You want to know what’s wrong with America? We’re pussies now.
That traitor – and he surely is a fucking treason-weasel – should not have been able to safely walk out of that meeting after telling the community that they didn’t have the god-given right to address their elected officials.
The article quotes a Madison County privacy org directly:
“The Sheriff Office claims they are only using this technology for serious crimes, yet published audit logs tell a different story,” a website called Madison for Privacy says. “Madison County has searched the nationwide database over 1,200 times over just a 60 day period. In a county over only 20,000 residents, its hard to understand what could warrant this many searches.”
Holy shit, they’re not wrong. Follow that haveibeenflocked.com link to the Madison County sheriff’s office Flock searches, and the accompanying note:
These are some of the searches performed by Madison County NC SO. We have seen a total of 1,216 searches for this agency, performed by 1 person over 62 days between 3/11/2026 and 5/11/2026 (1 user was active in the most recent six months) The most recent import of records for this agency happened on 5/17/2026.
Madison County is southwest of Asheville on the state line between NC and TN, comprised mostly of unincorporated communities, which is a polite way of saying most residents live in the hills, not in the towns. The entire county has a population of roughly 21,000, and the largest town, Mars Hill, has only 2,000 residents. It doesn’t get much more rural than this on the East Coast.
So given the population and its distribution, and the fact that the sheriff’s office only serves the unincorporated communities because the three towns have their own municipal police, where the fuck does the sheriff’s office get cause or even time for what averages out to 600 Flock searches in a month?
But it gets even stranger. I clicked on a few searches, just to see what I could see, and every single one I clicked on with an unredacted reason* was associated with the same two or three other non-local police departments as the source of the information retrieved, two of which were the exact same ones every time: Forest Park Ohio PD, Tifton Georgia PD, and occasionally the Douglas County Nevada SO. There were a couple others, but always at least one of those three.
This is true whether I clicked on a homicide, a non-DUI alcohol inquiry, a burglary, a car theft, or a sex offense. (If you go to the little i next to the other PDs, it tells you, “This audit record appears in [n] different public record files.”) No matter what reason I chose, no matter how disparate the crime or the date, one if not all of those three law enforcement agencies came up as the source of the Flock information that inquiry pulled from. And this is the same of every search I clicked on, over and over and over again.
(*The sole exceptions to all this were where the crime itself was redacted, and then the associated source of information was Buncombe County, NC, which neighbors Madison Country and could potentially be a valid law enforcement reason to search Flock data.)
And when I selected the Repeat Searches checkbox at the top, defined as “Display filter that hides likely duplicate searches (identical searches within 5 minutes). Does not affect server-side counts or downloads,” an even 800 of those 1,216 searches get loaded. So fully two thirds of those searches across two months qualify as duplicates executed within five minutes of each other, to Flock parameters at least.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand how it all works on the Flock side, but it almost seems like someone in the Madison County, NC sheriff’s office is just sitting on their ass keeping serious tabs on a short list of people living in other places.
Sounds like someone’s losing the next election
I’m not saying you should… but you could… use the cameras and other open sources … darkweb and whatever else and just to utterly dox each and every one of these people promoting these products. These are not tech savvy people. They are old, decrepit, and well trained in responding only to a hearty handful of totally-not-a-bribe.
If you want these cunts to worry about security and rights… you need to make it personal.
Find an open flock cam? Live stream it with a projector where people see it. Collect some damning evidence and push it right in the face of the people who think it’s secure.
My favorite discussion topic when someone starts with that protect the children bullshit:
You are totally right! But oh wait: with devices likely headed in the direction of being a beacon of ‘my user is underage’ … doesn’t that mean you can effectively, using publicly available information, play pokemon go… except with children?! After all with the leaks and cross references… they could probably just put a filter system in place and let you just find your match. Boy, girl, age, weight, build? I see you’ve made a selection! Care to cross reference with our live footage so you can find pick out that special place for the ideal get together? Need some AI help with finalizing your choice? Let’s dress them up with a bit of help from our app developer GROK! …Promise this is your child and youre just playing dress up to pick out that right gift? Alright! Here you go! Oh its actually your significant other and youre looking for something spicy… well … why not! Heres a few more images with some fun playful outfits for the bedroom… we did you a favor and put them in a couple recommended positions we completely recommend. Go get em king! You’re ready!
