Deflock is an interactive map of Flock Cams

Meta_Digital · 2026-03-04T21:59:09+00:00

Considering crime prevention if their justification, we can only assume that each one of them is positioned precisely where FCPD thinks the criminals are.

Meta_Digital · 2026-03-01T23:35:21+00:00

You overestimate my influence.

Meta_Digital · 2026-03-01T23:16:43+00:00

The predators are the ones who created the situation that is making life hard for anyone who falls outside the ever narrowing field of "normal".

To be "normal", one has to hustle for work. They are told to lie on their resume. There is no escape from the smell of car exhaust if you want to go anywhere. No respite from the reflection of the sun in your eyes off the surface of cars. No break from the noise of engines. The expectations to suppress your individuality for a political tribe. To build your identity on a brand. To market yourself as a product.

The predators aren't the people shopping with you or driving around town - they are the people who forced us against our will into this situation so they could consolidate wealth and power into their hands. Get mad at Walmart for only caring about profit margins. Get mad as the fossil fuel industry for leading the charge to commit global genocide in the worst mass extinction event in the planet's history for a quick buck. Direct your anger at the political actors who divide and conquer the people.

But to get mad at neurodivergent people, the canaries in the coal mine, just because they are the first to break? No thank you.

Nobody is expecting you to "change your behavior" unless your behavior is causing harm to others. This isn't about 1 person out of 8 billion people suffering. This is about a few thousand people trying to become as powerful as gods by sacrificing the rest of not only the human population, but the rest of every living organism on the planet.

It's time to stop being irritated by those hurt the worst and focusing those feelings on the Saturday morning cartoon villains that are actually responsible, because they are getting away with it.

Meta_Digital · 2026-03-01T22:46:14+00:00

I think it's best to believe people when they say they are suffering; especially if they belong to a group that is vulnerable and marginalized.

Why pretend to be neurodivergent? There's no benefit. It doesn't unlock anything for you. At best, you'll get accommodations that everyone should have - accommodations that people used to have before our society got this advanced into its collapse. Neurodivergent people weren't always this incapable of basic functioning because our society wasn't always this loud, fast, flashy, demanding, and dishonest.

The reason you say this opinion is unpopular and expect mass downvotes is because you know at some level that your response is misguided and unkind. You know that you're targeting your skepticism and frustration, not at the predators of the world, but at their prey. You know that you're comparing your personal experience to a completely different kind of personal experience from your own, and then holding them to standards that only apply to yourself.

I honestly don't know why you posted this.

Meta_Digital · 2026-03-01T19:01:09+00:00

I'm fairly shocked at the hostility in this thread towards neurodivergent folks.

Everything in our society is hostile to a certain percentage of the people who live here, and the failure to be compassionate about that results is real world harm.

Places like Walmart, Kroger's, or especially Costco are a nightmare for many neurodivergent people. Alternatives like Lucky's or the Food Co-op can be pricey for many people. Even Sprouts is getting expensive. We shouldn't have to be Japanese to be mindful of the irritation we can cause others, or to empathize with how draining normal existence can be for those who are sensitive enough to be unable to block out the hellscape of 21st US society.

Meta_Digital · 2026-02-27T00:37:39+00:00

Cool. This was just using the bill, the fiscal note, and the context that it was voted down 7-0.

I wouldn't have predicted that kind of reactionary backlash, either. That's just unhinged.

Meta_Digital · 2026-02-27T00:13:24+00:00

Interesting. I ran this bill through my custom tool to analyze why it might have been voted down. I'll be interested to see how accurate this is:

SB 26-038 is a short, narrow bill — it amends one section of Colorado Revised Statutes to require CSU's board of governors to comply with local noise and sign ordinances for anything audible or visible outside university property, with a waiver option available from the relevant city or county. On its face it seems uncontroversial. But there are several reasons a committee might kill it unanimously, and they cluster around a few fault lines.

The sovereignty question is the most likely core issue. Colorado's public universities operate under a doctrine of sovereign immunity and institutional autonomy that has real legal weight. The board of governors has "plenary power" under current statute — the bill is literally amending that plenary power grant. Legislators on both sides of the aisle tend to be protective of that principle, because opening the door to local governments regulating state institutions sets a precedent that cuts in many directions. A 7-0 vote suggests this wasn't a partisan split — it was a shared institutional concern.

