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This breakdown in rule of law is unfortunate. Ideally, this would be handled by, in order of desirability: - Flock decision-makers and customers holding ethi

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.

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Waterluvian 8mo ago
> 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 8mo ago
  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 8mo ago
    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.
    - thephyber 8mo ago
      Three critical differences the American Revolution had: (1) the middle class had some extremely well educated people, (2) the communication technology among the colonies was pretty fast whereas the comms between the colonies and the British rule across the Atlantic was slow, and (3) the empire tried to clamp down on the colonies ability to export to any market other than the mother country, killing lots of profit which previously made those markets strong.
      - throwaway85825 8mo ago
        (4) the British navy was busy raiding the carribean for prize money and abandoned the army in america. I recommend the book "The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution and the Fate of the Empire"
    - Kuinox 8mo ago
      > The American and French revolutions originated in the middle classes. I don't know about the american revolution, but that's wrong for the french revolution. I'll link to french wikipédia pages since they are far better on the subject. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tats_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux_de_1789 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tats_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux_... Here we can see the first National Assembly was half nobility and clergy. The third estate was the other half. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiers_%C3%A9tat https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiers_%C3%A9tat > Par ailleurs, les députés du tiers état aux états généraux représentaient essentiellement la bourgeoisie[2]. Which indicate that the majority of the third estate representative were bourgeois.
  - jacquesm 8mo ago
    > 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 8mo ago
      Boy is he trying on the latter. Quite impressive just how resilient it seems to be.
      - jacquesm 8mo ago
        Yes, tbh I would not have thought that you could take a sledgehammer to the economy as if you're say Elon Musk buying a communications platform and yet, here we are, 1 year in and we're still hanging on. But I wouldn't bet on another three of these.
        dpc050505 8mo ago
        It will pop just in time to put the blame on the liberal that wants to slightly tax the rich and improve the quality of life of working people.
      - edoceo 8mo ago
        It's like when management does something stupid and then engineering works overtime to keeps the system working. Of course management learns nothing and all outside observers don't even notice something went wrong.
        jacquesm 8mo ago
        There is a limit to how much engineers working overtime can do to offset management stupidity and when you reach the limit the bottom falls out. Of course then everybody blames the engineers...
      - autoexec 8mo ago
        It's being heavily supported a bubble. We'll see how resilient it is when that pops. As it is, the average person's finances and future prospects are getting worse all the time regardless of whatever the stock market is doing.
  - thewebguyd 8mo ago
    > 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.
    - deleted 8mo ago
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  - ryandrake 8mo ago
    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.
    - deleted 8mo ago
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    - hirako2000 8mo ago
      Could also say that over half the population finding such ridiculous mandates justifiable: lockdowns and demands that employers enforce vaccination compliance for all employees, ordoned non democratically by a senile; in a country with constitutional rights likely meant we would not see activists engaging in vandalism anytime soon.
      - UltraSane 8mo ago
        [flagged]
      - jibal 8mo ago
        [flagged]
        hirako2000 8mo ago
        I was probably one of "you". My comment is simply calling out the liberticide episode we attended rather quietly.
        deleted 8mo ago
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        johnnyanmac 8mo ago
        After 2025, I don't think y'all get to say it's libertcide to wear a mask, sorry.
    - 8mo ago
  - mikestorrent 8mo ago
    > The American Revolution was rare in that it didn't need to happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_Rebellion 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 8mo ago
      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.
      - autoexec 8mo ago
        Even if the needs of the American people weren't being ignored over the wishes of corporations and the ultra-wealthy in terms of numbers alone we have less representation than ever before because the number of people who are supposed to represent us hasn't kept up with the growing population.
        throwaway85825 8mo ago
        America ended in 1861 when the era of political bargains transitioned to the era of the government and the subjects.
