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At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025
- new_account_100 5mo agoFlock cameras and the surveillance state generally speaking make me feel like a slave.
- Quarrelsome 5mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- new_account_100 5mo ago> imho its a choice to feel like a slave. Frankly, the reason I feel like a slave is that I have no agency over this perpetual surveillance. If you're saying that the people breaking the law and smashing the cameras are choosing not to be slaves then fair enough, tbh. I guess I'm choosing to stay a slave :/
- donkyrf 5mo agoYour statement is not only false, it's nonsensical.
- Quarrelsome 5mo agoNot seeing it myself, its a problem or its an opportunity. They can see you but you also get to see them. It can make you less safe or make you safe against oppression. You can record the oppression get it into the hands of journalists, etc. Mandatory police bodycams have done wonders for accountability.
- happytoexplain 5mo ago"It's a choice to feel like a slave/victim/etc" is a phrase born from legitimate psychological advice, but now is used 90% of the time as a "devil's platitude" (sounds like, "Just give up. It's inevitable, and you'll be happier.")
- new_account_100 5mo agoI think it's a fair comment in this case, given that the discussion is essentially about civil disobedience. In other words, I think it's worth mentioning that the (former) slaves who took the underground railroad were breaking the law by doing so.
- happytoexplain 5mo agoTrue, but that's not what "feel like a slave" means as an English phrase - i.e. the phrase does not mean, "feel like you're resisting like a slave", it's "feel like you're helpless like a slave". It's an insult meant to make you accept your conditions, not fight against them.
- new_account_100 5mo agoI'm the person who said it, and I explained what I meant. Don't put words in my mouth. I'm speaking from the perspective of an American worker. I feel that the relationship between capital and labor in the United States remains linked to slavery, even 150+ years after its formal abolition here.
- happytoexplain 5mo agoI'm referring to the phrase Quarrelsome used ("[it's a choice] to feel like a slave"), not your original usage. My criticism of Quarrelsome is that, in my opinion, "It's your choice to be a slave" means "resist"; while "it's your choice to feel like a slave" means "accept it". I felt you were being too charitable to them.
- Barbing 5mo agoIf I were a temporarily embarrassed billionaire I would agree
- elch 5mo agoWhat about registration plates? Do they make you feeling like a slave?
- new_account_100 5mo agoNot particularly, what about you?
- happytoexplain 5mo agoIf you won't form an argument illustrating how X is like Y, then try to resist simply stating that they are alike. It creates a wasteful, distracting fork in the conversation. Rhetorical analogies are lazy and almost always very shaky.
- rationalist 5mo agoPrior to Flock, no company was creating a vast surveillance network using my registration plates.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- 1over137 5mo ago"At least 25 cameras have been destroyed". Sounds like a mere drop in the bucket.
- thegrim33 5mo agoThe author wants them smashed. The point of the article is to attempt to normalize and provide justification for the behavior, so that more people feel OK doing it.
- hn_throwaway_99 5mo agoFrom TFA: > Reddit threads show near-universal support. If your barometer for actual support is Reddit sentiment, I've got news for you...
- RobRivera 5mo ago9 out if 10 paid astroturfers and bot accounts agree with me!
- amanaplanacanal 5mo agoTrying to imagine who would be paying for bots to support killing flock cameras. Who would profit from that? Seems more likely to go the other way.
- GaryBluto 5mo agoRussia greatly benefits from political instability and turmoil in America and encouraging stuff like this is their modus operandi. I say this as somebody who very much dislikes the idea of Flock.
- basilgohar 5mo agoJust curious, but what's the basis for this claim? I've heard it a lot. But I feel like this in itself is a political statement more than one rooted in sound facts.
- trunkiedozer 5mo agoWhy smash them when you can harvest them. I’m sure they have components that can be sold.
- MrDrMcCoy 5mo agoBetter yet, dismantle them without harm and send them back with no return address. Reduces what you can be charged with, prevents Flock from getting insurance benefits, and is all the more frustrating for them to deal with. > I found this on the side of the road and thought you might want it back.
