[HN Gopher] Flock's gunshot detection microphones will start lis...
___________________________________________________________________
Flock's gunshot detection microphones will start listening for
human voices
Author : hhs
Score : 267 points
Date : 2025-10-04 14:49 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| FireBeyond wrote:
| And then they'll start proactively reporting to law enforcement
| when their AI model thinks what you're saying is "suspicious",
| just like they do now when it thinks the movement patterns of
| behavior of your car is suspicious.
|
| Flock's CEO openly says the he intends that "Flock will help
| eliminate ALL crime", and has shown he has no concerns about how
| dystopian or Minority Report-esque Flock would need to be to
| accomplish that mission.
| dotancohen wrote:
| When one cares not about false positives, eliminating all true
| positives is trivial.
| bckr wrote:
| I'm not worried that much about random acts of violence from
| desperate or misguided strangers.
|
| The crime I want eliminated is that of the elite.
| tptacek wrote:
| I think you're going to find that working class people living
| in low and middle income neighborhoods do not agree with you
| about this. They're unhappy with how police response tends to
| traumatize the innocent in their neighborhoods, but they're
| even more unhappy with how police response appears only to
| halfheartedly address crime, which falls heavier (both in
| frequency and impact) on lower-income people than it does on
| the wealthy.
|
| You can read meeting minutes from neighborhood and beat
| meetings to confirm this (there's probably lots of things you
| can read to confirm it, but the nerdiest way to do it is to
| get the raw data.)
|
| A shorter way to say all of this: you're expressing a luxury
| belief.
| jkestner wrote:
| You're right. It's a luxury to have the space away from the
| problem to think about it systemically. Certainly, part of
| the work is to learn from each other.
|
| Will surveillance cameras in low-income areas (if that's
| where they'll put them) mean that the police will be more
| responsive to crime in those areas? If the police are
| already not responsive in supposedly high-crime areas,
| what's the underlying cause? Would the Black Panthers have
| felt the need to have armed patrols in their neighborhoods
| if the police could've put up a surveillance system?
| saila wrote:
| How it is "luxury" to want to address large scale crimes
| such as wage theft, price collusion, corruption, unequal
| access, and institutional racism/classism that are major
| underlying factors in street crime, including the lack of
| enforcement you mention here? From a nerd perspective, it's
| seems obvious that addressing underlying causes is
| beneficial to all of us. In fact, it seems likely that it's
| the _only_ thing that will work in the long run. Policing
| might also be necessary in some cases, but it 's not going
| to fix our long-standing social issues.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's luxury to suggest that street and property crime
| should take a backburner to whatever your issues are,
| because you are (demographically speaking; I have no idea
| who you are personally) (1) much less likely to
| experience street and property crime than someone in a
| low-income neighborhood and (2) much more able to
| metabolize the impacts of those crimes.
|
| The whole thing is silly; it isn't the job of municipal
| police to investigate price collusion and corruption in
| the first place. You might just as meaningfully say that
| the trash collection service should be prioritizing
| institutional racism.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Yeah the real issue that most Americans (and probably other
| countries) is that 0.1% of the populace is wagging the rest
| of the 99.9% around based on how much they're willing to pay
| to politicians.
| antibull wrote:
| Disgusting.
| j4coh wrote:
| Surely this will never be used for evil
| mihaaly wrote:
| They promised. Possibly even pinky promised!
|
| (hackers too, to never steal data from them)
| ajay-b wrote:
| They film us on the street. They film us at traffic signals, from
| law enforcement vehicles, and drones, parks and even through our
| doorbell cameras. I don't mean this glibly, or in its entirety,
| but the big screen watching your every move in 1984 seems not too
| far off..
| boothby wrote:
| And now with the advent of highly capable LLMs, we don't even
| need humans watching and listening. The data streams can be
| captured, analyzed, summarized, for any behavior, mention,
| suspicion, or hallucination of _undesirable_ activity. In a
| population inured to masked agents snatching people off the
| street domestically and semi*-autonomous drone strikes abroad*,
| our future doesn 't look rosy.
|
| * for now
| martin-t wrote:
| This is the key realization which is missing from talks about
| AI dangers.
|
| Total surveillance used to be impossible because the
| government needed people to spy on other people. They needed
| to find somebody willing and pay them.
|
| Now it can be automated.
|
| The war won't be humans vs an AI controlling robots. It'll be
| humans vs the government and rich people controlling AI
| controlling robots.
| dashundchen wrote:
| Larry Ellison, major asshole and big ally of the current
| authoritarian regime:
|
| "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are
| constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on,"
| Ellison said, describing what he sees as the benefits from
| automated oversight from AI and automated alerts for when crime
| takes place.
|
| Ellison, Vance, Musk, Thiel, Luckey, Zuckerberg and many of the
| tech oligarch assholes want us to live in their surveillance
| state.
|
| They're currently making good progress. What will you do to
| help stop them?
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/omnip...
| theossuary wrote:
| And this guy is going to own TikTok through a deal with
| Trump, he's literally going to be the thought police
| lesuorac wrote:
| It's funny because they were constantly recorded at epstein's
| island and yet not on their best behavior...
|
| Recording isn't enough you also need follow-up and if there's
| anything we've learned over the years is that the police are
| going to follow up on somebody throwing their soda can into
| Ellison's yard but not breaking your front door.
| EliRivers wrote:
| _Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are
| constantly recording and reporting everything that 's going
| on_
|
| These people live in fantasyland bubbles, powered by their
| unshakeable belief in their own intelligence and "hyper
| rational" nonsense.
|
| People already film themselves committing crimes. There are a
| great many people who, over and over again, make decisions in
| the present that will have strongly negative consequences in
| their own futures.
|
| "If we watch people they won't do bad things." Sure, in some
| other universe maybe.
| martin-t wrote:
| And so plebians vs patricians turns into citizens vs
| entrepreneurs.
|
| It's not just about who owns the means of production anymore,
| it's about who owns the means of surveillance (the so called
| AI).
|
| Two thousand years and humans have learned nothing. Power and
| money still lead to more power and money which lead to abuse,
| which after decades gets so bad it leads to revolution.
| Except this time they want to make revolutions impossible. So
| they _have_ learned but common people have not.
| wslh wrote:
| Seems like we need more peaceful citizen defense tools.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| ICE will go after you for organizing such tools (unrelated to
| immigration cases):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45475525
| rolandog wrote:
| With WiFi even being able to detect our heartbeats [0], we'll
| get to enjoy dynamic pricing on our insurance on a second-by-
| second basis!
|
| Remember kids, if the invasive tracking is done by the
| government _and_ a couple of companies, then it 's the good
| kind of dystopia! /s
|
| [0]: https://news.ucsc.edu/2025/09/pulse-fi-wifi-heart-rate/
| nicbou wrote:
| At least we don't have listening devices in our homes!
| Arch485 wrote:
| Hey, Alexa?
| zyx321 wrote:
| Yeah, that would be so sad... Hey Alexa, play Despacito 2.
| koolba wrote:
| The logical next step is replace the microphones with the ones we
| carry around in our pockets every day:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=IRELLH86Edo
| gregoryhinkle wrote:
| 1960: "I have a great idea! lets have every person in the
| country carry a radio tracking beacon!" "That'll never fly!"
| 2012: "I can has TWO iphones??"
