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- Hacker News
- For a country that staged a revolution over a tea tax modern Americans sure seem to love having their rights trampled.
- Weird how people view "Americans" as different species. Never have I seen someone say "Europeans", "Germans"...
"These Americans", "Modern Americans".
by worldsavior - What right does a Flock camera violate?by alex43578
- Over a tea tax without representation. Very common to forget that part!by bpodgursky
- Lots of people in different places are pushing back on these things. Texas has a gubernatorial election coming up in November. We'll see if Texans are ok with surveillance or actually want to punish the people responsible and restore some sense of freedom.by dfxm12
- Because many people agree with having cameras to help reduce/monitor crimes.
From their views, the right isn't trampled. It's a win
by ergocoder - Did it reduce catalytic converter theft?by ihsw
- Doesn't seem especially likely, does it? People report the thefts in unmonitored neighborhoods. The police... check the nearby intersection cameras for any vehicles passing between 11pm and 4am?by cosmicgadget
- It’s hard to say. As the economic got better, trade policies stabilized and the price of commodities and therefore the metals in a converter dropped in value. As the price of the metals went down, the thefts dropped nationally. Texas thefts seemed to have dropped inline with the national trend. Since the supply side issues are picking up again, the thefts are going up likewise.by baldeagle
- To quote from https://www.txdmv.gov/sites/default/files/body-files/MVCPA_F...
Number of times an ALPR was deployed. 61,875
Number of LPR Deployments by taskforce investigators 42,878
Number of vehicles recovered from LPR detection 1,963
Number of Cleared Cases – Catalytic Converter Theft 1,658
Number of arrests from LPR detection 569
Number of identified/documented prolific catalytic converter theft offenders 266
Number of Catalytic Converter Theft bait operations 236
The problem is they don't define "deployments". There are ~13,500 ALPR cameras and they do thousands of plates per hour and neither of those numbers matches the deployment. My best guess is it is a targeted search and so a vehicle is recovered or a case is cleared 2-3 times out of every 100 times they search the database.
Regarding actual reduction, as another comment said, the amount of crime fluctuates with metal prices, pretty much lockstep. But at least they can lock the people away.
by Mathnerd314 - I doubt it helped much directly. The nationwide ring that was dismantled recently was busted partially due to surveillance from a pole mounted camera though. The article title initially baited my rage, but I can plausibly see how LPRC's could be used to track catalytic converter thieves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932022_catalytic_co...
- So to fight abuse and overreach by your leaders, you can:
- give up your car/vehicle propery
- let an LLC take ownership
- reside in the privacy protections of LLC and corporation
I don't think any successful case has happened yet where flock et al have pierced the corporate veil to get address information, nor dug into insurance records to find who the LLC-license plates belong to.
by mannanj - The fact that corporations have more privacy rights than people is dystopian.by carlob
- i don’t think that will help anything. surely flock and similar companies use facial recognition features? particularly at every stores parking lot that has these in it?
and i’d be more shocked if the same stores weren’t already sharing their own inside cameras facial recognition directly with companies like flock already.
and from what we’ve seen, these companies cameras are linked up with names from frequent shopper cards, cc data, what people buy, when they buy it, etc…
by toofy - If this is $1/year does that mean a certain number of cameras can be purchased each year?by j45
- It's important that the cattle pays for its own imprisonment. For example a cow's milk gets sold to pay for the fence. If the farmer where to pay for the fence out of his own pocket, he would be creating negative karma, but if the cow pays for it, its a form of consent. You are are the Cow in this story.by farcitizen
- The only mistake Flock has made in terms of general acceptance is leaving them closed-access. The right way to build this empire is to set all the cameras as public. When they're wide-open and everybody is free to watch (along with ads, of course) not enough will care about the privacy because they want to track their cheating boyfriend, Amazon delivery, and get live traffic and weather info.by 1970-01-01
- That's a terrible idea as it'll be used/abused by stalkers etc. Women will never feel safe again.by ndsipa_pomu
- Strange that someone else’s question “Did it reduce catalytic converter theft?”, directly relevant to the article, got downvoted to death. Not sure if we’re meant to have discussions here or just dutifully complain about topics that are fashionable to complain about.by qwerpy
- Sadly that's very common on HN today.
I commented under a post about some skill claiming to unleash the superpower of Claude Code. I asked, is there any evidence aka benchmark that shows it's any better than vanilla Claude Code that is statistically significant?
Dead silence. But not downvotes -- easily got to -4.
SMH.
by fg137 - I wondered that too. It doesn't say, but does state: "Data from the license plate readers, known in law enforcement as LPRs, was searched 62,000 times in 2025, leading to about 1,660 cleared catalytic converter theft cases, a report from the authority said."
Also, how many missing people are there? finding 10k seems quite a lot. “one of the most effective ways Flock has been able to help find, just last year, over 10,000 missing persons”.
by lostlogin - I agree. I "revived" the comment by clicking on the timestamp ("33 minutes ago") and then clicking "vouch". I believe only users with a score of 200+ (points? karma?) can do so.
- Given how unpopular these cameras are, and how sloppy their security has been, I have come to assume there's boatloads of bribery happening. I can't come up with any other explanation for how willing police chiefs and city councilors and mayors are to get yelled at at city council meetings and how wantonly they're giving away the privacy of their constituents.
I'm guessing that as scrutiny increases, we'll begin to hear about questionable, at best, sales tactics, if not outright bribery. Trips, sponsored speaking/training engagements that puts money in the pockets of cops and policymakers, etc. The whole thing stinks of it.
by SwellJoe - It’s been proven (at least in the Minnesota flock conference) that flock pays politicians and police as private contractors and commissions them on any potential contracts they bring to flockby bigbinary
- Texas
> In 2023, the Texas Legislature unanimously passed a law raising auto insurance costs for Texans by $1 to combat rampant catalytic converter theft.
> The Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, led by a board mostly appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, has turned the $1 fee hike into at least 3,200 Flock cameras.
More coming. Meanwhile, secure your EV!!! Batteries will be next!!!
by k310 - Stealing an EV battery is harder than stealing a cat.by seanmcdirmid
- EV batteries weigh hundreds of kilos. They typically require a mechanical workshop with a hoist to remove, not something your typical theif could easily steal on a street corner.
- What an insane trade off. Seems like a few bait cars and a couple of trackers would be plenty to figure out where the converters are getting fenced. Obviously there is a small number of buyers driving the entire catalytic theft economy.by tehwebguy
- In Texas I'm surprised it's not legal to shoot a catalytic converter thief if caught in the act. That's what they used to do for cattle rustlers.by SoftTalker