        fuzzfactor 8mo ago
        with 20/20 hindsight it would have been a whole lot better to throw a Constitutional Convention rather than have a civil war. It had already intentionally been forgotten how well that worked the first time.
        throwaway85825 8mo ago
  - wutwutwat 8mo ago
    "There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy." - Alfred Henry Lewis
- kbrisso 8mo ago
  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 8mo ago
    > 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 8mo ago
    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 8mo ago
      America is not NYC. NYC is proud of its police-state apparatus. Most of the rest of the country is very different.
      - butterbomb 8mo ago
        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 8mo ago
  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 8mo ago
    Who can I vote for that will stop flock cameras from being installed?
    - gamerdonkey 8mo ago
      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 8mo ago
      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 8mo ago
      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).
      - runarberg 8mo ago
        Seattle voted for Katie Wilson as mayor partly because she seemed to oppose surveillance cameras. She now seems to have changed her mind is is speaking in favor of them.
- KittenInABox 8mo ago
  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 8mo ago
    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 8mo ago
      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.
      - mv4 8mo ago
        "Among the 37 percent of adults who would not have covered a $400 expense completely with cash or its equivalent, most would pay some other way, although some said that they would be unable to pay the expense at all. For those who could cover the expenses another way, the most common approach was to use a credit card and then carry a balance, and many indicated they would use multiple approaches. However, 13 percent of all adults said they would be unable to pay the expense by any means (table 21), unchanged from 2022 and 2023 but up from 11 percent in 2021" https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2024-savings-and-investments.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-we...
- kingkawn 8mo ago
  Get out there and be the change you want to see, king
  - nielsbot 8mo ago
    I don't get the sarcasm here.. Instead of sniping with snark (see HN rules, please) post your better take.
    - kingkawn 8mo ago
      Is it not literally true that he is calling for action from the populace without doing it? You all can only lift a finger to downvote a literal call to action lmao
- mywittyname 8mo ago
  > 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 8mo ago
    That's not how the political reality of exacting mostly voluntary compliance from the masses works.
  - everforward 8mo ago
    That would be an incredibly risky escalation, and it would be a stupid ultimatum to issue. The people, or even states, could escalate in response. The worst case is escalating to violence; ICE isn’t trained, equipped, or numerous to deal with deploying into a violently hostile area. The army could, but then we’re in full blown civil war. A more realistic middle ground is that it pushes people or states into nonviolent non-compliance by eg refusing to pay federal taxes. Frankly if California and New York alone stopped paying federal taxes the system would probably crumble.
    - wolvoleo 8mo ago
      ICE isn't trained for anything, they're just proud boys in tacticool gear. But the point of them is not to be effective, it's to cause headlines.
  - bcrosby95 8mo ago
    Yeah because that works out really well in history!
- jeffrallen 8mo ago
  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.
  - JuniperMesos 8mo ago
    Disrupting basic functions of the economy will hurt ordinary people a lot more than it will hurt billionaires. Also under these conditions of food distribution and transportation being actively disrupted, why would anyone be at school? Huge numbers of American schools are unsafe and unpleasant places for kids to be in ordinary times, and a massive disruption to ordinary life is not going to make that situation any better.
- kilohotel 8mo ago
  Who is the arbiter of "necessarily trouble"? You? Only people that politically agree with you?
  - john_strinlai 8mo ago
    >You? Only people that politically agree with you? the next sentence after they mention "necessary trouble" is literally: "But that only goes as far as to be my opinion." they are just stating their opinion. everyone decides when the time for "necessary trouble" is individually, based on their accumulated experience, opinion, etc. no arbiter required, just a critical mass of people with aligning opinions.
  - krapp 8mo ago
    Who was the arbiter of the trouble necessary for gay rights? Who was the arbiter of the trouble necessary for civil rights? Who was the arbiter of the trouble necessary for womens' rights? Who was the arbiter of the trouble necessary for the rights of handicapped people? Indigenous people? Immigrants? American society was created for the benefit of straight white Christian men alone. Every right held by any other group, every ounce of political power, every bit of basic human dignity, has had to be taken by force of "necessary trouble." There is no "arbiter." How could there be? An arbiter presupposes an objective moral ideal and a just society, neither of which we have. In the end, America can only be trusted to live up to its principles at the point of a gun.
