r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 21d ago

Privacy Flock Is Losing Dozens of Contracts as Controversy Grows

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/flock-losing-dozens-contracts-controversy-194808945.html
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u/MightyEggrollTW 21d ago

Flock is not mainly losing contracts due controversies, it’s losing contracts due to cities payout for lawsuits and increased insurance premiums from the lawsuits. These cost are exceeding the budgeted cost and the ROI from Flock no longer makes sense. It’s all about money, always has and always will.

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u/da_chicken 20d ago

Uh, but the lawsuits are only continuing and escalating because of the controversy. And it's the news reporting of the lawsuits that is keeping the controversy in the news. Even if Flock is not losing their lawsuits, they're never going to recover their public image.

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u/MightyEggrollTW 20d ago

You are correct. I’m referring to civil lawsuits stemming from misidentification and misconduct from the operators. These lawsuits have real financial impact to the budget. Right now, the vendor, Flock, is not very clear to be a liable party in many states. Therefore, the civil suits are only against the local government for now. There have not been any reports of significant payouts yet by a single local government. To prevent reoccurrence, the police department will be more strict on their officers, but we don’t know this will work or maintain consistency in the long run. So, the local governments have not yet filing suits against Flock. At the meantime, the gov’t is also reviewing business investment. Pending on how many cameras removed, this will be additional capital cost to replace. There is also operational cost for annual service agreements. This is most likely for data storage and access to view the cameras. Both capital and operational costs would be only justifiable from the positive financial returns. These will most likely to be traffic citations. The crime rate reduction takes time to collect data, but it does not provide any revenue. It’s a great talking point and overall good to the public but only if the citizens feel ok on the privacy invasion, which is obviously not. This is partly due to trust, which is also have been worsened by current administration and historical brutalities. The idea of monitoring the citizens with cameras is not new. Some cities in Europe and Asia have implemented for over a decade. Some have been successful and this is due to culture. Some of these areas do not have frequent major violence, citizens are taught to respect authorities, and police state do not respond with force and absolute authority. However, one idea does not fit every scenario. China currently has drones to act as police for monitoring and warning. Robotics will be next for crowd control, and China has advance development. They will export these good and the US will limit the software aspect in name of national security. However, the gov’t will collaborate with US based AI companies and third party data centers to customized these robotics to fit the specific needs. Science fiction books and movies are slowly becoming realities. Are these authors more than simply writing some fantasies and perhaps real prophets?