Technology

Jeezus pleezus. Even county commissioners think they have autocratic, dictatorial powers. It amazes me how little power given can lead immediately to corruption. How do we get a new generation of morally righteous, benevolent, empathic people to run for government in the midst of all this dark nonsense?

According to the second paragraph, Flock is a license plate reader.

Funny thing about American voting: for all the ways that people insist voting doesn't matter, the one place in America where one vote travels the absolute farthest is in a small town election, and right next to that are county elections, for positions like these.

County sheriffs are often elected, as are county commissioners; who gets elected and who gets appointed depends entirely on applicable state and local law. But even if both of these positions are appointed in Madison County, North Carolina, where this debacle took place, the appointer will almost always be an elected official, like a mayor.

In other words, there is in fact a place where the buck stops in local politics, whether it's with the mayor or the commissioner or the sheriff or all of the above, and everyone who lives there already knows exactly where it does, especially in a back wood county in the hills like this one.

Add the fact that the meeting was already full of angry people, people who cared enough about the whole thing to make the drive into the county seat and attend, only to be shut up once they arrived.

So while they were silenced at this meeting, it's not over. None of them want Flock cameras, and nobody wants to take the time and trouble to come to a goddamn podunk county commission meeting only to be told to shut up and sit down.

Come election season, any neighbors with short memories will absolutely be reminded of this, in the kind of local election where often every single vote counts.

A city council in the U.S. does not have to allow a general public comment time. Perhaps there are some states where it is required.

They can also allow public comment only as part of a hearing on a specific matter. Most states require this.

HOWEVER, if they allow an open public comment they cannot censor it.

so it would seem that even at the local level, civil SERVANTS are too big for their britches

Great, maybe you should start refusing to let these pieces of shit feel safe in public.

No? Not willing to do that? Fine, zero sympathy- you deserve whatever they give you.

Could not be sicker of Americans whining about how victimized they are. This is on you. Yes, I'm victim-blaming, you fucking cowards. You spent two centuries dining out on the myth that dealing with this kind of shit was the ONE THING you're good at. Go fuck yourselves, I could give two shits whether MAGA keeps steamrolling you at this point.

Who wants to bet that the county commissioner is raking in massive paycheques from flock?

30 cities have banned flock. I hope the county bans these commissioners. It can be done.

The article quotes a Madison County privacy org directly:

“The Sheriff Office claims they are only using this technology for serious crimes, yet published audit logs tell a different story,” a website called Madison for Privacy says. “Madison County has searched the nationwide database over 1,200 times over just a 60 day period. In a county over only 20,000 residents, its hard to understand what could warrant this many searches.”

Holy shit, they're not wrong. Follow that haveibeenflocked.com link to the Madison County sheriff's office Flock searches, and the accompanying note:

These are some of the searches performed by Madison County NC SO. We have seen a total of 1,216 searches for this agency, performed by 1 person over 62 days between 3/11/2026 and 5/11/2026 (1 user was active in the most recent six months) The most recent import of records for this agency happened on 5/17/2026.

Madison County is southwest of Asheville on the state line between NC and TN, comprised mostly of unincorporated communities, which is a polite way of saying most residents live in the hills, not in the towns. The entire county has a population of roughly 21,000, and the largest town, Mars Hill, has only 2,000 residents. It doesn't get much more rural than this on the East Coast.

So given the population and its distribution, and the fact that the sheriff's office only serves the unincorporated communities because the three towns have their own municipal police, where the fuck does the sheriff's office get cause or even time for what averages out to 600 Flock searches in a month?

But it gets even stranger. I clicked on a few searches, just to see what I could see, and every single one I clicked on with an unredacted reason* was associated with the same two or three other non-local police departments as the source of the information retrieved, two of which were the exact same ones every time: Forest Park Ohio PD, Tifton Georgia PD, and occasionally the Douglas County Nevada SO. There were a couple others, but always at least one of those three. (If you go to the little i next to the other PDs, it tells you, "This audit record appears in [n] different public record files.")

This is true whether I clicked on a homicide, a non-DUI alcohol inquiry, a burglary, a car theft, or a sex offense. No matter what reason I chose, no matter how disparate the crime or the date, one if not all of those three law enforcement agencies came up as the source of the Flock information that inquiry pulled from. And this is the same of every search I clicked on, over and over and over again.

(*The sole exceptions to all this were where the crime itself was redacted, and then the associated source of information was Buncombe County, NC, which neighbors Madison County and could potentially be a valid law enforcement reason to search Flock data.)

And when I selected the Repeat Searches checkbox at the top, defined as "Display filter that hides likely duplicate searches (identical searches within 5 minutes). Does not affect server-side counts or downloads," an even 800 of those 1,216 searches get loaded. So fully two thirds of those searches across two months qualify as duplicates executed within five minutes of each other, to Flock parameters at least. (Or maybe one third, if I'm understanding it wrong; I'm sure someone will be along to correct me shortly.) But that's still a fuckton of duplicates executed within five minutes of each other.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't understand how it all works on the Flock side, but it almost seems like someone in the Madison County, NC sheriff's office is just sitting on their ass keeping serious tabs on a short list of people living in other places.

