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It'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 sup

by furyg3 25d ago

It'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 25d ago
A reasonable regulation, focusing on personal freedom, would just forbid building such a network in the first place.
- alehlopeh 25d ago
  You just need to reasonably predict the future 20 years ago.
  - apexalpha 25d ago
    The EU heavily regulates this specifically in the, here infamous, "AI regulations" . Though GDPR would also ban this probably.
    - leansensei 25d ago
      What's the point, when we have Chat Control 2.0?
  - bluefirebrand 25d ago
    1984 was written in 1949, that feels like a reasonable prediction of Flock a lot longer than 20 years ago
  - pintxo 25d ago
    The history of human civilization is quite telling, no?
  - fuzzfactor 25d ago
    More like 30 years ago when I got my first webcam and have been deeply considering today's exact scenario, along with many alternatives ever since. Had nothing to do with any regulations though, actually didn't want to give anybody any ideas either way. There were so many better things to do back then, and now even more variety of opportunities although not every "ecosystem" turns out to be a net positive if you're not careful.
- brookst 25d ago
  How would you specify this regulation? It’s very hard to regulate outcomes when the component steps are legal. Not saying we shouldn’t try, just saying that path is well-trodden and rarely works. See: media consolidation, etc IMO it is much more practical to regulate and penalize the activity of using such a network than to preempt its creation. Heck, BitTorrent can be seen as a surveillance network. But intent and usage make it obvious it’s not.
  - perlgeek 25d ago
    The GDPR is far from perfect, but it does cover this. It talks about acquiring and storing information that can be used to identify people. It doesn't specify what counts, so now that face recognition is pretty, it automatically applies to images. It also talks about uses cases where such things are allowed to be recorded, and forbids all others. > IMO it is much more practical to regulate and penalize the activity of using such a network than to preempt its creation. Hard disagree. If such a network is created, foreign adversaries (or domestic ones that don't abide by the laws) can hack them. Has happened quite a number of times.
  - JoshTriplett 25d ago
    We can absolutely say that, for instance, taking pictures in public is legal but surveilling is not. We could say that recording public spaces systematically, for the purposes of surveillance, is not permitted. That does not require us to say that individuals cannot record in a public place. We can even say that individuals or companies are not allowed to collude to effectively turn individual recordings into systematic public surveillance (e.g. you can't build a product that searches everyone's personal videos of spaces and turns them into a spotty surveillance network).
  - JohnFen 25d ago
    > How would you specify this regulation? I'd regulate the database side of things. What makes mass surveillance systems such as Flock, Ring, etc., incredibly objectionable isn't really the cameras. It's the databases they feed into that allow for the unprecedented invasion into our daily lives. That's also true for non-camera surveillance systems. The concentration and correlation of individually innocuous information adds up to an egregious assault on us all. That's the part that needs heavy restriction and regulation.
- YCHNPopcorn 25d ago
  Ask YC - they funded Flock
nonethewiser 25d ago
>It'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. Primary example: U.S. government officials pressuring social-media platforms through intermediaries to suppress constitutionally protected speech.
- doc_ick 24d ago
  Now was there a realistic health risk involved in that “primary example”? If only everyone just told the truth instead of buying the rights to it.
none2585 25d ago
> Thankfully the supreme court seems to agree here in two ways I'm sure we're a golden statue or private jet away from the supreme court having a change of heart there.
- Lord-Jobo 25d ago
  It’s called a deluxe motor-coach and it’s the most important currency in our democracy, apparently.
harporoeder 25d ago
There is not generally an expectation of privacy in public. Things in public can be recorded without consent. Filming a car on a street and giving that video to the government is not the same as me giving private information to a third party, and then them giving it to the government such as Carpenter v United states covers. Edit: Note that this is not an endorsement, rather stating that recent supreme court cases may not be applicable.
- someguyiguess 25d ago
