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Flock cameras gifted by Horowitz Foundation, avoiding public oversight
- zerosizedweasle 8mo agoFascists, him and his VC partner
- Swoerd 8mo ago[dead]
- roysting 8mo agoI wish people would get more thoughtful, because fascism is the last thing any of this is, it’s something brand new and way worse, something from some sci-fi story of a tech-dystopian ruling class with suffocating and smothering domination over the masses. I think you would have to mash together a couple different novels and movies to accurately capture what this is. Just alone note that not a single tyrant of the past could have even dreamt of the power and control over society that even just currently exists, let alone what is in the pipeline. Do you remember Minority Report? That seems to be approaching things, but even that did not include many things that even already exist. Frankly, I think authors and directors didn’t include many aspects of things, simply because audiences of the past would have probably not found it believable that even just current things existed, because how could they, it would seem so utterly crushing and depressive that it would break the suspense when you can’t see any prospect for survival/success.
- Spooky23 8mo agoGross. Ethics laws should prohibit this.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- roysting 8mo agoTechnically it should be covered as not just illegal, but by virtue of being the pinnacle of capital crimes, inherently treasonous through the violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause… but abiding by the Constitution is just so lame and old. We need to move fast and break things.
- drweevil 8mo agoI sounds naive to assert that the jurisdiction of city government doesn't extend beyond just "whatever is funded by taxpayers." Also, if someone were to destroy one of these things, the damage caused, by a similar logic, is $0, right? /s
- willturman 8mo agoHow long until YCombinator stops listing Flock "Safety" on their website as one of their proud VC success stories? [1] https://www.ycombinator.com https://www.ycombinator.com
- propagandist 8mo agoThe new leadership (Tan) is utterly shameless and free of moral constraints. I wouldn't count on it.
- cyanydeez 8mo agoYeah, the idea that YC will disown unfettered capitalism seems dreamy.
- CobrastanJorji 8mo agoFlock was valued at $7.5 billion last year, and it's probably worth more now. It's absolutely one of YCombinator's success stories. YCombinator's goal is to make a lot of money by causing there to be more startups, and therefore more successor startups. "Make the world a better place" is not one of their success metrics. They're investors, not altruists.
- soperj 8mo agoIt's only a success if all you care about is money.
- LadyCailin 8mo agoWhich is all a great deal of people in America care about, yes.
- unclad5968 8mo agoThey could also care about mass surveillance.
- 8mo ago
- rusty_rick 8mo agoSimilar post here on cities being gifted surveillance tools: https://computer.rip/2025-12-26-Flock-and-Urban-Surveillance.html https://computer.rip/2025-12-26-Flock-and-Urban-Surveillance...
- irl_zebra 8mo agoDid you make this account to post this comment?
- firloop 8mo agoI was about to link the same article and I did not make my account to post this comment.
- irl_zebra 8mo agoSure, but you created your account 14 years ago and have lost of posts. The person to whom I'm replying created their account 0 minutes before posting the comment to which I am replying. Not really apples to apples.
- rusty_rick 8mo agoI've never posted anything on hn before and saw this post and it reminded me of a blog I found interesting. So yes, I did make this account to post this comment
- john_strinlai 8mo ago
- enahs-sf 8mo agoSo if I understand the totality of the situation here: mans donates cameras from company he invested in, gets tax break for doing so, helps portfolio co, furthers own self-interest and propels us towards surveillance state? Did I miss anything?
- roysting 8mo agoThe only thing you may have missed is that YCombinator is also an investor in Flock.
- reactordev 8mo agoYou're saying the quiet part out loud sir...
- roysting 8mo agoThat’s my curse
- tptacek 8mo agoI think the money is a red herring here. ALPR firms can come up with any number of different pilot/licensing/financing programs to keep deployments under purchasing thresholds for police departments. The issue is that Las Vegas, like most major metros, doesn't appear to have ordinances preventing their police department from deploying cameras without the consent of the city council. That's fixable! There's model ordinances for this.
- jmward01 8mo agoThis is why gifts to government are problematic. They are never gifts, they are end-runs around accountability and should have exceptionally high scrutiny. It is hard to say they should be outright illegal since participating in government often blurs the line between gifting government and just normal participation. This though is clearly just an end-run around democracy.
- FreakLegion 8mo agoThis particular gift is also problematic because Horowitz is an investor in Flock, and Horowitz's family foundation is spending money on Flock that will in turn increase its value, which benefits him as an investor. Of course lawyers will have looked at all this to make sure it doesn't run afoul of self-dealing rules, but that just means the rules verge on uselessly weak.
- almosthere 8mo agoAre people going to start "disabling flock cameras" when they are integrated into police vehicles?
- LadyCailin 8mo agoI’m not necessarily defending that, but that sounds far less problematic in general.
- bix6 8mo agoThe US is such a joke. Free market my ass. What an end run around true competition. Just grift top to bottom.
- warkdarrior 8mo agoNothing stops other surveillance companies from donating cameras and 24-7 monitoring services.
