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Even though it's become commonplace in the last 20 years, I'm still shocked to see how companies can pretty much ignore the law, do whatever they want, and have

Even though it's become commonplace in the last 20 years, I'm still shocked to see how companies can pretty much ignore the law, do whatever they want, and have everyone involved shielded from any kind of significant consequences. In situations like this, I think the person at the top of the chain that told employees to perform the illegal installations should be arrested and charged. On top of that, the company should be fined into bankruptcy. If the directors knew about it any companies they're involved with shouldn't be allowed to conduct future business in the municipality (or state).

mothballed 1y ago
They were co-operating/conspiring with CBP as an extension of the federal government. Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense. Don't think your company could just put up cameras and post the location of LEO and they'd let you get away with something like that.
- euroderf 1y ago
  > Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense. This sounds like some sort of legal procedures adopted from the USSR.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - oblio 1y ago
    Well, you're probably right for some types of procedures. But this type of thing (surveillance cameras) would actually fall under state security and be ordered by the Central Committee and done top down without any comments anywhere along the line (because everyone understood what was good for them). You're probably thinking of the "we're making the wrong type of tractor ball bearings"/"we're making broken consumer radios" type of issue where yeah, they'd give you the runaround.
  - trhway 1y ago
    It isn't just USSR, it is the core Russian principle of "oprichnina" - you can violate any laws, human or God's, as long as you're serving the tzar, Secretary General or President Putin. We start to see a hint of it here with ICE, and i'm sure we'll see a bit more of it with the newly formed Domestic Terrorism Task Force.
    - saubeidl 1y ago
      > Domestic Terrorism Task Force That is ... a surprisingly honest name for a force that'll terrorize any domestic opposition, gotta give them that at least.
      - FireBeyond 1y ago
        It's not hard to draw potential dots: Designate Venezuelan boats as "likely terrorists" (drug dealers). Authorize use of extrajudicial military lethal force (blow up boats with dealers aboard). Justify the above due to "terrorism". Designate "Antifa" as a "domestic terrorism group". Not hard to see the next step of "deploy military force against individuals suspected of being Antifa". No need for pesky trials. They're terrorists. This is a war...
    - Wololooo 1y ago
      And if I'd have to wager anyone that dare speaking out would be labelled antifa, therefore a terrorist, therefore free for all from a law enforcement perspective... Things are going downhill at an impressive pace... Not going to lie watching the Trainwreck in slow motion is entertaining in a sort of morbid way. Though I wished that it wouldn't go that way...
      - SlightlyLeftPad 1y ago
        Send help.
      - wartywhoa23 1y ago
        Trainwreck spotting is best conducted from outside of the train. I think that most cases of seemingly unwarranted depression and apathy in people today in fact stem from their subconscious acknowledgement of this trainwreck in progress, and failure of consciousness to accept that and/or do anything about it. In other words, mass cognitive dissonance.
  - grafmax 1y ago
    It turns out capitalism devolves into authoritarianism too when money gets concentrated enough. Basically any extreme concentration of power (wealth concentration or Stalinism) is going to tend toward this kind of outcome.
    - conception 1y ago
      Slight correction, capitalism has no political ideology and craves monopoly. Corporate feudalism and capitalism are totally compatible.
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    No need to look abroad; companies have gotten away with this kind of stuff for most of the history of the US. Union busting is a particular flashpoint for engaging in illegal activity with the blessing of the government.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court The keep saying this and losing in court. I don’t have much respect left for these bootlickers who won’t fight.
- snowwrestler 1y ago
  A bunch of companies seem to be relying on similar federal cover. To me it seems dumb because whatever legal exposure they create will outlast the current administration. It’s impossible to predict who will be running the federal government 3 years from now, and liability does not evaporate much in that time frame. The next administration could decide to side with localities, and assist prosecutions of the companies and executives involved. Or even pursue their own federal prosecutions.
