5 ms·

Meanwhile in Texas we can’t even have red light cameras to automatically ticket people willing to kill you just to catch a light.

fc417fc802 4mo ago
Honestly I like that policy. What's the legality of flock in Texas?
- Spooky23 4mo ago
  Totally legal. The operating theory of all of these cameras is that anything happening in public sight is by its nature not private. The federal government is dumping millions and millions of dollars into grant programs for municipalities to buy it… It’s a giant federal surveillance program disguised as decisions made by individual police departments. It’s hilarious and depressing to contrast the HN community reaction to Snowden versus the mostly meh response to flock.
  - bertt 4mo ago
    You're mistaken if you think the community is still the same percentage of humans.
    - Spooky23 4mo ago
      That’s a fair point that I didn’t consider, thank you.
  - pixl97 4mo ago
    The last 20 years has burned privacy into the ground for a large part of the population.
    - ButlerianJihad 4mo ago
      [flagged]
      - cucumber3732842 4mo ago
        There's this insidious tendency among HNers to make this argument and ones like it. Yeah, if you live in a tiny medieval village or a small town in the middle of nowhere in 1980 there was little "privacy" but Jeffrey Dahmer was fucking dudes (back when that wasn't ok) and eating people in his apartment for years before anyone caught on. In more suburban settings there truly was privacy to a large practical extent. Furthermore, these argument lie through their teeth to portray privacy from those who you mostly voluntarily associate, vs privacy from government systems that can seek you out, have power over you and can fairly unilaterally screw you with little recourse and you cannot choose not to associate with. Having people not associate with you in 1980, or 1280, because you did something sly or immoral is fundamentally different from being combed over by the government because you hit some unknowable proprietary criteria that triggered them to go over you with a fine tooth comb.
        ButlerianJihad 4mo ago
        Have you ever seen "Wings of Desire" (der Himmel über Berlin)? for anyone who's paranoid about "surveillance states" it's an eye-opener, about how things really work: about how overseers and spiritual beings really may perceive human activity, and if you really think about it, perhaps there is good that can come from this. There's this insidious HN tendency to believe that "The Government" (whatever that means) is 100% malicious and Out To Get Us. The reality is far more nuanced, my friend. if "The Government" was truly out to get so many people, they would get them, and society wouldn't actually functoin. "The Government" wants people to work, and raise children and stimulate the economy; The Government likes when people are abled and working/supporting others, and paying taxes, and HNers seem to think "The Government" wants to perpetually interfere and intervene and trip us up. Just reading HN and /. and the other paranoia boards, I'd think that there are swat teams on every corner and black helicopters pouncing on every third hacker on a weekly basis, man. The crazy thing is that this administration in the USA is gutting governmental apparatus, makign a "small government" and "drainining the swamp" that leftists love to hate on, but honestly a "smaller government" definitely for sure won't have enough ability to screw with the common man like y'all believe it would. Sure, gov't can privatize a lot of stuff like handing over to Flock, but still, Flock's aligned with them, and (see Wings of Desire again) this is not malice and not naked malevolence. Sorry.
    - Manuel_D 4mo ago
      The plain view doctrine dates back to the 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_view_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_view_doctrine
      - fc417fc802 4mo ago
        Context matters. At the time cameras were large and bulky. Computers were massive and extremely power hungry. The world's communication networks didn't have the bandwidth to shuttle video around in bulk.
  - infecto 4mo ago
    What meh response? There has been a continued and very vocal response against flock here.
    - Spooky23 4mo ago
      If you pointed out any of the many problematic aspects of Snowden in those days, you’d be shouted down and voted into oblivion immediately.
      - mixmastamyk 4mo ago
        Good, because nothing “problematic” about an individual matters one bit when presented with nefarious government activities. It’s obvious distraction technique 101.
hfosidkc77 4mo ago
Having been in Texas last month these cameras are all over your state. I saw them everywhere from the smallest city to houston https://imgur.com/a/P7WxKpU https://imgur.com/a/P7WxKpU
- kodablah 4mo ago
  They're all basically turned off by law, just not removed
  - rigrassm 4mo ago
    Go visit Harris County where Houston is, they are definitely active and more are getting deployed constantly. More commercial businesses are also installing them in their parking lots. It's not just Lowe's/Home Depot, I've seen new ones popping up at grocery stores and storage unit businesses. To go from my house to the grocery store 4 miles away, I have to drive by 6 flock camera deployments. Hardware store 6 miles away? That's at least 9-12 cameras I have to pass. I literally cannot leave my neighborhood without Flock knowing about it because they've installed them at every single entrance. And that's just the driving portion of a trip. I stopped going to Big box stores almost completely because I'm tired of looking up as I walk down the aisles and see a fucking screen showing me on camera with big red letters stating "Recording in progress". That's not enough though, you go to the self checkout and have cameras above you and in the checkout machines watching and recording and analyzing your every movement and facial expression. It's blatantly obvious what's going on if people would look up from their phones for 10 minutes and pay attention.
    - abalashov 4mo ago
      > if people would look up from their phones for 10 minutes and pay attention. Ah, that's a big ask in 2026...
- assimpleaspossi 4mo ago
  Make sure you're not looking at traffic control cameras. These are used to monitor traffic for the traffic lights.
kodablah 4mo ago
"Meanwhile in <location> we can't even have Flock cameras to automatically catch people who may have killed someone" Hopefully the absurdity of broad scale surveillance can't be so easily lost in hyperbole
- microgpt 4mo ago
  Flock doesn't automatically catch people who killed someone. Red light cameras do catch people who run red lights.
  - kodablah 4mo ago
    And people that don't run red lights and suffer selective enforcement and are used for arbitrary surveillance and so on and so on. Don't let your naive view of what you want these things and their handlers to do distract you from reality, regardless of the brand or intent of widely deployed cameras.
    - kjkjadksj 4mo ago
      Traditional red light cameras take a still frame and are triggered only during a red light violation.
      - microgpt 4mo ago
        That's actually a problem because sometimes they catch people who weren't running the red light, but easily fixed by capturing a bit more.
        KennyBlanken 4mo ago
        Thank goodness you found a basic flaw in red light and speed enforcement cameras. It's shame it's taken decades for someone to realize this issue and now we can finally start working on solutions like taking two photos.
  - Libcat99 4mo ago
pack_stimulus 4mo ago
That is ridiculous. Some level of surveillance is necessary to bring the society closer to the optimal state.
- AlexeyBelov 4mo ago
  Americans don't want to be optimal, they want to be free.

