Flock is edtech—creepy edtech.

Getting rid of Flock is an important step but just the first one.

I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of single-issue voting, but I’m so annoyed by our incumbent mayor’s “let’s think long and hard before rushing into getting rid of Flock” that I don’t know that any other issue is going to matter to me in a few weeks.

This headline captures a lot of the tension I feel going into this election. Despite obvious missteps, I do trust Gorton’s experience and probably wouldn’t mind her continuing to serve.

However, we don’t need a slow, deliberate panel to get rid of Flock. I think “it’s pretty irresponsible” to have adopted the cameras without anticipating the problems they ultimately brought. Where was the panel to warn us against surveillance and privacy infringement?

Wild numbers here. Why does Lexington have these cameras if Lexington is only using them 4% of the time?

Ditch Flock in Lexington.

People are just catching up, Garrett. They should have been this angry for the past nine years, and no one should have let things get this far.

Review is good, removal is better.

Hell yes. Disappointed in myself for not being one of these people.

This story makes me (even) more highly of 404 and (even) more poorly of Flock.

This response is such a CEO way to apologize for something:

“It took me maybe longer than it should have to realize the sheer impact of the company,” he says. “I’m still surprised. I got our July update a week ago, and we helped find almost a thousand missing people, over 22,000 stolen cars — in July. That’s crazy. That’s such a big impact on the world. And what I came to realize over time was that the responsibility that bears with it is an obligation to make sure that it’s creating a society that we both, you and I, and everyone around us, want to raise their kids in.”

Love a company response that comes down to “sure, we talked about it, but we didn’t actually do it.”

I was reading some Jacques Ellul yesterday, where he noted that in “technical morality,” technology cannot do wrong, only the humans using the technology.

Flock’s response here seems to be a variation on that: The technology cannot be inaccurate, only the humans using it.

Look, some of the problem is Flock, but the core of the problem is ALPRs, and merely switching companies doesn’t solve that.

Flock is gross, but so is this.

Do Lexington next! Also, Flock’s statement is so gross.

If edtech doesn’t include this horrifying monstrosity, the field isn’t being broad enough in its inquiry.

Absolutely terrifying.

Ring sucks and is creepy. Here’s the killer paragraph from this story;

Unlike, say, data analytics giant Palantir or some other high-profile surveillance companies, Ring is a surveillance network that homeowners have by and large deployed themselves, powered by fear mongering against our neighbors and unfettered consumerism.

Surveillance sucks.

Today, on the last day of class, a student shared some of their ongoing efforts to mess with local Flock cameras and develop makeup patterns to defeat facial recognition. It was like realizing I’d had a Cory Doctorow character in class all semester, and it brought me joy and hope.

Flock continues to suck.

Wish I’d made more of a stink about Lexington adopting Flock cameras. It’s a creepy-as-hell technology, and we need to get rid of them.

Did not realize that dashcam surveillance was a thing. I hate that it is, and I hate that Flock is going here.

So scary, so gross. Lexington needs to ditch Flock now.