4 ms·

Can someone explain to me why you wouldn't want a camera accessible to police monitoring the comings and goings of your residence? Seems it would make it trivia

by bko 2mo ago

Can someone explain to me why you wouldn't want a camera accessible to police monitoring the comings and goings of your residence? Seems it would make it trivial to catch any criminal behavior. And the pool makes sense as well as pools are incredibly dangerous. If children are regularly breaking in and swimming at night, which has been known to happen, it's a huge liability to residents not to mention the possibility of someone drowning I guess it could be private effort (everyone I know has a ring or Google home type system monitoring their residence 24/7), but I think the hysterics around Flock is mostly an online phenomenon.

ceejayoz 2mo ago
> Can someone explain to me why you wouldn't want a camera accessible to police monitoring the comings and goings of your residence? You can't be serious. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-police-officers-used-vast-network-cameras-spy-their-exes/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-pol... "Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems." They're stalking people with them.
- bko 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - iamnothere 2mo ago
    You don’t buy it? Do you think the charges were fabricated?
  - lightedman 2mo ago
    "I just don't buy it." Literally there are ARRESTS AND CHARGES against these cops and you 'just don't buy it.' Do you see what's wrong with your statement? You're being 100% disingenuous.
  - digi59404 2mo ago
    Drops in crime are not related to Flock and Policing. The crime statistics have been dropping for a long time. Since its peak in the early 1990s. This has been occurring since before smartphones, before flock, hell before DVDs became mainstream. Crime is cultural. The US’s culture has changed significantly since the 1990s and continues to do so. Flock and Police are not crime prevention; they are crime reaction. The police in the US do not exist to “stop crime” despite the public marketing they do so. That’s literally marketing and salesmanship on their part. Police have no legal requirement to protect individuals nor their property. A police officer could watch someone be murdered infront of them, do nothing, and they would suffer no legal consequences. Infact they might get fired, then sue for back pay and early retirement. It’s happened. Multiple times. Going back to crime - Again, it’s cultural. The US has adopted a culture since the 1990s that “crime doesn’t pay” and that crime isn’t ok. The US has also changed its stance on drugs and addictive substances offering treatment instead of punishment in many cases. Weed is legal now, it wasn’t then. Flock and Policing tactics have very little to do with the drop in crime.
    - bko 2mo ago
      Of course cops stop crime. Well maybe not cops but putting people that commit crime in prison, there is less crime. Look at El Salvador as an example. It's that easy
      - ceejayoz 2mo ago
        https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/trump-bukele-deportation-deal-cecot-prison-el-salvador/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/trump-bukele-depo... > Bukele’s government had previously negotiated with MS-13 and other violent gangs it publicly claimed to be cracking down on, El Faro found. Those negotiations, documents showed, involved offering privileges to gang leaders in prison, in exchange for a reduction in homicides and voter support in territories the gangs controlled. Not sure that’s a great model to emulate.
        bko 2mo ago
        > Over the past ten years, El Salvador’s crime rate has experienced a historic transformation, plummeting by roughly 98%. Homicides dropped from a devastating peak of 103 to 105 per 100,000 residents in 2015—when it was considered one of the world's murder capitals—to a historic low of approximately 1.3 per 100,000 residents. Yeah, I think its a great model to emulate.
  - bluGill 2mo ago
    Crime in cities has been going down globally for a long time. Is this because of Flock or not is an open question that I have not seen anyone unbiased comment on. (though honestly I don't think Flock has been around long enough for a proper study to be done - they need to figure out all the different confounding factors and how to control for them)
  - pavel_lishin 2mo ago
    That's a heck of a correlation!
- prolly97 2mo ago
  Is this net bad behaviour that was added due to Flock, or was it a bad actor who happened to use Flock? Agreed that it's bad behaviour, and that we don't want police overstepping. But I don't see how the use of Flock by police can't be monitored in a way, which catches or even eliminates this issue.
  - ceejayoz 2mo ago
    > Is this net bad behaviour that was added due to Flock, or was it a bad actor who happened to use Flock? Every tool we give to cops gets widely abused. Which is precisely why we should be slow to provide them with new ones.
  - preg_match 2mo ago
