An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amid a number of updates for moderators and developers announced Wednesday comes bad news for supporters of a more open web: Reddit is ending support for RSS feeds. Reddit says RSS has now become a "common surface for large-scale scraping and automated abuse," which is why it's made the decision to wind down RSS feeds on its platform. "We know RSS has been a beloved part of the open web for a long time, and we're grateful to everyone who used it to stay connected to Reddit," the company noted in its announcement, where it also shared a March 2027 shutdown date for its public API. Reddit said RSS support will cease on November 13.
[...] The RSS change was one of several updates issued on Wednesday by the company. Another big change will be the end of its public API. Public API access will also end by March 2027, which will impact any tools that used it for programmatic access to Reddit conversations, including social listening products, those used by researchers, and AI products, such as AI assistants. Today, those assistants can use Reddit to answer questions, but after closing public API access, they will need to forgo commercial deals with Reddit for its data.
In addition, Reddit provided an update on its Rules Hub progress and auto-mod changes, and said it was "adding safeguards" to its classic, text-heavy version of its site known as Old Reddit. The latter will include limiting access to logged-in moderators and recent users -- changes Reddit also said were required because of "abusive scraping and automated traffic." Reddit said in the next few months it will limit access for logged-in users to those who have used Old Reddit in the last 90 days. The company also reminded developers building approved third-party apps and bots to register them with the company before January 12, 2027, to avoid disruption. After that date, Reddit will remove API access for any developer that hasn't registered.
The United States Postal Service is running a pilot program to put cameras in its mail carrier trucks that continuously scan roads and signs, map roadways and sidewalks, and improve “community safety,” according to a letter posted by a labor union and a statement from the agency to 404 Media. The idea is that, since the trucks are constantly traveling anyway, they can be used as a way to collect data, eventually potentially across the nation.
“The purpose of this pilot is to leverage the Postal Service’s unique ability to collect this valuable data due to the scale and frequency with which our fleet of postal vehicles travel the streets of every community across the country,” the letter, posted by NALC Branch 238 to Facebook, reads.
The letter, written by the United States Postal Service (USPS) Labor Relations to Brian Renfroe, the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, says the USPS will partner with Next Base, a dashcam company, for the pilot. At the moment, the cameras will be used in the Washington, DC area, and will be installed on a hundred vehicles, the letter says.
On its website, Next Base offers a variety of dash cams, marketed to ordinary drivers, fleet operators, and ride share drivers. Its website says Next Base’s cameras record in up to 4K, and can capture every “license plate” with precision. The cameras don’t run automatic license plate reader (ALPR) software, though.
The letter continues, “Next Base cameras will scan and analyze roads, signage, maps roadways [sic] and sidewalks.” It says the cameras will be forward-facing, installed inside the trucks, and will begin recording as soon as the vehicle is in drive and away from the postal facility. “The cameras will not hinder the vehicle operator’s field of vision, nor does it record audio,” it adds.
The pilot was slated to start on September 21, and is expected to last several months, the letter says.
A spokesperson for the USPS told 404 Media in an email “The Postal Service is conducting a limited pilot to assess whether vehicle-mounted cameras can help identify roadway conditions and support community safety. The pilot includes privacy safeguards and requires no additional action from employees. Findings will inform any future decisions.”
USPS trucks already have 360 degree cameras that capture the outside of the vehicle for a period of time.
As the CEO of comedy streaming platform Dropout, as well as both the host and executive producer of its boldly ambitious game show/prank show/performance art piece Game Changer, Sam Reich wears a lot of hats. In honor of the show’s eighth season finale last week, though, The A.V. Club asked Reich to dive deep on just one of those hats: his role as a game designer for a show that prides itself on changing the rules of the game every single episode. While he prepares for production of the show’s ninth season, Reich talked us through the thinking behind all 10 of Game Changer’s season eight episodes, including the push-and-pull of encouraging competition in his players, how games can sometimes get “too crunchy” for their own good, and the ways he stops himself from turning into Mr. Beast.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
The A.V. Club: You and your team probably have more practical experience in making TV-ready, vastly different game shows than anybody on the planet at this point.
Sam Reich: Generous of you to say TV. And “TV-ready.”
AVC: What did you and your team learn while making season eight of Game Changer?
SR: This is a much longer answer than you bargained for. I can already feel it brewing in the back of my head/throat. But I think that when we began Game Changer as a show, we began it… I’m using the royal we here. I began it with a love of the avant-garde and having done the occasional escape room, but with very limited understanding of actual game design. And so you see us, especially in the first handful of seasons, really ebbing back and forth between stuff that feels more like game and more like performance art.
