u/evildad53

Who thinks that the money, once it's mixed into the General Revenue, will be used for local addiction issues?

'The West Virginia First Foundation will no longer receive funds from the state’s opioid settlements, according to a Tuesday news release from Attorney General J.B. McCuskey.

'Instead, the portion of funds previously sent to the First Foundation for distribution — 72.5% of all money earned through settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors — will now be sent directly to the state’s general revenue fund to be used by the Legislature and disbursed among localities.

'Details regarding the change to the funding mechanism were scarce on Wednesday, but McCuskey said in a news release that the end goal is to put more money into local governments’ coffers to spend as they see fit in confronting the state’s ongoing drug and overdose epidemic.

'“As the former state auditor and a former legislator, I have worked with both the Legislature and our local governments and am confident that they know best what their communities need,” McCuskey said. “I am excited to see the thoughtful and effective ways that my friends in both local governments and the Legislature use this increased funding to better the lives of their constituents.”'

Full article at West Virginia Watch. https://westvirginiawatch.com/2026/08/19/wv-to-redirect-first-foundations-opioid-fund-share-to-state-local-governments

Windows 10. I don't torrent every day, so this became a recent issue. I switched VPNs because I discovered my previous VPN stopped port forwarding. I switched to Proton, and it worked briefly, but today, I haven't been able to connect to a single peer, and qBit says "offline." I followed the general troubleshooting from https://www.rapidseedbox.com/blog/qbittorrent-not-downloading My qBit app literally shows no trackers, no connections, and I'm seeding some very recent and popular files.

My internet connection is fine, even with the VPN active I'm getting 800 down and 400 up. My router (eero) is configured for uPnP. I tried forcing a tracker announce, no help. I've set the port in qBit to the one Proton tells me to use. I've opened my firewall to qBit, and I've added qBittorrent as an exclusion. I've enabled DHT, peer exchange and peer discovery.

As a final test, I moved all the torrents to a different drive, except one that's only partially downloaded, and connected qBitorrent without the VPN. (I figured one 25 year old movie was safe) qBittorrent still says it's not connecting, and no trackers, no peers are showing up.

I'm at my wit's end, any help is appreciated. Screenshots if they help. Thanks in advance.

As you can see, they posted a picture on Failbook of cameras that are NOT Flock cameras, but security cameras they've installed for the downtown businesses. The explanation sounds good until folks started asking what they're doing with the videos? Who holds the data? Who will they share with? And in the thread, seemingly no matter how they try to explain it all away, they just dig themselves deeper.

Via Charleston Gazette-Mail. No paywall: https://archive.ph/AjvpU

After overwhelming concern over implementation of Flock Safety cameras in the city, a majority of Huntington City Council members voted for the services during a meeting Monday night that ran until early Tuesday morning. 

Multiple amendments and voted down amendments, as well as hours of public comments, ultimately ended in the approval of a professional services contract that would provide the Huntington Police Department with license plate recognition, live video cameras, audio detection and drone services.

The contract passed by a 6-4 vote with council members Jason Arthur, Todd Sweeney, council chair Mike Shockley, Linda Blough, Mary Beth Anderson and vice chair Rob Archer voting for the contract.

Council members Tia Rumbaugh, Sarah Walling, Teresa Johnson and Holly Smith Mount voted against the contract.

Council member Stacy Jo Holley was absent from the meeting.

Amendments for last-minute corrections to the contract and its funding were approved. Anderson motioned for the amendment. Another amendment for HPD to provide council with a review on the system during the city budget hearing was approved.

The contract includes 46 license plate recognition cameras with vehicle fingerprint technology, 17 live video cameras, two drones and two gunshot detection audio devices.

It is a sole source contract with Flock Group Inc., also known as Flock Safety. The contract would be for a total of $2.1 million for five years and cost $394,785 for the first year and $438,220 per year for the remaining four years.

Mayor Patrick Farrell and HPD Chief Phil Watkins said the city's partnership with Flock Safety will help HPD solve crimes faster and hopes to deter criminal from committing crime in the city.

More than 50 people spoke in opposition of the contract. Residents and members of the public asked the council members to vote against the contract and shared concerns of the contract, privacy issues, the company and concerns of the service's potential to be hacked and abused.