    Yes, surely if we add more surveillance then the problems of surveillance will be solved. Police have bad behavior because it's de-facto allowed. Police have very little accountability. They can do whatever they want and nobody really cares in a way that matters. The department protects them, courts go light on them, and prosecutors don't prosecute. If you surveil the police, it doesn't matter. You can catch the police killing someone on camera and they're not going to jail. When bad behavior is allowed, and said bad behavior "helps" your life in some way, why wouldn't you do it? It's a matter of incentives. We build an incentive structure where police are rewarded for being awful. So the end result is the police are awful basically by construction. They can't not be awful.
stevecoalbear 2mo ago
You're absolutely right! If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. That's why I installed a camera in your bathroom and made it publicly accessible to the internet. If somebody commits a crime in your bathroom, they'll be trivially caught. Find me some evidence that Flock ever helped catch a criminal.
- bko 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 2mo ago
    > You have no right to privacy entering my neighborhood. You own the whole thing, huh?
    - bko 2mo ago
      [flagged]
      - solid_fuel 2mo ago
        [flagged]
joshgachnang 2mo ago
This assumes the police are always upstanding and never have ulterior motives. Which has proven not to be true. [0] and tons of others [0] https://www.kcra.com/article/new-bedford-police-officer-on-leave/73434678 https://www.kcra.com/article/new-bedford-police-officer-on-l...
- bko 2mo ago
  This assumes that the benefit of allowing police to effectively do their job outweighs instances of abuse of that power. I don't get this argument. Police aren't perfect therefore police shouldn't be granted the ability to do their job?
  - lightedman 2mo ago
    Police already can't do their job because we select for sub-90 IQ cops. Giving idiot cops abusable tools is PURE AND UTTER STUPIDITY. If you think otherwise, I can't wait for those same idiots to kick in your door despite you having done nothing wrong due to some false accusation by a clanker and show you the error of your mistaken train of thought.
    - tptacek 2mo ago
      If by that you mean we formally select for police with lower intelligence, that's not true; it's an Internet urban myth. If you meant something along the lines of the job's conditions and circumstances intrinsically selects for people with lower intelligence, I mean, I disagree, but you could have the debate.
      - lightedman 2mo ago
        "that's not true; it's an Internet urban myth." Jordan vs City of New London, year 2000, US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals - try again.
        tptacek 2mo ago
iamnothere 2mo ago
I have neighbors and that’s good enough. We all think Flock is creepy and nobody wants to be listed in a database. At this point everyone’s had their PII leaked more than once, so everyone knows the risk. I personally have an NVR that isn’t connected to the internet and I encourage others to do the same if they want cameras.
jakeinspace 2mo ago
The police aren't your friends
- bluGill 2mo ago
  This isn't true. Most police are your friends. The problem is a few are not your friends and nobody can tell the difference until it is too late.
Msurrow 2mo ago
Privacy. Controlling your own data.
Tepix 2mo ago
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia, 1756.
- bko 2mo ago
  “Where there is no law, there is no freedom.” John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1689)
  - ceejayoz 2mo ago
    Ah yes, laws, notoriously non-existent before the introduction of camera surveillance.
- LazyMans 2mo ago
  The irony of this quote, is it's about a communities right to fund their own defense when the greater powers (London at the time, federal gov't now) will not provide what is needed. It's about a community having the power and holding that power. The flock business model is precisely this. Those who pay for the cameras decide how it is used. Your participation in local government will have greater and faster impact in the use of your local ALPR technology than the federal government will have for a long time.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
chime 2mo ago
If it was just 2-4 weeks of camera footage archives accessible to local police with paper trail on an as-needed basis, I doubt there would be much opposition. But then this happened in my county: https://www.lakemchenryscanner.com/2026/06/19/prosecutors-say-mchenry-county-police-chief-used-flock-license-plate-reader-data-hundreds-of-times-to-track-people-he-knew/ https://www.lakemchenryscanner.com/2026/06/19/prosecutors-sa...
Zigurd 2mo ago
Have you seen American cops?
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
bluGill 2mo ago
If only everything worked perfectly as intended. In the real world there are unintended consequences of most things we do and we need to balance. The question isn't what good can these do, the question is does the good outweigh the bad? At best we can say the jury is still out on that question - and we can only say that on the assumption that Flock and the law (likely both) does something about the ways the system can be abused.