- nielsbot 1y ago
  Do you have a source for their cooperation with CBP? I think that would make this an even bigger story.
  - mothballed 1y ago
    Yes the posted article This decision came after Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias discovered that Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a “pilot program” against state law,
    - FireBeyond 1y ago
      Flock promises all sorts of safeguards and ethics around, y'know, the law, but the reality is their perspective is "it's not our job to tell you that you can or can't do something, even if we know for a fact that you can't". Reminds me when I build health insurance claims management software (pre-ACA). "We want to mine the database for familial history of conditions, based on familial claims and ICD codes". "We can't do that." "Why not? It's all in the database." "It is. And we are legally forbidden from running such queries." "..."
serbuvlad 1y ago
First of all, I think that this instinct to fine-'em, screw-'em, etc. is profoundly authoritarian. It is extremely important for a civil society not only that predictable laws are put into place, but also that predictable enforcement of those laws exist. I jaywalk almost every day. I understand that if a cop sees me jaywalk, he will fine me. I also understand that if the cop wants to put me in jail for jaywalking, he cannot do that, and the law would be on my side. On my side, me, the offender. The reason is that the law not only specifies what people should do what is allowed and isn't allowed, but also what the penalties are for breaking the law. A law stating "People are required to do X" or "People are forbidden from doing Y", without any penalties specified is not worth the paper it is written on and cannot be enforced in any way (at least that's how it works in my jurisdiction, Romania). And that is all very well, and how it should be, in a law-based state. Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government. "The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order. In much simpler terms, citizens and corporations are only required to follow legal orders and are not required to follow illegal orders, given by the executive. Who decides what is legal? The judiciary. This is what it means to live in a society with a separation of powers. > The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation. A cease-and-desist by the executive is not a law. The corporation's opinion is that the contract termination is illegal. And therefore that the cease-and-desist is illegal. Perhaps they're right. Perhaps they're wrong. But they have the right to bring the thing to trail. "Well maybe they have the right to bring the thing to trail, but until the trail is ruled in their case, they should follow the orders of the executive.", I hear the objection. Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point. "So the executive cannot do anything to get those cameras down until the trail is solved?" Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter. Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.
hdgvhicv 1y ago
Confiscate the shares. No compensation. Effectively nationalisation as punishment. Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke, but the work still gets done.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Confiscate the shares. No compensation This is better than corporate death penalties but still more complicated than fines. Massive fines are the answer. > Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke So do fines and bankruptcy. CEO won’t go to jail, but they’ll spend the rest of their lives fighting shareholder lawsuits. Feed them to the wolves.
  - forgotoldacc 1y ago
    > CEO won’t go to jail, but they’ll spend the rest of their lives fighting shareholder lawsuits. One important lesson to be learned from the past 20 years: if you're sued, don't go to court. If you're dragged to court, say "fuck you, I'm not going and I'm not paying." If you have enough money, they literally will not do anything. They'll just have endless sham court cases that you're free to ignore and there will never be any consequences. Alex Jones is up to a few billion dollars in settlements against him. He's had court cases against him for, what, over 10 years now? He's still running his show, still getting money, and he's openly mocking the courts. Judges don't care. Whatever people work in the frameworks that allegedly exist to enforce judgments don't care. They're getting their salary either way.
    - close04 1y ago
      I think you're reading the wrong lesson from this. If someone cares enough to take you down, your strategy isn't just useless, it's actively harming you. It's a "for my friends everything, for my enemies the law" situation. A better lesson is that you can be "on the radar" but far enough from the central hotspot that you are not a priority. Alternatively you need someone to have your back and be your heatshield while you keep trudging along.
