The Problem Isn’t Flock or Ring

These Flock (and Ring) cameras that are popping up everywhere are worrying but not for the right reason. Would you worry about a Flock or Ring camera if neither the government nor corporations (in “partnership” with the government) had any power to use the data collected against you?

That’s the substantive objection.

People have had cameras for longer than anyone currently living has been alive. It was and still is common for ordinary people to take pictures and videos in public. Few of us cared that we maybe got included in a picture or video taken by someone else taking pictures or videos – because why would we? The person who took the picture or video maybe had a picture or a video of us and they could see it and maybe so could the people they showed it to. But that was the extent of it. The pictures and videos they took were not “shared” – hateful word in the modern usage – with corporations or the government and also their cameras and video recorders had no way of knowing who we were. We were just random “people.” The cameras and video recorders didn’t have facial recognition or other biometric identifying capabilities and were not connected to anything, either. The images and recordings taken were thus harmless – unless of course it was a PI snapping pics or videos of a person meeting up with their side piece, but even that was discrete in that it was a matter between the cheating spouse, the aggrieved spouse and perhaps divorce lawyers. It didn’t matter a hill of beans to anyone else.

It matters – as regards Flock and Ring – because these cameras are being used to record and track us as individuals. Not just random “people” in a crowd. It matters – because the government and corporations are in a position (having coercive means at their disposal) to make use of the individualized record of our presence here or there, our coming and goings and so on against us, or for extremely creepy purposes. There are a number of publicized instances of government workers – such as cops – who have access to the individualized data being collected by these cameras using it to track (and stalk) women they’re interested in. Women who have no idea they are being watched, tracked and stalked by an armed government worker. To believe that this is just an “isolated” problem is to believe in fairy tales since human nature is what it is. Give a creepy cop the ability to snoop (and stalk) and he will snoop and stalk.

Now consider how many government workers there are and how much potential leverage they have, implicitly as well as explicitly, over your life. Fold in the corporate workers who work with the government and really ought to be seen as the same thing – because they are, effectively. The insurance person you have to deal with is not technically a government worker but does it matter? You have to deal with this person – because the government effectively forces you to. Because if you decline to, then the insurance worker will sic the government on you. The insurance worker is very keen to know where, when and how you’re driving. Just the same as the government worker – and for basically the same reasons: To mulct you and to control you.

It’s one example to make the point.

Another is that people are already being targeted falsely for “crimes” they did not commit – because a Flock or Ring camera misidentified an individual. One case involved a woman who had to deal with a cop knocking on her door – not to get a date but because he was certain she’d stolen a package, because the Flock or Ring camera saw her vehicle driving through the neighborhood where the package was stolen. It wasn’t just asking questions. It was threatening accusations. The woman ended up having to prove her innocence after having been presumed guilty by the Flock/Ring cameras.

Another example to make the point.

It all boils down to leverage; i.e., what can be done with the data – the images and more – collected and uploaded by these cameras.

Take the leverage away – this knowing that they have the power to make you suffer (understanding this is key to understanding what really motivates these people; see the interrogation scene in Orwell’s 1984 for further understanding) using the material gathered and sifted through and categorized and the Flock and Ring cameras become as innocuous as the cameras and video rigs of the 1980s.

I grew up in the DC area and that area is full of tourists with cameras and video recorders. It never bothered me or anyone else that I can remember because why would anyone care that some random person took a picture of me or you when the person taking the picture (or video) had no idea who we were and no way to find out who we were – as well as no leverage (power) to use that knowledge against us if they somehow managed to figure out who we were?

Flock and Ring are easy targets – and they deserve to be targeted as long as they are used as leverage against us by the government and corporations that have fused together into the same thing – but they are not the fundamental problem.

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