  Private citizens filming in public and police forces setting up arrays of surveillance cameras in public somehow don’t seem equivalent. I’m not a lawyer so I can’t properly articulate what the legal difference is. And if there isn’t one then the law needs change. Clearly the majority of citizens agree with me. Is it legal for US citizens to all put cameras on their cars and set up a network where we can all see where all police are at any given time? Seems like a good idea at this point.
  - pydry 25d ago
    already happening and it seems it is legal https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/citizens-are-tracking-ice-real-time-warn-migrants-is-that-legal-2025-09-04/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/citizens-are-tracki...
    - DrScientist 25d ago
      Another area that's also existed for quite a while is the crowd-sourcing of the positions of mobile speed traps. Though bizarrely in the UK that's legal if you do it via Waze, not if you do it via whatsapp.
  - EvanAnderson 25d ago
    The quickest way to get dragnet surveillance banned would be for citizens to collaborate and create a massive publicly-available surveillance network.
bko 25d ago
So you want the government to recreate the tech and control that flock provides. I don't think this is going to work out like you think it will...
- harimau777 25d ago
  Clearly not, but even that would be better than unaccountable corporations having the tech.
  - bko 25d ago
    Corporations are more accountable than government agencies. A government agency can switch vendors or you can drag their CEOs in front of Congress. Try that with some internal bureaucrat in an agency you've never heard of.
    - harimau777 25d ago
      Leaders of departments (i.e. the government equivalent of a CEO) are dragged in front of congress all the time. The government at least has a theoretical obligation to promote the public good. It isn't much but it's better than corporations whose only obligation is the shareholders. The government is also subject to safeguards like freedom of infermation requests which level the playingfield somewhat. I'm not saying that the government is good. I'm just saying that corporations are much worse.
    - ceejayoz 25d ago
      > Try that with some internal bureaucrat in an agency you've never heard of. https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/testimony-of-anthony-fauci/ https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/testimony-of-anthony-f... How many Americans had heard of internal bureaucrat Anthony Fauci and NIAID before 2020?
      - bko 25d ago
        I doubt the president of the United States would be so quick to grant a full pardon to the Flock CEO for any past (or future) crimes committed. Thanks for proving my point.
gnfargbl 25d ago
> users have a private relationship with Google where they elect to let Google track them and retain their information Elect to is a bit strong here. Acquiesce to, maybe, or perhaps suffer to.
- apexalpha 25d ago
  You elect to buy an Android and not an Apple I suppose.
  - noir_lord 25d ago
    While I'd generally agree that Apple is the better of the two on the privacy side it's still a false choice because you pretty much have to pick one as a regular person as things currently stand. It becomes harder over time to function in society without a smart phone (I know this because I barely use mine and it usually lives at home but my partner runs her life off hers).
    - apexalpha 25d ago
      I agree but it's clear why you could argue it should be elect from a legal standpoint.
      - simonwsimonw 25d ago
        [dead]
      - pocksuppet 20d ago
        "Don't blame me - I voted for Kodos!"
  - deleted 25d ago
    [deleted]
  - dns_snek 25d ago
    This style of argument is nonsense because deciding between Android and Apple has about a hundred unrelated but equally important consequences. There is no choice that aligns with all of your wishes (and rights). Privacy? Just buy Apple (largely an urban legend at this point, but regardless). Actual ownership? Just buy Android. Security? Just buy Apple (or Pixel with GrapheneOS). Repairability? Just buy one of these 4 Android models. Headphone jack? lol.
cyanydeez 25d ago
America's supreme court's consistency will not protect anyone from this problem, no matter how much history says so.
tmpz22 25d ago
Were pretending we can still have a socratic discussion about this with any consequence. There will be numerous unevidenced accusations about fraud this midterms. It will blanket the internet and air waves. Despite republicans being incredibly nervous about trumps chances these midterms, republicans will win the house and the senate. Trump will reaffirm a supermajority, and policies he decreed will only be expanded. Emboldened, tariffs will continue and expand. The Iran war will continue and expand. Flock cameras will continue and expand. The supreme court will acquisence slowly piece by piece to ever more draconian constitutional violations. This is only the beginning.
- DFHippie 25d ago
