(TikTok screencap)
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Wtf are these things
Mobile surveillance stations. Typically solar powered with a backup battery, and the inevitably monstrous result of surveillance capitalism.
The first time I saw one of these was at a Fourth of July gathering in a public park. I saw the high blue lights and I figured it was marking some kind of portable police resource center. I had imagined some basic first aid and some officers ready for emergency assistance. I had imagined something that was partly a service and partly community outreach. I had imagined something with positive features.
I was so disappointed to find out it was just cameras. Quite an emotional trip in my head there, from “We’re here to help!” to “We’re watching you, fuckers” in the space of a moment.
But I guess the cops in my suburb are no better than the cops in any other suburb.
"We’re here to help!” and “cops” in the same thought is wild lol
Sometimes the first thought is what the propaganda you grew up with said
We’re here to help “property owners and wealthy people”.
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ACAB.
AAAR
Is this your bootlicking pirate impression or ?
What? That cops are dangerous? They are. Your chances of dying go way up whenever you are in the presence of a cop. That’s why I vacate the premises whenever one walks in. You never know if he just got chewed out by his wife, or his boss, or someone else, and he’s looking for someone to take it out on.
Nothing good can come out of being in the presence of a cop.
“This. This attitude right here. Stop it.”
Yeah, so long as the police system in the US is corrupt as hell and intent on militarization and spying on the population: lol no.
Fuck the police
Wait, stop the attitude of thinking can’t help, or stop the attitude of thinking cops can?
No cop wants to help anyone but himself.
Has anyone told the crackheads how much copper is in that thing?
It’s got wheels and everything. You can literally just roll it right to the scrap yard.
There’s one of these in a shopping center around me. I flip it off every time I see it.
I mean, I deliberately drive near it, stop, roll down my window, put my arm out, and flip it off very intentionally.
I don’t care if it knows me. I’ve made no secret of my hatred for authoritarianism throughout my life. I’ve gone to more protests than I can count. Besides, if authorities really wanted to do something to me, they’d readily make things up anyway. They don’t need an excuse, so I might as well express myself.
This shit is dystopian as fuck and every time I see it or it blasts out its message about us being watched, it boils my blood.
Fuck it all. This is not okay.
. . .flip it off very intentionally.
Heehee I’m kinda glad I’m not alone here. I walk my neighborhood and people install those STUPID cameras facing the sidewalk to catch EVERYONE walking by, that whistle at you, or say “you are being recorded!”
I give it the finger without looking at it basically as a reflex now. I’ve never even flipped someone off in traffic, I’ve been told I have the patience of a saint.
But surveillance capitalism and stupid paranoid suburbanites satisfying their nosy-neighbor compulsions is definitely a line.
We’ve got those stupid towers all over the place here too. Construction sites, parking lots.
Freaking absurd. I’m upset that it’s the best crime deterrent they can come up with, because I suppose skulky fellows lurking around dark parking lots aren’t preferable either.
There will be a robot standing in that spot in 10 years.
Tell crackheads that there’s 50 pounds of copper and two catalytic converters in these things.
Or like one stick of ram
There actually might be… brb
Forget telling crackheads there’s copper, tell gamers there’s ram modules on there they could solder to their GPU
Those solar panels look pretty nice…
Come to think of it, yeah… These things will be real nice to have after the collapse.
A modestly sized, but complete and mobile off-grid solar system, just waiting for you to hitch it to your car and pull it away. Tear the cameras and lights off of it, then use the solar panels, batteries, and associated electrical equipment to power whatever small electrical loads you need.
“After the collapse” he says, with no idea what powers my posting >:)
For real. Why the fuck would you wait? This whole thing depends on us destroying this and anything like it.
Why the fuck would you wait?
Because this thing is recording video all around itself and I don’t want any cops visiting my house.
At trailers with GPS still get stolen and never recovered on the regular down south. Might be slightly different because it’s the cop’s property, but if you can kill off the tracing and WiFi early and leave it in the woods somewhere for a month you’d probably get away with it.
There’s a reason we can’t identify most ICE agents. Replicate one tiny piece of that outfit, walk less than a mile and you’re golden.
Well??? Don’t hold back, tell us about the internals and where the tracking devices are.
Think less heist, more looting. Batteries in the bottom, panels up top, charge controller in between are the good bits
Ah, I see. Electricity wiring has always been my weak spot. I’d probably fry myself or the good bits if I tried.
They’re probably just waiting for someone to do that. I think the crackhead approach is safer here.
I thought it was led screens where big brother could give a “behave as a good citizen” - on repeat every day.
No, that screen is in your pocket.
Big Brother Loves You, Join ICE
Lol 50? They would do it 2 lbs.
You can also get the same effect by telling a meth head who hasn’t slept in 7 days “hey, I think that things watching you”
Shit, even my ears perked up at that…
They know.
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I was ready to be like nah that’s just a traffic obs camera or someshit, but I looked it up and it really is a total shitheadomatic-5000
Oroville, California’s police department pays $45,000 per year for one LVT trailer
That is what’s really insane.
Yeah we’ve got a bunch of these in our neighborhood. It’s a rundown area but this just makes it worse. I’d love nothing more than to mask up and smash this shit
*Mask up and disassemble that shit for parts on the spot. Make it serve the people, rather than spy on them.
It does have some very nice solar panels on it, though.
These things are so fucking dystopian.
They really are. I visit a location with one of these regularly and a pleasant loudspeaker says “Welcome to [shopping area], please report any disturbances” and I immediately feel like I’m in Half-Life, or another dystopian video game…
I always start the chase scene early by throwing the can at his face.
