Birbla

Join the discussion

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

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • > Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on

    - Larry Ellison

    https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-ai-surveillanc...

    Now, let's hope you agree with Larry Ellison's definition of what constitutes best behavior or they will soon be sending drones after you.

    > "You just have a drone follow the car," Ellison said. "It's very simple in the age of autonomous drones."

    by vrganj
  • They want to make money. Their buyers want a closely surveilled world with no exits.
    by afarah1
  • A bit concerning how some people in this thread will bend over backwards to defend mass surveillance. Not surprising given who owns the board, but still.
    by canelonesdeverd
  • We need to keep our surveillance of the surveillance state broad. There’s a lot of focus on Flock right now (rightfully so), but they are merely a single player in the privatized surveillance state architecture.

    Palantir, Anduril, telcos, and more are contributing to the erosion of our privacy.

    It’s been 2 decades since we learned about the secret NSA room at AT&T. 13 years since the Snowden revelations. This is not new and we need to be vigilant.

    by beams_of_light
  • At the very least they need to make public accessible all data collected about all employees and owners of Flock, and everyone in government agencies that contract with Flock. This means we can see all photos and videos of these people, every trip they make, etc. All searchable with AI, with no audit trail (just like it is for government agencies).
    by gblargg
  • Perhaps its time that YC mentioned explicitly that if they are going to fund a company which holds specific PII data(i would include precise location history to start with) they would have to guarantee:

    1. An erase-me feature if they gained over say some X unique/active users.

    2. Disclose to their best legal abilities on warrants served in the countries that allow such disclosure. Allow for strong whistle blower protection if warrantless wiretapping becomes a thing.

    by ghm2199
  • Tangential but why do articles about Flock never have (YC S17) in the title like articles about other YC companies?
    by naz
  • It's pretty clear to be that governments shouldn't be able to 'subcontract' their way out of the limits placed on them via the constitution.

    Thankfully the supreme court seems to agree here in two ways:

    1) Just because a third party (Google in Chatrie case but Flock here) collects the data and the government requests it from them, doesn't mean that that isn't a 'search' which requires a warrant ("obtaining someone's cell-phone location history from Google constitutes a Fourth Amendment search.")

    2) Delegating "searches" to a private party isn't permitted if they are acting as an "instrument or agent of the Government" (Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Association (1989) - also cited in Chatrie).

    In the Google case, users have a private relationship with Google where they elect to let Google track them and retain their information... but when the Police ask for that information it's a 'search' and requires a specific warrant.

    In the Flock case the entire REASON the cameras are there is the the government (Police or local municipality) has contracted Flock to surveil the public. Asking flock for the whereabouts of a specific person seems like it should likewise require a warrant. That's inherently different than a crime being reported and then going to dig up a video from the area from Flock - which is different than seeing someone in that video and asking Flock to find every time they've been captured by any Flock camera anywhere... that would seem to be a 'search' and would require a warrant (which in this scenario would probably be easy to get).

    by furyg3

Explore Birbla archives