# We put Flock under surveillance: go make them behave differently 😈
# Louis Rossmann — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W420BOqga_s

Blackberry, you're going to let me
record in peace, right? Right.
No, you're not.
Hey everybody, how's it going? Hope
you're having a lovely day. It's going
to be hard to wipe this smirk off my
face this morning. Check this out. So,
there is this company, Live View
Technologies, that was going to put up
these AI surveillance cameras in the
park in Austin that we opposed. And on
their website, they said they take a
different approach to security because
people behave differently when they know
they're being watched. And today we're
going to start to figure out if
politicians behave differently when they
know they're being watched with a tool
that makes it easier for you to figure
out when your local politicians are
putting this garbage in your city. So
this is a site called alpr.watch. It has
a map over here. And on the map you're
going to see everywhere where there is a
confirmation of a city council meeting
where they're installing license plate
readers, automated license plate
readers, flock AI powered surveillance
cameras, and so on and so forth. Many
people have been emailing me and saying,
"Louis, what do I do?" And I'll say,
"Try going to a city council hearing in
your area." and they go, "Louis, how do
I do that?" And it's like, "Where do you
live?" Okay, go to this site. Lewis,
what do I do there? And it's I I can't
have this conversation back and forth
for the thousands of people that email
me. It's impossible. So, what this site
does is it tries to make it as easy as
possible to get an alert when there's
going to be a meeting in your area. So,
the way this works is this website is
scraping over 1,800 different municipal
governments in the United States and
soon to be more as more people get
involved in this lovely little open
source project. It allows you to get
email alerts for your area. You can put
your email address into the site and
after you put your email address in, you
can put the notification radius in
miles. So, do I want to be notified when
there's a hearing within 5 miles of me,
20 m, 100 miles, 200 miles, and so on
and so forth. And you will receive email
notifications once there is a
confirmation of one of these hearings.
Now, the way this works, this is not all
automated. There are moderators. So
there are all these scrapers that are
working to try and figure out whether or
not there are different uh meetings and
hearings and we have to go through them
manually to see if they actually apply.
So for instance, this one is a keyword
for flock and sometimes a keyword for
flock is a keyword for flock and
sometimes keyword flock is flock of
emotional support birds or something
like that which obviously we're not
going to be mad at. So this one is
talking about a coverage of a backyard
flock. So obviously I'm not going to put
waste your time on that. They took
possession and said he will join their
bachelor flock. He is talking about a
farm and roosters. So obviously we're
not going to do that. So there are human
beings that are actually moderating this
website and going through every single
one of these city council and board
meetings that are scraped. Once it is
confirmed by a human being to be an
actual meeting that goes over the
installation of AI surveillance in your
area, it is added to the map. And once
it gets added to the map, if you are
signed up, you will receive a
notification. I'm hoping that your
politicians behave differently when they
are under surveillance instead of being
only one person that shows up in
opposition to these. What if 12 people
showed up? What if a hundred people
showed up? What if a thousand people
showed up? We're hoping that if we make
it as easy as possible that you'll do
the work. We've made it easy for you to
put your government under surveillance.
Are you going to make them behave
differently? I hope so. That's it for
today. And as always, I hope you learned
something. Please make use of the tool.
There's a chat room link down below for
a Zulup for the Clippies Aulup where we
discuss all of these things. Please say
thank you to Mr. Snoot in the Zulip who
was responsible for putting together
this amazing freaking site. Snoot did
put a good amount of effort and I'm sure
that he's spending money on SMTP relay
and everything else for this site to
work. So if you are happy with what he
did, there's a donate link in the upper
right corner where you can donate via
donor box, Square, Google, Apple Pay,
any of this type of stuff. And again, if
you find the work valuable, I do suggest
that you provide him a donation. I think
that what he put together is pretty
[ __ ] awesome. And this I we would
like to build this website into
something that not only shows you the
city council hearings, but I'd also like
to have a page that goes over some of
the common arguments that will work.
There's this page that I have on the
consumer rights wiki that is really
doesn't really belong in the consumer
rights wiki and should probably be on on
a dedicated site to this flock camera
stuff over here where I go over common
arguments, questions, and responses when
discussing flock surveillance. So, I'd
like to get something like this put on
the site that people can contribute to
and just have it off of the consumer
rights wiki where it's a little bit out
of place. This site is a work in
progress, but yeah, again, just great
work to Snoot and thank you to everybody
in the clipping movement for making this
possible. This would not be possible
without the work of all of you. As I've
said, this Clippy movement is not about
just changing your profile picture. It's
about doing what you can where you can
to push back. And he did, and I
appreciate that. And so does Blackberry.
Must be nice having two cans of food
before 8 a.m.
spoiled cat.
Oh yeah, now you show up to be on video
after after I'm almost done.
Yeah. Also, a large shout out to Terren.
He actually created a site that was
essentially a runner up to this. It was
an amazing site. It just was going to be
expecting a scraper to be inserted
afterwards. At the same time of this, I
don't want to discount any of the work
that he did because it was exceptional
and getting me to even believe that this
would be possible to begin with. So,
thank you very much to him and everybody
else that took time to put together
something like this. But above all,
thank you to Blackberry for being an
adorable little kitty and bothering me
throughout the duration of this video.
It's a good kitty.
[Music]
What a kitty. What a good girl.
[Music]
That's a good kitty.
[Music]
You want to turn the microphone?
[Music]
Thank you.
[Music]
That's it for today and as always I hope
you learned something. I'll see you in
the next video. Bye now.