I think what separates those out for us now, as we’re thinking about them in the writer’s room, is, “Is this a game that’s trucking toward an inevitable conclusion, or not?” And I think this season, and you might appreciate this as someone who appreciates games, we were eager to flex more of what we had learned about game design. And I think at times that yielded really interesting results. And at times, probably, games got a little too crunchy for their own good in ways that were really fun for the players to play, but maybe didn’t translate quite as well for the viewers at home.
AVC: Can you give an example of that?
SR: So, I really like “I Spy” as a game. And in a way, we took the very traditional game of I Spy, and we applied some Mafia, Werewolf, Blood On The Clock Tower mechanics to it in ways that I think were fun and interesting. It made the episode a little bit less predictable than it would be if it were just an I Spy game, and also offered it some escalation.
But it’s complicated. So, to follow it is a big ask of the audience. It’s interesting, we are at a point as a network, as well as with Game Changer, where the audience is so big at this point, and it consists both of people who love game design and of people who just love comedy and performance art, that we’re never going to please everybody.
So, there’s a way in which I feel like I have to tune out the audience and just focus on creating the thing that I’m most excited about, whatever that is. And I’m very proud of what we did this season. But yeah, if I had to make an adjustment between this season and next season, it’s pulling back a little bit on crunchier game mechanics.
AVC: There are quite a few games that have some layer of social deduction in them this season. What’s interesting about that to you?
SR: I mean, at a base level, it’s probably because, first and foremost, I’m a Blood On The Clocktower fanatic. And secondly, because I think social deduction games are, by their very nature, social. And so, that game is going to read more on camera than a lot of types of games would, just by virtue of the fact that what is happening there is an interaction between human beings. Also, it gives people the opportunity to lie.
And that is not something that we’ve done a lot of in Game Changer, historically. Like, usually it’s me pulling the wool over people’s eyes. So, for me to introduce a game that then gives others the opportunity to pull the wool over each other’s eyes gives them an opportunity at mischief, which I think is fun.
AVC: Do you have a favorite of the various social deduction layers that were in this season?
SR: I think my favorite is probably “Kangaroo Court,” in the sense that I love this idea of playing the game and winning the game is actually not the point. It’s, “Can I convince people that I did?” I just think it’s really elegant as a game mechanic, which I haven’t seen a lot of before.
AVC: Shifting the topic a bit, are you familiar with the game design term “the magic circle?” It’s the idea that people playing a game enter into a contract to treat the outcome like it matters, even though it really doesn’t.
SR: Hell yeah, love that term.
AVC: How do you foster that idea when you’re working with improv people, who generally want to make the most entertaining, funniest thing happen—which is not always “Caring about the outcome of a game”? How do you handle the interplay between those two ideas?
SR: It’s a good question. I think that those things are a little at war with each other in Game Changer. Ultimately, I think my cast is going to do whatever is going to create the most entertaining possible episode, even if that means throwing the game to the wind. The way in which that helps us is, when we need to do something as a show, whether it’s be generous to a particular player, or we need to balance the scales somehow. And then the ways in which it can shoot us in the foot are clearly when players aren’t taking the game seriously, to the point where it’s like it has no stakes.
I think that what’s interesting is Game Changer is no different from any other Dropout show, in the sense that there are no real stakes. We are not offering big prizes on Game Changer. We did during the COVID season, because we were trying to raise morale. But fundamentally I’m resistant to offering meaningful prizes on Game Changer because I don’t want the show to turn into a Mr. Beast kind of thing. Once there’s actual money on the line, the show starts to feel more exploitative. The only stakes that there are are these meta stakes that have to do with people wanting to say that they won the show, or the fact that they know a lot of people watch the show, or the fact that the crew’s all there. “This is a big production.This is very cool. It’d be fun to say that I walked away a winner.”
And the truth is just sincere, which is that some people actually care about that more than others. It happens to be the people who are more into games. Ify [Nwadiwe] wanted to win “Count The Rice.” Demi [Adejuyigbe] wanted to win. Catherine [McCafferty] wanted to win. Jiavani wanted just an experience of the game. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s fine.
AVC: Once the game is going, does it ever surprise you how that turns? I’m thinking a lot about “Night Shift,” which is a very, very funny episode of TV, but one where it doesn’t always feel like the game is being played competitively.
