5 ms·

Flock used >100 times to track veteran who recorded traffic stop

380 points by bbatsell 28d ago

claaams 28d ago
How was there ever any doubt that these cameras and this access would be used in this way? I personally blame the lack of accountability that police have in the US and the lack of public oversight into how departments operate.
- bigyabai 28d ago
  I personally blame Y Combinator for looking at Flock and going "Well, there is potential for abuse, but that's a risk we're willing to impose on society to make some money."
  - solenoid0937 28d ago
    Not enough people blame VCs and the people that fund evil things. They are accessories. They knew this would happen, let's not pretend they didn't. They are just shameless because making money has been canonized as a greater moral good than being a decent human being. We need to bring back name and shame.
    - matsemann 28d ago
      Sooo many will tout something along "fiduciary duty to shareholders" to explain why evil must happen. Just search for it in comments here on HN, and you will see it again and again, as if everyone's hands are twisted.
      - eecc 28d ago
        Well, doing the most immoral and reprehensible thing on the edge of what’s lawful is a guaranteed “blue ocean” strategy so it’s inevitable that the most sociopathic will take the opportunity
      - jtbayly 28d ago
        You are confused. Yes, lots of people say that here, but the intention is almost never to justify immoral behavior. Rather the goal is to delegitimize capitalism by blaming it for the immoral behavior.
        mafuy 28d ago
        No, the parent is exactly right. I've seen it countless times and I am so sick of it. The poor, poor CEO has to be evil, it is his duty.
    - 01284a7e 28d ago
      They are the reason these companies exist. When it comes to the creation of large for-profit technology companies, they decide what comes about and what doesn't. The blame is on them.
      - Zigurd 28d ago
        They also fit startup logic in a peculiarly perverted way: try all the nasty stuff compartmentalized into a low stakes stealth mode start up, then become an acquisition target once you've got the perverted PMF of having a benign looking product that hides the evil within. Clean hands for the acquirer.
    - Jtarii 28d ago
      Blaming people trying to make money is so pointless. Change the law if you don't like what is happening.
      - a2ff6eeb0 28d ago
        You're right. People trying to make money should be held legally accountable for the impact of their investments.
      - lokar 28d ago
        The law is properly a limit on behavior, not a grant for acceptable behavior. It defines in which situations the state will ultimately employ its monopoly on violence to compel compliance. This is a vastly smaller set of situations compared to what a health society would consider acceptable.
      - solenoid0937 28d ago
        > Change the law There is a huge gulf between what the law allows, and what being a decent person requires, and that gulf is called "being a scumbag." We should not alter the law to prohibit everything in that gulf, because it would create an authoritarian society ripe for abuse, relying on controls like mass surveillance and the erasure of civil liberties. However, we can and should name, shame, and socially/commercially outcast people who gleefully engage in the art of being a scumbag. > trying to make money It is indeed possible to make money without funding evil things.
      - catlover76 28d ago
        [dead]
    - notnullorvoid 28d ago
      They are more than a accessory. You wouldn't say someone who funds a contract killing is merely an accessory to murder. VCs should likewise be considered as principal offenders, unless there is proof that the company was not transparent with the VCs.
    - bigyabai 28d ago
      They're more than accessories, that nearly writes them off as being innocent looped-in bystanders. Y Combinator has a vested stake, they want to encourage a maximalist Flock-centric police force. They directly profit off police that are incapable of doing their job without extreme, abusive tools at their disposal. You could argue that YC has more of a conscience than other investors like A16Z. But I'm not sure how much I believe that seeing Gary Tan's moral indifference towards startups that are the incarnate equivalent of the Torment Nexus.
  - deleted 28d ago
    [deleted]
  - bko 28d ago
    Its a camera bro, reading the same license plates your can read with your eyes. If you care about your precincts policies go take it up with them. You may as well go after companies selling firearms to police.
    - patrickmay 28d ago
      There is a massive difference between a human making observations and 120,000 cameras (at last count) coordinated through a single company's computer systems. This surveillance state enablement is as anti-American as it gets.
      - bko 28d ago
        They take pictures of cars in certain intersections and register their license plates and keep them between 0 and 30 days typically (usually 7). It can be queried and logged. So if someone gets kidnapped and they're looking for someone its easy to track them. There have been 1m “cases supported” and helping to locate approximately 10k missing persons. If you don't believe that look at a few real cases. Every example of a bad case is basically cops keeping tabs on ex-girlfiends or wives. Yes, that's bad but I prefer to save kids from kidnapping. Saying its "anti-American" isn't an argument. I think it's very pro-American in that it protects law abiding Americans from criminals. https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/how-effective-is-flock https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/how-effective-is-flock https://www.wbrc.com/2026/09/04/moody-police-woman-charged-with-kidnapping-13-year-old-girl/ https://www.wbrc.com/2026/09/04/moody-police-woman-charged-w... https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/galt-flock-kidnapping-arrest-victim-resuced/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/galt-flock-kidnappin... https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/mitchell-weber-arrest-colorado-road-rage/ https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/mitchell-weber-arrest-...
        ipython 28d ago
        Agreed. Which is why I’m in favor of recording all conversations within earshot of any public location. Those can be tagged for keywords related to child endangerment. After all, who would argue against protecting kids? In fact, we should take the pictures from public school districts and feed them into this system. Facial recognition immediately available on any kid that happens to walk on any public street. Why would anyone want to opt out of such a system? (/s if it isn’t obvious)
  - ipython 28d ago
    Don’t know why you’re downvoted but this venture funding is exactly what makes the scale and centralization of surveillance possible. You can’t build this sort of system out without the debt financing provided by the vc industry. For example - I don’t have links to substantiate this yet - but I’d bet the same playbook that’s always used was used here as well. Flock cameras were provided to cash strapped police departments at a very low cost - unsustainably low for any other non vc funded company to compete with - in order to juice growth and build the scale/network effect to make the system valuable.
- ggreer 28d ago
  I'm pretty sure license plate readers and other surveillance tech have been abused constantly in the past, but we see more articles about Flock because they have better logging & auditing compared to smaller competitors or government-owned cameras.
  - ipython 28d ago
    Flock also has the advantage of scale and centralization where previous solutions had neither
- GymInMeCricket 28d ago
  In my opinion, there was never any doubt that there would be over-policing. Rather, people doubt that they would belong to the over-policed parties. I hear similar arguments about NSF funding from my relatives: "yes, funding has been illegally cut, but it will not be cut for the people I know, only for the 'bad' researchers."
  - madaxe_again 28d ago
    Leopards, faces, and all that jazz.
  - scotty79 28d ago
    Calling fishing for vengance "overpolicing", that says a lot.
    - GymInMeCricket 28d ago
      Appologies, but I don't know what you mean.
      - Hikikomori 28d ago
        Its a fair bit more than overpolicing. If you don't think it is hope that boot is tasty.
      - repeekad 28d ago
        Being anti police is a bit of a wedge in US politics, it's privileged to say we don't need as much police because the poorest communities are often who need it most. Abusing surveillance tools has nothing to do with legitimate policing, so "over-policing" is probably the wrong word.
        wredcoll 28d ago
