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Random people calling 911 on other people filming them is a staple of Youtube; banks, coffee store workers, hairdressers, most especially restaurant managers. I

by tptacek 29d ago

Random 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 29d ago
Especially 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 29d ago
  Well, 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 29d ago
    This 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 29d ago
  > I understand the plight of the installer who's worried about being labeled as a bad guy for executing public works contracts. You do unpopular things, you gotta expect to be an unpopular person. Sophisticated, educated types might understand that parking wardens are just doing their jobs, and they didn't make the policy they're enforcing. But to 70% of the population, the person putting a ticket on their car is an asshole.
- diath 29d ago
  The company could have rejected the government deal if they cared about the moral aspect of spying on citizens instead of money; by accepting the deal and executing the contract they are complicit.
  - xp84 29d ago
    What? Is that not their whole business?
saghm 29d ago
The response is stronger because your hairdressers and baristas aren't actively providing a service for surveillance as part of their work. The bar should be higher for a company that's ostensibly being trusted to provide a law enforcement tool that's prone to misuse than for providing beverages or cosmetology.
- gruez 29d ago
  >The response is stronger because your hairdressers and baristas aren't actively providing a service for surveillance as part of their work. Should other law enforcement contractors also be subject to the same higher standard? For instance, should dell get extra flak if one of their contractors called 911, because they were installing PCs for a police department? If not, this just seems like a way of applying a double standard, just because you hate flock. It's fine to hate flock, but it should be actually justified reasons (eg. "they're enabling mass surveillance" or whatever), not spurious ones like "they did a bad that's vaguely common, but we're gonna admonish them extra hard for it because we hate them")
  - saghm 29d ago
    If they called 911 because they were worried about privacy when publically installing a privacy-violating tool, then yes, they 100% should be. Having higher standards for higher impact things isn't somehow hypocritical.
    - gruez 29d ago
      >If they called 911 because they were worried about privacy when publically installing a privacy-violating tool, then yes, they 100% should be. Seems like the installer was calling because he thought he was being harassed? >As Keefe began to shoot video, the installer saw him and immediately packed up his equipment and drove away, so Keefe also returned to his car and followed several cars behind, hoping to document the next stop. >... >“I work with Flock Safety. And I called originally because I’m getting followed,” the installer can be heard telling a dispatcher after being transferred. “I was getting harassed, pretty much. Taking videos and pictures. And now, the same vehicle that pulled over where I was working at has been following me.” Sure, you can try to equate "flock setting up a surveillance network" to "physically following flock employees", but what's the implication here? That anyone working for flock should be fair game as a stalking target? What about someone working for NSA? Should it be fine to look through their emails?
DrewADesign 29d ago
Well, when you’re on the clock, you’re an agent of that company. And when you’re installing an indiscriminate mass-surveillance camera, calling the police on someone that’s video recording you is kind of bananas. Perhaps you don’t find that to be an interesting event, but a lot of people who are rightfully angry at the non-consensual deployment of a mass surveillance network disagree.
- tptacek 29d ago
  It's not bananas. It happens all the time. The police show up, check things out, and inform the caller that the person recording has a right to do so. In this case, it's even less bananas, because the people recording him were literally following him around, which is not what generally happens in these "audit" scenarios where someone parks themselves on the street outside a restaurant or bank. There's pretty clearly a vibe on this thread that calling 911 is itself a use of coercive force. It is not. 911 is how you're ordinarily supposed to reach the police. In my neighborhood, it's how you'd report a stolen bicycle. It's the job of the police to handle those calls appropriately, and I don't see any indication that the call was handled inappropriately here. The story doesn't want to give you that context because their goal isn't to inform you, it's to get your blood pumping.
  - taywrobel 29d ago
    Except that the reason that the YouTube “1A Auditors” get the attention that they do is that frequently it’s not a simple “check things out, and inform the caller that the person recording has the right to do so”, but the interactions often escalate to threats of unlawful arrest as police default to the side of the caller. Calling the police, especially in America, can 100% be a coercive use of force. That’s why people threaten to call the cops/DHS/ICE all the time during arguments, and why things like SWATing are as big of a problem as they are. When the behavior of many policy officers is escalate first, ask questions second if at all, it does become a genuine threat.
    - tptacek 29d ago
      I don't know what to tell you. I watch these videos all the time (it's one of my vices, bodycam footage in particular) and what I see every time --- when it's "auditors" harassing businesses, not when it's auditors confronting police at police departments --- is business owners being told to suck it up. I know that in Summer 2020 there was a fashion for saying any call to the police was ipso facto a deployment of coercive force, but I'm rejecting that argument out of hand while also pointing out that in many regions 911 is exactly the thing you're supposed to do when you have uncertainty. It is simply not a demand for violence; it's a demand to have a trained authority come and resolve a situation, rather than having two private citizens with no training at all in the law confront each other and hope for the best.