renewiltord 1y ago
Well, if we consider it fine for people to commit crimes like shoplift, rob, or assault people it seems fairly normal to permit groups of people to violate the law too. Lots of fans of Luigi Mangione and this hasn't directly killed anyone yet. I'd say it's just a general tolerance to the idea that the rules we have are baroque and anything goes when trying to reach your aims. This seems fairly cross politically unifying. Those who want the law obeyed are kind of rare. Most are happy to have the law violated to hurt their political opponents. Then they feel surprisingly aggrieved to have same strategy played against them.
- worthless-trash 1y ago
  > Most are happy to have the law violated to hurt their political opponents. Way to make me feel like an outcast.
- stavros 1y ago
  The difference is that people are fans of Luigi Mangione because he enforced a punishment for what people feel should be illegal. You're trying to paint vigilante justice with the same brush as lawlessness, when in fact it's the opposite. One is breaking the law to punish someone that the law failed to, the other is breaking the law to avoid punishment. The CEO caused vast death and suffering with the policies he enacted in the name of profit, yet the law didn't touch him. Enforcing what the people think should be enforced isn't the same as enforcing what the people think shouldn't be enforced (mass surveillance). It is, in fact, the opposite.
  - renewiltord 1y ago
    The Flock guys are breaking the law to reactivate their cameras so that they can catch people doing things that are illegal or that they think should be illegal. Seems to be an exact match actually. You have to apply some Theory of Mind. Just like you think you're doing the right thing so do they.
    - stavros 1y ago
      They'll be reporting them to the police, you reckon?
atoav 1y ago
It is pretty clear to me that many of the things companies do get away with would land regular Joe in jail with high reliability. I think we have to start making CEOs more liable for such things, especially when done on their explicit command.
- FpUser 1y ago
  And who is gonna lobby/s the government to do so? Same companies / CEOs that buy the government in a first place
- CM30 1y ago
  Not even just regular Joe, a lot of the things large companies get away with would lead to far harsher consequences for small or medium sized ones. Any normal company spying on people's devices at the scale of Facebook, selling dodgy goods on the level Amazon does or ignoring guidelines in general like Uber and AirBnB used to would get absolutely wrecked by the legal system. The system needs to be way more even when it comes to dealing with individuals and companies of every size possible.
  - atoav 1y ago
    Yeah good point. The question is how can we effectively change incentives in such way the decision-makers in big corporations will feel they are taking a personal risk that can ruin their lives instead of a situation where the worst that can happen is a (compared to revenue) tiny symbolic fine made by the company and not by them? For me the important thing is that the buck needs to stop somewhere human in certain cases. And in doubt that should be the CEO, potentially even multiple people at once. If we want a free market where new players can enter and compete, big corporations needs to fear harsher punishment not lighter ones.
- t-3 1y ago
  Not just CEOs, make employees liable. Going after the soft targets first will reduce the resources and influence of the harder targets at the executive level.
flanked-evergl 1y ago
If government fails to prosecute crime then laws are pointless, and in the west we have had a significant swing, especially in high population centres, towards electing governments and officials that refuse to prosecute crimes.
- Frieren 1y ago
  That is because we are moving away from Democracy and rule of law and towards Feudalism and aristocracy. In such a system, the law is not blind but it is applied depending on the accused social status. Feudalism is not a good goverment system to produce wealth nor well-being. It is very good at concentrating the diminishing wealth in a few hands, thou.
  - flanked-evergl 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - bippihippi1 1y ago
      democracy is the process of defining what the laws are and who enforces them. The executive branch is not allowed to decide what laws to enforce. That's what an autocracy is.
    - Frieren 1y ago
