It’s pretty depressing to see every ostensibly American value be replaced by profit-driven utilitarianism. “It improves X problem marginally and it makes money, so why not?” seems to be the reasoning for just about everything anymore. No discussion of values, of the society we want to build, or anything else. That’s the world the tech industry is building.
> by profit-driven utilitarianism.
That's generous. To me it's just felonious corruption possibly bordering on treason.
> and it makes money
It doesn't make money. Which is why these rent seeking entities attach themselves to the federal and state budgets with onerous contracts that they will defend to the death. If they had to actually compete for private business they would be out of money by end of year.
> of the society we want to build
This isn't directionless either. The people doing this have a vision for your society and they're willing to do almost anything to secure that.
> That’s the world the tech industry is building.
Which is why I find monopoly law enforcement so important. "Too big to fail" has become the norm and it seems to me is a required ingredient in order to achieve these outcomes.
Too big to fail shouldn’t even be in the vernacular of our society. Every private business should be able to fail. Let it happen and the let new entrants take over and compete.
Is something does become so large and critical to the functioning of the nation that means we have either failed to trust bust or it needs to be nationalized and made a public service. If Microsoft for example were to fail tomorrow, no way in hell should we bail them out. Let them fail, let others enter the market and pick up the pieces.
You know you're in trouble when someone brings up "treason", the only crime defined specifically in the Constitution, exactly so people wouldn't randomly call everything they don't like "treason".
> defined specifically in the Constitution
It also requires at least two witnesses to the same overt act.
> exactly so people
I imagine they were more concerned with what US attourneys would do. The people have always more broadly defined "treason" outside of the constitutionally narrowed "treason against the United States."
>It doesn't make money. Which is why these rent seeking entities attach themselves to the federal and state budgets with onerous contracts that they will defend to the death
Flock and friends are just the most flagrant tip of the iceberg. This behavior goes all the way down to your goddamn licensed plumber and his stupid trade group that lobbies to make it illegal for anyone unlicensed to install a gas stove, and it's all crap.
> It doesn't make money.
Honestly, we should treat these people like we would with any other employee wasting money. They need to justify their expenses. I don't mean with just words, I mean data. Words aren't enough. I can claim all day that painting this red dot on a ceiling with my special paint that costs 10 cents to make and $10k to install just right is an effective solution to stopping terrorists, pedophiles, and even cancer but words aren't proof. And except for the utmost security concerns, this data and justifications should be public. Otherwise there is no accountability.
People often say they don't trust politicians. I'd like to see those words be reflected in actions. It seems we only don't trust certain politicians. And it seems we hand over all trust as soon as they claim they are protecting children and fighting terrorists. I'm sorry, but what class of people are we finding in the Epstein list? Last I checked he wasn't hanging around low class people with no political or monetary influence. So why do we let them use that phrase like some cheat code?
Stopped reading at the silly word "treason". Come on. The word treason has a meaning. This forum is an incredibly rare thing: a place of measured, reasonable, fact-based debate. Let's keep it that way.
Reminds me of the school 'vape detectors' that can also be programmed to listen for "loud noises" and "keywords" but basically handwave away the fact it violates wiretapping laws because they're claiming they're basically doing pattern matching on RAM buffered audio then dumping it.
Do you have a link to an analysis of one of these?
Look at "spoken keyword" and "gunshot" for instance
Direct link for easier access: https://halodetect.com/capability/emergency-keyword/
How does keyword detection work?
HALO Smart Sensor listens for preloaded distress keywords and triggers real-time alerts when detected, ensuring quick emergency response without recording conversations.
What keywords can HALO detect?
HALO Smart Sensor comes preloaded with distress keywords and can be updated with additional phrases to fit specific security needs.
Does HALO record conversations?
No, HALO Smart Sensor ensures privacy by only detecting keywords and aggression patterns without recording audio or storing voice data.