hk1337 29d ago
> technicians from Flock Do they even have their own technicians? I believe there have been Dish Network technicians seen working on and setting up flock cameras and even those technicians are contractors of Dish network.
- kotaKat 29d ago
  Mix of. Large metros they'll use their own staff to install, rural Americana they'll use Dish's OnTech division. Dish realized they have an entire 'trained' workforce of cable/dish techs that they can put to other technical use, so they pushed into more managed hands tech services. https://www.ontechsmartservices.com/ https://www.ontechsmartservices.com/ I noticed a more prominently branded "OnTech" van roaming around my rural slice of life that had a smaller Dish brand logo on it that seemed to be more of that side of the business.
hammock 29d ago
> it's just some installer dude probably making $65k/year to climb poles and fasten cameras I find it hard to be persuaded by the salary idea. A hitman who works for $100 is just as bad as one who works for $10,000. In fact other immoral activities work the opposite, bizarrely (a whore who works for $100 is worse than one who works for $10,000)
- ExoticPearTree 29d ago
  Most jobs are imoral. If we were to do only the moral ones… we’d have probably 75% unemployment or something like that.
  - dml2135 29d ago
    This is the kind of thing that someone knowing they are doing bad things at their job says to justify it to themselves. It’s not true. You can go find something worthwhile to do instead.
    - xboxnolifes 29d ago
      How would hackernews visitors support their lifestyle then?
    - ExoticPearTree 29d ago
      Your advice is along the lines of “if you’re homeless, buy a home”. Very useful.
  - cristoperb 29d ago
    "there's no ethical production under capitalism"?
Someone1234 29d ago
> It's worse for the technician in this case, because he really was being followed --- that's not unlawful but it's unnerving. Isn't that exactly what Flock are doing to tens of thousands of people a day? So why the double-standard. I actually agree it is unnerving, I just don't agree that one should be held to a different standard than the other.
- chii 29d ago
  > one should be held to a different standard than the other. harassing a worker is not the way to fix the problem. The worker has no agency to affect the changes desired by the harasser. It's an issue with the gov't, and needs civic procedures to change. This behaviour is the same as harassing hospitality staff for bad prices. Harassers would be considered borderline committing terrorism if they go further.
  - ricketycricket 29d ago
    It legally wasn't harassment. If it was, he would have not been let go. That word means a real thing and this was not it.
  - Hizonner 29d ago
    Filming them at work, or following them to the next job so you can film them at work, is not in any way, shape, or form "harassment".
  - ndriscoll 29d ago
    The worker does have agency. They did not have to take a job installing mass surveillance systems. They're directly doing the bad thing, and the "harassers" are literally doing the same thing the worker is doing, but back to the worker.
    - ryandrake 29d ago
      Contractors On The Death Star. You know you are working for the bad guys and are willingly doing the job.
cute_boi 29d ago
Well then everyone is innocent except CEO's or management lol. This isn't how world works.
emsign 29d ago
Guy is not just a technician, he's a technician working for Flock installing surveillance tech to monitor the public. Wrong life choices have consequences like being filmed being complicit in establishing a surveillance regime.
giaour 29d ago
> It's worse for the technician in this case, because he really was being followed --- that's not unlawful but it's unnerving. The technician was in public, bearing a company logo, performing an activity in which there is widespread public interest, and identified himself to law enforcement as an agent of Flock Safety. He is entitled to be unnerved but has no reasonable expectation of privacy here.
- tptacek 29d ago
  Nobody disagrees, though "calling 911" is exactly what he's supposed to do if he thinks he's being followed.
  - vkou 29d ago
    Who do I call if I think Flock is stalking me, and who will the police show up to intimidate when I do?
    - akerl_ 29d ago
      > Who do I call if I think Flock is stalking me Your local representative who signed a contract with Flock to install and operate the cameras?
      - vkou 29d ago
        So, complain to the stalker?
anigbrowl 29d ago
banks, coffee store workers, hairdressers, most especially restaurant managers. Those people are all working in private premises, and have the right to eject customers for being belligerent or just annoying. The Flock technicians are in public, and as we're always reminded by Flock advocates, have no expectation of privacy. There's no indication that the reporter was harassing him in any way.
- tptacek 29d ago
  There's no indication that anything at all happened to the reporter, is there? A worker had a concern about someone following them and called it in, and that... is the end of the story?
  - anigbrowl 28d ago
    I was just pointing out the problem with your initial premise, but I don't think this argument holds water either. Nobody enjoys being subject to a police stop, and the reporter's journalistic undertaking (which was very clearly signaled as such) was interrupted, although certainly he was free to resume it the next time he spotted a Flock installer at work.
    - tptacek 28d ago
      It's not Summer 2020 and I'm just not going to entertain the idea that calling the police when you're alarmed by something is an act of violence. This is some random working schmoe hanging things on poles. It's a nonstory.
      - anigbrowl 26d ago
        That's quite a straw man you've taken on there.
ozgrakkurt 29d ago
Sure, people working on german army in ww2 were also probably just some guy getting 10k/year salary or something like that. Person doesn’t matter if they are in uniform. I had a situation like this against airlines recently where I am getting so obviosly screwed but unfortunately the guy that is doing the screwing is “just a guy” so I can’t go off on them.
- tptacek 29d ago
  Totally reasonable comparison. Can't imagine why that didn't occur to me, too.