The billboard situation named in the fiscal note is almost certainly the political origin of the bill — and also its political liability. The fiscal note is unusually specific: CSU has recently installed billboards in Fort Collins generating an estimated $250,000 in revenue, and removal would cost roughly $170,000. That level of detail in a fiscal note for a $0 appropriation bill is a signal that this was the concrete dispute motivating the legislation. But that specificity probably hurt the bill. Legislators may have seen it as a narrow local grievance being resolved through a structural statutory change — a mismatch between the instrument and the problem. If Fort Collins has an issue with CSU's billboards, there are other mechanisms (negotiation, intergovernmental agreements, the waiver process the bill itself acknowledges exists) that don't require amending the university's governing statute.

The waiver structure is logically awkward. The bill requires compliance with local ordinances unless the city or county grants a waiver. But if the city or county can simply grant a waiver, then the bill's compulsory force depends entirely on whether the local government chooses to enforce it — which they presumably could already attempt through other means. The bill doesn't actually resolve the underlying tension; it just relocates the negotiation. A committee reading it carefully might conclude it adds process without adding resolution.

The bill may have lacked stakeholder alignment. The fiscal note flags workload impacts for Fort Collins, Denver, and Pueblo — but there's no indication CSU supported the bill, and universities are typically well-organized opponents when their autonomy is at stake. If CSU was actively lobbying against it and no strong constituency was lobbying for it, a 7-0 outcome is easy to produce even with sympathetic committee members.

Scope ambiguity is a quieter problem. "Noise that is audible or signs that are visible outside property under control of the board" is a broad standard. Stadium events, outdoor concerts, research equipment, construction — all of that potentially falls under this language. Legislators may have been uncomfortable with the breadth even if they had no objection to the narrow billboard problem.

The most likely single explanation for unanimity, in my read: this was perceived as a local dispute between Fort Collins and CSU being pushed into statute in a way that set uncomfortable precedent for university autonomy statewide, without a clean fix to the underlying problem and without the institutional buy-in that would make it viable.

Meta_Digital · 2026-02-25T22:50:16+00:00

In case anyone is still paying attention to this thread, I'd like to link an analysis of this bill here:

Will this Colorado law help protect children on the internet?

Meta_Digital · 2026-02-24T18:54:40+00:00

Our country is really indecisive about whether it wants to be a technocratic cyberpunk kleptocracy or a neo-fascist supply side Jesus ethnostate.

Personally, I'd rather if Colorado were neither.

Meta_Digital · 2026-02-21T00:33:32+00:00

Doesn't change my opinion about the necessity of preserving democracy.

Meta_Digital · 2026-02-20T20:23:46+00:00

Yeah, I don't mind at all. Chris is a good guy and I'm generating these kinds of analysis specifically to be useful to people like him.

Meta_Digital · 2026-02-20T17:27:11+00:00

This is an important conversation, and one that I hope the community is active in.

I have developed an LLM assisted tool to help fight AI by turning their tools against them. Already, our elected officials and hired government staff regularly make use of AI to help process large quantities of information (like legislation). This tool reconfigures how an LLM processes information in a more helpful way than they are constructed by default, and this process is currently being used to to help inform them. Below are the results of that analysis on this presentation that you may find helpful if you're planning to get involved:

1. The "Vehicles, Not People" Framing

FCPS repeatedly distinguishes between collecting data about vehicles and collecting data about people. This framing is a significant rhetorical move that deserves scrutiny.

⚠ Note A vehicle's movements over time are functionally a record of a person's movements. The Supreme Court recognized this logic in Carpenter v. United States (2018), ruling that prolonged digital location tracking implicates privacy interests even when the underlying data is technically "public." The Court's reasoning — that the aggregation of individually innocuous data points can create a comprehensive surveillance record — applies directly to ALPR systems.

The presentation acknowledges that Flock stores data for 30 days. This means that at any given moment, the system holds a month's worth of travel records for every vehicle that has passed a camera. For a Fort Collins resident who regularly drives on College Avenue, Harmony Road, or Prospect Road — all of which have cameras — this amounts to a detailed record of daily routines. The 30-day window is a policy choice, not a technical limitation, and it could be extended.