by bko 2mo ago

ceejayoz 2mo ago

> Can someone explain to me why you wouldn't want a camera accessible to police monitoring the comings and goings of your residence? You can't be serious. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-police-officers-used-vast-network-cameras-spy-their-exes/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-pol... "Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems." They're stalking people with them.

bko 2mo ago
[flagged]
- iamnothere 2mo ago
  You don’t buy it? Do you think the charges were fabricated?
- lightedman 2mo ago
  "I just don't buy it." Literally there are ARRESTS AND CHARGES against these cops and you 'just don't buy it.' Do you see what's wrong with your statement? You're being 100% disingenuous.
- digi59404 2mo ago
  Drops in crime are not related to Flock and Policing. The crime statistics have been dropping for a long time. Since its peak in the early 1990s. This has been occurring since before smartphones, before flock, hell before DVDs became mainstream. Crime is cultural. The US’s culture has changed significantly since the 1990s and continues to do so. Flock and Police are not crime prevention; they are crime reaction. The police in the US do not exist to “stop crime” despite the public marketing they do so. That’s literally marketing and salesmanship on their part. Police have no legal requirement to protect individuals nor their property. A police officer could watch someone be murdered infront of them, do nothing, and they would suffer no legal consequences. Infact they might get fired, then sue for back pay and early retirement. It’s happened. Multiple times. Going back to crime - Again, it’s cultural. The US has adopted a culture since the 1990s that “crime doesn’t pay” and that crime isn’t ok. The US has also changed its stance on drugs and addictive substances offering treatment instead of punishment in many cases. Weed is legal now, it wasn’t then. Flock and Policing tactics have very little to do with the drop in crime.
  - bko 2mo ago
    Of course cops stop crime. Well maybe not cops but putting people that commit crime in prison, there is less crime. Look at El Salvador as an example. It's that easy
    - ceejayoz 2mo ago
      https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/trump-bukele-deportation-deal-cecot-prison-el-salvador/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/trump-bukele-depo... > Bukele’s government had previously negotiated with MS-13 and other violent gangs it publicly claimed to be cracking down on, El Faro found. Those negotiations, documents showed, involved offering privileges to gang leaders in prison, in exchange for a reduction in homicides and voter support in territories the gangs controlled. Not sure that’s a great model to emulate.
      - bko 2mo ago
        > Over the past ten years, El Salvador’s crime rate has experienced a historic transformation, plummeting by roughly 98%. Homicides dropped from a devastating peak of 103 to 105 per 100,000 residents in 2015—when it was considered one of the world's murder capitals—to a historic low of approximately 1.3 per 100,000 residents. Yeah, I think its a great model to emulate.
- bluGill 2mo ago
  Crime in cities has been going down globally for a long time. Is this because of Flock or not is an open question that I have not seen anyone unbiased comment on. (though honestly I don't think Flock has been around long enough for a proper study to be done - they need to figure out all the different confounding factors and how to control for them)
- pavel_lishin 2mo ago
  That's a heck of a correlation!
prolly97 2mo ago
Is this net bad behaviour that was added due to Flock, or was it a bad actor who happened to use Flock? Agreed that it's bad behaviour, and that we don't want police overstepping. But I don't see how the use of Flock by police can't be monitored in a way, which catches or even eliminates this issue.
- ceejayoz 2mo ago
  > Is this net bad behaviour that was added due to Flock, or was it a bad actor who happened to use Flock? Every tool we give to cops gets widely abused. Which is precisely why we should be slow to provide them with new ones.
- preg_match 2mo ago
  Yes, surely if we add more surveillance then the problems of surveillance will be solved. Police have bad behavior because it's de-facto allowed. Police have very little accountability. They can do whatever they want and nobody really cares in a way that matters. The department protects them, courts go light on them, and prosecutors don't prosecute. If you surveil the police, it doesn't matter. You can catch the police killing someone on camera and they're not going to jail. When bad behavior is allowed, and said bad behavior "helps" your life in some way, why wouldn't you do it? It's a matter of incentives. We build an incentive structure where police are rewarded for being awful. So the end result is the police are awful basically by construction. They can't not be awful.