by tptacek 29d ago

EgregiousCube 29d ago

Especially 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 29d ago
Well, 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 29d ago
  This 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 29d ago
> I understand the plight of the installer who's worried about being labeled as a bad guy for executing public works contracts. You do unpopular things, you gotta expect to be an unpopular person. Sophisticated, educated types might understand that parking wardens are just doing their jobs, and they didn't make the policy they're enforcing. But to 70% of the population, the person putting a ticket on their car is an asshole.
diath 29d ago
The company could have rejected the government deal if they cared about the moral aspect of spying on citizens instead of money; by accepting the deal and executing the contract they are complicit.
- xp84 29d ago
  What? Is that not their whole business?

saghm 29d ago

The response is stronger because your hairdressers and baristas aren't actively providing a service for surveillance as part of their work. The bar should be higher for a company that's ostensibly being trusted to provide a law enforcement tool that's prone to misuse than for providing beverages or cosmetology.

gruez 29d ago
>The response is stronger because your hairdressers and baristas aren't actively providing a service for surveillance as part of their work. Should other law enforcement contractors also be subject to the same higher standard? For instance, should dell get extra flak if one of their contractors called 911, because they were installing PCs for a police department? If not, this just seems like a way of applying a double standard, just because you hate flock. It's fine to hate flock, but it should be actually justified reasons (eg. "they're enabling mass surveillance" or whatever), not spurious ones like "they did a bad that's vaguely common, but we're gonna admonish them extra hard for it because we hate them")
- saghm 29d ago
  If they called 911 because they were worried about privacy when publically installing a privacy-violating tool, then yes, they 100% should be. Having higher standards for higher impact things isn't somehow hypocritical.
  - gruez 29d ago
    >If they called 911 because they were worried about privacy when publically installing a privacy-violating tool, then yes, they 100% should be. Seems like the installer was calling because he thought he was being harassed? >As Keefe began to shoot video, the installer saw him and immediately packed up his equipment and drove away, so Keefe also returned to his car and followed several cars behind, hoping to document the next stop. >... >“I work with Flock Safety. And I called originally because I’m getting followed,” the installer can be heard telling a dispatcher after being transferred. “I was getting harassed, pretty much. Taking videos and pictures. And now, the same vehicle that pulled over where I was working at has been following me.” Sure, you can try to equate "flock setting up a surveillance network" to "physically following flock employees", but what's the implication here? That anyone working for flock should be fair game as a stalking target? What about someone working for NSA? Should it be fine to look through their emails?

