Flog The Crippled Camel

The Blue Bag Rag's pre-eminent editorialist is back with a tale of how he came to favor severing ties with DeKalb and adding more government, this city, to our lives. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, a trite expression but more relevant than he may think. Given that a camel is often described as a horse designed by committee, it is an appropriate analogy for government, especially the two most overbearing in our lives: the county; and the city. 

One key ingredient at that time was the strong divisiveness between the population in the Dunwoody area (yet to be fully defined) and the county government and this was leveraged by the pro-city forces to foster great emotional support for their goals. The angry folks were of the unthinking sort, who when confronted with an issue respond with "Something must be done. This is something. Let's do this." Committees were formed and another camel was designed. Hastily, lest another something crop up catching the attention of the unthinking, or the unthinking start thinking. If that force were great in you, then you saw success manifested in a new camel, one with the tongue of a snake, a greedy appetite, and enormous capacity for defecation. But, it is your camel, and that's all that matters.

Much has changed. The original antagonist, Vernon Jones, is gone. In the meantime DeKalb had a CEO, who during a pandemic, revealed a stark contrast between the his camel and Dunwoody's. The comparison does not favor Dunwoody, and it has become clear that the editorialist's real issue was not with DeKalb's camel, but with a particular politician's personality. This cannot happen in Dunwoody because this camel ain't designed like that. But neither will we get the likes of a Michael Thurmond. 

History loops, and while it may not repeat itself, the verses rhyme. Now it appears that Dunwoody's camel jockeys may well have loaded that last, crippling straw on their camel's back. We seem to be in another period where the electorate is at odds with those camel jockeys at city hall, just as pro-city forces were at odds with DeKalb's back in the day. Things are not likely to dissipate in a couple of news cycles---this disconnect has legs. We even have a re-run of the "Jill and Vernon, sitting in a tree..." with a top city pol and a vendor exec having a remote rendezvous described by one critic as secret while defended by the pol as private. In this context the "privacy for me, but not for thee" storyline will not play well, and is reminiscent of the kind of haughty politics that fueled the flight from DeKalb. 

If the electorate remains angry then are we about to get a new camel? We can hope.

Flock? Or Glock?

There are probably no other issues today with more words spinning around them. And so little hard data. 

Starting with Flock, we have few words that do not come directly or indirectly from Flock, and, as expected, the tale these words tell is how wonderful their system is. How many bad guys have been apprehended by cops using their technology. No hard data. No idea where they got their numbers. No methodology. Not traceability. But lots of words. With a very limited shelf life, because Flock have had their site and its history removed from the internet Wayback Machine so you can't see them contradict themselves. This is the kind of opacity usually reserved for government. 

Nonetheless Flock's story is the one we have. So what are they saying? Used a million times in 2025 by 700 police departments and involved in 20% of case closures. Oh, and they've done a jam up job tracking down stolen vehicles. 

The story around guns has many, many more voices, and at least as many more statistics. It is no surprise that data are cherry-picked to support a particular conclusion, so the ranges vary widely. The ranges for what, you may ask? The number of crimes averted, prevented, avoided, etc., because the intended victim had a firearm---the defensive use of a weapon. The base data are very hard to come by because many jurisdictions do not collect data on potential crimes averted. But there are a variety of studies, some relying on estimates, unofficial reporting (media articles), and in one case polling of convicted felons regarding their aversion to armed prospective victims. No one references the Kennesaw gun ordinance. 

So what do they say? Some research, based on public surveys, indicated that hundreds of thousands, up to as many as 1.6 million, crimes are deterred by the presence of a firearm. Due to the high number, these groups are commonly categorized as 2nd Amendment zealots. On the opposite side, groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, offer a much lower estimate, approximately 70,000 effective defensive gun uses per year. While the variance is huge the words matter. One group may consider showing (brandishing) a firearm is an effective deterrent while another may only consider defensive use that results in official reports. 

So where does this get you?

Well, Flock claim their technology was involved in closing about 200,000 open cases in 2025. Bad guys caught. Taking the most anti-gun report, defensive firearms avert 70,000 crimes per year. Bad thing prevented. Therein lies the key difference, why this is comparing road apples to apples. Law enforcement doesn't prevent crime, and that is Flock's customer base. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Police presence, in decline, is at best a few degrees of separation from crime prevention and if you hear that claptrap from city hall, point out that cops are rarely seen in the wild and Dunwoody's city manager has decided to either not equip patrol cars with cruise lights or has order cops not to use them. If police presence is a deterrent, why would you not want them prominently visible? On the other hand you have an actual, proven deterrent. 