      > If people elect officials that promise to not enforce crimes, how is that not Democracy? Did people elected officials to not enforce the law? Or did people elected officials because they though they will be the law-and-order (even if they were mistaken)? That are two very different things. People make mistakes, misinformation exists, to think that once a goverment is elected that gives them the authority to do whatever they want is not understanding how constitutions and separation of power work. There are safeguards in place to avoid elected officials to become dictators (because the country founders know that someone will try).
  - iamnothere 1y ago
    The problem is would-be aristocrats who prefer neofeudalism fighting it out with other would-be aristocrats who prefer to rule through directed mobocracy and information control. The former pretends they are fighting for decency, morals, and individual freedoms, while the latter pretends they are fighting for the common good, democracy, and “freedom from” various bad things. God help us if either group succeeds.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ActionHank 1y ago
It was a mistake to treat corporations as the legal person responsible for these things. The officers of the corporations should be held legally responsible for breaking the law.
pjdesno 1y ago
If you click through to the follow up article, you’ll find that the city covered the cameras with black plastic. Sometimes low tech solutions work pretty well. And since the cameras are under contract to the city, on city poles, I doubt there’s anything the feds can do.
- patrickmay 1y ago
  And here I was about to post this completely unrelated link: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Thermite https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Thermite
  - K0balt 1y ago
    I find that camera sensors often fail in close proximity to 2 watt láser diodes. It’s very strange.
sli 1y ago
I've always maintained that if a corporation breaks the law, the entire C-suite should be individually charged as if they personally committed the crime. It's their company and their responsibility.
miltonlost 1y ago
That's Silicon Valley and tech's whole thing: move fast and break things (the law). Uber, Spotify, OpenAI: all began by flouting laws and were rewarded. And of course now we have a convicted felon of fraud as President doing his best to remove any chance of prosecuting fraud. This whole site is built on people wanting to break laws.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
FireBeyond 1y ago
As an ex-employee of Flock, I can guarantee that this most likely came from the top down. The founder has a vision that isn't just aspirational, but literal, in his eyes, "Flock should help eliminate all crime." Very much Minority Report. He sees Flock as the unsung heroes of the community, and any collateral damage is an acceptable price to pay, despite lip service being paid to ethics: For example, their "suspicious behavior". Cameras reporting to HOAs and to LE of vehicle behavior that is suspicious or aberrant to their AI (changes in parking behavior and times, for example). Sharing of data between entities that aren't meant to be sharing (HOAs sending data to LE, for example, when prohibited by the state. Flock's position is "not our job to stop you, even if we know that your state says not to"). A very ... opaque ... "transparency report". In my county alone, there are at least four agencies using Flock that are not listed in their "Agencies using Flock" data.
- qmr 1y ago
  Why would you work for such a fucked up dystopian Orwellian corporation? Appreciate any other insider details you have to share.
  - dcow 1y ago
    Ex-employee.
    - qmr 1y ago
      Yes, I read that, thank you.
  - HiPhish 1y ago
    > Why would you work for such a fucked up dystopian Orwellian corporation? I never understood how someone can ask such a question. It's not like you can just change jobs like you can change clothes. Some people have a family to feed so they can't just decide to be jobless for a few months. Finding a new job takes time you might not have if you still have to show up to your existing job and keep up the mask as if you have no intention of quitting. Sometimes the shittiest jobs pay the most and you cannot afford the pay cut. And sometimes all options are equally bad, e.g. if you don't want to participate in planned obsolescence, but every company out there is making products designed to break. What's the alternative? Make your own company?
HiPhish 1y ago
> On top of that, the company should be fined into bankruptcy. Fines need to increase with subsequent offenses, otherwise they become just a number in the cost of running business. If the fine is 100k, but the profit from breaking the law is 1M, then it makes more sense to keep breaking the law and keep paying the fine. Instead the fine should increase every time. The first time it's easy to pay the 100k, but then it rises to 200k (still worth), 400k (not so much worth it), 800k (barely profitable), 1.6M (actual loss) and so on. Of course this only works if the fine keeps increasing faster than the profitability of the crime.

