Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- Prediction: Flock acquires Axon.by SoftTalker
- Soon: Flock branded tasers.by cdrnsf
- They're a public company with a $50B market cap. That's not going to happen.
The direction would be the other way around. Axon is showing that they want the market, that they can build the tech themselves, and that they can leverage their extensive existing relationships with law enforcement and municipal governments as sales channels.
by echelon - Prediction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49053193
Axon just replaces Flock in some places. But I forgot to say that it probably doesn't matter much, and that whatever anyone resents about the whole thing, will just get worse.
by eth0up - Axon is a public company with market cap of $50B. It is an incumbent with a huge business in bodycams and tasers with a huge number of US police departments. Flock has a $7.5B valuation at it's last funding round, and is the new comer.
More likely for Axon to acquire flock than the other way around.
by advisedwang - They really want people to get e-ink license plates don't they?by crest
- The ones that are illegal to use and stick out like a sore thumb?by gruez
- Out of the frying pan...by RobotToaster
- Mass surveillance under any brand name is horrible, and would be illegal in any sane universe.
- Axon is also known as Taser, the company that popularised these sometimes-lethal weapons but promises they are completely safe and never lethal, and now supplies most of America's electronic police equipment.by inigyou
- > Axon, for example, advertises AI-powered cameras that attach to an existing streetlamp and are designed to completely blend in with their surroundings, and also collects license plate data with cameras installed inside police officers’ patrol vehicles
If anything this will make it go from bad to worse along all axes -- decentralized sharing, making it harder to track data request/usage, hide surveillance in an infrastructure that is considered essential, and host of other things..
by mirmor23 - > One reason why journalists, activists, and residents have been able to learn so much about what police use Flock for is that the company has built auditing tools that the public can access through records requests. ... It is not clear if the same granularity of data can be learned about Axon systems, although it does allow agencies to generate audit reports.
> Axon’s documentation for its ALPR product, a “shared data” option “extends the query to partner-agency detections once a sharing relationship is active.”
Axon develops a data marketplace to streamline so-called lawful sharing of data, or acquires it via Flock and rebrands the network name. Audit capabilities are removed to streamline operational efficiency and reduce political risk. The public is no better off than before.
by xkcd-sucks - Worse off, if anything.by neura
- Vendor doesn't matter. The same issues will exist. Public safety is all about aggregating data to "operationalize" it now, so all vendors will be collecting data and sharing it with all customers just like Flock. The only benefit is that for the moment, other vendors' networks are small compared to Flock.by dave78
- republicans got their government small enough that business and religion can drown it.by cyanydeez
- > One key feature of Flock is its national lookup tool.
> Axon, simply, does not have a national network. Meaning that it would not be possible for cops in one jurisdiction to search cameras across the country. [...] Police departments using Axon can enter into data sharing agreements with each other, though.
> Denver, just like the City of Ferndale, explicitly mentioned this lack of this national network as part of its decision to ditch Flock for Axon.
This (probably alongside all the bad press Flock has gotten) appears to be the crux of the switching. Ultimately, the tech actually being deployed seems similar.
Also interesting:
> One reason why journalists, activists, and residents have been able to learn so much about what police use Flock for is that the company has built auditing tools that the public can access through records requests.
by wxw - This is a step in the right direction. Everyone hates public surveillance until they become the victim of a crime, but it's critical that the surveillance is owned and controlled fully on an appropriate level.
You should fully own and control your home security cameras. Right now many homeowners are shipping their data to national datacenters.
Municipalities should fully own and control their public security cameras, on municipal datacenter resources.
Data sharing / federation should always be intentional and time-bound. It should be impossible for a small town cop to unilaterally access security records from a random city he has no jurisdiction in.
by pphysch - it took Last Week Tonight years to get these records in one particular caseby wolfi1
- How long before Axon turns data sharing "opt out"?
> One reason why journalists, activists, and residents have been able to learn so much about what police use Flock for is that the company has built auditing tools that the public can access through records requests.
As someone else says, "in theory". Also of note, their "Transparency Portal" is... not. I know of at least three agencies in my County who are using Flock who are not listed on the Transparency Portal...
by FireBeyond - Also Flock, in the past week:
All of Winona Police Department's Flock cameras cut down and stolen
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171656
257 comments
Cops Used Flock to Track a Man Across State Lines for a Pretextual Weed Search
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49184190
202 comments
How Cops Are Trying to Hide Their Use of Flock
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49172076
10 comments
Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156650
118 comments
Flock – Chilling Effects: Long Island's Emerging Open-Air Prison
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49148541
40 comments
Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158837
17 comments
by Cider9986