[HN Gopher] Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras
___________________________________________________________________
Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras
Author : mikece
Score : 462 points
Date : 2026-02-23 19:04 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| hackernews682 wrote:
| good.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > broken and smashed Flock cameras
|
| I wonder how resistant the cameras are to strong handheld lasers.
| I suppose they could harden them against some common wavelengths
| with filters, but that'd affect the image clarity in normal use.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I have worked with watt class lasers before and I implore you
| not to do this. Even if it's tempting. Most places where there
| are surveillance cameras are places where there are also
| people, and unless you want to hand out OD5 goggles to everyone
| in eyeshot... a pellet gun would be safer.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Most places where there are surveillance cameras are places
| where there are also people
|
| I assume you're concerned about reflections from the camera
| lens or housing? In my mind, the archetypal camera is mounted
| on a nice tall pole, silhouetted against open sky, and
| painted matte black.
|
| > watt class lasers
|
| Surely those would be excessive for someone attacking the
| sensor, unless they want to remotely sear some graffiti by
| burning away paint.
| hinkley wrote:
| Hitting the lens at an oblique angle won't fry the sensor
| though? You have to get close to the cone of visibility
| which is then within the bloom area.
| hinkley wrote:
| My friend in college did an internship on high frequency,
| short pulse beams (I wanna say violet and picosecond? Which I
| still think was exotic at the time).
|
| Most of his work was dealing with and accounting for
| reflections that left the machine. If you have a prism that's
| sending 95% of the light where you want it to go, when it's a
| multi watt laser you can't just let that 5% go wherever it
| wants. You will blind someone. So his job was getting black
| bodies in all the right spots to absorb the lost light.
|
| His safety goggles looked like even more expensive Oakleys of
| that era and they were (much more expensive).
| cyberax wrote:
| The amount of safety when working with lasers is
| ridiculous. And for a good reason, you can get permanent
| eye damage faster than the blink of an eye.
|
| Please, don't play with lasers. At all. Even supposedly
| "safe" lasers can output far more light than expected.
| hinkley wrote:
| Another friend's favorite saying is, "do not look into
| laser with remaining eye."
| flowerthoughts wrote:
| Not to mention the ones that have peaks in invisible
| parts of the spectrum.
| palata wrote:
| Unrelated, but I really want to take the opportunity:
|
| How can one know what is dangerous for the eyes or not? Years
| ago I got an "IR illuminator" (from aliexpress, probably)
| that I wanted to use with my raspberrypi NoIR camera, for
| fun. Say filming myself during the night to see how much I
| move while sleeping, or making my own wildlife camera trap.
|
| But I was scared that it could be dangerous and never used it
| (I tested it in an empty room, but that was it).
|
| Is there a safe way for a hobbyist to get an IR illuminator
| and be sure that I won't make somebody blind with it?
| elictronic wrote:
| Buy from a reputable dealer. I don't buy batteries, lasers,
| or items I ingest from locations lacking any repercussions.
| duskwuff wrote:
| IR illuminators are not lasers. Their purpose is to cast
| light across a broad area, not to deliver it all to one
| point. They should not be harmful to vision.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Last I recall they're just a crappy 5 megapixel Arducam camera
| module based on teardowns.
|
| https://www.cehrp.org/dissection-of-flock-safety-camera/
|
| https://www.arducam.com/product/arducam-ov5647-noir-camera-b...
| daemonologist wrote:
| Lol that's almost _literally_ the cheapest possible option.
| You can get these for $3-4 (on a board and with a mipi cable
| and everything) from China - I have a dozen in a box that I
| bought to test out a camera array idea before shelling out
| for nicer sensors.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Maybe pick up one [1] and experiment with it. If I had some
| spare change I would love to grab one just to hack it.
|
| [1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/297938376075
| nancyminusone wrote:
| Do not do this.
| tclancy wrote:
| Comments in the sub-$200 LiDAR thread suggested those would
| play merry havoc with a camera too.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Please do not encourage people to go shining bright lasers at
| small targets from long distances right next to busy roads.
|
| This is a nerd fantasy thing, but it's a really bad idea. It's
| hard to hit a tiny lens from a distance and it only takes one
| slip of the hand to shine it straight into traffic or someone
| walking down the sidewalk.
| neilv wrote:
| Recent: Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying
| Flock surveillance cameras (bloodinthemachine.com) | 456 points
| by latexr 2 days ago | 293 comments |
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47095134
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Merchant reports instances of broken and smashed Flock cameras
| in La Mesa, California, just weeks after the city council
| approved the continuation of Flock cameras deployed in the city,
| despite a clear majority of attendees favoring their shutdown.
|
| Well who could've seen that coming.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| America is really now two Americas. The divide between
| traditional freedoms and neo-authoritarianism is getting wider.
| But America is so large that even the minority (just) that
| believes in freedom is still 167 million people. Even if only a
| small percentage of that number, from either side of the divide,
| believes in violent activism, things are going to get worse
| before they get better.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| This is the most important comment here. There is a future
| reckoning to be had between the radical authoritarian fringe
| and normal Americans who do not want to live in an open air
| prison. The conflict is completley preventable, and makes a
| less safe place to live for us all.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| America is converting into a radical authoritarian state,
| yes, but they're not a "fringe". They are, by a small margin,
| the dominant faction in the US. Popular vote counts prove it.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| Unfortunately this country has literacy and education
| problems, and many voters were plainly ignorant of what
| they were voting for.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| The back and forth between "the Left" and "the Right" seems
| to actually be about who gets to run the prison instead of
| whether we should run a nation like one.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| The right has become so untenable that the only viable
| defense of it is a bad faith distraction tactic to pretend
| that it's comparable to the left.
| scottyah wrote:
| You're in a bubble. It's not wholly a bad faith
| distraction tactic, and denying wrongdoing by anyone
| flying the "left" banner is a scary thought.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| So one one hand we have Nazi ideas[1] being platformed by
| the ruling political party which has barely disguised its
| support for ethnically cleansing the country of all non-
| white people[2]. And on the other hand we have radical
| democratic socialist candidates proposing stabilized
| rent[3]. What am I missing here?
|
| 1.
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/republican-
| part...
|
| 2. https://www.esiweb.org/newsletter/100-million-
| expulsions-pro...
|
| 3. https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2025/nov/06/europe-zohra...
| boc wrote:
| As your net worth increases, the concern about what you have
| to lose from a personal safety perspective skyrockets. You
| start becoming far more paranoid and seeing crime everywhere.
| Tech CEOs and billionaires will build the dystopian
| panopticon society 100 times out of 100 because they don't
| care about other people, they just want to feel safe. If that
| means mass surveillance for the rest of the world, so be it.
|
| If you don't believe me, just look at the CCP. It already
| happened there.
| newfriend wrote:
| Being anti-crime doesn't mean lacking compassion. Crimes
| have victims, and reducing crime results in fewer of them.
| Poor people don't want to be victims any more than rich
| people do.
| baconbrand wrote:
| Building the panopticon does not reduce crime.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There isn't a radical authoritarian fringe in the US. There
| are multiple, competing radical authoritarian perspectives in
| the US, and I wouldn't be surprised if the sum of them
| constituted a majority.
|
| They disagree on the authority, not the methods, and help the
| two institutional parties cooperate to destroy civil
| liberties by accusing their counterparts of abusing
| ("weaponizing") civil rights to commit crimes, spy for
| foreign governments, and/or abuse children.
| jvm___ wrote:
| They talk about a K shaped recovery in economics.
|
| It just depends on if you're on the up portion of the K or the
| down stick. The larger picture might show an increase but if
| you split the data apart one leg is actually declining while
| the other is growing.
| etrautmann wrote:
| while an important consideration, I'm sure there are many on
| the up side of the k-economy that don't believe that
| persistent surveillance is warranted or ethical.
| elektronika wrote:
| They will fall in line as property crime increases.
| stuffn wrote:
| You're implying here, I assume, that anyone who voted R is pro
| neo-authoritarianism. It is interesting too that you've also
| implicitly stated that the D's are pro-freedom. Both statements
| are false on their face and highly influenced by terminally
| online behavior.
|
| I would suggest you go look at polls. Dems have been polling in
| the dirt among their own party since they decided to usurp
| Bernie in 2016 and embrace the rich, Repubs have been polling
| in the dirt since Trump took office last year.
|
| Absolutely no one is happy about the state of America. You can
| argue semantics, but it's pointless navel gazing at the larger
| national issue. No one, of any political affiliation, believes
| the government can govern. It's probably the single uniting
| factor across all political stripes. No one is happy. No one
| believes America has gotten measurably better in the last 10-15
| years, and everyone is suffering in one way or another. The
| flock/authoritarian bent is simply the last gasps of a
| neoliberal government that has realized there's no easy way out
| of the last 40 years of anti-citizen policies.