SR: I think it’s a balance, on a per-episode basis. So much of this boils down to, you can only do so much planning for this show. And then if we’re going to show you what authentically happened on screen, it’s just going to be whatever that was, for better or for worse. If we were moreso manipulating either the players or the outcome, we would be able to control more for this variable, and decide that the show is more or less competitive.
By the way: If we decided that the show is more competitive, I think we’d be appealing to one set of people and not the other set of people, and vice versa. So maybe it’s for the best that we don’t have control over this lever. But it’s a really authentic show. It’s cut down a lot, but what you see is basically what happened. And Game Changer, even before it’s a game show, is sort of a social experiment where it’s like we’re trapping people on a stage and they have no idea what’s going to happen. How are they going to respond to what’s going to happen? Are they going to start playing the game, or are they going to throw their hands up? It’s all part of it.
AVC: You’ve built whole episodes around attacking the structure of the game. But you and your team have also done a lot of work making these rules; presumably, you want players to at least attempt the game for a while.
SR: I don’t think that we’re anticipating that anyone will simply turn their back on the game. I saw some weird meme-ish thing that had to do with people going into an escape room and they just stand there for an hour and do nothing and then say thank you very much and leave. I think every player on Game Changer fundamentally understands that playing the game is a part of what makes the show entertaining. At the same time, let’s use “Last Talent Standing.” If a player gets voted out first, second, third, or fourth, if you’re too invested in it, that’s legitimately disappointing. And to watch our players be legitimately disappointed is sad. You know? Like, fundamentally, I think the show wants to stay in the spirit of good fun. What’s the right amount of taking the game seriously? Maybe it’s like a seven out of 10ten, or a seven and a half out of 10ten. But we really aren’t in control of that dial.
AVC: “What’s The Catch” is fascinating in that context, because there’s no winning it. There’s only deciding how you and other people lose.
SR: It is a setup for art. If you’re playing that game for real, you are leaving prizes alone, or trying to get your punishments off of your prizes. And then when we see that play out, it’s just nice. And how is that funny?
AVC: It’s also got a cast that, maybe out of anybody this season, perfectly understood the game they were playing.
SR: Jacob [Wysocki] and Kurt [Maloney] and Kimia [Behpoornia] know each other very well. They’re going to be very comfortable giving each other shit. And it is a game that kind of asks that of them, right? Whereas if you put people in that episode who aren’t as comfortable with each other, they’re maybe not going to give each other as much shit as these three do. And it’s very funny that they do.
Or take “Count The Rice”: Having a range of players in that game is actually kind of important, too. Because it’s way more fun, as the audience, to watch people who are floundering and succeeding all at the same time. At least in my opinion, you know?
AVC: On that score, was it a conscious decision to have so many episodes this season with larger casts?
SR: I don’t think it’s super conscious. If there’s a piece of it that’s subconscious, it may have to do with there being so many Dropout personalities at this point that I want to get involved in the show in some way, shape, or form. But to me, it’s more that we have the means now to do these games that feel a little bit bigger. And so when it comes to games that we don’t think would be as entertaining with three contestants, we’re able to say, what about five? What about seven? With “Count The Rice,” there’s no version of “Count The Rice” that works with three.
Because like, literally, again, from a crunchy game design perspective, a player only launches into another world upon a clash with another player. So the version of “Count The Rice” with three contestants is a version where there could only be three levels to it.
There’s also this idea of cast members on my side of the aisle, right? So in “Night Shift,” Chris Grace and Demi being kind of ensemble members there support the humor of it, which, you know, I love to pull in cast for clownish roles whenever I can.
AVC: Which episode from season eight went furthest afield from your initial vision? And which ones were you like, “Oh, that’s what we thought would happen”?
SR: The one that not only went off kind of how we planned/wanted it to, but felt the most like a miracle that it did, was “Count The Rice.” Because we felt like we were entering into that episode with a lot of unknowns. It also just felt like a huge lift. And this is very technical, but we have cameras in those rooms and an ability to monitor what’s going on in those rooms, as well as everyone outside of those rooms who’s helping us and responsible for keeping the game on track. But limited, particularly for me, limited visibility into what’s actually going on that entire game long. So by the time the first cut comes back to me, it’s like, “Oh my God, such a gift. There’s so much material there. So much of it is so funny.”