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| 1. This is illegal eavesdropping
|
| 2. I will start screaming at the Flock cameras
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| 1. This is illegal eavesdropping
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/plain_view_doctrine_0
|
| might apply, though IANAL
| seanw444 wrote:
| That's probably exactly the rationalization for this. No
| expectation of privacy in a public space, and therefore no
| requirement for warrant to eavesdrop. I may not like it, but
| the government will find absolutely any way to do things we
| don't like in spite of the infinite attempts to restrain it
| from doing so decades or centuries ahead of time.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| There are eavesdropping laws specifically about audio
| recording. Not sure if it's federal or state by state.
| squigz wrote:
| Next week: App that emits frequencies that block Flock
| microphones
|
| 2 weeks from now: Google and Apple remove AntiFlock apps;
| developers arrested
|
| (Only slightly sarcastic. We should be talking about ways of
| making these things useless, as well as illegal)
| camillomiller wrote:
| EMP devices.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Get little throwable "annoy-o-tron" devices with a button-cell
| and a magnet that randomly play little gunshot sounds or fake
| screams and throw them near the Raven sensors.
| therobots927 wrote:
| The slide into hell is steep and slippery. I'm afraid we're in a
| dark period of history that's only going to get darker.
|
| I want proponents of this tech to explain something to me. Why
| has the rate of stochastic terrorism only increased since the NSA
| and Palantir started spying on all of us? Isn't the whole point
| of this to preempt those kinds of things?
| bckr wrote:
| > stochastic terrorism
|
| This is a bugbear for me. The point of terrorism is that it's a
| random act of violence.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Stochastic terrorism usually refers to incitement, afaict.
|
| Edit: it's got a Wikipedia article, which says it's a
| particular kind of incitement.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism
| mystraline wrote:
| Terrorism isn't even an actual action. Its a threat of a
| random action to the public.
|
| For example, saying "there is a planned school shooting at a
| school in $metro_city", even though there is absolutely
| nobody doing that - that causes terror. Doesn't have to be
| backed by any actions at all.
|
| Like, with the shooting of UHC CEO, there was no grandiose
| statements or otherwise causing terror ahead of time. It was
| 3 bullets and leave.
| nemomarx wrote:
| They did fail to prove terrorism in court in that case - I
| think generally there needs to be some attempt to use the
| terror to achieve a political aim or change public opinion?
|
| Just making people afraid is a different thing.
| panarchy wrote:
| The stochastic part is who is doing it (random people being
| incited) vs an organized cell who has members engaging in
| random acts of violence
| Terr_ wrote:
| Right, it's the inverse of saying a "random dice roll"
| isn't happening because there isn't a _random_ human
| throwing a _random_ selection of polyhedra. Different
| aspects.
|
| That said, even "random" has so many different
| interpretations that "random targets" it can still be a
| misleading shorthand. What happens is something closer to
| "unpredictably unjust and disproportionate"... but of
| course nobody wants to keep saying a mouthful like that.
| stri8ed wrote:
| What is the counterfactual? Without knowing the number of
| attacks prevented by these tools, we don't know what the
| baseline would be.
| tptacek wrote:
| For the record: they prevented essentially nothing in our
| muni. We're 4.5 square miles sandwiched between the Austin
| neighborhood of Chicago (our neighbor to the east; many know
| it by its reputation) one side and Maywood/Broadview/Melrose
| Park on the other, directly off I-290; the broader geographic
| area we're in is high crime.
|
| We ran a pilot with the cameras in hot spots (the entrances
| to the village from I-290, etc).
|
| Just on stolen cars alone, roughly half the flags our PD
| reacted to turned out to be bogus. In Illinois, Flock runs
| off the Illinois LEADS database (the "hotlist"). As it turns
| out: LEADS is stale as fuck: cars are listed stolen in LEADS
| long after they're returned. And, of course, the demography
| of owners of stolen cars is sharply biased towards Black and
| Latino owners (statistically, they live in poorer, higher-
| crime areas), which meant that Flock was consistently
| requesting the our PD pull over innocent Black drivers.
|
| We recently kicked Flock out (again: I'm not thrilled about
| this; long story) over the objections of our PD (who wanted
| to keep the cameras as essentially a better form of closed-
| circuit investigatory cameras; they'd essentially stopped
| responding to Flock alerts over a year ago). In making a case
| for the cameras, our PD was unable to present a single
| compelling case of the cameras making a difference for us.
| What they did manage to do was enforce a bunch of failure-to-
| appear warrants for neighboring munis; mostly, what Flock did
| to our PD was turn them into debt collectors.
|
| Whatever else you think about the importance of people
| showing up to court for their speeding tickets, this wasn't a
| good use our sworn officers' time.
| squigz wrote:
| Can you elaborate on why you're not thrilled about Flock
| being removed?
| tptacek wrote:
| The metro area is blanketed in ALPRs and we were the only
| ones actually writing real policy about them. Now we
| don't have any ALPRs and can't build policy or shop it to
| any of our neighbors. We had harm reduction for the
| cameras and a plausible strategy for reducing their harm
| throughout the area, and instead we did something
| performative.
| squigz wrote:
| Why is it better to reduce the harm of a practically
| useless anti-crime device than remove it entirely?
| tptacek wrote:
| That's a good and reasonable question. The answer is: the
| cameras weren't going to do any meaningful harm in Oak
| Park (they were heavily restricted by policies we wrote
| about them, and we have an exceptionally trustworthy
| police department and an extremely police-skeptical
| political majority). But you can drive through Oak Park
| in about 5 minutes on surface streets, and on either side
| of that drive you'll be in places that are blanketed with
| ALPRs with absolutely no policy or restrictions
| whatsoever.
|
| Had we kept the cameras, we'd have some political capital
| to get our neighboring munis (and like-minded munis in
| Chicagoland like Schaumberg) to take our ordinances and
| general orders as models. Now we don't. We're not any
| safer: our actions don't meaningfully change our
| residents exposure to ALPRs (and our residents weren't
| the targets anyways; people transiting through Oak Park
| were) because of their prevalence outside our borders.
|
| What people don't get about this is that a lot of normal,
| reasonable people see these cameras as a very good thing.
| You can be upset about that or you can work with it to
| accomplish real goals. We got upset about it.
| squigz wrote:
| > What people don't get about this is that a lot of
| normal, reasonable people see these cameras as a very
| good thing. You can be upset about that or you can work
| with it to accomplish real goals. We got upset about it.
|
| An alternative is you can try to convince those people
| that, while their desire to reduce crime is perfectly
| understandable, this might not be the way to do it
| effectively, to say nothing of the potential avenues for
| abuse (and in current day America, I'd be very wary of
| such avenues)
|
| It remains an issue of trust for me. You not only have to
| trust your police and government(s), but you have to
| trust Flock too - and that trust has to remain throughout
| changing governments and owners of that company. I have a
| healthy distrust of both, particularly lately.