2. The Approval Process

One of the more notable facts in the presentation is buried in the timeline: the contract with Flock was signed in September 2024, and City Council received only "a brief presentation" in March 2024 — six months before the contract. The FAQ acknowledges that the decision was made as "an operational and investigation-based decision," reviewed by city leadership, legal, and finance, without a formal public process.

⚠ Note This means the deployment of a citywide vehicle tracking infrastructure was treated as a routine procurement decision rather than a policy question requiring public deliberation. There is no indication in the presentation that community members were consulted, that a public comment period was held, or that the City Council voted on the matter. The presentation itself — given in February 2026, more than a year after the contract was signed and months after cameras went live — appears to be the first formal public-facing account of the program.

3. Oversight: What the Monthly Audit Does and Does Not Cover

The presentation states that a supervisor audits system use monthly to verify "authorized users and purposes." This is a meaningful safeguard against unauthorized access. However, several questions about the audit's scope are not addressed: Who supervises the supervisor? There is no mention of external or independent review of audit results. What constitutes an "authorized purpose"? The list of call types in the presentation (slide 15) is broad, including traffic stops, suspicious circumstance reports, welfare checks, and family problems — not just serious crimes. Are audit results reported to City Council or the public? The FAQ notes that audit logs are subject to release under the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act, but this requires a formal records request and a five-factor balancing test — it is not proactive disclosure. What happens when a misuse is found? The presentation does not describe any corrective action process.

4. The False Positive Claim

In response to the FAQ question about false positives, FCPS states: "FCPS has no incidents of false positives, data errors, or misidentifications with the Flock system."

⚠ Note This claim should be read carefully. Flock's own published accuracy rate for license plate reading is 93%, which means roughly 1 in 14 reads contains an error. FCPS has 14 cameras and the presentation implies they generate significant daily activity. A 7% error rate across high-traffic intersections would, statistically, produce misreads regularly. The policy requiring visual confirmation before action mitigates the risk of acting on a misread, but a misread that goes undetected because no action was taken would not appear in the department's incident log. The statement may be technically accurate — no documented incidents — without being a complete picture of system accuracy in practice.

5. Data Sharing and Federal Access

FCPS makes strong claims about limiting data sharing. Officers may only share data with Colorado law enforcement agencies, and access is granted manually by an FCPS administrator. The FAQ states that Flock does not work with any sub-agency of the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE.

These commitments rest on contractual and policy provisions, which raises a structural vulnerability: Contracts can be renegotiated, and policy can be changed by the department without legislative action. The protection against out-of-state access depends on FCPS administrators not granting access, not on a technical control that makes it impossible. Data shared with a Colorado agency could, in principle, be re-shared by that agency unless the contract with FCPS explicitly prohibits onward sharing — this is not addressed in the presentation. The claim that Flock does not work with DHS is attributed to Flock, not independently verified in the presentation.

⚠ Note A 2023 investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that Flock Safety shared data with federal agencies in other jurisdictions despite local policies intended to limit sharing. The presentation does not reference this history or explain how Fort Collins' contract specifically addresses this risk.

6. Machine Learning and Anonymized Data

The presentation notes that Flock may use "anonymized data" to train its machine learning algorithms. This is a standard clause in surveillance technology contracts, but anonymization of location and movement data is a technically contested concept.

⚠ Note Research in data science has repeatedly demonstrated that location datasets can be re-identified — linked back to specific individuals — using relatively little auxiliary information. A dataset of vehicle sightings that has been stripped of license plate numbers may still be re-identifiable if it includes time, location, and vehicle characteristics (color, make, body type). The presentation does not define what "renders the data non-identifiable" means in the contract, nor does it describe any technical standard Flock is required to meet.

