3 ms·

I don't get why any of these devices are still intact...

by aquir 3mo ago

inquirerGeneral 3mo ago
[dead]
EA-3167 3mo ago
Are you willing to potentially be prosecuted to make a point that will ultimately come down to, "The cameras you destroyed are replaced with newly purchased units"? The way to beat this isn't vandalism, it's getting them banned from every municipality and county in the country, while fighting at state levels for more bans. It's also silly talk from kids online, just like "Don't vote, burn your local Wal-Mart" is only meant to impress other online children. The rest of us know that you'll neither vote, nor burn down the Wal-Mart.
- microgpt 3mo ago
  You get to sacrifice your life one or zero times in your life. Surely there are some terminally ill people who would do it?
  - EA-3167 3mo ago
    I can't speak for anyone else, but I suspect most terminally ill people want to spend time with the people they love, not breaking cameras and working their way through the legal system.
    - microgpt 3mo ago
      When I'm terminally ill one day I will find some good thing to do similar to vandalizing Flock cameras. If they arrest me, I won't care too much.
AstroNutt 3mo ago
Right? The installers conveniently made them within baseball bat range. Luckily, we don't have them where I live (small West Texas town).
Manuel_D 3mo ago
Because most of the American public is not as reflexively anti-Flock as HN would lead you to believe. People acting like cameras recording their activities in public is some sort of grave privacy violation are not the norm. Cameras recording tour activity in malls, and on public roads has been the case since the 90s. Flock became a lightning rod of attention due to ICE, but they don't actually represent any change from the status quo.
- dw_arthur 3mo ago
  A camera in 2026 is not the camera of 1996. Cameras today are connected to active and passive monitoring systems which are much more invasive to privacy. What will a camera be able to do in 2036?
  - Manuel_D 3mo ago
    To the contrary, cameras have been able to automatically read license plates since the 70s, and the technology became cheaper and more widely deployed in the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni... At the end of the day, a camera in public can only record images of people in public. That does not and never did require a warrant.
    - eightysixfour 3mo ago
      One of the things that is really interesting to me is when people don't update their opinions of some thing when the level of difficulty and cost associated with that thing change. A few decades ago, if a police officer wanted to find the whereabouts of some individual, they would have to do some serious leg work, even with ALPRs, potentially watch many hours of videos, etc. With Flock that can be reduced to a mere search query across many locales (maybe not even their locale!) with effectively no effort spent. When the cost changes so dramatically it effectively changes the balance of power and that is something we should, at the very least, deeply consider.
      - 3mo ago

I don't get why any of these devices are still intact...

by aquir 3mo ago

I don't get why any of these devices are still intact...

inquirerGeneral 3mo ago

[dead]

EA-3167 3mo ago

Are you willing to potentially be prosecuted to make a point that will ultimately come down to, "The cameras you destroyed are replaced with newly purchased units"? The way to beat this isn't vandalism, it's getting them banned from every municipality and county in the country, while fighting at state levels for more bans. It's also silly talk from kids online, just like "Don't vote, burn your local Wal-Mart" is only meant to impress other online children. The rest of us know that you'll neither vote, nor burn down the Wal-Mart.

microgpt 3mo ago
You get to sacrifice your life one or zero times in your life. Surely there are some terminally ill people who would do it?
- EA-3167 3mo ago
  I can't speak for anyone else, but I suspect most terminally ill people want to spend time with the people they love, not breaking cameras and working their way through the legal system.
  - microgpt 3mo ago
    When I'm terminally ill one day I will find some good thing to do similar to vandalizing Flock cameras. If they arrest me, I won't care too much.

AstroNutt 3mo ago

Right? The installers conveniently made them within baseball bat range. Luckily, we don't have them where I live (small West Texas town).

Manuel_D 3mo ago

Because most of the American public is not as reflexively anti-Flock as HN would lead you to believe. People acting like cameras recording their activities in public is some sort of grave privacy violation are not the norm. Cameras recording tour activity in malls, and on public roads has been the case since the 90s. Flock became a lightning rod of attention due to ICE, but they don't actually represent any change from the status quo.

dw_arthur 3mo ago
A camera in 2026 is not the camera of 1996. Cameras today are connected to active and passive monitoring systems which are much more invasive to privacy. What will a camera be able to do in 2036?
- Manuel_D 3mo ago
  To the contrary, cameras have been able to automatically read license plates since the 70s, and the technology became cheaper and more widely deployed in the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni... At the end of the day, a camera in public can only record images of people in public. That does not and never did require a warrant.
  - eightysixfour 3mo ago
    One of the things that is really interesting to me is when people don't update their opinions of some thing when the level of difficulty and cost associated with that thing change. A few decades ago, if a police officer wanted to find the whereabouts of some individual, they would have to do some serious leg work, even with ALPRs, potentially watch many hours of videos, etc. With Flock that can be reduced to a mere search query across many locales (maybe not even their locale!) with effectively no effort spent. When the cost changes so dramatically it effectively changes the balance of power and that is something we should, at the very least, deeply consider.
    - 3mo ago