Usually by this point they’ve shut the hell up and are now contemplating how to put the genie back bottle. Feel free to use some creative flair. If they dont look like they are about to be ill - you clearly need to go harder.
Damn this seems dark. Just anybody could steal our children. And so easily! We should probably gps tag them at birth. We’ll call it loli-jack. This way we’ll never lose another kid. I’m sure that won’t backfire… Hey and kids grow fast. Maybe some mandatory 3d scans of them during yearly checkups. Obviously so AI can track them if they are being trafficed. No way to disguise them then! Oh and then we can totally sell those totally anonomized scans to help with…
You’ll feel positively disgusting if youre doing it right.
After care is important: the thing I recommend is washing yourself down with iso alcohol. Get a good scrub in. Then get that inner cleanse with a stiff shot and a good cry in the fetal position in the shower. Fuck inhate this timeline.
washing yourself down with iso alcohol. Get a good scrub in. Then get that inner cleanse with a stiff shot.
But maybe grab the ethyl for the inner cleanse.
Good call. Also if you are a religious type I’d steer clear of hallowed ground for a bit. You may start to smolder after speaking such depraved words, true as they may well be, into existence.
“If you want a special meeting, you go back to the 250 years that the sheriff has been the elected official in the state of North Carolina and you have that meeting with him. This board, we don’t own Flock cameras, I’ve emailed some of you this. We don’t pay for Flock cameras. We don’t operate Flock cameras. We have no interest in Flock camera or Flock camera discussion. That’s your elected sheriff. So if you want to have a meeting with the person that’s involved with that, then you’ll have a meeting with [him], not with us that’s a legislative body. We don’t control the sheriff’s budget. We give him X number of dollars, he does with it what he wishes. I’m not having this discussion. Either you select a person or not.”
One of the residents suggests that the board of commissioners could pass an ordinance about Flock cameras; he is cut off by Garrison, who says again that the residents can pick a person to speak or not. Eventually, the residents do select one representative, who was allowed to speak for seven minutes.
Later in the meeting, another resident explains that their public records requests for details about the Sheriff’s Office contracts and use of Flock have not been sufficiently responded to. She was allowed to speak because she was providing comment about her requests for public records, and not Flock specifically. “I’m here to talk about the lack of government transparency and accountability that I’ve seen come up with the Flock issue, starting with tonight. I think that it’s disgraceful the way you are refusing to let citizens speak to their elected officials,” she said. “We’ve repeatedly asked you to hold a public meeting for us to discuss this, so I’m very disappointed to see a lack of transparency.”
We don’t control the sheriff’s budget. We give him X number of dollars, he does with it what he wishes.
Ok then, I’d like to open discussion about the sheriff’s budget. Time to make some cuts.
Sounds like the kind of place that would have a tank
Will they remember this the next time he’s up for reelection?
No they won’t. Unfortunately
Voters have a depressingly short memory.
He could also run unopposed and just win by default
That’s why democracy is also known as being ruled by the hordes of idiots. It’s amazing when people are well informed on what they are voting on, the problem is that’s never happened in mass and never will. People will vote based on their feelings or just straight up not at all.
I’m imagining the most wealthy (who think they know what’s best for the world, like P.T.) would say something eerily similar to what you are saying.
The very rich have access to all of the information. One can’t expect people who face significant barriers to higher education (and other means of informing themselves) to be on the level of experts, the educated and informed, or the very rich.
Why are people against experts, the educated, and the informed?
Partisan news media seems like the likely culprit. A broken political system posing as democracy could be another factor to consider. Opaque algorithms that put people into information bubbles (with the intention to make them addicted and as uninformed/reactionary as possible) are definitely a major factor.
Why are people against experts, the educated, and the informed?
I’m just thinking how for most of history, humanity put these people on a pedestal and let them get away with a lot (through religion, in most cases I think).
I think your culprits are accurate.
hm this name I heard before, this one I don’t know. I’ll just vote for the same person.
or not vote at all
The number of people who vote by the top name is higher than you expect.
Last name start with a B and your opponent’s last is a T… you’re getting a head start just because of that alone.
Most ballots randomize the order for that reason.
