[HN Gopher] Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet...
___________________________________________________________________
Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked
Ourselves
Archive Link: https://archive.ph/IWMKe Also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo - _This Flock Camera
Leak is like Netflix For Stalkers_
Author : chaps
Score : 211 points
Date : 2025-12-22 16:31 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.404media.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.404media.co)
| dvtkrlbs wrote:
| I just watched the Benn Jordan's video on this. Even if this is
| just configuration error on some of their cameras this is
| terrifying and I think they should be held accountable for this
| and their previous myriad of CVEs.
| chaps wrote:
| Here's the video for interested folk:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo
| tencentshill wrote:
| It's amazing that any vendor, let alone a CJIS vendor even
| allows unsecured deployments of their software in 2025.
| edot wrote:
| Flock or their defenders will lock in on the excuse that "oh
| these are misconfigured" or "yeah hacking is illegal, only cops
| should have this data". The issue is neither of the above. The
| issue is the collection and collation of this footage in the
| first place! I don't want hackers watching me all the time, sure,
| but I DEFINITELY don't trust the state or megacorps to watch me
| all the time. Hackers concern me less, actually. I'm glad that
| Benn Jordan and others are giving this the airtime it needs, but
| they're focusing the messaging on security vulnerabilities and
| not state surveillance. Thus Flock can go "ok we will do better
| about security" and the bureaucrats, average suburbanites, and
| law enforcement agencies will go "ok good they fixed the
| vulnerabilities I'm happy now"
| dvtkrlbs wrote:
| Yes and the biggest problem with this kind of ALPRs are they
| bypass the due process. Most of the time police can just pull
| up data without any warrant and there has been instances where
| this was abused (I think some cops used this for stalking their
| exes [1]) and also the most worrying Flock seems to really okay
| with giving ICE unlimited access to this data [2] [3] (which I
| speculate for loose regulations).
|
| [1]: https://lookout.co/georgia-police-chief-arrested-for-
| using-f... [2]: https://www.404media.co/emails-reveal-the-
| casual-surveillanc... [3]: https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-
| into-nationwide-ai-enabled-...
| throwway120385 wrote:
| When you give access to any system that collects the personal
| information including location data for people in the US to
| the police, a percentage of the police will always use those
| systems for stalking their exes.
| hugo1789 wrote:
| What is not only true for police but for every sufficiently
| big group of people.
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| Cops do have some unique tendencies but I think the real
| issue is the cops are able to leverage the power of the
| government in ways other large groups cannot.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Maybe with these systems we should require them TO be open
| for anyone to query against. Maybe then people would care
| more about how they impact their privacy.
| SamInTheShell wrote:
| Nothing will be done until one of the investors of the tech end
| up embarrassed from weaponization of the tech against
| themselves. These people have no clue how creepy some of their
| technologic betters can be. I once witnessed a coworker
| surveilling his own network to ensure his girlfriend wasn't
| cheating on him (this was a time before massive SSL adoption).
| The guy just got a role doing networking at my company and
| thankfully he wasn't there for very long after that.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I think more importantly people need to recognize that cops are
| people, flawed and fallible as is the flock system in general.
| It should never be the whole solution and be used as evidence
| alone.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Was it misconfigured? Or "misconfigured" so people in the know
| can bypass the minimal controls that are in place?
| SamInTheShell wrote:
| It's 2025. The ISP gateway I got comes with more default security
| than these cameras. The barrier to entry on security is lower
| than it ever has been in history. Whoever let this past the QC
| phase is an idiot.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Whoever let this past the QC phase is an idiot.
|
| It's all a matter of perspective. I'm sure to some executive
| somewhere, the person/s who approved all of this is seen as
| heroes, as they shaved of 0.7% or whatever from the costs of
| the development, and therefore made shareholders more money.
|
| Until there are laws in place that makes people actually
| responsible for creating these situations, it'll continue, as
| for a company, profits goes above all.
| SamInTheShell wrote:
| So you're trying to justify this type of rampant negligence
| in tech? Do you think justifying such malfeasance makes up
| for fact we literally have surveillance networks that bad
| actors can tap to do really awful things?
|
| Anyone that cares about their perspective has missed the
| point.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I don't think the person you're replying to is justifying
| it, but saying there's no laws to prevent the abuse.
|
| Personally I think tech CEOs should be put in stocks in the
| town square on the regular but they're protected from any
| form of repercussions besides extreme cases of fraud. Even
| then, they're only held accountable when the money people
| have their money effected, not when normal people are
| bulldozed by the abuse.
| SamInTheShell wrote:
| If I was 10 years younger, I might agree that they aren't
| justifying it, but I have enough experience with passive
| speech to just not let it pass anymore.
|
| Regarding remedy, we really need laws on this stuff
| yesterday. The problem is that we have to gut first
| amendment freedoms for some of this stuff, which wont go
| anywhere because there will always be too much overreach
| with today's representatives.
| yunwal wrote:
| You should probably read the comment you're replying to
| before replying
|
| > Until there are laws in place that makes people
| actually responsible for creating these situations, it'll
| continue, as for a company, profits goes above all.
|
| They obviously meant that we ought to be holding these
| people responsible.
| SamInTheShell wrote:
| > You should probably read the comment you're replying to
| before replying
|
| Congrats you spotted the thing we agreed on between
| comments. If you fail to see the agreement through parity
| of the part that was echoed, idk what to tell you.
| Education system is failing everyone in it these days.
| hrimfaxi wrote:
| An explanation is not a justification.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Why stick your neck out, swim upstream to do a good job
| that will not be recognised as such?
|
| Fix the corporate incentives and engineers will be able to
| do the right thing without suffering. Not everyone gets the
| luxury of a secure career doing morally ok things.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > So you're trying to justify this type of rampant
| negligence in tech?
|
| Don't know how you reached that conclusion, I obviously
| isn't trying to justify anything. But maybe something I
| said was unclear? What exactly gave you the idea I'm trying
| to justify anything of this?
| SamInTheShell wrote:
| Nothing against you personally, just so you know. But I
| have to point out that anyone caring about the reason for
| the short coming of flock on stuff like this are just
| crafting soft reasons they can use to justify things
| later. Being up front here I care not for their reason
| because the entire business model is frankly disgusting
| and an affront to a functioning society. This is the type
| of tech that evolves into social credit scores and precog
| crime units, stoping crime before it happens.
|
| At the end of the day your rationalization only affords
| comfort to those that have a vested interest in this
| stuff being successful and it needs to be clear to those
| people driving this that they're not doing something
| popular or even good.
| jandrese wrote:
| It probably makes close to no difference in development or
| production, but it does significantly cut down on the number
| of tech support calls from people who can't figure out how to
| set the password, or immediately forget the password they
| set. If it has no password then you can just plug it in an
| have it work. Sure it's totally insecure, but its also
| trivial to install.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Generating a password that is unique to the device and
| print it with a sticky label on the underside of the device
| isn't exactly rocket-science, and ISPs somehow figured this
| out at least two decades ago, which was the first time I
| came across that myself. Surely whoever developed this IP-
| camera has an engineering department who've also seen
| something like this in the wild before?
| jandrese wrote:
| Yep, but if you do that you need to staff a help line
| with people who can say "turn the box over and look at
| the sticker, no the sticker with the numbers on it, it's
| white with black letters and says PASSWORD in a big font,
| no the password isn't literally PASSWORD, it's the line
| below that with the strange letters, yes, to type that
| one you need to hold the shift key and press 3..."
|
| Remember that ISPs often have people who come to your
| home to hook stuff up.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Yes, which costs money, which is exactly my original
| point. It's not because "Oh I'm so hassled because
| customers are dumb", it's "No, hiring people to do
| support would cost us money, which we don't want".
|
| > Remember that ISPs often have people who come to your
| home to hook stuff up.
|
| I can't recall a single time a technician wasn't required
| to come to my flat/house to install a new router. I'm
| based in Spain, maybe it's different elsewhere, but I
| think it's pretty much a requirement, you can't setup the
| WAN endpoint or ISP router yourself.
| jandrese wrote:
| Last time I moved I opted for the "self install" kit,
| which was fine because I'm technical and the previous
| owners already had the service so there was nothing that
| needed to be done except hooking up the pre-configured
| modem. Saved me $200 in truck roll fees.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Interesting stuff, I've asked if I could do the
| installation myself every single time I've moved to a new
| place, and never has the ISP (three different ones) said
| yes. There isn't any installation fee place(probably by
| law?) so that isn't an issue here, just a hassle to
| coordinate having to meet between 12:00 and 18:00 or some
| super wide range of time for them to come and install it.
