Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • Beyond all of this, "firings" are meaningless. Abusive cops are just hired elsewhere.
    by k310
  • nobody saw this coming
    by timoxley
  • My town's covered with them already, without much warning in the local news, at least none I saw. And they're about to add 50% more all over the county. Planning on going to the zoning meeting Tuesday to speak against them. Also had a handful of yard signs printed up and put them at major intersections around town warning about the expansion, pointing people to the zoning meeting.

    Very much not okay with this surveillance state bullshit.

    by Tostino
  • I would encourage you to add arrows to your signs/ stickers pointing out the cameras. More impactful when people see (and are unconsensually recorded by) the device first hand.

    Good work!

    by CircuitSeuss
  • I don't believe a legal solution is possible. We need a three-tiered response to Flock's surveillance state business strategy, depending on what level of meddling each citizen is comfortable with.

    1. Protest via yard signs and awareness (what you're doing)

    2. Impermanent vandalism. I like the idea of hanging copies of the fourth amendment over the lenses

    3. Permanent vandalism. I think we need bounties on camera destruction and public legal funds to assist in defense, bail, etc.

    The police as a class/caste are not interested in the fundamental principles that America was founded on. Individual officers may be interested in civil freedom and privacy but as an entity they only ever march in the direction of total surveillance and domination of the citizenry.

    by quacked
  • > weren’t authorized

    this is easily solved with current technology, if they had an incentive to do so.

    besides firing folks that get caught, flock themselves should be brought to court.

    by jiveturkey
  • Ah but you see flock doesn't own the data so they're not responsible for misuse of it and other such legal deflections.
    by morkalork
  • This feels like a weird comment on an article about how they monitored usage, identified misuse, and terminated the people involved.

    There's surely plenty of entities that need better controls around usage of technology / records / etc, but this is an example of somebody having an incentive and then following through.

    by akerl_
  • We should put up Flock cameras in every police station and make the feeds public. If they’re not doing anything illegal, they should have nothing to hide.
    by an0malous
  • Flock is importing China's ubiquitous surveillance in America until every habitable space is captured
    by madhacker
  • China is not responsible for your fuck-us, you own it
    by FpUser
  • And digital billboards in every space will tell us what to think. Can't wait for the two to pair up and the billboards to target whoever is seen in the nearest camera. Or are they already doing it?
    by brikym
  • It's not that useful to single out Flock for that purpose. Google Nest and Amazon Alexa are also in that category.
    by tremon
  • I get that this comment is meant to warn about the creeping government overreach and a curtailment of free speech, by comparing the US against a society where government surveillance is already commonplace.

    I wonder if it does a disservice to readers to not make that same comparison against more similar countries instead (UK, Germany, Australia to name a few examples)?

    by roumenguha
  • I know there are lots of reasonable concerns about unauthorized access to private information.

    This is somewhat solved problem in other areas, like banking and government. Not zero, but asymptotically low.

    I think we need to criminalize misuse more clearly, preferably on a federal level. We need clear justifications for each use of data. And, we should require periodic audits by an independent third party - perhaps funded in the purchase contracts as a line item and held in reserve.

    This doesn’t solve the problem of legal use - which could be contentious now or in the future. But, this technology isn’t going away and good legislation to control it makes sense.

    by philip1209
  • Sounds like flock should be monitoring law enforcement more than civilians…
    by Zhenya
  • It should result in jail time. If I got access to government surveillance program and started using it for personal reasons, I would likely be charged with terrorism.
    by AngryData
  • Flock cameras appear to be one of the few things that can get police officers fired.
    by tptacek
  • Until they negotiate protections in their next contract.
    by lokar
  • Not true, but also not widely reported. Cops are fired all the time for a wide variety of reasons.
    by SoftTalker
  • FOR NOW. People, police states are about two classes of people: the police, and you.

    What is remarkable about this story is that something happened to them. Now were they prosecuted for any of a hundred laws they probably broke?

    No.

    by AtlasBarfed
  • Which makes me suspect its because they were looking up their superiors or politicians. With Flock, like cell site data, its trivial to determine who you are sleeping around with.
    by rasz
  • Right, because you don’t want to let the little guys mess it up for the big guys: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/fbi-seeks-us-wid...

    Gotta make a statement with the low level grunts so the citizenry think these systems have accountability.

    by edot
  • Silver lining! The cameras are catching criminals.
    by xnx
  • There's basically 3 ways to get a council to cancel a contract. 1) Persuade them to do it because it's the right thing for the community. This is best done in private. 2) Convince them that the legal liability out weighs the public benefit. This is best done in public. 3) Run for office.

    If you have the energy you can do all 3 in parallel.

    Here's my attempt at 2: https://rmnoflock.com/2026/07/29/rolling-meadows-flock-camer...

    Does anyone have advice or experience with 2?

    by rmnoflock
  • Abuse by police officers and other individuals with access to these systems is the answer to the stupid but common question "why should I worry about surveillance if I have nothing to hide".
    by simonw
  • Maybe for some, but I honestly don't find it very persuasive. The misuse of license plate data wouldn't make my top ten list of potential powers that law enforcement might abuse. Clearly, abuse of any kind of power should not be tolerated, but potential benefits must also be considered. I think the widespread deployment of cameras at businesses and homes provides strong evidence of their benefits. The idea that a crime happens outdoors and the proper course of action is for police to knock on 100 doors to collect grainy doorbell footage is pretty inefficient, to say the least.
    by veec_cas_tant
  • I never hear that question from Flock supporters. The question I hear[†] is "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?". It's a much harder one to answer than the straw man questions we set up for these things.

    (To be clear: I think the current generation of ALPRs is a policy failure and that major changes need to happen inside state law enforcement systems before they can be deployed successfully. But I also think people on HN have a real problem in convincing themselves about the obvious righteousness of their anti-surveillance arguments.)

    [†] I heard arguments like these because I was deeply involved in getting the cameras disabled in the inner-ring Chicago suburb in which I live, getting the first ACLU CCOPS ordinance in Illinois passed there, and helping draft what are probably the most detailed ALPR police General Orders in any municipality, or at least were at the time. Which is a long and pretentious way of saying I spent a lot of time talking to people who are not Very Online.

    by tptacek