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Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation
- gessha 20d agoAlternative title: “Torment Nexus technician complains about local mass surveillance resistance”.
- trs83 20d agoIrony is dead.
- blueoranges 20d agoFlock is YC
- Zeetah 20d agoPrivacy for me but not for thee - Flock
- simpaticoder 20d agoA really interesting experiment would be to give the public access to all of Flock's data, in real time. I say we try it and see how that goes.
- hammock 20d agoThere was an organization I came across that was working with private property owners to set up cameras outside/pointed at politicians, etc and sharing the footage. I can’t recall the name though
- ProfessorLayton 19d agosparrow map
- hammock 19d agoYes thank you!
- cute_boi 20d agoyea it is similar to robot mark zuckerburg who purchased everything near his house to protect privacy, but his app is the biggest privacy nightmares, especially rayban glasses.
- croes 20d agoOh the irony
- kappi 20d ago[flagged]
- orangeberrytea 20d ago[dead]
- nixosbestos 20d agoNo, it hasn't. And yeah, man, I hope hackers give a shit about YC and Flock enabling the dismantlement of any semblance of privacy, and normalizing total surveillance culture.
- tekla 20d agoThe site owners are the ones that helped fund this evil shit.
- jamesnorden 20d agoReally, with all the AI submissions, that's what you think the website is full of?
- mulemisterX 20d agoNo, it hasn't. And if it did, so what?
- LeBit 20d agoThat sounds like what a flock bot would say.
- perching_aix 20d agoliterally. ran the numbers quickly, it's a ridiculous claim. they barely register even when considering thread popularity: https://imgur.com/a/dqsFkTb https://imgur.com/a/dqsFkTb needs log scale to even see anything, really: https://imgur.com/a/jNtbuwE https://imgur.com/a/jNtbuwE the claim having been the following, before it got flagged to nothingness: > this site has become flocknews.com! guy kept seeing some posts every now and then for the past few weeks == site is like, literally flock news only man!!!! gotta love these reliable narrators
- driverdan 20d agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49618447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49618447
- orangeberrytea 20d ago[dead]
- b112 20d agoFlock was seed round funded by YC, not "a YC company". It's not like they control it, manage it, and what was pitched may be significantly different than what happened since then. YC isn't perfect, but what words you use, and their order is important. And the way you're phrasing it, you make it sound as if they are a subsidiary of YC. Or as if YC is on the board. If any of these things are true, you should plainly state them. Otherwise, what you're saying is incorrect.
- LastTrain 20d agoIf the they didn't pitch the massive surveillance and data capturing aspects they wouldn’t have got the funding.
- WarmWash 20d agoBlantantly making stuff up is a bad look, they were founded as an HOA (private neighborhood) security service. >Flock’s camera and accompanying software is geared towards private neighborhoods and neighborhood associations looking to decrease petty crime.[1] [1]https://www.hypepotamus.com/flock-safety-funding-round-growth/ https://www.hypepotamus.com/flock-safety-funding-round-growt...
- dkarl 20d agoSame thing on a smaller scale, and they never would have got venture capital funding if they didn't have an upward trajectory from HOAs. There's only one path upward from private HOA surveillance, and that's government surveillance.
- b112 20d agoBy that reasoning, every single company will run out of good scale reasons, and therefore scale for bad reasons, so you're evil to fund anyone ever.
- jamesnorden 20d agoFlock (YC 2017) missing from title.
- spiderfarmer 20d agoUS citizens are bad at protesting. In my area these cameras would be on fire weekly.
- whimsicalism 20d agoWhat country?
- mikeodds 20d agoFrench? I was impressed by: Yellow vests knock out 60% of all speed cameras in France https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46822472 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46822472
- tekla 20d agoThis story isn't related this issue at all. This was about a fuel tax, not actually about the cameras themselves
- mikeodds 19d agoYes rather it was an example of action rather than words
- andwhatisthis 20d agoWould be nice, but we (in France) have plenty of cameras already. They may not be branded Flock, but they're there nonetheless. And as far as I'm aware, none of them are ablaze.