| ewoodrich wrote:
| In the US for the past 5+ years Xfinity/Comcast, Charter,
| and whatever CenturyLink is called these days have all
| heavily pushed the "self-install kit" option vs
| traditional tech install each time I've moved.
|
| Worked 4/5 times (all with cable), only time it failed
| was because I had apparently subscribed to a DSL plan
| from CenturyLink without realizing and they needed to
| wire up the extra lines upstream for the "modern" version
| of DSL to work in my apartment. After insisting multiple
| times that the self-install kit was 100% plug-n-play at
| my new address despite my intense skepticism since I
| _really_ needed reliable internet from Day 1 during COVID
| remote work.
|
| I was seriously missing Comcast/cable by the time that 1
| yr contract was up, the devil you know and all...
| braingravy wrote:
| Yep. Until we start holding decision makers responsible for
| the consequences of their decisions, they will always choose
| the selfish option.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Counterpoint: whoever let this past the QC phase got paid very
| generously, and everyone involved is ignoring the laws that
| already exist to combat this, because law enforcement, too,
| gets paid generously. And the laws that forbid _that_ aren 't
| getting enforced because the police doesn't police the police,
| and dad has made it perfectly clear that flagrantly ignoring
| the law is fine if you're in power.
| salawat wrote:
| What makes you think QA/QC is paid handsomely? It's a bloody
| cost center mate, and you can't measure "damage prevented"
| consistently, or at least in a way most high-risk tolerating
| exec types won't immediately undermine.
|
| t. Former QA veteran
| bromuk wrote:
| Really great investigation, what's the URL of the "vibe coded"
| site with the access links?
| eightysixfour wrote:
| I don't want these cameras to exist but, _if they 're going to_,
| might we be better off if they are openly accessible? At the very
| least, that would make the power they grant more diffuse and
| people would be more cognizant of their existence and
| capabilities.
| hrimfaxi wrote:
| Is it more symmetrical? I know _in theory_ we all can
| continuously download and datamine these video feeds but can
| everyone really?
| eightysixfour wrote:
| No, but the same argument could be made for things like open
| source software. We assume/hope that someone more aligned
| with our outcomes is actively looking.
|
| Or, at the very least, that we can go back and look later.
| hrimfaxi wrote:
| I don't think they are similar. Public feeds would enable
| someone to document and sell people's whereabouts in real
| time. The fact that I could do the same or go back and look
| later is no defense.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| This is a different argument than what I was responding
| to.
|
| > I know in theory we all can continuously download and
| datamine these video feeds but can everyone really?
|
| To which my response is "this is like OSS." What I mean
| by that is that, in theory, people audit and review code
| submitted to OSS software, in reality most people trust
| that there are other people who do it.
|
| > Public feeds would enable someone to document and sell
| people's whereabouts in real time. The fact that I could
| do the same or go back and look later is no defense.
|
| This is a different argument to me and one that I'm still
| torn about. I _think_ that if the feeds exist and the
| government and private entities have access to them, the
| trade-offs may be better if everyone has access to them.
| In my mind this results in a few things:
|
| 1. Diffusion of power - You said public feeds would
| "enable someone to document and sell people's whereabouts
| in real time." Well, private feeds allow this too. I'd
| rather have everyone know about some misdeed than Flock
| or the local PD blackmail someone with it.
|
| 2. Second guessing deployment - I think if the people
| making the decisions know that the data will be publicly
| available, they're more likely to second guess deploying
| it in the first place.
|
| 3. Awareness - if you can just open an app on your phone
| and look at the feed from a camera then you become aware
| of the amount of surveillance you are subject to. I think
| being aware of it is better than not.
|
| There's trade-offs to this. The cameras become less
| effective if everyone knows where they are. It doesn't
| help with the location selection bias - if they're only
| installed in areas of town where decision makers don't
| live and don't go, the power is asymmetric again. Plenty
| of other reasons it is bad. None of them worse than the
| original sin of installing them in the first place.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Open cameras make information that was previously local
| and difficult to collect global and easier to collect.
| Relatively, it reduces the privacy and power of people on
| the ground in your neighbourhood and increases the power
| of more distant actors. It doesn't seem very socially
| desirable as an outcome. It also increases the relative
| power of people with technical capacity and capital for
| storage and processing etc.
|
| I do buy your argument that open access could help check
| the worst abuses. But, if widespread, it'd be so
| catastrophic for national security that I can't see how
| it would ever fly.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| I think the theater of closed versions have the same
| problems, we just don't acknowledge them as well.
|
| If I were an enemy nation state, flock would definitely
| be a target.
| kgwxd wrote:
| They don't grant power, they enhance it. Not helpful for those
| without don't have any actual power.
| lubujackson wrote:
| Did you see the other post about this where the guys showed a
| Flock camera pointed at a playground, so any pedo can see when
| kids are there and not attended?
|
| Or how it has become increasingly trivial to identify by face
| or license plate such that combining tools reaches "movie
| Interpol" levels, without any warrant or security credentials?
|
| If Big Brother surveillance is unavoidable I don't think
| "everyone has access" is the solution. The best defense is
| actually the glut of data and the fact nobody is actively
| watching you picking your nose in the elevator. If everyone can
| utilize any camera and its history for any reason then expect
| fractal chaos and internet shaming.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| > so any pedo can see when kids are there and not attended?
|
| Sure. It also lets parents watch. Or others see when parents
| are repeatedly leaving their kids unattended. Or lets you see
| some person that keeps showing up unattended and watching the
| kids.
|
| > Or how it has become increasingly trivial to identify by
| face or license plate such that combining tools reaches
| "movie Interpol" levels, without any warrant or security
| credentials?
|
| That already exists and it is run by private companies and
| sold to government agencies. That's a huge power grab.
|
| > The best defense is actually the glut of data and the fact
| nobody is actively watching you picking your nose in the
| elevator. If everyone can utilize any camera and its history
| for any reason then expect fractal chaos and internet
| shaming.
|
| This argument holds whether it is public or not. It is worse
| if Flock or the government can do this asymmetrically than if
| anyone can do it IMO, they already have enough coercive
| tools.
| rsync wrote:
| "Or others see when parents are repeatedly leaving their
| kids unattended."
|
| ... which is the expected, default use-case for a
| playground ...
| eightysixfour wrote:
| I didn't want to get into an argument over whether kids
| should be unattended at playgrounds or not - I don't know
| where the other poster is front and it seems to be based
| on age, density, region, etc. Where I grew up it would be
| weird to stay, in the city I am in it would be weird to
| leave them.
|
| If you leave your kids unattended at a playground I don't
| see how the camera changes the risk factor in any
| meaningful way. Either a pedophile can expect there to be
| unattended children or not.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I've thought the same regarding license plate readers (and saw
| considerable pushback on HN) -- feeling like you suggest: if
| they have the technology anyway, why not open it up?
|
| I imagined a "white list" though (or whatever the new term
| is--"permitted list"?) so that only certain license plates are
| posted/tracked.
| overfeed wrote:
| > I don't want these cameras to exist but, if they're going to,
| might we be better off if they are openly accessible?
|
| Cities will remove Flock cameras at the first council meeting
| that sits after council-members learn _their_ families can be
| stalked.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Seems like a positive side effect. The Seattle area is
| delaying it after the open records request case.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| At what point does the top brass at Flock get arrested?
| reactordev wrote:
| Oh they're buddies with all the departments. Fat chance.
| SamInTheShell wrote:
| Rather just see them get Flocked honestly. Seems like the type
| of tech a child would dream up only to realize when it's too
| late that it's dystopian, creepy, and a detriment to society.
| zrobotics wrote:
| Building the torment nexus...
| cons0le wrote:
| In your dreams maybe
| fuckflock wrote:
| By top brass do you mean the people behind this website?
|
| > The financing was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with backing
| from Greenoaks Capital, Bedrock Capital. Meritech Capital,
| Matrix Partners, Sands Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins,
| Tiger Global, and _Y Combinator_ also participated.
|
| https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-secures-major-...