- Induane 8mo ago
  The other day in Kansas City some lady set fire to a warehouse that was being sought for purchase by ICE. They are on video and quite nonchalant.
- wartywhoa23 8mo ago
  > I still think that overall, Americans are deeply underreacting to the times. To put things in perspective, the whole humankind, as in 99.99% of population, is utterly underreacting.
- zamadatix 8mo ago
  I can only hope what people will decide make trouble about is also what I consider necessary. If we could all agreed what was necessary to make trouble about there wouldn't be nearly as much to be making trouble over. It's a very double edged sword which does not necessarily do a very good job at bringing any more clarity of what the moral path was to the country.
- freeplay 8mo ago
  Mass unemployment would/will be the catalyst to mass uprising. All of the fuel is in place (ICE, Epstein, rising costs of everything, unaffordable housing, general lack of hope and faith in the government, etc.) High unemployment numbers will be the spark that sets it all ablaze.
- sanex 8mo ago
  Right? The French know how to riot.
- xnx 8mo ago
  You're fortunate if you live in a community where cameras in public spaces is in the top 20 concerns.
scotty79 8mo ago
> 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 8mo ago
  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?
  - dirasieb 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - estearum 8mo ago
      Sometimes I envy the simplicity of the mental worlds some people apparently occupy
  - mmanfrin 8mo ago
    Far cry difference between that and the mass dragnet and centralized surveillance of entire communities at tap for agencies/police/fed.
  - noah_buddy 8mo ago
    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.
AlexandrB 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
  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 8mo ago
    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 8mo ago
      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 8mo ago
  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.
user3939382 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
All those behaviours are consequences of direct civil disobedience, unrest and rebellion - not alternatives.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
lm28469 8mo ago
> This breakdown in rule of law is unfortunate. Yearly reminder to read: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/kurz-the-discourse-of-voluntary-servitude https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/kurz-the-discourse-of-vol...
- ok_dad 8mo ago
  This is excellent, I second your suggestion for everyone to read this.
some_random 8mo ago
Rule of law is long gone, neither party has any interest in it, it's more of a guideline of law now.
- fullstop 8mo ago
  Are you really both-sides-ing this?
  - some_random 8mo ago
    Yeah I am actually, I'm tired of carrying water for people who openly hate me.
- skybrian 8mo ago
  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-real-not https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/record-low-crime-rates-are-...
  - squidsoup 8mo ago
    Prosecuting the working class, sure.
  - fanatic2pope 8mo ago
    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-activities/overview-rule-law https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-a...
    - skybrian 8mo ago
      No. Catching murderers (for example) is a basic function of the justice system. Of course the US justice system does have many flaws and in some ways much worse lately, but compare with Somalia or Haiti and you'll see that there's quite a long way down. It could get much worse.
chasd00 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
  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 8mo ago
  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 8mo ago
    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.
dyauspitr 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
  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.
  - ChoGGi 8mo ago
    > Eating sounds like an unhelpful exaggeration, unless I missed a major news story. There's a bunch of mentions of "jerky" in the files, some people have taken it to mean eating people.
    - inigyou 8mo ago
      [dead]
  - ratrace 8mo ago
    [dead]
stego-tech 8mo ago
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.
psadauskas 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
  “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.” - JFK
tptacek 8mo ago
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.
- toephu2 8mo ago
  I am in favor of them. There is no expectation of privacy in the public setting. I can record anyone on a public street w/o their permission. If these license plate cameras are making the streets safer and helping to reduce crime, why not? Sure there may be some mis-uses here and there, but for the most part they seem to be working and in places where they are deployed, crime is being reduced.
  - inigyou 8mo ago
    [dead]
- array_key_first 8mo ago