I don’t know that this is quite an answer to your question, but the episodes that left the biggest gaps for the players to fill, meaning the games that in some ways were simplest on their face, were our first and last games, “Standards And Practices” and “Last Talent Standing.” Just, this is a very old-school Game Changer format: Here’s a prompt. There are an infinite number of things you could do to answer this prompt. What are you going to bring to the table, cast member? Those are the ones that asked the most from our cast, because they’re like, you’re the content here, for better or for worse. All I did is lob you a softball. Or in some cases a fastball.
Those episodes, I feel like, capture magic maybe the best, in some cases where you could have done anything, and you did this very imaginative thing. Like Zach Reino’s legally clearable Disney parody song in “Last Talent Standing,” as an example of just, like, never in a million years would I have guessed that would end up in a Game Changer episode. Jiavani saying that she’d slid into Gianmarco [Soresi]’s DMs, and that he rejected her.
AVC: I just watched the edit today that someone did of Jacob and Kurt’s improvised pod racing audio.
SR: It came out like 24 hours after the fact. That was staggering. But it’s interesting, because the most surprising thing probably at this point is when we set up a game and then the game happens and nothing breaks or is unusual about it. The meta is so much a part of Game Changer. When everything goes according to plan, it’s usually pretty surprising.
I think an episode that did go pretty according to plan would be “Noise Some Makes.” We set up a game. The players played that game faithfully and, honestly, pretty competitively. And you can’t write for this, you sort of hope it happens or doesn’t happen. But as we headed into the back half of that game, and particularly the back third, it was like, the players are playing this faithfully and the game is getting harder, and they’re getting bad at it. So are we going to have an ending to this episode that just kind of fizzles out? That could have been the case where everyone’s just scoring ones and twos, and then it’s over. And then what happened instead was a miraculous five, which made for an amazing ending. But there’s absolutely a world where that just didn’t happen.
AVC: If that does happen, what, then is your job, and your team’s job, in terms of making good TV out of it?
SR: I think we have the ability as game designers, show creators, whatever it is, to plan for things that we may do or may not do depending on how the game goes. So I think that’s kind of the lever that we have at our disposal, right? Is a little bit of maybe we could throw this in at the last minute, for lack of another option, to make for great TV. This pivot, or whatever it is. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but there are at least a couple of examples of Game Changer episodes where we came up with something on the fly, maybe even with the players involved during a stopdown, because we were like, “We want to end this a little bit stronger.” But it’s tricky, because I really don’t want the show to become artificial.
And there is a piece of me that would rather accept an outcome, even if it’s not ideal, if it’s true. Because at the end of the day, that matters to me, that the show be authentic to what actually transpired, at least a little bit.
AVC: To finish out here, I have some rapid-fire questions about specific episodes. “Don’t Wake Standards And Practices”: Was Phil real? A real guy found on the street?
SR: Is Phil a real person? Look, we haven’t been able, we just in the last two weeks managed to track Phil down, finally. And I won’t tell you why, and I won’t tell you whether or not that has anything to do with season nine. I would say… Ask Phil!
AVC: “Night Shift”: What were the purposes of some of the unused newsstand items?
SR: First row was pure nonsense. Third row were communication devices that wouldn’t be all that easy to use, but could be useful. Second row was sheer trolls that would make the day shift’s life harder. To punish you twice over—they’re going to take away your time, and they’re going to hurt the day shift.
AVC: “Count The Rice”: Was it by design that players could get trapped in that final room for indefinite periods?
SR: Absolutely. We wanted for it to look like hell, a little bit. And then the notion was that they needed to square off against someone in order to get back up the ranks. At the end of the day, we had four people in competition with each other who knew the win condition, which is actually more than I thought there would be.
AVC: “What’s The Catch?”: Were you ever tempted to relent and let Jacob have a full day at Universal?
SR: Jacob did get to ride… I let him ride two rides.
AVC: “Let him” is so funny in that context.
SR: I can’t remember what they were off the top of my head, but it was our last day, and I let him have two rides. [Cackles.]
AVC: And then for “Last Talent Standing”: How long was that shoot, total?
SR: The actual shoot, I think, was four hours, which is not so bad. The thing that people do or don’t realize, I don’t know, is that we don’t start shooting an episode until after lunch, because we’re teeing everything up. So it’s like, we keep people there, they go through the works, and then we tape the shoot. And then if a shoot does go four hours, now we’re running late, you know? So it’s not that long of a shoot. It’s just a long day.
AVC: Very final question, in honor of you having Taskmaster‘s Alex Horne do a voice cameo this season: What’s your dream Taskmaster cast, either from existing contestants, or casting your own?