| gruez wrote:
| For what? Under current jurisprudence collecting license plates
| images isn't illegal, because there's no expectation of privacy
| in public. They could post the information online if they
| wanted to and they'd be in the clear. It's fine to object to
| ANPR networks on the basis of "mass surveillance" or whatever,
| but screaming for people to be arrested without legal basis,
| just because you don't like what they're doing is childish and
| counterproductive to the conversation.
| array_key_first wrote:
| I mean, stalking is very clearly illegal.
|
| The main issue is that we have a different set of laws that
| govern businesses and that govern private citizens.
|
| If I set up a camera in a local park and programmed it to
| zoom into children's faces and stream it directly to my
| computer, I am surely going to jail.
|
| But if I set up 100 cameras to do just that, baby, that's
| just business.
|
| It's almost paradoxical. The more evil I do, the less illegal
| it becomes. The greater the scale of harm I inflict, the more
| palatable it is. It's a get out of jail free card.
|
| Are you a psychopath? Love to kill people? Well, don't use
| knives or guns silly! Instead, form an LLC and give people
| poison. You'll kill 100x more people with 100x less
| consequences!
| gruez wrote:
| >If I set up a camera in a local park and programmed it to
| zoom into children's faces and stream it directly to my
| computer, I am surely going to jail.
|
| [citation needed]
|
| You might be called a creep, and you might be asked to
| remove the camera (because you can't leave random cameras
| on public property without permission), but operating
| cameras in public and recording stuff isn't illegal.
| Paparazzis do that all the time.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Stalking is not illegal at all.
| therobots927 wrote:
| They won't under this administration. It's owned and operated
| by Surveillance Valley Vulture Capitalists
| tonymet wrote:
| Why do people avoid saying President Trump like he's
| Voldemort?
| therobots927 wrote:
| Because he attained his current position by ragebaiting
| everyone. He's just a puppet of the people who are really
| in charge (intelligence agencies and billionaires)
| mvkel wrote:
| Should we also arrest computer co execs because computers are
| used to hack into things?
| j3s wrote:
| flock is the most heinous reflection of the ills of our current
| socioeconomic structure. absolutely nobody should be okay with
| mass surveillance, much less mass surveillance enabled by a
| private company.
| simlevesque wrote:
| It's what happens when we rank private property over human
| lives. We deserve this.
| esseph wrote:
| No, we do not "deserve this". The universe has no concept of
| "deserve".
| riversflow wrote:
| People are part of the universe, and they have a concept of
| deserving.
| overfeed wrote:
| "Deserving" not in the sense of dharma/karma, but as a
| natural consequence of prior actions.
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| Agree.
|
| If you find yourself sympathetic to Flock, you should ask
| yourself: do we have a right to any kind of privacy in a
| public space or is public space by definition a denial of any
| sort of privacy? This is the inherent premise in this
| technology that's problematic.
|
| In Japan, for instance, there are very strict laws about
| broadcasting people's faces in public because there is a
| cultural assumption that one deserves anonymity as a form of
| privacy, regardless of the public visibility of their person.
|
| I think I'd prefer to live in a place where _I_ have some
| sort of recourse over when and how I 'm recorded. Something
| more than "avoid that public intersection if you don't like
| it."
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I think you have it backwards. This is what happens when we
| rank human lives over human freedom.
|
| The argument for these cameras is that they save lives. The
| argument against them is that they destroy freedom.
| docjay wrote:
| I don't know that I've heard the "saves lives" argument for
| this type of camera. How would that play out?
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| That's easy. Person gets kidnapped, government
| surveillance camera helps police find the car before the
| kidnapper kills them. Or, probably more common: murder
| happens, government surveillance camera helps police find
| murderer and jail them before they kill someone else.
|
| That's why these cameras are so prevalent, the case for
| them is extremely obvious and easy to make (give police
| more tools to stop bad guys), while the case against them
| is a lot more subtle (human freedom, government abuse,
| expectations of privacy, risk of data breaches, etc).
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Person gets kidnapped, government surveillance camera
| helps police find the car before the kidnapper kills
| them. Or, probably more common: murder happens,
| government surveillance camera helps police find murderer
| and jail them before they kill someone else.
|
| It's a good steelman/devil's advocate of their position,
| but I wonder if proponents realize how much wishful
| thinking drives those supposed outcomes.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I don't think it's wishful thinking. Flock advertises how
| many actual, real-world cases their cameras have
| contributed to solving, and even just reading news
| reports on murder trials you'll often see comments like
| "suspect's car was caught on camera traveling such and
| such direction" in the timeline of events.
|
| The question isn't whether these cameras help law
| enforcement. Of course they do. The question is whether
| that's sufficient justification for continuous government
| surveillance of the public movements of millions of law
| abiding citizens.
| docjay wrote:
| I don't mean that I can't _imagine_ a scenario in which
| an _imagined_ world has cameras covering every square
| inch, a 911 operator with their fingers hovering over the
| keyboard and ready to enter a license plate into the
| InstaLocate system, which then automatically triggers
| SWAT to be quick-released from a drone directly onto the
| current location of what is still called a "getaway car",
| rather than "evidence." But I can also imagine a
| situation with less steps wherein a spoon takes down an
| F-16, but I equally haven't heard an argument for using
| spoons as air defense. ;)
|
| Helping to solve a crime after the fact is certainly a
| thing, and that discussion has merit, but I think you're
| taking creative license again with stopping a serial
| killer or spree killer "before they kill again." That's
| not really how murders play out, which is why there are
| special names for them.
|
| It would be helpful for discourse, and for making your
| own argument, if the discussion was grounded in the
| reality of the sour world we live in now.
| 0x1ch wrote:
| You can both have a desire to defend your peace, while also
| being against mass surveillance.
| overfeed wrote:
| Gp specifies how we _rank_ those 2 is the issue, and didn
| 't say they are mutually exclusive
| nullc wrote:
| Surveillance technology doesn't stop property crime, so it
| isn't a tradeoff question.
|
| The necessary and sufficient steps to stop property crime
| are:
|
| 1. Secure the stuff.
|
| 2. Take repeat criminals off the street.
|
| Against random 'crime of opportunity' with new parties
| nothing but proactive security is particularly effective
| because even if you catch the person after the fact the
| damage is already done. The incentive to commit a crime comes
| from the combination of the opportunity and the deterrence--
| and not everyone is responsive to deterrence so controlling
| the opportunity is critical.
|
| Against repeated or organized criminals nothing but taking
| them out of society is very effective. Because they are
| repeated extensive surveillance is not required-- eventually
| they'll be caught even if not in the first instance. If you
| _fail_ to take them off the streets no amount of surveillance
| will ever help, as they 'll keep doing it again and again.
|
| Many repeat criminals are driven by mental illness,
| stupidity, emotional regulation, or sometimes desperation.
| They're committing crimes at all _because_ for whatever
| reason they 're already not responding to all the incentives
| not to. Adding more incentives not to has a minor effect at
| most.
|
| The conspiratorially minded might wonder if the failure to
| enforce and incarcerate for property crime in places like
| California isn't part of a plot to manufacture consent for
| totalitarian surveillance. But sadly, life isn't a movie
| plot-- it would be easier to fight against a plot rather than
| just collective failure and incompetence. In any case, many
| many people have had the experience of having video or know
| exactly who the criminal is only to have police, prosecutors,
| or the court do absolutely nothing about it. But even when
| they do-- it pretty much never undoes the harm of the crime.
| ck2 wrote:
| remember when people first started experiencing TSA and there
| were massive protests at how obscene and violating it all was,
| then uncovering how useless they were as fake security theater
|
| and they were going to get it all shut down
|
| TWENTY-FIVE YEARS NOW
|
| so good luck getting rid of flock where people don't even know
| it's happening
|
| Not sure if people realize that cellphone locations, several
| layers in the firmware and software, can be had without warrant
| by anyone YEARS LATER
| vatsachak wrote:
| That's why it's good to use GrapheneOS*. In the future,
| hopefully the pinebook project succeeds
| rfl890 wrote:
| You mean GrapheneOS?
| gruez wrote:
| How does using GrapheneOS prevent license plate readers from
| tracking where you are, or from you being groped at the
| airport?
| vatsachak wrote:
| I responded to the last point of the parent comment
| gruez wrote:
| Grapheneos doesn't stop cellphone tracking either. Cell
| carriers keeping track of where you are (or at least
| which cell you're in) is fundamental to how cell phone
| networks work, so a privacy focused android distribution
| can't fix that.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Moreover, people are pissed off when someone's angry because of
| TSA bs. "Don't be an asshole, they're just doing their jobs".