| kobieps wrote:
| Yeah, it doesn't seem productive to paint this as a partisan
| issue
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Your assumptions are probably reflective of my downvotes, but
| I choose my words carefully.
| stuffn wrote:
| Downvotes are a good sign you made someone think about
| their own internal biases and they didn't like it. So they
| lash out in the only way the know how. Pathetic and weak.
| novemp wrote:
| No one said the Democrats are pro-freedom. Both parties are
| authoritarian. One is just less effective.
| bradfitz wrote:
| Oh no.
| encom wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPQFF0oqsto
| the__alchemist wrote:
| This breakdown in rule of law is unfortunate. Ideally, this would
| be handled by, in order of desirability: - Flock
| decision-makers and customers holding ethics as a priority, and
| not taking the actions they are due to sense of duty, community,
| morals etc - Peer pressure resulting in ostracization of
| Flock execs and decision makers until they stop the unethical
| behavior - Governments using legislation and law
| enforcement to prevent the cameras being used in the way they are
|
| Below this, is citizens breaking the law to address the
| situation, e.g. through this destruction. It is not ideal, but it
| is necessary when the higher-desirability options are not
| working.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| > It is not ideal, but it is necessary when the higher-
| desirability options are not working.
|
| What has worried me for years is that Americans would not
| resort to this level. That things are just too comfortable at
| home to take that brave step into the firing lines of being on
| the right side of justice but the wrong side of the law.
|
| I'm relieved to see more and more Americans causing _necessary
| trouble._ I still think that overall, Americans are _deeply
| underreacting_ to the times. But that only goes as far as to be
| my opinion. I can 't speak for them and I'm not their current
| king.
| yardie wrote:
| You won't get to the kind of change you thought you would see
| until food runs low and the economy stalls. The American
| Revolution was rare in that it didn't need to happen. The
| Founders were just being giant assholes (j/k). While the
| French Revolution just a few decades later was more status
| quo. A lot of starvation and poverty just pushed the
| population over the edge.
| t-3 wrote:
| The American and French revolutions originated in the
| middle classes. The poor are often indifferent to politics
| because they're focused on survival. The middle classes,
| who own things they don't want to lose and have free time
| to aspire for more, are the ones who start revolutions. The
| poor only came in after being whipped up by the interested
| parties, and don't necessarily join the revolutionary side.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > You won't get to the kind of change you thought you would
| see until food runs low and the economy stalls.
|
| These are no longer impossibles.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Boy is he trying on the latter. Quite impressive just how
| resilient it seems to be.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > until food runs low and the economy stalls.
|
| Well one of those is already on the fast tracking to
| happening (economy stalling).
|
| Unfortunately, I don't have much faith that people will
| turn against the administration during any kind of major
| depression/food scarcity. I foresee people turning against
| each other for survival instead.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I would have believed that before 2020, but after COVID, I
| fully believe that if the food ran out, half the country
| would say it's a fake hoax. People would be on their death
| beds actually starving, and deny it was happening with
| their last breath.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| For real. Literally killed millions. That didn't get us
| to agree somehow.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I had the same reaction. I thought things were getting
| bad before COVID, but I thought that, generally, when
| push came to shove, sanity would prevail.
|
| Herman Cain denied COVID's severity right up until it
| killed him, and them even _after he died_ , his team was
| still tweeting that "looks like COVID isn't as bad as the
| mainstream media made it out to be." When I saw that
| people were literally willing to die to "own the libs", I
| knew shared reality was toast.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| I disagree. You can escape a disease, even during a
| global pandemic. And not every person that got COVID was
| on a ventilator or even felt that bad. Seeing the death
| toll statistics and even the direct effects through a
| screen is not visceral for many folks.
|
| Starvation isn't avoidable and you can't ride it out.
| There isn't any chance that starving to death could be
| less severe than getting a bad flu. Nobody can avoid not
| eating for an extended period of time. If there is not
| enough food, it will affect everyone directly.
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| Of course MAGA folks would be affected if the whole
| country starved. The question is how they would _react_
| to starving. They might just blame Hillary Clinton.
| mikestorrent wrote:
| > The American Revolution was rare in that it didn't need
| to happen.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_Rebellion
|
| Interestingly y'all Americans pay much more tax now than
| you did to England back in the day. Turns out King George
| was right, and it was just about changing who the tax was
| paid to.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Not really a secret. The slogan was "No taxation without
| representation" not "no taxation."
|
| The degree to which legislation in the US is bought by
| big companies and rarely reflects democratic desires we
| may be in another "no taxation without representation"
| era.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Back then most taxes went to Britain.
| simonjgreen wrote:
| Now they go to Bezos
|
| Where there's an opportunity to be the 1%, folks will
| find a way to be the 1%
| wutwutwat wrote:
| "There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy."
|
| - Alfred Henry Lewis
| kbrisso wrote:
| I agree. The amount of cameras and tracking has gotten out of
| control. If America actually becomes an "authoritarian"
| country (seems almost likely) I imagine all these Flock pics
| with other data mining techniques will be used to send
| Communist Progressives to reeducation camp.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > The amount of cameras and tracking has gotten out of
| control.
|
| The UK looks at the use of cameras and feels threatened for
| its Nanny State title. We Yanks have laughed at that name
| while the water around us slowly came to a boil.
|
| Some cities and/or states have banned the use of cameras at
| stop lights to issue tickets. Not really sure what caused
| that to happen, except the cynic in me thinks some
| politician received a ticket in the mail from one of the
| cameras.
| aenis wrote:
| America is an authoritarian country for decades now.
|
| It first dawned on me when i visited NYC some 30 years ago.
| I stepped over some arbitrary yellow line I wasn't supposed
| to - the uniformed cop that noticed that went from 0 to 100
| in 0.1 second and behaved as if I just pulled a gun. Zero
| time to reflect and assume I might have made a legitimate
| mistake. Since then I've visited U.S. >150 times, and in my
| experience it was always thus in the U.S. - the law
| enforcement is on hair trigger and the populace has
| seemingly grown used to it and considers this behaviour
| normal. Geez.
|
| (Go live in any northern european country for comparison.
| Any interaction with law enforcement is almost certainly
| going to be pleasant, cordial, and uniformed police
| typically does not rely on threats of violance for
| authority).
| cobbzilla wrote:
| America is not NYC. NYC is proud of its police-state
| apparatus. Most of the rest of the country is very
| different.
| butterbomb wrote:
| NYC police seem insane lmao. For some reason various
| precinct accounts have made it into my social media feed,
| and the last time I saw the they were bragging about
| stealing some old ladies less lethal defense weapon.
| wrs wrote:
| What confuses me is that no revolution is required. All we
| had to do to avoid this was to vote. Voting would still
| (probably) work.
| unclad5968 wrote:
| Who can I vote for that will stop flock cameras from being
| installed?
| gamerdonkey wrote:
| In many cases, the decision to install Flock cameras have
| been made by city councils and sheriffs' offices. So it
| very much depends on local candidates.
|
| On the broader topic, I'm not sure that just voting is
| the way that we'll get out of this mess, but I think a
| large part of the problem is how our focus on wider,
| national issues has eroded the interest in the local. So
| people seem to be most disenfranchised from the level of
| politics where they can actually have the most influence,
| both by voting and direct action (protests, calls, etc).
| cdrnsf wrote:
| We turned over seats on our city council for the first
| time in decades and the new, "liberal" council members
| voted with the rest, unanimously, to install more Flock
| cameras.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The local government officials in charge of allowing
| these to be installed.
|
| It also represents an opportunity for upstarts. If you
| want to get into local politics, this is a single issue
| that will unit voters and bring them in.
|
| We had a city councilperson elected on the sole issue of
| replacing the purple street lights. She won decisively
| and her entire campaign was literally signs everywhere
| promising to fix the purple streetlights. (yes, they were
| fixed).
| overfeed wrote:
| Badger your city council, work with like-minded residents
| in a way that can credibly threaten their re-elections,
| find and support privacy-conscious candidates who won't
| sign-onto Flock's agenda, create ads based on council
| meetings when councilors support surveillance in a way
| most voters will reject. Put their quotes on billboard
| with their picture, etc
| amrocha wrote:
| Ok, you do all that work at home and manage to block
| flock in your area. It doesn't matter because the next
| city over where you work installed them so you get
| tracked anyway.
|
| Then 2 years later a new city council gets elected and
| they install flock cameras in your city too. You can
| never get rid of them because it already passed and
| nobody wants to relitigate the same thing every couple of
| years.
|
| Local politics does not work here.
| mothballed wrote:
| Our city voted out the cameras so the feds just installed
| flock cameras on every bit of federal property in and
| near town, plus they're at private places like hardware
| stores.
