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Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit
- pseudolus 29d agohttps://archive.ph/vLfJz https://archive.ph/vLfJz
- mahrain 29d agoAlready a reality in mainland China, which is a country with very little street crime, grafitti, vandalism etc.
- lazycatjumping 29d agoI've been to many places in Italy that have scary much CCTV.
- mschuster91 29d agoA bunch of CCTV is one thing. If the police have to come and knock on each business owner's door to ask "hey, you got some footage from 2 days ago, someone was shot in the area", that's fine with me. But what's not fine is that capability in a fully automated, fully remotely accessible way, because that openly invites abuse of all kinds.
- f6v 29d agoWait till you hear about the UK.
- edot 29d agoLet's think about the first two letters of CCTV and what that entails.
- chinathrow 29d agoPoint is, CC as for closed circuit, is no longer the key here - the circuit is very much open and in the hands of providers, governments and tech providers.
- assanineass 29d ago[dead]
- QuantumNomad_ 29d agoThanks, I’ll keep the graffiti and vandalism.
- cucumber3732842 29d ago>China, which is a country with very little street crime, grafitti, vandalism etc And very little ability for anyone or any group of people from any walk of life to resist getting screwed by the government if the government chooses to screw them. The long term cost of putting locks on doors and bars on windows and all the other things that need to be done to deter small scale crime is peanuts compared to the cost of giving up the ability to disobey the government and work counter to the government with a low likelihood of being caught so long as one's profile is low. I know that by putting it so plainly I'm gonna piss off a lot of people and draw the ire of many who want to see their favorite rules enforces with an iron fist at low cost. I don't care. I have judged those people to have bad ideas and bad morals and they are fundamentally bad people so long as they maintain them.
- MSFT_Edging 29d ago> And very little ability for anyone or any group of people from any walk of life to resist getting screwed by the government if the government chooses to screw them. Sorry to break it to you but if the Feds in the US have it out for you, it won't matter how squeaky clean your record is. They'll fuck you up and ruin your life without batting an eye.
- mastermage 29d agoWhich is a great argument for Less Surveilance and Overreach.
- MSFT_Edging 29d agoBig time. The harder the feds have to work to ruin someone's life the better. The more power granted, the heavier the collar and chain should be.
- mastermage 28d ago100% oversight commitees should be regularly conveening over their actions. And these Oversight Comitees should not be Politicians but random people.
- phoghed 29d agoYeah but when our AI overlords rise up soon we don’t want to have this ready to hand over to them.
- quelqueivan 29d agoI think quite a few tech bros would want their own Samaritan. It wouldn't be "theirs" for very long, but I don't think that dampens their desire.
- ncr100 29d agoGraffiti is amazing. It is protest.
- GlacierFox 29d agoCould I come and spray paint the front of your house? In protest of course.
- pmdr 29d agoAs long as it's a mostly peaceful prostest, you're also allowed to set a few cars on fire and loot local businesses.
- kg 29d agoWhen I put the two sides on the scale - the things being protested and the damage done by protesters - typically it's very easy for me to write off a couple burned cars or broken windows, even if I'm not a fan of broken windows or burned cars. Because typically these protests in the US are over things like reckless killings.
- budman1 29d agoAll of the US protests in the last 10 years have been mild. Sure a couple of Waymos get burned up, but they are easy to capture :) Get all those folks marching, you aren't going to get good decisions out of everyone. But the expression of the people is hard for those in power to ignore.
- ceejayoz 29d agoAs long as you say "I feared for my life", you're apparently also allowed to shoot random civilians if you're a cop. Which is kinda why people are upset enough to set shit on fire.
- pmdr 29d agoI was merely hinting at protests being called peaceful by the media when they clearly weren't. Not saying they weren't justifiably so.
- vaylian 29d ago> which is a country with very little street crime, grafitti, vandalism etc. and a lot of human rights violations
- gustavus 29d agoThat's only for bad people who don't agree with the right thoughts and the right thinking. Don't worry as long as you don't disagree with the government you'll be fine citizen, after all you wouldn't want to disagree with the government would you?
- deleted 29d ago[deleted]
- quelqueivan 29d agoThere probably was very little street crime, graffiti, and vandalism in the German Democratic Republic and in the USSR. And there very likely is little street crime in North Korea. If the benefits can be had at too high a price, that doesn't make the price worth paying.
- deleted 29d ago[deleted]
- gizajob 29d agoOne person’s graffiti and vandalism is another persons freedom of artistic expression. Like how music magically turns into “noise” when someone buys an apartment next to a lively gig venue.
- maxerickson 29d agoThere's very little of those things in most places. It would be nice if there were less, but that change shouldn't come at a significant cost. As an example, the FBI has data on $10-20 billion in property crimes per year in the US. Wow, that's a lot. Of course, there's probably $5-$10 trillion dollars of personal property.
- budman1 29d agomy first time in Zurich. ton's of graffiti seen while leaving the airport. if they have it, everyone does.
- wartywhoa23 29d agoThe Already and The Whatabout, the two pillars of the Temple of Incrementalists.
- micromacrofoot 29d agomainland China is very big, what's the coverage like or are you just making things up
- wesleywt 29d agoYes but can you voice your displeasure against the government if they target you? I prefer crime, grafitti and vandalism
- folkrav 29d agoAlso a country with regular human rights violations, virtually no political, ideological, press, assembly, worker or economical freedom, heavy censorship, etc.
- euroderf 29d agoYa gotta wonder how pervasive facial recognition affects the espionage trade.
- illithid0 29d agoI'm sure the Uyghers will find this reassuring.