| "Oh someone's first week on this planet".
| monkaiju wrote:
| i guess that while it is alarming that these feeds were
| "unsecured" I'm just as concerned that they exist at all. Folks
| worry about it getting into the "wrong hands" but from my POV it
| was put up by the wrong hands.
|
| While both are a problem I am far more concerned about the power
| this gives our, increasingly authoritarian, government than about
| individual stalkers/creeps.
| tptacek wrote:
| I would love to watch a shorter version of this video that just
| discussed the deltas between the status quo and Flock, rather
| than breathlessly reporting the implications of cameras as if
| they were distinctive to Flock. He'll spend 30 seconds talking
| about how you can see _every_ activity and _every_ person on the
| camera --- yeah, that 's how cameras work. There are thousands of
| public IP cameras on the Internet, aimed at intersections, public
| streets, houses, playgrounds, schools; most of them operated that
| way deliberately.
|
| There _are_ Flock-specific bad things happening here, but you
| have to dig through the video to get to them, and they 're not
| intuitive. The new Flock "Condor" cameras are apparently auto-
| PTZ, meaning that when they detect motion, they zoom in on it.
| That's new! I want to hear more about that, and less about "I had
| tears in my eyes watching this camera footage of a children's
| playground", which is something you could have done last week or
| last year or last decade, or about a mental health police
| wellness detention somewhere where all the cops were already
| wearing FOIA-able body cams.
|
| If open Flock cameras gave you the Flock search bar, that would
| be the end of the world. And the possibility that could happen
| _is_ a good reason to push back on Flock. But that 's not what
| happened here.
| jkestner wrote:
| In my experience, people respond much more strongly to naming a
| specific company or person. Clearer plan of action than a
| resigned "This tech is old news."
| akerl_ wrote:
| If your takeaway from that comment is that 'tptacek thinks
| Flock's tech is old news and he's resigned about it, I think
| you're going to be in for a treat.
| tptacek wrote:
| Is the plan of action "eliminate all public IP cameras"?
| That's coherent, I'd get it, but that doesn't seem to be what
| he's saying at all. He used a Google search to find exposed
| Flock admin consoles (interesting! say more about that!) but
| he could just as easily have just searched "open IP cameras";
| there's sites that do nothing but index those.
| phyzome wrote:
| He's pretty open in this video about how Flock is far from
| alone in this space, and he's just using them as an example
| because they're so popular and flagrantly abusive.
| tptacek wrote:
| In what way this is an illustration of Flock's "flagrancy"?
| I'm seriously asking. I'm not a Flock supporter. My point is
| that cameras just as sensitive as the ones he shows here are
| _deliberately_ public on the Internet.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's the attitude and marketing. Maybe not "flagrant" but
| "ambitious," "aggressive," and "expansive." I don't know
| the name of any other public surveillance/camera company,
| but I've heard about Flock, and the same is probably true
| of any of my neighbors who are even the least bit tech-
| following. They are also ambitiously funded for growth and
| expansion and their outward press attitude is congruent.
|
| Other camera companies would like to see steady year-over-
| year growth in camera sales. Flock would like to see the
| world blanketed in 24/7 surveillance.
|
| They make themselves a lightning rod as a business
| strategy.
| tptacek wrote:
| If Flock vanished off the Earth tomorrow I think we'd see
| exactly the same ALPR penetration. Municipalities aren't
| buying these things because Flock's so good at selling
| them; they're buying because the ALPR vendors have an
| extremely compelling pitch! Two of our neighboring
| municipalities have non-Flock ALPRs; I think you're going
| to see a lot of non-Flock ALPR penetration in
| progressive-leaning suburbs, for instance, because
| progressives are all het up about Flock.
|
| (I helped get Flock cancelled in Oak Park, where I live,
| and before that led the passage of what I believe to be
| the most restrictive ALPR regs/ordinance package in the
| country. I'm not an ALPR booster.)
|
| But I'm going to keep saying: my thing about this video
| is that he's describing _mostly_ things that are true of
| all public IP cameras. There are zillions of those!
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think everyone in this thread can agree that
| surveillance cameras should be fought against, no matter
| whose brand is stamped on them. Flock is still a better
| than average target because of the attitude they project
| and because of name recognition.
| tptacek wrote:
| Wait, I don't agree with that. Why do you assume everyone
| in this thread agrees with that?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Sorry, I assumed you did, given the advocacy you
| mentioned you led.
| tptacek wrote:
| I pushed back on our Flock deployment because the
| particulars of its deployment meant that we were curbing
| more cars driven by innocent Black drivers than we were
| responding to any meaningful crimes, and because when we
| had Flock's alerts enabled, the net effect was to take
| our selectively-recruited, highly-trained, very expensive
| police force and turn them into failure-to-appear-warrant
| debt collectors for nearby suburbs with far worse police
| departments.
|
| It was not some nerd+ principled stand against
| "surveillance". My experience working on the public
| policy of this stuff is that when you take a stand
| against "surveillance", normal people --- and I'm in what
| I believe to be one of the 10 most progressive
| municipalities in the country, the most progressive
| municipality in Chicagoland --- look at you like you're a
| space alien.
|
| + _I am, obviously, a nerd, fwiw._
| phyzome wrote:
| His other two (much longer) videos go into those details.
| This one is more of a quick update.
|
| Just to give you a sense of the kind of company we're
| dealing with, the CEO of Flock called the guy who made a
| Flock camera map an "antifa terrorist". He's unhinged.
| tptacek wrote:
| Thanks! I know it's a big ask, but can you give me
| pointers (rough timestamps, whatever). A friend told me
| to watch _this_ video for the distinctive Flock badness,
| and the time I spent on that was not rewarded.
| fuzzylightbulb wrote:
| Have you ever gone fishing? Did you catch all the fish?
|
| Often it is more impactful to address one major/tangible player
| in a particular space than it would be to "boil the ocean" and
| ensure that we are capturing every possible
| player/transgressor. I agree that some of the video was overly
| breathless, but if that's what wakes people up to the dangers
| of unsecured cameras/devices then so be it.
| tptacek wrote:
| Ok, you're the second person to say that, and I think my
| point is not clear enough. That's on me.
|
| This response would make sense if I was saying "why focus on
| Flock, there are so many other ALPR cameras out there" (also
| true, but not relevant to my point).
|
| But this is a video that is _mostly_ about things that are
| true of _all_ IP cameras, of the kind that we 've had staring
| out onto public streets for decades, plural decades. People
| celebrated those cameras, thought they were super neat, built
| sites indexing them. All of them do most of the same things
| this video says those Flock cameras did, the tiny minority of
| Flock cameras you can access publicly.
| dang wrote:
| (This was originally posted to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46356182 but we've since
| merged the threads.
|
| The video in question is linked from the toptext above.)
| Bender wrote:
| Children could go missing thanks to Flock default settings. HN
| would tell me to never attribute to malice ... but there may be
| criminal negligence.
|
| To cover their butts I strongly suggest Flock implement a default
| _" grading system"_ that will show a city in a banner at the top
| of their management and monitoring system that based on their
| camera and network configuration they get an A+ to F-. If the
| grade is below a C then it must be impossible to get rid of the
| banner and it must be blinking red. The grading system must be
| both free, mandatory and a part of the core management code. This
| assumes Flock will have the willpower to say no when a city
| demands removal of the flashing red banner. Instead up-sell
| professional services to secure their mess. I would like to see
| the NCC Group review their security and future grading system.
| fuckflock wrote:
| HN _is_ the malice in this instance.
|
| > The financing was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with backing
| from Greenoaks Capital, Bedrock Capital. Meritech Capital,
| Matrix Partners, Sands Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins,
| Tiger Global, and _Y Combinator_ also participated.
|
| https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-secures-major-...
| NietzscheanNull wrote:
| I always found Hanlon's Razor a bit too optimistic in tone. I
| prefer it restated in the form of Clarke's third law:
| "Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from
| malice."
| huflungdung wrote:
| Oh no. Someone can view cctv data and delete it. Always blown out
| of proportion. The likelihood of someone a) committing a crime or
| otherwise b) knowing there was this specific brand of camera
| software being run on a camera in that area c) knowing how to
| access these portals
|
| Is basically zero.