DrewADesign 29d ago

Well, when you’re on the clock, you’re an agent of that company. And when you’re installing an indiscriminate mass-surveillance camera, calling the police on someone that’s video recording you is kind of bananas. Perhaps you don’t find that to be an interesting event, but a lot of people who are rightfully angry at the non-consensual deployment of a mass surveillance network disagree.

tptacek 29d ago
It's not bananas. It happens all the time. The police show up, check things out, and inform the caller that the person recording has a right to do so. In this case, it's even less bananas, because the people recording him were literally following him around, which is not what generally happens in these "audit" scenarios where someone parks themselves on the street outside a restaurant or bank. There's pretty clearly a vibe on this thread that calling 911 is itself a use of coercive force. It is not. 911 is how you're ordinarily supposed to reach the police. In my neighborhood, it's how you'd report a stolen bicycle. It's the job of the police to handle those calls appropriately, and I don't see any indication that the call was handled inappropriately here. The story doesn't want to give you that context because their goal isn't to inform you, it's to get your blood pumping.
- taywrobel 29d ago
  Except that the reason that the YouTube “1A Auditors” get the attention that they do is that frequently it’s not a simple “check things out, and inform the caller that the person recording has the right to do so”, but the interactions often escalate to threats of unlawful arrest as police default to the side of the caller. Calling the police, especially in America, can 100% be a coercive use of force. That’s why people threaten to call the cops/DHS/ICE all the time during arguments, and why things like SWATing are as big of a problem as they are. When the behavior of many policy officers is escalate first, ask questions second if at all, it does become a genuine threat.
  - tptacek 29d ago
    I don't know what to tell you. I watch these videos all the time (it's one of my vices, bodycam footage in particular) and what I see every time --- when it's "auditors" harassing businesses, not when it's auditors confronting police at police departments --- is business owners being told to suck it up. I know that in Summer 2020 there was a fashion for saying any call to the police was ipso facto a deployment of coercive force, but I'm rejecting that argument out of hand while also pointing out that in many regions 911 is exactly the thing you're supposed to do when you have uncertainty. It is simply not a demand for violence; it's a demand to have a trained authority come and resolve a situation, rather than having two private citizens with no training at all in the law confront each other and hope for the best.

hk1337 29d ago

> technicians from Flock Do they even have their own technicians? I believe there have been Dish Network technicians seen working on and setting up flock cameras and even those technicians are contractors of Dish network.

kotaKat 29d ago
Mix of. Large metros they'll use their own staff to install, rural Americana they'll use Dish's OnTech division. Dish realized they have an entire 'trained' workforce of cable/dish techs that they can put to other technical use, so they pushed into more managed hands tech services. https://www.ontechsmartservices.com/ https://www.ontechsmartservices.com/ I noticed a more prominently branded "OnTech" van roaming around my rural slice of life that had a smaller Dish brand logo on it that seemed to be more of that side of the business.

hammock 29d ago

> it's just some installer dude probably making $65k/year to climb poles and fasten cameras I find it hard to be persuaded by the salary idea. A hitman who works for $100 is just as bad as one who works for $10,000. In fact other immoral activities work the opposite, bizarrely (a whore who works for $100 is worse than one who works for $10,000)

ExoticPearTree 29d ago
Most jobs are imoral. If we were to do only the moral ones… we’d have probably 75% unemployment or something like that.
- dml2135 29d ago
  This is the kind of thing that someone knowing they are doing bad things at their job says to justify it to themselves. It’s not true. You can go find something worthwhile to do instead.
  - xboxnolifes 29d ago
    How would hackernews visitors support their lifestyle then?
  - ExoticPearTree 29d ago
    Your advice is along the lines of “if you’re homeless, buy a home”. Very useful.
- cristoperb 29d ago
  "there's no ethical production under capitalism"?