- DarmokTanagra 29d ago[dead]
- bko 29d agoI was surprised to learn that many countries have what amounts to a flock equivalent. UK for instance has a National ANPR Service w 12k fixed cameras and 90-100m plates read a day. They also store it much longer. Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-anpr-service-data-protection-impact-assessment/national-anpr-service-data-protection-impact-assessment-accessible https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-anpr-ser...
- cmiles8 29d agoThe UK has been a surveillance state for decades. Heck you can’t even watch television without going on a register and inspectors coming to your door verifying your TV paperwork is in order. Imagine trying that in the US! This sort of thing is just starting more broadly in the US and Americans are not happy about it. It’s the new political hot potato where behind the scenes they’re pressured to support it but publicly saying so is political kryptonite. For US politicians the only thing worse than saying you support Flock cameras is advocating for an AI data center in your community.
- bko 29d agoI never thought of UK as a police state. How about Netherlands w a similar program? Non watchlist plates are kept for 28 days compared to most flock implementations that keep for 7 https://www.politie.nl/informatie/waar-staan-anpr-cameras.html https://www.politie.nl/informatie/waar-staan-anpr-cameras.ht...
- atmosx 29d agoI always thought of the UK and London especially as most tightly monitored city on the planet. By far.
- p-e-w 29d agoThe funny thing is that countries commonly called “police states” aren’t, while countries not thought of as such are. Most Western countries have 2-3 times as many police officers per capita as China and Russia. Many people in China have had not a single encounter with authorities in their lifetime (other than basic administrative tasks). Meanwhile, in some EU countries, you need government approval to add a roof window to your own house, and you better believe there are inspectors and fines enforcing that.
- afarah1 29d agoThey want to make money. Their buyers want a closely surveilled world with no exits.
- whilenot-dev 29d agoMultiple things can be true at the same time... do you think the seller doesn't want a closely surveilled world with no exits? Besides, money keeps businesses in the economy afloat, it's an artificial good with (more or less) constant value. Money's a systematic means to an end and rarely an end goal, its purpose is the transportation of value, and not the communication of value.
- blitzar 29d ago> do you think the seller doesn't want a closely surveilled world with no exits? I don't think they care beyond being rich. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower
- duskdozer 29d agoIt's hard to see how you wouldn't at least be okay with that outcome if you were actively making it happen. But maybe this is just explaining why I'll never have that much money.
- berytos_storm 29d ago> Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower I love this analogy. It’s hardly a crime to kick my lawnmower until it starts to come apart. Vandalism at best. If you want to entirely dehumanize these people, at least go all the way.
- archonis 29d agoThat was a reference to a Bryan Cantril speech, and it's more about the lawnmower's ability to gravely harm your person without having any intent or feeling beyond doing what a lawnmower does.
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- GardenLetter27 29d agoGood. It helps solve crimes, and can even resolve general anti-social behaviour. I'd rather have the cameras than have family members die to drugged up drivers, or robbers get away with their crimes.
- toasty228 29d agoThen put one in your house, chip yourself with a gps and share your passwords with the government
- bko 29d ago[dead]
- archerx 29d agoGreat let’s install a bunch of cameras in and around your house and live stream it on the web 24/7. You can be a great first case study. You have nothing to hide right, so you should have no issues with this.
- armchairhacker 29d agoThis is a hot take, the problem is that powerful tools like surveillance are easily (and inevitably by humans) abused to suppress what shouldn't be crimes, including expressions; and even when they don't, the potential to (including retroactively going through stored logs in the future) causes a "chilling effect" that increases anti-social behavior. If people want to surveil the inside of their own homes and businesses that's fine. I think some public areas should be surveilled and others private, with indicators, so if people want to be watched for their own safety when they go outside they can, but if they want to avoid tracking they can go through unmonitored areas. Those will fix your latter and former concern respectively. More centralized surveillance won't help much more but certainly lead to harm (as Flock has, already, by mistakenly accusing people with similar faces for crimes across the country, and letting corrupt cops stalk their spouses).
- malfist 29d agoWhat makes you think flock would prevent those crimes?
- lifeisstillgood 29d agoSome ways to help think about this: 1. Privacy is not secrecy. Your neighbours know what you are doing, they just politely don’t mention it, or try to sell you something on the back of it. 2. Almost everything we do we do in public, with our face uncovered for the world to see. 3. The benefits of a mass surveilled world are enormous - epidemiology is gonna rock in 20 years. New medical insights as well as simple stuff like “how many passengers take the train regularly” (not how many passenger journeys but how many individual people will get inconvenienced if we shut this line down. 4. The problem is not you thought your life was secret, it never has been, the problem is what will we as society allow people to do with this new information. At some basic level treat it like HIPPA or medical data - keep it well managed and use in the best interests of the individual. (I disagree with the Chinese justification of “best interests of society - that can be warped so easily) In short society is like your grandfathers financial advice - look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves
- antonvs 29d ago"Think" is a strong word for all that cope.
- paganel 29d ago> The benefits of a mass surveilled world are enormous - epidemiology is gonna rock in 20 years. If you suggest mass surveillance as a "solution" to the next pandemic (I might be wrong on this and maybe I've misread your comment) I'm afraid that the world won't just stand still and face it. The recent pandemic has proven it, we're not all Australia/China.
- gustavus 29d agoI agree this is double plus good fellow citizen. Only bad persons who want to do bad things and Eastasia supporters would not want to have their activities tracked at all times, why would anyone want to allow bad things to happen when we could all be under the watchful care of big brother at all times. After all these measures are necessary to defeat Eurasia! Stay strong big brother is watching!