| kklisura wrote:
| For more context here Flock Safety is a YC-backed company [1][2]
|
| [1] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety
|
| [2] https://x.com/garrytan/status/1856016868580151615
| kklisura wrote:
| And let me share this reply by Garry Tan, CEO of YC, after
| someone made a comment that Flock might be _pretty dystopian_
| [1][2]:
|
| > You're thinking Chinese surveillance
|
| > US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims
|
| [1] https://x.com/neurajordan/status/1963303084609966288
|
| [2] https://x.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I've never heard about this Tan guy before, I don't keep up
| with politics/corporatism anymore, but is that possibly
| sarcasm? It sure feels like it to me. But again, I don't know
| this person, but if I came across that by itself I feel like
| it's pretty clearly sarcastic, as Twitter tends to be. Maybe
| I'm just tone deaf myself to how tone deaf others could be?
| esseph wrote:
| This is the CEO of the startup incubator handwaving away
| concerns in the name of money.
| gruez wrote:
| He probably being sincere. If you're logged in (or use
| something like xcancel), you can see the full thread, where
| he starts off with
|
| > Flock Safety currently solves 700,000 reported cases of
| crime per year, which is about 10% of reported crime
| nationwide
|
| > And they're just getting started
|
| His profile also says:
|
| >President & CEO @ycombinator --Founder @Initialized--
| designer/engineer who helps founders--SF Dem accelerating
| the boom loop--haters not allowed in my sauna
| embedding-shape wrote:
| It's really interesting the different cultures
| "YCombinator the startup incubator" and "Ycombinator/HN
| the internet forum has". A comment being so oblivious
| about surveillance would probably be flagged here, at
| least heavily downvoted, while this guy is actively the
| president and CEO of Ycombinator today?
|
| pg, what happened? Ycombinator used to be a beacon of
| sense in a sea of uselessness, but now uselessness is
| running Ycombinator?
| overfeed wrote:
| > pg, what happened?
|
| Don't look to pg for anything that can be seen as "woke"
| - he wants that mind-virus eliminated forever[0]. Many
| billionaires revealed their true colors after November
| 2024, remember this when they adjust their public posture
| to follow the political winds.
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42780223
| eastbound wrote:
| This is not woke, no matter how large you define woke.
| You can see links with the ACLU or various human rights
| defense groups, but those groups may have become woke,
| without "global surveillance" becoming a woke topic.
|
| Wokism is about making racist accusations of dominance
| over an audience who didn't do it. It's about unfairness
| and hyping factions against each other. The global
| surveillance is not about pitting groups against each
| other. To wit, 1984 has always been a very right-wing
| torpe.
| overfeed wrote:
| "Wokism" is an amorphous culture-war weapon that can be
| anything an author wants it to be. Diversity is woke,
| equity is woke, inclusion is woke, non-heteronomative
| relationships are woke, movies that are barely critical
| of unbridled capitalism are woke. Not being onboard with
| "law and order" is woke - and not being 100% onboard with
| Flock can be reframed as being pro-Criminal and "woke"
|
| > global surveillance is not about pitting groups against
| each other.
|
| And yet this is exactly how the surveillance companies
| sell their global surveillance tools. Ring, Flock are all
| about keeping an eye on "outsiders" - see Nextdoor for
| examples on how people justifying surveiling others.
| therobots927 wrote:
| He's being sincerely greedy and nihilistic, if that's
| what you mean by "sincere"
| plorg wrote:
| Gary has some unhinged politics with regards to "public
| safety" even excepting the Flock boosterism.
| therobots927 wrote:
| If it benefits Surveillance Valley, Garry Tan is all over
| it like Trump on a 13 year old
| aaroninsf wrote:
| It is not sarcastic.
|
| Generally speaking, today, surveillance capitalism is the
| foundation of both our political culture, economy, and the
| tech industry that backs them.
|
| In polite circles we call surveillance "user telemetry" and
| the like. It's not just Palantir and FLock; where does
| Meta's money come from...? Google's for that matter...?
| leeoniya wrote:
| > You're thinking Chinese surveillance
|
| the big irony, of course, is that i'm much more comfortable
| with China surveilling me than the US, since the latter can
| throw me in jail, seize my assets, and ruin my family's life,
| while the former cannot.
| devwastaken wrote:
| The CCP can hijack your accounts and absolutely do all of
| those things, using your own government.
| riversflow wrote:
| could you provide an example of that happening?
| afavour wrote:
| The US government is a democracy and can be replaced should
| it exceed people's limits. The CCP... uh, not so much.
|
| I'm not trying to say the US government is faultless but it
| amazes me how often I see this kind of anti-democratic
| institition sentiment.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| > _it amazes me how often I see this kind of anti-
| democratic institition sentiment._
|
| leeoniya didn't say anything about democracy. The
| practical reality is that regardless of what forms of
| government are involved, whichever government has the
| ability to arrest you is the government which is the
| greatest threat in your day-to-day life.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > government has the ability to arrest you is the
| government which is the greatest threat in your day-to-
| day life
|
| Assuming every government is the same, which I'm not so
| sure about. I rather be arrested by the German government
| than the US government, mainly because I don't want to
| disappear to black site and be made to disappear for
| years while I'm tortured receiving enhanced discussion
| techniques. At least I know I'll be treated relatively OK
| by Germany, while my fear is pretty much the opposite
| from a lot of other governments out there.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| > _Assuming every government is the same_
|
| _Wrong._ The American government is much better than the
| Russian government, but the Russian government cannot
| arrest me while the American government can, therefore
| the American government is a _much_ more serious threat
| _to me_ than the Russian government. _No equivalence
| between the two governments is assumed or implied._
| LocalH wrote:
| > The US government is a democracy and can be replaced
|
| I'm not sure this is as axiomatic as many think, in 2025
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I've already placed my bets that current president will
| be the first to serve at least three terms since the two-
| term limit was introduced. Judging by what's happening,
| seems like a safer and safer bet every day.
| tchalla wrote:
| Hasn't Trump already said he won't do another term?
| pixelpoet wrote:
| No way would he ever lie!
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Like he said he didn't know anything about project 2025?
|
| Steve Bannon is the one working on this, has said they
| have a plan to do it. Trump himself seems to believe that
| if the country is at war elections are postponed because
| that is how it works in Ukraine. Ergo Venezuela.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| He has said that he cannot do more than two terms, but
| also there are ways to do more terms. Then he said it's
| too early to think about, then that he is joking, then
| that he wasn't joking, then that he isn't looking into
| it, but that they're "probably entitled to another four
| after that" (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-trump-has-
| said-about-pursu...), whatever the fuck that means.
|
| Ultimately, I don't think it matters much what he says or
| has said, he won't clearly say what he/they are planning,
| obviously.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| I think the most likely reason that won't happen is some
| sort of cardiovascular failure (heart attack or stroke),
| not because anyone will actually stop the Republicans
| otherwise trying. Conservatives want a monarchy.
| tremon wrote:
| In that case, I guess we'll see a live-action remake of
| Presidency at Bernie's.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Shitty bet tbqh, but it's your money. Trump promises his
| supporters much but delivers very little. If J6 is the
| sort of insurrection his base can muster, there's no
| chance in hell of him getting another term.
| array_key_first wrote:
| It's not anti-democratic, it's just pragmatic.
|
| Yes the US is a democracy, but a lot of our systems suck
| ass and are also close in proximity. You DO NOT want to
| get into legal trouble in the US. Our justice system is
| beyond fucked. If there's one way to permanently ruin
| your life in the US, it's getting into legal trouble.
| You're better off smoking crack cocaine, that's probably
| healthier for your livelihood.
|
| I don't know about China's legal system, but even
| assuming it's more fucked, it's all the way over there.
| Not here.
|
| The main trouble with Flock and companies like them is
| that they attach to our broken systems like a tumor. If
| the system fails, which it often does, these accelerate
| it and make it worse. If you get falsely accused of
| something or piss off the wrong PD, this shit can ruin
| your life. Permanently and expeditiously.
|
| Even if you are the most Moral Orel you should be
| skeptical of these crime reduction claims. They don't
| just beat down crime, they beat down regular people, too.
| And if you ask them, they don't know the difference.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > I don't know about China's legal system, but even
| assuming it's more fucked, it's all the way over there.