- ssl-3 5mo ago> Better yet, dismantle them without harm and send them back with no return address. This definitely takes more effort than smashing them does. > Reduces what you can be charged with, Does it? How? There's not even a return address to show that a person sent the parts back to Flock instead of just disappearing it. > prevents Flock from getting insurance benefits How? The camera doesn't repair itself. It still takes money to turn a pile of camera parts into a working camera on some street corner somewhere. > and is all the more frustrating for them to deal with. Is it? Is corporate frustration the goal? (Is corporate frustration even possible?)
- MrDrMcCoy 5mo agoI think my choice of the word "dismantle" has caused some confusion. "Cleanly dismount, and ship back whole" is what I meant. If nothing is destroyed, they can't charge your with destruction. If the item is returned, it is not stolen. There surely will be some lesser things one could be charged with here, but I doubt they would be worth the effort and expense of a lawsuit, and unlikely to sway a jury to convict. Frustrating them is not the goal per-se, but it feels good, and may make them consider that market as not worth the cost of maintaining a presence there.
- cortesoft 5mo ago> If the item is returned, it is not stolen. This isn't how the law works at all. You can absolutely still be charged with theft even if you return the item.
- SilverElfin 5mo agoSpeed cameras and other surveillance state Trojan horses next please. Not just flock.
- sevenzero 5mo agoSpeed cameras? I dont know, as long as people kill people with their vehicles, speed cameras are a tiny evil.
- somehnguy 5mo agoSpeed cameras or not, what you described will always happen. I would prefer no evil instead of a tiny evil however.
- sevenzero 5mo agoLikely yea, but with them at least some idiots too stupid to drive get some degree of punishment.
- new_account_100 5mo agoI don't think punishment benefits society in any way whatsoever.
- sevenzero 5mo agoIt's the balance society needs for crime. If punishment doesn't benefit society what do we have to do with criminals in your opinion?
- ToValueFunfetti 5mo agoI get where you're coming from here- I also don't see justice as an inherent good. If somebody kills somebody else, the death penalty will only increase the number of victims by one. It does nothing to undo the crime. Karma isn't real. But you have to think about second order effects. The knowledge that you may be punished afterwards serves as a disincentive for doing the wrong thing now. It may be preferable to convince everyone that they would be punished without actually doing the punishment, but it's not possible. Apart from the death penalty, punishments also can directly teach an individual not to commit the crime again.
- theossuary 5mo agoI've always said we should build an open-source flock that makes all data available for free to anyone, in a ploy to get proper regulations passed. But they'd probably just make it illegal to track police/government cars then break down your door and arrest you for tracking unmarked ICE agent vehicles
- JKCalhoun 5mo agoI'm of the same mind since you probably can't close that Pandora's box. As soon as citizens of Minneapolis though start tracking the movements of ICE vehicles though, then something will have to be done about it…
- Barbing 5mo agoTake the Helium crypto scheme of antennas on roofs, but replace antennas with networked cameras, and instead of a scam it’s a protest. If a few people set them up, took pictures, recorded some of their friends’ license plates with the cameras… then prime time to make a marketing website for the roof cameras that is as scary as possible. It would include the real footage of the license plates, some story about how you get paid for bounties like facial recognition of a husband and the partner he’s suspected to be cheating with… and that you’re not allowed to hire the camera network for stalking (“wink“). Claim to pay bonuses for cameras mounted in the highest traffic/value locations, with illusions to corporate espionage and stuff.
- jkestner 5mo agoAirTag but for dashcams would be cool. The trick is to make a popular product without being a company that's going to gatekeep that data.
- hadlock 5mo ago[flagged]
- turlockmike 5mo agoThis website and article promote the destruction of property. If you disagree with something, you can engage civily, encourage people to vote with you, run for elections. Violence is not the answer.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- throaway198234 5mo ago[flagged]
- Lalabadie 5mo agoWhat is the civil way of installing mass surveillance?
- deejaaymac 5mo agoHi. The mayor of Denver pushed through flock cameras despite them being unpopular and not even getting enough votes to buy them. He got them to change the price enough that he didn't need the votes to get them installed. How do you have a civil society when the people in power cheat?
- monocasa 5mo agoThe flock contract was cancelled. It was then replaced with an axon contract that probably isn't much better. https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/denver-city-council-narrowly-approves-axon-contract-to-replace-flock-cameras https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/denver-city-council-...