|
| Just as importantly, but more to the point, is still the
| question of whether they're actually useful. To that end,
| does not the same logic apply to being able to pressure
| nearby municipalities to remove the cameras?
|
| In any case, while I remain fundamentally opposed to such
| surveillance, you raise very good points, and I
| appreciate you taking the time to explain your position
| in this thread.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm fine that we took the cameras down. As you can see
| from my first comment on this part of the thread: they
| weren't working, and before we stopped our PD from
| responding to stolen car alerts, they were actively doing
| harm. But I disagree with you about the long-term
| strategy. I'd have kept the cameras --- locked down (we
| had an offer from Flock to simply disable them while
| leaving them up, so that they wouldn't even be powered
| up) --- and written a formal ALPR ordinance. Then I'd
| have worked with the Metro Mayors Caucus and informal
| west suburban mayor networking to get other munis to
| adopt it.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > As it turns out: LEADS is stale as fuck: cars are listed
| stolen in LEADS long after they're returned.
|
| Is this related to rental companies reporting cars as
| "stolen" if they are an hour overdue on their scheduled
| return?
| EasyMark wrote:
| I don't care. The world is a dangerous place, we make it
| safer by promoting freedom and education and goodwill and
| faith in people, not by growing the police state. We do know
| for a fact however that in the near future anything "think of
| the children" or "just looking for criminals" ultimately gets
| turned against all of us as the government grows and grows
| without limit, our rights will become fewer and fewer with
| the encroachment. It's not "panic" or "exaggeration" it has
| happened all through history of nation-states.
| saubeidl wrote:
| We also don't know the number of attacks indirectly _caused_
| by these tools, by instilling a more fraught social
| environment.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Why has the rate of stochastic terrorism only increased since
| the NSA and Palantir started spying on all of us?
|
| ...is this true? What timespan are we looking at? My
| understanding was that crime has been on the decline pretty
| much from the 90s up until 2020. And in 2020 the world changed
| in a way that kind of made everyone go nuts.
| therobots927 wrote:
| Let's start with school shootings which only started AFTER
| the surveillance apparatus went online.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| You're making the same mistake that lots of people do,
| looking at the big events that make the news instead of
| actual crime stats. The former doesn't really tell you
| anything about crime rates.
|
| This is a big problem that leads to things like these
| surveillance measures, because people think crime is really
| high even when it's the lowest it has ever been, because of
| the media environment.
| leptons wrote:
| There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public. That
| includes being recorded on video, or audio.
| Bud wrote:
| There's no reasonable expectation of pervasive video/audio
| capture, permanent recording, and complete AI analysis of all
| actions in public by all citizens forever, either. But that's
| the direction in which we're rapidly heading.
| neilv wrote:
| (Vouched for this comment, which was somehow already dead
| at 2 minutes old.)
|
| Someone will always say "there is no reasonable expectation
| of privacy in public", for whatever reason. So someone
| always has to respond to that, for the benefit of anyone
| who doesn't know that not everyone agrees with that
| dismissive assertion.
| leptons wrote:
| >Someone will always say "there is no reasonable
| expectation of privacy in public", for whatever reason.
|
| It isn't "for whatever reason", _it is part of the first
| amendment_. Just because you don 't like it doesn't mean
| it hasn't been the law for a very long time.
| leptons wrote:
| You can hate it all you want, but it's the first amendment
| that makes it legal to record in public. I'm honestly glad
| we have the right to record in public, else the government
| would be able to hide some nefarious shit that the public
| has been able to record and dissemenate. If we couldn't
| record in public, then that would be extremely dystopian.
| Maybe using AI on recorded data is the real problem you're
| having, and I agree there should be laws against that - it
| is a separate issue than recording in public, but it's
| unlikely to ever be regulated with the current
| administration.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I disagree and think it is very reasonable and very possible.
| Don't put up cameras everywhere, don't put up listening
| devices everywhere, don't allow the government to buy this
| information from corporations. There should be a clear line
| drawn between me or you or a bar putting up a camera and the
| government gaining access to that data. It's not hard, it
| really isn't. Saying what you're saying it just trite and not
| looking at what is possible.
| leptons wrote:
| It's part of the same first amendment that gives you the
| right to free speech. Go look it up. There is no such thing
| as privacy in public, and if you feel like you have a right
| to privacy in public, then you need to read up on the first
| amendment. The only thing that requires permission is when
| the footage is used for commercial purposes, then you need
| permission to use it.
|
| And FWIW, citizens have a right to get the footage the
| government records. You can get any camera footage from any
| government building, and even personal cellphones of
| government emplpoyees if they happen to film something with
| their personal cellphone while on the job.
| scottydelta wrote:
| > You're thinking Chinese surveillance
|
| > US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims
|
| -- Garry Tan, Sept 03, 2025, YC CEO while defending Flock on X.
|
| https://xcancel.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955
|
| I admire Garry but not sure why there can't be a line that we all
| agree not to cross. No weapon has ever been made that was not
| used to harm humanity.
| tptacek wrote:
| I spent several years doing a bunch of work in my local muni
| that drastically restricted, and eventually booted (I'm not
| happy about this; long story) Flock. I feel like my Flock bona
| fides are pretty strong. I understand people not being
| comfortable with Flock. I do not understand this idea that it's
| an obvious red line.
|
| People disagree about this technology. I live in what I believe
| to be one of the 5 most progressive municipalities in the
| United States+ and I can tell you from recent experience that
| our community is sharply divided on it.
|
| + _(we 're a small inner-ring suburb of Chicago; I'm "cheating"
| in that Chicago as a whole is not one of the most progressive
| cities in the country, but our 50k person muni is up there with
| Berkeley and represented by the oldest DSA member in Congress)_
| squigz wrote:
| Constantly surveilling your citizens without cause doesn't
| strike you as an obvious red line?
| tptacek wrote:
| No. Roughly half our community wanted to keep the cameras.
| And we're as blue/progressive as it gets. Whatever else it
| is, it isn't "a red line".
|
| That is not the same thing as me saying I think the cameras
| were a good tradeoff.
| tehjoker wrote:
| The wealthy people keep the poor down, then having this
| subpopulation that acts in messed up ways causes crime,
| which causes the wealthy to accept things like
| surveillance to "protect themselves" and continually
| cedes to more authoritarian policies. The middle class is
| the social base of fascism.
|
| The way out is to turn on the rich and produce a more
| economically equal society.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| People live in fear, and these things help police close
| cases quickly.
|
| I served on a jury where a young woman slipped on ice while
| crossing the street and was run over by a negligent driver
| who was fleeing what he thought was the police, because he
| was on probation and not supposed to drive. With private
| surveillance, red light cameras and some other sources,
| they were able to track down the vehicle and apprehend the
| individual within 45 minutes of the event. Prior to that,
| much more primitive version of that technology being
| available, there would no chance of that case being solved.
|
| Personally, I think this technology is dangerous, lacks
| effective governance, is operated without transparency, and
| is prone to abuse. Events of late highlight how different
| jurisdictional boundaries at the city, state and federal
| levels can be in conflict. But the technology is not going
| away -- imo it's time to govern it and limit the inter-
| jurisdictional data sharing.