- bdangubic 20d agoUS Citizens have been tamed by “social” and other media propaganda by the people in power. But we got 2A handy to you know, hunt for rabbits and shit
- deleted 20d ago[deleted]
- juiceland 20d ago>The officer said the installer was also concerned about privacy. "And his worry more than anything is that, you know, he's just an employee. Anybody like you and me. And now he's going to be in the news and he doesn't know if it's going to be targeted at him or his family." Don’t you understand? He was just following orders.
- deleted 20d ago[deleted]
- bobim 20d agoMilgram agrees
- ryandrake 20d agoTotally wild that someone installing a surveillance camera is "concerned about privacy." Only his privacy is important I guess.
- close04 20d agoToo bad somehow the face that ends up out there as the face of surveillance isn’t the CEO of Flock, not their coders, not the YC people who gave them money to do exactly what they’re doing. It’s the lowest of the low in the chain, the guy sitting in the sun to install the cameras on a post.
- juiceland 20d agoNo empathy for fascists or fascist collaborators.
- tptacek 20d agoRandom people calling 911 on other people filming them is a staple of Youtube; banks, coffee store workers, hairdressers, most especially restaurant managers. I don't know why anyone would expect technicians from Flock to be different. It's worse for the technician in this case, because he really was being followed --- that's not unlawful but it's unnerving. You'd think from the response that this was like the VP/Sales of Flock Safety. But it's just some installer dude probably making $65k/year to climb poles and fasten cameras. I guess that's praxis for you though. I think this is just a ragebait piece.
- EgregiousCube 20d agoEspecially when chances are that this camera installation was the result of local government asking and paying Flock to put it up. I'm not sure why the anger is directed at the company instead of local elected officials, and I understand the plight of the installer who's worried about being labeled as a bad guy for executing public works contracts.
- LeBit 20d agoWell, politicians are to pay for the fact they have allowed something like Flock cameras to be put up and spy to egregiously on their constituents. But Flock itself should not be spared . They are building things that are going against widely accepted values. Since when Americans are okay with that level of erosion of their privacy? Same thing with Meta building pervert glasses.
- EgregiousCube 20d agoThis is the disconnect. You say that politicians are allowing them - that's not right. They're directing them to be set up, they're spending citizen tax money on buying them. The blame lies entirely with government officials who sought out and purchased surveillance tech, and we should not blame the technologists who responded rationally to the incentive that local governments provided for them.
- michaelt 20d ago
- Hasz 20d agoman, these guys bungled their PR so, so hard. What they should have done is pre-seeded a ton of stories about flock catching some notorious criminal, helping solve xyz serious crimes, helping solve abc minor nuisance issue crimes, and maybe some lines about reducing direct law enforcement interactions. On the flip side, let Axon, Motorola take some of the heat, paint your enemies as "defund the police", and stop being so obviously branded. Take a page out of Phillip Morris/Altria playbook and keep a lower profile. Instead, they've managed to unite left and right in hatred. Clown show.
- cucumber3732842 20d agoTheir problem is they believed their own bullshit and thought they were offering people a good deal that basically amounted to "the government 1984s you more than they already do but your package thief gets arrested, maybe". Ignoring the fact that that deal is not necessarily good, if they had been slightly scummier, not given two shits about actually reducing petty crimes against the people and instead set out to help municipalities collect civil fines (which have basically no 4th-8th amendment protections these days) they probably could have gotten away without scrutiny for a very long time and gotten their systems deeply entrenched. The useful idiots would've eaten it right up with the flimsiest of pretexts so long as each segment of useful idiots was peddled to individually. "The truck we saw carrying 2-tons of waste tires away from your tire shop is not owned by an entity on the state approved list, pay up" "We saw you leaving home depot with a water heater but you didn't pull a permit, prove it didn't go into your house or pay the fine" "we saw your 2004 Altima emit a puff of blue leaving a light. Per vehicle code XYZ any vehicle that emmits a visible cloud cannot pass emissions inspection, submit proof of passing withing 30d or your resigstration is revoked" If they had done that a lot of people would have eaten it up and asked for more. But nope, they believed their own BS and built a system for "real" law enforcement. And of course that leads to a bunch of bad interactions with cops and the public doesn't like that.