You want to know what's wrong with America? We're pussies now.

That traitor -- and he surely is a fucking treason-weasel -- should not have been able to safely walk out of that meeting after telling the community that they didn't have the god-given right to address their elected officials.

fascist

Whats the chances this town organizes and resists or campaigns?

Will they remember this the next time he's up for reelection?

I'm not saying you should.... but you could... use the cameras and other open sources ... darkweb and whatever else and just to utterly dox each and every one of these people promoting these products. These are not tech savvy people. They are old, decrepit, and well trained in responding only to a hearty handful of totally-not-a-bribe.

If you want these cunts to worry about security and rights... you need to make it personal.

Find an open flock cam? Live stream it with a projector where people see it. Collect some damning evidence and push it right in the face of the people who think it's secure.

My favorite discussion topic when someone starts with that protect the children bullshit:

You are totally right! But oh wait: with devices likely headed in the direction of being a beacon of 'my user is underage' ... doesn't that mean you can effectively, using publicly available information, play pokemon go... except with children?! After all with the leaks and cross references... they could probably just put a filter system in place and let you just find your match. Boy, girl, age, weight, build? I see you've made a selection! Care to cross reference with our live footage so you can find pick out that special place for the ideal get together? Need some AI help with finalizing your choice? Let's dress them up with a bit of help from our app developer GROK! ...Promise this is your child and youre just playing dress up to pick out that right gift? Alright! Here you go! Oh its actually your significant other and youre looking for something spicy... well ... why not! Heres a few more images with some fun playful outfits for the bedroom... we did you a favor and put them in a couple recommended positions we completely recommend. Go get em king! You're ready!

Usually by this point they've shut the hell up and are now contemplating how to put the genie back bottle. Feel free to use some creative flair. If they dont look like they are about to be ill - you clearly need to go harder.

Damn this seems dark. Just anybody could steal our children. And so easily! We should probably gps tag them at birth. We'll call it loli-jack. This way we'll never lose another kid. I'm sure that won't backfire... Hey and kids grow fast. Maybe some mandatory 3d scans of them during yearly checkups. Obviously so AI can track them if they are being trafficed. No way to disguise them then! Oh and then we can totally sell those totally anonomized scans to help with....

You'll feel positively disgusting if youre doing it right.

After care is important: the thing I recommend is washing yourself down with iso alcohol. Get a good scrub in. Then get that inner cleanse with a stiff shot and a good cry in the fetal position in the shower. Fuck I hate this timeline.

Sounds like someone's losing the next election

“If you want a special meeting, you go back to the 250 years that the sheriff has been the elected official in the state of North Carolina and you have that meeting with him. This board, we don’t own Flock cameras, I’ve emailed some of you this. We don’t pay for Flock cameras. We don’t operate Flock cameras. We have no interest in Flock camera or Flock camera discussion. That’s your elected sheriff. So if you want to have a meeting with the person that’s involved with that, then you’ll have a meeting with [him], not with us that’s a legislative body. We don’t control the sheriff’s budget. We give him X number of dollars, he does with it what he wishes. I’m not having this discussion. Either you select a person or not.”

One of the residents suggests that the board of commissioners could pass an ordinance about Flock cameras; he is cut off by Garrison, who says again that the residents can pick a person to speak or not. Eventually, the residents do select one representative, who was allowed to speak for seven minutes.

Later in the meeting, another resident explains that their public records requests for details about the Sheriff’s Office contracts and use of Flock have not been sufficiently responded to. She was allowed to speak because she was providing comment about her requests for public records, and not Flock specifically. “I’m here to talk about the lack of government transparency and accountability that I’ve seen come up with the Flock issue, starting with tonight. I think that it’s disgraceful the way you are refusing to let citizens speak to their elected officials,” she said. “We’ve repeatedly asked you to hold a public meeting for us to discuss this, so I’m very disappointed to see a lack of transparency.”

"You will not speak on Flock tonight,” he responds. “One person designated. You can pick that person … if I gave everyone three minutes to say the same thing, which is opposition to Flock, we’d never get done … I’ve spoken. I’m not debating this."

Only politicians can be that arrogant. imagine forgetting how the fuck you got into that seat in the first place. Ironically, it's the same reason that he thinks that one person can speak on behalf of everyone else.

Voting for somebody to make your decisions for you is crazy. But expecting that same person to agree with everything that you want is just insane.

Even with that in mind, arrogant pricks like this guy still seem to be able to berate their constituents and remain confident that they will get re-elected.

Sounds like some heads need to roll then, literally.