        > Being anti police is a bit of a wedge in US politics, it's privileged to say we don't need as much police because the poorest communities are often who need it most. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but it sure sounds bad. Poor communities have frequently suffered the most from police forces, since by and large police are designed and funded by the wealthy to protect their interests.
- bediger4000 28d ago
  There wasn't for anyone who paid attention. That "logic of surveillance" article a few years ago got it 100% correct: surveillance is immediately used against those who object to its use.
- bko 28d ago
  There was an audit trail for improper access using the technology and a lawsuit. How is this "lack of accountability" and "lack of public oversight"? Here are the 100 instances: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.114502/gov.uscourts.wied.114502.39.5.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
  - Zigurd 28d ago
    Try FOIAing a body cam, and filing a complaint. You might get action before the next Ice Age. Record a cop doing something blatantly illegal and try finding a willing prosecutor. In practice there's no accountability.
    - bko 28d ago
      This guy seemed to do it. I also have better things to do than record police and refuse instructions. > Record a cop doing something blatantly illegal and try finding a willing prosecutor. The cop wasn't doing anything illegal, from the article: While standing in a private parking lot in Sussex, Wisconsin, on May 4, 2025, Napoleon Jones witnessed a traffic stop made by an out-of-county police officer. "It just didn't sit right with me," Yeah dog, "just didn't sit right" doesn't really hold up.
      - ibejoeb 28d ago
        It doesn't hold up? What the implication, then? That the recording was illegal and the post-arrest investigation yielded the wrong result?
      - throwaway894345 28d ago
        > Yeah dog, "just didn't sit right" doesn't really hold up. Can you cite the law that requires more than “it doesn’t sit right” to record police officers in public?
      - hvb2 28d ago
        An out of county police officer, in general, can't conduct a traffic stop? There's a few exceptions but none of those seem to apply?
- AtlanticThird 28d ago
  Are you aware of any current country or any country throughout history that has granted the government powers like this and hasn't been abused? I think you're mistaken to blame lack of accountability and lack of public oversight. I think it's simply not possible.
  - tene80i 28d ago
    To some extent, the U.K. They’ve had flock-style cameras for years, and while there is of course police abuse there’s far greater accountability. Brits are more comfortable with the idea of police having those powers - but of course that’s partly to do with the fact their police don’t have guns, so are generally less terrifying.
    - 2b3a51 28d ago
      UK police officers are not routinely armed, but there armed response units, and under certain circumstances in e.g. railway stations and airports you will see pairs of officers walking about with machine guns on a regular basis. Accountability: misuse of cctv or bodycam footage can lead to disciplinary action of various kinds including being sacked. The link below will give you an idea of the volume of formal complaints and the 'pipeline' from complaint to potential dismissal and criminal proceedings against officers; https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-misconduct-england-and-wales-year-ending-31-march-2025/police-misconduct-england-and-wales-year-ending-31-march-2025 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-misconduct-e... The accountability system is 'under review' (we do this a lot, slows things down nicely and looks like action); https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/end-to-end-review-of-the-police-accountability-system https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/end-to-end-review... It isn't unicorns and rainbows by any means; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66809642 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66809642
    - AtlanticThird 27d ago
      Not at all true for the UK. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/28/police-accused-widely-misusing-body-worn-video-england-wales https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/28/police-accus...
- tombert 28d ago
  I have gotten in arguments about these Flock cameras, because people will use the "if you're not doing anything wrong you got nothing to worry about" defense. Basically the entire point of the fourth Amendment (and sort of the Bill of Right as a whole) seems to be based on the assumption that we cannot trust the government to not abuse its power, so we purposefully limit its power. At least that's the impression I got, IANAL disclaimer I guess. If we cannot safely assume that every cop is above-board, which we obviously cannot, then it's trivial to come up with cases of "if you got nothing to hide you got nothing to fear" defense. A bad cop could use Flock to stalk an ex-girlfriend. A bad cop could find some unsavory-but-not-illegal behavior from a politician (e.g. visiting a porn shop) and blackmail them. A bad cop could, as demonstrated by this article, simply use a Flock camera to harass someone they don't like. I didn't think this was a controversial opinion, but I do see a lot of Flock/mass-surveillance defenders so I guess it is.
  - rvba 28d ago
    A bad cop can sell your location so they can rob your house when you are out or tell the bad guys how to find you
    - tombert 28d ago
      Agreed. I mean, there's really no shortage of terrible scenarios that can happen if we cannot assume that 100% of cops are good.
      - Zigurd 28d ago
        Even cops that are well intended, that most people would call good, are hopelessly under trained regarding civil rights. A lot of have them have delusions of being some kind of detective and being clever about deceiving you into giving up your rights. Then they become belligerent if you don't play along.
  - CamperBob2 28d ago
    because people will use the "if you're not doing anything wrong you got nothing to worry about" defense Remind them that whether they're doing something wrong or not is not their call. That sometimes shows signs of sinking in.
- hammock 28d ago
  > How was there ever any doubt that these cameras and this access would be used in this way? Strawman. I have never heard of one single ingenuous person that believed these would only be used appropriately. The main issue is that our government has too much power as to be unstoppable.
jmclnx 28d ago
Hopefully he gets a big enough payment that makes other jurisdictions remove these cameras.
- fhdkweig 28d ago
  Hopefully they remove cops who abuse their powers. While I agree that victims require compensation, ultimately these payouts only hurt the taxpayers who have to cover for these cops who at worst just move to another town to do it again.
theturtletalks 28d ago
Was just reading into this and it’s infuriating. He was recording another person’s traffic stop in a parking lot. Once the stop was done, he walks to his car. The same officer goes to his car and “pulls him over.” The vet says that you can’t pull someone over in a private parking lot, that’s not a legal stop. Doesn’t matter, he’s arrested and car towed. He’s kept in jail for 5 hrs before being released for it not being a legal stop just like the vet said. Then that officer tracked him thru flock over 100 times for some personal vendetta.
- Toutouxc 28d ago
  Infuriating, yes, but apparently getting shot for no reason is also quite popular. This sounds like the better deal.
  - scotty79 28d ago
    Nobody offers you such deal. You get both.
- braum 28d ago
  sounds like an easy win for a prosecutor for felony stalking. there needs to be more separation from prosecutors and cops. I know a lot of places now have prosecutors who are actively against cops, that is not what I mean. the prosecutors are supposed to be unbiased and make decisions on evidence. we know they don't regardless of their political leaning. but that is the standard we (citizens) should hold them accountable. unfortunately there are too may bootlicking voters who just want to feel "safe" and have zero courage of their own even in the voting booth. we need to stop giving agencies money based on stats. that is one cause to a lot of these problems. then the cops and agencies get all twisted and in a tissy when a tool that made stat pumping easier like right now the flock cameras.
  - FeepingCreature 28d ago
    > we need to stop giving agencies money based on stats. I think you just need to stop giving agencies money based on bad stats. Goodhart's Law is an extremely well-established effect. At the very least, crime rate should be monitored by a separate department.
layer8 28d ago
The fact that the victim is a Navy veteran should be immaterial here. People shouldn’t be any less upset if he wasn’t.
- CobaltFire 28d ago