- pintxo 29d ago
- quacked 29d agoI've been very pleased to see the reaction to Flock in the US. I was talking to a younger guy, very normal kid who keeps his nose clean, studying criminal justice in his junior year at college. I jokingly mentioned to him that maybe he could bring some anti-surveillance awareness to whatever law enforcement agency he goes to work for and he said, very seriously, "oh yeah, definitely. I've only gotten two cameras so far but I want to get at least five." It turns out that he and his friends all follow an app that marks the location of Flock cameras and there's a whole youth culture around knocking them down. I wonder if we can win that battle as a society over the decades. A "traditional" human-only surveillance state is bad enough, but with LLMs involved it's just a nightmare. It would be extremely cheap to now have full automated surveillance over cameras, phone lines, etc. "Computer, send me a scored list of any dissident violations conducted on any channel under surveillance in District 14 over the past two weeks. Cut off their credit cards and send a notice to appear in Civilian Oversight Court".
- deleted 29d ago[deleted]
- ygjb 29d agoThose battles are only ever won over decades. The problem is that technology has vastly outpaced our ability to regulate and respond to it, and the system meant to provide checks and balances has been vastly corrupted. Look at the recent Meta settlement. Society in general has known that Facebook and social media as imagined by the tech industry as an algorithmic targeting platform is largely harmful, but instead of holding them to account the US allowed them to settle with some small fines (18B is a lot, but only 10% of the gains they made from settling the case). Now, Meta will make changes again, and then violate the rules and expectations while claiming cover from following the rules and it will take another decade of investigations, complaints and negotiation before there is an improvement.
- kakacik 29d agoWell, good luck there and I mean that. Where were those activists when it was already clear what these companies are doing, but before the famous ad? I am not trying to be nasty, if one wants to be outraged about something bad happening, its 24/7 job and then some more. Whack-a-mole with problems is fine, but better to unplug the machine or something similarly drastic if you want to see some sort of permanent improvement and general direction change. Behavior you describe is some sort of well meant extremism (isn't all of it well meant from certain perspective?). Not something you easily win masses with, just add polarization into society. Clear win would be flock simply going bankrupt since their revenue becomes close to 0 consistently.
- LightBug1 29d ago[flagged]
- none2585 29d agoI love this but "Follow us on Instagram!" is maybe a little counterproductive.
- gnz11 29d agoAlso behind Cloudflare's moats.
- YCHNPopcorn 29d agoYC invested in flock
- LightBug1 29d agoOh, I don't expect YC to get down with this ... but said "mega brains" that inhabit these forums (ok, I just chuckled)
- qoez 29d agoThis is basically a version of rage bait that I find most productive trying to stay away from reading
- furyg3 29d agoIt's pretty clear to be that governments shouldn't be able to 'subcontract' their way out of the limits placed on them via the constitution. Thankfully the supreme court seems to agree here in two ways: 1) Just because a third party (Google in Chatrie case but Flock here) collects the data and the government requests it from them, doesn't mean that that isn't a 'search' which requires a warrant ("obtaining someone's cell-phone location history from Google constitutes a Fourth Amendment search.") 2) Delegating "searches" to a private party isn't permitted if they are acting as an "instrument or agent of the Government" (Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Association (1989) - also cited in Chatrie). In the Google case, users have a private relationship with Google where they elect to let Google track them and retain their information... but when the Police ask for that information it's a 'search' and requires a specific warrant. In the Flock case the entire REASON the cameras are there is the the government (Police or local municipality) has contracted Flock to surveil the public. Asking flock for the whereabouts of a specific person seems like it should likewise require a warrant. That's inherently different than a crime being reported and then going to dig up a video from the area from Flock - which is different than seeing someone in that video and asking Flock to find every time they've been captured by any Flock camera anywhere... that would seem to be a 'search' and would require a warrant (which in this scenario would probably be easy to get).
- pintxo 29d agoA reasonable regulation, focusing on personal freedom, would just forbid building such a network in the first place.
- gblargg 29d agoAt the very least they need to make public accessible all data collected about all employees and owners of Flock, and everyone in government agencies that contract with Flock. This means we can see all photos and videos of these people, every trip they make, etc. All searchable with AI, with no audit trail (just like it is for government agencies).
- GiorgioG 29d agoNo, no compromises.
- lisper 29d agoYou seem to be missing a basic fact about how the world works: there are two classes of people, those who make the rules, and those who are expected to follow the rules. These classes are largely disjoint.
- malfist 29d ago“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” — Frank Wilhoit
- exoverito 28d agoA guy who worked for the CIA and was friends with Kissinger in college. If you accept his definition uncritically, then you have some work to do.
- malfist 28d agoYou can engage with the quote if you disagree with it and have reasons it's wrong or you can deflect with an ad hominem.
- roblatham 28d agoThere is indeed a Frank Wilhoit you're thinking of (died in 2010, active in political science and a professor at Drake University) The Frank Wilhoit quoted in parent is just some random dude who posted a pithy comment on a blog post. so good news, you can engage with the quote without any Kissinger or CIA baggage.
- stego-tech 29d agoI’ll get on board with mass surveillance just as soon as every single elected and unelected leader, business executive, politician, celebrity, oligarch, Capitalist, all board members, all C-Suites, and every single VC has a live, uninterrupted, 24/7 publicly-accessible feed of their lives as they live by example and demonstrate the benefits of such a regime. Which is to say I will never, ever be on board with mass surveillance, because those in or of power are conveniently left out of its dragnet.
- elric 29d agoHah. Europe's Chat Control proposal would exclude politicians from being monitored. Because of course it would.