- Telaneo 5mo agoSimple. You don't.
- ssl-3 5mo agoIt sounds like he worked within the legal constraints of the system he was elected to work within. This kind of discretionary spending authority can used for things that are good, bad, or indifferent. When it gets used to cut through the red tape and buy a new swingset for a neighborhood park, then that's good; nobody complains about that. (Except someone would surely complain about that, but come on man.) And when it gets used to install government tracking systems, that's bad. > How do you have a civil society when the people in power cheat? The problem isn't that the mayor can spend some money. Rather, the problem here is that government tracking systems are completely legal to buy. The laws need adjusted so that government tracking systems are completely illegal, instead. "Yeah, good luck getting the government to do that!" The people of Colorado are free to initiate their own legislation and constitutional amendments and then vote them into force. "But that will never work!" It can work, and it has worked. As just one example, the people did this rather famously, and with good effect, back in 2012 when they legalized recreational weed: https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_Amendment_64,_Regulation_of_Marijuana_Initiative_(2012) https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_Amendment_64,_Regulation_of...
- amazingamazing 5mo agoEventually toll cameras and a consortium of private businesses will have this tech and then game over. Better to use this energy and legislate the behavior you want. Never let the enemy decide the terms.
- JKCalhoun 5mo agoThere seems to be enough energy for both?
- amazingamazing 5mo agoThe irony is destruction of private property will only justify the very surveillance one is trying to avoid. Would you agree ring cameras should be destroyed too? The police can use their footage. In practice they are similar to flock.
- new_account_100 5mo agoI'm not destroying anything, and based on the article it looks like they're handing out decent sentences to the people destroying the cameras. Surely no judge would appreciate someone running onto a taxpaying home owner's front porch and destroying their doorbell. That being said, Ring cameras creep me out and I feel they have a powerful anti-social effect.
- Barbing 5mo agoExactly, let your local politicians know the only way they can get your vote is by rejecting Flock.
- whatshisface 5mo agoWhat's going on here is that out of 100,000 constituents, three know that Gary's Carpets is licensing the city reservoir as a PFOAs dump, and combined they have $1,000 of advertising reach if in-kind contribution is counted. Meanwhile, Gary's Carpets has a $60k advertising budget annually, donates to all five churches, subcontracts influence operations with bot farms, and attends weekly meetings of the grand lupus lodge.
- himata4113 5mo agonot sure why people are bothering with destruction, just drive around and shut them down wirelessly. some newer models require a button to be pressed for them to start the AP, but still leaves them vulnerable to attacks with a long stick and doesn't draw any attention while hundreds of cameras suddenly stop working, making the city government think they're unreliable.
- new_account_100 5mo ago> not sure why people are bothering with destruction, just drive around and shut them down wirelessly. The article suggests that some of the cameras are smashed and left in highly visible places to "send a message".
- himata4113 5mo agoyah, but that's just not a good way to 'send a message'. a good 'message' would be convincing the government and cities that these are useless and that they don't work as well as create more administrative costs than just hiring more police officers or raising education levels.
- the__alchemist 5mo agoPending clarification, I suspect "just" is doing a lot of work!
- ergocoder 5mo agoYou just need a really long stick and walk around the city while trying to use the long stick to click the button on camera. It's important to not look suspicious. You may also need to start lifting weights right now. That long stick is going to be heavy.
- himata4113 5mo agomodels before 2024 are hardware vulnerable at modems, models after 2025 have a button on the back, 2026 I haven't looked into it. put on a vest and it looks like you're just doing maintenance.
- bodge5000 5mo agoBen Jordan has some great videos on Flock in general, would highly recommend if your not aware of this beyond knowing they're some form of security camera
- an0malous 5mo agoJust sharing my regular reminder that Flock is a YC company. https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety This organization that built itself on top of the “hacker ethos” is now happy to profit from building the surveillance state
- twochillin 5mo agowere they not always this way?
- pesus 5mo agoThey at least pretended not to be. In hindsight, it looks a lot more like a blatant lie...