  They're only popular because people are routinely lied to. We see this same issue time and time again in "free markets". If you tell people this will help stop crime and that's it, everyone and their mama is gonna say yes. If you tell people the truth, that police don't really care to look at the data and this surveillance is going to be used to target innocent people for unrelated "crimes" on the taxpayers dollar, then everyone would say no. This is also why 99% of surveys are broken. You can get people to agree to literally anything if you just lie a little. After all, Adolf Hitler got elected by promising to fix the German economy and, in a way, he did.
  - tptacek 8mo ago
    In what way are voters in these municipalities being lied to? We got logs of all the searches, and incident reports of every time they were used to curb another vehicle. We know how well they did (or didn't, in our case) worked. I don't know what "surveys" have to do with this. Voters voted on it; it was a campaign issue in our trustee election.
roysting 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
  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-constitutional-concerns-surrounding-flock-cameras/ https://journals.law.unc.edu/ncjolt/blogs/under-surveillance...
  - margalabargala 8mo ago
    The person you replied to is saying usage Flock is violating the constitution.
    - bezier-curve 8mo ago
      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.
      - ranger_danger 8mo ago
        > destroying property is not going to get anyone anywhere I seem to remember something about tea in Boston having a different outcome.
gregcohn 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
Would someone please think of the rule of law?! :'((((
JCattheATM 8mo ago
The higher-desirability options are practically only theoretical in many contexts. See also the United Healthcare CEO killing.
nceqs3 8mo ago
> 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 8mo ago
  Who appointed anyone king? Neither Trump nor Flock are kings, both should be challenged, violently if necessary.
- array_key_first 8mo ago
  Nobody said he had the right, he explicitly does not have the right, that's what makes it civil disobedience. And civil disobedience is basically necessary to have a functioning society long term.
basilikum 8mo ago
One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
thatguy0900 8mo ago
Peer pressure is apparently not even effective in getting billionaires who could easily hire whatever variety of escort they want from having sex with trafficked children, so I'm not sure in what world it's supposed to stop the billionaires from installing cameras.
ocdtrekkie 8mo ago
My guess is the vast majority of the 80,000 or whatever cameras are uncontested politically. Local board meetings for most towns are boring and quiet affairs, and those are also the most effective venue for these concerns. If you are a taxpayer in a local jurisdiction with Flock cameras and you want them removed, show up to every single meeting and maximize use of public comment time. Local government is a place individuals can actually be extremely effective but also almost nobody ever actually does.
strangattractor 8mo ago
Guess Flock cameras don't solve quite as many crimes as they claim. Surveillance heal they self.
toss1 8mo ago
Yes unfortunate, but sometimes necessary Wait until the governance fails to the point data centers start getting burned down
majorchord 8mo ago
How is flock cameras existing, a breakdown in the rule of law? As far as I know they are not technically breaking any laws, even though I disagree with their use in principle. Some might think it is somehow a Fourth Amendment violation, but I'm pretty sure it has already been ruled on enough times now that there is no expectation of privacy on government-owned roads, except for what's inside your car.
- greycol 8mo ago
  If the law "if you shoot an arrow with no mind to it's direction or destination existed you are guilty of negligence and liability of any damages" existed and then guns where invented you can argue either that the law needs to be updated or that case law will follow the spirit of the law and establish that it also applies to guns. If you are prescriptive and do not believe in the spirit of the law then a new law would have to cover the case of guns. Many would say there is a breakdown in the rule of law if it turned out people could just fire those guns willy nilly and the arrow law did not apply to them. Similarly if there is a law that says the government can't build cameras everywhere to track you 24/7 without a warrant then post facto get a warrant to justify the prior tracking. Many people believe there is a breakdown in the rule of law when The government can pay someone else who has built cameras everywhere to track you 24/7 without a warrant then post facto get a warrant to justify the prior tracking.
brandensilva 8mo ago
When laws no longer serve the people and you have a lawless government doing whatever it wants, they are merely strongly worded suggestions. We give laws their power so I don't think this government realizes just how poorly things look with the DOJ now and how little trust there is for anything coming out of the federal government.
wolvoleo 8mo ago
If I were American I don't think the above mechanism would have any chance of still working to be honest. And I don't think respecting the law still matters when the lawmakers are so evil. I applaud the people destroying these cameras. It's not violence against people, it's just property.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