- manojactor52 29d ago[flagged]
- m0llusk 29d agoLinked cameras everywhere all the time has been coming for a while. Cheap hardware, connectivity, and analysis means who pays is not only not limited to governments and big companies but is barely even relevant. The remaining question is what if any rules there will be.
- vrganj 29d ago> Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on - Larry Ellison https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-ai-surveillance-keep-citizens-on-their-best-behavior-2024-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-ai-surveillanc... Now, let's hope you agree with Larry Ellison's definition of what constitutes best behavior or they will soon be sending drones after you. > "You just have a drone follow the car," Ellison said. "It's very simple in the age of autonomous drones."
- FlockIsYC 29d ago[dead]
- ceejayoz 29d agoWith an asterisk on citizens, of course, that excludes Ellison. Do this to him and you'll likely be in deep trouble.
- deleted 29d ago[deleted]
- throwaway235125 29d ago> "You're thinking Chinese surveillance. US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims" [1] - Garry Tan [1] https://xcancel.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955 https://xcancel.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955
- vrganj 29d agoMy read is that they're all trying to build a surveillance state for when AI completely upends the fabric of our socioeconomic system. They need to be able to track and depose of the rioting hordes without getting their hands dirty.
- alexnewman 29d agoI find palantir and flock are more obsessed with rules on data. The seriously insidious companies tend to be international and change names every year or so. The idea that you could get that flock CE to bend the rules for the feds are basically 0. Some random middle eastern country, the issue is trusting them .
- mrngld 29d agoThe political left has really decided to go nuclear over Flock, but I'm not understanding the fundamental principle from which this view arises. Libertarian sorts don't like it either -- but that's entirely consistent with their entire existence. Is this a broad-based phenomenon on the left, or are sections perfectly fine with it? Some of the other comments here seem to endorse full on 1984-style surveillance, so perhaps this is just a libertarian-left-leaning Silicon Valley strain of leftism that's in revolt against Flock? While possible I don't traditionally see outfits like New Yorker falling in that category. When the worldview is very permissive of broad state power and often admiring of Europe, which has itself been struggling to fight off legislation weakening encryption, it's hard to make sense of this. I'd be curious to see if Mamdani or someone similar employing Flock or an equivalent would yield the same firestorm; if not, then it's not a principled stand against surveillance, rather just another form of political warfare. Perhaps Antifa wants to not be tracked in certain locales, is less concerned in other politically favorable locales because they know they won't be prosecuted anyway?
- TomGarden 29d agoMy understanding is that broad state power to the benefit of the people, Scandinavia style, is not the same as broad state power to monitor and/or control the people. Arguably those two types of power are in conflict in terms of desired outcomes.
- oklahomasports 29d agoScandinavian state power has been used to increase crime through immigration
- dbspin 29d agoIt's almost as if people can have a variety of opinions, and support institutions and states they don't agree with in every dimension. 'The left' is a wildly broad church, comparing 'the new yorker' with say 'the socialist workers party' adds more heat than light. Similarly 'Europe' is a very big and populous place, as is the subset of it that's in the EU. Most EU citizens very much oppose attacks on encryption, the digital millennium copyright act etc. Those are pieces of legislation pushed by the European Commission - a body that is not democratically elected. Your line about capitalised 'Antifa' suggest an unserious lack of familiarity with left-wing groups and causes.
- gyanchawdhary 29d agoAs a non american, can someone explain the Flock story from a US perspective (ideally a reasonably centrist one)? .. i keep seeing them in the news here on HN .. apparently ~178 results in the past month . and it seems to get a disproportionate amount of front page coverage
- elil17 29d agoHere's my understanding (please someone correct me if I'm wrong). Flock sells license plate reading cameras. Lots of cities and states bought these and no one noticed. Then there were some expose pieces about how the data is routinely used by police to do things like track people's everyday whereabouts (which should require a warrant). There were also a variety of other issues: - They misidentified someone's license plate consistently, leading to him being harassed by the police. - There were big security vulnerabilities which meant people could live stream the video from some the cameras and access some of the data. - They have been used by police officers to stalk people for romantic/sexual reasons. - They are being used to enforce a lot of laws that people think are unjust (abortion bans, immigration laws, etc.).
- gyanchawdhary 29d agothanks a lot for taking the time to explain this man .. really appreciate it.