Even if he lose he will be hired by flock, it works this ways sadly.
He didn’t get the cameras, the sheriff did. They want them to pass an ordinance to block their use
Fuck elections, these types of people require more immediate consequences.
Lots of recall campaigns have successfully been done. They have the benefit of being very public and attention grabbing by nature. That’s if more immediate ejection/dismissal mechanisms don’t exist on a panel/committee.
You’re operating under the assumption that these people haven’t already made the calculation that wherever bribe they received is worth their position.
So recalling them, or voting them out, after they’ve done what they were bribed/blackmailed to do, isn’t the threat, or check on power, that many here believe it to be.
“You will not speak on Flock tonight,” he responds. “One person designated. You can pick that person … if I gave everyone three minutes to say the same thing, which is opposition to Flock, we’d never get done … I’ve spoken. I’m not debating this.”
Only politicians can be that arrogant. imagine forgetting how the fuck you got into that seat in the first place. Ironically, it’s the same reason that he thinks that one person can speak on behalf of everyone else.
Voting for somebody to make your decisions for you is crazy. But expecting that same person to agree with everything that you want is just insane.
Even with that in mind, arrogant pricks like this guy still seem to be able to berate their constituents and remain confident that they will get re-elected.
Only politicians can be that arrogant.
Have you never heard C-suite and/or millionaires talk? They all sound like that - that’s what unearned power sounds like.
The line between the two continues to blur.
Always has been under capitalism.
More like corruption rather than other values
Quick, think of some synonyms for flock. I’ll get us started:
Murder.
Gaggle.
Parliament.
let’s just talk about Cock tonight.
I understand the subtext of this and why, and it isn’t meant to be taken literally, but there’s no way that’s true. 2 lbs of copper?? Is that including solar panels?
Non paywall
It’s more reasonable than the headline makes it sound. The commissioner pointed out that he’s not in charge of the decision to use Flock cameras and told the group of people who wanted to express their opposition to him anyway to pick one representative who would do so.
I’ve been to meetings where people repeatedly express the same negative opinion of a policy to someone with no control over that policy and I guess that’s what the commissioner wanted to avoid.
But he works for the people. It’s not his call to tell the people what they want to talk about. It’s his fucking job to sit there and listen, AND THEN SEE WHAT ELSE HE CAN DO TO HELP.
Because in this moment, the listening IS the help. People need to be heard and it’s his job to listen.
he’s not in charge of the decision to use Flock cameras
but that council or whatever it was, do make the rules (local laws, ordinances) for that jurisdiction. they could do something if they wanted to. a simple ordinance prohibiting their use within their boundaries. but they do not, and they had already made up their minds–public input be damned.
No, it’s public forum and you get to say what you want regardless. You, as a citizen, shall not be silenced, no matter the topic.
Ok so when a dozen people all go to say the same thing, when do the other people get to speak? Time is finite.
If a dozen people want to talk about different things, when do the other people get to speak? The subject matter makes zero fucking difference. They get the same time regardless.
Ok so when a dozen people all go to say the same thing, when do the other people get to speak? 36 minutes later. They get 3 minutes each. These elected officials can spend a half fucking hour listening to their citizens.
Then they need to fix the issue that a lot of people are complaining about so they can get to the other matters
lol, muh freeze peach, US of A number one!!
I wish a mod would delete this, just for the irony. I get why they wouldn’t, given you’re allowed to have frozen peaches or whatever
I’ve also been to a county meeting like that. The topic at hand was expanding a greenway, but one Karen took up most of the meeting complaining about (what I have to assume is her imagination) people smuggling hookers into the city by canoe.
That can’t be an efficient way to smuggle.
oh please find us the minutes of this meeting….
Meh. Not a single thing should get done there until those cameras are gone. He certainly knows who is in charge of those cameras so he can listen again for the 121th time and so he can relay the message for 121th time. I mean what else can you do if the camera dipshit isn’t attending these meetings?
Damn, clickbait headline wins [the attention] yet again…
They want them to pass an ordinance blocking their use. They didn’t approve it, but they have the authority to stop it
Leave it up to some southern shit-ass state to stifle free speech. Public forums are just that, public, and shall not be censored or restricted in any way. Fuck this crooked ass panel / board/ whatever.