- slopinthebag 20d agoNah, what they should have done is called themselves the UK government and then all of HN would be praising them instead
- 19d ago
- howmayiannoyyou 20d agoFlock has solved crimes in my state, including a few horrendous violent crimes. We forget US society was configured (imperfectly) to allow families to raise their children in stability and safety, with guardrails around both sides of liberty. Surveillance has a legit role in protecting communities and their families - especially the most vulnerable. Willing to be most of the Flock hate crowd doesn't have kids walking to school in areas where bad things happen - many probably don't have kids.
- Jcampuzano2 20d agoI tend to agree that when used correctly, a surveillance system like this could have benefits at a societal level. The problem is the many stories we already have of misuses of this equipment, showing that people in power are not mentally capable of actually managing a surveillance system like this in a societally beneficial way. If the use of the system was designated as only being allowed to stop heinous crimes and we had a track record and way to prove this was always the case, then I would be 100% in support. But given it has already proven to not be possible is likely why most people are against it. I simply don't think Humans are capable of proper use of a system like this.
- snarf21 20d agoThe problem is that these system are setup specifically to be able to be used incorrectly. Flock is getting all the rage right now but they aren't the only vendor. An acquisition and rename later and everyone will have forgotten this all. Police (others?) are setting up stingrays. Stalin's secret police had a maxim: "Show me the man, and I'll find you the crime." Remember, everyone who installed a Ring doorbell camera paid to help set up these kinds of networks. (all so that a porch pirate might get caught even though Amazon will reship for free). These systems also set up a huge target for bad actors to hack outside of the law. If these things were only ever used with the a valid search warrant, that would be a great step forward. But even that will only stop "honest" people from abusing the system.
- jamesnorden 20d agoOh, yes, "think of the children", nobody has ever explored this angle to push unpopular things before.
- classified 20d agoOutfits like TSA, ICE, Flock attract all the wrong people.
- dofm 20d agoTo be fair to people, TSA attracts people who live near airports and need jobs, doesn't it? ICE, yes. At this point you cannot make an argument at all that you are going to join a fair-minded organisation that treats people decently while upholding a lawful function. People who work for Flock should be considering their futures, but I suspect people who install Flock cameras are more in the TSA bracket: it is a job that will be near them that pays.
- zetanor 20d agoGovernment jobs attract all the wrong people.
- jasonlotito 20d agoTo be clear, that doesn't mean everyone working for the government is the wrong people.
- Tostino 20d agoI've gotta mention it because everyone seems to have a learned helplessness with this type of thing. I went and spoke at my county commissioners meeting a couple times after the initial flock roll out (voted on with no discussion a couple years prior) started becoming apparent. The first meeting, the group of me and two other people were half of the people making public comment. Every single person was against it unless they worked for the county. At the second meeting there were a whole lot more people. Again, every single person who spoke who didn't work for the county was against it, this time they had eight+ police officers speak in favor of it. We managed to swing a couple of the county commissioners who were in favor of it before and were not in favor of it after hearing about the constitutional issues as well as the cyber security issues that flock doesn't really care about. Pasco county Florida is now removing all the cameras on the public right of ways at the end of this month.
- Simulacra 20d agoThe real trick, is to stop going to these meetings, and start running against these politicians. Get the forms, stand out in front of your local post office, collect the signatures, and primary them. Run against them. That's the only thing they listen to
- johnnyanmac 19d agoNot everyone has the drive, talent, connections, time, nor resources to run a political campaign. Showing up to your townhall every 2 weeks can already be an overly high barrier given some townhall times, but is much more feasible.