  As a veteran I agree, with a significant caveat: Generally those who support the police in general (especially those with the thin blue line American flag displayed somewhere) espouse support for veterans. The clash of a veteran operating legally with police operating illegally helps foster cognitive dissonance and disentangle these two institutions in their mind. In other words these types of articles are helpful for causing those individuals to confront the issues in their belief structure. I use them this way all the time with my parents, as they continue to insist that I (a retired Navy vet) should mindlessly support the police. They are not interested in the LONG history of those two populations clashing.
  - deleted 28d ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 28d ago
    [deleted]
johnmlussier 28d ago
Don't remove the cameras - make sure they're used legally and bad apples don't ruin a good thing: Four different places, four different children rescued by use of Flock cameras. https://kfdm.com/news/local/flock-camera-teamwork-credited-with-rescue-of-missing-child-arrest-of-suspect https://kfdm.com/news/local/flock-camera-teamwork-credited-w... https://www.foxcarolina.com/2026/07/31/kidnapped-mother-son-rescued-with-help-flock-cameras-upstate-deputies-say/ https://www.foxcarolina.com/2026/07/31/kidnapped-mother-son-... https://www.whsv.com/2026/08/01/deputy-uses-flock-cameras-find-missing-girl-less-than-30-minutes/ https://www.whsv.com/2026/08/01/deputy-uses-flock-cameras-fi... https://abc3340.com/news/local/moody-police-say-flock-cameras-helped-find-missing-13-year-old-safe-after-reported-kidnapp https://abc3340.com/news/local/moody-police-say-flock-camera... Want to track latest on what flock cameras did? https://flockstopscrime.com https://flockstopscrime.com
- FeepingCreature 28d ago
  Why not the other way around? First make sure the police department is capable of using them legally and reliably investigating abuse, then we can consider allowing them.
- chuckadams 28d ago
  [flagged]
  - wateralien 28d ago
    > make sure they're used legally and bad apples don't ruin a good thing The unedited comment shows he used it correctly using “and” to mean “so that”.
    - chuckadams 28d ago
      Ah, indeed that is the more likely reading. I stand by the boot bit.
- zapataband1 28d ago
  "bad apples" = one rotten apple ruins the bunch. There are no "good apples" the article itself shows that other "apples" were helping him illegaly surveil. The "good apples" thought it was a good idea to give every apple access to a problematic system. There are no good apples if there's a rotten in the bunch, we need public oversight of the only people that are allowed to enact violence on behalf of the state.
wateralien 28d ago
Surely access to footage can be gated behind some sort of expedited digital court warrant? I always think of that scene in Minority Report where 3 judges are conferenced in live when a “vision” arrived. Because if used properly and lawfully these cameras can be useful to keep people safe. Including from the cops.
- jonahx 28d ago
  In practice, the odds overwhelmingly favor abuse. And even if the "proper and lawful" version was somehow achieved, it would require constant maintenance, security, and expensive oversight that would also be at risk of degenerating back into abuse.
  - wateralien 28d ago
    If abuse can’t be eliminated then it’s about what ratio of abuse to crime reduction is tolerable I guess. If we find 100 taken children while a dirty cop stalks his ex - is that tolerable? I’d say yes. If it became more abused I guess that’s when society needs to decide.
    - bastawhiz 28d ago
      Abuse can be eliminated. It's called requiring a warrant. What's tolerable doesn't matter: we don't need to litigate how willing we are to bend the fourth amendment.
- sampullman 28d ago
  Using minority report as an example of a good policing system is a bit unsettling.
- bastawhiz 28d ago
  You don't need a special speedy system. A regular warrant is just fine. A warrant in this case would never have been granted because there was no suspicion of wrongdoing. There's already processes for expedited search warrants outside of business hours, the problem is that warrants are simply never required to use these services.
ksudb 28d ago
[dead]
spongebobstoes 28d ago
surveillance technology is not going away. we need to mitigate the downsides what systems could be changed or created to prevent abuse of power?
- PunchyHamster 28d ago
  not installing them. Voting out anyone that does
  - atemerev 28d ago
    Not enough. Preemptively passing laws that forbid this kind of mass surveillance. Like in Switzerland and other nice places.
    - NegativeK 28d ago
      Making the possession of data this either illegal or too horribly cumbersome. Flock is just an iteration, and getting rid of that brand won't fix it. And camera tracking of normal citizens is just an iteration -- not the underlying systemic issue that isn't being addressed. The EU has GDPR. At this point, I want something stronger than that.
      - atemerev 26d ago
        Still not enough. What you suggest does not prevent the government of possessing the data. Technical means of collection needs to be preemptively banned.
  - wateralien 28d ago
    Video is useful in keeping people safe. Including from the cops. It’s about remaking the system to require court permission every time they access it, process and transparency.
    - colechristensen 28d ago
GiorgioG 28d ago
Flock is the most successful and well-known company doing this, however they’re not the only one. We need to be really careful to push back against the use of this technology as a whole and not fixate only on Flock. My town doesn’t use Flock, it uses another company’s tech…it’s no better! Don’t give the politicians an out.
- edoceo 28d ago
  Does that company also have three pounds of copper in their cameras, like Flock?
tostrstrudel 28d ago
https://flockonyourblock.com/ https://flockonyourblock.com/
thangalin 28d ago
https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png ;-) See also: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/ https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/
mrluckysmith 28d ago
I think Flock could be very useful to track actual criminals. However, any queries to the system must require a warrant and publicly available track record.
- patrickmay 28d ago
  Requiring a warrant would be better than the status quo, but the very existence of the data is too high a risk, in my opinion.
- hightrix 28d ago
  It would be even easier to track criminals if we required all people* in the country to wear always on devices with GPS, always on cameras, always recording audio that are illegal to disable or turn off. But that would be OK as long as a warrant was required to access it, right? * - All people unable to pay the government to disable the device.
  - mrluckysmith 28d ago
    Personal space intrusion doesn't equal monitoring public roads.
    - arealaccount 28d ago
      Considering how ubiquitous public roads are it sorta does
      - NetMageSCW 28d ago
        And how impossible public roads are to avoid and live.
- Grombobulous 28d ago
  If oligarchs can opt-out it shouldn't exist. They can live in gated communities, travel by chauffeured cars owned by contracted businesses multiple LLCs deep, fly in private airports on private jets, or just go live on a yacht in international waters.
spenrose 28d ago
My mental model: 1. Policing is yet another example of Baumol’s effect[1]; sectors where automation lags become expensive 2. Policing can be automated effectively, including via Flock: > Hunters Point rapper Dreamllife Rizzy described how police tech has made it more difficult to get away with bipping and other crimes. “Crime in San Francisco, period, that shit over with, brother,” the rapper said. “They got drones, hella shit.” He described how Flock cameras clock the plates on a stolen car and send an alert to police stations, which send drones to follow the vehicle.[2] 3. Policing, like major surgery, ambitious construction, military invasions, and other high-consequence endeavors, is not immune to perfidy, incompetence, or other human weaknesses. 4. Argument by implicit synecdoche (here is an example of an abuse, therefore the general behavior is abusive) is ubiquitous and invalid; you need to actually collect wide evidence and weigh major tradeoffs. How does Flock affect total crime rates? Total abuse rates? That only matters if you think that we should be open to the possibility that widespread use of Flock cameras might be good. 5. WRT privacy and policing-the-police in particular, there is a small but highly vocal community of libertarians whose perspective is sharp, detailed, and not reflective of broader society’s perspective except in motte-and-bailey form, and who will never be persuaded by evidence because for them what matters are the principles (n.b.: this observation is not per se a criticism — sometimes principles should trump evidence around tradeoffs). 6. HN’s 10^5 (?) active commenters include 10^4(?) members of that libertarian vanguard 7. Everyone has heard all the libertarian and contra-libertarian arguments going back decades; no one is learning from yet another go-round [1] https://acjsissons.medium.com/the-baumol-effect-not-a-disease-but-a-cure-c63d0ae0b481 https://acjsissons.medium.com/the-baumol-effect-not-a-diseas... [2] https://sfstandard.com/2026/08/13/rest-peace-bip-city/?utm_source=native_share&utm_medium=site_buttons&utm_campaign=site_buttons https://sfstandard.com/2026/08/13/rest-peace-bip-city/?utm_s...