| overfeed wrote:
| Opponents too can escalate to the next rung: perhaps a
| county-level retail tax on all retailers hosting ALPRs.
|
| Either that or getting creative with directed aerosolized
| oil droplets.
| overfeed wrote:
| > You can never get rid of them because it already passed
| and nobody wants to relitigate the same thing every
| couple of years.
|
| Those who care about their privacy _should_ relitigate at
| every opportunity. "The price of freedom is eternal
| vigilance". Those who give up in advance, are beyond
| fucked, because they'll have to take whatever is sent
| their way.
| psadauskas wrote:
| Voting doesn't work as well when there's billions of
| dollars being spent to influence the votes to make
| billionaires richer, while the working class that could
| vote against it is too busy working 3 part time jobs just
| to survive.
| kakacik wrote:
| Nah thats a cheap excuse. Amorality of current gov was
| out there in plain sight, even before 2016 and definitely
| after. It was extremely hard for common folks to avoid
| it, some active acting would be required.
|
| Then it boils down to morals, how flexible people are
| with them - this is weakness of character. Ability to
| ignore malevolent behavior if it suits me is more a
| ballpark of amoral sociopaths than good-hearted guy who
| simply doesn't have 2 hours a day to ponder philosophies
| of modern politics and regional historical details half
| around the globe. No amount of ads (which are so far
| trivial to avoid with reasonable lifestyle) change what a
| moral person considers moral.
|
| And it couldn't have been easier this time, its not some
| left vs right view on things, just simple morality -
| lying, cheating, stealing, potential pedophilia, not hard
| to say of one is OK with that or not.
|
| Sure I could eat a salad for 5$, but no I'll get a crappy
| burger for same amount because I like salty greasy stuff.
| Gee doctor why do I have bad heart, how could have I
| known? Must have been those evil mega corporations and
| their genius marketing.
| psadauskas wrote:
| The amorality was not in plain sight, if your only source
| of news is Fox News or Breitbart or Twitter.
| mothballed wrote:
| This is why I'm in favor of sortition instead of voting.
|
| The majority of random people don't have combination of
| desire, corruption, sophistication, and political
| experience to pull off this kind of bribery.
|
| Virtually every elected politician does.
|
| ~Everything about the election process selects for the
| worst kinds of people.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There is a lot of truth in this but I'm not convinced
| sortition is going to work either.
|
| But what you _could_ do is vote with a string attached
| and a penalty for being recalled that is going to make
| people think twice about running for office if their aim
| is to pull some kind of stunt. The 'you give me four
| years unconditionally' thing doesn't seem to work at all.
| Teever wrote:
| I've been mulling over a system where there's a
| legislative body composed of citizens picked through
| sortition and another legislative body that's elected
| like normal legislative bodies of today.
|
| The twist on that body however is that voting is
| mandatory and ballots have a non of the above option on
| them. If a super majority (say 60-75%) vote none of the
| above the election is a do-over with all the people on
| the ballot being uneligable to run for that seat for say
| 5-10 years.
| nielsbot wrote:
| I don't think that's all we (assuming you're USA) had to do
| or need to do going forward. Voting is "necessary but not
| sufficient" as the quote goes.
| achierius wrote:
| Just like how all we had to do to shut down Guantanamo Bay
| was vote for President Obama, right? So glad that that
| worked out. By and large, our institutions are not
| democratic, in that they are not responsive to 'popular
| opinion'; while there are certain arenas where, for one
| reason or another, the will of the majority does sway the
| day (e.g. the influence of scandals on individual elected
| officials), by and large most things are decided by non-
| democratic factors like business interests and large
| donors, and the media just works to get people on-side with
| whatever comes out of that.
|
| To quote a well-known study on the topic: "The preferences
| of the average American appear to have only a minuscule,
| near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public
| policy."
|
| (Gilens & Page, Perspectives in Politics)
| bullfightonmars wrote:
| This is ahistoric. No-one ever said we had to "just vote
| for Obama" to close Guantanamo Bay.
|
| Frankly, Obama _tried_ to close Guantanamo Bay. He
| significantly shrunk the population of inmates, but it
| was ultimately Congress, and the courts that prevented
| the closure
|
| Obama spent a huge amount of time and political capital
| trying to clean up Bush's messes.
| umanwizard wrote:
| You're supporting the point of the person you responded
| to.
| jibal wrote:
| No, they refuted their strawman.
| henryteeare wrote:
| One vote isn't enough. Just Obama was insufficient when
| congress was not sufficiently aligned.
| kettlecorn wrote:
| This is far too nihilist.
|
| Obama and Biden both led to meaningful policy
| improvements and they were far more stable than the
| current admin.
| coliveira wrote:
| They were able to slow down the inevitable trajectory,
| they did nothing to reverse course. Doing anything
| different would be too "radical" for Obama or Biden.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "All we had to do to avoid this was to vote."
|
| Every time I hear this I cringe, whether this subject or
| any other. The people did vote and this is what they got -
| not necessarily what they specifically voted for. Different
| people hold things in different importance. Flock security
| cameras (or similar) generally don't even get noticed by
| the people voting on taxes, guns, abortions, etc.
| N_Lens wrote:
| Besides, establishment Democrats aren't exactly for the
| common man, they're just not as cartoonishly evil as the
| Republicans. Democrats would likely still be in favor of
| Flock cameras.
| NBJack wrote:
| The age old tactic of vilification. It's easy to overlook
| all the nuances on all sides; it's a whole spectrum with
| plenty of overlap.
|
| My hope in the US is that folks at least take the time to
| evaluate their options and/or candidates; voting a
| straight ticket just because someone calls themselves
| something can lead to undesirable outcomes.
| roysting wrote:
| Not to mention that most of the most upending,
| consequential changes and events in America were not only
| not voted on, but were wildly opposed by the populace,
| yet were imposed anyways and today, after decades of
| government "education", people vigorously support and
| defend those tyrannical impositions.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| Seconded. Democracy is the only transcendental political
| system: you can have any ideology you want (so be careful
| or you'll be voting only once). To survive, it depends on
| civic spirit - i.e. _participation_. Democracy always
| collapses into authoritarianism eventually. Then (if you
| want it bad enough), you have to claw it back, slowly and
| painfully. All just as Plato foresaw.
|
| It really bothers me that so few people in the modern West
| understand just how lucky they are. If you didn't have the
| control _you already have_ over your government, you 'd be
| fighting for it.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The US is a semi-democracy, notably due to its hyper-
| polarized two party system that completely forbids (in the
| 2020s) any crossing of party lines for compromise.
|
| The single biggest improvement to American society would be
| to implement multi-member districts for legislature, OR to
| implement STAR voting - any kind of system that promotes
| the existence of more parties, more political candidates,
| to break the two party cycle.
|
| Far too many people fail to vote or research candidates due
| to how shitty our democracy is. Far too few candidates
| exist as a blend of values, and we are stuck with "every
| liberal policy" vs. "every conservative policy".
|
| ---
|
| To that end, it seems the cities that are banning Flock for
| proper privacy reasons are all in liberal states and
| cities. Conservative/moderate areas seem a lot less engaged
| on the topic. "That's just how it goes, of course
| government is going to tread on us, what can be done about
| it".
| yardie wrote:
| Not sure if you are aware but we rarely directly get to
| vote on these things. You vote for a representative and
| hope they vote in a way that serves your interests. But
| now, we have omnibus bills. And it's 50/50 loaded with
| things we want and things we don't. The same bill that
| funds Pre-K will also have a section to fund a kitten
| shredding machine. But if you vote against it all voters
| will hear is how you don't want to fund education.
| realo wrote:
| I do not live in the USA, but my understanding of those
| omnibus bills is that they are government blackmail of
| its people.
|
| I remember being horrified the first time I heard this
| was legal in the USA.
|
| How can the US citizens accept such a brutal denying of
| good governance is beyond me.
| mothballed wrote:
| IIRC FDR pioneered the contemporary use of this to ram
| through progressive legislation, in particular social
| security by essentially packaging it up so the needy
| would get nothing in other programs if social security
| wasn't passed.
|
| Though I wouldn't be surprised if the idea goes back to
| Roman times.
| cyberge99 wrote:
| It wouldn't have mattered because the Horowitz Foundation
| donated them to avoid governance and regulations.
| K0balt wrote:
| Unfortunately, studies undertaken by MIT over a decade ago
| show that when it comes to law writing and passing, voters
| have no statistically measurable input at the federal
| level. (Since citizens united)
|
| It's all just identity politics. I will say that Trump has
| proven the exception to this rule, enacting a whole lot of
| policy that circumvents the law and has real effects. (And
| is likely mostly unconstitutional if actually put to the
| test)
|
| So while locally, voting can be powerful, it's mostly bread
| and circuses at the federal level since regulatory capture
| is bipartisan.
