this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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Flock Safety, the police technology company most notable for their extensive network of automated license plate readers spread throughout the United States, is rolling out a new and troubling product that may create headaches for the cities that adopt it: detection of “human distress” via audio. As part of their suite of technologies, Flock has been pushing Raven, their version of acoustic gunshot detection. These devices capture sounds in public places and use machine learning to try to identify gunshots and then alert police—but EFF has long warned that they are also high powered microphones parked above densely-populated city streets. Cities now have one more reason to follow the lead of many other municipalities and cancel their Flock contracts, before this new feature causes civil liberties harms to residents and headaches for cities.

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[–] Opisek@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 17 hours ago

As a surprise to precisely no one.

[–] DrWorm@piefed.social 39 points 4 days ago (7 children)

Find nodes near you and report any that are missing

https://deflock.me/

I don't see any reports in my city, but there are reports in neighboring cities. Looks like I have some work to do!

[–] neomachino@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 4 days ago

Thanks for this, I'm pretty sure I've seen these in a few spots around my area but I don't see any on the map. I'll check next time I go out.

[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

What would I look for to know where one would be?

[–] swampdownloader@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They have solar panels and once you know what to look for they’re quite apparent. Typically on every major route in/out of your town along the edge bordering adjacent towns.

Are they those ones with the flashing blue light? I see those a lot at dealerships, not sure if they're related.

[–] modus@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

And if you see one, walk back and cut it down.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago

They don't seem to be much of a thing in Ireland yet (unless people just aren't reporting them). There's 3 in Dublin, all of which are in an industrial park, and the rest (66 of them) are in Northern Ireland.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world -2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

And DESTROY them. I've been mulling pulling up behind them on the interstate, parking, popping them off with a 12-gauge, rolling on with an obfuscated license plate. Pull over in a few miles, remove the magnet. Single shot through the engine block!

But most of you libs aren't armed, can't lift a shotgun, "I might get in trouble!" At what point do you actually fight back? This seems an easy point of entry?

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Why a shotgun? This sounds incredibly dangerous for whatever is down range.

If you want to deface these, why not climb up there or throw rocks?

[–] jerkface@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

What do you think he is, some kind of LIB??

[–] jerkface@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Look at you, feeling all hard, because you THOUGHT ABOUT committing vandalism. GTFO with your bait.

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 50 points 4 days ago

Anyone else like to watch horror movies with the windows open and the volume turned up?

Totally unrelated of course but people should try it, apparently it can create quite an immersive spectacle.

[–] RaoulDook@lemmy.world 28 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Flock "Safety" read Orwell's 1984 and decided to be the infrastructure supplier for Big Brother

[–] curbstickle@anarchist.nexus 27 points 4 days ago

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 26 points 4 days ago

Imagine all the false positives from children screaming during play.

Also, fuck this dystopian bullshit.

[–] sundray@lemmus.org 21 points 4 days ago

Flock’s Gunshot Detection Microphones Will Start Listening for ~~Human Voices~~

Spanish

[–] foo@feddit.uk 23 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I can think of another company with microphones all over the place, mostly in living rooms and attached to front doors.

[–] ech@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

The same company who's CEO simped the wannabe dictator at the ego-stroking dinner?

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] foo@feddit.uk 2 points 3 days ago

Agreed. I wasn't being dismissive of the problem. It's bad IMO, and it's already widespread.

[–] markz@suppo.fi 14 points 4 days ago

What a surprise.

[–] blargh513@sh.itjust.works 13 points 4 days ago

I wonder what the resonant frequency of those mics could be? Wonder how loud it would have to be to ruin a mic?

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Allegedly, the physical construction of the gunshot mics don't make them particularly suitable to listening to conversations on the street. Like a lot of flock marketing and products, it is over promising but it can still be useful for detecting "unrest". So think less "it will hear you say 'fuck trump"" and more "it will hear a crowd of people in a starbucks realizing how fucked everything is" or "it will hear someone yell out a warning that ICE is in the area".

What is inevitable and will actually cover the individual will be the drone detection mics. The actual act of hearing a Terrorist Drone is REALLY easy from a technical standpoint and is a very similar concept to the gun shot detectors but have MUCH more sensitive mics.

[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Drones have a very specific sound that isn't similar to anything else, so I'd imagine picking up a drone would be much simpler than someone in distress.

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 days ago

Yeah. It is a shockingly easy problem to solve. The point is more what the hardware is designed to listen for.

Drones? A quadrotor big enough to handle a... paint balloon is not that big. That is why so many dumbass russians don't hear it until it is too late in Ukraine. So you need a fairly sensitive mic and the hardware to filter through all the background noise.

Gunshots? You COULD rig something up to do similar so you can hear a gunshot from a mile away but there really isn't a point since that wouldn't be actionable data for the real customers (cowardly cops who want to run the other way). And you want to sell a LOT of these because triangulation obviously means square mile because said customers don't understand trigonometry. So you want to focus on loud noises and be able to distinguish a gunshot from a car backfiring from fireworks. So relatively low sensitivity mics and hardware more geared towards that.

Which, when you are re-purposing them for surveillance, are very different tools.

[–] archchan@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 days ago

Can we just shoot the dystopian mass surveillance devices please?

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 6 points 4 days ago

This will exclusively have the effect of deploying police to the location of mentally I'll homeless people, making things worse.

[–] notannpc@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

So what ways could these devices be disabled with the minimum amount of risk? I suspect a strong enough laser could damage the image sensor. But what about the microphones?

Because I highly doubt we can count on the law to protect us from this.

[–] wcbdata@vis.social 2 points 4 days ago

@BrikoX What could possibly go wrong?™️

[–] caveman8000@lemmy.world 0 points 4 days ago

As long as Lucius Foxx is the only one with the key...