I can understand if there were emergency keywords like yelling "Help" or "Call 911" and extremely limited phrases like that. Essentially a voice activated fire alarm. But uploading new keywords and not being explicit of what keywords trigger the thing is really not a good look. If you can upload arbitrary words then there is no meaningful difference between spying. The thing has an occupancy sensor and it's not like it is hard to combine that data with camera data. What are the keywords? If a kid talks about someone else smoking a joint does that trigger the system? Where are kids going to get some safe place to talk about things without fear of surveillance?
The words keywords being hidden just furthers concerns of surveillance. If you can't know what words you can't use then you have to be very cautious with your speech, least you set off false positives and get in trouble. This really is too far.
HOLY FUCK! THEY *SUGGEST* YOU INSTALL THESE THINGS IN BATHROOMS! How is anyone okay with that? It's way more than a smoke detector! https://halodetect.com/blog/school-bathroom-vandalism/
Safety, security and thinking of the children was always going to be the vector that this would be implemented with. Once the school boards clear this and schools begin filling up with real-time voice recognition hardware like this under the guise of "safety", going further is just a small step away.
I wouldn't be shocked if in ten years, parents will be getting monthly summaries of their kids' out-of-class activities, complete with the most objectionable things they said out of class, their compliance score, the topics they like to discuss, the kids they associate with. Then we'll see the normalization of things like Flock from this post, followed by endless expansions in what these businesses can do to "keep you safe".
It really feels like there is no debate anymore when it comes to things actually being implemented, they are just thrust upon us and maybe discussed later after there have already been consequences
And by discussion you mean discussion about removing safety/privacy/any other laws in the way the the 'new thing' being implemented.
Have you read The Technological Republic recently? What you said is an echo of the Palantir CEO's thesis there. In the book he calls for discussion of what "the good life" is. I found it a bit ironic that you seem to come to different conclusions about surveillance.
This country literally had a civil war to prevent rich capitalists from owning other human beings. America’s “values” have always been rooted in profit-driven utilitarianism.
> It’s pretty depressing to see every ostensibly American value be replaced by profit-driven utilitarianism
That's the difference between mythos and ethos - they were never the actual values to begin with (profit-driven utilitarianism is exactly American ethos)
> You're thinking Chinese surveillance
> US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims
— Garry Tan, Sept 03, 2025, YC CEO while defending Flock on X.
https://xcancel.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955
I admire Garry but not sure why there can’t be a line that we all agree not to cross. No weapon has ever been made that was not used to harm humanity.
I spent several years doing a bunch of work in my local muni that drastically restricted, and eventually booted (I'm not happy about this; long story) Flock. I feel like my Flock bona fides are pretty strong. I understand people not being comfortable with Flock. I do not understand this idea that it's an obvious red line.
People disagree about this technology. I live in what I believe to be one of the 5 most progressive municipalities in the United States† and I can tell you from recent experience that our community is sharply divided on it.
† (we're a small inner-ring suburb of Chicago; I'm "cheating" in that Chicago as a whole is not one of the most progressive cities in the country, but our 50k person muni is up there with Berkeley and represented by the oldest DSA member in Congress)
i guess you're not part of a group that the current administration has decided is anti-American just because we exist?
this administration is already making proclamations that are not laws (Executive Orders and National Security Directives), which clearly violate 1st Amendment rights to free speech, and yet are being interpreted by states to go after specific groups (may i introduce you to Texas and Florida).
police already exist as an uncontrollable force within most cities who apply the law as they see fit.
do you think a combination of those two things isn't going to result in a tool like this being abused?
if you do think it will be abused and that isn't a red line, that says something about you.
if you don't think it will be abused despite the evidence that police abuse surveillance and the current administration has no respect for due process and that isn't a red line, that also says something about you.
circling back, i hope you never find yourself on the receiving end of the technology you want others to be on the receiving end of.
>"i hope you never find yourself on the receiving end of the technology you want others to be on the receiving end of."
Absolutely solid line, and about sums it up. Batting for practices or technologies like this is publicizing your myopia and lack of imagination for seeing it being used against you or your friends/family/property in due time.