- icantevenhold 28d ago
  Not only is policing not immune against perfidy, but I would argue perfidy is built into the police system as a core tenet. There is a lot of widely available evidence
- skybrian 28d ago
  A way to think of the Baumol effect in more local terms: High-productivity organizations have increased revenue and reduced expenses, almost by definition. These profits can be "spent" in various ways like charging customers less, paying workers more, paying investors more, and blue-sky research. (I'm remembering the early days of Google here.) Or it could fund various forms of corruption. Paying employees more helps drive up local wages. Also, wealthier people want higher-end services and are price-insensitive, so they're inevitably going to be charged more. They'll bid more for houses and pay more to eat in fancier restaurants. People discount the "trickle-down" effect but everyone notices when the cost of living goes up because there are a lot of rich people around who will pay more.
venusenvy47 28d ago
How can we find more information about when we can refuse police requests as is mentioned here? It seems like the public needs to know about when we can legally do this. "Shayhorn's supervisor informed him shortly after the arrest that he'd, in fact, illegally stopped Jones, and he therefore could not compel Jones to produce his identification"
- hammock 28d ago
  Really only three or four things you ought to say during a stop “( Name and address, or license registration and insurance if in a vehicle)” -required by law pretty much everywhere. “I’m exercising my right to silence. I will not answer questions without a lawyer” “I do not consent to any searches” “Am I being detained, or am I free to go”- say this one anytime you think the officer might be done with the reason he stopped you, because it “starts a clock” of unlawful extension Pick whichever one makes the most sense at any given moment. Don’t say anything else. If the officer says you are free to go, leave. As for what you can refuse, you really can’t during the stop. You have to fight in court. LISTEN CAREFULLY to the words of the officer and do not respond to QUESTIONS, only ORDERS. They are trained to ask you to do things that might be unlawful if they were orders, like can you step out of the car for me please, can you follow my flashlight for me, can you roll down your window all the way. If you are unclear, ask “are you ordering me, officer?” If any part of the stop was unlawful your defense attorney can iron that out later in court (and if so, typically everything occurring after the unlawful gets thrown out) If you want to go a step further and be polite etc, know that many police won’t give you brownie points for it, but if they ask you questions like “where are you coming from” or “where are you going” or “who are/were you with” redirect your answers only to plainly obvious facts about YOURSELF ONLY and the PRESENT time, e.g. “I am out for a drive officer” Caveat: IANAL, this is not legal advice Source: SWIM has extensive experience in this area
  - venusenvy47 27d ago
    That's interesting about the questions that sound like orders. I'll have to read up on that and keep it in mind.
jmward01 28d ago
When people believe they are being watched they act differently. Essentially you are coercing them. People need a reasonable sense of privacy to be able to act freely so, to me, this means that privacy is a central requirement of freedom. There are legitimate reasons for some ability to conduct surveillance, but without a cost any surveillance method becomes mass surveillance. That cost must be human, it must scale in human time, or it turns into mass surveillance since without a human cost all it takes is one person and one button to watch one or a hundred thousand people. Technologies like flock have no human scaling cost. They run 24/7/365 and make surveilling one person or hundreds of thousands of people as easy as pushing a button. There is no human scaling cost to them. That means that all it takes to abuse a massive portion of the population is one person and one action. The probability of abuse, abuse which harms a population as a whole, therefore approaches 100% no matter how 'good' the controls are on it. All mass surveillance technologies have this fundamental flaw. The consequence of that abuse is that people, rightfully, will believe that they are being watched, legitimately or not, 24/7/365. The harm here is clear. A society that is under mass surveillance is a society that is having its basic freedoms continuously attacked. Mass surveillance, surveillance without a direct human cost that scales with the level of surveillance, is not compatible with any definition of 'freedom'. Or, to sum all this up, every argument about how a system like this could be made better to limit harm is a red herring because technologies like Flock have a fundamental flaw that is incompatible with any definition of a free society.
jauntywundrkind 28d ago
If only there was a more general way to find the lying sneaking power tripping police officers. Flock is turning out to be quite useful for society, in this one very specific way. Data to watch the watchmen.
ventana 28d ago
Cops love Flock. I'm subscribed to some of the local police department accounts in social networks, and Facebook shows me more of those across the country, and I see a lot of posts like “a serious crime happened, we tracked the car using the Flock license place reader and the suspect is now in custody”. I think it's true that Flock indeed helps with the actual policing, no doubt about that. But it also seems like police departments across the country really try to promote the view that Flock is a good technology that helps safety, because some cities ultimately voted to disable Flock [1], and I'm sure police are just mad about this and don't want this to happen. I can't wait until this finally reaches the Supreme court and they hopefully decide that those cameras are unconstitutional. [1]: just a local example: https://www.mountainview.gov/Home/Components/News/News/1211/284 https://www.mountainview.gov/Home/Components/News/News/1211/...
sershe 28d ago
Should we also have separate posts for every individual case when camera helped catch someone? What's the point of continuously posting what amounts to single anecdotes without any statistical context? Should we ban every technology and shut down any government program that has small amount, but rage-bait-able form of, abuse?
JKCalhoun 28d ago
Flock has become something like the Tantalus Field from the original Star Trek's “Mirror Mirror” episode.
iJohnDoe 28d ago
> "Shayhorn's supervisor informed him shortly after the arrest that he'd, in fact, illegally stopped Jones, and he therefore could not compel Jones to produce his identification" Can we get Shayhorn’s supervisor a medal? Perhaps a parade in their honor? Usually corruption or coerced corruption is so bad in any precinct that this type of proper behavior is shocking. Surprised they didn’t all conspire to put a drop gun on Jones.
welzel 27d ago
Who is surprised by this? what surprises me is that flock has not started a commercial service, where you can have the system surveillance anybody for a daily fee and have it compile a need report for you. Use cases: stalk woman, collect evidence against your enemies, collect dirt for blackmail, etc. Maybe flock is already offering this, but only for the Enterprise customers and 0.1% ....
woadwarrior01 27d ago
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will watch the watchmen?
econ 25d ago
It once struck me that there are way to many laws with hardcoded values. Just like in programming those values reflect situations that aren't nesasarily true anymore. For spying on public we should have laws that scale with trust and accountability. Law enforcement can then chose to persecute their own or lose some public support and lose access to some systems. You can have a point system with different regions having different levels of access. Sometimes it might be as easy as to call the next district to ask if they can look something up. This is both humiliating and adds a layer of accountability. The office in good standing shouldn't be all that willing to stick their neck out for a shady outfit. It's just a crude example. If enough people don't trust you with public cameras you shouldn't have access to them but the moment they do trust you you should. Similarly you can adjust salaries to performance. If people are really doing a wonderful job it is worth rewarding them. If your coworkers is generating some unusual amount of complaints you can talk with them. I certainly wouldn't be willing to put up with loss of tools and a pay cut because they can't behave.