| nosianu wrote:
| I'm deeply skeptical of surveillance and convinced it
| _will_ be misused, more and more over time as all sides get
| used to it and the complaints become less, or less
| fundamental and more against something specific while not
| questioning the tech as such.
|
| Still, I'm torn whenever I walk to the city center
| (Bavarian big city that is not Munich) and see how many
| rental bikes and rental e-scooters can be found thrown into
| the river that runs through the city. Or public trash cans
| that were actually put deep into the earth, with concrete
| too, lie broken with lots of earth and the long metal pipe
| with concrete attached because some people spent
| considerable effort to destroy public infrastructure. Or
| somebody must have jumped hard and repeatably on a weak
| point of a public bench, which has very thick wood and
| thick steel screws, but they still managed to destroy it.
|
| I want those people to be found, I'm very angry. This is a
| frequent occurrence. If that means more surveillance, I
| would not oppose. I'm tired of seeing this happen again and
| again and again.
|
| The city had to start using trashcans that look more and
| more like little war bunkers. They can't do anything for
| the bikes and scooters though, making them too heavy to
| lift and throw into the water is obviously not possible.
| Police _do_ patrol, but they can 't be everywhere all the
| time.
|
| For illustration: Two bikes of a public bike rental service
| found in the river. They are not old, all of them are new,
| but this is how they look after a few days or weeks in the
| river:
|
| https://img.mittelbayerische.de/ezplatform/images/4/4/8/8/4
| 0...
|
| Divers are called regularly to retrieve bikes, scooters,
| and other big items thrown into the city's river: https://i
| mages.nordbayern.de/image/contentid/policy:1.132184...
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| Surveillance in the end is a tool, like a gun, which can
| be used for good or bad.
|
| I doubt any more effort will be made against vandalism
| for a long time that reaquires to increase surveillance.
| The cameras and microphones will remain, though.
|
| Edit: I live in a dictatorship. State surveillance and
| policing has helped with vandalism. But the drawbacks are
| obvious and nefarious. I would take more vandalism in a
| mediocre democracy any day.
| nosianu wrote:
| Uhm... see my first sentence? I'm aware, and I said so.
|
| Obviously I pointed to a conflict (of my interests),
| that's why I said I'm torn. If I want the second (less
| vandalism) I'll have to give up at least some of the
| first (freedom from surveillance while in public places).
| pixl97 wrote:
| It's almost assured the police know and have interacted
| with those committing vandalism already. Really the
| question you need to ask yourself is should said vandals
| should be beat to death or enslaved in prison forever.
|
| More cameras doesn't fix this kind of crime.
| rsync wrote:
| "I want those people to be found, I'm very angry. This is
| a frequent occurrence. If that means more surveillance
| ..."
|
| No, it doesn't necessarily mean surveillance ... or, at
| least, not _automated_ surveillance.
|
| Your wishes (which I share) can be fulfilled with human
| bodies (possibly police) on the street deterring these
| bad actions.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Ah yes, nothing like bit of lite STASI from keeping the
| rental bikes and the trash cans from being vandalised ...
| ... ...
| noAnswer wrote:
| The majority if this vandalism is most likely done by
| teens.
|
| I still remember my last years in school. Around the turn
| of the millennium, when the country had an economic down
| turn. The school building was a bunch of containers.
| Freezing in the winter, sweating in the sommer. Society
| saw nothing but a burden in us. The teachers constantly
| said "no one is waiting for you out there!"
|
| Nothing has changed since then. There is no respect for
| child care. There is no respect for school children.
| (Walk into a school and try not to drip over "temporary"
| support beams.) There will be no "Sondervermogen" for
| Schools.
|
| You can't fix a social problem - that some recent the
| society they have to live in and lash out via doing dumb
| thinks - via technology.
| MountDoom wrote:
| I'm surprised you say that. To flip this on its head, what
| would be your principled argument to accept ambient
| surveillance?
|
| I don't doubt that license plate readers are used primarily
| to solve crimes. But the fact that it is collected and can be
| made available to anyone essentially strips you of privacy in
| everyday life. Cops are people too; once the tech is
| available, it is sometimes abused to spy on spouses,
| neighbors, journalists critical of the local PD, and so on.
|
| There is also a more general argument: an ever-growing range
| of human activities is surveilled to root out crime, and we
| can probably agree that the end state of that would be
| dystopian: it'd be a place where your every word or even
| every thought is proactively monitored and flagged for
| wrongthink. We're ways off, but with every decade, we're
| getting closer. I'm not saying that Flock-listening-to-
| conversations is the line we can't cross, but if not this,
| then what?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Salami slicing tactics. The authoritarians will take a
| nibble at a time until we are all consumed.
| buran77 wrote:
| > I do not understand this idea that it's an obvious red
| line.
|
| It's an invasive surveillance technology that contributes to
| building the pervasive surveillance day to day reality.
|
| You're muddying the waters asking "why are you against this"
| without even hinting at an argument why anyone should _not_
| be against this.
|
| You can already see the progression. What was sold as "only
| listens to gunshots" now no longer listens only to gunshots.
| The deal constantly gets altered.
| tptacek wrote:
| No I'm not. I actually do real political work on this
| issue, ran the commission process that restricted our
| cameras and created the only restrictive ALPR police
| General Orders in Chicagoland, and got us to pass an ACLU
| CCOPS ordinance --- the first municipality in Illinois to
| have one.
|
| Whatever else I am, I'm not "muddying the waters". I'm
| commenting in good faith from actual experience. You're
| going to find my bona fides here are pretty strong.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| You could comment about why the things listed in the
| article aren't a red line.
| tptacek wrote:
| I've already done that.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Please quote where. I don't see it. I will go further and
| assert no you didn't.
| buran77 wrote:
| > I actually do real political work on this issue
|
| And Catholic priests preach. Some things aren't mutually
| exclusive and a lot of people are capable of holding
| conflicting ideas in their head.
|
| > I'm commenting in good faith from actual experience.
|
| All good but you didn't _say_ anything. You muddy the
| water by saying repeatedly how progressive and
| experienced you are without providing the obvious
| reasoning that multiple commenters here are missing: why
| _not_ be against it? This industry in general (and Flock
| in particular as per the article) have already been shown
| to continuously escalate things and change the deal to
| their benefit again and again. Any step they take forward
| always proved to be an irrecoverable step backward for
| civil liberties.
|
| You cracked open the door and are looking at someone on
| the other side opening it wider and wider, and bringing
| their friends in, and still believe you can close that
| door whenever you want. Any history book will tell you
| that's hubris, not qualifications.
|
| What are your bona fides on turkeys voting for Christmas?
| If you can put together an argument why this isn't a red
| line given this evidence of escalation, I'll tell you all
| about _my_ bona fides.
| free_bip wrote:
| The funny thing is you did the exact same thing in this
| comment as the last one! No arguments to be seen, just "I
| did all this stuff." Maybe we should call this sunken
| cost rather than muddying the waters?
| tptacek wrote:
| Because the question was whether I'm commenting in good
| faith.