Are those groups opposed to any tool or technology that could be used for government overreach or oppression? Is that really the only thing we can do?
i can't speak for groups, only myself. if we had ever seen police restraint via civilian oversight boards or had ever seen a pattern of behavior that would let us trust police, that would be one thing. but we haven't and they resist oversight.
combine that with a federal government that increasingly says police can do whatever they want and the 1st, 4th, 6th, and 8th amendments don't apply equally anymore.
so, no, i don't think police should have access to incredible levels of surveillance or military-grade hardware.
> I do not understand this idea that it's an obvious red line.
It's an invasive surveillance technology that contributes to building the pervasive surveillance day to day reality.
You're muddying the waters asking "why are you against this" without even hinting at an argument why anyone should not be against this.
You can already see the progression. What was sold as "only listens to gunshots" now no longer listens only to gunshots. The deal constantly gets altered.
In rereading Thomas's comments on this post, I'm going to try to sum up how I've read his comments:
I'm about 98% certain understands why people are against this; other comments make this more clear, but even sentence right before the one you quoted to suggests this fact ("I understand people not being comfortable with Flock.").
By "I do not understand this idea that it's an obvious red line" he seems to mean that, even if you ignore all authoritarians, there are plenty of smart people who believe the benefits (particularly when well regulated) outweigh the risks.
There are plenty of things that are wrong that are not "an obvious red line," so merely thinking that Flock is bad is not enough to make it "an obvious red line."
His argument for why people should not be against seems to be twofold:
1. If it could be made to work in such a way that isn't invasive, it could be a boon, particularly to the most disadvantaged[0].
2. If all of the places that regulate it well kick it out, then they lose political capital that could constructively be used to encourage their neighbors to also regulate it[1].
At the time of writing he has commented 16 times on this article and not a single time with a to-the-point answer when asked point blank what's his reasoning. I'd love to not have to guess his thoughts.
We have a technology that keeps evolving to encompass more and more "protections" for the people, that happen to come with more and more control for authorities. Every step in that direction is a red flag. The red flag is the direction in which things are moving. Don't we have enough chapters in the history books about why that is?
> the cameras weren't going to do any meaningful harm in Oak Park
> a lot of normal, reasonable people see these cameras as a very good thing
That sums up tptacek's "argumentation". It can be used to justify just about any type of surveillance. I mean does breaking E2EE and monitoring every communication really do any meaningful harm in Oak Park?
It really brings into focus how people who were raised in "good times" just can't wrap their heads around how easily the cookie can crumble into "bad times", and how people who found moderate success in their field believe they can now control everything. The kind of hubris that overrides any history lesson, or boiling frog fable.
And don't even get me started on what self-proclaimed "reasonable people" believe about other topics.
Contrast with the counter-arguments of what lies behind the curtain, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45476100
It was a good way to bring someone down a couple of (dozen) notches in my eyes. Not that it matters, this won't do any meaningful harm in Oak Park.
Thanks for summing up those arguments!
My snarky retorts:
1. "and if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bicycle"
2. "Let the bad actors do harm but keep an eye on them so others might do the same instead of prevent them from doing harm" is a wild approach to anything that has to ignore so many things it feels like intentional gaslighting. Even at face value it's absurd; why would only zero and partial regulation encourage similar behavior amongst neighbors but not full restriction? Imagine this suggestion for things we currently call crimes like rape and manslaughter and child abuse!
I'm in my "calling it like I see it era" and I'm calling this one. Shills gonna shill.
Who am I "shilling" for? Did you help get cameras removed from your municipality? I did in mine.
No I'm not. I actually do real political work on this issue, ran the commission process that restricted our cameras and created the only restrictive ALPR police General Orders in Chicagoland, and got us to pass an ACLU CCOPS ordinance --- the first municipality in Illinois to have one.
Whatever else I am, I'm not "muddying the waters". I'm commenting in good faith from actual experience. You're going to find my bona fides here are pretty strong.
> I actually do real political work on this issue
And Catholic priests preach. Some things aren't mutually exclusive and a lot of people are capable of holding conflicting ideas in their head.
> I'm commenting in good faith from actual experience.