Waterluvian 8mo ago

> 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 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
  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.
  - thephyber 8mo ago
    Three critical differences the American Revolution had: (1) the middle class had some extremely well educated people, (2) the communication technology among the colonies was pretty fast whereas the comms between the colonies and the British rule across the Atlantic was slow, and (3) the empire tried to clamp down on the colonies ability to export to any market other than the mother country, killing lots of profit which previously made those markets strong.
    - throwaway85825 8mo ago
      (4) the British navy was busy raiding the carribean for prize money and abandoned the army in america. I recommend the book "The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution and the Fate of the Empire"
  - Kuinox 8mo ago
    > The American and French revolutions originated in the middle classes. I don't know about the american revolution, but that's wrong for the french revolution. I'll link to french wikipédia pages since they are far better on the subject. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tats_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux_de_1789 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tats_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux_... Here we can see the first National Assembly was half nobility and clergy. The third estate was the other half. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiers_%C3%A9tat https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiers_%C3%A9tat > Par ailleurs, les députés du tiers état aux états généraux représentaient essentiellement la bourgeoisie[2]. Which indicate that the majority of the third estate representative were bourgeois.
- jacquesm 8mo ago
  > 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 8mo ago
    Boy is he trying on the latter. Quite impressive just how resilient it seems to be.
    - jacquesm 8mo ago
      Yes, tbh I would not have thought that you could take a sledgehammer to the economy as if you're say Elon Musk buying a communications platform and yet, here we are, 1 year in and we're still hanging on. But I wouldn't bet on another three of these.
      - dpc050505 8mo ago
        It will pop just in time to put the blame on the liberal that wants to slightly tax the rich and improve the quality of life of working people.
    - edoceo 8mo ago
      It's like when management does something stupid and then engineering works overtime to keeps the system working. Of course management learns nothing and all outside observers don't even notice something went wrong.
      - jacquesm 8mo ago
        There is a limit to how much engineers working overtime can do to offset management stupidity and when you reach the limit the bottom falls out. Of course then everybody blames the engineers...
    - autoexec 8mo ago
      It's being heavily supported a bubble. We'll see how resilient it is when that pops. As it is, the average person's finances and future prospects are getting worse all the time regardless of whatever the stock market is doing.
- thewebguyd 8mo ago
  > 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.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- ryandrake 8mo ago
  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.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - hirako2000 8mo ago
    Could also say that over half the population finding such ridiculous mandates justifiable: lockdowns and demands that employers enforce vaccination compliance for all employees, ordoned non democratically by a senile; in a country with constitutional rights likely meant we would not see activists engaging in vandalism anytime soon.
    - UltraSane 8mo ago
      [flagged]
    - jibal 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      - hirako2000 8mo ago
        I was probably one of "you". My comment is simply calling out the liberticide episode we attended rather quietly.
        deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
        johnnyanmac 8mo ago
        After 2025, I don't think y'all get to say it's libertcide to wear a mask, sorry.
  - 8mo ago
- mikestorrent 8mo ago
  > The American Revolution was rare in that it didn't need to happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_Rebellion 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 8mo ago
    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.
    - autoexec 8mo ago
      Even if the needs of the American people weren't being ignored over the wishes of corporations and the ultra-wealthy in terms of numbers alone we have less representation than ever before because the number of people who are supposed to represent us hasn't kept up with the growing population.
      - throwaway85825 8mo ago
        America ended in 1861 when the era of political bargains transitioned to the era of the government and the subjects.
        fuzzfactor 8mo ago
        with 20/20 hindsight it would have been a whole lot better to throw a Constitutional Convention rather than have a civil war. It had already intentionally been forgotten how well that worked the first time.
        throwaway85825 8mo ago
- wutwutwat 8mo ago
  "There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy." - Alfred Henry Lewis
kbrisso 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
  > 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 8mo ago
  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 8mo ago
    America is not NYC. NYC is proud of its police-state apparatus. Most of the rest of the country is very different.
    - butterbomb 8mo ago
      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 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
