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- Hacker News
- I think it should depend on what residents living in the street want with several tiers. Public cam, paywall, law enforcement 24/7 or for a specific case, encrypted court order only, fake cams.
Each with different aproval requirements. A public cam would require 100%. Fake cams req only one vote. etc
by theendisney - the problem with pitching Flock as "the triumph of technology over criminality" is that because of all the bogus edicts, an average american commits three felonies every single day. and whoever picks who gets prosecuted for what, is the owner running the plantation.
Three Felonies a Day http://www.harveysilverglate.com/books/ In 2006, the Code of Laws of the United States of America: 200000 pages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Code) with 500 pages/week it's about 10 years just to read it, i.e. to have a chance not breaking it (but this wrongly assumes that it's not growing meanwhile). In 2012: Federal Code: 75000 pages, Tax Code: 72000 pages.
The Criminalization of Everyday Life http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=42372 http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175781/
John Stossel's Illegal Everything https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBiJB8YuDBQ John Stossel - Technically, That's Illegal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf-uPAItVtM
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt.” — Ayn Rand (1905–1982), 'Atlas Shrugged' (1957)
Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front by Joel Salatin https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Want-Do-Illegal-Stories/dp...
- Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.by SXX
- Congratulations, Flock, on establishing the most successful honeypot of all time!
No matter what the level of corruption, no matter which side of the surveillance state you support, no matter which side of the cameras you're on, Flock has a way to shine a spotlight on you and bring you out of the closet!
Currently following a YouTuber who knows all the roadside regulations for signposts and he points out how the Flock poles are all installed dangerously wrong, and will surely impale the next driver to crash out on the shoulder!
- > Congratulations, Flock, on establishing the most successful honeypot of all time!
No way man that award goes to cloudflare
by trueno - @theguardrailguy is great, love his work, highly recommend.by toomuchtodo
- This one [0] by chance?by Akronymus
- I'm proud to have mapped an impressive amount of cameras. You see a lot of things on a bicycle.
I also add non ALPR cameras. There are multiples more of those. I see no reason those can't detect license plates either.
by user00005 - There is a growing counter-tech neo luddite movement forming, and I think its going to get very large. At some point we need to step back and ask - why are we simply accepting technologies that erode freedoms and subjugate the massesby ost-ing
- Well because the people who control countries (some countries call them kings, others call them billionaires and politicians) said we should.by inigyou
- This isn't a vigilante movement. These cameras are being installed without any constitutional basis. And people don't need legal authority to correct an unlawful camera installation problem that cities are not handling.by trinsic2
- eh? it's still vigilantism if they're 'correcting' something unlawful?
- Flock is a vigilante movement.by inigyou
- Perhaps you meant it's not a vandalism movement?by anigbrowl
- Lets instead talk about the growing vigalante action by Flock corporation refusing to allow cities to remove cameras from their property after the contract is cancelled. Some cities have been forced to cover the cameras with trash bags.
https://www.404media.co/flock-objects-to-our-removing-their-...
https://www.wmtv15news.com/2026/06/05/dane-county-covers-flo...
by superkuh - If I were a city government, I would just start charging Flock rent.
- Local politicians need to coordinate to remove their Flock cameras at the same time and pass laws to prevent any new one from being put up. Flock doesn't have the resources to sue every single one of them, especially if every city commits to dragging out the process for as long as possible by creating as many legal hurdles as they can, all of which Flock would have to have a court rule on.
Kind of like how practically every Scientologist filed suit against the IRS over CoS having their tax exempt status revoked, to which the IRS eventually relented.
- When people feel like their voice isn’t heard, this is the inevitable result.
- NO! Even if your voice is heard, the state doesn't need to track your every move.by altcognito
- Violence and destruction are perfectly natural ways of communicating. Some animals use sounds and almost all use body language.
One could even argue communicating over the phone or internet lacks the destructive component. Irl behavior is heavily modified by it.