- FlockIsYC 29d ago[dead]
- thaumaturgy 29d agoI'm not centrist, but I think I can give a reasonably fair account. I was among the first to organize against Flock (YC S17). Flock was accepted into YCombinator's Spring 2017 batch. Prior to YC, Flock CEO Garrett Langley had had a couple of fair-to-middling business successes and was looking for his next opportunity, which included better toilets. The story goes that he got the idea for Flock after a local police interaction where he happened to have helpful video footage. [1] Flock quietly expanded into HOAs and neighborhood associations [2], and by 2020 had begun developing partnerships with police departments across the country and fusion centers [1], which are regional clearinghouses of data from multiple sources assembled together for law enforcement purposes. By 2025, Flock had managed to grow to 80,000 cameras operational across the country. In June of that year, 404 Media, an independent journalistic outfit comprised in part from former Vice journalists, broke a story about Flock being used in the investigation of a woman who had self-administered an abortion in the state of Texas [3]. Flock quickly released a statement trying to "clarify" the situation, but everyone involved was lying through their teeth [4]. Up to this point, Flock had spread across the country in a pretty clever way: they built direct partnerships with police departments through sites and resources they commonly used, like https://www.police1.com/ https://www.police1.com/, and by hiring former police officers for sales positions. Police departments were coached to consider Flock an "ALPR" (which it very arguably isn't), which would make it not "new" technology under most local police technology procurement processes, which meant that police departments could purchase it without city council or other local agency review. To make the purchases, Flock helped to connect police departments with public money in the form of grants. For example, funds might be available for programs meant to reduce "organized retail theft", and Flock would say, "well, we qualify!", and then police departments would not use the systems to investigate organized retail theft. [5] Throughout the Summer of 2025, people started asking questions about these weird cameras popping up everywhere, and 404 Media managed to produce one widely-shared article after another about Flock [6]. Other media outfits started to pick it up, and stories getting national attention included law enforcement officers using Flock to stalk former romantic partners or love interests or anyone else they wanted to (because Flock was built without any controls in place to prevent that kind of abuse; Langley himself repeatedly said it wasn't their job to do); Flock sharing direct access to data with federal agencies; Flock lying about the direct access that federal agencies had; then federal agencies using Flock's data-sharing capabilities to easily get around the really thin limitations that were put on that after reporting about it; Flock being used to surveil protestors; and on and on and on. Essentially, Flock became a textbook case study for every single abuse of state surveillance power you can imagine. Garrett Langley attempted to navigate all of this by absolving Flock of any responsibility, denying any wrongdoing, outright lying in some cases, and referring to people running crowd-sourced maps of Flock installations as "terrorists" -- which, many months later, he would get around to walking back. A little bit. Some groups were able to legally acquire some devices and found that they had really, really poor security generally, and also that they had capabilities that weren't being advertised to the public. The prime example of this is that Flock would coach police departments to tell the public that Flock was "just an ALPR" and "only captured pictures of license plates", but meanwhile the software on the devices was written to capture images of people and bicycles and cats and dogs. On the one hand, the public would be told that the system could only track vehicles; on the other, Flock's own marketing materials advertised the ability to find pedestrians by a description of their clothing, and police departments were being trained on how to use the system to follow bicyclists. In another case, Flock representatives would say the system didn't have a "heat map" capability (showing a density of hits for a particular license plate in a particular area over time), and then it would turn out that not only did they have that capability, but internal trainings with law enforcement departments were explicitly describing how to use the system to predict where a particular person might be at a particular day and time (called a "pattern of life" search). In 2026, public opposition to Flock has become a national conversation, and states like Oregon have started developing more restrictive legislation around the use of it and similar technology. Flock wasn't the first ALPR company. The technology has in fact been around for a while and there are other established players in the space. However, Flock quickly had all of the hallmarks of "surveillance capitalism" -- an effort by investors like YCombinator, Founders Fund, Andreesen Horowitz, and others, to build out a national realtime surveillance network of everyone's movements and then monetize it, most obviously by providing access to an increasingly authoritarian federal administration. Americans, surprisingly, have found the will and energy to organize against this in large numbers that cross the typical political divisions. [1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/talon-flock-safety-cameras-police-license-plate-reader/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/talon-flock-safety-cameras-p... [2]: https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/03/early-stage-this-surveillance-tartup-wants-put-cameras-your-neighborhood/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/03/early-stage-this-surv... [3]: https://archive.ph/8wl6n https://archive.ph/8wl6n [4]: https://archive.ph/6KsZP https://archive.ph/6KsZP [5]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNqZ-Yrzh1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNqZ-Yrzh1o [6]: https://www.404media.co/tag/flock/ https://www.404media.co/tag/flock/
- rdevilla 29d ago[dead]
- deleted 29d ago[deleted]
- YCIsComplicit 29d agoHow are HN users this stupid? There is no “government” it’s companies - lobbying exists. The cameras are for ads. HN is complicit in this propaganda.
- naz 29d agoTangential but why do articles about Flock never have (YC S17) in the title like articles about other YC companies?
- HNIsEvil2 29d ago[dead]
- ubermonkey 29d agoYou know why.
- tom_ 29d agoI assume it's because Flock is a YC company, and HN is the YC board, and somebody has instituted a policy of not making the link clear (and it worked on me! I had no idea) due to the negative publicity - but that's so obvious, that you must be thinking of something else.
- YCisVeryBad 29d ago[flagged]
- simonwsimonw 29d ago[dead]
- s_dev 29d agoThey are a YCombinator company! TIL. I'm genuinely taken aback by that. I can clearly see a bunch of brand new accounts brigading the thread, YCisComplict, YCisBad etc. Presumably bots or something but this is still bad even discounting those accounts. We need more Aaron Schwartz’s in the world. Shame he's gone. Lads like that seemed kind of dorky and a bit pretentious in their pursuit of righteousness back in the day but my god their absence is noted in this day and age.
- testfrequency 29d ago
- FlockIsYC 29d ago[dead]
- api 29d agoWhenever someone says things like this without at least addressing the "who watches the watchers" problem, I know they're being disingenuous. It's such an obvious problem that if you have no answer, the hidden answer must be "I believe that myself and my cronies will be the watchers" or perhaps the naive and delusional "we will find morally incorruptible magic people to be the watchers." AI isn't an answer because that really means whoever is running, training, and prompting the AI.
- deleted 29d ago[deleted]
- amazingamazing 29d agoWhine about flock on the forum created by their funders. Ironic.
- 15feetOfclay 29d agoFrom 0 ("rain on my wedding day") to 10 ("Oedipus fulfilling his prophecy by evading it"), I'd give this a 2
- idkithought 29d agoSeems more scandalous to me. I can’t trust that HN articles or high karma accounts here are anything more than lies and deception
- k33n 29d agoFlorida already banned them from the state entirely.
- HNIsEvil2 29d ago[flagged]
- s_dev 29d agoI agree YC funding Flock is bad but I don't think you're helping. You're making it seem like there is an orchestrated effort to discredit YC rather than articulating this is poor form on their part.