mothballed 1y ago

They were co-operating/conspiring with CBP as an extension of the federal government. Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense. Don't think your company could just put up cameras and post the location of LEO and they'd let you get away with something like that.

euroderf 1y ago
> Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense. This sounds like some sort of legal procedures adopted from the USSR.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- oblio 1y ago
  Well, you're probably right for some types of procedures. But this type of thing (surveillance cameras) would actually fall under state security and be ordered by the Central Committee and done top down without any comments anywhere along the line (because everyone understood what was good for them). You're probably thinking of the "we're making the wrong type of tractor ball bearings"/"we're making broken consumer radios" type of issue where yeah, they'd give you the runaround.
- trhway 1y ago
  It isn't just USSR, it is the core Russian principle of "oprichnina" - you can violate any laws, human or God's, as long as you're serving the tzar, Secretary General or President Putin. We start to see a hint of it here with ICE, and i'm sure we'll see a bit more of it with the newly formed Domestic Terrorism Task Force.
  - saubeidl 1y ago
    > Domestic Terrorism Task Force That is ... a surprisingly honest name for a force that'll terrorize any domestic opposition, gotta give them that at least.
    - FireBeyond 1y ago
      It's not hard to draw potential dots: Designate Venezuelan boats as "likely terrorists" (drug dealers). Authorize use of extrajudicial military lethal force (blow up boats with dealers aboard). Justify the above due to "terrorism". Designate "Antifa" as a "domestic terrorism group". Not hard to see the next step of "deploy military force against individuals suspected of being Antifa". No need for pesky trials. They're terrorists. This is a war...
  - Wololooo 1y ago
    And if I'd have to wager anyone that dare speaking out would be labelled antifa, therefore a terrorist, therefore free for all from a law enforcement perspective... Things are going downhill at an impressive pace... Not going to lie watching the Trainwreck in slow motion is entertaining in a sort of morbid way. Though I wished that it wouldn't go that way...
    - SlightlyLeftPad 1y ago
      Send help.
    - wartywhoa23 1y ago
      Trainwreck spotting is best conducted from outside of the train. I think that most cases of seemingly unwarranted depression and apathy in people today in fact stem from their subconscious acknowledgement of this trainwreck in progress, and failure of consciousness to accept that and/or do anything about it. In other words, mass cognitive dissonance.
- grafmax 1y ago
  It turns out capitalism devolves into authoritarianism too when money gets concentrated enough. Basically any extreme concentration of power (wealth concentration or Stalinism) is going to tend toward this kind of outcome.
  - conception 1y ago
    Slight correction, capitalism has no political ideology and craves monopoly. Corporate feudalism and capitalism are totally compatible.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  No need to look abroad; companies have gotten away with this kind of stuff for most of the history of the US. Union busting is a particular flashpoint for engaging in illegal activity with the blessing of the government.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court The keep saying this and losing in court. I don’t have much respect left for these bootlickers who won’t fight.
snowwrestler 1y ago
A bunch of companies seem to be relying on similar federal cover. To me it seems dumb because whatever legal exposure they create will outlast the current administration. It’s impossible to predict who will be running the federal government 3 years from now, and liability does not evaporate much in that time frame. The next administration could decide to side with localities, and assist prosecutions of the companies and executives involved. Or even pursue their own federal prosecutions.
nielsbot 1y ago
Do you have a source for their cooperation with CBP? I think that would make this an even bigger story.
- mothballed 1y ago
  Yes the posted article This decision came after Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias discovered that Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a “pilot program” against state law,
  - FireBeyond 1y ago
    Flock promises all sorts of safeguards and ethics around, y'know, the law, but the reality is their perspective is "it's not our job to tell you that you can or can't do something, even if we know for a fact that you can't". Reminds me when I build health insurance claims management software (pre-ACA). "We want to mine the database for familial history of conditions, based on familial claims and ICD codes". "We can't do that." "Why not? It's all in the database." "It is. And we are legally forbidden from running such queries." "..."

serbuvlad 1y ago

First of all, I think that this instinct to fine-'em, screw-'em, etc. is profoundly authoritarian. It is extremely important for a civil society not only that predictable laws are put into place, but also that predictable enforcement of those laws exist. I jaywalk almost every day. I understand that if a cop sees me jaywalk, he will fine me. I also understand that if the cop wants to put me in jail for jaywalking, he cannot do that, and the law would be on my side. On my side, me, the offender. The reason is that the law not only specifies what people should do what is allowed and isn't allowed, but also what the penalties are for breaking the law. A law stating "People are required to do X" or "People are forbidden from doing Y", without any penalties specified is not worth the paper it is written on and cannot be enforced in any way (at least that's how it works in my jurisdiction, Romania). And that is all very well, and how it should be, in a law-based state. Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government. "The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order. In much simpler terms, citizens and corporations are only required to follow legal orders and are not required to follow illegal orders, given by the executive. Who decides what is legal? The judiciary. This is what it means to live in a society with a separation of powers. > The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation. A cease-and-desist by the executive is not a law. The corporation's opinion is that the contract termination is illegal. And therefore that the cease-and-desist is illegal. Perhaps they're right. Perhaps they're wrong. But they have the right to bring the thing to trail. "Well maybe they have the right to bring the thing to trail, but until the trail is ruled in their case, they should follow the orders of the executive.", I hear the objection. Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point. "So the executive cannot do anything to get those cameras down until the trail is solved?" Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter. Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.