| Not here.
|
| You're saying that the US legal system is extremely bad,
| shouldn't the assumption be that other countries have it
| better? I don't know much about either country's legal
| systems, but I do know that if I feel like my country is
| extremely bad at something, other countries probably do
| it better, at least that what I'll assume until I see
| evidence of something else.
| array_key_first wrote:
| Maybe, I mostly gave that disclaimer to say that it
| actually doesn't matter much. Even if it's worse, that's
| still better, because it's over there.
|
| But yes, generally, I assume virtually every developed
| country (and some of the kind of developed countries)
| have a more just and competent legal system than the US.
|
| The US is an interesting beast, because when you compare
| it to the entire world on a bunch of stuff, it doesn't
| seem so bad. But when you compare to countries that have,
| like, clean running water, then it really falls flat in a
| lot of ways. This allows apologists to basically justify
| anything the US does, because somebody, somewhere, is
| doing it much worse. Hey guys, look at Uganda, they're
| genociding gay people!
| ryandrake wrote:
| Not being an expert in every single country's legal
| system, I would _guess_ that the USA 's is about middle
| of the spectrum in terms of badness/fairness/justice.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| These things are hard to weigh objectively. For instance,
| in America the police don't take bribes, you can't bribe
| your way out of a traffic ticket. The cops will laugh at
| your attempt and pile on more charges. But if you're a
| local business owner, the bribes to local politicians are
| far from unheard of and all manner of corrupt dealings
| between business and local government is prevalent. So
| how you rank America's corruption depends on how you
| weigh those two forms of corruption. There's not one
| single objectively correct way to do that.
| tremon wrote:
| I don't see how it matters how other countries rank vs
| the one a person lives in. Even if Canada's legal system
| is better than the US, you can't choose to subject
| yourself to the Canadian legal system without extricating
| yourself from the US first.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| It's not anti-democratic, it's simply a matter of
| exposure. China can WANT to do whatever they want to me,
| but I have no assets in China, no trade in China, and
| neither me nor anyone close to me will ever go to China.
| So it simply matters a lot less what China has on me than
| the country where I have friends, loved ones, financial
| assets, property, and frequently visit.
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| Maybe it isn't the US government we need to worry about.
| What's stopping Flock from compiling and selling personal
| dossiers on every citizen like all the other big tech
| companies? They're just a private company so nothing to
| worry about, right?
| bean469 wrote:
| > The US government is a democracy and can be replaced
| should it exceed people's limits
|
| In theory, yes, but why do you think that it would be
| possible to forcefully replace in practice?
| tremon wrote:
| A democratic government that tramples all democratic
| processes ceases to be democratic.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| why would the former bother, when all they have to do is
| take you to one of their secret police stations in the US
| and disappear you?
| therobots927 wrote:
| Still a much lower risk than Kristi Noem deciding you
| represent a national security risk because you tweeted
| "Fk ICE"
| ok_dad wrote:
| America probably invented extraordinary rendition.
| cwillu wrote:
| s/is take you to/is convince you to willing go to/g
| isoprophlex wrote:
| jesus fuck the gloves really came off in the past few years.
| noone even cares to hide it anymore.
|
| i could almost admire the transparency of these people, the
| way they're apparently okay accepting collateral damage of
| their schemes, up to the complete destruction of the fabric
| of society... as long as there's money to be made.
| saubeidl wrote:
| American venture capitalism ironically creates all of the
| same authoritarian issues as Chinese state capitalism, but
| without any of the lifting hundreds of millions of people out
| of poverty part.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Indeed, American capitalism is designed to lift the
| already-rich out of mere "rich" into "obscenely rich."
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Another sign of Chinese ideological dominance is that nobody
| can conceive of a future that does not mimic China's
| solutions to social problems. Trump says frequently that he's
| jealous of Xi's position as dictator, tech firms envy 996
| culture, public safety advocates are pivoting to restricting
| internet speech and constant surveillance.. etc. etc.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Well a lot of people can conceive of a cultural hegemony
| that is more pleasant to live under. It's more that Y
| Combinator wants to be exposed to the returns of the
| Palantirs, Andurils and Clearviews out there.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| You don't understand, when software has support for Chinese
| characters it is automatically 150% more dystopian.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Having listened to a recent podcast from a16z with them I
| wholeheartedly agree. Every single day there is a gta with
| child inside. Some of these are immediately recovered because
| of flock.
|
| Some simply because they subp your phone.
|
| At this point I'm convinced threads like these are simply an
| attempt of narrative control by criminal gangs.
| verisimi wrote:
| Is this dystopian enough yet?
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Flock does ai enabled mass surveillance.
|
| Palantir uses such information, feds and local governments
| are already customers.
|
| The CEO of ycombinator is part of the same weird church as
| Peter Thiel, acts 17.
|
| Then look up the other SV tech billionaires that are on board
| with network states and other Curtis Yarvin nonsense.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| I wonder if that's why this post, with more upvotes than a
| number of the other ones on the front page, has seemingly
| vanished from it.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| The number of comments is way higher than the number of
| upvotes, which usually gets submissions heavily downranked.
| lossolo wrote:
| Comments were moved from this higher upvoted thread
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46356182 to this lower
| upvoted one.
| dang wrote:
| No, it's the other way around. This post is ranked higher on
| the frontpage than it would be if it weren't YC-related. (In
| fact, it probably wouldn't be on the frontpage at all in that
| case.)
|
| A core principle is that we moderate less, not more, when YC
| or a YC-funded startup is part of the story. Many past
| explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&pr
| efix=false&qu...
| LexiMax wrote:
| I believe you when you say that nobody at YC put their
| thumb on the scale for this story in particular.
|
| However, YC very much has control over the algorithm used
| to rank stories on the Hacker News front page, and this
| algorithm very commonly downranks threads which are
| detected as being "controversial."
|
| If the algorithm "working as intended" consistently
| downranks stories that cast a bad light on YCombinator, the
| sorts of people y'all mingle with, or the tech industry in
| general...is that any better than putting your thumb on the
| scale?
|
| This is kind of why I feel obligated to use
| https://news.ycombinator.com/active - after all, it's a
| very good indication of what Hacker News' algorithm and
| certain cohorts of its readership wants to hide from the
| casual viewer. And given the sorts of stories it tends to
| hide, it doesn't reflect well on this site or its users.
| itishappy wrote:
| > If the algorithm "working as intended" consistently
| downranks stories that cast a bad light on YCombinator,
| the sorts of people y'all mingle with, or the tech
| industry in general...is that any better than putting
| your thumb on the scale?
|
| That's the exact opposite of what Dan stated, what this
| thread (and your link) clearly demonstrate, and my own
| experience here.
| eddyg wrote:
| Yes, they should be secured so they can only be accessed by law
| enforcement.
|
| But if your spouse/SO/sister/mother/girlfriend/whatever was
| assaulted while jogging in a park that had Flock cameras, and it
| allowed law enforcement to quickly identify, track, apprehend and
| charge the criminal, you'd _absolutely_ be grateful for the
| technology. There 's nothing worse than being told "we don't have
| any leads" when someone you care about has been attacked.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| What about when ICE uses this data to abduct and deport your
| spouse and family members? Will you be grateful then?
| gs17 wrote:
| They should also require a warrant at least, especially for any
| data sharing. With "they can only be accessed by law
| enforcement", we've already had plenty of police harassing
| their exes. If they couldn't convince a judge to let them use
| the camera, there's really no hope of the case going anywhere.
|
| > There's nothing worse than being told "we don't have any
| leads" when someone you care about is attacked.
|
| I'd argue worse is "we know exactly who did it and we're not
| going to do anything about it (but we would do something if you
| try to do something about it yourself)".
| fzeroracer wrote:
| What if your spouse/SO/whatever was wrongfully arrested because
| they were on a Flock camera and conveniently matched what the
| police were looking for? Or if they ran whatever dogshit AI
| algorithm over it looking for suspects?
|
| We can make up situations all day where it can or can not be
| validated but the reality is that this is a defacto
| surveillance state. If every move you make can be monitored,
| you should assume that the state can and will abuse it to hurt
| innocent people in the name of politics or whatever.
| gs17 wrote:
| Or if they were simply being harassed because their ex was a
| cop who decided to use the cameras to stalk them, where
| there's not even an excuse.