380 points by bbatsell 28d ago

How was there ever any doubt that these cameras and this access would be used in this way? I personally blame the lack of accountability that police have in the US and the lack of public oversight into how departments operate.

bigyabai 28d ago
I personally blame Y Combinator for looking at Flock and going "Well, there is potential for abuse, but that's a risk we're willing to impose on society to make some money."
- solenoid0937 28d ago
  Not enough people blame VCs and the people that fund evil things. They are accessories. They knew this would happen, let's not pretend they didn't. They are just shameless because making money has been canonized as a greater moral good than being a decent human being. We need to bring back name and shame.
  - matsemann 28d ago
    Sooo many will tout something along "fiduciary duty to shareholders" to explain why evil must happen. Just search for it in comments here on HN, and you will see it again and again, as if everyone's hands are twisted.
    - eecc 28d ago
      Well, doing the most immoral and reprehensible thing on the edge of what’s lawful is a guaranteed “blue ocean” strategy so it’s inevitable that the most sociopathic will take the opportunity
    - jtbayly 28d ago
      You are confused. Yes, lots of people say that here, but the intention is almost never to justify immoral behavior. Rather the goal is to delegitimize capitalism by blaming it for the immoral behavior.
      - mafuy 28d ago
        No, the parent is exactly right. I've seen it countless times and I am so sick of it. The poor, poor CEO has to be evil, it is his duty.
  - 01284a7e 28d ago
    They are the reason these companies exist. When it comes to the creation of large for-profit technology companies, they decide what comes about and what doesn't. The blame is on them.
    - Zigurd 28d ago
      They also fit startup logic in a peculiarly perverted way: try all the nasty stuff compartmentalized into a low stakes stealth mode start up, then become an acquisition target once you've got the perverted PMF of having a benign looking product that hides the evil within. Clean hands for the acquirer.
  - Jtarii 28d ago
    Blaming people trying to make money is so pointless. Change the law if you don't like what is happening.
    - a2ff6eeb0 28d ago
      You're right. People trying to make money should be held legally accountable for the impact of their investments.
    - lokar 28d ago
      The law is properly a limit on behavior, not a grant for acceptable behavior. It defines in which situations the state will ultimately employ its monopoly on violence to compel compliance. This is a vastly smaller set of situations compared to what a health society would consider acceptable.
    - solenoid0937 28d ago
      > Change the law There is a huge gulf between what the law allows, and what being a decent person requires, and that gulf is called "being a scumbag." We should not alter the law to prohibit everything in that gulf, because it would create an authoritarian society ripe for abuse, relying on controls like mass surveillance and the erasure of civil liberties. However, we can and should name, shame, and socially/commercially outcast people who gleefully engage in the art of being a scumbag. > trying to make money It is indeed possible to make money without funding evil things.
    - catlover76 28d ago
      [dead]
  - notnullorvoid 28d ago
    They are more than a accessory. You wouldn't say someone who funds a contract killing is merely an accessory to murder. VCs should likewise be considered as principal offenders, unless there is proof that the company was not transparent with the VCs.
  - bigyabai 28d ago
    They're more than accessories, that nearly writes them off as being innocent looped-in bystanders. Y Combinator has a vested stake, they want to encourage a maximalist Flock-centric police force. They directly profit off police that are incapable of doing their job without extreme, abusive tools at their disposal. You could argue that YC has more of a conscience than other investors like A16Z. But I'm not sure how much I believe that seeing Gary Tan's moral indifference towards startups that are the incarnate equivalent of the Torment Nexus.
- deleted 28d ago
  [deleted]
- bko 28d ago
  Its a camera bro, reading the same license plates your can read with your eyes. If you care about your precincts policies go take it up with them. You may as well go after companies selling firearms to police.
  - patrickmay 28d ago
    There is a massive difference between a human making observations and 120,000 cameras (at last count) coordinated through a single company's computer systems. This surveillance state enablement is as anti-American as it gets.
    - bko 28d ago
      They take pictures of cars in certain intersections and register their license plates and keep them between 0 and 30 days typically (usually 7). It can be queried and logged. So if someone gets kidnapped and they're looking for someone its easy to track them. There have been 1m “cases supported” and helping to locate approximately 10k missing persons. If you don't believe that look at a few real cases. Every example of a bad case is basically cops keeping tabs on ex-girlfiends or wives. Yes, that's bad but I prefer to save kids from kidnapping. Saying its "anti-American" isn't an argument. I think it's very pro-American in that it protects law abiding Americans from criminals. https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/how-effective-is-flock https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/how-effective-is-flock https://www.wbrc.com/2026/09/04/moody-police-woman-charged-with-kidnapping-13-year-old-girl/ https://www.wbrc.com/2026/09/04/moody-police-woman-charged-w... https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/galt-flock-kidnapping-arrest-victim-resuced/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/galt-flock-kidnappin... https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/mitchell-weber-arrest-colorado-road-rage/ https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/mitchell-weber-arrest-...
      - ipython 28d ago
        Agreed. Which is why I’m in favor of recording all conversations within earshot of any public location. Those can be tagged for keywords related to child endangerment. After all, who would argue against protecting kids? In fact, we should take the pictures from public school districts and feed them into this system. Facial recognition immediately available on any kid that happens to walk on any public street. Why would anyone want to opt out of such a system? (/s if it isn’t obvious)
- ipython 28d ago
  Don’t know why you’re downvoted but this venture funding is exactly what makes the scale and centralization of surveillance possible. You can’t build this sort of system out without the debt financing provided by the vc industry. For example - I don’t have links to substantiate this yet - but I’d bet the same playbook that’s always used was used here as well. Flock cameras were provided to cash strapped police departments at a very low cost - unsustainably low for any other non vc funded company to compete with - in order to juice growth and build the scale/network effect to make the system valuable.
ggreer 28d ago
I'm pretty sure license plate readers and other surveillance tech have been abused constantly in the past, but we see more articles about Flock because they have better logging & auditing compared to smaller competitors or government-owned cameras.
- ipython 28d ago
  Flock also has the advantage of scale and centralization where previous solutions had neither
GymInMeCricket 28d ago
In my opinion, there was never any doubt that there would be over-policing. Rather, people doubt that they would belong to the over-policed parties. I hear similar arguments about NSF funding from my relatives: "yes, funding has been illegally cut, but it will not be cut for the people I know, only for the 'bad' researchers."
- madaxe_again 28d ago
  Leopards, faces, and all that jazz.
- scotty79 28d ago
  Calling fishing for vengance "overpolicing", that says a lot.
  - GymInMeCricket 28d ago
    Appologies, but I don't know what you mean.
    - Hikikomori 28d ago
      Its a fair bit more than overpolicing. If you don't think it is hope that boot is tasty.
    - repeekad 28d ago
      Being anti police is a bit of a wedge in US politics, it's privileged to say we don't need as much police because the poorest communities are often who need it most. Abusing surveillance tools has nothing to do with legitimate policing, so "over-policing" is probably the wrong word.
      - wredcoll 28d ago
        > Being anti police is a bit of a wedge in US politics, it's privileged to say we don't need as much police because the poorest communities are often who need it most. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but it sure sounds bad. Poor communities have frequently suffered the most from police forces, since by and large police are designed and funded by the wealthy to protect their interests.
bediger4000 28d ago
There wasn't for anyone who paid attention. That "logic of surveillance" article a few years ago got it 100% correct: surveillance is immediately used against those who object to its use.
bko 28d ago
There was an audit trail for improper access using the technology and a lawsuit. How is this "lack of accountability" and "lack of public oversight"? Here are the 100 instances: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.114502/gov.uscourts.wied.114502.39.5.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
- Zigurd 28d ago
  Try FOIAing a body cam, and filing a complaint. You might get action before the next Ice Age. Record a cop doing something blatantly illegal and try finding a willing prosecutor. In practice there's no accountability.
  - bko 28d ago
    This guy seemed to do it. I also have better things to do than record police and refuse instructions. > Record a cop doing something blatantly illegal and try finding a willing prosecutor. The cop wasn't doing anything illegal, from the article: While standing in a private parking lot in Sussex, Wisconsin, on May 4, 2025, Napoleon Jones witnessed a traffic stop made by an out-of-county police officer. "It just didn't sit right with me," Yeah dog, "just didn't sit right" doesn't really hold up.
    - ibejoeb 28d ago
      It doesn't hold up? What the implication, then? That the recording was illegal and the post-arrest investigation yielded the wrong result?
    - throwaway894345 28d ago
      > Yeah dog, "just didn't sit right" doesn't really hold up. Can you cite the law that requires more than “it doesn’t sit right” to record police officers in public?
    - hvb2 28d ago
      An out of county police officer, in general, can't conduct a traffic stop? There's a few exceptions but none of those seem to apply?
AtlanticThird 28d ago
Are you aware of any current country or any country throughout history that has granted the government powers like this and hasn't been abused? I think you're mistaken to blame lack of accountability and lack of public oversight. I think it's simply not possible.
- tene80i 28d ago
  To some extent, the U.K. They’ve had flock-style cameras for years, and while there is of course police abuse there’s far greater accountability. Brits are more comfortable with the idea of police having those powers - but of course that’s partly to do with the fact their police don’t have guns, so are generally less terrifying.
  - 2b3a51 28d ago
    UK police officers are not routinely armed, but there armed response units, and under certain circumstances in e.g. railway stations and airports you will see pairs of officers walking about with machine guns on a regular basis. Accountability: misuse of cctv or bodycam footage can lead to disciplinary action of various kinds including being sacked. The link below will give you an idea of the volume of formal complaints and the 'pipeline' from complaint to potential dismissal and criminal proceedings against officers; https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-misconduct-england-and-wales-year-ending-31-march-2025/police-misconduct-england-and-wales-year-ending-31-march-2025 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-misconduct-e... The accountability system is 'under review' (we do this a lot, slows things down nicely and looks like action); https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/end-to-end-review-of-the-police-accountability-system https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/end-to-end-review... It isn't unicorns and rainbows by any means; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66809642 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66809642
  - AtlanticThird 27d ago
    Not at all true for the UK. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/28/police-accused-widely-misusing-body-worn-video-england-wales https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/28/police-accus...
tombert 28d ago
I have gotten in arguments about these Flock cameras, because people will use the "if you're not doing anything wrong you got nothing to worry about" defense. Basically the entire point of the fourth Amendment (and sort of the Bill of Right as a whole) seems to be based on the assumption that we cannot trust the government to not abuse its power, so we purposefully limit its power. At least that's the impression I got, IANAL disclaimer I guess. If we cannot safely assume that every cop is above-board, which we obviously cannot, then it's trivial to come up with cases of "if you got nothing to hide you got nothing to fear" defense. A bad cop could use Flock to stalk an ex-girlfriend. A bad cop could find some unsavory-but-not-illegal behavior from a politician (e.g. visiting a porn shop) and blackmail them. A bad cop could, as demonstrated by this article, simply use a Flock camera to harass someone they don't like. I didn't think this was a controversial opinion, but I do see a lot of Flock/mass-surveillance defenders so I guess it is.
- rvba 28d ago
  A bad cop can sell your location so they can rob your house when you are out or tell the bad guys how to find you
  - tombert 28d ago
    Agreed. I mean, there's really no shortage of terrible scenarios that can happen if we cannot assume that 100% of cops are good.
    - Zigurd 28d ago
      Even cops that are well intended, that most people would call good, are hopelessly under trained regarding civil rights. A lot of have them have delusions of being some kind of detective and being clever about deceiving you into giving up your rights. Then they become belligerent if you don't play along.
- CamperBob2 28d ago
  because people will use the "if you're not doing anything wrong you got nothing to worry about" defense Remind them that whether they're doing something wrong or not is not their call. That sometimes shows signs of sinking in.
hammock 28d ago
> How was there ever any doubt that these cameras and this access would be used in this way? Strawman. I have never heard of one single ingenuous person that believed these would only be used appropriately. The main issue is that our government has too much power as to be unstoppable.