| willyt wrote:
| Your voting system is shit. It results in a two party
| state. If one party fails to present a coherent offering
| and the other one is infiltrated by nut jobs then the
| system breaks down. After all, if it was such a good
| system, why didn't you impose it on Germany and Japan when
| you won WW2? (This comment is politically neutral; who the
| incoherents and the nut jobs are are left to the reader's
| discretion)
| KittenInABox wrote:
| On the contrary I think Americans are reacting about the same
| as any other set of people would react. There are always
| going to be people who, as long as their personal lives are
| stable, they are not going to do anything to put that
| stability at risk. America is also huge enough that even if
| one part of the country is having a crisis, millions of
| fellow citizens will not hear of it or have any 2nd, 3rd or
| 4th hand connection to the matter.
|
| But also if a small portion of Americans disparately plan to
| do stuff like sabotage surveillance camera, it's still
| newsworthy.
| taurath wrote:
| Let's be clear though - it's not that Americans are
| clinging to some deep stability that brings them comfort or
| relaxation, it's that they're on the edge already. The vast
| vast majority of people are barely able to afford the
| basics of life, while we're bombarded with an ever more
| shameless wealthy elite's privileges.
|
| Politics is like water boiling - it's just going to be
| little bubbles at first but all of a sudden it will start
| to really rumble.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Is that really the case? It seems to me that the vast
| majority in the US can fairly easily afford a fair bit of
| material luxury, mostly because material luxuries have
| become incredibly cheap (by historical standards).
|
| The trouble is at least in the high population areas
| (AFAICT) a huge swath of "average" people seem to be
| stuck living life on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis,
| renting, no prospect of property ownership, minimal to
| zero retirement savings, no realistic way to afford
| children, etc. Not abnormal by historic or global
| standards but very abnormal when compared to the past
| ~150 years of US history.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You mean like South Korea? Thailand? Peru? Nepal?
| kingkawn wrote:
| Get out there and be the change you want to see, king
| nielsbot wrote:
| I don't get the sarcasm here.. Instead of sniping with
| snark (see HN rules, please) post your better take.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > What has worried me for years is that Americans would not
| resort to this level.
|
| They'll stop once the police (or ICE, more likely) start
| dishing out _horrific_ punishments for it.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| That's not how the political reality of exacting mostly
| voluntary compliance from the masses works.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| General strike! Close the ports, close the airports, steal
| dozers and park them on railroad tracks, teachers on the
| streets in front of their schools to protect their students,
| blockade the grocery distribution centers, so that the
| shelves go bare, just stop everything, everywhere.
|
| When it hurts the billionaires, they will tell their
| politicians to invoke the 25th.
|
| It's the only way, we've lost our democracy, but we still
| have economic power.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > This breakdown in rule of law is unfortunate.
|
| Doesn't breakdown in rule of law happened when a corporation
| (surely) bribed local officials to install insecure
| surveillance devices with zero concern for the community living
| near them?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| How many homeowners install mystery-meat Chinese cameras on
| their houses that feed the data God knows where? Should their
| homes be vandalized too for their lack of concern for the
| community?
| mmanfrin wrote:
| Far cry difference between that and the mass dragnet and
| centralized surveillance of entire communities at tap for
| agencies/police/fed.
| noah_buddy wrote:
| Beyond any discussion of "vigilante" / "criminal"
| destruction of cameras, there's a clear difference between
| giving domestic corporations (who act hand in glove with
| your local government) access to cameras on your property
| vs. giving foreign corporations (working hand in glove with
| an adversary government) access to cameras on your
| property.
|
| It really comes down to whether you consider an
| individual's right to privacy more important than your
| state's security. Neither is really a perfect options in
| this case, but having the Flock camera means some part of
| your property is under the panopticon of local law
| enforcement that could arrest you (loss of privacy).
|
| Going with chinese tech, you are probably more private in
| regards to your own government, but you're probably having
| some negative effect on state security based on the
| marginal benefit of CCP surveillance/ potential malware in
| your network.
|
| The dichotomy is false. People could have cameras which
| report to no one, but that's less useful for all
| governments involved.
| dirasieb wrote:
| ok so let's just put aside chinese companies! ring is an
| american company, should people's ring cameras be
| vandalized because ring might share their data with the
| american government?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I have not vandalized any Ring cameras, but I have paid
| to replace those installed by friends and family and have
| those replaced shredded as part of an electronics
| recycling waste stream. "Think globally, act locally"
| sort of thing.
| dirasieb wrote:
| i don't think the people destroying flock cameras are
| open to the idea of going through the legal process to
| replace them with alternatives that have better privacy,
| something (maybe the fact that they currently are
| vandalizing them) tells me that they are just interested
| in vandalizing them
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Flock cameras are different, they take advantage of laws
| that have not kept pace with technology while being
| colocated and operated in public spaces, to where you are
| forced to live in a corporate surveillance state for
| Flock Group's enterprise value and potential shareholder
| returns. And so, destruction of the devices is all that
| is left available to them (if their jurisdiction opts to
| not remove them, as many have done [1]). Somewhat silly
| to blame humans who want privacy (arguably a human right
| [2]) just so the CEO of Flock can get wealthy (and YC can
| get liquidity) at IPO, no?
|
| The human is doing what you would expect the human to do
| when faced with limited options in an operating
| environment that is not favorable to them. Crime has been
| trending down for some time [3], Flock cameras are a
| business driven on fear like Shotspotter, where the
| results are questionable at best and you're selling to
| the unsophisticated.
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-
| contracts...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy
|
| [3] https://time.com/7357500/crime-homicide-rate-violent-
| propert... | https://archive.today/vMACL
| dirasieb wrote:
| i've never found this type of "humans were left with no
| alternative" argument in defense of destruction of
| property convincing, some of the things that separates
| humans from other animals is the concept of
| private/public property, rule of law, etc, you know?
| there are alternatives, contrary to the alarmism found
| online the US is very far from actual dictatorships where
| people have close to 0 way of achieving change through
| the legal system, immediately jumping to violence without
| an imminent threat is something i'd expect from lower
| primates, not from homo sapiens.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You're free to your opinion. Property is just property,
| it is nothing special. Rule of law is highly dynamic and
| a shared delusion. Damaging or destruction of property is
| not violence, it is a property crime at best. In the
| scope of Flock, it is well documented as having been
| misused, illegally in many cases, by law enforcement and
| those with access to its systems [1] [2] [3].
|
| > there are alternatives
|
| This does not consistently appear to be the case in the
| US unfortunately.
|
| [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/effs-
| investigations-ex...
|
| [2] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-
| roundup
|
| [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=flock+misuse
| dirasieb wrote:
| > Damaging or destruction of property is not violence.
|
| you wouldn't consider someone vandalizing your home or
| the infrastructure in your neighborhood to be violence?
| of course it is violence, an attack on the place i live
| (whether that's limited to just my home or to the larger
| community i live in) is an attack on me
|
| is it not violence to, for example, burn down a business
| where people work in if you do it at a time where no one
| is around to get immediately hurt as a consequence? can i
| not call the financial damage caused both to the workers
| and the owners of that place violence?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > you wouldn't consider someone vandalizing your home or
| the infrastructure in your neighborhood to be violence?
| of course it is violence, an attack on the place i live
| (whether that's limited to just my home or to the larger
| community i live in) is an attack on me
|
| No, I file an insurance claim and move on with my life.
| It is just property, and almost all property can be
| trivially replaced. Your property is not you. It is just
| property. We simply see the world differently, that's
| all. Good luck to you.
| dirasieb wrote:
| oh of course, because insurance claim payments are
| instantaneous (just like the reconstruction work they'll
| have to do) and the people who work there can just go
| work somewhere else by just finding another job, right?
|
| life is very simple when you live in fairy land
| jacquesm wrote:
| I fail to see the equivalence between taking out a
| surveillance camera that is violating people's privacy
| with the other things that you list. Arguing like that is
| simply not going to work.
| dirasieb wrote:
| the person i replied to made a broad "destroying property
| is not violence" claim, the scope of the conversation is
| more than just that
|
| also, i consider a security camera in a place i live to
| be security infrastructure, you should not be able to
| come into a place and do act like a vigilante imposing
| your view on what should and should not be recorded
| through force, if you have a problem with the way things
| work you should try to work within the law
|
| again, this is what separates civilization from chaos
| jacquesm wrote:
| It is clear that they were in no way making that claim in
| the context that you put it in, that's on you, not on
| them.
| dirasieb wrote:
| are you sure?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47129267 they seem
| to disagree
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > you wouldn't consider someone vandalizing your home or
| the infrastructure in your neighborhood to be violence?