hdgvhicv 1y ago

Confiscate the shares. No compensation. Effectively nationalisation as punishment. Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke, but the work still gets done.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Confiscate the shares. No compensation This is better than corporate death penalties but still more complicated than fines. Massive fines are the answer. > Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke So do fines and bankruptcy. CEO won’t go to jail, but they’ll spend the rest of their lives fighting shareholder lawsuits. Feed them to the wolves.
- forgotoldacc 1y ago
  > CEO won’t go to jail, but they’ll spend the rest of their lives fighting shareholder lawsuits. One important lesson to be learned from the past 20 years: if you're sued, don't go to court. If you're dragged to court, say "fuck you, I'm not going and I'm not paying." If you have enough money, they literally will not do anything. They'll just have endless sham court cases that you're free to ignore and there will never be any consequences. Alex Jones is up to a few billion dollars in settlements against him. He's had court cases against him for, what, over 10 years now? He's still running his show, still getting money, and he's openly mocking the courts. Judges don't care. Whatever people work in the frameworks that allegedly exist to enforce judgments don't care. They're getting their salary either way.
  - close04 1y ago
    I think you're reading the wrong lesson from this. If someone cares enough to take you down, your strategy isn't just useless, it's actively harming you. It's a "for my friends everything, for my enemies the law" situation. A better lesson is that you can be "on the radar" but far enough from the central hotspot that you are not a priority. Alternatively you need someone to have your back and be your heatshield while you keep trudging along.

renewiltord 1y ago

Well, if we consider it fine for people to commit crimes like shoplift, rob, or assault people it seems fairly normal to permit groups of people to violate the law too. Lots of fans of Luigi Mangione and this hasn't directly killed anyone yet. I'd say it's just a general tolerance to the idea that the rules we have are baroque and anything goes when trying to reach your aims. This seems fairly cross politically unifying. Those who want the law obeyed are kind of rare. Most are happy to have the law violated to hurt their political opponents. Then they feel surprisingly aggrieved to have same strategy played against them.

worthless-trash 1y ago
> Most are happy to have the law violated to hurt their political opponents. Way to make me feel like an outcast.
stavros 1y ago
The difference is that people are fans of Luigi Mangione because he enforced a punishment for what people feel should be illegal. You're trying to paint vigilante justice with the same brush as lawlessness, when in fact it's the opposite. One is breaking the law to punish someone that the law failed to, the other is breaking the law to avoid punishment. The CEO caused vast death and suffering with the policies he enacted in the name of profit, yet the law didn't touch him. Enforcing what the people think should be enforced isn't the same as enforcing what the people think shouldn't be enforced (mass surveillance). It is, in fact, the opposite.
- renewiltord 1y ago
  The Flock guys are breaking the law to reactivate their cameras so that they can catch people doing things that are illegal or that they think should be illegal. Seems to be an exact match actually. You have to apply some Theory of Mind. Just like you think you're doing the right thing so do they.
  - stavros 1y ago
    They'll be reporting them to the police, you reckon?

atoav 1y ago

It is pretty clear to me that many of the things companies do get away with would land regular Joe in jail with high reliability. I think we have to start making CEOs more liable for such things, especially when done on their explicit command.

FpUser 1y ago
And who is gonna lobby/s the government to do so? Same companies / CEOs that buy the government in a first place
CM30 1y ago
Not even just regular Joe, a lot of the things large companies get away with would lead to far harsher consequences for small or medium sized ones. Any normal company spying on people's devices at the scale of Facebook, selling dodgy goods on the level Amazon does or ignoring guidelines in general like Uber and AirBnB used to would get absolutely wrecked by the legal system. The system needs to be way more even when it comes to dealing with individuals and companies of every size possible.
- atoav 1y ago
  Yeah good point. The question is how can we effectively change incentives in such way the decision-makers in big corporations will feel they are taking a personal risk that can ruin their lives instead of a situation where the worst that can happen is a (compared to revenue) tiny symbolic fine made by the company and not by them? For me the important thing is that the buck needs to stop somewhere human in certain cases. And in doubt that should be the CEO, potentially even multiple people at once. If we want a free market where new players can enter and compete, big corporations needs to fear harsher punishment not lighter ones.
t-3 1y ago
Not just CEOs, make employees liable. Going after the soft targets first will reduce the resources and influence of the harder targets at the executive level.

flanked-evergl 1y ago

If government fails to prosecute crime then laws are pointless, and in the west we have had a significant swing, especially in high population centres, towards electing governments and officials that refuse to prosecute crimes.