- tptacek 8mo agoI think the money is a red herring here. In Oak Park, Illinois, we ran into a rhyming version of this problem: the only control we had about what technology OPPD deployed was a spending limit ($15K, if I'm remembering right), above which they had to ask the board for an appropriation. Our pilot deployment of Flock cameras easily went underneath that limit. I'm not reflexively anti-ALPR camera. I don't like them, but I do local politics and know what my neighbors think, and a pretty significant chunk of my neighbors --- in what is likely one of the top 10 bluest municipalities in the United States (we're the most progressive in Chicagoland, which is saying something) --- want these cameras as a response to violent crime. But I do believe you have to run a legit process to get them deployed. OPPD was surprised when, after attempting to graduate their pilot to a broader deployment, a minor fracas erupted at the board. I'm on Oak Park's information systems commission and, with the help of a trustee and after talking to the Board president, got "what the hell do we do about the cameras" assigned to my commission. In conjunction with our police oversight commission (but, really, just us on the nerd commission), we: * Got General Orders put in place for Flock usage that limited it exclusively to violent crime. * Set up a monthly usage report regime that allowed the Village to get effectiveness metrics that prevented further rollout and ultimately got the cameras shut down. * Presented to the board and got enacted an ACLU CCOPS ordinance, which requires board approval for anything broadly construed as "surveillance technology" for policing, whether you spend $1, $100,000, or $0 on it. Especially if you're in a suburb, where the most important units of governance are responsive to like 15,000-50,000 people, this stuff is all pretty doable if you engage in local politics. It's much trickier if you're within the city limits of a major metro (we're adjacent to Chicago, and by rights should be a part of it), but still.
- rurp 8mo agoThis is very helpful information, thanks for sharing. Vegas is unlikely to be an outlier here, especially given the involvement of Horowitz. I expect that many cities and towns will face similar moves to do an end run around citizen's rights and knowledge.
- SirFatty 8mo agoI cannot imagine a scenario where I'd want those in my neighborhood. Glad you like them, but I hope they don't make it to the west suburbs where I live.
- CrzyLngPwd 8mo agoIt's democracy in action, nothing to see, please move along.
- n2d4 8mo agoGenuine question, why does Flock get so much bad press in the US compared to other, much more infringing surveillance tech? Your mobile provider knows your exact location at any point in time, and the NSA probably has access to most big tech data. Those tell you much more than a license plate reader. In much of Europe, it is quite normal to see cameras everywhere both for traffic enforcement and for crime prevention. They are generally popular with the public, eg. in the UK with a >80% approval rate. In many cities, essentially every corner has CCTV. Is it because Flock Safety also markets to private businesses, whereas in Europe CCTV and ANPR are state-run? Or is it a cultural thing, eg. because Americans value freedom or prefer driving over the speed limit, and Flock may end that?
- Pine_Mushroom 8mo agoI think a big part is the name. Like we are the sheep for the shearing.
- n2d4 8mo agoDoes this question really warrant the downvotes? I'm genuinely curious. Why not just answer it instead?
- patrickmay 8mo agoI suspect you're getting downvoted because the phrasing of your question implies that you don't consider this type of surveillance to be a problem.
- pseudalopex 8mo agoPlease don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- drnick1 8mo ago> Your mobile provider knows your exact location at any point in time, and the NSA probably has access to most big tech data. I can choose whether to carry a cell phone. I can control what data I share with big tech (very little here since I use free software and self-host everything). I cannot do anything (that isn't illegal) if some bureaucrat decides to place a camera down my street to identify me or my car anytime I pass nearby.
- ChrisArchitect 8mo agoTitle is: Vegas police are big users of license plate readers. Public has little input because it’s a gift.
- newzino 8mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- fantasizr 8mo agogotta feel bad for snowden's naivete that he thought his big disclosures would resonate with the public at large. All we got in the years since was more surveillance and for him, a life in exile.
- irishcoffee 8mo agoSnowden's naivete was grounded in arrogance. It sure wouldn't have been hard to create a digital deadman that released his information while he stayed in the country leveraging whistleblower protection. Or, he could have found his version of deepthroat and told his story. Or, he dumps everything on 4chan or on the Tor network and let someone else expose it... if all he actually cared about was exposing the moral ineptitude of the US. Alas no, he was much more interested in the attention and TV interviews. He lives in exile because he wasn't interested in whistleblowing.
- fc417fc802 8mo agoYou really think he could have dumped all of that without having it traced back to him? Aren't these audited systems?
- irishcoffee 8mo agoYes, I think he could have. He didn't want to cover his tracks. Leaking information to the media is falling-off-a-log easy. The best journalists will tell you to your face "I'll go to jail before I give up a source"
- fc417fc802 8mo agoIt's not a matter of a journalist giving up his source. The issue is the sheer quantity of data leaked and the fact that the systems are (I assume) audited. Barring a security exploit I assume it would have been trivial to identify the responsible accounts. If you believe otherwise I'm open to your theory but I think it is on you to provide a plausible explanation here.
- solfox 8mo agoThis is the type of self-interested philanthropy that gives tech non-profits a bad name. Whatever happened to giving without the expectation of return?
- _DeadFred_ 8mo agoImagine if the government was as creative with getting things done people want as it is with getting things done that people don't want.
- xxxx_xxxx 8mo ago[dead]
- xdennis 8mo ago> surveillance technology, which critics worry could be co-opted to track undocumented immigrants They're worried that the system could be co-opted to enforce the law on law breakers? Isn't that the job description of a cop? This is how toxic American political discourse has become. Instead of pointing out that mass surveillance is evil because of the potential for abuse, they're saying it's bad because cops could do their jobs.
- runlaszlorun 8mo agoPalantir used this backdoor to get into municipal police departments. LA is the example that sticks in my mind. I remember others.
- klipklop 8mo agoSo installing mass surveillance systems without permission of the people being spied on counts as philanthropy now? We are at a weird place right now in the US.
- 4d4m 8mo agoI mean eventually founders with strong ideals will find VCs better aligned to society, since now it's en vouge to go full mask off.