|
| Very obviously not. Words have meaning. You are misusing
| words to garner emotional support for your preferred
| political position.
|
| Burning down anything (including a business) is arson.
| Not violence. It only becomes violence if people are
| present and at imminent risk of physical harm.
|
| Financial damage is not violence. Speech is not violence.
| Please take your doublespeak back to reddit; it doesn't
| belong on HN.
| dirasieb wrote:
| how did you jump from property damage and arson to
| speech? non sequitur much? financial damage absolutely
| can be violence, you can ruin someone's life if you take
| away their job by burning down the place they work at and
| it could lead to something horrific like them taking
| their own lives or not being able to pay for their
| medication or not be able to pay for their child's
| education, etc as a direct consequence of your act of
| destroying that place. destroying infrastructure people
| rely on to stay healthy/safe/economically stable/etc
| should be considered by civilized people as a violent
| attack on them, you cannot pretend that disrupting
| someone's livelihood is not at all related to attacking
| their liberty and/or life
|
| a case where you can argue speech can be violence would
| be a verbal threat to hurt or kill someone, but that has
| nothing to do with what we're talking about, i don't know
| why you're bringing up speech, are you trying to say that
| destroying these cameras is a form of expressing freedom
| of speech? (not accusing you of this btw, just genuinely
| curious what you meant by that)
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > how did you jump from property damage and arson to
| speech?
|
| I included speech as an example, the same as your
| bringing up property damage, arson, and financial damage.
| It seemed relevant given the general shape of what you
| were expressing.
|
| Someone being driven to suicide or unable to pay for
| medication is not an example of violence. It might be
| many things but violence is most certainly not one of
| them.
|
| > you cannot pretend that disrupting someone's livelihood
| is not at all related to attacking their liberty and/or
| life
|
| Indeed it is _related_ but that does not magically make
| it "violence". Violence is direct physical harm. Not
| indirect and not anything other than physical.
|
| > a case where you can argue speech can be violence
|
| Speech is _never_ violence. That's about as close to
| definitionally impossible as you can get. (Here's a fun
| related observation: violent rhetoric is not itself
| violent.)
|
| Respectfully, you seem to be having extreme difficulty
| comprehending the fact that words have meaning. It's
| impossible to engage in meaningful discussion with
| someone who either can't or won't conduct themselves in
| accordance with that fact.
| dirasieb wrote:
| > Speech is _never_ violence.
|
| coming up to you on the street and telling you i'm going
| to stab you to death is not violence as long as i don't
| go through with the stabbing? someone needs to better
| secure the mental asylum wifi, you shouldn't have access
| to it
|
| shouting "BOMB!" at an airport for fun is not violence
| even though you're causing people to trample each other
| and might result in serious physical harm that resulting
| directly from your action?
| xienze wrote:
| > Should their homes be vandalized too for their lack of
| concern for the community?
|
| If enough people can be convinced that those cameras are
| somehow helping Trump, you'll find a lot of people in here
| and Reddit saying "yes", I'll imagine. Before this we had
| people vandalizing Teslas because of Elon.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| yes.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Rather, a community could pass a law to prevent persistent
| filming of public locations--why not, right?
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Well, not in the US since filming in public is (at least
| AFAIK) constitutionally protected. It's weird though,
| somehow two party consent for audio recording (even in
| public) seems to be accepted by the courts. Although it's
| entirely possible that I have a misunderstanding.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is actually kind of hard to look this up: I get lots
| of search results about the right to record police being
| protected constitutionally. And the lack of an inherent
| right to privacy, when in public. But, this doesn't seem
| to preclude a locality from creating a law that disallows
| recording of public locations, right? You may not have a
| constitutional right to safe air, but as far as I know
| states can pass their own environmental regulations...
|
| (All US specific)
| jacquesm wrote:
| As long as they're not pointed at the street that should be
| fine. If they are pointed at the street then, depending on
| where you live, that may not be acceptable.
| lm28469 wrote:
| I'll personally send my DNA and weekly blood work straight
| to Xi Jinping address and pay for postage myself before
| letting my own government spy my every moves. Thes risks of
| anything bad happening are much lower
| ryandvm wrote:
| The real breakdown in the rule of law occurred when the US
| Supreme Court made the specious decision that amoral business
| entities (corporations) had the same rights in a democracy as
| citizens.
|
| All this shit flows downhill from Citizens United.
| closewith wrote:
| You must be very young? These issues predate 2010 by
| millennia.
| danaris wrote:
| Citizens United was just the inevitable outgrowth of
| Buckley v. Valeo 50 years ago, declaring that money ==
| speech.
|
| _That_ was the wellspring of all this shit.
| rurp wrote:
| Supreme Court decisions are not a deterministic process
| like you get with code. Justices twist and contradict
| precedents to suit their ideological goals all the time;
| these days they don't even try to hide it much. The
| Citizens United decision wasn't something that had to
| happen, it was a deliberate choice by conservatives.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| What other social issues should be solved with vigilante
| justice?
|
| I don't like all this surveillance stuff, but Flock is just the
| tip of the iceberg and "direct action" against Flock is just as
| likely to backfire as it is to lead to changes. More
| importantly, once you give folks moral license to do this stuff
| it's hard to contain the scope of their activity.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| This is a nice description (i.e "where is the limit on this
| type of action?") of a reason why this approach is low on the
| list, and why ideally we would solve it with one of the other
| options.
|
| You don't want to give people "moral license" to do this
| broadly, but we've hit a point where there are no options
| available that don't have downsides. Stated another way:
| Taking no action can also be unethical.
| igor47 wrote:
| Man, I really emphasize with this, and that immediately
| raises my "motivated reasoning" hakles. There's a lot of
| people in America with deeply held views that I strongly
| disagree with, and I would be very worried if they began
| taking matters into their own hands; to pick a hopefully-
| uncontroversial example, bombing abortion clinics. They,
| too, would say "to take no action is also unethical". The
| purpose of society is to arbitrate these kinds of
| disputes...
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I agree but will point out that abortion is an example of
| policing activity that does not affect oneself. Adding an
| additional clause reflecting that aspect seems to fix
| many of the issues that might concern you.
| wonnage wrote:
| Consider the converse of your statement
|
| I believe in surveillance, but Flock is just the tip of the
| iceberg and rolling out mass public surveillance is just as
| likely to backfire as it is to lead to changes. More
| importantly, once you give folks moral license to do this
| stuff it's hard to contain the scope of their activity.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| > _What other social issues should be solved with vigilante
| justice?_
|
| Everything you said is true, but I suspect, also irrelevant,
| because options short of vigilante justice aren't going to be
| seen by the public as viable for much longer (if they're even
| seen so _now_ ). America's social contract is breaking, and
| existing institutions make it clear, daily, that they will
| strengthen that trend rather than reverse it. And as JFK
| said, 'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will
| make violent revolution inevitable.' That doesn't make the
| violence laudable, or even desirable. It is simply inevitable
| without seemingly impossible positive change from an
| establishment that is hostile to such.
| 8note wrote:
| the threat of vigilante mob justice is required for the law
| to work. its the tension that makes sure the rich and
| powerful want to stay involved, and be held accountable by
| it, rather than skipping over it and making it irrelevant.
|
| the threat has to be credible, which is where things like
| this, and luigi are quite valuable
| caditinpiscinam wrote:
| For me, Flock installing these cameras and other people
| taking them down are two sides of the same coin. One group
| puts cameras up in public without people's knowledge or
| permission, the other group takes cameras down without
| people's knowledge or permission. I find it kind of
| beautiful, like the ebb and flow of the tide.
| user3939382 wrote:
| We either have out of control govt or civil unrest and only
| people who don't know what the latter looks like cheer it on.
| We're screwed unless someone unlocks the economy. Right now
| it's not happening.
| closewith wrote:
| All those behaviours are consequences of direct civil
| disobedience, unrest and rebellion - not alternatives.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > This breakdown in rule of law is unfortunate.
|
| Yearly reminder to read:
|
| https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/kurz-the-discourse-of-vol...
| ok_dad wrote:
| This is excellent, I second your suggestion for everyone to
| read this.
| some_random wrote:
| Rule of law is long gone, neither party has any interest in it,
| it's more of a guideline of law now.
| fullstop wrote:
| Are you really both-sides-ing this?
| some_random wrote:
| Yeah I am actually, I'm tired of carrying water for people
| who openly hate me.
| skybrian wrote:
| Doomer vibes are common, but meanwhile, state and local
| justice systems continue to prosecute many crimes and crime
| is on a downward trend [1].
|
| [1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/record-low-crime-rates-
| are-...
| squidsoup wrote:
| Prosecuting the working class, sure.
| fanatic2pope wrote:
| FWIW the "rule of law" is a reference to the idea that the
| law should be applied equally to everyone regardless of
| their position in society, and has nothing to do with the
| crime rate.