  > The supreme court will acquisence slowly piece by piece to ever more draconian constitutional violations. It doesn't seem slow to me.
ryandvm 25d ago
I could probably be convinced that some sort of panopticon license plate reader network could be a net positive for society IF it had the necessary and demonstrably infallible audit and oversight systems - especially with respect to the 4th amendment in the United States (i.e. search warrants). But honestly, law enforcement is the least of my concerns because the industrial surveillance complex has shown time and again that the commercial entities are the ones with the never ending thirst for squeezing ever more profit from every person they can. To me, the far more insidious problem is what happens when Flock needs to keep showing growth? What's to stop them Flock from selling data to any and all comers? The possibilities are literally endless: * Perfect price discrimination. Parking garages, stores, car washes, fast food places perfectly adjusting price based on what you can afford (based on where you've been). * Car insurance shadow telematics. You don't want a GPS-tracker installed on your ODB? Fine. They'll still know where you drive and how fast. * Clinic-visit based healthcare inference. "Looks like this guy has been going to a cancer clinic. NO HIRE." * "Where has your spouse been?" In an age where your TV is spying on you and your fucking refrigerator is showing you ads, do you really think Flock doesn't already have thousands of ideas on how to monetize commercial surveillance data in the post law enforcement phase?
- YCisVeryBad 25d ago
  [flagged]
- ethbr1 25d ago
  > To me, the far more insidious problem is what happens when Flock needs to keep showing growth? To me, this was always the armored gauntlet underneath the velvet glove of any private entity with strong technical locks, Apple included. The best you can reliably say about any private entity is that they're treating their users well at the moment. Ultimately, profit always trumps user alignment.
  - iso1631 25d ago
    Smaller companies are far less likely to, as their owner is happy with their profit and actually likes running the company. One a company goes public though, or has significant external input (VC etc), things start on the slippery slope.
YCisVeryBad 25d ago
Flock is YC. This is being done by investors for ads. Somr govts are cutting deals, those that aren’t are banning them. Never trust HN articles or high karma accts
- eastbound 25d ago
  Flock will be a big curriculum that tarnishes YC. Already under YC videos, comments are related to the Flock scandal. Denizen will want to make it a pain for YC until they fix their ethical problem.
- creaturemachine 25d ago
  All that karma farmed with paywall bypass posts. Kinda greasy.
- KellyCriterion 25d ago
  Do not know about their competitors (and other countries/regulations), but Id guess this going to be a critical product for governments in the future?
tyrabound 25d ago
You are of course correct, the issue with this reason and legality based arguments ignore the issue and fact that the capability is the real problem, not whether some local deputy can stalk someone. It’s something I’ve argued with several legal advocacy and rights groups, this is not the time to compromise and rely on case law. I wish people could see that the very reason and way in which flock popped up almost immediately simultaneously all across the country is because it ids actually a domestic spying matrix, not a policing tool. It is a hostile, domestic and foreign enemy capability; not just some misguided mistake. As long as the capability exists, it is “vulnerable” to back door access by foreign “intelligence services” that are just pass throughs to the CIA/FBI in this case through the “five eyes”+. It may be illegal and unconstitutional to do domestic surveillance, which is still done under various “fingers-crossed and therefore the Constitution does not apply” enemy fabrications like national security laws/letters that are not even public, even if they are of course checked and approved by Judge Trust me Bro; but nothing stops, e.g., the various illegitimate American departments and agencies from asking the Australians, British, Canadians, Israelis, etc. if they happen to have any information about who you have met with over the last 5 years, or your country asking if you, foreign civil rights advocate, have met with anyone in America that might be helping spread civil rights in their country in exchange for some other NS deal with tweet another devil. I wish we had a legitimate government that could actually be trusted with something like a verified, bullet proof Flock camera system that can only be accessed in a verifiable and auditable manner to actually prevent and solve things like abductions and drug/human trafficking and identify lost elderly; but wet love in a society dominated by devils that make deals with murderers, violate the