Verbal communication is a work in progress. We really want it to work. Sometimes you have to make people listen. Get them back in the program :)
by theendisney - I had this thought just the other day. It is not possible for any governing body to completely ignore the governed unless the governed have no issues that that lead to speach/action. There will always be a petition/revolt/exodus which results in the governing body hearing the governed.by goodmythical
- On some level, it feels like (some) politicians haven't realised this, or have forgotten it.
We can either have a functioning democracy and justice system, where responsibility is delegated to people whose job it is to uphold society's values, or we can have individual people that do job themselves. If a judge or police officer isn't going to carry out justice, then eventually people are going to do it themselves. That tends to get messy, so we stopped doing that with good reason, and built institutions to better service justice, but if the institutions aren't doing their jobs, they should be reformed or thrown out.
by Telaneo - Someone should start a surveillance company and put up their cameras pointed at the politicians houses.
If they then try to get them taken down using legal action they could sue under equal protection clause.
Edit add: Make data stream of cameras public for general population but charge if LEO or aggregate data search.
- I've done a lot of thinking on this, even crowdsourcing the coverage with people standing on sidewalks using their phones with a specific app, which collects similar data. Stand near the court house, politicians homes. However Flock tends to say that the people that contract them own the data to get around a lot of the liabilities, so they themselves "don't own the data". That is the hard part to emulate as a citizen who doesn't have same protections as a cop or city council.
I'm going off personal research though so I could be wrong.
by daytonbuilds - Passed an old guy sitting on the side of the road with a lawn chair today, he was holding a pool skimmer with cardboard attached at the end to block a flock camera. There was a local news story about it [1]. Happy to see it.
[1] https://www.cltampa.com/news/a-77-year-old-republican-man-is...
by themythfable - I'm sure my politics are very different than that man's, but at least we agree on the fact that Flock fucking sucks.by georgemcbay
- Well that is just art and quite the signal.by smalltorch
- > and the FlockHopper app can be used to navigate without passing any of them.
Didn't know about this! Pretty neat
by culi - Flock was pitched as the triumph of technology over criminality. It's surveillance network was supposed to end crime. However, when people witness extreme criminality thriving unpunished at the top levels of U.S. politics, the lie becomes evident. Flock isn't about ending crime. It's a tool of control to be used by criminals.
Who watches the watchers? Everyone.
by beloch - >Who watches the watchers? Everyone.
Maybe everyone should be keeping an eye on more things than they have been.
For this to work as a public service it needs to be a public service.
All the streams should be live and easily available in real-time to the public who should have an ongoing say in where they want cameras and where they do not to begin with, along with frequent citizen reviews regarding things like relocation.
Detectives are just going to have to face facts no differently than everybody has already admitted there are not enough cops to watch all the cameras all the time, so nobody can deny if the public eyes got involved the amount of stolen property recovered would be through the roof compared to what the department can ever accomplish no matter what. So there is no valid excuse if you are serious about public service or curtailing crime.
I would think the wisest communities would only allow commercial cameras as a public service beyond reproach, and as a fairness gesture should never have to pay anything whatsoever for not only the camera and the stream but all the related software that is supposed to be so helpful to the public.
Assuming Flock is going to sell the data to whomever they can well beyond complete local control whether they are supposed to or not, at least the locals who allow the cameras shouldn't have to pay anything ever. In fact they should always be licensing each public camera on strict terms so Flock can pay the community more than the cost of ongoing administration along with getting all the data and the latest state-of-the art local processing in the deal. If they really want to be a public service instead of having the public consider them a public nuisance.
>helping government agencies respond if a camera is damaged.
>“We’ve planned for it,” the company wrote, adding that protection plans are available for purchase.
No no no no no, this is so wrong, Flock should always be paying the local communities just to have each camera in place and if they can not generate enough community goodwill to keep vandalism from escalating it should be a cost they alone should bear.
Flock should be expected to do just fine in places that were never considered a "free country" to begin with and where things like freedom and liberty don't ring a bell.
If you're in the USA why even start out just the opposite of the American way if you were capable of anything that was more worthwhile?
by fuzzfactor