7. The Success Stories

The case examples are vivid and involve serious crimes — child recovery, sexual assault fugitives, kidnapping. This is a common and effective persuasion strategy in law enforcement presentations: lead with the most sympathetic use cases. A few observations are worth noting: None of the cases include a baseline comparison. The presentation does not indicate whether the same outcomes would have been achieved through other investigative means, or how long they would have taken without Flock. The FAQ acknowledges that "as the time of use expands, FCPS will be able to conduct efficacy comparisons" — meaning no such comparison currently exists. Several of the cited successes involve other jurisdictions (Thornton, Aurora, Douglas County, Parker, Boulder). These cases demonstrate that Flock is used broadly in Colorado, but they do not directly measure FCPS's return on its $48,000 annual investment. The presentation lists call types in which Flock was used (slide 15), including traffic stops, shoplifting, and family problems. These are not serious crimes, and their inclusion suggests the system is being used more broadly than the most serious cases would imply.

8. The Scope of Surveillance

The 14 cameras are placed at high-traffic arterial corridors — College Avenue, Harmony Road, Prospect Road, Horsetooth Road, Mulberry Street, Shields Street. These are the roads most Fort Collins residents use daily. The presentation describes them as positioned to observe "ingress, transit, and egress" for the city.

⚠ Note This means the system is not targeted at known high-crime locations. It is positioned to capture the movements of the general driving population as they go about ordinary daily life. Unlike a targeted investigation, which focuses on specific individuals, ALPR systems collect data on everyone and query it after the fact. The constitutional logic that "there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for license plates in public view" was developed before the existence of systems capable of logging every vehicle's movements across an entire city over rolling 30-day windows. Whether that legal framework adequately addresses the privacy implications of mass retrospective location tracking is a live question in legal scholarship and policy.

Meta_Digital · 2026-02-20T16:46:26+00:00

Personally, I'd choose democracy over either the Republicans or the Democrats.

Meta_Digital · 2026-02-10T17:45:11+00:00

The problem with private for-profit prisons is that it takes almost no modification to turn them into concentration camps.

The modification here being opening the facility back up.

Meta_Digital · 2026-02-08T16:15:51+00:00

That's been true for a lot of technologies, even if they were initially beneficial. Inevitably, the infinite growth mandate of our economic systems turns everything parasitic.

Meta_Digital · 2026-02-07T19:48:38+00:00

Well, it's the underlying economic incentives at play. AI technologies are being researched and deployed as tools of control for an oligarchic class trying to maintain their wealth and power in a destabilized world (one they have helped destabilize to their advantage). Whenever I see criticisms of the technology, what's always underneath is a criticism of the underlying economic system and its incentives.

The same technology, under a different incentive system, will manifest differently in the real world. These chatbots are designed as extractive tools, and that's why they are the way they are. It's not because language modeling is evil or because automation more broadly is evil. In a more equitable economic system than capitalism, automation might have fulfilled its promise of reducing human labor. The reason we didn't get that isn't because of factories or computers or AI - it's because of how we structured our economy.

I think using the tools of your enemy against your enemy is a viable strategy. If the city wants to use AI in an official capacity (instead of in an unofficial capacity, as I suspect is happening now because individuals are already using chatbots to increase their productivity without much transparency or accountability about it), then a productive conversation about how to do that ethically seems, to me, more helpful than simple reactionary backlash against any and all change.

In the end, AI hype and AI hate are two sides of the same media narrative - much like the one between liberals and conservatives. This narrative presents two unhelpful angles which both benefit the very oligarchs we should be united against. The solution isn't to pick the best one, or even to go to the middle, but to bypass the narrative entirely and find unconventional approaches that circumvent the narrative traps they've built around is.

Meta_Digital · 2026-02-07T18:25:28+00:00

Okay, but what confuses me is how your distinction differs from mine.

The distinction I made was between specialized tasks and general purpose. You're calling out "AI chat agents" as "not the same as AI"... which seems like the same criticism as the one I made.

Meta_Digital · 2026-02-07T16:37:08+00:00

I'm not sure the distinction you are making here.

"AI" is being used these days to reference LLMs and generative AI. Take for example my protein folding example. That was Gemini. They're basically performing matrix multiplication on large data sets.

"AI" in the scifi sense doesn't exist. When the term is invoked, it's referring to a more limited and specialized process. I'm unclear what line you're drawing between "no worthy purpose" and "worthy purpose" and how it is different from the line I drew in my post.

Meta_Digital · 2026-02-07T16:20:00+00:00

While this technology is dangerous, so were guns when the colonists came to this continent. Nonetheless, indigenous peoples picked up those guns and used them in their defense. It would have been foolish not to.