All good but you didn't say anything. You muddy the water by saying repeatedly how progressive and experienced you are without providing the obvious reasoning that multiple commenters here are missing: why not be against it? This industry in general (and Flock in particular as per the article) have already been shown to continuously escalate things and change the deal to their benefit again and again. Any step they take forward always proved to be an irrecoverable step backward for civil liberties.
You cracked open the door and are looking at someone on the other side opening it wider and wider, and bringing their friends in, and still believe you can close that door whenever you want. Any history book will tell you that's hubris, not qualifications.
What are your bona fides on turkeys voting for Christmas? If you can put together an argument why this isn't a red line given this evidence of escalation, I'll tell you all about my bona fides.
The funny thing is you did the exact same thing in this comment as the last one! No arguments to be seen, just "I did all this stuff." Maybe we should call this sunken cost rather than muddying the waters?
Because the question was whether I'm commenting in good faith.
It was a statement that you're muddying the waters without implying whether bad faith or just a weak argument. And it was followed by the reasoning: that on a topic where the arguments against pervasive surveillance can be considered obvious, you aren't even hinting at an argument why anyone should not be against this in your dissenting opinion. Just an appeal to authority, "I am super experienced and say it's fine".
After repeated requests also from others you're still just waltzing around this, pretending you're not answering because you didn't get the question worded the right way.
If you think that's what good faith looks like I've got news for you.
>Because the question was whether I'm commenting in good faith.
Perhaps others have asked that question. I have not. Rather, I'm asking a different question:
Why should we believe that Flock is operating in good faith?
Especially given the anti-democratic (small 'd') and likely illegal stuff they pulled in Evanston[0].
That's not a rhetorical question.
I think my response to this would be to say that other ALPR operators are just as susceptible to extrajudicial pressure as Flock, and it would be foolish indeed to salve yourself by saying your ALPRs are OK because they're operated by Motorola instead of Flock.
I really don't think the "rhetorical" thing is going to work with me. I have the impression I might be the one person on this thread who has actually done any policy with with ALPRs.
That's all as may be.
And discussions of ALPRs and the issues around them are absolutely important.
My point was that the City of Evanston required their contractor (Flock) to remove their equipment from city infrastructure. Flock did so and then promptly reinstalled that equipment on city-owned infrastructure, flouting the will of the legitimate civil authority -- because they wanted to get paid by another government agency, against the express orders of said civil authority.
I don't know where you come from, but that sort of behavior just reeks of bad faith to me.
Feel free to disagree. And if you do, given your significant policy experience why Flock acted in good faith in Evanston. I'd be quite interested in your thoughts.
>I really don't think the "rhetorical" thing is going to work with me.
Huh? a rhetorical question[0] is (often) one that isn't actually trying to elicit information. My question, on the other hand, was specifically attempting to ascertain whether or not you think Flock is acting in good faith given their history.
So no, I wasn't trying to "gotcha" you (as in "when did you stop beating your wife" kind of thing), I genuinely wanted your take. But that doesn't seem to be forthcoming, so I'll back off. Have a good day.
I hope it's worth it.
> I actually do real political work
I’m not even sure why but this sentiment rubs me the wrong way.
Perhaps it’s that what’s resonated most to me about democracy is the premise that it is all “for the people, of the people, by the people.”
There’s something exclusive about that statement.
Yes. The people are supposed to do work. Believe me: ordinary people who strongly disagree with a lot of what's being said on this thread are doing the work, showing up and complaining about "defund the police" people being behind any limitations on ALPRs at all. I had to argue with them! You are responsible for engaging on this, because, contrary to the claim at the top of the thread, this simply is not a "red line".
The work of democracy does not require action.
If you don’t respond to this comment, I’ll assume you agree.
Saying things like this is why you're losing.
I’m on your side with regards to the issue of flock.
So, we’re losing.
That's the "magic" of democracy. It makes states stable because the government is theoretically representative which adds a ton of friction to the usual "we'll just throw the kind and his court off a cliff because they don't represent us and install some lords who do" workflow.
Because “political work” is an oxymoron
I'm an ex-employee of Flock who left when I learned just how empty their words about ethics and morality of increased surveillance really were.