Constitution constantly and consistently, carve out exceptions where none exist or are permitted, and are pedophiles devious criminals of every order and magnitude. I know all these things for a fact in addition to the fact that flock is not the first or the only method/network of mass surveillance that is already fully deployed around the country and world, and gaslighting, narcissistic lies are used to placate people and bribe them with shiny things and “convenience” to be ok with it. People thought the future would look like some draconian and dystopian 1984, but in reality it is actually the Matrix or even the Minority Report, only far more hidden and with far more Soma. The point being is that there cannot be any compromise at all, because as I will adapt what was said about the topic, “he who trades basic freedom for false security is guaranteed to receive neither.”
titzer 25d ago
> 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. Bigcorp has a tendency to treat "anonymized" data as if it were up for grabs. The moment they strip the obvious PII from a data stream, they consider it anonymized, and they can do whatever they want with it. They "value" your privacy--that anonymized data is gold. Of course, such data is such high value and they don't "sell it to third parties", so they technically uphold their pages-long EULA, should they ever be charged in court. But the nature of a lot of high value information, like fine-grained location and telemetry data, just cannot be effectively anonymized. I mean, how do you think they get real-time traffic information? It's "anonymized" GPS location / speed data from Android phones. And it is from the location services layer, not from Google maps.
jordanb 25d ago
The other thing that's going on is that Flock is essentially an always-on "dragnet." A "dragnet" is when you set up police checkpoints everywhere and essentially put entire cities under watch to find a fugitive. This happened in Boston after the bombings. "Dragnets" are illegal except in extreme circumstances (like a bombing). Flock is a "dragnet on demand." You have a digital dragnet in place not just in one city but potentially in every city, and with a single search can pull the results of the dragnet on anyone for any reason.
- hippich 25d ago
  Recently was driving in the middle of nowhere in Texas.. And I saw a few flock cameras watching both ways in highways there too. So it is not just cities, states are implicated too.
  - apercu 25d ago
    Probably selling data to CBP/DEA. I went through a combined military and police checkpoint a bit north of Rio Hondo last August and it was surreal.
    - pstuart 25d ago
      It's for a good cause! This has enabled the DEA to keep all dangerous drugs out of the country and avoid any sort of drug abuse epidemics! Think of the children!
      - ryan_j_naughton 25d ago
        I'm guessing this was /s sarcasm given the "think of the children" reference. Just saying so in case others didn't get the reference and thought you were being sincere...
        allthetime 25d ago
        Uh, the rest of the comment is obviously false and sarcastic as well. Dangerous drugs are at an all time high and the epidemic is immediately apparent in downtown streets
ImHereToVote 25d ago
But what if a private company does a fourth amendment violation? What if the private company is the governing body seeking control?
WakeUpHN 25d ago
YC created Flock 10 years ago. Created it.
YCcreatedFlock 25d ago
[flagged]
- stronglikedan 25d ago
  And a lot of other things too. It's kinda the whole point of their existence.
emodendroket 25d ago
I think there's a reason that they've pushed to get these things up all over the country in a very short amount of time. I feel like the more entrenched they are the less likely the Supreme Court is really going to find against them and tear up the business model, regardless of whether it would be logically consistent or not.
isolay 25d ago
But who will enforce those decisions and what is the penalty for noncompliance?
hsuduebc2 25d ago
I feel this is assuming that the private ventures will not willingly cooperate and can't be forced to comply other than through warrants.
Manuel_D 25d ago
> It'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 At least in the US, they can't. This is already the law. But what so many people don't understand is that the government does not and never did require a warrant or some other permission to film people in public. Flock isn't allowing the government to bypass limits placed them by the Constitution. Privacy laws, for the most part, protect what people do in private. One thing the Flock debate had revealed is how many people simply assume everything they don't like is unconstitutional.
pull_my_finger 25d ago
> 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 Do we know this for fact? Surely, the police are they're biggest consumers, but do they sell access to the APIs to anyone else?

