Hey all.
I made a video this week about Flock’s leaked employee buyouts and, in researching it, found this neat site that maintains a database of entities and municipalities that have canceled, suspended, or opted not to renew their Flock contracts.
If you need something positive to think about today, this is a good place to start. There were over 100 contracts canceled just in September alone.
How many of them immediately signed a contract with Motorola or Axon?
Probably a few.
I don’t think it’s going to matter though. This is an issue that, inexplicably, has pissed off even people who are largely apolitical. The only way Motorola or Axon escape Flock’s fate is by acting ethically and/or having mass surveillance technology that actually works instead of failing spectacularly all the time, and neither of those scenarios seems probable given the current climate of ‘moving fast and breaking things’.
We’ll see, I suppose. I lack your optimism that, just because something fails fantastically, it will not be used and trusted by corpo-fascists and kakistocrats.
I’m actually not an optimist, and didn’t expect to be saying that even a few months ago. My adult life has largely corresponded to the post-WTC march of fascist mass surveillance and I was one of a handful of people who actually opposed it back in college in the 2000’s.
I just don’t see how any of the three companies get their tech to work properly and they 100% are not going to self-regulate.
Just this month Flock has lost hundreds of contracts in 36 US states. That is some serious bipartisan anger. If you’ve got 9 minutes and want to hear more about why I think how I do, I made a video on it this week.