|
| https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-
| resources/educational-a...
| some_random wrote:
| It's not about crime rate or "many crimes" still being
| taken seriously, it's the fact that we all know now that
| there are certain crimes that, depending on where you are
| and who is in charge, simply don't count. Furthermore,
| depending on where you are and who is in charge, the
| authority may simply choose to not adhere to the law
| whatsoever.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Don't both sides this. Explicitly point out that the GOP is
| many orders of magnitude worse.
| some_random wrote:
| Who was leading the push on drug "decriminalization"?
| daedrdev wrote:
| You mean weed?
| rjbwork wrote:
| complete non-sequiter. legalization would solve many of
| our problems, and if done 20-25 years ago, have taken
| care of that cartel issue down south.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i'm not a fan of lawlessness but on the other hand, i'm 100% ok
| with the government living in fear of the governed.
| cogogo wrote:
| The thing about that is the governments who most fear the
| governed are often extremely draconian. I actually do not
| think that it is constructive and it is precisely that fear
| that is driving things like voter suppression in the US.
| mothballed wrote:
| Lawlessness is superior to the law of the tyrant.
|
| Having lived or spent time in a lot of 3rd world shitholes,
| including a civil war, I've only really felt freedom in
| places with lawless lack of government, never places with
| 'rule of law' -- that always gets twisted for the elite.
|
| Of course the same happens in lawless regions, but power is
| fractured enough, there is a limit on power they can wield
| against the populace, as the opposing factions ultimately are
| a check on any one side oppressing the population to leave.
| They can't man machine guns at all the 'borders' and
| ultimately corruption becomes cheap enough that it is
| accessible to the common person which arguably provides more
| power to the common man than representative democracy does.
|
| I think this element of factions in competition was part of
| the original genius of the '50' states with the very minimal
| federal government. But the consolidation of federal power
| and loss of the teeth of the 10th amendment and expansion of
| various clauses in the constitution means there is now no
| escape and very few remaining checks.
| margalabargala wrote:
| This is a personal preference and not some universal axiom.
|
| Living under a tyrant at least tends to provide
| predictability and stability of a sort. The kind of
| violence that exists in a lawless society tends not to
| exist. State sanctioned violence, sure, but that's more
| often than not targeted.
|
| Basically, given the choice of Somalia or North Korea,
| there will be a diversity of opinions as to which someone
| prefers. I'm not saying I prefer one to the other, just
| that "Somalia" is not an objectively correct choice.
| mothballed wrote:
| As a note on Somalia: Somalia outside the state-like
| entities (Somaliland, Puntland, Al-Shaabab caliphate, and
| FGS / federally controlled somalia) is governed by xeer
| law.
|
| It's actually not lawless, it just uses a decentralized
| (polycentric) legal system that is poorly understood by
| westerners. They've had better outcomes under this system
| than under democratic government of FGS, which led to all
| or nothing tribalism influences coming into office.
| arjie wrote:
| In a country like the US with a fairly democratic process at
| various levels of government, this just means that people
| with some strong opinions can subject the rest of the
| citizens to their desires. This is the universal veto on
| societal order. We can see that the desire for governments to
| "live in fear of the governed" usually rapidly disappears
| when people start destroying water lines and power lines.
| After all, 'the governed' and 'the government' are the same
| people just with different factions distributed in power.
|
| A government that can't do anything to police unions is
| _also_ the government living in fear of the governed. A
| government that can 't rein in (say) PG&E is also a
| government living in fear of the governed. When political
| representatives are shot by a right-wing anti-abortion
| terrorist that is also (and perhaps even more viscerally so)
| a government living in fear of the governed. And I'm
| certainly not 100% okay with this.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > In a country like the US with a fairly democratic process
| at various levels of government
|
| How can you look at the current state of affair and say
| this with a straight face... It's a mafia, they're all
| millionaires, they're all friends, thay all go to the same
| schools, they all work for the government and instantly
| bounce to lobby for the private sector, they all use their
| insider knowledge to profit, &c. Only someone who went
| through the American education system can believe the US is
| anywhere close to what you described, it's a farce
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I view this breakdown in law similar to the marijuana
| situation. It's kind of a villainous administration, green
| lighting villainous things. The law doesn't hold water in this
| case. The people have to do something drastic to get that
| across.
| Avshalom wrote:
| Flock would not exist if they held ethics as a priority. It's
| The Panopticon from the well known book _The Panopticon is
| Unethical_
| Grimblewald wrote:
| People who rape, murder, and eat children run the country and
| face no hint of repurcussion. There never was rule of law. Only
| the appearance of it.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Rape is clearly in the Epstein files.
|
| Murder is implied in the Epstein files with an email about
| burying girls on the property.
|
| Eating sounds like an unhelpful exaggeration, unless I missed
| a major news story.
| psadauskas wrote:
| Dan Carlin, on his Common Sense podcast several years ago, said
| something that really stuck with me (and he probably was
| paraphrasing it from someone else).
|
| Society is like a pressure cooker, with built-in safety release
| valves to prevent the pressure from getting too high. If your
| solution to the safety release is to block off the valves, with
| authoritarian surveillance, draconian laws, and lack of justice
| for the elites committing crimes, it just moves it somewhere
| else. Block off too many, and it explodes.
| dlev_pika wrote:
| "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent
| revolution inevitable."
|
| - JFK
| stego-tech wrote:
| I mean, that's excellent wishcasting, but the reality is that
| current economic incentives combined with a lack of social
| ("cancel culture" got cancelled because "uwu too mean"),
| regulatory ("uwu can't hurt Capital or the rich people won't
| make jobs no more"), and criminal ("uwu can't hold Capital
| accountable for their actions when they do crimes or people
| will lose jobs") accountability means that this was always
| going to be the outcome.
|
| More people need to understand that the system is working as
| designed, and the elimination of peaceful, incremental reform
| based on popular demand, along with mass manipulation of human
| emotions through media and advertising, means that this sort of
| resistance is the sole outcome left before devolving into naked
| sectarian violence.
|
| Say what you will, but the anti-Flock camera smashers are at
| least doing _something_ beyond wishcasting from a philosophical
| armchair in comment sections or social media threads.
| tptacek wrote:
| All of this presumes that residents in municipalities with
| ALPRs don't want them used the way they are. That's not true!
| These things are broadly pretty popular among a broad set of
| residents.
| roysting wrote:
| You are unfortunately, for whatever your reasons you have,
| barking up the wrong tree. The people already made a law, the
| supreme law in fact, called the Constitution.
|
| In fact the capital criminals in this matter are the people
| violating and betraying that supreme law; the politicians,
| sheriffs, city councils, and even the YC funders behind Flock,
| etc.
|
| It is in fact not even just violating the supreme law, but
| though that betrayal, it is in fact also treason.
| bezier-curve wrote:
| Where in the Constitution does it require us to give up our
| privacy to private companies with little oversight? Seems
| like there's contention here.
|
| https://journals.law.unc.edu/ncjolt/blogs/under-
| surveillance...
| margalabargala wrote:
| The person you replied to is saying usage Flock is
| violating the constitution.
| bezier-curve wrote:
| I was confused by the "barking up the wrong tree" opener
| because the parent commenter was not contradicting that
| line of thinking either. Though destroying property is
| not going to get anyone anywhere, that I can agree with
| if that's GP's point.
| gregcohn wrote:
| While points 1 and 2 are indeed desirable, point 3 should be
| moot given we have a constitutional right to privacy and
| freedom from unreasonable search and seizures.
|
| The combination of ubiquitous scanners, poor data controls on
| commercially owned date, and law enforcement access without
| proper warrants compounds to a situation that for many rational
| people would fail the test of being fair play under the Fourth
| Amendment. For similar reasons, for example, it has been held
| by the Supreme Court that installing a GPS tracker on a vehicle
| and monitoring it long-term without a warrant is a 4A violation
| (US v Jones). Similar cases have held that warrants are needed
| for cellphone location tracking.
|
| So far, however, courts have not held Flock to the same
| standard -- or have at least held that Flock's data does not
| rise to the same standard.
|
| I personally think this is a mistake and is a first-order
| reason we have this problem, and would prefer the matter to
| stop there rather than rely on ethics. (Relying on ethics
| brought us pollution in rivers, PFAS and Perc in the ground,
| and so on.)
|
| Given the state of politics and the recent behavior of the
| Supreme Court, however, I would not hold my breath for this to
| change soon.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I think you already jumped to far. You can't break the law when
| the law is broken by every other tier of society.
|
| Sorry, try again!
| meindnoch wrote:
| Would someone please think of the _rule of law_?! : '((((
| JCattheATM wrote:
| The higher-desirability options are practically only
| theoretical in many contexts. See also the United Healthcare
| CEO killing.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| > It is not ideal, but it is necessary when the higher-
| desirability options are not working.