| buran77 wrote:
| It was a _statement_ that you 're muddying the waters
| without implying whether bad faith or just a weak
| argument. And it was followed by the reasoning: that on a
| topic where the arguments against pervasive surveillance
| can be considered obvious, you aren't even hinting at an
| argument why anyone should _not_ be against this in your
| dissenting opinion. Just an appeal to authority, "I am
| super experienced and say it's fine".
|
| After repeated requests also from others you're still
| just waltzing around this, pretending you're not
| answering because you didn't get the question worded the
| right way.
|
| If you think that's what good faith looks like I've got
| news for you.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Because the question was whether I'm commenting in good
| faith.
|
| Perhaps others have asked that question. I have not.
| Rather, I'm asking a _different_ question:
|
| Why should we believe that _Flock_ is operating in good
| faith?
|
| Especially given the anti-democratic (small 'd') and
| likely illegal stuff they pulled in Evanston[0].
|
| That's _not_ a rhetorical question.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45382434
| tptacek wrote:
| I think my response to this would be to say that other
| ALPR operators are just as susceptible to extrajudicial
| pressure as Flock, and it would be foolish indeed to
| salve yourself by saying your ALPRs are OK because
| they're operated by Motorola instead of Flock.
|
| I really don't think the "rhetorical" thing is going to
| work with me. I have the impression I might be the one
| person on this thread who has actually done any policy
| with with ALPRs.
| thakoppno wrote:
| > I actually do real political work
|
| I'm not even sure why but this sentiment rubs me the
| wrong way.
|
| Perhaps it's that what's resonated most to me about
| democracy is the premise that it is all "for the people,
| of the people, by the people."
|
| There's something exclusive about that statement.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes. The people are supposed to _do work_. Believe me:
| ordinary people who strongly disagree with a lot of what
| 's being said on this thread are doing the work, showing
| up and complaining about "defund the police" people being
| behind any limitations on ALPRs at all. I had to argue
| with them! You are responsible for engaging on this,
| because, contrary to the claim at the top of the thread,
| this simply is not a "red line".
| thakoppno wrote:
| The work of democracy does not require action.
|
| If you don't respond to this comment, I'll assume you
| agree.
| tptacek wrote:
| Saying things like this is why you're losing.
| thakoppno wrote:
| I'm on your side with regards to the issue of flock.
|
| So, we're losing.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I'm an ex-employee of Flock who left when I learned just
| how empty their words about ethics and morality of
| increased surveillance really were.
|
| They will happily look the other way when agencies share
| data that Flock knows they're not meant to be sharing.
|
| They will happily "massage" data when needed to shore up
| a case (particularly with their gunshot detection).
|
| Their transparency report probably lists only about 2/3
| (at _most_ ) of the agencies that are actually using the
| system.
|
| I asked lots of questions about ethics and morality in
| the recruitment process, got in, and rapidly learned that
| it was openly mask-off, surveillance state, Minority
| Report-esque mission.
| therobots927 wrote:
| Yikes. I can't say it surprises me but my god that's
| terrifying
| aidenn0 wrote:
| In rereading Thomas's comments on this post, I'm going to
| try to sum up how I've read his comments:
|
| I'm about 98% certain understands why people are against
| this; other comments make this more clear, but even
| sentence right before the one you quoted to suggests this
| fact ("I understand people not being comfortable with
| Flock.").
|
| By "I do not understand this idea that it's an obvious red
| line" he seems to mean that, even if you ignore all
| authoritarians, there are plenty of smart people who
| believe the benefits (particularly when well regulated)
| outweigh the risks.
|
| There are plenty of things that are wrong that are not "an
| obvious red line," so merely thinking that Flock is bad is
| not enough to make it "an obvious red line."
|
| His argument for why people should _not_ be against seems
| to be twofold:
|
| 1. If it could be made to work in such a way that isn't
| invasive, it could be a boon, particularly to the most
| disadvantaged[0].
|
| 2. If all of the places that regulate it well kick it out,
| then they lose political capital that could constructively
| be used to encourage their neighbors to also regulate
| it[1].
|
| 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45475617
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45475478
| buran77 wrote:
| At the time of writing he has commented 16 times on this
| article and not a single time with a to-the-point answer
| when asked point blank what's his reasoning. I'd love to
| not have to guess his thoughts.
|
| We have a technology that keeps evolving to encompass
| more and more "protections" for the people, that happen
| to come with more and more control for authorities. Every
| step in that direction is a red flag. The red flag _is_
| the direction in which things are moving. Don 't we have
| enough chapters in the history books about why that is?
| collingreen wrote:
| Thanks for summing up those arguments!
|
| My snarky retorts:
|
| 1. "and if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bicycle"
|
| 2. "Let the bad actors do harm but keep an eye on them so
| others might do the same instead of prevent them from
| doing harm" is a wild approach to anything that has to
| ignore so many things it feels like intentional
| gaslighting. Even at face value it's absurd; why would
| only zero and partial regulation encourage similar
| behavior amongst neighbors but not full restriction?
| Imagine this suggestion for things we currently call
| crimes like rape and manslaughter and child abuse!
|
| I'm in my "calling it like I see it era" and I'm calling
| this one. Shills gonna shill.
| tptacek wrote:
| Who am I "shilling" for? Did you help get cameras removed
| from your municipality? I did in mine.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _do not understand this idea that it 's an obvious red
| line_
|
| ALPRs are not an obvious red line. Federal police ignoring
| court orders with microphones on street corners is.
| tptacek wrote:
| The premise of these cameras is that the operating LEOs
| control sharing. If you assume the federal government is
| going to ignore those controls extralegally, then ALPRs
| themselves aren't acceptable. The red line you're proposing
| here isn't coherent.
|
| Again I want to be clear that there's a difference between
| "bad idea" or "bad public policy tradeoff" and "red line".
| I believe it's pretty clear that when something is a live
| controversy with no clear winner in a municipality like Oak
| Park, whatever else it is, it isn't a "red line".
| stonogo wrote:
| And the problem with that premise is the company clearly
| does not honor the local controls. Ask Evanston about it.
| I don't understand why you're defending Flock so hard
| when you can get the same product from e.g. Axon without
| all the we're-smarter-than-you bullshit from the vendor.
| Not all ALPRs come with Flock baggage, but you seem to
| treat them interchangeably.
| tptacek wrote:
| This isn't responsive to the point 'JumpCrisscross was
| making.
| stonogo wrote:
| Yes, that's how conversations work.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I believe it's pretty clear that when something is a
| live controversy with no clear winner in a municipality
| like Oak Park, whatever else it is, it isn't a "red
| line".
|
| Shouldn't it be the opposite? A thing is tested when it's
| put under stress. It's a red line because it's not to be
| crossed even when the temptation to do it increases.
| tptacek wrote:
| To me, calling something a "red line" implies that
| there's near-universal agreement that something is bad
| (or, at least, on the proper weighing of the underlying
| values: here, freedom from surveillance vs. law
| enforcement).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _premise of these cameras is that the operating LEOs
| control sharing_
|
| The practical effect is most of them have national
| sharing turned on.