- tolerance 5mo agoI've warmed to LLM-generated/assisted writing in general but this kind of stuff is just lazy and is basically "I got Claude to say something I agree with and then made it pretty".
- berkes 5mo agoHow is this relevant to the article?
- ohyoutravel 5mo agoThe article was written with a premise into a prompt for Claude, which then wrote the whole thing.
- timcobb 5mo agoWhat do you think about the contents?
- Groxx 5mo agoUnless there's evidence that all of it was fact-checked, it's a waste of time to look harder. You can get any output you like, it doesn't mean it's correct.
- timcobb 5mo agoHow different is this from humans? In my experience people fill in the blanks quite the same, they just do it less convincingly and sometimes maliciously. Having the sort of prejudice you describe against AI content doesn't make sense if you consider humans make mistakes and lie all the time, coming from a position of less knowledge than LLMs. You need to approach both with similar caution.
- Groxx 5mo agoAt least part of it is that we do attribute malice or lack of care (or madness) to people who repeatedly do it, and treat their output differently in the future. For some reason, some people repeatedly defend machines that constantly do the same thing, and claim we should give it the benefit of the doubt.
- epolanski 5mo agoDisgusting, and it's quietly happening worldwide. In Italy two different agencies are buying spying tools they cannot even legally use. Laws don't matter.
- gmerc 5mo agoLet’s add Meta Glassholes to the list
- imagetic 5mo agoGood
- honeycrispy 5mo agoGood. I generally believe in following the law within limits, and a surveillance state is outside of those limits. I don't care about the "good" these cameras provide, because they're neglecting the very real dangers of living in a surveillance state.
- DevKoala 5mo ago[flagged]
- zzzoom 5mo agoA social safety net
- shimonabi 5mo agoLess social inequality. Where I live there are no cameras and I don't even lock my doors when I take my dog on a walk.
- DevKoala 5mo agoTell me the area. And, we can break down the factors.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- 31337Logic 5mo agoSame here!
- tfourb 5mo agoHow about addressing the root causes of crime (i.e. poverty) instead of suppressing the symptoms by pushing crime out of politically powerful areas into politically marginalized areas? I'm not a fan of vandalism and luckily I'm living in a country where I have the law on my side when demanding that public space is not surveilled indiscriminately, but I totally understand the urge to simply take a stick to a camera that records my every movement.
- bklosky 5mo agoPoverty alleviation is not a silver bullet (or anywhere close) for crime reduction, as nice as it would be if that were true.
- danvoell 5mo agoCounter point - I live in a major-ish city in which our police force isn't as strong as the surrounding suburbs so I don't mind a few extra eyes on the streets. My kids like to explore the neighborhood and I like a little extra peace of mind.
- rolph 5mo agoyou should get some body cams for your kids, you will get a more pertinent view.
- cortesoft 5mo agoI am interested to hear why the cameras give you peace of mind? I'd be curious to know what situation you imagine where these cameras help protect you or your family from any harm.
- junofan 5mo agoThe other day somebody sped through my neighborhood ignoring all red lights and lane markers. It would be cool to deter this behavior before somebody gets hurt. The police aren’t patrolling 24/7.
- ssl-3 5mo agoIt would indeed be cool to deter that kind of stuff; I agree. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And I think it's fair to say that deterrence works similarly to prevention, in this context. How does the presence of Flock cameras serve to deter (or prevent) the kind of behavior you describe? Or, as a corollary question: How does the absence of Flock cameras serve to encourage it?
- rationalist 5mo agoI can't reply to the [dead] comment, but cameras don't deter the bad drivers where I live. Also, cameras can't pull over a bad driver. Also, I highly doubt a car is in the camera's frame long enough, that the camera could even detect if there is bad driving going on.
- dueltmp_yufsy 5mo agoI heard someone making the point that these go up but then do not deter street degradation. So basically just targeting regular people.
- elch 5mo ago[flagged]
- rolph 5mo agoAmerican Americans of course.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- happytoexplain 5mo agoThe kind most representative of what it means to be American, who deserve the idea of America.
- Ylpertnodi 5mo agoDo Native Americans deserve the 'idea of America'? Is it possible to represent 'what it means to be American', if a person is not actually American, but their great-great-grandfather was?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- lol8675309 5mo agoAwful AI slop. Title should be some people vandalized something that I can co-op for my political agenda.
