There’s been a great deal of backlash against Flock cameras, with constant vandalism and numerous reports of crooked cops misusing them, leading to more and more communities to cancel their contracts. While Flock has received the most backlash, there are other ALPR companies out there. Rather than ending their use of technology that spies on you, and in a move that doesn’t really solve the problems associated with mass surveillance, some departments that have dropped Flock have simply switched to other companies that do the same thing, reports NPR.
One of those competitors is Axon. If that name sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen it displayed on body cam videos, since Axon is the leading supplier of body cams to law enforcement, according to The Intercept. After a bit of rebranding in 2017 (the same year Flock was founded), many people don’t know that Axon is the company formerly known as Taser, the electrical stun gun — another technology that police never, ever misuse.
While Flock had to develop not only its technology, but also its law enforcement contacts and clients, Axon already had the clients in its Rolodex thanks to its other products. Law enforcement agencies may be fleeing from Flock contracts like rats from a sinking ship, but they still want ALPR technology. In places like Denver, Colorado, for example, switching ALPR providers is easy when you’re getting your new camera tracking access through a supplier you likely already do business with.
That’s the way it is but not the way it should or can be.
The American people have largely abandoned their civic duty and disengaged from the process. We are reaping what we, and our parents, have sown and it’s not pretty. Complacency, escapism, consumerism, feelings of disempowerment, having taken their toll.
Contrast that to a literal workforce that runs 24/7 backed by billions from special interest groups who have been seeking to undermine the republic for decades now. Decades. It’s no wonder the system is corrupt and the democratic process fails to serve the people. We’ve allowed it to happen, but we can also undo the damage.
It’s an uphill battle but the garden belongs to the people. The fruits of our labors belong in our baskets. This miasma can be dispelled the moment people say they’ve had enough and stand up en masse.
I don’t believe in your mythology about the USA or its institutions. To me the American people are settler colonists, like Israelis, who have always been some of the worst people on earth. Their “civic duty” has always been part of a civic religion with no basis in reality. The reality of the US is that it is a slave society that industrialized then used that industrial might to subjugate the world, overthrow sovereign nations, and practice unlimited violence at home and abroad. It is a society that calls itself free with the largest prisoner population in the world, by numbers and by capita even comparing with nations with billions of people. It is a nation that talks about democracy but installed a literal king in my country so they can steal oil. It is a nation that genocided a population of millions to build parking lots over their holy sites then tells the rest of us they’re the good guys. The American people are the most evil and insipid people in the world and that is why their government is corrupt. Donald Trump truly is the best and most accurate representation of them.
You’re not wrong. America is just about as imperialist as they come in the modern sense. The bulk of the ‘glorious history’ of Americanism is simply being in the right place at the right time in world development and a whole lot of Hollywood. It’s been bullshit from the very beginning. The same as any large and expanding country since the beginning of time.
That said, there are only two options for humans, sit down in defeat, weighed under the crushing conformity of tradition. Or set a new course and brave the inertia and violent established interests.
You and I are more alike than we are to our respective leaders. Thus, the common man must join forces with all neighbors to climb on the back of our wolves and hold on tightly by the ears. A government unchecked by its people is a dangerous and rampaging beast. It’s our responsibility to hold our governments to higher standards. By force if necessary, but it must also come by working through and changing the system wherever possible.