jmclnx 28d ago

Hopefully he gets a big enough payment that makes other jurisdictions remove these cameras.

fhdkweig 28d ago
Hopefully they remove cops who abuse their powers. While I agree that victims require compensation, ultimately these payouts only hurt the taxpayers who have to cover for these cops who at worst just move to another town to do it again.

theturtletalks 28d ago

Was just reading into this and it’s infuriating. He was recording another person’s traffic stop in a parking lot. Once the stop was done, he walks to his car. The same officer goes to his car and “pulls him over.” The vet says that you can’t pull someone over in a private parking lot, that’s not a legal stop. Doesn’t matter, he’s arrested and car towed. He’s kept in jail for 5 hrs before being released for it not being a legal stop just like the vet said. Then that officer tracked him thru flock over 100 times for some personal vendetta.

Toutouxc 28d ago
Infuriating, yes, but apparently getting shot for no reason is also quite popular. This sounds like the better deal.
- scotty79 28d ago
  Nobody offers you such deal. You get both.
braum 28d ago
sounds like an easy win for a prosecutor for felony stalking. there needs to be more separation from prosecutors and cops. I know a lot of places now have prosecutors who are actively against cops, that is not what I mean. the prosecutors are supposed to be unbiased and make decisions on evidence. we know they don't regardless of their political leaning. but that is the standard we (citizens) should hold them accountable. unfortunately there are too may bootlicking voters who just want to feel "safe" and have zero courage of their own even in the voting booth. we need to stop giving agencies money based on stats. that is one cause to a lot of these problems. then the cops and agencies get all twisted and in a tissy when a tool that made stat pumping easier like right now the flock cameras.
- FeepingCreature 28d ago
  > we need to stop giving agencies money based on stats. I think you just need to stop giving agencies money based on bad stats. Goodhart's Law is an extremely well-established effect. At the very least, crime rate should be monitored by a separate department.

layer8 28d ago

The fact that the victim is a Navy veteran should be immaterial here. People shouldn’t be any less upset if he wasn’t.