fc417fc802 4mo ago

Honestly I like that policy. What's the legality of flock in Texas?

Spooky23 4mo ago
Totally legal. The operating theory of all of these cameras is that anything happening in public sight is by its nature not private. The federal government is dumping millions and millions of dollars into grant programs for municipalities to buy it… It’s a giant federal surveillance program disguised as decisions made by individual police departments. It’s hilarious and depressing to contrast the HN community reaction to Snowden versus the mostly meh response to flock.
- bertt 4mo ago
  You're mistaken if you think the community is still the same percentage of humans.
  - Spooky23 4mo ago
    That’s a fair point that I didn’t consider, thank you.
- pixl97 4mo ago
  The last 20 years has burned privacy into the ground for a large part of the population.
  - ButlerianJihad 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - cucumber3732842 4mo ago
      There's this insidious tendency among HNers to make this argument and ones like it. Yeah, if you live in a tiny medieval village or a small town in the middle of nowhere in 1980 there was little "privacy" but Jeffrey Dahmer was fucking dudes (back when that wasn't ok) and eating people in his apartment for years before anyone caught on. In more suburban settings there truly was privacy to a large practical extent. Furthermore, these argument lie through their teeth to portray privacy from those who you mostly voluntarily associate, vs privacy from government systems that can seek you out, have power over you and can fairly unilaterally screw you with little recourse and you cannot choose not to associate with. Having people not associate with you in 1980, or 1280, because you did something sly or immoral is fundamentally different from being combed over by the government because you hit some unknowable proprietary criteria that triggered them to go over you with a fine tooth comb.
      - ButlerianJihad 4mo ago
        Have you ever seen "Wings of Desire" (der Himmel über Berlin)? for anyone who's paranoid about "surveillance states" it's an eye-opener, about how things really work: about how overseers and spiritual beings really may perceive human activity, and if you really think about it, perhaps there is good that can come from this. There's this insidious HN tendency to believe that "The Government" (whatever that means) is 100% malicious and Out To Get Us. The reality is far more nuanced, my friend. if "The Government" was truly out to get so many people, they would get them, and society wouldn't actually functoin. "The Government" wants people to work, and raise children and stimulate the economy; The Government likes when people are abled and working/supporting others, and paying taxes, and HNers seem to think "The Government" wants to perpetually interfere and intervene and trip us up. Just reading HN and /. and the other paranoia boards, I'd think that there are swat teams on every corner and black helicopters pouncing on every third hacker on a weekly basis, man. The crazy thing is that this administration in the USA is gutting governmental apparatus, makign a "small government" and "drainining the swamp" that leftists love to hate on, but honestly a "smaller government" definitely for sure won't have enough ability to screw with the common man like y'all believe it would. Sure, gov't can privatize a lot of stuff like handing over to Flock, but still, Flock's aligned with them, and (see Wings of Desire again) this is not malice and not naked malevolence. Sorry.
  - Manuel_D 4mo ago
    The plain view doctrine dates back to the 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_view_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_view_doctrine
    - fc417fc802 4mo ago
      Context matters. At the time cameras were large and bulky. Computers were massive and extremely power hungry. The world's communication networks didn't have the bandwidth to shuttle video around in bulk.
- infecto 4mo ago
  What meh response? There has been a continued and very vocal response against flock here.
  - Spooky23 4mo ago
    If you pointed out any of the many problematic aspects of Snowden in those days, you’d be shouted down and voted into oblivion immediately.
    - mixmastamyk 4mo ago
      Good, because nothing “problematic” about an individual matters one bit when presented with nefarious government activities. It’s obvious distraction technique 101.

