404 Media has the story: > Unlike many of Flock’s cameras, which are designed to capture license plates > as people drive by, Flock’s Condor cameras are pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras > designed to record and track people, not vehicles. Condor cameras can be set > to automatically zoom in on people’s faces as they walk through a parking lot, > down a public street, or play on a playground, or they can be controlled > manually, according to marketing material on Flock’s website. We watched > Condor cameras zoom in on a woman walking her dog on a bike path in suburban > Atlanta; a camera followed a man walking through a Macy’s parking lot in > Bakersfield; surveil children swinging on a swingset at a playground; and film > high-res video of people sitting at a stoplight in traffic. In one case, we > were able to watch a man rollerblade down Brookhaven, Georgia’s Peachtree > Creek Greenway bike path. The Flock camera zoomed in on him and tracked him as > he rolled past. Minutes later, he showed up on another exposed camera > livestream further down the bike path. The camera’s resolution was good enough > that we were able to see that, when he stopped beneath one of the cameras, he > was watching rollerblading videos on his phone...

The company Flok is surveilling us as we drive: > A retired veteran named Lee Schmidt wanted to know how often Norfolk, > Virginia’s 176 Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader cameras were > tracking him. The answer, according to a U.S. District Court lawsuit filed in > September, was more than four times a day, or 526 times from mid-February to > early July. No, there’s no warrant out for Schmidt’s arrest, nor is there a > warrant for Schmidt’s co-plaintiff, Crystal Arrington, whom the system tagged > 849 times in roughly the same period. > > You might think this sounds like it violates the Fourth Amendment, which > protects American citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures without > probable cause. Well, so does the American Civil Liberties Union. Norfolk, > Virginia Judge Jamilah LeCruise also agrees, and in 2024 she ruled that > plate-reader data obtained without a search warrant couldn’t be used against a > defendant in a robbery case...

Two articles crossed my path recently. First, a discussion of all the video Waymo has from outside its cars: in this case related to the LA protests. Second, a discussion of all the video Tesla has from inside its cars. Lots of things are collecting lots of video of lots of other things. How and under what rules that video is used and reused will be a continuing source of debate.

The basic strategy is to place a device with a hidden camera in a position to capture normally hidden card values, which are interpreted by an accomplice off-site and fed back to the player via a hidden microphone. Miniaturization is making these devices harder to detect. Presumably AI will soon obviate the need for an accomplice.