The ones by me play loud classical music at night to keep homeless from setting up camp. Nothing makes me feel more safe at night than loud classical music. Just kidding it always makes me feel like a slasher movie killer is just a few feet behind me.
Probably the most dystopian thing I’ve ever experienced IRL.
“Welcome to Walmart 17…thousand. You have chosen, or been chosen, to shop at one of our finest remaining retail plazas.”
“Eat recycled food. Good for the environment and OK for you.”
The mini game dictates you properly dispose of your excrement. Civil Enforcement is concerned.
the aperture laboratories vibes, i get those when i visit old power plants for work, just by the looks
It costs less than 10 dollars to disable them.
It also costs about negative 1200 to steal them.
It costs infinitely more to do nothing.
What even are these? I’m not American, we don’t torture (or have) crackheads here. I mean we do have bums, but hard drugs are too expensive and hard to find for then I think. Booze is easy.
Anyway, in case anyone here is thinking of their local community’s wellbeing, idk what it’s like in the US with tariffs and all, but I know that in general it’s like 30 bucks off Aliexpress to get a cordless angle grinder that works with Makita batteries. Maybe 50 with a battery and charger included. Yes, they work.
It’s like portable CCTV. Police cameras. They can move them to wherever the crime is basically.
With built-in AI facial recognition and license plate reader
Thanks I hate that additional knowledge
I would like to know as well, if only since if it’s done in the US, it won’t be too long until we get it over here.
I mean, this obviously looks like some kind of mobile general suspicion surveillance system, but what’s the official story?
The official story is that it’s mobile general surveillance to deter crime.
They’re very open that it’s a surveillance system that watches everyone and records everything.
They’re a little less open about how open they are with police or exactly how much they can correlate everything with other data. Most people don’t have an intuitive feel for how easy it is to piece together a lot about their lives from some small measurements when tied to everyone else’s, so they just stop at being annoyed by the lights and sometimes fucking commercials.
take off the whole pole, i think someone did it recently, it probably cost them more to reinstall it.
Joke’s on you, I get to see both.
They aren’t common in the places I typically shop, at least not yet.
So, around here, when you see these, you know you’re in an unsafe part of town, so they’re essentially a huge advertisement to go shop some place safer and nicer. The privacy invasion aspect of it isn’t even really the biggest factor in regards to where I spend my money.
Half the derelict RVs in Seattle have a power system out of one of these bad boys
Hate it. It’s so annoying. The stores in the area hate it because it pisses people off and they complain to the stores and them the stores are like we hate them as well but the cops put them there.
I once had the lovely privilege of listening to a police higher up (lieutenant or something?) happily crow about setting these things up. I was just trying not to scoff as he said it was super effective, and yet his little slideshow showed absolutely diddly squat in any changes in the metrics they were using.
They’re more annoying than the guy who use to setup a speaker and and do busking in the parking lot. At least he provided some kind of service and not…that.
the stores are like we hate them as well but the cops put them there.
If they’re on a store’s parkinglot, they’re trespassing if they’re there without the store’s consent. That means they can be removed.
Most stores are tenants of a landlord. Even those Walmart warehouses are leased, often both in land and structure.
Even if they are tenants to a lease, the doctrine of quiet enjoyment would prohibit a landlord from being able to freely agree to having police property sitting on the store’s parking lot if their lease covers the parking lot. It’s kinda like renting a house with a yard: your lease is for the house and the yard surrounding the house. A landlord cannot just come on top the lawn and start ripping it up without the tenant’s permission.
Regardless it’s the people working at the store who don’t like it. The owner class loves this shit and hate poor people.
Time for a strike?
A landlord cannot just come on top the lawn and start ripping it up without the tenant’s permission.
On one hand, yes. On the other hand that’s only as enforceable as a tenant can fight it.
In practice it happens. Unless the tenant has the resources or there’s a legal advocacy group dedicated to that specific issue, owners tend to be able to do whatever they want so long as they use the argument of ‘protecting my property’.
The settlement and restitution just ends up something like the owner keeps their stuff there and maybe you get to terminate your lease tomorrow without being forced to pay out the whole eight remaining months of the lease. But that’s anecdotal.
On one hand, yes. On the other hand that’s only as enforceable as a tenant can fight it.
Trespass to land is a tort, which means there’s the potential for monetary damages.
I’m assuming the higher ups for one of the more corp stores allows them there. The people actually working the stores hate them.
I guess that kinda depends on the business structure. Are they fully owned and operated by the main corporation? Or are they licensees of the store’s name and brand? If it’s the first one, some humdrum middle manager could do what you said. If it’s the later, those surveillance things could be trespassing.
Each store has to take care of a part of the lot, but this is all secondhand info from employees working in the stores. So I’d assume one of the stores is fine with the yapping tower thing on one of their spots, even if the other stores aren’t.
WARNING CITIZEN! THIS AREA IS UNDER SURVEILLANCE! YOUR FACE HAS BEEN SCANNED AND ADDED TO A DATABASE!
Not too far off from what these things actually scream
They don’t say that last part, they just do it.
I sold my old car to a crackhead. He had way more chill than any kind of AI surveillance.
Was your old car made out of crack?
Believe it or not, crack heads need cars too. You can’t go fucking anywhere in this country without a car.
Did you ride along on the test drive?
Lol no he gave me $900 and we went our seperate ways. Pretty standard, honestly.
“If you can see this, you shouldn’t be shopping here.”
I do actively avoid places that have these to the extend that I reasonably can.
I feel safer around crackheads than around cops
is this the perfect example where men can finally understand why women chose the bear?
edit: I’m greatly amused that six cucks disliked this comment.
I like it. “Which do you feel safer around, a cop or a crackhead?” Should upset the wife beaters.