They will happily look the other way when agencies share data that Flock knows they're not meant to be sharing.
They will happily "massage" data when needed to shore up a case (particularly with their gunshot detection).
Their transparency report probably lists only about 2/3 (at most) of the agencies that are actually using the system.
I asked lots of questions about ethics and morality in the recruitment process, got in, and rapidly learned that it was openly mask-off, surveillance state, Minority Report-esque mission.
Yikes. I can’t say it surprises me but my god that’s terrifying
To me the most horrifying one here is “massaging” the data to help shore up a legal case.
Would whistleblower protections shield you? Or have you taken this to any reputable journalists?
This is exactly what has happened with the same junk science tech that “Shotspotter” uses. There are recorded incidents of police leaning on support staff to alter the location of a potential detection. And their junk science software is closed source. So when they are involved in a case, the defense has subpoena their source code and voila! Shotspotter is dropped from the prosecution’s exhibit list. You see Shotspotter can’t afford to have their code scrutinized. Have you figured out why? (Junk science)
You could comment about why the things listed in the article aren't a red line.
I've already done that.
Please quote where. I don't see it. I will go further and assert no you didn't.
> do not understand this idea that it's an obvious red line
ALPRs are not an obvious red line. Federal police ignoring court orders with microphones on street corners is.
The premise of these cameras is that the operating LEOs control sharing. If you assume the federal government is going to ignore those controls extralegally, then ALPRs themselves aren't acceptable. The red line you're proposing here isn't coherent.
Again I want to be clear that there's a difference between "bad idea" or "bad public policy tradeoff" and "red line". I believe it's pretty clear that when something is a live controversy with no clear winner in a municipality like Oak Park, whatever else it is, it isn't a "red line".
> I believe it's pretty clear that when something is a live controversy with no clear winner in a municipality like Oak Park, whatever else it is, it isn't a "red line".
Shouldn't it be the opposite? A thing is tested when it's put under stress. It's a red line because it's not to be crossed even when the temptation to do it increases.
To me, calling something a "red line" implies that there's near-universal agreement that something is bad (or, at least, on the proper weighing of the underlying values: here, freedom from surveillance vs. law enforcement).
I've never heard of the phrase requiring having a near-universal agreement before.
And I wouldn't say that's a widely held definition. For example:
> The red line, or "to cross the red line", is a phrase used worldwide to mean a figurative point of no return or line in the sand, or "the fastest, farthest, or highest point or degree considered safe." [0]
If adopting these practices means they stick around and people will always argue for bringing them back if we stop... We've crossed the point of no return.
It's an interesting point.
I see your point that something cannot be a red line if it has significant support. Because a red line is something that people universally agree is unacceptable, and if there is even a significant minority who disagree then it's not universal.
Equally, for any horrible thing you will find a minority who support it. Hitler certainl had wide support for deporting Jews, if not worse. Does that mean it can't be a red line? In fact there is no point having red lines that are universally accepted, because they are already, well, universally accepted. There is little point stating that killing babies and eating their flesh whil livestreaming is a red line because no one wants to do it.
I don't have a view on Flock itself.
I'm not a fan. But I think if people want to seriously organize against its use, they need to be honest and empathetic about what its supporters are looking to achieve. You tell me if the threads on this story are showing that.
> Because a red line is something that people universally agree is unacceptable
No? Just those who are decisionally relevant. Most people are incapable of civic action, for example.
> premise of these cameras is that the operating LEOs control sharing
The practical effect is most of them have national sharing turned on.
For me, the red line was Texas extrajudicially enforcing its abortion laws through Flock. It’s illegal. It’s invasive.
It's illegal in Illinois. And when the scandal happened, we weren't impacted, because we'd already disabled out-of-state sharing many months prior.
Which was an annoying lift, because Chicago is part of a tri-state area (Wisconsin and Indiana); there are de-facto suburbs of Chicago in other states, and we had to say "no sharing without a phone call authorizing it".