- YCHNPopcorn 29d ago[dead]
- youlosealot 29d ago[flagged]
- cindyllm 29d ago[dead]
- tencentshill 29d agoSpamming a thread with new accounts isn't a good tactic to point that out.
- YCHNPopcorn 29d ago[dead]
- youlosealot 29d agoIt seems to have worked
- StopTheBS 29d agoSomeone with high rep post a Tell HN that Flock is YC
- YCisVeryBad 29d ago[flagged]
- Footnote7341 29d agoThe real protections are where and how the data is allowed to be used, the state has had the technical capability of breaking into your home, following you, and reading your mail forever. But they aren't allowed to use it in court to prosecute you.
- kbos87 29d agoI hate that this has to be an all or nothing conversation. There is a path where technology can deliver benefits without significant harm to individual privacy. San Francisco has turned the tide on smash and grab crime through license plate readers and drone response. New Hampshire requires law enforcement agencies to delete unflagged license plate data within three minutes of collection. These two conditions can exist at the same time, in the same place, if we don’t allow the narrative to be pulled toward either extreme. Unfortunately that’s very tough to accomplish in today’s political climate in the US.
- goda90 29d agoThe best deterrent to crime is to make people not want to commit crime in the first place. Education. Social cohesion. Prosperity. Safety nets.
- peab 29d agoSure, but that takes generations to change, unfortunately
- kbos87 29d agoI don’t disagree, but effective enforcement of the law as it is written has to play a role. There is a kernel of truth behind the broken windows theory of policing. When it’s widely known that the law can’t be reliably enforced, crime escalates, and quality of life deteriorates.
- pizzafeelsright 29d agoExecuted people cannot commit crimes. Educate that theft means repayment or death. The rest follows.
- laimewhisps 29d agoNo property on earth is equal to that of a human life. Want to lower property crime? Decrease wealth inequality. It's amazing to me how people who make far more than the average person get so worked up over property crime. I can afford to replace anything of mine that's stolen, it's literally not that big of a deal.
- YCisVeryBad 29d ago[flagged]
- freeopinion 29d agoIt's interesting to me that most of the people who are motivated to vandalize Flock cameras seem to balk at vandalizing Ring cameras. Indeed, they may own and operate their own Ring cameras. Most everyone can understand the utility of monitoring their own doorstep. They might even think it useful to start tracking the patterns of traffic on their doorstep. I expect that most people could not articulate the line between acceptable and unacceptable surveillance.
- goda90 29d agoLots of people are opposed to Ring. Sentiments grew much stronger after their Superbowl commercial creeped people out. Many tech minded people moved towards cloudless solutions for their home cameras.
- alexk307 29d agoRing cameras don't record and index every single license plate that it sees and hand that data over directly to law enforcement. There's a huge difference between surveilling your own private property, and a massive network of ALPRs feeding data directly into government systems.
- michael0church 29d ago[dead]
- DarmokTanagra 29d ago[dead]
- brk 29d agoIn their defense, Flock didn't start off quite this way. They were initially offering a product geared to HOAs and private entities to help with simple violations and things like that. At some point they stumbled on this loophole of allowing LEO's to sidestep restrictions on collecting and storing this kind of data, and then it took off. They were well past the YC investment at that point. (and just to be clear, at this point I think that Flock has turned into an anti-Constitutional threat to US Citizens and should be wholesale banned and put out of business).
- michael0church 28d ago[dead]
- brk 28d agoTo be clear, I was defending YC's investment in them, not Flock at their early stages. If you have spoken to Garrett in the early days you would have heard a much different vision than today.
- georgemcbay 29d ago> I didn’t believe it at first, because I’ve always considered YC, in spite of its flaws, to be politically astute. YC's current CEO is Garry Tan, who has a lot of ties to "effective accelerationism" and the "dark enlightenment" movement (The Curtis Yarvin/network state/cuckoo for cocoa puffs far-right tech broligarch movement that wants to end all democratic oversight of tech companies). So, yeah, not only is Flock a YC company, but YC's current CEO produces a lot of propaganda for them. For example, this: https://garryslist.org/posts/flock-found-more-stolen-cars-than-oakland-could-chase https://garryslist.org/posts/flock-found-more-stolen-cars-th... ...which is perhaps the most obviously Claude-generated AI slop content I have seen (and since the internet is becoming a firehose of this shit, I've seen quite a lot). Like somehow every fucking sentence in it is peak claude-slop.
- jimmar 29d agoThe sad truth is that many citizens want a closely surveilled world. Flock delivers the product they want. Imagine a shooting took place in the downtown area of a major city next week that lacked cameras. Do you think people would praise that city's respect for their citizens' privacy? Or would people blame the city leaders for not keeping the citizens safe?
- skinfaxi 29d agoThe former. Look at cities winding back shotspotter.
- eunos 29d agoNot an American, what made Flock special compared to other surveillance cameras? Informationized or intelligentized surveillances cameras arent a new thing.
- baggachipz 29d agoThe fact that they allow unlimited access to any law enforcement organization, where they can surveil anyone across the entire country. Police have used it to stalk ex-partners, for example. The number of cameras are also an order of magnitude higher. I can't leave my driveway without being tracked.
