorism Act 2000)

      (1)In this Act “terrorism” means the use or threat of action where— (a)the action falls within subsection (2), (b)the use or threat is designed to influence the government [or an international governmental organisation] or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and ©the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious [, racial] or ideological cause.

      (2)Action falls within this subsection if it— (a)involves serious violence against a person, (b)involves serious damage to property, ©endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person committing the action, (d)creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or (e)is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.

      (3)The use or threat of action falling within subsection (2) which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism whether or not subsection (1)(b) is satisfied.

      (4)In this section— (a)“action” includes action outside the United Kingdom, (b)a reference to any person or to property is a reference to any person, or to property, wherever situated, ©a reference to the public includes a reference to the public of a country other than the United Kingdom, and (d)“the government” means the government of the United Kingdom, of a Part of the United Kingdom or of a country other than the United Kingdom.

      (5)In this Act a reference to action taken for the purposes of terrorism includes a reference to action taken for the benefit of a proscribed organisation.
      "

      Link

      • hector@lemmy.today
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        2 days ago

        It’s so broad, they can accuse anyone of it, and that’s the point. Both parties have long supported these over broad laws too, because they are not on our side, they want the ability to bring the power of the state on the heads of any groups that might not be breaking the law in a way any reasonable person would condemn but still scare those aritstocrats.

      • tabular@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        In the UK it means the cop wants your ID and is willing to pretend your camera is a gun to get it.

        • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 day ago

          Fatal police shootings in the UK are getting more common. In 2019 one man was “lawfully murdered” because an officer said the victim’s mobile phone looked like a handgun. In 2024 it was announced the officer would not be prosecuted. Not one police officer has been found guilty of illegal murder as of yet.

        • Senal@programming.dev
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          2 days ago

          The UK isn’t the US (at least in this context) almost nobody has guns.

          In very limited situations the police can, but it’s not the norm.

          Don’t get me wrong, ACAB, they just don’t generally use guns a as a pretext, perhaps a knife, or perhaps there is more than an arbitrary number of people grouped together so they can claim an ‘illegal’ protest.

    • hector@lemmy.today
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      2 days ago

      It never had meaning. To instill deep fear. Doing violent acts with the purpose of achieving a political end.

      It’s always been super broad and just waiting for a domestic party to adopt the tactics of Israel’s occupied territories here in the US, that’s where this was always heading.

  • blitzen@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    I used deflock to look for cameras around me; I CANNOT leave my city limits by car without passing by a Flock camera.

    • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      A question to nobody in particular: would it be possible to make license plate covers that are made out of the same material as those anti-facial recognition glasses?

      • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        It’s not just license plate readers anymore. They have cameras that perform facial recognition and other identifying recognition.

        Your car is in many ways uniquely identifiable by its markings and its model that vehicle with many pictures of it and that license plate are already in a database. If you have stickers, if you have big dents or additions and changes from the base model of your vehicle than you are quite identifiable within a particular geographical area depending on the urban density.

      • blitzen@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        There’s YouTube video out there, the name escapes at the moment, where he figures out how to basically insert “noise” over his license plate that can lead to flock cameras not recognizing it. Fascinating stuff.

        Two big issues IMO. 1) maybe it fools cameras now, but who knows if it continues to. 2) it’s illegal to cover your plate, probably doubly with the intent to obfuscate. My solution is bike rack. “Oops, didn’t meant to cover my plate” is good plausible deniability.

        • Shortstack@reddthat.com
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          1 day ago

          It’s Benn Jordan

          Also, the way they catalogue info is not just license numbers, but any unique combinations of bike racks, bumper stickers or the like. So your bike rack would make you very trackable in a way, but at least your identity would be harder to pinpoint

          And about the intentional obfuscation, all kinds of princess pavement trucks and entitled BMWs deliberately use smoked license plate covers, and nobody bats an eye. So if there’s a law against that, it either has no teeth or is not enforced

          • emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            22 hours ago

            That guy is just the coolest person ever. Every time I hear his name its some new fucking based shit. His music as The Flashbulb is my favorite music of all time. He has unbelievable range and creativity as an artist and was one of the first people to fight against music labels going after torrenters/downloaders. He uploaded all his own torrents to a private tracker. Just an awesome fucking person who obviously just wants the best for everyone.

          • blitzen@lemmy.ml
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            1 day ago

            Ya, he mentioned the “identifiable” thing in the video. I’m not really how much truth is in that. Even if true, I feel better about being logged as “unidentifiable [color] [make] [model] with bike rack,” over [license plate number] which can be used to look up my name and address.

            Even if his license plate trick worked under his conditions, there’s no way of knowing if it’s tricking Flock cameras or if it is, if it confines to do so with updates. And you never know if it fails, you’ll continue to think it’s working while it’s not.

            Neither way is perfect, so perhaps the better solution it to assume your vehicle is always tracked and to take alternate forms of transportation when engaging in something you don’t want logged.

            • modus@lemmy.world
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              22 hours ago

              He points out in one of his videos how many Flock systems are not fully secure. You can access these systems and check to see if your vehicle was logged.

    • TrollTrollrolllol@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      My city is one of the few in my county that doesn’t have a contract with flock, but the county was nice enough to put them up around town anyway.

        • TrollTrollrolllol@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I’d be interested to know, the reason I know my city doesn’t have it is a bunch of residents pushed for it at multiple council meetings.

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Since Flock CEO wants to give this movement some press

    Here’s Benn Jordan, he’s done a series of videos on the cameras, demonstrates their vulnerabilities, and talks about how Flock has been deploying secretly by co-opting local municipalities to subsidize their national rollout.

    First video, the one seems to have started the major anti-Flock push: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ

    Follow-up showing how easy they are to hack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY

    More live demonstrated vulnerabilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo

    Not as directly related, but he discusses a way to use generative AI models to create noise masks for your specific plate that will disrupt the OCR process that ALPRs use. (Key term: Adversarial Noise) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_F4rEaRduk