Flock, or Glock? Which would you choose? That is exactly the problem: you only get a choice in one of the two, as the other is being forced upon you. Remember one thing: they are not mutually exclusive. Your choice.

What A Brand

Honestly, you have to admire Flock's brand. It is everywhere. Everyone recognizes them when they might never notice competitor cameras. Yes, Flock has competitors. But that branding isn't flawless and recent company missteps have tarnished the brand causing what may be irreparable damage.

From the outset "mistakes were indeed made." One is the camera itself.

In retrospect, getting your inspiration from Darth Vader's helmet might have been suboptimal.

Then there was some foot-shooting going on. Flock's training materials for PoPo (police and politicians) emphasizing how best to market and justify extensive government surveillance became public. Looked a lot like propaganda though it could be viewed as smarmy marketing. "Own the narrative, or someone else will." Sounds like an effort to drown out the public's questioning voices. Vox Populi is never good. For business. Or for politics. 

Then came their "deplorable" moment when a top Flock executive declared that opposition, particularly DeFlock, were terrorists. Not very diplomatic and it doesn't look like it is working any better for Flock that "deplorables" did for Hillary. 

A goose and gander situation surfaced recently when a Flock employee servicing equipment in the field, and hence in public, took umbrage at an ordinary citizen putting them on video. Police arrived, as it now seems that Flock is their new master, though it isn't clear how Flock can do deep surveillance of someone in public, the same someone who cannot take a video of a Flocker, in the very same public arena. 

Only time will tell if Flock have something up their sleeves or under a table that allows them adequate control over their customers such that they can weather what they certainly hope is a passing storm. The concern, regardless of where you stand, is whether or not this will become a political "single issue" for a significant portion of the electorate. Then the current crop o' clowns will either react or they will be replaced by folks who represent the will of the people. While those people of will may not have a constitutional right to privacy in public spaces, by the same token the government has no constitutional mandate for suspicionless, pervasive surveillance of we the people. 

Speed Walking

Pedestrian Tracking

It's The Optics, Stupid

This is no more true than today, what with click-bait, virtual adoration and hate, and all that. You are what you appear to be. Take care to appear to be what you want people to think you are. Sometimes that isn't easy. Sometimes you really want something, you do something that just doesn't look that good. What to do? Well, most folks try to do it in the dark. There is a name for many of these people: politicians.

Optics have gotten really bad in daVille.

Intersectionality. Government surveillance meets political opacity. A marriage made in, well, made in somewhere or something. But the wedding was held at city hall, though a recent tryst was held further away. Enter the optics. 

Yet, not unusual, at least in politics. A vendor exec. A politician. They meet. Neutral territory. No published agenda. No public notification. But...results. Shortly after, vendor gets concessions on a contract. Correlation? Causality? Who knows. That's what political opacity is all about. But opacity came up against open records requests. Revealing emails were revealed. Timelines were drawn up. Not a good look.

Opacity meets optics. But the politician is term limited. Could an executive position be in the future? 

Q.E.D.

It's time to hug your local politician. Why? Because they have proven a principle upon which this country was founded: that government cannot be trusted. 

For those with a recent public education, shortly after ratifying the US Constitution they immediately added the bill of rights, securing the enumerated rights of the people of the United States. And...to protect them from a government, gone rogue, that would take those rights away. 

And here we are. 

Now many, with possible connections to a certain surveillance company, who loudly proclaim that no one in America should expect any privacy in public spaces and that should a government wish to surveil anyone...everyone...by any means available, that is just fine. SCOTUS precedence on the one hand suggests that is true, but on the other hand, SCOTUS has recognized the impact of digital technology by placing restrictions on digital tracking. Clearly the current technology is not mere observation. And this is how our current crop of government overlords have proven our founding fathers' wisdom. 