by furyg3 25d ago

pintxo 25d ago

A reasonable regulation, focusing on personal freedom, would just forbid building such a network in the first place.

alehlopeh 25d ago
You just need to reasonably predict the future 20 years ago.
- apexalpha 25d ago
  The EU heavily regulates this specifically in the, here infamous, "AI regulations" . Though GDPR would also ban this probably.
  - leansensei 25d ago
    What's the point, when we have Chat Control 2.0?
- bluefirebrand 25d ago
  1984 was written in 1949, that feels like a reasonable prediction of Flock a lot longer than 20 years ago
- pintxo 25d ago
  The history of human civilization is quite telling, no?
- fuzzfactor 25d ago
  More like 30 years ago when I got my first webcam and have been deeply considering today's exact scenario, along with many alternatives ever since. Had nothing to do with any regulations though, actually didn't want to give anybody any ideas either way. There were so many better things to do back then, and now even more variety of opportunities although not every "ecosystem" turns out to be a net positive if you're not careful.
brookst 25d ago
How would you specify this regulation? It’s very hard to regulate outcomes when the component steps are legal. Not saying we shouldn’t try, just saying that path is well-trodden and rarely works. See: media consolidation, etc IMO it is much more practical to regulate and penalize the activity of using such a network than to preempt its creation. Heck, BitTorrent can be seen as a surveillance network. But intent and usage make it obvious it’s not.
- perlgeek 25d ago
  The GDPR is far from perfect, but it does cover this. It talks about acquiring and storing information that can be used to identify people. It doesn't specify what counts, so now that face recognition is pretty, it automatically applies to images. It also talks about uses cases where such things are allowed to be recorded, and forbids all others. > IMO it is much more practical to regulate and penalize the activity of using such a network than to preempt its creation. Hard disagree. If such a network is created, foreign adversaries (or domestic ones that don't abide by the laws) can hack them. Has happened quite a number of times.
- JoshTriplett 25d ago
  We can absolutely say that, for instance, taking pictures in public is legal but surveilling is not. We could say that recording public spaces systematically, for the purposes of surveillance, is not permitted. That does not require us to say that individuals cannot record in a public place. We can even say that individuals or companies are not allowed to collude to effectively turn individual recordings into systematic public surveillance (e.g. you can't build a product that searches everyone's personal videos of spaces and turns them into a spotty surveillance network).
- JohnFen 25d ago
  > How would you specify this regulation? I'd regulate the database side of things. What makes mass surveillance systems such as Flock, Ring, etc., incredibly objectionable isn't really the cameras. It's the databases they feed into that allow for the unprecedented invasion into our daily lives. That's also true for non-camera surveillance systems. The concentration and correlation of individually innocuous information adds up to an egregious assault on us all. That's the part that needs heavy restriction and regulation.
YCHNPopcorn 25d ago
Ask YC - they funded Flock

nonethewiser 25d ago

>It'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. Primary example: U.S. government officials pressuring social-media platforms through intermediaries to suppress constitutionally protected speech.

doc_ick 24d ago
Now was there a realistic health risk involved in that “primary example”? If only everyone just told the truth instead of buying the rights to it.

none2585 25d ago

> Thankfully the supreme court seems to agree here in two ways I'm sure we're a golden statue or private jet away from the supreme court having a change of heart there.

Lord-Jobo 25d ago
It’s called a deluxe motor-coach and it’s the most important currency in our democracy, apparently.

harporoeder 25d ago

There is not generally an expectation of privacy in public. Things in public can be recorded without consent. Filming a car on a street and giving that video to the government is not the same as me giving private information to a third party, and then them giving it to the government such as Carpenter v United states covers. Edit: Note that this is not an endorsement, rather stating that recent supreme court cases may not be applicable.