hfosidkc77 4mo ago

Having been in Texas last month these cameras are all over your state. I saw them everywhere from the smallest city to houston https://imgur.com/a/P7WxKpU https://imgur.com/a/P7WxKpU

kodablah 4mo ago
They're all basically turned off by law, just not removed
- rigrassm 4mo ago
  Go visit Harris County where Houston is, they are definitely active and more are getting deployed constantly. More commercial businesses are also installing them in their parking lots. It's not just Lowe's/Home Depot, I've seen new ones popping up at grocery stores and storage unit businesses. To go from my house to the grocery store 4 miles away, I have to drive by 6 flock camera deployments. Hardware store 6 miles away? That's at least 9-12 cameras I have to pass. I literally cannot leave my neighborhood without Flock knowing about it because they've installed them at every single entrance. And that's just the driving portion of a trip. I stopped going to Big box stores almost completely because I'm tired of looking up as I walk down the aisles and see a fucking screen showing me on camera with big red letters stating "Recording in progress". That's not enough though, you go to the self checkout and have cameras above you and in the checkout machines watching and recording and analyzing your every movement and facial expression. It's blatantly obvious what's going on if people would look up from their phones for 10 minutes and pay attention.
  - abalashov 4mo ago
    > if people would look up from their phones for 10 minutes and pay attention. Ah, that's a big ask in 2026...
assimpleaspossi 4mo ago
Make sure you're not looking at traffic control cameras. These are used to monitor traffic for the traffic lights.

kodablah 4mo ago

"Meanwhile in <location> we can't even have Flock cameras to automatically catch people who may have killed someone" Hopefully the absurdity of broad scale surveillance can't be so easily lost in hyperbole

microgpt 4mo ago
Flock doesn't automatically catch people who killed someone. Red light cameras do catch people who run red lights.
- kodablah 4mo ago
  And people that don't run red lights and suffer selective enforcement and are used for arbitrary surveillance and so on and so on. Don't let your naive view of what you want these things and their handlers to do distract you from reality, regardless of the brand or intent of widely deployed cameras.
  - kjkjadksj 4mo ago
    Traditional red light cameras take a still frame and are triggered only during a red light violation.
    - microgpt 4mo ago
      That's actually a problem because sometimes they catch people who weren't running the red light, but easily fixed by capturing a bit more.
      - KennyBlanken 4mo ago
        Thank goodness you found a basic flaw in red light and speed enforcement cameras. It's shame it's taken decades for someone to realize this issue and now we can finally start working on solutions like taking two photos.
- Libcat99 4mo ago

pack_stimulus 4mo ago

That is ridiculous. Some level of surveillance is necessary to bring the society closer to the optimal state.

AlexeyBelov 4mo ago
Americans don't want to be optimal, they want to be free.