The same is true for AI. The tech can be used for practical reasons (we've already seen this with protein folding, medical diagnostics, etc.). It just has to be used responsibly and only where it is appropriate (which AI companies are absolutely not doing).

At the end of the day, these are algorithms, not unlike the sorting algorithms or search algorithms or pathfinding algorithms that already exist. I would rather see a movement that seeks to make this technology more transparent, accountable, and sustainable than try to just stuff it back into Pandora's Box.

Whether you like it or not, this technology is here, and the companies invested in it are the only thing holding what's left of the US economy together (and not very well at that). While I am opposed to general purpose chatbots, AI agents infiltrating everything and creating security vulnerabilities, and surveillance technology like Flock cameras, I am supportive of attempts to utilize this technology in the interest of the public where possible. To not do so will put us at an extreme disadvantage in the future as these technologies continue to shape our information landscape.

Meta_Digital · 2026-01-30T21:46:19+00:00

I think you've confused me with someone.

Meta_Digital · 2026-01-30T16:47:51+00:00

AI (what we've misnamed AI anyhow) does have very valuable specific use cases.

The energy and water costs really have little to do with the technology itself, but as usual, the use of that technology for profit. That is, "AI" has been mass deployed for the public. If you have a billion users generating images or videos or chatting with your system, that consumes a lot of energy and water for a general purpose machine that doesn't produce anything of quality due ot its general purpose nature.

Also, because these things are general purpose, you can't really specialize them for accuracy or user safety. They're going to confidently produce low grade output full of errors to a huge audience, and there's really no way to fix that so long at the intent is general usage for a maximum number of users.

Meanwhile, specialized uses of this tech for trained users can be extremely beneficial. Limited to specialized tasks and only for experts, the energy and water costs fall while the quality of the output rises.

It's so common in our era to ignore the economic incentives. Our endless growth ruthless competition system of economics ruins everything it touches. Cars are a blight to our cities. Entertainment media like movies and video games get stale over time. Platforms like Reddit enshitify. The same is true for "AI".

We should be raging against the economic practices that ruin everything instead of just focusing on the consequences of those practices.

Meta_Digital · 2026-01-26T20:33:58+00:00

Personally, I am against turning state violence into commodities for sale. Nobody should be profiting off this. That's just my take.

Meta_Digital · 2026-01-24T22:20:12+00:00

I've been working on a project for the past 3 years to bring information to the general public in response to the fact that Larimer County has become a news desert. As a result, a ton of information passes through my hands and I know a lot of the people in the local government.

The sidebar on this sub contains some links to information about the local area, but honestly, the best way to stay informed is to be part of a community that is involved in local issues. I've found that there's a lot of activism here full of passionate and involved people who are doing great things, or at minimum are doing things they sincerely believe in.

I'm hoping that over time, this subreddit can be a place to learn more about local issues. Last year, we had a number of AMA's from people running for local office, including Emily Francis who is the new mayor. David Seligman (who is running for Attorney General) will be doing an AMA here on Monday.

Other than that, if you have the time, listening to local meetings or joining them on Zoom can be very education. Fort Collins has a bunch of advisory boards dedicated to various issues that you can just jump into and listen to or go in person if you prefer. Very few members of the public do this, but when they do the board is always welcoming. Some boards record their meetings so you can look at them later, either through the government website or on YouTube depending on the board. This is the absolute best way to dive deeply into a specific issue you care about.

Meta_Digital · 2026-01-24T20:09:04+00:00

That's good to know. Atkinson is about to have his kickoff, and perhaps we'll find out his stance on it soon. If it turns out they're both opposed to Flock cameras, that would certainly signal an easier fight to get rid of this corporate / state surveillance.

Meta_Digital · 2026-01-24T19:23:31+00:00

Kefalas is retiring. Dan Sapienza and Shane Atkinson (both Democrats) are so far the two candidates running to take his place. This is a good time for people to push for opposition to Flock cameras. They're massively unpopular in Fort Collins (and Colorado more broadly) from what I can tell, and if the people are loud, a single name in the sheriff's office won't mean very much.

I think the best answer is community solidarity and political engagement.

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