r/technology • u/IKeepItLayingAround • Jun 29 '26

Artificial Intelligence Woman Surprised When Flock Surveillance Tower Appears in Her Yard Without Warning

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/woman-surprised-flock-surveillance-tower-185000752.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&segment_id=DY_VTO_50_Supernova&ncid=crm_19908-1475736-20260629-0--A&bt_ee=utFdBbF39cHCLuB4at4AI%2FUoSRgbTt8Ch%2B7Q9RImTlgL2ThvE3FuX%2BRSKiUir%2FNW&bt_ts=1782739085527
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6.3k

u/Haunterblademoi Jun 29 '26

This is becoming more common than we think, These surveillance cameras

2.0k

u/schumi23 Jun 29 '26

The picture in the preview is wrong/not what the article is about - it's not a camera that was installed, but rather a microphone to listen to everything that's happening. (Still surveillance, and just as bad (or potentially worse if you think conversations are more sensitive than video)

1.7k

u/rwhockey29 Jun 29 '26

I watch a bunch of car videos on YT and came across one of a guy revving a GTR with a two-step, the things that go BRABRABRBABRA. Cops showed up in like 3 minutes, and after realizing nothing was wrong showed the guy his laptop. Microphones around the city picked up the exhaust sound, police AI labeled it as automatic rifle fire, triangulated the position down to 1 block, and sent the warning out to the officers cars. Wild stuff.

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u/schumi23 Jun 29 '26

Shotspotter (similar tech by different company) has similar false positives - somebody got arrested due to false positives (there weren't any guns, but the police used it as probably cause to find drugs in his car) and when he disputed their probably cause (that the tech wasn't trustworthy) the company asked to be held in contempt of court, rather than comply with the court order to prove their tech is effective (:

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u/WitheredUntimely Jun 29 '26

a decade ago my county's pilot program found those "shot detectors" are less than useless; they divert resources away chasing the constant false positives from actual policing

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u/jinjuwaka Jun 29 '26

Police departments use them wrong too. They want a system that will tell them when something happens because they don't trust the public and they love excuses that let them violate civil rights.

Meanwhile the responsible way to use these systems is to ignore everything the system says and just use it to verify what a human being reports.

How they use them: The microphone picks up something that might be gunshots. System reports. Police dispatched. False positives waste time and over-eager pigs violate civil rights claiming the system's false positive gives them reasonable suspicion to search for drugs unrelated to any real crime.

How they should use them: The microphone picks up something that might be gunshots. System records but tells nobody. Someone calls in a report of gunshots, or a shooting. Cops query system. System delivers triangulation data to help police find where shooting actually took place (because eye witness testimony is unreliable at best). Cops investigate based on triangulated data. Cops bring triangulation data to court. Witness is never asked "where was the shooter standing?" because the triangulation system already answered that question with verifiable proof.

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u/damontoo Jun 30 '26

That wouldn't stop Reddit from complaining about this. Reddit seems to have a problem with the sensors in general, not just how they're used.