SR: You know, I’m out with enough Taskmaster asks that I’m not sure I should answer this, for political reasons. But I will say that any time we get to collaborate with those guys in any way, shape, or form, it’s a dream. My hope against hope now is that the cameo casting goes the other way. It doesn’t need to be me. In fact, it should almost definitely be a Brennan [Lee Mulligan] or a Vic [Michaelis] or a Lou [Wilson]. They would hold up the Jason Mantzoukas/Kumail Nanjiani mantle really well.
McDonald's is reportedly using AI-powered pricing tools to recommend menu prices based on what customers near individual restaurants are willing to pay. Franchisees technically retain control over final prices, but some told Reuters they feel pressured to follow the algorithm's recommendations. "A corporate document reviewed by the publication shows that McDonald's tracks adherence to the platform, and notes any deviations from the algorithm's price recommendations," reports Engadget. From the report: Reuters got a look at the interface that franchisees use to access this technology and it's pretty creepy. Messages show stuff like "your restaurant is showing MEDIUM SENSITIVITY to price" based on "customer willingness to pay in your area." Cost differences at nearby locations can be stark. Researchers found that a Bic Mac at a Fresno, California store cost $5.69, but the same burger cost $6.89 at another branch two miles down the road. That's a 21 percent difference.
The company acknowledges that using this dynamic pricing system could open up franchisees to legal hurdles, all while continuing to push the platform. The pricing portal's terms of service reportedly warns that owners "may be competitors of each other" and "it is particularly important for all Users of the Tool to understand and comply fully with antitrust and competition laws." The document also reiterates that franchisees are "always free to determine the final price," thus potentially absolving corporate from any antitrust concerns.
McDonald's has decried Reuters' reporting as "speculative and uninformed." The company says the pricing portal is "a tool, not a mandate, designed to provide restaurant-specific recommendations to help franchisees deliver value for customers and make informed business decisions." The company has been using some version of this technology since at least 2019, according to Reuters. In 2023, however, CEO Kempczinski boasted to investors that it had developed proprietary tools to evaluate pricing at individual restaurants.
As Flock continues to be the center of a nationwide conversation about automatic license plate reading cameras, the company has said that it doesn’t, and won’t, do facial recognition: “We will not add facial recognition to our devices,” Flock CEO Garrett Langley said in a recent video. But other, third-party companies are telling cops that they are willing to add facial recognition to data gathered by Flock cameras in order to “close that gap.”
A company called VIDIZMO is advertising the capability to export footage from FlockOS to its own platforms that do facial recognition, behavior prediction, and racial and gender analysis on live camera feeds. VIDIZMO is a several decades-old video analysis and database company that has started offering facial recognition technology to cops within the last six months. In a May email to Johnson City, Tennessee, deputy police chief Michael Adams, a salesperson from VIDIZMO wrote that the company’s product could do facial recognition on both Flock and Axon data in “one searchable platform.”
“Flock Safety generates plate reads and clips continuously. Your investigators use that data on active cases. But that Flock data does not connect automatically to your Axon evidence system,” the salesperson wrote. “VIDIZMO Intelligence Hub closes that gap. It brings Flock Safety data, Axon body worn camera footage, and any other evidence source into one searchable platform. Investigators search across all of it simultaneously — by face, vehicle, or object in seconds.” The email was obtained using a public records request by DeFlock Johnson City and was shared with 404 Media. The Johnson City PD told 404 Media in a statement that it did not take a call with the company.
An excerpt from the email. Full email embedded below
VIDIZMO’s CEO, Nadeem Khan, told 404 Media on a video call that the company has not yet started running facial recognition tech on footage from Flock cameras, and that it has not actually built the specific tool that would export data from Flock’s system to its own platform (though the company advertises this capability online, and the company already sells other facial recognition products). But Khan said VIDIZMO “would love to do the integration,” and that he believes facial recognition “is the way the world is going, the way the world will have to be,” and that he thinks Flock should offer the capability itself in a way that “balances privacy, security, and the freedom that we enjoy in this country.”
“It is completely in line with what we want to do,” Khan said. “All of these technologies are already implemented [in the real world]. I think Flock is trying to get out of the way rather than trying to implement the technology right [correctly] by saying they will not do recognition. But this is the way the world is going, it is the way the world will have to be, but with the right sort of technologies where privacy and security are balanced.”