- Simulacra 19d agoNeither did AOC. Respectfully, stop talking yourself out of it. Most voters are desperate for someone different, but they are only ever given the same two choices. Look into it. Seriously consider it.
- Denzel 20d agoI don’t understand your point. > We managed to swing a couple of the county commissioners who were in favor of it before and were not in favor of it after hearing about the constitutional issues as well as the cyber security issues that flock doesn't really care about. Do you not see the problem here? Pasco County has a $2.2B annual budget. These county commissioners have the financial resources, organizational access to expertise, and time to focus on these problems. Do they really need an under-resourced citizen to inform them about the constitutional issues after deployment? And then they just say “Aw shucks, whoopsies, now I see the light.” I don’t think it’s fair to call this learned helplessness (a lingering belief after the threat has vanished) when we’re facing off against an active, persistent adversarial threat. Your county commissioners didn’t make a “whoopsies” when they took a deliberate, informed action against your interests. Furthermore, it’s unsustainable to require citizens to pour significant time and energy into forcing their representatives to faithfully represent them. That quite literally defeats the purpose of a representative governing body.
- hermannj314 20d agoIf someone came up to me and started filming me while I was in public, and then when I got in my car they followed me, I would also call the police. The double standard demonstrated by Flock isn't the issue, they are the pieces of shit and of course they have no moral consistency. But "He who fights with monsters should be careful, lest he thereby become a monster." I thought we were united that people have a reasonable sense of temporal privacy in public - that being in public is ephemeral and not some permanent record to be analyzed in perpetuity. We should not be fine stalking people and making them feel threatened, even those that want to build the panopticon state.
- iwontberude 20d ago[dead]
- emsign 20d agoBut you're not working for Flock, are you? We could go on much further until we reach the what Popper called the Tolerance Paradox: "If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." The point is that total surveillance is like the destruction of tolerance or in thie case privacy, and it makes watching the watchmen impossible. There's a point of no return and before that one is reached resistance IS allowed or else you lose everything.
- delichon 20d agoIf someone were following around and filming someone who was posting anti-Flock fliers, I would also feel that crosses into harassment after a certain amount of time. A TV news crew filmed me when I was a freshman setting up my old travel trailer in a new university trailer park. I hated it, but it didn't last long. If they had continued following and filming indefinitely despite my protests, I would have wanted some kind of legal protection from them.
- nbvgjhk 20d agoflock's business model is recording people. they do not get to complain about being recorded.
- onesociety2022 20d agoWhy do you think you can get legal protection just because the filming lasts longer? AFAIK you can film anyone however long you want as long as you do it exclusively on public property where there's no expectation of privacy and you don't harass them in anyway (maintain a safe distance). Isn't that what happens to celebrities & politicians? AOC doesn't get to complain that the press is following her with cameras everywhere she goes all day long.
- jeroenhd 20d agoI would feel the same way if these people weren't installing a permanent surveillance camera. I don't think it's fair to cry harassment if you're getting filmed setting up the harassment machine. If anything, Americans are being too nice to Flock. We're watching the villain and setup of a 1980s dystopian scifi horror, except there's no unlikely hero who can save the world by shooting a single weirdo in a suit on top of a skyscraper.
- driggs 20d agoI love a good taste-of-their-own-medicine story like anyone else, but the headline is false. It seems that this is about a YouTuber stalking a Flock employee's vehicle through traffic for 10-15 minutes, which is why the police were called.
- kstrauser 20d agoThat’s literally exactly what Flock does. I can’t find sympathy for the company on this.
- whimsicalism 20d agoMaybe I’m a radical but I am okay with the government having capabilities that are different from what a youtuber is allowed to do.
- kstrauser 20d agoIn my opinion, yes, that makes you a radical. I don’t want an armed organization with a trillion dollar budget stalking me. That’s the common stance in America. We even put it in our constitution.