And the problem with that premise is the company clearly does not honor the local controls. Ask Evanston about it. I don't understand why you're defending Flock so hard when you can get the same product from e.g. Axon without all the we're-smarter-than-you bullshit from the vendor. Not all ALPRs come with Flock baggage, but you seem to treat them interchangeably.
This isn't responsive to the point 'JumpCrisscross was making.
Yes, that's how conversations work.
I'm surprised you say that. To flip this on its head, what would be your principled argument to accept ambient surveillance?
I don't doubt that license plate readers are used primarily to solve crimes. But the fact that it is collected and can be made available to anyone essentially strips you of privacy in everyday life. Cops are people too; once the tech is available, it is sometimes abused to spy on spouses, neighbors, journalists critical of the local PD, and so on.
There is also a more general argument: an ever-growing range of human activities is surveilled to root out crime, and we can probably agree that the end state of that would be dystopian: it'd be a place where your every word or even every thought is proactively monitored and flagged for wrongthink. We're ways off, but with every decade, we're getting closer. I'm not saying that Flock-listening-to-conversations is the line we can't cross, but if not this, then what?
Salami slicing tactics. The authoritarians will take a nibble at a time until we are all consumed.
Constantly surveilling your citizens without cause doesn't strike you as an obvious red line?
I'm deeply skeptical of surveillance and convinced it will be misused, more and more over time as all sides get used to it and the complaints become less, or less fundamental and more against something specific while not questioning the tech as such.
Still, I'm torn whenever I walk to the city center (Bavarian big city that is not Munich) and see how many rental bikes and rental e-scooters can be found thrown into the river that runs through the city. Or public trash cans that were actually put deep into the earth, with concrete too, lie broken with lots of earth and the long metal pipe with concrete attached because some people spent considerable effort to destroy public infrastructure. Or somebody must have jumped hard and repeatably on a weak point of a public bench, which has very thick wood and thick steel screws, but they still managed to destroy it.
I want those people to be found, I'm very angry. This is a frequent occurrence. If that means more surveillance, I would not oppose. I'm tired of seeing this happen again and again and again.
The city had to start using trashcans that look more and more like little war bunkers. They can't do anything for the bikes and scooters though, making them too heavy to lift and throw into the water is obviously not possible. Police do patrol, but they can't be everywhere all the time.
For illustration: Two bikes of a public bike rental service found in the river. They are not old, all of them are new, but this is how they look after a few days or weeks in the river:
https://img.mittelbayerische.de/ezplatform/images/4/4/8/8/40...
Divers are called regularly to retrieve bikes, scooters, and other big items thrown into the city's river: https://images.nordbayern.de/image/contentid/policy:1.132184...
It's almost assured the police know and have interacted with those committing vandalism already. Really the question you need to ask yourself is should said vandals should be beat to death or enslaved in prison forever.
More cameras doesn't fix this kind of crime.
These are, of course, our only 2 options...
"I want those people to be found, I'm very angry. This is a frequent occurrence. If that means more surveillance ..."
No, it doesn't necessarily mean surveillance ... or, at least, not automated surveillance.
Your wishes (which I share) can be fulfilled with human bodies (possibly police) on the street deterring these bad actions.
The majority if this vandalism is most likely done by teens.
I still remember my last years in school. Around the turn of the millennium, when the country had an economic down turn. The school building was a bunch of containers. Freezing in the winter, sweating in the sommer. Society saw nothing but a burden in us. The teachers constantly said "no one is waiting for you out there!"
Nothing has changed since then. There is no respect for child care. There is no respect for school children. (Walk into a school and try not to drip over "temporary" support beams.) There will be no "Sondervermögen" for Schools.
You can't fix a social problem - that some recent the society they have to live in and lash out via doing dumb thinks - via technology.
Ah yes, nothing like bit of lite STASI from keeping the rental bikes and the trash cans from being vandalised ... ... ...
Surveillance in the end is a tool, like a gun, which can be used for good or bad.
I doubt any more effort will be made against vandalism for a long time that reaquires to increase surveillance. The cameras and microphones will remain, though.