  Who can I vote for that will stop flock cameras from being installed?
  - gamerdonkey 8mo ago
    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 8mo ago
    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 8mo ago
    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).
    - runarberg 8mo ago
      Seattle voted for Katie Wilson as mayor partly because she seemed to oppose surveillance cameras. She now seems to have changed her mind is is speaking in favor of them.
KittenInABox 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
  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 8mo ago
    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.
    - mv4 8mo ago
      "Among the 37 percent of adults who would not have covered a $400 expense completely with cash or its equivalent, most would pay some other way, although some said that they would be unable to pay the expense at all. For those who could cover the expenses another way, the most common approach was to use a credit card and then carry a balance, and many indicated they would use multiple approaches. However, 13 percent of all adults said they would be unable to pay the expense by any means (table 21), unchanged from 2022 and 2023 but up from 11 percent in 2021" https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2024-savings-and-investments.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-we...
kingkawn 8mo ago
Get out there and be the change you want to see, king
- nielsbot 8mo ago
  I don't get the sarcasm here.. Instead of sniping with snark (see HN rules, please) post your better take.
  - kingkawn 8mo ago
    Is it not literally true that he is calling for action from the populace without doing it? You all can only lift a finger to downvote a literal call to action lmao
mywittyname 8mo ago
> 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 8mo ago
  That's not how the political reality of exacting mostly voluntary compliance from the masses works.
- everforward 8mo ago
  That would be an incredibly risky escalation, and it would be a stupid ultimatum to issue. The people, or even states, could escalate in response. The worst case is escalating to violence; ICE isn’t trained, equipped, or numerous to deal with deploying into a violently hostile area. The army could, but then we’re in full blown civil war. A more realistic middle ground is that it pushes people or states into nonviolent non-compliance by eg refusing to pay federal taxes. Frankly if California and New York alone stopped paying federal taxes the system would probably crumble.
  - wolvoleo 8mo ago
    ICE isn't trained for anything, they're just proud boys in tacticool gear. But the point of them is not to be effective, it's to cause headlines.
- bcrosby95 8mo ago
  Yeah because that works out really well in history!
jeffrallen 8mo ago
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.
- JuniperMesos 8mo ago
  Disrupting basic functions of the economy will hurt ordinary people a lot more than it will hurt billionaires. Also under these conditions of food distribution and transportation being actively disrupted, why would anyone be at school? Huge numbers of American schools are unsafe and unpleasant places for kids to be in ordinary times, and a massive disruption to ordinary life is not going to make that situation any better.
kilohotel 8mo ago
Who is the arbiter of "necessarily trouble"? You? Only people that politically agree with you?
- john_strinlai 8mo ago
  >You? Only people that politically agree with you? the next sentence after they mention "necessary trouble" is literally: "But that only goes as far as to be my opinion." they are just stating their opinion. everyone decides when the time for "necessary trouble" is individually, based on their accumulated experience, opinion, etc. no arbiter required, just a critical mass of people with aligning opinions.
- krapp 8mo ago
  Who was the arbiter of the trouble necessary for gay rights? Who was the arbiter of the trouble necessary for civil rights? Who was the arbiter of the trouble necessary for womens' rights? Who was the arbiter of the trouble necessary for the rights of handicapped people? Indigenous people? Immigrants? American society was created for the benefit of straight white Christian men alone. Every right held by any other group, every ounce of political power, every bit of basic human dignity, has had to be taken by force of "necessary trouble." There is no "arbiter." How could there be? An arbiter presupposes an objective moral ideal and a just society, neither of which we have. In the end, America can only be trusted to live up to its principles at the point of a gun.
Induane 8mo ago
The other day in Kansas City some lady set fire to a warehouse that was being sought for purchase by ICE. They are on video and quite nonchalant.
wartywhoa23 8mo ago
> I still think that overall, Americans are deeply underreacting to the times. To put things in perspective, the whole humankind, as in 99.99% of population, is utterly underreacting.
zamadatix 8mo ago
I can only hope what people will decide make trouble about is also what I consider necessary. If we could all agreed what was necessary to make trouble about there wouldn't be nearly as much to be making trouble over. It's a very double edged sword which does not necessarily do a very good job at bringing any more clarity of what the moral path was to the country.
freeplay 8mo ago
Mass unemployment would/will be the catalyst to mass uprising. All of the fuel is in place (ICE, Epstein, rising costs of everything, unaffordable housing, general lack of hope and faith in the government, etc.) High unemployment numbers will be the spark that sets it all ablaze.
sanex 8mo ago
Right? The French know how to riot.
xnx 8mo ago
You're fortunate if you live in a community where cameras in public spaces is in the top 20 concerns.

