In stopped clock is right twice a day news, Florida is moving to ban Flocks from state highways.
Aside from Florida, there is a bunch of momentum all around the US now. Some cities just moved to another ALPR vendor like Axon. That sucks ofc. But many have eliminated ALPR entirely too, after citizens spoke out! Some cities had a constant stream of ppl speaking at city council meetings about it, months on end, dozens of ppl in every meeting.
It’s harder to deal with Flocks on private property. Like Home Depot and Lowes. A city gov terminating its own contract, doesn’t stop Home Depot. I dream of a coordinated, nation-wide boycott of co’s that put private Flocks in their lots. And letting them know exactly why.
Let’s keep the anti ALPR momentum going. It’s starting to see results. And don’t fall into the illogic of thinking it’s not perfect, therefore it’s useless.
Home depot and Lowe’s are often the only significant home repair place around. In order to boycott one, the other will have to take the first step and remove the cameras. (Which would probably be Lowe’s since I heard Home Depot donated to Trump and the former CEO is a big supporter)
Still, a boycott won’t work well as long as we have a lesser of two evils situation.
In my area, we have an Ace Hardware. If you find that or True Value in your area, hit one of those up instead. They don’t have as much, but should offer enough for most needs. The Ace near me is small and has none of these cameras.
Oh, I love Ace. The employees know me by name. That’s probably a red flag, but I don’t care. Yeah, it’s pricey though.
We also have Outdoor Supply Hardware here. The nut and bolt section is handyman heaven.
Still, as great as they are, sometimes I need construction stuff from the other stores.
TBH, I don’t see it as a red flag. Well, unless the employee is making notes in a corporate system about you or w/e, that’s different.
But if you buy stuff, and employee recognizes you with their human brain and human eyeballs, I don’t have a problem with that. It’s the data aggregation which is harmful IMO. The automated systems extracting all possible info. The personal dossiers. The population scale. The inferences made about everyone, and selling to other co’s to predict and manipulate all our behavior.
I walk into local sandwich shop, Joe behind the counter greets me by name b/c I’m in every week? I’m cool with that.
Do you have Harbor Freight? I forgot about that one. It’s hard to avoid the big places and they know this well.
Yup, have those around too. My motto with Harbor Freight is “buy cheap first. If it works, great. If it breaks, buy better.” Serves me well, but not worth testing & investing in battery lock-in tool lines.
Lots of neat gadgets and supplies though. How much tech do you need in screwdrivers, clamps, and consumables.
That is a great motto for that place lmao. I hate the tool lock-in hell.
They have facial recognition surveillance inside so what’s the difference
I’m aware of the lawsuit suggesting home Depot is using self checkout cameras to scan and log biometric data. I am waiting for that to play out in court however.
If true, then yes, throw the book at them. It is likely video is sent to remote processing hardware that does violate the law.
However, I’ll point out that is an assumption as the plaintiff nearly saw a rectangle around his head which doesn’t necessarily indicate anything beyond object identification; basic technology built into cameras for decades now.
In this case Home Depot themselves somewhat implied legitimacy to the complaint in their defense of it. Smooth move guys.
I don’t know of any lawsuit but just assume any store with the resources to do such a thing is doing it.
Also there’s no reason they shouldn’t be allowed to do that. It’s their store. As long as they aren’t giving free access to LEO or feds or whomever they can do it all they want.
There are notification requirements if they use the technology in store. The tech it’s self is allowed.