| kgwxd wrote:
| What's the point of making a statement like that? Is it like a
| Snapple cap thing, or do you expect people to actually give up
| on talking about the blatant government overreach?
|
| And what a dumb way to frame it. "Think of the woman" is the
| same argument as "think of the children". Why not just say if
| you were attacked you'd want it to be on camera? Afraid it'll
| make you sound weak? Well, so does bootlicking.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Until your spouse/SO/sister/mother/girlfriend spurns a LEO, and
| then the LEO uses it to stalk and harass them. Talk to any LEO,
| they constantly misuse their data access to look up
| friends/family/neighbors to find dirt. Most of the time its
| relatively harmless gossip, but it can easily be used to harass
| people.
| tediousgraffit1 wrote:
| "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a
| little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't want laws to be written to the
| level of my emotional individual reaction to a singular crime.
| I want laws to reflect the ideals and values of society, and to
| work at scale when balancing individual freedom, societal
| safety, and protection from government abuse.
|
| "It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the
| guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy
| arrest." - Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
| LeFantome wrote:
| This is true of course. You could also apply this logic to even
| the most extreme of fascist tendencies though.
|
| There is freedom to and freedom from as they say in The
| Handmaid's Tale.
| thedougd wrote:
| I'll make up another one to pile on. Perhaps the police would
| have had a visible, deterrent presence if they weren't lazily
| relying on cameras, and that would have prevented the assault
| in the first place.
|
| Anyhow, if you read the flock database, they're overwhelmingly
| not using them for the purposes of public safety or random
| crime.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| "...they're overwhelmingly not using them for the purposes of
| public safety or random crime."
|
| That would seem to be very relevant information.
| kelnos wrote:
| Ah yes, the good ol' appeal to fear. "Think of the childr--err,
| I mean poor defenseless woman!"
|
| No, I don't want these cameras. I don't care if they make law
| enforcement's job easier. They are an invasion of privacy and a
| part of the disgusting dragnet surveillance state.
|
| They need to go.
|
| A decade ago, I was attacked on a public sidewalk by three men,
| who roughed me up a bit and stole from me. The police were
| utterly unhelpful, and as far as I know, they never caught
| anyone. But ultimately, that didn't really matter. I was
| traumatized for a while, but eventually worked through it.
| Whether or not they were caught would not have changed any part
| of that process.
|
| I get that, emotionally, we want some sort of justice when
| things like this happen, but I am not willing to put up with
| even more constant surveillance in order to feel a little bit
| better about a bad thing that happened to me. I would much
| rather criminals sometimes went free.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Yea I've never been a fan of the whole "makes law
| enforcement's job easier" arguments.
|
| As though personal rights/liberties are trumped by a cop
| needing to do paperwork or leave his desk.
|
| Plus, when you follow this to its natural/extreme conclusion,
| the absolute easiest thing for law enforcement would be to
| arrest you for no reason at all.
|
| The rationalization for this policy of course could simply be
| that probable cause is "inconvenient."
| kirykl wrote:
| If the cameras are recoding public areas, isn't it better the
| recorded footage stays public
| butlike wrote:
| They shouldn't be recording at all is the point.
| esseph wrote:
| Would you want your partner or child stalked, raped, and
| murdered?
|
| You don't even need to drop an air tag now, you can use the
| license plate reader to track them everywhere they go. There is
| no hiding.
| adamthegoalie wrote:
| At first I thought you were defending flock. Seems clear the
| cameras make it harder to commit crimes and easier to go
| after the offenders, despite all the side effects most people
| are upset about here.
| esseph wrote:
| It makes it easy for a random person to track anyone,
| regardless of which states they go to.
|
| It also makes it easy to say, track a person's movements to
| an abortion clinic if your state would like to prosecute
| that (this is happening).
| rainonmoon wrote:
| How does a camera make it harder to commit a crime? If I
| bash your skull in on camera, did the camera make that more
| difficult? Would your family be less aggrieved?
| eightysixfour wrote:
| I think so, but it is a loosely held opinion at this point.
| Fundamentally, I think it is a huge, asymmetric power grab by
| Flock and local police to install these systems. It only takes
| one officer looking up their local politician and finding them
| doing something that could even look like a bad deed (or to
| fake it in the era of AI videogen...) to enable blackmail and
| personal/professional gain.
|
| _If they 're going to exist_, it may be better for that to be
| spread among the public than to be left in the hands of the
| few.
| everdrive wrote:
| It's getting pretty crazy out there. What's your recourse for
| this? Avoid most populated areas?
| murderingmurloc wrote:
| I live in a town of 6,000 and we have 5 Flock cameras
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It's a quality of people problem not a quantity of people
| problem.
| potzemizer wrote:
| I mean. There are solutions...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46822472
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| deflock.me has a map. (I recently contributed a few flock
| cameras I spotted.)
|
| I notice they generally watch busy roads and intersections, off
| and on ramps to highways, retail malls...
|
| Smaller roads through neighborhoods were mostly unmolested.
| kelnos wrote:
| Work with your municipality to pass laws banning cameras like
| this. I'm sure it isn't easy (and I'm not sure I have the
| stomach for working through that process in my city), but
| people have done it in some places.
| e40 wrote:
| Him reading the Flock statement on a Flock camera open on the
| internet was just so good. I love and support Benn Jordan.
| cm2187 wrote:
| A useful rule of thumb is that any video that is using music to
| convince you of something is generally bullshit in the first
| place.
|
| Am I right to understand that all those cams are pointed to the
| street / public places? I am not aware that there is any
| expectation of privacy, legally or otherwise, when you walk down
| the street. Sure, it is lame that those camera are unprotected,
| and shows how amateurish most of those IoT companies are. But how
| is that different from the thousands of live cams over youtube or
| the wider internet? Or the poorly secured CCTV watching every
| angle of any street in most big cities.
|
| The author then uses face search engines to find personal
| information on the individuals. That is the creepy part, but has
| little to do with Flock, and you could have pulled those faces
| from any social network or any random video on youtube.
| SamInTheShell wrote:
| You miss the point. This is a law enforcement tool. The average
| American doesn't want a surveillance state and that's literally
| what's happening. The legal aspect of it is not in question
| here.
|
| Just because something is legal doesn't make it right. Anyone
| deploying or involved with this technology should be
| embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.
| cm2187 wrote:
| That's not the point the video makes. Flock didn't invent
| CCTV. Not that I am trying to defend mass surveillance or
| incompetent silicon valley companies.
| goda90 wrote:
| Flock "invented" CCTV in the USA that doesn't requiring
| going to multiple locations and asking for their tapes in
| order to track someone across locations.
| fecal_henge wrote:
| Am I right to understand that all those cams are pointed to the
| street / public places?
|
| - I think you would be wrong to understand that. How on earth
| did you reach that conclusion?
|
| But how is that different from the thousands of live cams over
| youtube or the wider internet? Or the poorly secured CCTV
| watching every angle of any street in most big cities.
|
| - More than one thing can be wrong at once. Requires nuanced
| thought I accept.
|
| The author then uses face search engines to find personal
| information on the individuals. That is the creepy part.
|
| - I think he is demonstrating the creepy opportinities. Did he
| share any of that information? I think anyone with bad intent
| probably probably not make a video explaining what they did.
| cm2187 wrote:
| > _- I think you would be wrong to understand that. How on
| earth did you reach that conclusion?_
|
| from the video only showing cams of public places (parking
| lots, parks and streets). And also it seems that this is how
| Flock markets itself on its website.
|
| > _- I think he is demonstrating the creepy opportinities.
| Did he share any of that information? I think anyone with bad
| intent probably probably not make a video explaining what
| they did._
|
| I am not saying the author is creepy, I am saying face search
| engines and personal information available publicly are
| creepy. But nothing to do with Flock.
| neogodless wrote:
| Related:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46356182 _Benn Jordan - This
| Flock Camera Leak Is Like Netflix for Stalkers_ [video]
| (youtube.com)
| dang wrote:
| We merged that thread into this one.
|
| (Edit: and put that video's link in the toptext above.)
| vatsachak wrote:
| You could kinda already do this with all kinds of security
| cameras. There are only so many people who are computer
| proficient, and that number is lower than the number of camera
| installers.
|
| There have been cases of people getting into baby monitors and
| yelling at the baby.