CobaltFire 28d ago
As a veteran I agree, with a significant caveat: Generally those who support the police in general (especially those with the thin blue line American flag displayed somewhere) espouse support for veterans. The clash of a veteran operating legally with police operating illegally helps foster cognitive dissonance and disentangle these two institutions in their mind. In other words these types of articles are helpful for causing those individuals to confront the issues in their belief structure. I use them this way all the time with my parents, as they continue to insist that I (a retired Navy vet) should mindlessly support the police. They are not interested in the LONG history of those two populations clashing.
- deleted 28d ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 28d ago
  [deleted]

johnmlussier 28d ago

Don't remove the cameras - make sure they're used legally and bad apples don't ruin a good thing: Four different places, four different children rescued by use of Flock cameras. https://kfdm.com/news/local/flock-camera-teamwork-credited-with-rescue-of-missing-child-arrest-of-suspect https://kfdm.com/news/local/flock-camera-teamwork-credited-w... https://www.foxcarolina.com/2026/07/31/kidnapped-mother-son-rescued-with-help-flock-cameras-upstate-deputies-say/ https://www.foxcarolina.com/2026/07/31/kidnapped-mother-son-... https://www.whsv.com/2026/08/01/deputy-uses-flock-cameras-find-missing-girl-less-than-30-minutes/ https://www.whsv.com/2026/08/01/deputy-uses-flock-cameras-fi... https://abc3340.com/news/local/moody-police-say-flock-cameras-helped-find-missing-13-year-old-safe-after-reported-kidnapp https://abc3340.com/news/local/moody-police-say-flock-camera... Want to track latest on what flock cameras did? https://flockstopscrime.com https://flockstopscrime.com

FeepingCreature 28d ago
Why not the other way around? First make sure the police department is capable of using them legally and reliably investigating abuse, then we can consider allowing them.
chuckadams 28d ago
[flagged]
- wateralien 28d ago
  > make sure they're used legally and bad apples don't ruin a good thing The unedited comment shows he used it correctly using “and” to mean “so that”.
  - chuckadams 28d ago
    Ah, indeed that is the more likely reading. I stand by the boot bit.
zapataband1 28d ago
"bad apples" = one rotten apple ruins the bunch. There are no "good apples" the article itself shows that other "apples" were helping him illegaly surveil. The "good apples" thought it was a good idea to give every apple access to a problematic system. There are no good apples if there's a rotten in the bunch, we need public oversight of the only people that are allowed to enact violence on behalf of the state.

wateralien 28d ago

Surely access to footage can be gated behind some sort of expedited digital court warrant? I always think of that scene in Minority Report where 3 judges are conferenced in live when a “vision” arrived. Because if used properly and lawfully these cameras can be useful to keep people safe. Including from the cops.

jonahx 28d ago
In practice, the odds overwhelmingly favor abuse. And even if the "proper and lawful" version was somehow achieved, it would require constant maintenance, security, and expensive oversight that would also be at risk of degenerating back into abuse.
- wateralien 28d ago
  If abuse can’t be eliminated then it’s about what ratio of abuse to crime reduction is tolerable I guess. If we find 100 taken children while a dirty cop stalks his ex - is that tolerable? I’d say yes. If it became more abused I guess that’s when society needs to decide.
  - bastawhiz 28d ago
    Abuse can be eliminated. It's called requiring a warrant. What's tolerable doesn't matter: we don't need to litigate how willing we are to bend the fourth amendment.
sampullman 28d ago
Using minority report as an example of a good policing system is a bit unsettling.
bastawhiz 28d ago
You don't need a special speedy system. A regular warrant is just fine. A warrant in this case would never have been granted because there was no suspicion of wrongdoing. There's already processes for expedited search warrants outside of business hours, the problem is that warrants are simply never required to use these services.

ksudb 28d ago

[dead]

spongebobstoes 28d ago

surveillance technology is not going away. we need to mitigate the downsides what systems could be changed or created to prevent abuse of power?

PunchyHamster 28d ago
not installing them. Voting out anyone that does
- atemerev 28d ago
  Not enough. Preemptively passing laws that forbid this kind of mass surveillance. Like in Switzerland and other nice places.
  - NegativeK 28d ago
    Making the possession of data this either illegal or too horribly cumbersome. Flock is just an iteration, and getting rid of that brand won't fix it. And camera tracking of normal citizens is just an iteration -- not the underlying systemic issue that isn't being addressed. The EU has GDPR. At this point, I want something stronger than that.
    - atemerev 26d ago
      Still not enough. What you suggest does not prevent the government of possessing the data. Technical means of collection needs to be preemptively banned.
- wateralien 28d ago
  Video is useful in keeping people safe. Including from the cops. It’s about remaking the system to require court permission every time they access it, process and transparency.
  - colechristensen 28d ago

GiorgioG 28d ago

Flock is the most successful and well-known company doing this, however they’re not the only one. We need to be really careful to push back against the use of this technology as a whole and not fixate only on Flock. My town doesn’t use Flock, it uses another company’s tech…it’s no better! Don’t give the politicians an out.

edoceo 28d ago
Does that company also have three pounds of copper in their cameras, like Flock?

tostrstrudel 28d ago

https://flockonyourblock.com/ https://flockonyourblock.com/

thangalin 28d ago

https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png ;-) See also: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/ https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/

mrluckysmith 28d ago

I think Flock could be very useful to track actual criminals. However, any queries to the system must require a warrant and publicly available track record.

patrickmay 28d ago
Requiring a warrant would be better than the status quo, but the very existence of the data is too high a risk, in my opinion.
hightrix 28d ago
It would be even easier to track criminals if we required all people* in the country to wear always on devices with GPS, always on cameras, always recording audio that are illegal to disable or turn off. But that would be OK as long as a warrant was required to access it, right? * - All people unable to pay the government to disable the device.
- mrluckysmith 28d ago
  Personal space intrusion doesn't equal monitoring public roads.
  - arealaccount 28d ago
    Considering how ubiquitous public roads are it sorta does
    - NetMageSCW 28d ago
      And how impossible public roads are to avoid and live.
Grombobulous 28d ago
If oligarchs can opt-out it shouldn't exist. They can live in gated communities, travel by chauffeured cars owned by contracted businesses multiple LLCs deep, fly in private airports on private jets, or just go live on a yacht in international waters.

spenrose 28d ago

My mental model: 1. Policing is yet another example of Baumol’s effect[1]; sectors where automation lags become expensive 2. Policing can be automated effectively, including via Flock: > Hunters Point rapper Dreamllife Rizzy described how police tech has made it more difficult to get away with bipping and other crimes. “Crime in San Francisco, period, that shit over with, brother,” the rapper said. “They got drones, hella shit.” He described how Flock cameras clock the plates on a stolen car and send an alert to police stations, which send drones to follow the vehicle.[2] 3. Policing, like major surgery, ambitious construction, military invasions, and other high-consequence endeavors, is not immune to perfidy, incompetence, or other human weaknesses. 4. Argument by implicit synecdoche (here is an example of an abuse, therefore the general behavior is abusive) is ubiquitous and invalid; you need to actually collect wide evidence and weigh major tradeoffs. How does Flock affect total crime rates? Total abuse rates? That only matters if you think that we should be open to the possibility that widespread use of Flock cameras might be good. 5. WRT privacy and policing-the-police in particular, there is a small but highly vocal community of libertarians whose perspective is sharp, detailed, and not reflective of broader society’s perspective except in motte-and-bailey form, and who will never be persuaded by evidence because for them what matters are the principles (n.b.: this observation is not per se a criticism — sometimes principles should trump evidence around tradeoffs). 6. HN’s 10^5 (?) active commenters include 10^4(?) members of that libertarian vanguard 7. Everyone has heard all the libertarian and contra-libertarian arguments going back decades; no one is learning from yet another go-round [1] https://acjsissons.medium.com/the-baumol-effect-not-a-disease-but-a-cure-c63d0ae0b481 https://acjsissons.medium.com/the-baumol-effect-not-a-diseas... [2] https://sfstandard.com/2026/08/13/rest-peace-bip-city/?utm_source=native_share&utm_medium=site_buttons&utm_campaign=site_buttons https://sfstandard.com/2026/08/13/rest-peace-bip-city/?utm_s...