The founding fathers entertained the notion that the "bad guys" would not be restricted to the general population and that in fact they might worm their way into positions of power inside the government. And so they have. Recent reports indicate quite a few bad actors using this vunderbar "surveillance" technology for what to every observer is nothing but stalking. Well, to be fair, there are the occasional pervs who want to watch kids in bathing suits, but that's surely on the up-and-up. What the stalkers have proven is that the American public needs protection. From the government in the USA. At every level, including right here in daVille. 

So, in this 250th anniversary year, if you bump into the Mayor or a member of Council, thank them. Thank them for proving that those wise leaders in our past were absolutely right.

Gutless Wonder

America is divided. No news there. Apparently Dunwoody is as well. Again, likely not a surprise. But, is it getting worse? That seems to be the case. That great, and widening, divide seems to be between city hall's bureaucrats and politicians, and the electorate...the citizenry. It started with bonds and general tax increases. City hall loves 'em. Citizens don't. Then there is the "pave paradise" folks at city hall, whose enthusiasm is largely driven by grant funding. Folks in daVille are less enthusiastic about an interstate lane in their front yard. Then there was attempted theft of the First Baptist parking lot that left more than a few folks wondering what they were drinking at the palace. The Dunwoody Dildos are universally regarded as ugly (or worse) and are now seeing "D" lids disappearing. Apparently city hall has so pissed off folks that a little malicious vandalism is cropping up. And the latest? That would be government surveillance. The Flock surveillance system. 

A bit of vandalism here too.

Reminiscent of the Biden stickers cropping up back in the day. Probably about as effective, no matter what they're trying to do. These are just a protest. 

At least one protester decided on something perhaps a little less harmless than a sticker-protest.

That blue box hanging below the gutless camera is the power and brains of the operation, keeping in mind that the real brains are in Flock's cloud. This vandalism speaks to excessive anger combined with minimal restraint. 

It isn't clear how widespread the anti-Flock sentiment is in daVille, and we'll never know because this city will never put the matter to the citizenry for a vote. It would be interesting to find out how many folks have tried the old see-click-fix on this bad boy. 

Best Of All...

...it's Dunwoody!

 

But Is It Really Warranted?

The law is a funny thing. There's laws. There's the constitution. There are courts. There are judges. There are processes. Many of these are intended to protect us. From the government. Some work. Some don't. In many cases we are being protected from the police, from heavy-handed law enforcement. Many folks today are concerned about a ubiquitous, pervasive surveillance state. 

But is it? Is it a surveillance state? Flock's acolytes would say thee nay. They claim that their extensive hordes of cameras, their exhaustive data collection and processing is not surveillance, it is observation. You know, exactly like a cop standing on the sidewalk, taking down license plate numbers. An objective observer would see this for what it is. Bullshit. But, is it surveillance? 

Legally, probably not. There is some merit, legally, to the notion that this is simply watching folks who have entered public areas, shedding any expectation of privacy. Then it gets tricky, because we're a quarter  of the way through the 21st century. Past the Information Age. Filled with Digital Natives. And, the law, the Supreme Court, has caught up. There are precedents around Digital Tracking, and warrants are required to access records. Almost as if you have an expectation of privacy in your own person. And this includes geofencing. Geofencing is arguably exactly what that flock o' cameras, and the information collection behind it are doing. 

It won't be long before this is argued. In court. Before a judge. Maybe even the Supreme Court, and if it makes it that far precedent suggest SCOTUS will not see this extensive data gathering as the legal equivalent of a cop with a pencil and pad. Maybe it is time for state and local governments to step up. Maybe they should establish requirements for a warrant, even an administrative warrant, to perform Digital Tracking. As it turns out, the government does not have a Constitutional right to surveil us. 

Cockroaches VS Vandals

The Cockroach Janta Party, started as a bit of a lark, has proven quite effective at forcing government change by forcing the resignation of a national leader during a high-stakes testing scandal. This in a country suffering under increasingly autocratic rule which ironically is the largest "democracy" on the planet. 

Closer to home we have vandals attacking government installed, though privately owned, surveillance systems. This is likely to go as well, and be as effective, as the anarchist takeovers in Seattle and Atlanta, with the noteworthy support of the local politicians, who proclaimed the areas held by anarchists "autonomous zones." These, like the professional protestations of the Police and Fire Training Center, resulted in nothing more than arrests, and in Atlanta, the death of an innocent child. 

Perhaps the folks rising up against government surveillance should learn a few lessons from the Cockroaches.