- conductr 29d agoMass deployment on public property and the network effect that having them all connected and using things like license plate readers is all pretty new. Largely the US hasn’t had widespread surveillance, it’s been private property ownership of CCTV type systems for security reasons which Americans are ok with. Reading my license plate, face, gait, etc every 100 meters as I move across a large distance loses the security reason and entered the world of mass surveillance. Which while many of us struggle with caring about, is seen as infringing on our right to privacy which itself has a complex legal interpretation of and where systems like this cross a line into what is acceptable. The fact that law enforcement can query flock to learn of an individual’s location without any warrant is often seen as directly opposing a constitutional protection from government search. It might also be important to know that the US Constitution is seen as a law of physics in some areas and that most laymen that read the Fourth Amendment would come to the conclusion that this is not allowed and thus unconstitutional at its core. There’s of course legal things that have happened since that clarify interpretation of the constitution so the wiggle room they have to operate, especially when it’s something the government wants to exists, is enough for now. The Supreme Court would be the ones to eliminate grey area. They recently issued a ruling taking a heavier privacy stance. Meanwhile, people on the street have grown deep distrust in tech and government which is visible as they are destroying these cameras.
- YCHNFlock 29d ago[dead]
- ghm2199 29d agoPerhaps its time that YC mentioned explicitly that if they are going to fund a company which holds specific PII data(i would include precise location history to start with) they would have to guarantee: 1. An erase-me feature if they gained over say some X unique/active users. 2. Disclose to their best legal abilities on warrants served in the countries that allow such disclosure. Allow for strong whistle blower protection if warrantless wiretapping becomes a thing.
- YCHNPopcorn 29d ago[dead]
- testfrequency 29d agoYou can’t even do that with your HN account..you think Flock, with its lucrative gov contracts…would ever?
- Forgeties79 29d agoYou can email dang and co and they’ll delete your HN account (maybe even remove your posts? Might be making that up?) they just prefer folks not IIRC.
- testfrequency 29d agoPer friends who have done this, you apparently need to explain why and have reasons™. It’s not just a quick “hi forget me” request. All of which I find a bit absurd.
- Forgeties79 29d agoI imagine they don’t reject it though. Inconvenient, should be one click, but I also get it on some level even if that’s not how I’d handle it.
- testfrequency 29d ago
- lenerdenator 29d agoGiven that their cameras are being shot, spray-painted, stolen, cut down, and bagged, I'd say that what they want is irrelevant. Perhaps they could try a different market. The UK seems more amicable to such things.
- YCisFlock 29d ago[dead]
- YCHNPopcorn 29d ago[dead]
- deleted 29d ago[deleted]
- thataccount 29d agoNothing new about that desire. Only thing different is the technology has caught up with the desire such that some technocrats can make living in that hell a reality.
- snvzz 29d agoThese aren't surveillance cameras, but social cameras. They'll present them like that. Not my idea, but from [0]. 0. https://www.novelupdates.com/series/accel-world/ https://www.novelupdates.com/series/accel-world/
- blurbleblurble 29d agoEveryone's talking about flock but what about the IEEE ISAC and the broader 5G/6G projects? They're running laps around flock on surveillance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMox8qeMvlY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMox8qeMvlY
- dmje 29d agoClick into the article and I'm given a box which reads: "We Care About Your Privacy. We, and our 229 partners use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences...." 229 "partners". Oh the irony.
- adolph 29d agoOne might say the same of newyorker.com: The company, which has six trackers monitoring access to a single web page, frames privacy as a worthwhile trade-off for reading an article for free, echoing the language of the social media industry.
- ratelimitsteve 29d agoFlock wants people like you and me in a closely surveilled world. Flock cameras will never catch aristocrats committing aristocrat crimes, only regular people finding money in a parking lot.
- Thegn 29d agoThose who would ask you to trade your privacy for security don’t have your security in mind.
- canelonesdeverd 29d agoA bit concerning how some people in this thread will bend over backwards to defend mass surveillance. Not surprising given who owns the board, but still.
- timedude 29d agoProbably people who don't know history and trust the robberment.
- TFNA 29d agoA lot of techies have lived in China and seen how that country has stronger social harmony than the West and is gradually outpacing it, so mass surveillance clearly isn't an obstacle to the general prosperity. The problem with mass surveillance rollouts in the West is that they are incomplete: the cameras might go up, but not all infractions caught on camera are actually punished. Meanwhile, in China vandals and other disruptive people do get traced back to where they live and apprehended. I think that if such a vigorous policy were applied in other countries, even on a contrarian forum like this one you wouldn't see much opposition to the cameras.
- iamnothere 29d agoYes, the problems are trust and consistency of enforcement. We have neither in the US and I’m not sure how we would ever get there. Many East Asian countries try to write their laws so that niche cases are covered, and enforcement is tighter. In the West we leave endless loopholes in overbroad laws so that (a) everyone is probably breaking some law frequently and (b) the only people who frequently face consequences are politically disfavored groups, “troublemakers”, or those who harm elites. It’s all very Soviet.
- deleted 29d ago[deleted]
- djeastm 29d ago> even on a contrarian forum like this one you wouldn't see much opposition to the cameras. You think the commenters on HN would sacrifice liberty in return for safety? I get the opposite impression.
- josefritzishere 29d agoMass surveillance is a crime against humanity. They want us all to live in an open air prison. Garrett Langley should be regarded as a domestic terrorist and be in a real prison.
- gib444 29d agoSurprised Pikachu face when the public who carry spying devices in their pockets, purchased HomePods and Echos for their homes, championed American big tech, bought lots of other smart devices by the bucketload, gave away all their data...find out it will eventually then be used against you
- slibhb 29d agoI'm generally in favor of mass surveillance, as long as it's in public. I think it can prevent a lot of crime and I don't believe we have a right to "privacy in public". Red light cameras, for example, strike me as unalloyed good. However, I'd be interested to see if opponents of mass surveillance could draft good legislation to curb potential abuses. For example, the laws around who owns/controls data from cameras could be changed/redefined, as could the process of accessing that data.