Residents also shared concerns of cameras being pointed toward schools and tracking people's everyday movements. They noted situations of wrongful arrests in other communities with Flock Safety services. Others cited privacy concerns, saying they don't want a surveillance state. 

Opposition of the Flock Safety resolutions began outside before the council meeting started. A rally outside of city hall organized by the Huntington Community Action Group gathered 75-100 people. Likewise, the council chambers also began to fill before the meeting began.

Council member Holly Smith Mount initially motioned to postpone the resolutions indefinitely, which was rejected. Mount said she thought it best to send it back to the administration to re-work the contracts, look more into it and give the public a chance for more information.

Several council members shared concerns about the reputation of the company and funding of the services and pushed for postponement to give the city more time to work through the contract and give the public a chance to hear more about the contract and from the company.

Mount said she is also concerned about last minute amendments to the contract that were brought to the council Friday evening. Mount said she feels the contracts should be postponed for the public to look more into. Mount and Walling said they feel the contracts are rushed.

During his reports, Farrell said the Flock Safety services will be an important tool for HPD to solve crimes faster. Farrell said in support of the Flock Safety contracts that the cameras and devices could also deter people from coming into the city and committing crimes — knowing there’s a chance they could get caught.

Farrell said the idea of the cameras came after he attended two conferences with other mayors. He said he sought out advice from mayors from cities that had seen a decrease in crime, and most of them said the success was from incorporating Flock Safety within their safety.

Farrell said a policy would be put in place for the police department. He said he believes the city needs to give officers the tools it needs to help solve crime and keep the public safe.

"Your police department is asking for these tools to protect you. I trust them to do it responsibly,” Farrell said.

Although he has spoken with mayors who have had good experiences with the Flock Safety camera, Farrell said he has not spoken to mayors who have had negative experiences with the cameras.

Watkins said the city will put guardrails up in the next phase of the process. The cameras are expected to go up in September, he added.

In a statement, Farrell said he recognized both the important step council made to give officers modern tools to help protect the community and public concerns about the privacy, civil liberties and potential misuse of the technologies.

"Our responsibility is not to choose between safety and freedom. It is to protect both," Farrell said. "That is why these tools will be governed by clear policies, strong oversight, strict accountability, and a commitment to ensuring they are used lawfully, ethically, and only for the purposes for which they were intended." 

The council approved a separate resolution to authorize a professional services contract with Flock Group to provide the police department with premier support services related to the live video cameras, audio detection, drone services and license plate recognition systems. The support agreement "ensures ongoing technical support, maintenance and system reliability for the department's Flock-based technology," according to the agenda document.

The resolution was amended for verbiage corrections of the contract. Anderson motioned for the amendment.

The contract is for two years with an annual cost of $38,780 for a total contract cost of $77,560.

The meeting lasted approximately eight hours.

Members of the state legislature recently visited Tucker County for a special “interim” session, with committee meetings on a variety of topics. They were quickly reminded that many area residents have one overriding concern on their minds: data centers.

The legislative event was held Sunday through Tuesday, with Canaan Valley Resort State Park as the primary hub of activities. Members of the West Virginia legislature arriving at the resort Sunday afternoon were greeted by data center protestors waving signs.

Democratic lawmakers held a press conference Monday afternoon at the Davis Town Hall, where they focused largely on their grievances with state laws recently enacted by Republicans that provide regulatory shortcuts and steep tax cuts for data center developers.

Protestors assembled again Monday night, outside a panel discussion at the Davis Volunteer Fire Department. Inside, a crowd of about 160 people gathered for the panel discussion.

Read the full article at Country Roads News
https://countryroads.substack.com/p/data-center-backlash-greets-state

Flock Safety says its cameras don’t track people.

But the company’s own training videos show police using the system to track suspects “from location to location to location.”

And some of its cameras are designed to follow people as they walk.

“And they quite literally use AI to zoom in and follow you around whether you’re a person of interest or not,” said Benn Jordan, a security researcher who found dozens of Flock cameras streaming openly online.

https://www.wsaz.com/2026/06/15/flock-says-its-cameras-dont-track-people-its-own-training-videos-say-otherwise/