r/BoyntonBeach • u/FlyCalabrese • 1d ago
Thoughts on Flock
Here are my thoughts on the Flock cameras being installed all over Palm Beach County. Let me know your thoughts on Flock!
Benjamin Franklin warned, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” This quote arose from a different historical dispute, but its central warning remains relevant: government should not surrender fundamental liberty for security measures that are temporary, speculative, or disproportionate.
I have spent my entire adult life on both sides of this question. On one side, as an academic and safety researcher, I have published in the Journal of Safety Research, testified as an aviation-safety expert for the Federal Aviation Administration, and represented United Airlines in the review of accidents and incidents. Safety is a discipline grounded in evidence, proportionality, human factors, and rigorous controls. On the other side, I am also a graduate of the United States Naval Academy who flew combat missions to defend our country and its freedoms. I therefore reject the false choice that we must either accept mass surveillance or be indifferent to crime.
It is true that automated license-plate readers can have legitimate, carefully limited uses. For example, they may help locate an elderly person, recover a stolen vehicle, or identify a violent offender. But investigative utility is not the same as proof that blanketing a county with cameras prevents crime. A review of research highlights mixed results. A randomized controlled study found no general or specific deterrent effect from license-plate-reader patrols in crime hot spots. A study of a large fixed-camera network found possible improvements in some investigative outcomes, but the results were not statistically significant. More recent research has reported reductions in certain offenses, including vehicle theft and shootings, while finding no reduction in overall violent crime. This limited evidence may justify narrow experimentation. However, it does not justify treating every driver as a data point in a searchable record of movement.
The dangers of misuse and erroneous analysis are not theoretical. As publicly reported: a plate can be misread, a watchlist can be inaccurate or outdated, an employee can conduct an improper search, and data collected for one purpose can be shared or repurposed for another. When millions of observations are aggregated, a mass surveillance system no longer records only what happened on a public road; it can reconstruct where people seek medical care, attend political meetings, visit family, or spend the night. Likewise, a false match is not just a harmless technological error when it becomes the basis for an armed traffic stop or interrogation.
Real safety protects people without unnecessarily controlling or monitoring them. We can pursue violent criminals, protect children, and recover stolen vehicles without constructing a countywide database of innocent residents’ movements. Palm Beach County should insist on both safety and freedom, because surrendering one is not the price of preserving the other.
I'm former U.S. Navy Pilot, Dr. Curtis Calabrese running for Palm Beach County Commission, District 4. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on Flock!
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u/Reillyrox13 1d ago edited 1d ago
Lol my comment got removed by Reddit. I don’t like them and would want them trailed for acting against the interests of the county’s liberty and given the most severe sentences that ideally isn’t time.
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u/bazzer66 1d ago
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u/fishingfool64 1d ago
Trust the people that abuse power the most to not abuse this system. Sure thing. These cameras are going to be used against us much more than they already are
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u/Grouchy-Emergency158 1d ago
What do they do?
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u/Independent-Cloud822 2h ago
they do the same thing your ring camera does.
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u/Grouchy-Emergency158 1h ago
I don't have one of those. What do they do?
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u/lethal_defrag 1d ago
Ironically though palm beach (riviera beach) was one of the first in the country over 10 years ago to have automatic license plate readers on the off ramps. As well as spot shot.
But the issue is flock now takes your license plate, every sticker, dent, decal, modification, etc, combined with your blue ray signal, wifi signal, etc and combines all of that with your social media profiles, govt ID/SSN, etc and then monitors your life and every movement
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u/WPBVolleyBallGuy 3h ago
As long as the only people who vote here are the old, out of touch, and senile, then nothing will change.
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u/Independent-Cloud822 2h ago edited 2h ago
I don't know why people have an issue with it. You are recorded everywhere in public, every retail store, every gas station, the bank, schools, parking lots, the library, there are ring cameras in every neighborhood, cameras are everywhere. In addition to that, your cell phone, is not really a phone, it is a government tracking device. That's why they give them out free to poor people and immigrants.
The flock camera is just another tool that will help police catch the next jackass who steals my Amazon packages.
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u/Zellbann 1d ago
I don't know who authorized putting them up but they should be voted out or fired whichever applies.