In marketing material and technical documentation available online, VIDIZMO does claim that it can ingest data from Flock’s automatic license plate reader (ALPR) and livestream cameras into several of its own products, which do further AI analysis on the data. “An agency can import plate reads or clips that it has exported under its own authorized access,” Khan said in an email. “Flock has not been involved in or informed of this.” VIDIZMO’s online documentation for customers has extensive information about its facial recognition and AI analysis products, and contains a page about integrating data from FlockOS — Flock’s “real time crime center” product — into AI Live Insight, Nexus, and AI Intelligence Hub, which are three different VIDIZMO products.
“Detection tells you a person is in frame,” VIDIZMO says. “Face recognition tells you which person. It is the capability that takes a face seen on a live camera and matches it against the people you enrolled in the Object Library, so the moment someone on your watchlist walks past a camera, the system names them, on the video, in the event feed, and in the recording, without an operator having to recognize the face themselves.”
The company’s “AI Live Insight” page also claims that it can detect “situations” such as trespassing, or “behavior” by individual people, “turning raw video into behavioral and situational understanding.”
“Instant alerts fire from the live pipeline with snapshots attached. A second layer runs your queries over recorded events: a plate and a person together,” VIDIZMO’s website says. “Enrolled people and objects recognized on live feeds, with named alerts and snapshots for review.”
VIDIZMO already works with several police departments and government agencies, according to its website. The company’s documentation says that police departments need to upload individual faces as “objects” in the software’s library, which can be added to a “watchlist” that automatically triggers tracking and recording when they are detected by a camera. “With faces enrolled and recognition on, the camera starts naming people as they appear,” the documentation says. “The recognized person’s name appears on the bounding box around their face […] if you turned on Create Recording, a clip is captured around each recognition.” The company says that police can set a “Match Threshold,” which is a numerical confidence score about the person’s identity.
“By running face detection, you can search for and identify specific individuals in your media or evidence via attribute filters […] You can identify individuals from seven races: White, Black, Indian, East Asian, Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latino Hispanic,” VIDIZMO says on its website. The company adds, “Law enforcement agencies can save time analyzing security, CCTV, or dashcam footage. If they have a description of the suspect, such as their supposed age, gender, or race, they can utilize attribute filters to yield effective results.”
VIDIZMO says that in other contexts, cities or stores can also use its products to quietly do “demographic analysis,” for marketing purposes, by determining which races or ages of people are showing up to specific events or to specific stores: “By analyzing the activity in their store, sellers can determine which group spends the most time and makes the most purchases of their products. Getting insights such as these can aid them in tuning their marketing strategy.”
A VIDIZMO booth at a conference. Image: VIDIZMO
The facial recognition product it offers is “appalling,” according to Chris Gilliard, a privacy expert and author of the upcoming book Luxury Surveillance.
“I’m appalled at the willingness of VIDIZMO to tout their capabilities to filter along the lines of race, age, and gender. There’s decades of scholarship that show why this is not possible, and even more so not desirable,” he told 404 Media. “Particularly in the case of race and gender, which are not static categories to be determined by a computer.”
The fact that a third-party company is advertising that it wants to do facial recognition on Flock data highlights a common trend in the surveillance space. When one company draws a line in the sand, saying they are unwilling to do a certain type of surveillance, other lesser-known startups try to differentiate themselves by offering that functionality. Because of this recurring phenomenon, it is exceedingly difficult to build and scale a surveillance apparatus and then have companies themselves, in this case Flock, dictate what it can be used for. VIDIZMO’s Khan said, “As a small company who is running without a VC, we have to provide alternatives to the industry. What we are doing is providing that alternative.”
Khan claimed that his technology could also be used to preserve privacy; facial recognition, he said, can be used to redact bystanders faces from footage automatically. He said that cops cannot use the system without a specific case number, that all of their actions in the system are recorded for potential audits, and that VIDIZMO collects no data itself. "Much of the harm your reporting has documented comes from implementation choices, not from the technology itself," Khan said. "Those choices include pooling data into a nationwide network, allowing searches without a case, keeping audit logs no one can meaningfully inspect, and treating an AI match as an answer."
Gilliard said that the fact that facial recognition and other AI analysis can be added to existing surveillance cameras highlights the importance of not building such systems in the first place.
“What Flock says about their capabilities is to some degree irrelevant because they have built the infrastructure for mass surveillance. Their entire existence provides the foundation for other perhaps even more invasive technologies to be built on top of it,” Gilliard said. “Flock itself needs to be understood as part of the surveillance ecosystem that exists in this country. This is why discussions of guardrails for a particular system are inadequate because another company can (and will) come along to assemble another layer of surveillance on what has already been established.”
Flock and Axon did not respond to a request for comment.
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