|
| For me, the red line was Texas extrajudicially enforcing
| its abortion laws through Flock. It's illegal. It's
| invasive.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's illegal in Illinois. And when the scandal happened,
| we weren't impacted, because we'd already disabled out-
| of-state sharing many months prior.
|
| Which was an annoying lift, because Chicago is part of a
| tri-state area (Wisconsin and Indiana); there are de-
| facto suburbs of Chicago in other states, and we had to
| say "no sharing without a phone call authorizing it".
| locopati wrote:
| i guess you're not part of a group that the current
| administration has decided is anti-American just because we
| exist?
|
| this administration is already making proclamations that are
| not laws (Executive Orders and National Security Directives),
| which clearly violate 1st Amendment rights to free speech,
| and yet are being interpreted by states to go after specific
| groups (may i introduce you to Texas and Florida).
|
| police already exist as an uncontrollable force within most
| cities who apply the law as they see fit.
|
| do you think a combination of those two things isn't going to
| result in a tool like this being abused?
|
| if you do think it will be abused and that isn't a red line,
| that says something about you.
|
| if you don't think it will be abused despite the evidence
| that police abuse surveillance and the current administration
| has no respect for due process and that isn't a red line,
| that also says something about you.
|
| circling back, i hope you never find yourself on the
| receiving end of the technology you want others to be on the
| receiving end of.
| shakna wrote:
| > Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-
| Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support
| for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism
| on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those
| who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and
| morality.
|
| > https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/09/coun...
|
| My birth, as someone who is bi, is now declared to be
| tantamount to terrorism in the USA. My belief that race
| shouldn't matter, is now extremism.
|
| The red line, is systems like this, enable those who would
| happily hunt me down and gut me like a fish. There are
| preachers in the government, who frequently say that I am not
| a person. The government is attempting to move to an
| extrajudicial procedure where it concerns people the
| government oppose.
|
| We shouldn't gladly be making it easier for a better Dehomag
| to be put together - that is the red line.
| buran77 wrote:
| > I admire Garry
|
| Isn't it getting harder to say this, hearing this kind of
| rhetoric? "My bombs only kill the bad guys" is either
| hopelessly ignorant, or willfully malicious.
| therobots927 wrote:
| Way too many people in this industry value professional
| achievement over ethical considerations. And in doing so
| provide cover for obvious bad actors.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I don't know and DNGAF about Garry, but that argument is
| specious and reflects the conflict his business fundamentally
| creates for him. The smart move would be to be silent, not sure
| what you "admire".
| kklisura wrote:
| A CEO of YC - the site you're currently on...
| free_bip wrote:
| How exactly is that relevant? I doubt most people who use
| Amazon admire Andy Jassy.
| therobots927 wrote:
| I give it 1-2 years max before he hands over the personal
| login emails / IP of every user on this site to the thought
| police. There's nothing admirable about mercenary
| capitalists.
| nehal3m wrote:
| That does not make them immune from criticism.
| ncallaway wrote:
| And? Do you want me to memorize the management and
| organizational structure of every website that I use?
|
| I am perfectly capable of using this site and not giving a
| flying shit about the CEO of YCombinator
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| It boggles my mind how some people can seem to only think
| in terms of "teams". And can't think critically about their
| supposed team.
|
| "I'm on their site so I'm on their team... Of course I back
| everything they do, I'm on their team."
|
| Similarly (and slightly related) when a big part of your
| motivation is to see the "other" side upset you've lost the
| plot.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Good for him. That's certainly a worthy accomplishment.
|
| The point stands i think. It is difficult for someone in
| his position to offer meaningful commentary about the topic
| without alienating his customers. As I mentioned in another
| comment, I've see firsthand how this type of tech resulted
| in a prosecution that would have been impossible without
| it.
|
| But... there are glaring risks to the public with this
| tech. Everything from dragnet surveillance to cops stalking
| their exes. Move fast and break things is a menace in this
| context, and the gulf between a foreign boogeyman and
| something closer to home may not be as wide as someone
| would like it to be.
| scoofy wrote:
| The logic here works both ways. The number of wars prevented by
| mutually assured destruction, and the number of lives saved is
| beyond nontrivial, and likely outnumbers the lives lost.
|
| I don't want to get into an argument about the dangers
| involved, I agree with Taleb about the fat tails of violence,
| and how standard statistics breaks down when there is infinite
| variance. My point is just that Tan's point is reasonable, even
| if there is risk. You need only look at the CCTV usage in the
| UK to see how you can have a reasonable society with strong
| surveillance.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| The UK has departed from being a reasonable society with
| strong surveillance. This happened about the same time the
| police started showing up at 2am for Facebook posts from old
| ladies.
| foldr wrote:
| >You need only look at the CCTV usage in the UK to see how
| you can have a reasonable society with strong surveillance.
|
| It's not really 'surveillance' as the vast majority of those
| cameras are privately owned and on private property. The
| numbers that get thrown around are basically just guesses,
| given that there are no central records of privately owned
| CCTV cameras.
| jon-wood wrote:
| Part of why CCTV in the UK is ubiquitous and yet hasn't so
| far resulted in what many people describe as a surveillance
| state is that the cameras are all operated by different
| people. To hoover up data an agency needs to go ask the owner
| of every shop along a road for the video, while hoping
| they've not recorded over the tape yet.
|
| That falls apart (and is falling apart) when the cameras are
| all operated by the same company. Now an agency can just go
| to that company and request video for an entire town in one
| go. There's probably a self-service portal for this because
| the operator isn't even based in that town, so has no skin in
| the game, no need to work out whether they agree this is
| something the video is needed for.
| Starlevel004 wrote:
| > I admire Garry
|
| Why?
| strangattractor wrote:
| "Flock safety currently solves ... %10 of the crime Nation
| Wide"
|
| Pretty bold statement without citing data to back that up. I
| have already received a speeding warning letter from one of
| these things. Does that count as a crime Flock solved?
|
| I tire of all this binary thinking. It is true that
| surveillance helps victims. It is also true that the same
| surveillance can endanger civil liberties. We should have some
| say in how much we will allow our liberties to be endangered.
|
| Sounds like someone watched too much Person of Interest
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/
| tptacek wrote:
| Flock cameras don't issue citations at all and don't appear
| to include speed radar.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Don't need radar to calculate speed with multiple
| photographs. And yes technically the city issued the
| warning.
| tptacek wrote:
| Can you document this further? State/locality? In
| Illinois, that wouldn't be legal.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Ok Before I am accused of misrepresenting things and in
| the interest of clarity.
|
| 1. I am in San Francisco.
|
| 2. Upon further research Flock does not appear to be used
| by SFPD for ticketing. They have another camera system
| for that. That does not mean that Flock could not be used
| for speeding tickets or a host of other things like
| running red lights, littering etc. Microprocessors and
| CMOS cameras can do amazing things.
|
| Regardless of what company is doing the surveillance the
| debate remains the same.
|
| 1. Pervasive surveillance has the potential to be used
| inappropriately by authorities. Discussion is needed.