|
| You are simply imposing your own views on others. Just because
| _you_ disagree with Flock doesn 't give you the right to
| destroy license plate readers that my tax dollars paid for. Who
| appointed you king?
| lm28469 wrote:
| Who appointed anyone king? Neither Trump nor Flock are kings,
| both should be challenged, violently if necessary.
| basilikum wrote:
| One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey
| just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to
| disobey unjust laws.
| drnick1 wrote:
| > While some communities are calling on their cities to end their
| contracts with Flock, others are taking matters into their own
| hands.
|
| This is absolutely the right thing to do.
|
| Remove and smash the cellular modem in your car while you are at
| it.
| Zigurd wrote:
| The cellular modem is usually on a dedicated fuse. No need for
| violence unless smashing it would be satisfying.
| ndesaulniers wrote:
| I took a look at the schematics for the two fuse boxes in my
| 2023 Chevrolet and _could not tell which/if any_ fuse was
| dedicated to a cellular modem.
|
| This was in regards to: https://www.ftc.gov/news-
| events/news/press-releases/2025/01/...
| s3p wrote:
| Same here. I am driving a 25 Kia and have tried to little
| success to find that modem.
| steviedotboston wrote:
| and for good measure get rid of the tracking device in your
| pocket that you willingly use all day to send your location to
| facebook, X, tiktok, etc.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _and for good measure get rid of the tracking device in
| your pocket that you willingly use all day to send your
| location to facebook, X, tiktok, etc._
|
| I don't have facebook, X, or tiktok installed on my phone.
| elpocko wrote:
| Thank you for letting us know.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Same thing here. I don't use that malware at all.
| eddyg wrote:
| Those aren't the problem, it's _any_ "free" mobile app in
| the App Store or Play Store with an advertising SDK (which
| is almost all of them) that uses your location to "keep
| your weather forecast up-to-date" _but also_ provide data
| brokers with your location...
|
| https://darkanswers.com/how-your-location-is-sold-to-
| adverti...
| magicalist wrote:
| Sure, and--setting aside the issues with all the millions
| of smart phone users who can't properly consent to these
| apps and their permissions because they don't have the
| knowledge to know what they're actually consenting to--
| the great thing is that I can choose not to install these
| apps. And I don't!
|
| I don't have the same choice with cameras everywhere that
| feed into a company with a security team run by donkeys
| and that provides minimal to no oversight to the
| government bodies using the camera data to do an end run
| around the fourth amendment.
| sodapopcan wrote:
| Some of these sites, if not all, allegedly keep a profile
| on you regardless of if you've ever had an account with
| them or not.
| dylan604 wrote:
| At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if FB bought raw
| data from the providers just to see if they could aggregate
| it into their shadow profiles. Whatever the cost of buying
| that data, it wouldn't mean anything to a corp that prints
| money. Yes, this is pure tin foil hat level conspiracy
| nonsense, but it goes to show how little I think of FB
| flemhans wrote:
| Disconnect its modem
| steviedotboston wrote:
| my point is people are freaking out about Flock but
| everyone has a tracking device in their pocket at all
| times, and people absolutely love Ring doorbell cameras (ok
| maybe not you, I get it).
|
| It seems incongruous to me that people are willing to
| recognize the benefits that these tools provide law
| enforcement at solving crimes but when it comes to Flock
| cameras somehow things are totally different. They're just
| cameras with really good software, and law enforcement
| likes them because it makes their jobs easier.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| A phone provides the individual with tangible benefits.
| It only tracks the individual. The individual is always
| free to opt out.
|
| A ring doorbell camera provides the individual with
| tangible benefits. It is installed by the individual on
| personal property. It does however typically capture some
| amount of public space which I think is problematic.
|
| Government run centralized surveillance does not provide
| the individual with tangible benefits. It almost
| exclusively captures public spaces (that's usually the
| entire point of the exercise after all). It generally is
| not realistic to opt out short of being denied access to
| any surveilled public spaces. If that happens to include
| the majority of roads near your home then I guess you'll
| want to look into moving.
| sodapopcan wrote:
| I've done this recently. It's only been six weeks so not sure
| if I'll keep it up, but I have felt very little pain. I put
| my sim back in my iPhone the other day when I needed an Uber
| to go to the vet after reading that recently taxis in my city
| have been denying people with pets even if you tell them you
| have one when ordering. Sim went right back in my flip phone
| when I got home and I actually experienced some relief as I
| did it.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| Enjoy your portable physical SIM while you can, they are
| absolutely coming for it
| sodapopcan wrote:
| You think so? As in we'll only be able to buy Apples and
| Androids?
| butlike wrote:
| I just want a hot NSA rep. Is that too much to ask?
| cboyardee wrote:
| GOOD
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47095134
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| The easier fix seems like doxxing politicians and embarrassing
| them until they protect all of their constituents against things
| like this. We got a small modicum of privacy with the Video
| Privacy Protection Act [0] after Bork's video rental history was
| going to be released.
|
| [0]
| https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=video+r...
| pessimizer wrote:
| That's not easier, and they don't have shame. They're proud of
| becoming wealthy.
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| I certainly agree about the lack of shame - but even if you
| destroyed all of the Flock cameras (and any other public
| traffic cams) you're still left with no actual protection for
| your private data.
|
| There's more of us then there are of them - so their wealth
| can't protect them from everything. They can and do buy
| privacy so there must be something worth protecting that the
| masses can expose using their same methods.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Many in this administration are the lowest, least educated
| parts of their respective societies. They don't have shame. You
| cannot shame them because this is literally their only way to
| make money.
| irl_zebra wrote:
| If shame were a motivator for this administration or the
| current grifter class, neither of these things would exist to
| the current Armageddon-level they currently do. That is to
| say, completely agree with your take here. There are plenty
| of government-entity examples of this, but my favorite I've
| seen recently was a video montage of Elon saying annually,
| like clockwork, that sully autonomous driving would be here
| in 2-3 years for the last 12 years or so. If these people had
| shame, he wouldn't be doing that, as an example.
| xt00 wrote:
| I imagine there is a process in place to allow cities / states
| / communities to place the cameras on polls. If Vegas somehow
| got around public comment process to put these on poles, then
| what would stop any random company from requesting to put their
| own camera there? Like lets say a motivated individual went
| through some process to put a camera on a pole someplace near
| somebody that would definitely make the govt official / flock
| exec etc nervous, what is stopping them? It sounds an awful lot
| like Flock is basically going to town's and saying "we will put
| up a bunch of cameras in a bunch of places" probably based upon
| algorithm's etc. How do they decide where these get put, who
| gets to decide that? Why can't any random company request to
| put up a camera on a random power pole? After they give the map
| to the govt officials, do they get a chance to say "oh this one
| by my house, can you move that?"
| steviedotboston wrote:
| This is really bad for all the reasons that people have mentioned
| (vigilante "justice" never is a good thing) but people have a
| misplaced understanding of right and wrong here. Flock cameras
| have helped solve some major crimes, and people will be glad to
| have this technology around if they are ever a victim.
| goldfish3 wrote:
| >have a misplaced understanding of right and wrong here.
|
| "Could I be making wrong assumptions? No I'm a hacker, it must
| be everyone else who is wrong."
| kstrauser wrote:
| Police states are great at solving major crimes. And when those
| are sufficiently solved, to justify their continued existence,
| they have to solve lesser crimes, repeating until you need
| enough surveillance to ensure no one's flushing their toilet
| improperly.
|
| Police states are like autoimmune diseases under the hygiene
| hypothesis. They'll keep ramping up their sensitivity until
| they're attacking everything, even when it's benign.
| steviedotboston wrote:
| Flock cameras can be helpful in all sorts of crimes. They've
| been used to solve everything from kidnappings to minor
| property damage.
|
| There obviously isn't a future without crime. This is just a
| tool to make it easier for police to do their job and deter
| criminals somewhat, but that is probably marginal.
|
| There will always be kidnappings, there will always be
| property damage. Having technology available to make it
| easier to solve those crimes seems obvious to me.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Yes, I can see how they would be helpful in solving crimes
| down to minor property damage.
|
| I do not want to live in a society where police are
| watching everything I do in the name of solving minor
| property damage. "If you have nothing to hide, you have
| nothing to fear" is bullshit. I don't do anything illegal
| in my bathroom, but I do not wish to have a camera in
| there, even if it could solve a hypothetical crime.
| nvesp wrote:
| Dude my car was literally jacked up and had the catalytic
| convertor chopped off in a parking with flock cameras at a
| hotel before, def never got caught, and according to the hotel
| security footage they parked right next to my car, got out and
| did everything real fast. Plus most people using cars to commit
| heinous crimes are usually stolen and ditched right after
| anyways, people who use their own car to commit crimes usually
| end up being lower level crimes like organized retail theft,
| drugs, etc, you know stuff id rather not trade privacy for
| security over.