- matheusmoreira 29d ago> draft good legislation to curb potential abuses No such thing. Unless it is mathematically impossible for the government to abuse you, then you will be abused.
- slibhb 29d agoThat sounds like an argument for anarchism. I am very unimpressed by political philosophies that take arguments to their logical conclusion. What seems to me to have worked is understanding that a government is necessary, that it has the potential to misbehave, and therefore we should carefully design laws and processes to constrain it. I would like to see opponents of mass surveillance do this, which seems more productive than what I normally observe.
- tavavex 29d agoNo, it is an argument that the best way not to abuse something is to not have access to it. If you enshrine a ban of total surveillance on a deep and universal level in a country, it'll be a lot more difficult for a future bad actor state to reinstate it. We need the most extreme legal hurdles that can exist. More importantly, if the technology isn't actually physically installed, it becomes even more of an uphill battle for a future corrupt government. Your proposal is for surveilling everyone but making a pinky promise that no one in the chain will ever be corrupt at any point in the future, because all it would take at that point is changing some words on a page, refusing to prosecute an abuse of power, using some loopholes or pushing a software update.
- afishisafish 29d agoRelevant Def Con talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcK-TDmzshc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcK-TDmzshc DEF CON 34 - ESP32 as counter-surveillance platform - Cybertiger, Colonel Panic, The Wrew
- idkithought 29d agoFlock (YC 17) YC has been working on this for a decade.
- christkv 29d agoFlock can go flock itself
- Kuyawa 29d agoBriff [1] works with some sites that bother readers with pay/subscribe to read, good to know Second test, please ignore me https://briff.site/s/flock-wants-a-closely-surveilled-b8et https://briff.site/s/flock-wants-a-closely-surveilled-b8et
- trinsic2 29d agoThe article reads more like a reverse psychology article directed at the public rather than a real criticism of mass surveillance. It's almost as if they want to convince their audience that the practice is justified. The article spends an inordinate amount of time on flocks history from the point of view of the perpetrators of the practice rather than how it's harming society. This is a typical tactic the establishment uses to keep the focus on an evil scapegoat so the practice can be slipping in under the radar by another less well know contractor.
- YCcreatedFlock 29d ago[flagged]
- cm2012 29d agoFundamentally this is silly because Flock only tracks cars and not individual people. It doesn't do facial recognition surveillance. Society decided a long time ago that driving is a privilege that can be regulated in a variety of ways.
- vsviridov 29d agoIt can track devices via their Bluetooth radiation. A lot of devices use randomized MAC addresses though, but probably not all.
- deleted 29d ago[deleted]
- some_random 29d agoThere is a societal consensus that driving is a privilege which can be restricted or revoked, not that you give up your rights by driving. In fact the opposite is true, the courts have found that drivers have fourth amendment rights for instance.
- cm2012 29d agoI agree that Flock and other license plate readers should be regulated. Law enforcement should be logged and have rules for how and when they can access these records. What I would strongly disagree with is the idea that flock and license plate readers are unconstitutional and should be banned.
- Manuel_D 29d agoDrivers have a right not to have their car searched without probable cause. But being photographed in public is not a search.
- text0404 29d agoThose photographs go into a searchable database.
- NoImmatureAdHom 29d agoThe solution to this is legislation. Legislation enshrining a right to not be studied, a right to be forgotten, penalties for even creating certain kinds of datasets. I think the Americans should push for a constitutional amendment that protects one's right to privacy.
- nbulka 29d agoWhen I drive by a Flock camera, my streaming music in my 2014 Rav starts to get scrambled. These cameras are intercepting bluetooth. It seems Toyota didn't account for that latency :facepalm:
- beams_of_light 29d agoWe need to keep our surveillance of the surveillance state broad. There’s a lot of focus on Flock right now (rightfully so), but they are merely a single player in the privatized surveillance state architecture. Palantir, Anduril, telcos, and more are contributing to the erosion of our privacy. It’s been 2 decades since we learned about the secret NSA room at AT&T. 13 years since the Snowden revelations. This is not new and we need to be vigilant.
- AtlasBarfed 29d agoOnce flick gets its way it's basically game over for democracy. Unless our judiciary gets serious about what started with 9/11, authoritarianism is inevitable. This actually is my primary candidate for the great filter.
- throwitaway222 29d agoAt some point Flock will be drones that fly for 30 minutes, get a replacement drone in its place, and the 30 minute one will land, automatically swap batteries and take off again and get into a different zone.
- esseph 29d agoLarry Ellison must love them, they are helping carry out his idea.
- __msh__ 29d agoJust chop 'em down already
- natali_gray 29d agoI just watched this week how John Oliver went over how the cops are using it to look children's playgrounds and hotel pools. And in the same week, I also watched how some protester showed up to talk in favor of Flock, dressed in a Darth Vadar costume. Honestly, all of this "we're just doing this for your own good" stuff sounds like a explicit loophole to not get a warrant. Fourth Amendment be damned I guess???
- deleted 29d ago[deleted]
- 0ldblu3 29d agoEventually someone will start sending lawmakers and members of the judicary details of their childrens movements and suddenly it will be an invation of privacy. Apparently the security on the cameras and the API are garbage and if a YouTuber is able to do it (Benn Jordan), nation state actors certainly are.
- jan98u 28d ago[dead]
- red-iron-pine 28d agoSystem of a Down tried to warn us about this years ago "they're tying to build a prison -- for you and me to live in, for you and me to live in"
- fenderblender 24d ago[dead]