someguyiguess 25d ago
Private citizens filming in public and police forces setting up arrays of surveillance cameras in public somehow don’t seem equivalent. I’m not a lawyer so I can’t properly articulate what the legal difference is. And if there isn’t one then the law needs change. Clearly the majority of citizens agree with me. Is it legal for US citizens to all put cameras on their cars and set up a network where we can all see where all police are at any given time? Seems like a good idea at this point.
- pydry 25d ago
  already happening and it seems it is legal https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/citizens-are-tracking-ice-real-time-warn-migrants-is-that-legal-2025-09-04/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/citizens-are-tracki...
  - DrScientist 25d ago
    Another area that's also existed for quite a while is the crowd-sourcing of the positions of mobile speed traps. Though bizarrely in the UK that's legal if you do it via Waze, not if you do it via whatsapp.
- EvanAnderson 25d ago
  The quickest way to get dragnet surveillance banned would be for citizens to collaborate and create a massive publicly-available surveillance network.

bko 25d ago

So you want the government to recreate the tech and control that flock provides. I don't think this is going to work out like you think it will...

harimau777 25d ago
Clearly not, but even that would be better than unaccountable corporations having the tech.
- bko 25d ago
  Corporations are more accountable than government agencies. A government agency can switch vendors or you can drag their CEOs in front of Congress. Try that with some internal bureaucrat in an agency you've never heard of.
  - harimau777 25d ago
    Leaders of departments (i.e. the government equivalent of a CEO) are dragged in front of congress all the time. The government at least has a theoretical obligation to promote the public good. It isn't much but it's better than corporations whose only obligation is the shareholders. The government is also subject to safeguards like freedom of infermation requests which level the playingfield somewhat. I'm not saying that the government is good. I'm just saying that corporations are much worse.
  - ceejayoz 25d ago
    > Try that with some internal bureaucrat in an agency you've never heard of. https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/testimony-of-anthony-fauci/ https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/testimony-of-anthony-f... How many Americans had heard of internal bureaucrat Anthony Fauci and NIAID before 2020?
    - bko 25d ago
      I doubt the president of the United States would be so quick to grant a full pardon to the Flock CEO for any past (or future) crimes committed. Thanks for proving my point.

gnfargbl 25d ago

> users have a private relationship with Google where they elect to let Google track them and retain their information Elect to is a bit strong here. Acquiesce to, maybe, or perhaps suffer to.

apexalpha 25d ago
You elect to buy an Android and not an Apple I suppose.
- noir_lord 25d ago
  While I'd generally agree that Apple is the better of the two on the privacy side it's still a false choice because you pretty much have to pick one as a regular person as things currently stand. It becomes harder over time to function in society without a smart phone (I know this because I barely use mine and it usually lives at home but my partner runs her life off hers).
  - apexalpha 25d ago
    I agree but it's clear why you could argue it should be elect from a legal standpoint.
    - simonwsimonw 25d ago
      [dead]
    - pocksuppet 20d ago
      "Don't blame me - I voted for Kodos!"
- deleted 25d ago
  [deleted]
- dns_snek 25d ago
  This style of argument is nonsense because deciding between Android and Apple has about a hundred unrelated but equally important consequences. There is no choice that aligns with all of your wishes (and rights). Privacy? Just buy Apple (largely an urban legend at this point, but regardless). Actual ownership? Just buy Android. Security? Just buy Apple (or Pixel with GrapheneOS). Repairability? Just buy one of these 4 Android models. Headphone jack? lol.

cyanydeez 25d ago

America's supreme court's consistency will not protect anyone from this problem, no matter how much history says so.

tmpz22 25d ago

Were pretending we can still have a socratic discussion about this with any consequence. There will be numerous unevidenced accusations about fraud this midterms. It will blanket the internet and air waves. Despite republicans being incredibly nervous about trumps chances these midterms, republicans will win the house and the senate. Trump will reaffirm a supermajority, and policies he decreed will only be expanded. Emboldened, tariffs will continue and expand. The Iran war will continue and expand. Flock cameras will continue and expand. The supreme court will acquisence slowly piece by piece to ever more draconian constitutional violations. This is only the beginning.