|
| But as a tech company, this is extremely irresponsible
|
| BTW, Benn Jordan is also known as The Flashbulb, an ambient
| legend
| fortran77 wrote:
| Interesting, but nothing new. Shodan users have known about
| clueless IP camera owners that leave their cameras on the public
| internet for years. This is a little more interesting because
| it's from a well-funded startup rather than independently owned
| Chinese IP cameras.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Easy solution for Flock problem: get rid of visible license
| plates. Make them 2x1" of size and RFID-readable, give readers to
| police, problem solved.
|
| Not-that-easy solution is legal ban for such surveillance.
|
| None of these both will happen though.
|
| You accepted TSA and PRISM, you will get used to Flock too.
|
| Next is Flock but for people, with face recognition.
| phyzome wrote:
| Fantastic, now I can't report a hit-and-run.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| You never have, anyways.
| bpiche wrote:
| Kirlian Selections rocks
| guiltygatorade wrote:
| Wild to see the Flashbulb on top of HN
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Associated Benn Jordan video post:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo
| culi wrote:
| This was posted to HN a week ago but didn't get enough attention
| due to the weird title.
|
| It's a map of all city council meetings in the US whose agenda
| mentions Flock
|
| https://alpr.watch/
| dang wrote:
| _alpr.watch_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46290916 -
| Dec 2025 (444 comments)
|
| That post was literally the #1 story on HN for the entire day:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2025-12-16.
|
| It was on the frontpage for 25 hours. That's about as much
| attention as _any_ thread gets - well above the 99th
| percentile.
| therobots927 wrote:
| Flock is cooked. They didn't even implement basic security
| features for an extremely sensitive database. More ammo for those
| of us trying to get our local authorities to cut ties with this
| disgusting excuse for a startup.
| tonymet wrote:
| Have breaches like this had a meaningful impact on businesses
| before? If there has been a case where the public cared , and
| the business was terminated, it's definitely been an exception
| to the rule.
| therobots927 wrote:
| We'll see. Benn Jordan is doing the Lords work and providing
| a lot of evidence peopl can bring along to their local
| council meetings.
| fusslo wrote:
| I wonder what our founders would think about tools like Flock.
|
| From what I understand these systems are legal because there is
| no expectation of privacy in public. Therefore any time you go in
| public you cannot expect NOT to be tracked, photographed, and
| entered into a database (which may now outlive us).
|
| I _think_ the argument comes from the 1st amendment.
|
| Weaponizing the Bill of Rights (BoR) for the government against
| the people does not seem to align with my understanding of why
| the Bill of Rights was cemented into our constitution in the
| first place.
|
| I wonder what Adams or Madison would make of it. I wonder if
| Benjamin Franklin would be appalled.
|
| I wonder if they'd consider every license plate reading a
| violation of the 4th amendment.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| > From what I understand these systems are legal because there
| is no expectation of privacy in public.
|
| Not quite. There's been precedent set that seems to imply flock
| and other mass surveillance drag net operations such as this do
| violate the forth.
| snazz wrote:
| Defendants trying to exclude ALPR evidence often invoke
| _Carpenter v. U.S._ (or _U.S. v. Jones_ , but that's
| questionable because the majority decision is based on the
| trespass interpretation of the 4th Amendment rather than the
| _Katz_ test). Judges have not generally agreed with
| defendants that ALPR (either the license plate capture itself
| or the database lookup) resembles the CSLI in _Carpenter_ or
| the GPS tracker in _Jones_. A high enough density of Flock
| cameras may make the _Carpenter_ -like arguments more
| compelling, though.
| chzblck wrote:
| they prob be upset about the 13th 15th and 19th amendments too
| amrocha wrote:
| I think you should try to decide for yourself what to make of
| the situation instead of wondering what some ancient dead old
| dudes would think.
| reed1234 wrote:
| Both perspectives could be informative.
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| This is the unfortunate consequence of political decisions
| surrounding de-policing and border control. Everyone's a
| libertarian until they get robbed.
| tonymet wrote:
| I'm baffled by the state of law enforcement. On one hand we are
| spending loads on surveillance, but on the other we refuse to
| enforce violent, property & drugs-abuse crimes. Gross violent
| offenders are being allowed to walk. So what is the point of all
| the CCTV ?
|
| As major investors in Flock, being aware of the long term law
| enforcement strategy, I'm guessing ycombinator can comment on
| what all of this investment is for.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| The surveillance state is there to benefit the rich and wealthy
| whom not only wield disproportionate power but are increasingly
| scared of their own shadow. The rest of us get nothing but
| crickets if we ask the police to do anything.
| tonymet wrote:
| It's a nice theory but still doesn't explain why the laws
| aren't being enforced. Presumably these rich, powerful and
| paranoid also control the AG's and judges. Why aren't they
| locking these people up?
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Because it doesn't affect them directly, it's really that
| simple. Look at how quickly the entire media and police
| apparatus mobilized when Brian Thompson was killed.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| The CEO of Flock, Garrett Langley, called Deflock a terrorist
| group. It's unhinged. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-kZGrDz7PU
| therobots927 wrote:
| Expect more of this. The masks are coming off.
|
| "Are the fires of Hell a-glowing? Is the grisly reaper mowing?
| Yes! The danger must be growing For the rowers keep on rowing
| And they're certainly not showing Any signs that they are
| slowing!" - Willie Wonka
| whycombinetor wrote:
| What else are you supposed to call it when a group conspires to
| destroy government-contracted security infrastructure?
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| How are they conspiring to destroy it? Are you saying that
| coordinating attempts to change policy counts as destroying
| the previous policy, or are you drawing a line from
| identifying and locating the cameras to (possibly other)
| people actively vandalizing them?
| jjwiseman wrote:
| If they were doing that, that would be a criminal conspiracy,
| not terrorism. Authoritarians often like to call ordinary
| criminals, political opponents, and dissenters terrorists to
| delegitimize them and justify harsher behavior against them.
| I assume that's what Garrett Langley was trying to do when he
| called them a "terroristic organization".
|
| Luckily for DeFlock they're not doing anything "terroristic"
| or even criminal.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| As another commenter said, it's a criminal conspiracy or
| something to that effect. If terrorism is supposed to be the
| use of violence against non-combatants to attain a political
| or ideological goal... then would de-Flock be anti-terrorism?
| Removing Flock cameras makes me feel less terrorized.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's better or worse to have it publicly
| accessible or only accessible to an elite group.
| afarah1 wrote:
| In Brazil there is a similar problem, but it's not as widely
| discussed. Here, police investigations revealed that a website
| sold access for less than $4 to the nation-wide surveillance
| system, which included live feed of public safety cameras and
| person search by tax identifier. It was also shown that criminal
| organizations used it to locate their targets. Access was through
| the open internet, with leaked credentials, the federal
| government's system requires no VPN for access.
|
| Source (Portuguese):
| https://mpmt.mp.br/portalcao/news/1217/164630/pf-expoe-invas...
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| That definitely wouldn't happen in the states. Corruption only
| happens in poor countries.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Really valuable research. A benefit to public safety, and drawing
| attention to a sloppy vendor in the security space, claiming to
| secure the public, but instead putting the public at risk.
| However I'm deeply concerned for the researcher and all involved
| because this may be a criminal violation under the CFAA -
| accessing these systems without authorization, even if they don't
| have authentication.
| chzblck wrote:
| People who complain about flock should have to list how many
| crimes are in their zip code to be taken serious.
| btbuildem wrote:
| glock > flock
|
| Is mass vandalism the final answer to this problem?
| rsync wrote:
| There's an interesting idea here that is tangentially related to
| "common carrier" regulations ...
|
| Specifically:
|
| If a flock (or similar) camera is deployed on public land/infra
| there should exist default permission for any alternate vendor to
| deploy a camera in the same location.
|
| I wonder how that could be used and/or abused and, further, what
| the response from a company like flock would be ...
| chaps wrote:
| Not directly an answer to your question, but installed
| Shotspotter locations are generally "not shared with police"
| and installations are done in a way where the location is
| obfuscated away from the police/city through Shotspotter
| contractors. It's not actually true that the device locations
| aren't shared with the police, but shotspotter/police
| testimonies in shotspotter cases say so anyway.
| crumpled wrote:
| Yes. This looks bad for Flock security.
|
| Good thing nobody tried to pop a shell on the camera OS and move
| laterally through the network. That would be bad.
|
| I'm sure it's all very secure though.
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