These days, it’s hard to say which technological “innovation” US citizens hate more: AI data centers or Flock surveillance poles.
The American revulsion with the former is well known. The latter, however, has seen an even more shocking rise in resistance, as the number of people hacking down, blinding, or otherwise sabotaging Flock cameras has reached a level best described as “countless.”
Those who cut down Flock surveillance devices are regarded as folk heroes, garnering huge defense campaigns aided by the rapid growth of the online anti-Flock community.
Amidst immense pressure from the public, the company is starting to back down on its quest to create a law enforcement-led surveillance state. On Friday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced that Flock was officially ending its “human distress detection” pilot program, an always-on audio surveillance tool that monitored public places for sounds of “screaming.”