DFHippie 25d ago
> The supreme court will acquisence slowly piece by piece to ever more draconian constitutional violations. It doesn't seem slow to me.

ryandvm 25d ago

I could probably be convinced that some sort of panopticon license plate reader network could be a net positive for society IF it had the necessary and demonstrably infallible audit and oversight systems - especially with respect to the 4th amendment in the United States (i.e. search warrants). But honestly, law enforcement is the least of my concerns because the industrial surveillance complex has shown time and again that the commercial entities are the ones with the never ending thirst for squeezing ever more profit from every person they can. To me, the far more insidious problem is what happens when Flock needs to keep showing growth? What's to stop them Flock from selling data to any and all comers? The possibilities are literally endless: * Perfect price discrimination. Parking garages, stores, car washes, fast food places perfectly adjusting price based on what you can afford (based on where you've been). * Car insurance shadow telematics. You don't want a GPS-tracker installed on your ODB? Fine. They'll still know where you drive and how fast. * Clinic-visit based healthcare inference. "Looks like this guy has been going to a cancer clinic. NO HIRE." * "Where has your spouse been?" In an age where your TV is spying on you and your fucking refrigerator is showing you ads, do you really think Flock doesn't already have thousands of ideas on how to monetize commercial surveillance data in the post law enforcement phase?

YCisVeryBad 25d ago
[flagged]
ethbr1 25d ago
> To me, the far more insidious problem is what happens when Flock needs to keep showing growth? To me, this was always the armored gauntlet underneath the velvet glove of any private entity with strong technical locks, Apple included. The best you can reliably say about any private entity is that they're treating their users well at the moment. Ultimately, profit always trumps user alignment.
- iso1631 25d ago
  Smaller companies are far less likely to, as their owner is happy with their profit and actually likes running the company. One a company goes public though, or has significant external input (VC etc), things start on the slippery slope.

YCisVeryBad 25d ago

Flock is YC. This is being done by investors for ads. Somr govts are cutting deals, those that aren’t are banning them. Never trust HN articles or high karma accts

eastbound 25d ago
Flock will be a big curriculum that tarnishes YC. Already under YC videos, comments are related to the Flock scandal. Denizen will want to make it a pain for YC until they fix their ethical problem.
creaturemachine 25d ago
All that karma farmed with paywall bypass posts. Kinda greasy.
KellyCriterion 25d ago
Do not know about their competitors (and other countries/regulations), but Id guess this going to be a critical product for governments in the future?

tyrabound 25d ago

You are of course correct, the issue with this reason and legality based arguments ignore the issue and fact that the capability is the real problem, not whether some local deputy can stalk someone. It’s something I’ve argued with several legal advocacy and rights groups, this is not the time to compromise and rely on case law. I wish people could see that the very reason and way in which flock popped up almost immediately simultaneously all across the country is because it ids actually a domestic spying matrix, not a policing tool. It is a hostile, domestic and foreign enemy capability; not just some misguided mistake. As long as the capability exists, it is “vulnerable” to back door access by foreign “intelligence services” that are just pass throughs to the CIA/FBI in this case through the “five eyes”+. It may be illegal and unconstitutional to do domestic surveillance, which is still done under various “fingers-crossed and therefore the Constitution does not apply” enemy fabrications like national security laws/letters that are not even public, even if they are of course checked and approved by Judge Trust me Bro; but nothing stops, e.g., the various illegitimate American departments and agencies from asking the Australians, British, Canadians, Israelis, etc. if they happen to have any information about who you have met with over the last 5 years, or your country asking if you, foreign civil rights advocate, have met with anyone in America that might be helping spread civil rights in their country in exchange for some other NS deal with tweet another devil. I wish we had a legitimate government that could actually be trusted with something like a verified, bullet proof Flock camera system that can only be accessed in a verifiable and auditable manner to actually prevent and solve things like abductions and drug/human trafficking and identify lost elderly; but wet love in a society dominated by devils that make deals with murderers, violate the Constitution constantly and consistently, carve out exceptions where none exist or are permitted, and are pedophiles devious criminals of every order and magnitude. I know all these things for a fact in addition to the fact that flock is not the first or the only method/network of mass surveillance that is already fully deployed around the country and world, and gaslighting, narcissistic lies are used to placate people and bribe them with shiny things and “convenience” to be ok with it. People thought the future would look like some draconian and dystopian 1984, but in reality it is actually the Matrix or even the Minority Report, only far more hidden and with far more Soma. The point being is that there cannot be any compromise at all, because as I will adapt what was said about the topic, “he who trades basic freedom for false security is guaranteed to receive neither.”