|
| 2. The data collected by a company such as Flock but not
| necessarily Flock could be used inappropriately or sold
| for other purposes. Benn Jordan has a good video on the
| subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ&t=21s
|
| 3. The claim that Flock is responsible for %10 of solved
| cases seems dubious but without data it is difficult to
| know or believe. Given that Flock is in YC's portfolio
| makes it even more suspect.
|
| Flock or a company like Flock may try and become
| pervasive and indispensable before a public discussion
| places any limits on their behavior.
| tptacek wrote:
| I have no idea where the "10% of solved cases" thing
| comes from, but I posted across thread: I looked at
| effectiveness _very_ carefully in my own muni, and my
| conclusion was that the cameras were of basically no
| help. It feels cynical to make this observation, but if I
| had to bet --- from the way our own PD, which I respect a
| lot, tried to formulate an argument for keeping the
| cameras --- they 're counting every crime where an
| involved car blipped an ALPR. That's not at all the same
| thing as solving a crime.
|
| Someone who knows more about how Flock generates that
| stat could say more.
| zyx321 wrote:
| Speed radar is unlikely but average speed is possible.
|
| If you were in one place at 13:00 and 5 miles down the road
| at 13:10 you must have gone at least 30mph at least once.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| So... don't speed?
| zyx321 wrote:
| NOTHING TO HIDE
|
| NOTHING TO FEAR
|
| BIG BROTHER IS MY FRIEND
|
| BIG BROTHER KNOWS WHERE I AM AT ALL TIMES
|
| BIG BROTHER KEEPS ME SAFE
| monkpit wrote:
| This has to be bait, but feel free to make a more
| substantiated argument... for example, how does privilege
| play into what you've said here?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I was responding to the point above. If getting a fine
| for speeding is one's concern about the cameras, then
| don't speed.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| If I recall correctly, "If LE looked at Flock in the process
| of investigating a crime that resulted in an arrest, it
| counts" (regardless of whether that look had any meaningful
| impact or any findings at all in the crime, just "in trying
| to solve this crime, did you run a search on Flock at all").
| nemothekid wrote:
| Irrespective of how you feel about this, its very strange to
| throw China under the bus here. If Chinese surveillance is so
| dystopian, don't you think China uses the same exact rhetoric
| for protecting their police state? After all China went from a
| bunch of farms to the second largest economy in 30 years.
|
| Either you think mass surveillance is wrong or not.
| saubeidl wrote:
| He's not an oligarch in China, though, so of course theirs is
| bad.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| What's to prevent US-based surveillance from becoming Chinese
| surveillance?
|
| Also, what reason do you think China gives for its
| surveillance? It's the same: "protecting victims", "protecting
| citizens", "public safety".
| saubeidl wrote:
| Why do you admire him? Him and his ilk are responsible for the
| dystopia we're barreling towards.
| mhb wrote:
| That should be Flock (YC 2017)
| cr125rider wrote:
| There are a lot of ideas that are bad for society but great for
| business. YC is business first, always.
| dang wrote:
| We stopped putting that in submission titles years ago. An
| exception is for Launch HNs.
| mhb wrote:
| Yes. My intention was how it should be in mind space rather
| than literally.
| camillomiller wrote:
| It is now fair game to destroy their illegal surveillance
| devices. Please do.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Is there an audio stream that tends to ruin speech recognition?
| baby_souffle wrote:
| Play multiple lyrical songs at the same time? Bonus for multi-
| language.
| AfterHIA wrote:
| I'm going to go around these things all day screaming, "help,
| rape!"
|
| It's like that old prank where you order pizzas to someone's
| house that didn't order them. That's how we used to fight against
| the man. Now we scream, "rape" randomly in public.
|
| What a time to be alive.
| yongjik wrote:
| It's a problem entirely made up from America's insistence on
| guns. IMHO that's like when you have a website that serves a few
| requests per second, and then someone has the bright idea of
| using Kafka and Kubernetes because reasons, and now you have a
| horrible mess that requires multiple developers to support and,
| instead of questioning the original technical decision, everybody
| instead piles up technical "solutions."
|
| At least nobody actually says "The founding engineers knew
| everything, our job is protect their original technical
| decisions, because otherwise our great company will fall."
|
| Regulate guns and all these problems go away. As a bonus, you'll
| find out they were neither necessary nor useful for defending
| your rights.
| tptacek wrote:
| We're not going to regulate guns this way, so this point, valid
| or not, isn't meaningful to US policy.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Dangerous freedom > peaceful slavery
|
| The non-American mind simply can't comprehend, and that's okay.
| rhubarbtree wrote:
| But the argument doesn't make any sense. History isn't full
| of examples where handguns prevented tyranny. It's America
| that is running the experiment, not the rest of the world.
| And the conclusion is lots of people die as a result, and
| right now it looks very much like you're headed toward
| tyranny anyway.
| mindcrime wrote:
| > Regulate guns and all these problems go away.
|
| Firearms _are_ regulated in the United States. Quite heavily,
| in fact. This goes back to the National Firearm Act of 1934,
| carries through the Gun Control Act of 1968, then loops in the
| Firearm Owners ' Protection Act (FOPA) of 1986 (which included
| the famous Volkmer-McClure amendment that all but outlawed
| fully automatic weapons for civilians) and runs through at
| least the Brady Act of 1993. And that's without getting into
| the smorgasbord of state, county, and municipal laws that also
| apply.
|
| The idea that the US is still living in the Wild West era with
| regards to firearms is a complete myth.
|
| > As a bonus, you'll find out they were neither necessary nor
| useful for defending your rights.
|
| That's not an experiment I'm willing to indulge in personally.
| As the old saying goes "I'd rather have my guns and not need
| them, than need them and not have them."
| EasyMark wrote:
| It really isn't though. Sure I can't go and buy a full auto
| AR15/AK47 without a special license. However it's pretty easy
| for me to go buy semi-auto version of that which can also do
| a lot of damage. There are a few red flag laws like in Texas
| but they are easily gotten around by private trade, and
| that's true for most "Red" states. Often no waiting period
| either if you go to an actual store. It really varies a lot
| state to state.
| tstrimple wrote:
| The 2019 Dayton shooter used a semi-automatic AR-15 and
| killed 9 people and wounded 17 others in the 30 seconds it
| took from his first shot fired to his death at the hands of
| police. 30 seconds to respond and kill the shooter. You
| cannot really ask for a more ideal response time than that.
| But 26 lives are directly impacted by those bullets, never
| mind the number of folks impacted because it was their
| loved ones being killed. All so conservatives can cosplay
| as freedom fighters at the shooting range.
| rhubarbtree wrote:
| There are more civilian guns than civilians in the US.
| krapp wrote:
| >The idea that the US is still living in the Wild West era
| with regards to firearms is a complete myth.
|
| Compared to every other country in the world, including those
| with private firearm ownership, the US very much is still in
| the Wild West.
|
| >That's not an experiment I'm willing to indulge in
| personally.
|
| You're indulging in it now. Your rights are being eroded and
| nullified daily by an increasingly militarized police force,
| an ever more pervasive surveillance state and an
| authoritarian government going off the rails. How are your
| guns helping?
