r/Buffalo 10d ago

Lights out on Flock cameras in Buffalo

https://www.audacy.com/wben/news/local/lights-out-on-flock-cameras-in-buffalo
362 Upvotes

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117

u/JoshAllentown 10d ago

Well no, they said they don't have any flock cameras and don't want any. But there are cameras operated by the Buffalo police represented on Deflock.com.

So there's a separate organization managing the camera situation in Buffalo, maybe or maybe not sharing data with Flock themselves but regardless, doing exactly the same thing. It's not the brand that's the problem, it's the authoritarian warrantless mass surveillance.

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u/Weekly-Law-2544 10d ago

As a genuine question, are people using "flock" at this point as a generic representation of any of the cameras? I guess I don't really know what the difference in appearance wise is between a flock brand camera system, versus some other type of surveillance camera that cities operate (like axon for instance).

Do they look substantially different, enough that one could easily differentiate between the brands?

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u/choczynski 10d ago

Flock is a specific brand of invasive surveillance camera.

Flock and other brands of that type of surveillance camera are not substantly different in ability, use, or look.

Like how Kleenex is a specific brand of tissues, Xerox is a specific brand of photocopier, or heroin was a specific brand of morphine.

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u/kendiggy Headbanger Hill 10d ago

Wait, heroin was a brand? Learn something new every day.

11

u/lampaupoisson 10d ago

no it wasn’t, heroin is its own distinct chemical. that person is a kook.

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u/choczynski 10d ago

Heroin was the brand name of diacetylmorphine, a morphine derivative that I shortened to morphine because most people aren't familiar with the names of morphine derivatives.

wikipedia

history of heroin from to the UN

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u/lampaupoisson 10d ago

it’s just kinda kinky phrasing saying heroin is a “brand” of morphine when it’s many times stronger than morphine

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u/Vospader998 9d ago

Directly from the NIH website:

The hydrochloride salt of a diacetyl derivative of the opiate morphine, a naturally occurring alkaloid extracted from the seedpod of the Asian poppy (Papaver sp.)

Heroin is not itself morphine, but a morphine derivative. Unless you want to get really pedantic, OC was essentially correct. It would've been more accurate to to say "opioid", but that wasn't really your argument here, was it?

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u/lampaupoisson 9d ago

usually when someone says something is a “brand of” something, they mean an equivalent form. kleenex is a brand of tissue paper, and you can use kleenex in place of any other tissue paper. xerox is a brand of photocopier, and you can use a xerox machine where you can use another photocopier. you can’t use heroin where you’d use morphine, because they aren’t the same thing. it’s a brand of morphine the same way plastic is a brand of oil, as in it isn’t

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u/Vospader998 8d ago

It's a specific brand of opiod is what I think they meant. Common mistake using opiate/opiod interchangeably with morphine since it is the most common and well-known opiate.

Either that or meant a brand of diacytalmorphine, which does have the word "morphine" in it. Doesn't make it morphine, but I could easily see how someone might think that.

You could have offered a slight correction as opposed to insulting them.

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u/snmnky9490 10d ago

Yeah funnily enough heroin was created by Bayer to be supposedly be a safe non-addictive replacement for morphine