scotty79 8mo ago

> 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 8mo ago
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?
- dirasieb 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - estearum 8mo ago
    Sometimes I envy the simplicity of the mental worlds some people apparently occupy
- mmanfrin 8mo ago
  Far cry difference between that and the mass dragnet and centralized surveillance of entire communities at tap for agencies/police/fed.
- noah_buddy 8mo ago
  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.

AlexandrB 8mo ago

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 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
  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 8mo ago
    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 8mo ago
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.

user3939382 8mo ago

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 8mo ago

All those behaviours are consequences of direct civil disobedience, unrest and rebellion - not alternatives.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

lm28469 8mo ago

> This breakdown in rule of law is unfortunate. Yearly reminder to read: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/kurz-the-discourse-of-voluntary-servitude https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/kurz-the-discourse-of-vol...

ok_dad 8mo ago
This is excellent, I second your suggestion for everyone to read this.

some_random 8mo ago

Rule of law is long gone, neither party has any interest in it, it's more of a guideline of law now.

fullstop 8mo ago
Are you really both-sides-ing this?
- some_random 8mo ago
  Yeah I am actually, I'm tired of carrying water for people who openly hate me.
skybrian 8mo ago
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-real-not https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/record-low-crime-rates-are-...
- squidsoup 8mo ago
  Prosecuting the working class, sure.
- fanatic2pope 8mo ago
  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-activities/overview-rule-law https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-a...
  - skybrian 8mo ago
    No. Catching murderers (for example) is a basic function of the justice system. Of course the US justice system does have many flaws and in some ways much worse lately, but compare with Somalia or Haiti and you'll see that there's quite a long way down. It could get much worse.

chasd00 8mo ago

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 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
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 8mo ago
  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.

dyauspitr 8mo ago

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 8mo ago

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 8mo ago

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 8mo ago
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.
- ChoGGi 8mo ago
  > Eating sounds like an unhelpful exaggeration, unless I missed a major news story. There's a bunch of mentions of "jerky" in the files, some people have taken it to mean eating people.
  - inigyou 8mo ago
    [dead]
- ratrace 8mo ago
  [dead]

stego-tech 8mo ago

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.

psadauskas 8mo ago

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 8mo ago
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.” - JFK

tptacek 8mo ago

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.

toephu2 8mo ago
I am in favor of them. There is no expectation of privacy in the public setting. I can record anyone on a public street w/o their permission. If these license plate cameras are making the streets safer and helping to reduce crime, why not? Sure there may be some mis-uses here and there, but for the most part they seem to be working and in places where they are deployed, crime is being reduced.
- inigyou 8mo ago
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array_key_first 8mo ago
They're only popular because people are routinely lied to. We see this same issue time and time again in "free markets". If you tell people this will help stop crime and that's it, everyone and their mama is gonna say yes. If you tell people the truth, that police don't really care to look at the data and this surveillance is going to be used to target innocent people for unrelated "crimes" on the taxpayers dollar, then everyone would say no. This is also why 99% of surveys are broken. You can get people to agree to literally anything if you just lie a little. After all, Adolf Hitler got elected by promising to fix the German economy and, in a way, he did.
- tptacek 8mo ago
  In what way are voters in these municipalities being lied to? We got logs of all the searches, and incident reports of every time they were used to curb another vehicle. We know how well they did (or didn't, in our case) worked. I don't know what "surveys" have to do with this. Voters voted on it; it was a campaign issue in our trustee election.