| chasd00 wrote:
| yeah surveillance doesn't mean secure. A few weeks ago there
| was a solid 10-15 second run of automatic weapons fire on my
| street in an intersection. I do a lot of shooting and i could
| tell from the concussion it couldn't have been more than a
| couple hundred feet from my bedroom window. My neighbors
| turned in all their camera footage with recordings of two
| cars and the gunfire to a detective. When i asked them what
| happens next the detective just said in an annoyed voice
| "well i'll ask someone to check around..". Like it was
| plainly obvious he had zero interest at all.
|
| edit: I live in Dallas so, although we sometimes hear
| gunshots when the Cowboys score a touchdown, i'm not in an
| active war zone.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm in Dallas as well, and I hear gun shots daily. New
| Years/4th July absolutely sound like a war zone. I found a
| slug next to my trash can after a 4th celebration a couple
| of years ago. Not a shell, the actual slug. I keep it on my
| desk as a reminder. My fur babies are not allowed outside
| on those nights.
| pixl97 wrote:
| All fun and good until whatever you are comes under the
| scrutiny of the police state.
| 1shooner wrote:
| I think most opposing Flock have considered and rejected the
| bargain of trading their freedom for security in this case.
|
| There are other ways to sacrifice your privacy for a sense of
| safety that doesn't impose your 'understanding of right and
| wrong' on the entire public.
| cg5280 wrote:
| My confusion stems from the fact that mass surveillance is
| already pretty normal in major cities. Your face is on a dozen
| cameras anytime you walk through the grocery store. Your
| precise location is pinged off cell towers multiple times a
| day. I understand specific qualms with Flock as a company and
| how they manage the data, but this libertarian demand for total
| privacy in public spaces has been long lost and the beef with
| Flock in particular doesn't even scratch the surface.
|
| Edit: And I don't even know how to have good faith
| conversations about this topic in these spaces, because the
| hive mind has decided that anything but absolute outrage is
| untenable. I'm getting downvoted for sharing my opinion.
| kstrauser wrote:
| We already have mass surveillance, and yet we still have
| major crimes. It's not working, and I see no reason to
| believe that removing more freedom will lead to having safer
| streets. Why are we giving up liberty and getting nothing in
| return? That's an excellent reason to protest against adding
| more surveillance.
| tclancy wrote:
| Always nice to hear from someone completely immune to
| miscarriages of justice.
| Fargren wrote:
| "That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape, than that
| one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been
| long & generally approv'd"
|
| The amount of damage these cameras have caused is totally
| disproportional to whatever meager benefit they may have
| wrought. These are antisocial machines.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| God Bless America
| nvesp wrote:
| Kind of weird all of those people weren't all up in arms about it
| before the whole ice thing, why would you be mad that they're
| tracking somebody else but not mad that they have been slurping
| up data about your movements and habits this whole time, then
| monetizing said data by selling it to industries like insurance
| companies etc.
| wonnage wrote:
| You should be glad they came around instead of lamenting why it
| didn't happen earlier
| prh8 wrote:
| I don't think OP is glad people came around on it
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Huh? even if you knew and understood the scope of it before
| (I'd say a vast majority did not and thought they were just red
| light cameras), it is not very hard to understand that when you
| see the people in masks without badges snatching your neighbors
| haphazardly and with specious reasons that you might make a
| chunk of that majority look at the cameras more skeptically and
| maybe, just maybe wonder if that technology could be turned
| against you too.
|
| Until recently very few people could articulate the real risk
| this tech posed, now you can literally see it play out
| (depending where you live)
| rambojohnson wrote:
| how is it weird for you exactly? we didn't have masked gestapo
| thugs before.
| phil21 wrote:
| It's weird due to the complete lack of second order thinking
| the majority of people seem to have.
|
| You can scream up and down about how building such things is
| a horrible idea because it can one day be used for evil, and
| folks will either yawn or call you paranoid or worse.
|
| Then the thing actually gets (very lightly) abused/used for
| something folks don't like and omg it's an emergency no one
| could have ever predicted! And oh look - it's often times far
| too late to do a damn thing about it other than surface level
| 'fixes' that are nothing of the sort.
|
| It gets very frustrating living in such a society, but it
| might simply be the way humans are wired. If it's not in your
| face and actively a major problem to you in the moment, it's
| simply not a concern.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| all of these people didnt even know these cameras existed until
| recently. even this weekend, was talking to a few friends and
| they had never heard of them. I think they wanted to just sort
| of sneak them in under the radar and all the current ICE stuff
| has created more scrutiny and public knowledge about
| surveillance in general.
| belinder wrote:
| All they had to do was not air a very expensive superbowl
| commercial
| igor47 wrote:
| Are you thinking of the Ring camera commercial or did I miss a
| flock one during the same Superbowl?
| palad1n wrote:
| This is my America. Bravo.
| roger110 wrote:
| These kinds of headlines always read like wishful thinking on the
| author's part more than a real trend
| balozi wrote:
| Some of the "news" items these days read more like suggestions.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Until they get so expensive and there is so much pushback that
| cities end their contracts with them which seems to be the goal
| here.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| Doesn't that just mean Flock makes more money from making
| replacements?
| mrtesthah wrote:
| I'm sure they'd charge the municipalities and private entities
| for those replacements one way or another, which ultimately
| decreases the reliability and value proposition of their
| product.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| the damage is showing that Flock, from an objective technology
| point of view, is really quite much more limited in terms of
| its efficacy than its sellers are leading the buyers to
| believe.
|
| what good is their platform if it is easily defeated by a guy
| with a ladder and a hammer?
| nceqs3 wrote:
| All paid for by taxpayers because a few extremists have
| appointed themselves kings
| lm28469 wrote:
| They're supposed to serve you, not the other way, and you're
| supposed to start chopping heads off when they abuse the
| power you gave them.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| The authors misspelled "domestic terrorists".
| dlev_pika wrote:
| A little direct action a day, keeps the fascists away
| _ink_ wrote:
| Why were those installed in the first place?
| apparent wrote:
| Speaking only for areas near where I live, it was in response
| to a persistent uptick in home invasions. Police can't be
| everywhere at once, and LPR cameras flag stolen cars and
| mismatched plates that thieves like to use.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Harvest data and let the techno fascist state that is slowly
| emerging figure out a use case later. For potential scenarios:
| if you like sci fi you can watch minority report, if you like
| history you can look at central Europe around 1930
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| Could someone explain how they are doing this, safely and without
| detection or damage to municipal property?
| Lammy wrote:
| Waow (based based based)
| simianparrot wrote:
| This site is turning into an echo chamber for antifa apologists.
| Reddit take 2. I think I'm done. The signal to noise ratio is so
| low with all the "AI" slop spam, far-left extreme political
| content where any dissent is flagged into oblivion, and generally
| just pointless fluff.
|
| HN was special while it lasted o7
| nceqs3 wrote:
| Agree with all your points. HN has become such slop.
| dddgghhbbfblk wrote:
| I'm with you on the AI slop but your complaint on this post
| just sounds like bootlicking.
|
| I would say that anarchist-style direct action against mass
| surveillance pretty much embodies the classic hacker ethos
| going back many decades at this point.
| lm28469 wrote:
| "lick the boot and accept every degenerate technology without
| any question or you're AnTiFa"
|
| Ok buddy
| a456463 wrote:
| Good. Flock deserves it. So, do all big tech companies that have
| been "move fast break things"
| zwaps wrote:
| it's wild to me that Americand accept a private company
| plastering their town with surveillance cameras, given you know,
| everything
|
| Additionally, that you draw the line at sharing that juicy data
| with law enforcement. I mean sure, yeah, but even before that,
| sharing essentially all your movement data with some company
| because...?
| matt3210 wrote:
| Yet everybody is happy giving plaid and therefore palintir there
| entire financial history and future data
| b8 wrote:
| If I was someone on the run, then I would just get a fake license
| plate. They record plates on the interstates as well. Also, they
| have cameras and presumably can alert of a certain make and model
| + color car trailer on AI near a last seen area. Only way to
| bypass that is by swapping cars or getting a really generic
| popular car.
| guywithahat wrote:
| Maybe I'm just getting old but I dislike these implicit call to
| destructive action articles, even if I don't like the
| surveillance. It is _not_ incumbent upon the public to destroy
| surveillance cameras, and it 's probably a bad sign for society
| if they are. If you destroy one of these cameras you will
| probably be arrested, and it will ruin your life. We can elect
| officials who oppose these cameras, and encouraging people to
| destroy city property is not the move.
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