| AngryData wrote:
| Guns aren't the cause of America's crime problems. Guns
| existing don't make people walk out of homedepot with a cart
| full of tools or out of a walmart with a TV. Guns don't make
| people drive recklessly or commit DUIs. Guns don't burglarize
| peoples houses or make people sell or use drugs.
| ph4rsikal wrote:
| "We will all be on our best behaviour because we are constantly
| recording and reporting everything that's going on"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VA5hHllB4Xw
| keiferski wrote:
| It's pretty depressing to see every ostensibly American value be
| replaced by profit-driven utilitarianism. "It improves X problem
| marginally and it makes money, so why not?" seems to be the
| reasoning for just about everything anymore. No discussion of
| values, of the society we want to build, or anything else. That's
| the world the tech industry is building.
| captainkrtek wrote:
| It really feels like there is no debate anymore when it comes
| to things actually being implemented, they are just thrust upon
| us and maybe discussed later after there have already been
| consequences
| mothballed wrote:
| Reminds me of the school 'vape detectors' that can also be
| programmed to listen for "loud noises" and "keywords" but
| basically handwave away the fact it violates wiretapping laws
| because they're claiming they're basically doing pattern
| matching on RAM buffered audio then dumping it.
| crtasm wrote:
| Do you have a link to an analysis of one of these?
| mothballed wrote:
| https://halodetect.com/
|
| Look at "spoken keyword" and "gunshot" for instance
| godelski wrote:
| Direct link for easier access:
| https://halodetect.com/capability/emergency-keyword/
| How does keyword detection work? HALO Smart Sensor
| listens for preloaded distress keywords and triggers
| real-time alerts when detected, ensuring quick emergency
| response without recording conversations. What
| keywords can HALO detect? HALO Smart Sensor comes
| preloaded with distress keywords and can be updated with
| additional phrases to fit specific security needs.
| Does HALO record conversations? No, HALO Smart
| Sensor ensures privacy by only detecting keywords and
| aggression patterns without recording audio or storing
| voice data.
|
| Quite vague... and seems ripe for abuse
|
| I _can_ understand if there were emergency keywords like
| yelling "Help" or "Call 911" and extremely limited
| phrases like that. Essentially a voice activated fire
| alarm. But uploading new keywords and not being explicit
| of what keywords trigger the thing is really not a good
| look. If you can upload arbitrary words then there is no
| meaningful difference between spying. The thing has an
| occupancy sensor and it's not like it is hard to combine
| that data with camera data. What are the keywords? If a
| kid talks about someone else smoking a joint does that
| trigger the system? Where are kids going to get some safe
| place to talk about things without fear of surveillance?
|
| The words keywords being hidden just furthers concerns of
| surveillance. If you can't know what words you can't use
| then you have to be very cautious with your speech, least
| you set off false positives and get in trouble. This
| really is too far.
|
| HOLY FUCK! THEY * _SUGGEST*_ YOU INSTALL THESE THINGS IN
| BATHROOMS! How is anyone okay with that? It 's way more
| than a smoke detector!
| https://halodetect.com/blog/school-bathroom-vandalism/
| almostgotcaught wrote:
| > It's pretty depressing to see every ostensibly American value
| be replaced by profit-driven utilitarianism
|
| That's the difference between mythos and ethos - they were
| never the actual values to begin with (profit-driven
| utilitarianism is exactly American ethos)
| themafia wrote:
| > by profit-driven utilitarianism.
|
| That's generous. To me it's just felonious corruption possibly
| bordering on treason.
|
| > and it makes money
|
| It doesn't make money. Which is why these rent seeking entities
| attach themselves to the federal and state budgets with onerous
| contracts that they will defend to the death. If they had to
| actually compete for private business they would be out of
| money by end of year.
|
| > of the society we want to build
|
| This isn't directionless either. The people doing this have a
| vision for your society and they're willing to do almost
| anything to secure that.
|
| > That's the world the tech industry is building.
|
| Which is why I find monopoly law enforcement so important. "Too
| big to fail" has become the norm and it seems to me is a
| required ingredient in order to achieve these outcomes.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Too big to fail shouldn't even be in the vernacular of our
| society. Every private business should be able to fail. Let
| it happen and the let new entrants take over and compete.
|
| Is something does become so large and critical to the
| functioning of the nation that means we have either failed to
| trust bust or it needs to be nationalized and made a public
| service. If Microsoft for example were to fail tomorrow, no
| way in hell should we bail them out. Let them fail, let
| others enter the market and pick up the pieces.
| godelski wrote:
| > It doesn't make money.
|
| It makes someone money. And the "great thing" about
| government money is that when you lose it it doesn't come out
| of your pocket!
|
| Honestly, we should treat these people like we would with any
| other employee wasting money. They need to justify their
| expenses. I don't mean with just words, I mean data. Words
| aren't enough. I can claim all day that painting this red dot
| on a ceiling with my special paint that costs 10 cents to
| make and $10k to install _just_ right is an effective
| solution to stopping terrorists, pedophiles, and even cancer
| but words aren 't proof. And except for the utmost security
| concerns, this data and justifications should be public.
| Otherwise there is no accountability.
|
| People often say they don't trust politicians. I'd like to
| see those words be reflected in actions. It seems we only
| don't trust certain politicians. And it seems we hand over
| all trust as soon as they claim they are protecting children
| and fighting terrorists. I'm sorry, but what class of people
| are we finding in the Epstein list? Last I checked he wasn't
| hanging around low class people with no political or monetary
| influence. So why do we let them use that phrase like some
| cheat code?
| tptacek wrote:
| You know you're in trouble when someone brings up "treason",
| the only crime defined specifically in the Constitution,
| exactly so people wouldn't randomly call everything they
| don't like "treason".
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Have you read _The Technological Republic_ recently? What you
| said is an echo of the Palantir CEO 's thesis there. In the
| book he calls for discussion of what "the good life" is. I
| found it a bit ironic that you seem to come to different
| conclusions about surveillance.
| tQHAZ21 wrote:
| Don't worry. If LEOs are dispatched reacting to a Flock event,
| they will be using Carbyne, a company founded by Epstein and Ehud
| Barak.
| jollyllama wrote:
| How's this different than shotspotter?
| jkestner wrote:
| It's webscale
| EasyMark wrote:
| "Human distress" today, and "human everything" tomorrow. They
| probably just don't currently have the processing capability or
| upload bandwidth for all the passersby talking, the only issue is
| technical and not moral. Flock is in this for money, all morals
| are turned off --corporations are not really people-- and will
| sell cops and the government anything they are willing to pay
| for, including listening for wrongthink. Every time I read a
| story like this I send EFF or the ACLU another $20
| foresto wrote:
| > will sell cops and the government anything they are willing
| to pay for
|
| Anything they are willing to force _us_ to pay for.
| mihaaly wrote:
| "Listening on normal conversations can uncover serious crimes
| being executed or planned" - just an imaginary excuse from the
| future, along the small gradual steps taken, like this one.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| 1984 was a pretty mild vision of the surveillance state. If tech
| continues to improve we will not too far into the future have
| full surveillance around the clock of everybody. No way around it
| and it will not even cost a lot. The big question is who will
| have access to the data.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Seems we are not far away from full-on 1984.
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