Someone1234 29d ago

> It's worse for the technician in this case, because he really was being followed --- that's not unlawful but it's unnerving. Isn't that exactly what Flock are doing to tens of thousands of people a day? So why the double-standard. I actually agree it is unnerving, I just don't agree that one should be held to a different standard than the other.

chii 29d ago
> one should be held to a different standard than the other. harassing a worker is not the way to fix the problem. The worker has no agency to affect the changes desired by the harasser. It's an issue with the gov't, and needs civic procedures to change. This behaviour is the same as harassing hospitality staff for bad prices. Harassers would be considered borderline committing terrorism if they go further.
- ricketycricket 29d ago
  It legally wasn't harassment. If it was, he would have not been let go. That word means a real thing and this was not it.
- Hizonner 29d ago
  Filming them at work, or following them to the next job so you can film them at work, is not in any way, shape, or form "harassment".
- ndriscoll 29d ago
  The worker does have agency. They did not have to take a job installing mass surveillance systems. They're directly doing the bad thing, and the "harassers" are literally doing the same thing the worker is doing, but back to the worker.
  - ryandrake 29d ago
    Contractors On The Death Star. You know you are working for the bad guys and are willingly doing the job.

cute_boi 29d ago

Well then everyone is innocent except CEO's or management lol. This isn't how world works.

emsign 29d ago

Guy is not just a technician, he's a technician working for Flock installing surveillance tech to monitor the public. Wrong life choices have consequences like being filmed being complicit in establishing a surveillance regime.

giaour 29d ago

> It's worse for the technician in this case, because he really was being followed --- that's not unlawful but it's unnerving. The technician was in public, bearing a company logo, performing an activity in which there is widespread public interest, and identified himself to law enforcement as an agent of Flock Safety. He is entitled to be unnerved but has no reasonable expectation of privacy here.

tptacek 29d ago
Nobody disagrees, though "calling 911" is exactly what he's supposed to do if he thinks he's being followed.
- vkou 29d ago
  Who do I call if I think Flock is stalking me, and who will the police show up to intimidate when I do?
  - akerl_ 29d ago
    > Who do I call if I think Flock is stalking me Your local representative who signed a contract with Flock to install and operate the cameras?
    - vkou 29d ago
      So, complain to the stalker?

anigbrowl 29d ago

banks, coffee store workers, hairdressers, most especially restaurant managers. Those people are all working in private premises, and have the right to eject customers for being belligerent or just annoying. The Flock technicians are in public, and as we're always reminded by Flock advocates, have no expectation of privacy. There's no indication that the reporter was harassing him in any way.

tptacek 29d ago
There's no indication that anything at all happened to the reporter, is there? A worker had a concern about someone following them and called it in, and that... is the end of the story?
- anigbrowl 28d ago
  I was just pointing out the problem with your initial premise, but I don't think this argument holds water either. Nobody enjoys being subject to a police stop, and the reporter's journalistic undertaking (which was very clearly signaled as such) was interrupted, although certainly he was free to resume it the next time he spotted a Flock installer at work.
  - tptacek 28d ago
    It's not Summer 2020 and I'm just not going to entertain the idea that calling the police when you're alarmed by something is an act of violence. This is some random working schmoe hanging things on poles. It's a nonstory.
    - anigbrowl 26d ago
      That's quite a straw man you've taken on there.

ozgrakkurt 29d ago

Sure, people working on german army in ww2 were also probably just some guy getting 10k/year salary or something like that. Person doesn’t matter if they are in uniform. I had a situation like this against airlines recently where I am getting so obviosly screwed but unfortunately the guy that is doing the screwing is “just a guy” so I can’t go off on them.

tptacek 29d ago
Totally reasonable comparison. Can't imagine why that didn't occur to me, too.