Proton is hosting a public map showing more than 300,000 Flock surveillance devices across the United States, preserving access to a research project whose creator faces legal threats and intimidation. The map draws on an inventory obtained by cybersecurity researcher Joshua Michael from Flock’s own systems. According to Proton, it includes more than 170,000 cameras …
the July bulletin urged officers to watch for suspicious behavior, including unusual questions
It also listed media attendance […] among potential public safety concernsPlease stand back quietly as we bring Fascism to your country.
Hear me out! License plate reader detecting license plates that have a projection light that connects to your self hosted app on you phone where it scans for flock cameras based on this map and deflock. So that way in real time, on the fly, it’ll project an adversarial pattern on to your plates as you go by flock cameras.
Plus if you have a sun/moon roof (I’ve heard it be called both so I’m still unsure what it’s really called lol) it’ll make it look like you’re a polygon kind of geometric figure (like smash brothers melee) could make them for near the whells or for on a spoiler, could make your whole car becomes a different make and model to the camera.
Deflock.me has an app now that let’s you use it for navigation and offline downloads of their map info for anyone worried it’ll get taken down.
Fuck yeah
Tech for the people was bound to happen once all of the controlling factions of the world got bored with greed due to their ennui.
So, we know where they are. Now what do we do with that information?
Now we make them not be where they are.
Also, I hear they’re full of RAM and meth.
Unlike crowdsourced projects such as DeFlock, Michael’s inventory comes from company records rather than sightings submitted by volunteer
Huh.
Flock left their ArcGIS data open and he just downloaded all of it.
US government will probably call that hacking since they didnt mean for someone to download it even though it was plainly there.
Wasn’t it Mississippi that called hitting F12 in the browser hacking as well?
Lol, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“That mother hit F12! Shoot her through her child!” - Mississippi cops
“Justified” - MS DA
Wasn’t it Mississippi that called hitting F12 in the browser hacking
https://futurism.com/the-byte/governor-journalist-hacker-html
It was Missouri but still that’s so fucking stupid!!! Dude did everyone a favor and got called cyber criminal.
LOL their blatant disregard for security bites them again.
Doesn’t that make the information ‘publicly facing?’
As satisfying as it is that this comes from a security hole, if it only contains flock branded systems, then it is less complete than deflock which maps ALPRs of many brands including Flock.
That’s not necessarily correct. Both will surely include units that the other doesn’t.
That seems very surprising for a company headed by a fascist
It can live there until they get a government request from the United States to take it down. It’s like they’re asking for the same recognition that led the privacy conscious to not trust them…again.
I know fundamentally they’re trying to do good. Be in solidarity with what they promised to their users.
A man once said, “Fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me you can’t get fooled again.”
It’s missing a camera on a bridge nearby that other maps have.
This is official data from an API leak from last year, not supplemented with DeFlock/OSM data. Chances are that the camera is newer than when the leak took place. It also seems like more of a PR stunt than anything else. Hosting leaked data is more legally dubious than DeFlock being a map of real people saying “I saw this thing here.” Basically just Proton telling Flock “nah nah nah nah nah nah you can’t get me in my swiss alps.” To be clear, I’m all for them doing this, fuck Flock and all that.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Love this. Hold every company accountable, including proton.
This is a win now but there’s nothing keeping any company doing good for people, we’ve got to keep them accountable.
Yup. This is nice, but fuck proton and their crypto bullshit.
You mean crypto fascist?
Or are you actually opposed to cryptography (ie encrypted email)?
I made a proton account and quickly became disgusted at how many times the email webclient begged me to link my “GMail” to it. Like, They’d only provide the advertised storage space if I proved that every email to a google account would be automatically forwarded to Proton.
What if I don’t want to do a deal with the devil just to use your service?
This is what I remember of my experience around a year ago. I deleted my Proton account within a month. (I <3 Disroot.org)
+1 for disroot
Wish more people would convert their proton yearly fee into a yearly donation for disroot.
Disroot is great, but not encrypted, meaning susceptible to hacking and subpoenas.
Yeah. Nice and so on. I’d rather have a provider not getting involved with politics, no matter which stance, thanks.
Especially since proton is playing both sides at the moment. It comes across as attention seeking.
Are they playing both sides?
The CEO is a right wing trumper that keeps doubling and tripling and quadrupling down.
At the moment? I believe we all remember what the CEO said when Trump was inaugurated.
This is just a stupid game and I wish they would invest more time into making their products better.
How about a privacy company promoting privacy? Whether or not it’s “political” depends entirely on whether or not you choose to apply that perspective. They’re doing the same thing they’ve always done, and I’m pretty sure the motivation is to maintain their rep/get paid rather than exert influence somehow
Well then fight the core issue: the legislation which allows such cameras. It is okay to fight for privacy so that my service can continue. I am not okay to use my funds to create maps that literally have nothing to do with what proton provides. Fuck that.
Legislation is not only a legal process. There’s public awareness, democratic mandate. Laws don’t become laws when nobody is interested. Sometimes the people pushing for it are weathly elite, sometimes it’s the little guy.
Engaging with public initiatives and such, even if it’s slightly performative, to send a message is fighting for the cause.
I mean… It’s not “your” money, they didn’t create the map, and it seems pretty relevant to the rest of their services to me. Would be lit if they put out a privacy respecting navigation app with avoiding em as a feature, I’m about it. Kinda hard to see your take here as genuine, not sure what motivates it
I just want to have a working e-mail service. As soon as a provider gets political, the big trouble including lawsuits start, risking getting bankrupt, making me pay for all of that, with the potential of having no value at the end, as the service has to shut down.
I absolutely see the need to provide information about the flock cameras. I don’t see the need for Proton to do that.
Gotcha. I first heard about them through their VPN service, see privacy itself as their core product, and email/storage/calendar etc as very logical ways of delivering that same product that navigation or map data in general would be a great addition to. Being a privacy provider in a system so focused on surveillance and manipulation seems pretty “political” in the way you’re using the term no matter what. A proton abstaining from politics in that sense would just be google. Your definition of political seems to be related to how much friction is generated with the establishment, and imo their willingness to provide that friction is exactly what people are paying them for. If all you care about is a working email service, gmail is great. Better even, not to mention free.
Tell me you don’t know that the word politics means without telling me you don’t know that the word politics means.
I guess that was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Love to know what the “legal” part of the threat is. These items are in public locations. You know, why they say there’s no expectation of privacy for us. It works both ways.
That’s the fun part, it doesn’t!
The guy that got this data did it by accessing a website from flock, which leaked the data through an unprotected website.
The stuff mapped by users isn’t the issue. This particular data set is.
Per the article this is related to camera locations obtained from flock themselves when they failed to secure things properly. The publicly maintained “deflock” cameras in openstreetmap are on extremely solid legal ground.
“Failed to secure” is a funny way of saying they had a public-facing REST service he downloaded because they explicitly made it available for download.
I run a GIS department. I have to choose to make data available.
Doesn’t hurt to have redundant maps in case one gets taken down.
Is there a federated map app?
OpenStreetMaps?