titzer 25d ago

> 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. Bigcorp has a tendency to treat "anonymized" data as if it were up for grabs. The moment they strip the obvious PII from a data stream, they consider it anonymized, and they can do whatever they want with it. They "value" your privacy--that anonymized data is gold. Of course, such data is such high value and they don't "sell it to third parties", so they technically uphold their pages-long EULA, should they ever be charged in court. But the nature of a lot of high value information, like fine-grained location and telemetry data, just cannot be effectively anonymized. I mean, how do you think they get real-time traffic information? It's "anonymized" GPS location / speed data from Android phones. And it is from the location services layer, not from Google maps.

jordanb 25d ago

The other thing that's going on is that Flock is essentially an always-on "dragnet." A "dragnet" is when you set up police checkpoints everywhere and essentially put entire cities under watch to find a fugitive. This happened in Boston after the bombings. "Dragnets" are illegal except in extreme circumstances (like a bombing). Flock is a "dragnet on demand." You have a digital dragnet in place not just in one city but potentially in every city, and with a single search can pull the results of the dragnet on anyone for any reason.

hippich 25d ago
Recently was driving in the middle of nowhere in Texas.. And I saw a few flock cameras watching both ways in highways there too. So it is not just cities, states are implicated too.
- apercu 25d ago
  Probably selling data to CBP/DEA. I went through a combined military and police checkpoint a bit north of Rio Hondo last August and it was surreal.
  - pstuart 25d ago
    It's for a good cause! This has enabled the DEA to keep all dangerous drugs out of the country and avoid any sort of drug abuse epidemics! Think of the children!
    - ryan_j_naughton 25d ago
      I'm guessing this was /s sarcasm given the "think of the children" reference. Just saying so in case others didn't get the reference and thought you were being sincere...
      - allthetime 25d ago
        Uh, the rest of the comment is obviously false and sarcastic as well. Dangerous drugs are at an all time high and the epidemic is immediately apparent in downtown streets

ImHereToVote 25d ago

But what if a private company does a fourth amendment violation? What if the private company is the governing body seeking control?

WakeUpHN 25d ago

YC created Flock 10 years ago. Created it.

YCcreatedFlock 25d ago

[flagged]

stronglikedan 25d ago
And a lot of other things too. It's kinda the whole point of their existence.

emodendroket 25d ago

I think there's a reason that they've pushed to get these things up all over the country in a very short amount of time. I feel like the more entrenched they are the less likely the Supreme Court is really going to find against them and tear up the business model, regardless of whether it would be logically consistent or not.

isolay 25d ago

But who will enforce those decisions and what is the penalty for noncompliance?

hsuduebc2 25d ago

I feel this is assuming that the private ventures will not willingly cooperate and can't be forced to comply other than through warrants.

Manuel_D 25d ago

> It'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 At least in the US, they can't. This is already the law. But what so many people don't understand is that the government does not and never did require a warrant or some other permission to film people in public. Flock isn't allowing the government to bypass limits placed them by the Constitution. Privacy laws, for the most part, protect what people do in private. One thing the Flock debate had revealed is how many people simply assume everything they don't like is unconstitutional.

pull_my_finger 25d ago

> 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 Do we know this for fact? Surely, the police are they're biggest consumers, but do they sell access to the APIs to anyone else?