- giaour 20d agoWell, the government can use Flock camera footage, and YouTubers can film with personal devices on public property. So I guess their capabilities are already pretty different
- deleted 20d ago[deleted]
- glaslong 20d agoA frequent argument made in Flock's favor is that if you are in public there isn't an expectation of privacy. That Flock can see where you go just like any other driver. Particularly since Flock is a private entity not the government. This is the Other Driver behaving antisocially towards one driver EXACTLY as Flock does to all drivers.
- ck2 20d agothe weird thing about anti-flock is they are just replaced with another brand also they are just putting 24/7 recorders now in police vehicles and even delivery services so you can't just be anti-flock, you have to be anti-recording without policy for use and retention your phone and even your watch may be recording your audio right now
- blueoranges 20d ago> anti-recording without policy for use and retention Not recording on its own, but the linking of data with other cities and making it all searchable by those with access is where it becomes unprecedented mass surveillance. You’re right that we have to be specific. > your phone may be recording They are able to dodge these accusations by just selling voice command logs. “No we don’t record you or sell your audio data” and yet Siri’s AUL reads: [PhraseSpotter] Detected wake word “Pepsi” with a score 0.942. [com.apple.voiceactivation] Proceeding with full wake. A lot of people don’t know there is a low power “always on” processor (AOP) that monitors a small audio buffer on-device. So no need to sell the audio, just the unrelated logs of some app that uses the AOP.
- chinathrow 20d agoThe audacity.
- quaintdev 20d agoIt's kind of ironic that US built the infrastructure(adtech, social media) to track people around the world on the Internet and now their own people are getting tracked in real life.
- deleted 20d ago[deleted]
- aeroscissorz1 20d ago“Just an employee” isn’t trained to not say full name on 911 so you can’t be identified in future publishing. That’s a member.
- rfrey 20d agoI think if you're worried about being harassed by your neighbours if they find out what you do during the day, you should be thinking hard about what you do during the day.
- madaxe_again 20d agoYeah! If you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to fear! looks at you suspiciously Are those… curtains?
- rfrey 20d agoYou don't think there's a difference between recording somebody on the street installing mass surveillance devices and peering into person's window?
- deleted 19d ago[deleted]
- slopinthebag 20d agoIt’s a smart tactic for governments to use private corporations to do stuff like this. Flock takes all the heat and the government can even make themselves look good by ditching Flock. 2 seconds later they’ll use a different company. There is no practical difference between the government hiring people to do something and the government hiring a corporation to do the same thing, and if you find yourself blaming Flock instead of the government who funds them, you’re being manipulated by this tactic.
- downrightmike 20d agoExcept the Gov can't buy services from corps to do things they are not allowed to do: Pinkerton Act. None of this is legal
- slopinthebag 20d agoI’m not saying this is legal, I’m saying this is a tactic governments use to deflect culpability from themselves for their actions. The fact people even blame the flock guy and not the politicians who sent him there means it’s working.
- jh00ker 20d agoThis post was #1 on HN and I clicked the link, watched the video, and then it was bumped down to #98 within that time. I've never seen that happen on HN before, but maybe I just didn't notice?
- tekla 20d agoThis is normal on HN
- hamburglar 20d agoI think the long term solution to the privacy problem is going to be to switch to a vehicle marking system which can only be usefully used by law enforcement. Example, if instead of license plates you had a transponder that sends out encrypted metadata about the vehicle in a way that only law enforcement could decrypt it. Obviously there are still problems of abuse of law enforcement keys but it raises the bar significantly and it prevents private companies from building a business out of collecting the data. You introduce a new problem, which is that eyewitness reports of crimes etc can’t identify the vehicles as easily, but that could be viewed as an acceptable loss. Or the problem could conceivably be solved with more technology if we can have dynamically changing license plates (which, again, require law enforcement keys to map back to a real identity for the vehicle). The only other way I see is that we change laws so that a company like flock collecting this data and then offering it to the government is treated the same as if the government collected it itself. But now that the cat is out of that bag and there is big money behind it, I don’t really see it going back.
- YCHNPopcorn 20d ago[dead]
- FlockIsYC 17d ago[dead]