Frieren 1y ago
That is because we are moving away from Democracy and rule of law and towards Feudalism and aristocracy. In such a system, the law is not blind but it is applied depending on the accused social status. Feudalism is not a good goverment system to produce wealth nor well-being. It is very good at concentrating the diminishing wealth in a few hands, thou.
- flanked-evergl 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - bippihippi1 1y ago
    democracy is the process of defining what the laws are and who enforces them. The executive branch is not allowed to decide what laws to enforce. That's what an autocracy is.
  - Frieren 1y ago
    > If people elect officials that promise to not enforce crimes, how is that not Democracy? Did people elected officials to not enforce the law? Or did people elected officials because they though they will be the law-and-order (even if they were mistaken)? That are two very different things. People make mistakes, misinformation exists, to think that once a goverment is elected that gives them the authority to do whatever they want is not understanding how constitutions and separation of power work. There are safeguards in place to avoid elected officials to become dictators (because the country founders know that someone will try).
- iamnothere 1y ago
  The problem is would-be aristocrats who prefer neofeudalism fighting it out with other would-be aristocrats who prefer to rule through directed mobocracy and information control. The former pretends they are fighting for decency, morals, and individual freedoms, while the latter pretends they are fighting for the common good, democracy, and “freedom from” various bad things. God help us if either group succeeds.

deleted 1y ago

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ActionHank 1y ago

It was a mistake to treat corporations as the legal person responsible for these things. The officers of the corporations should be held legally responsible for breaking the law.

pjdesno 1y ago

If you click through to the follow up article, you’ll find that the city covered the cameras with black plastic. Sometimes low tech solutions work pretty well. And since the cameras are under contract to the city, on city poles, I doubt there’s anything the feds can do.

patrickmay 1y ago
And here I was about to post this completely unrelated link: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Thermite https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Thermite
- K0balt 1y ago
  I find that camera sensors often fail in close proximity to 2 watt láser diodes. It’s very strange.

sli 1y ago

I've always maintained that if a corporation breaks the law, the entire C-suite should be individually charged as if they personally committed the crime. It's their company and their responsibility.

miltonlost 1y ago

That's Silicon Valley and tech's whole thing: move fast and break things (the law). Uber, Spotify, OpenAI: all began by flouting laws and were rewarded. And of course now we have a convicted felon of fraud as President doing his best to remove any chance of prosecuting fraud. This whole site is built on people wanting to break laws.

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FireBeyond 1y ago

As an ex-employee of Flock, I can guarantee that this most likely came from the top down. The founder has a vision that isn't just aspirational, but literal, in his eyes, "Flock should help eliminate all crime." Very much Minority Report. He sees Flock as the unsung heroes of the community, and any collateral damage is an acceptable price to pay, despite lip service being paid to ethics: For example, their "suspicious behavior". Cameras reporting to HOAs and to LE of vehicle behavior that is suspicious or aberrant to their AI (changes in parking behavior and times, for example). Sharing of data between entities that aren't meant to be sharing (HOAs sending data to LE, for example, when prohibited by the state. Flock's position is "not our job to stop you, even if we know that your state says not to"). A very ... opaque ... "transparency report". In my county alone, there are at least four agencies using Flock that are not listed in their "Agencies using Flock" data.

qmr 1y ago
Why would you work for such a fucked up dystopian Orwellian corporation? Appreciate any other insider details you have to share.
- dcow 1y ago
  Ex-employee.
  - qmr 1y ago
    Yes, I read that, thank you.
- HiPhish 1y ago
  > Why would you work for such a fucked up dystopian Orwellian corporation? I never understood how someone can ask such a question. It's not like you can just change jobs like you can change clothes. Some people have a family to feed so they can't just decide to be jobless for a few months. Finding a new job takes time you might not have if you still have to show up to your existing job and keep up the mask as if you have no intention of quitting. Sometimes the shittiest jobs pay the most and you cannot afford the pay cut. And sometimes all options are equally bad, e.g. if you don't want to participate in planned obsolescence, but every company out there is making products designed to break. What's the alternative? Make your own company?

HiPhish 1y ago

> On top of that, the company should be fined into bankruptcy. Fines need to increase with subsequent offenses, otherwise they become just a number in the cost of running business. If the fine is 100k, but the profit from breaking the law is 1M, then it makes more sense to keep breaking the law and keep paying the fine. Instead the fine should increase every time. The first time it's easy to pay the 100k, but then it rises to 200k (still worth), 400k (not so much worth it), 800k (barely profitable), 1.6M (actual loss) and so on. Of course this only works if the fine keeps increasing faster than the profitability of the crime.