icantevenhold 28d ago
Not only is policing not immune against perfidy, but I would argue perfidy is built into the police system as a core tenet. There is a lot of widely available evidence
skybrian 28d ago
A way to think of the Baumol effect in more local terms: High-productivity organizations have increased revenue and reduced expenses, almost by definition. These profits can be "spent" in various ways like charging customers less, paying workers more, paying investors more, and blue-sky research. (I'm remembering the early days of Google here.) Or it could fund various forms of corruption. Paying employees more helps drive up local wages. Also, wealthier people want higher-end services and are price-insensitive, so they're inevitably going to be charged more. They'll bid more for houses and pay more to eat in fancier restaurants. People discount the "trickle-down" effect but everyone notices when the cost of living goes up because there are a lot of rich people around who will pay more.

venusenvy47 28d ago

How can we find more information about when we can refuse police requests as is mentioned here? It seems like the public needs to know about when we can legally do this. "Shayhorn's supervisor informed him shortly after the arrest that he'd, in fact, illegally stopped Jones, and he therefore could not compel Jones to produce his identification"

hammock 28d ago
Really only three or four things you ought to say during a stop “( Name and address, or license registration and insurance if in a vehicle)” -required by law pretty much everywhere. “I’m exercising my right to silence. I will not answer questions without a lawyer” “I do not consent to any searches” “Am I being detained, or am I free to go”- say this one anytime you think the officer might be done with the reason he stopped you, because it “starts a clock” of unlawful extension Pick whichever one makes the most sense at any given moment. Don’t say anything else. If the officer says you are free to go, leave. As for what you can refuse, you really can’t during the stop. You have to fight in court. LISTEN CAREFULLY to the words of the officer and do not respond to QUESTIONS, only ORDERS. They are trained to ask you to do things that might be unlawful if they were orders, like can you step out of the car for me please, can you follow my flashlight for me, can you roll down your window all the way. If you are unclear, ask “are you ordering me, officer?” If any part of the stop was unlawful your defense attorney can iron that out later in court (and if so, typically everything occurring after the unlawful gets thrown out) If you want to go a step further and be polite etc, know that many police won’t give you brownie points for it, but if they ask you questions like “where are you coming from” or “where are you going” or “who are/were you with” redirect your answers only to plainly obvious facts about YOURSELF ONLY and the PRESENT time, e.g. “I am out for a drive officer” Caveat: IANAL, this is not legal advice Source: SWIM has extensive experience in this area
- venusenvy47 27d ago
  That's interesting about the questions that sound like orders. I'll have to read up on that and keep it in mind.

jmward01 28d ago

When people believe they are being watched they act differently. Essentially you are coercing them. People need a reasonable sense of privacy to be able to act freely so, to me, this means that privacy is a central requirement of freedom. There are legitimate reasons for some ability to conduct surveillance, but without a cost any surveillance method becomes mass surveillance. That cost must be human, it must scale in human time, or it turns into mass surveillance since without a human cost all it takes is one person and one button to watch one or a hundred thousand people. Technologies like flock have no human scaling cost. They run 24/7/365 and make surveilling one person or hundreds of thousands of people as easy as pushing a button. There is no human scaling cost to them. That means that all it takes to abuse a massive portion of the population is one person and one action. The probability of abuse, abuse which harms a population as a whole, therefore approaches 100% no matter how 'good' the controls are on it. All mass surveillance technologies have this fundamental flaw. The consequence of that abuse is that people, rightfully, will believe that they are being watched, legitimately or not, 24/7/365. The harm here is clear. A society that is under mass surveillance is a society that is having its basic freedoms continuously attacked. Mass surveillance, surveillance without a direct human cost that scales with the level of surveillance, is not compatible with any definition of 'freedom'. Or, to sum all this up, every argument about how a system like this could be made better to limit harm is a red herring because technologies like Flock have a fundamental flaw that is incompatible with any definition of a free society.

jauntywundrkind 28d ago

If only there was a more general way to find the lying sneaking power tripping police officers. Flock is turning out to be quite useful for society, in this one very specific way. Data to watch the watchmen.

ventana 28d ago

Cops love Flock. I'm subscribed to some of the local police department accounts in social networks, and Facebook shows me more of those across the country, and I see a lot of posts like “a serious crime happened, we tracked the car using the Flock license place reader and the suspect is now in custody”. I think it's true that Flock indeed helps with the actual policing, no doubt about that. But it also seems like police departments across the country really try to promote the view that Flock is a good technology that helps safety, because some cities ultimately voted to disable Flock [1], and I'm sure police are just mad about this and don't want this to happen. I can't wait until this finally reaches the Supreme court and they hopefully decide that those cameras are unconstitutional. [1]: just a local example: https://www.mountainview.gov/Home/Components/News/News/1211/284 https://www.mountainview.gov/Home/Components/News/News/1211/...

sershe 28d ago

Should we also have separate posts for every individual case when camera helped catch someone? What's the point of continuously posting what amounts to single anecdotes without any statistical context? Should we ban every technology and shut down any government program that has small amount, but rage-bait-able form of, abuse?

JKCalhoun 28d ago

Flock has become something like the Tantalus Field from the original Star Trek's “Mirror Mirror” episode.

iJohnDoe 28d ago

> "Shayhorn's supervisor informed him shortly after the arrest that he'd, in fact, illegally stopped Jones, and he therefore could not compel Jones to produce his identification" Can we get Shayhorn’s supervisor a medal? Perhaps a parade in their honor? Usually corruption or coerced corruption is so bad in any precinct that this type of proper behavior is shocking. Surprised they didn’t all conspire to put a drop gun on Jones.

welzel 27d ago

Who is surprised by this? what surprises me is that flock has not started a commercial service, where you can have the system surveillance anybody for a daily fee and have it compile a need report for you. Use cases: stalk woman, collect evidence against your enemies, collect dirt for blackmail, etc. Maybe flock is already offering this, but only for the Enterprise customers and 0.1% ....

woadwarrior01 27d ago

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will watch the watchmen?

econ 25d ago

It once struck me that there are way to many laws with hardcoded values. Just like in programming those values reflect situations that aren't nesasarily true anymore. For spying on public we should have laws that scale with trust and accountability. Law enforcement can then chose to persecute their own or lose some public support and lose access to some systems. You can have a point system with different regions having different levels of access. Sometimes it might be as easy as to call the next district to ask if they can look something up. This is both humiliating and adds a layer of accountability. The office in good standing shouldn't be all that willing to stick their neck out for a shady outfit. It's just a crude example. If enough people don't trust you with public cameras you shouldn't have access to them but the moment they do trust you you should. Similarly you can adjust salaries to performance. If people are really doing a wonderful job it is worth rewarding them. If your coworkers is generating some unusual amount of complaints you can talk with them. I certainly wouldn't be willing to put up with loss of tools and a pay cut because they can't behave.