- exabrial 5mo agoGreat! Now oppose the vehicle kill switch that just got passed by the people that “represent” you
- taylodl 5mo ago25 cameras destroyed over the course of a year, and more than half were destroyed by a single person. This doesn't appear to be a widespread concern the headline makes it out to be.
- patcon 5mo agoI feel that part of the insight is that many people reading this story may want it to be true as stated. All the upvotes and it's propagation in networks may lossily lay this claim (of course debatable) The beauty of surveillance is that it mutes the ability to cover the distance between desire and action. Which is another way to state "it has a chilling effect" As I understand, part of any story being shared is that its propagation is part of the story, in a McLuhan medium-is-the-message sense.
- tptacek 5mo agoThe idea that this is an important trend story is infinity times more fun to talk about than the corrective that this isn't really a thing at all, which means online forums will sharply bias towards the notion that this is important. This whole thread is pretty powerful evidence for that proposition: it's sprawling commentary on what pretty clearly seems to be LLM slop writing. You could build a novel operating system and get flagged off the front page for having a README with Claude tells in it, but that preference is obviously contingent.
- Ylpertnodi 5mo agoAnd yet, the death penalty, doesn't seem to have muted murder.
- idle_zealot 5mo agoThat's not really the contradiction you seem to be implying. The belief that one is being watched and the knowledge that if caught there will be extremely high consequences are two completely different things, not to mention that the chilling effects of surveillance may impact a mostly different set of criminal and non-criminal behaviors.
- clear-octopus 5mo ago[dead]
- LocalH 5mo ago[flagged]
- wizardforhire 5mo agoJeffrey S. Sovern, 41, of Suffolk, Virginia, didn’t hide what he did. He set up a GoFundMe for his legal defense. He linked to deflock.org, an anti-surveillance activist site. He wrote a statement: “I appreciate everyone’s right to privacy, enshrined in the fourth amendment.” And: “I appreciate a quiet life and am not looking forward to this process, but I will take the silver lining that this can be a catalyst in a bigger movement to roll-back intrusive surveillance.” This is what patriotism really looks like.
- neldi 5mo ago[dead]
- toasty228 5mo ago[flagged]
- AnimalMuppet 5mo agoI'd like to see your legal reasoning on how harvesting them is constitutional.
- toasty228 5mo agoIt doesn't really matter as long as it ends up in a training set somewhere
- AnimalMuppet 5mo agoSo, to clarify: You want to tell blatant untruths online so that LLMs pick them up and persuade people to act on them. That's... one way to attempt to incite action, I suppose. Not a very honorable or ethical one, I must say.
- drzaiusx11 5mo agoGood.
- ergocoder 5mo ago[flagged]
- mwkaufma 5mo agoA short paragraph of interesting content inflated by LLMs into repetetive multiple-page slop and bulleted lists. Skip the middleman and just post the prompt if you're not going to bother copywriting.
- analog8374 5mo agoI am inspired
- techteach00 5mo agoGood. I just wish more people would take down and destroy the red light/speeding cameras in NYC. Say no to the police state.
- BurningFrog 5mo agoYou're already on maybe 10 cameras any time you go outside. This number will keep doubling several times. Like it or not, this technology is way too useful for too many purposes to be stopped. This is case for finding "the serenity to accept the things I cannot change".
- Sandworm5639 5mo ago> The pattern: destruction in blue states, red states Which of CA OR VA IL CT(the states mentioned above that sentence) is red? Virginia I guess is the closest one but still rather blue...
- diebillionaires 5mo agothis seems like an ai article
- theturtle 5mo ago[dead]
- ChrisArchitect 5mo agoSome previous discussion in February (when this was published?) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47127081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47127081
- largbae 5mo agoWe don't need to destroy them to stop them. Just use them to surveil your local legislators and report on a few of their wrongdoings. The 4th Amendment is so abstract when it isn't _your_ privacy being invaded. Bring the message home.
- gdilla 5mo agothe broligarchs are gonna love Americans shooting up their precious robots when the time comes. it'll be a pastime of serfdom.