stevecoalbear 2mo ago

You're absolutely right! If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. That's why I installed a camera in your bathroom and made it publicly accessible to the internet. If somebody commits a crime in your bathroom, they'll be trivially caught. Find me some evidence that Flock ever helped catch a criminal.

bko 2mo ago
[flagged]
- ceejayoz 2mo ago
  > You have no right to privacy entering my neighborhood. You own the whole thing, huh?
  - bko 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - solid_fuel 2mo ago
      [flagged]

joshgachnang 2mo ago

This assumes the police are always upstanding and never have ulterior motives. Which has proven not to be true. [0] and tons of others [0] https://www.kcra.com/article/new-bedford-police-officer-on-leave/73434678 https://www.kcra.com/article/new-bedford-police-officer-on-l...

bko 2mo ago
This assumes that the benefit of allowing police to effectively do their job outweighs instances of abuse of that power. I don't get this argument. Police aren't perfect therefore police shouldn't be granted the ability to do their job?
- lightedman 2mo ago
  Police already can't do their job because we select for sub-90 IQ cops. Giving idiot cops abusable tools is PURE AND UTTER STUPIDITY. If you think otherwise, I can't wait for those same idiots to kick in your door despite you having done nothing wrong due to some false accusation by a clanker and show you the error of your mistaken train of thought.
  - tptacek 2mo ago
    If by that you mean we formally select for police with lower intelligence, that's not true; it's an Internet urban myth. If you meant something along the lines of the job's conditions and circumstances intrinsically selects for people with lower intelligence, I mean, I disagree, but you could have the debate.
    - lightedman 2mo ago
      "that's not true; it's an Internet urban myth." Jordan vs City of New London, year 2000, US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals - try again.
      - tptacek 2mo ago

iamnothere 2mo ago

I have neighbors and that’s good enough. We all think Flock is creepy and nobody wants to be listed in a database. At this point everyone’s had their PII leaked more than once, so everyone knows the risk. I personally have an NVR that isn’t connected to the internet and I encourage others to do the same if they want cameras.

jakeinspace 2mo ago

The police aren't your friends

bluGill 2mo ago
This isn't true. Most police are your friends. The problem is a few are not your friends and nobody can tell the difference until it is too late.

Msurrow 2mo ago

Privacy. Controlling your own data.

Tepix 2mo ago

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia, 1756.

bko 2mo ago
“Where there is no law, there is no freedom.” John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1689)
- ceejayoz 2mo ago
  Ah yes, laws, notoriously non-existent before the introduction of camera surveillance.
LazyMans 2mo ago
The irony of this quote, is it's about a communities right to fund their own defense when the greater powers (London at the time, federal gov't now) will not provide what is needed. It's about a community having the power and holding that power. The flock business model is precisely this. Those who pay for the cameras decide how it is used. Your participation in local government will have greater and faster impact in the use of your local ALPR technology than the federal government will have for a long time.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

chime 2mo ago

If it was just 2-4 weeks of camera footage archives accessible to local police with paper trail on an as-needed basis, I doubt there would be much opposition. But then this happened in my county: https://www.lakemchenryscanner.com/2026/06/19/prosecutors-say-mchenry-county-police-chief-used-flock-license-plate-reader-data-hundreds-of-times-to-track-people-he-knew/ https://www.lakemchenryscanner.com/2026/06/19/prosecutors-sa...

Zigurd 2mo ago

Have you seen American cops?

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

bluGill 2mo ago

If only everything worked perfectly as intended. In the real world there are unintended consequences of most things we do and we need to balance. The question isn't what good can these do, the question is does the good outweigh the bad? At best we can say the jury is still out on that question - and we can only say that on the assumption that Flock and the law (likely both) does something about the ways the system can be abused.