roysting 8mo ago

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 8mo ago
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-constitutional-concerns-surrounding-flock-cameras/ https://journals.law.unc.edu/ncjolt/blogs/under-surveillance...
- margalabargala 8mo ago
  The person you replied to is saying usage Flock is violating the constitution.
  - bezier-curve 8mo ago
    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.
    - ranger_danger 8mo ago
      > destroying property is not going to get anyone anywhere I seem to remember something about tea in Boston having a different outcome.

gregcohn 8mo ago

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 8mo ago

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 8mo ago

Would someone please think of the rule of law?! :'((((

JCattheATM 8mo ago

The higher-desirability options are practically only theoretical in many contexts. See also the United Healthcare CEO killing.

nceqs3 8mo ago

> 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 8mo ago
Who appointed anyone king? Neither Trump nor Flock are kings, both should be challenged, violently if necessary.
array_key_first 8mo ago
Nobody said he had the right, he explicitly does not have the right, that's what makes it civil disobedience. And civil disobedience is basically necessary to have a functioning society long term.

basilikum 8mo ago

One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

thatguy0900 8mo ago

Peer pressure is apparently not even effective in getting billionaires who could easily hire whatever variety of escort they want from having sex with trafficked children, so I'm not sure in what world it's supposed to stop the billionaires from installing cameras.

ocdtrekkie 8mo ago

My guess is the vast majority of the 80,000 or whatever cameras are uncontested politically. Local board meetings for most towns are boring and quiet affairs, and those are also the most effective venue for these concerns. If you are a taxpayer in a local jurisdiction with Flock cameras and you want them removed, show up to every single meeting and maximize use of public comment time. Local government is a place individuals can actually be extremely effective but also almost nobody ever actually does.

strangattractor 8mo ago

Guess Flock cameras don't solve quite as many crimes as they claim. Surveillance heal they self.

toss1 8mo ago

Yes unfortunate, but sometimes necessary Wait until the governance fails to the point data centers start getting burned down

majorchord 8mo ago

How is flock cameras existing, a breakdown in the rule of law? As far as I know they are not technically breaking any laws, even though I disagree with their use in principle. Some might think it is somehow a Fourth Amendment violation, but I'm pretty sure it has already been ruled on enough times now that there is no expectation of privacy on government-owned roads, except for what's inside your car.

greycol 8mo ago
If the law "if you shoot an arrow with no mind to it's direction or destination existed you are guilty of negligence and liability of any damages" existed and then guns where invented you can argue either that the law needs to be updated or that case law will follow the spirit of the law and establish that it also applies to guns. If you are prescriptive and do not believe in the spirit of the law then a new law would have to cover the case of guns. Many would say there is a breakdown in the rule of law if it turned out people could just fire those guns willy nilly and the arrow law did not apply to them. Similarly if there is a law that says the government can't build cameras everywhere to track you 24/7 without a warrant then post facto get a warrant to justify the prior tracking. Many people believe there is a breakdown in the rule of law when The government can pay someone else who has built cameras everywhere to track you 24/7 without a warrant then post facto get a warrant to justify the prior tracking.

brandensilva 8mo ago

When laws no longer serve the people and you have a lawless government doing whatever it wants, they are merely strongly worded suggestions. We give laws their power so I don't think this government realizes just how poorly things look with the DOJ now and how little trust there is for anything coming out of the federal government.

wolvoleo 8mo ago

If I were American I don't think the above mechanism would have any chance of still working to be honest. And I don't think respecting the law still matters when the lawmakers are so evil. I applaud the people destroying these cameras. It's not violence against people, it's just property.