Flock cameras popping up like mad/local cops abusing said flock cameras to stalk women
City council changing their meeting times so said flock contracts are easier to ram through for approval (how naive of me to believe that blatant corruption only happens at the federal level)
Wal-mart adding more security cameras but still have the same card readers from 10 years ago that don’t work
Gas reaching nearly 5 bucks a gallon in a town where 3 is the average
My company fully embracing claude (and absolutely jerking itself off over it)
Local ICE raids
Friends’ companies doing layoffs
I’m so ready to 
like my heckin life depends on it to fix all of this!
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Fucking cameras are everywhere, it’s impossible to avoid being constantly surveilled every second of the day. And it’s not even just the state or corporations like flock who’s whole point is surveillance, companies like coke are going all in on it too.
My work just installed new coke machines, the kinds with a million flavours, and they have cameras (and probably microphones) installed that supposedly track people’s expressions as a form of market research on various coke products. There’s no notice you’re being recorded, no “by buying this cup of corn syrup you agree to be recorded & analyzed”, nothing. Just a little black dot where the lens is that records every single person that uses the machine, exactly which drink they select, how the react, all without their knowledge
Jesus. They tainted my beloved soda.
I hope you’re joking, because Coca-Cola is veritably evil and has been for a long, long time!
I don’t joke about soda.
They’re not even doing the “well you agreed to this” bullshit anymore.
You know damn well
or any bootlicker’s going to bust out “umm, no one OWES you privacy, sweaty! It’s porky’s property so it’s his choice!”Yup, now it’s “ummm OBVIOUSLY you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public space so just accept you’re being watched and analysed 24/7/365”
Lmao and they spent so many years criticizing China for cctv
Yea the hypocrisy isn’t new but it still makes me pull my hair out in frustration. I remember back when cctv was exploding in the 00s there was all sorts of debate about sacrificing privacy (with a healthy dose of “what are we, Chinese?!?!??” scaremongering thrown in) and now that facial recognition, AI analysis, and associated tech has made that surveillance infinitely more granular there’s not a peep
They truly don’t seem to understand that surveillance to protect capitalist interests is a whole different beast entirely.
I mean, I can’t speak on what’s happening in China because I haven’t been there and my only knowledge comes from acquaintances who have visited and what I see on social media, but it truly sounds like they surveil to ensure that people aren’t being assholes and disrupting others. Most Chinese people (who aren’t contrarian just to be contrarian) don’t view the government the same as we do. Hell, that’s not even to say these people are leftist— it’s just that they are living life and have no reason to view the government as a threatening entity because their needs are not locked behind paywalls
I think the biggest fundamental difference between somewhere like the US and China is the structure behind it when comparing a planned economy to a capitalist one.
There was an excellent example of it, I think on Hexbear, but not sure: In China when you lose a handbag on the metro you can walk up to the police and they use the cameras to track the handbag for you. The system is in service of the people, because it’s the peoples system and a part of infrastructure that is owned and operated by the people. This same applies to AI and cops. None can really be compared to their functions in capitalism where they serve the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
The western brain pan has a hard time comprehending the difference, because we don’t live in a reality where things like this could be beneficial and in our own control.
put a sticker over the black dot
Now I’m curious how long it would take coke to reach out to us to get it removed…
A loud voice eminates from the machine as the sticky note approaches the camera mid-attempt: “STEP AWAY FROM THE SODA DISPENSER” in the Combine from HL2 voice.
Put some Vaseline on it and say your hands were greasy from the kitchen. Much more plausible deniability.
Apparently nail polish remover can irreparably damage the film over the lense
“cleaning” it with a greasy rag might be the move
The dumpsters in my building’s garbage room have cameras in them.
Fucking criminal
I’ve almost given up on the concept of anonymity as someone who has spent my life trying to lay low in whatever capacity tbh; It is becoming almost impossible to live a private life.
Part of me wants to desperately believe that the surveillance state I heard so much about online was only in big cities and blue states or whatever, but I don’t know what the fuck to think when all the stuff I’m talking about is happening in a town with <20K people
Something I’ve noticed in my city is they’ve started rolling up the sidewalks in the evening and nothing is open late anymore. I used to like grocery shopping Meijers at midnight on the weekends and now it closes at 9 pm. Gas station at the end of my street used to be open 24 hours every day and now it closes at 8 pm. Really sucks if you’re a night owl or you want to avoid the crowds.
rolling up the sidewalks
Sorry, what so you mean by this? As in, shops bring in the produce that they had on the sidewalks and roll down the shutters? Or they physically remove the sidewalks somehow (I’m not from the USA)
Also sucks if u work inconvenient hours, have a spotty memory or dont have the energy to go earlier in the day (2 things that are often caused by disability or other things outside ur control)
Meijers
I see we have a Michigander posting here on the Hexbears.
Yeah people love to blame covid for stuff like this, but it is clearly just capitalism and has always been
Apparently there’s a bipartisan anti-Flock movement in the state legislature where I live, but - Axon astroturfing conspiracy theories aside - some form of totally ubiquitous police surveillance is coming eventually. Delaying it, potentially fragmenting it to make it harder for them to use, are both valuable efforts, but that age is arriving.
The absolute best-case scenario from a privacy standpoint is to prevent local cops from having it, and make the feds have to access a heavily fragmented landscape of sensors illegally and then use parallel construction in any court cases which result. But make no mistake, the sensor mesh will exist and sufficiently powerful agencies will use it.
Tf coming and arriving.
It’s fucking here already. They enacted it post 9/11 and it’s been full throttle overdrive since.
I’ve noticed such an extreme proliferation of these mobile security camera trailers in some weird places. I noticed them because most of them are using solar panels to run the surveillance on the top of the mast that sticks up very high. They are in shopping area parking lots, construction sites, just randomly in empty lots next to busy roads, etc. I’m guessing Flock or some other similar corp is feeding all the data back to some analytics and tracking back end. The US probably has a significant portion of its renewable energy dedicated to powering these mobile surveillance systems.
Voting will solve absolutely none of this.
Sure tankie. Go tell your supervisors you got another one to not vote.
spoiler
Yes this is sarcastic.
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Sure as an anarchist opposed to electoralism I’m a “tankie” that makes perfect sense.
none of us decide to be tankies, it is thrust upon all who chose to reject liberalism.
Do you think “tankie” means anything?
It’s just a snarl word for “leftist I want to kill”
Both op and the person replying to you are joking
You can deny it all you want. You’re an antifa radical that wants to destroy democracy.
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