Edit: I live in a dictatorship. State surveillance and policing has helped with vandalism. But the drawbacks are obvious and nefarious. I would take more vandalism in a mediocre democracy any day.
Uhm... see my first sentence? I'm aware, and I said so.
Obviously I pointed to a conflict (of my interests), that's why I said I'm torn. If I want the second (less vandalism) I'll have to give up at least some of the first (freedom from surveillance while in public places).
No. Roughly half our community wanted to keep the cameras. And we're as blue/progressive as it gets. Whatever else it is, it isn't "a red line".
That is not the same thing as me saying I think the cameras were a good tradeoff.
The wealthy people keep the poor down, then having this subpopulation that acts in messed up ways causes crime, which causes the wealthy to accept things like surveillance to "protect themselves" and continually cedes to more authoritarian policies. The middle class is the social base of fascism.
The way out is to turn on the rich and produce a more economically equal society.
People live in fear, and these things help police close cases quickly.
I served on a jury where a young woman slipped on ice while crossing the street and was run over by a negligent driver who was fleeing what he thought was the police, because he was on probation and not supposed to drive. With private surveillance, red light cameras and some other sources, they were able to track down the vehicle and apprehend the individual within 45 minutes of the event. Prior to that, much more primitive version of that technology being available, there would no chance of that case being solved.
Personally, I think this technology is dangerous, lacks effective governance, is operated without transparency, and is prone to abuse. Events of late highlight how different jurisdictional boundaries at the city, state and federal levels can be in conflict. But the technology is not going away -- imo it's time to govern it and limit the inter-jurisdictional data sharing.
> Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.
> https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/coun...
My birth, as someone who is bi, is now declared to be tantamount to terrorism in the USA. My belief that race shouldn't matter, is now extremism.
The red line, is systems like this, enable those who would happily hunt me down and gut me like a fish. There are preachers in the government, who frequently say that I am not a person. The government is attempting to move to an extrajudicial procedure where it concerns people the government oppose.
We shouldn't gladly be making it easier for a better Dehomag to be put together - that is the red line.
"Flock safety currently solves ... %10 of the crime Nation Wide"
Pretty bold statement without citing data to back that up. I have already received a speeding warning letter from one of these things. Does that count as a crime Flock solved?
I tire of all this binary thinking. It is true that surveillance helps victims. It is also true that the same surveillance can endanger civil liberties. We should have some say in how much we will allow our liberties to be endangered.
Sounds like someone watched too much Person of Interest
Flock cameras don't issue citations at all and don't appear to include speed radar.
Don't need radar to calculate speed with multiple photographs. And yes technically the city issued the warning.
Can you document this further? State/locality? In Illinois, that wouldn't be legal.
Ok Before I am accused of misrepresenting things and in the interest of clarity.
1. I am in San Francisco.
2. Upon further research Flock does not appear to be used by SFPD for ticketing. They have another camera system for that. That does not mean that Flock could not be used for speeding tickets or a host of other things like running red lights, littering etc. Microprocessors and CMOS cameras can do amazing things.
Regardless of what company is doing the surveillance the debate remains the same.
1. Pervasive surveillance has the potential to be used inappropriately by authorities. Discussion is needed.
2. The data collected by a company such as Flock but not necessarily Flock could be used inappropriately or sold for other purposes. Benn Jordan has a good video on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ&t=21s
3. The claim that Flock is responsible for %10 of solved cases seems dubious but without data it is difficult to know or believe. Given that Flock is in YC's portfolio makes it even more suspect.
Flock or a company like Flock may try and become pervasive and indispensable before a public discussion places any limits on their behavior.
I have no idea where the "10% of solved cases" thing comes from, but I posted across thread: I looked at effectiveness very carefully in my own muni, and my conclusion was that the cameras were of basically no help. It feels cynical to make this observation, but if I had to bet --- from the way our own PD, which I respect a lot, tried to formulate an argument for keeping the cameras --- they're counting every crime where an involved car blipped an ALPR. That's not at all the same thing as solving a crime.
Someone who knows more about how Flock generates that stat could say more.
Speed radar is unlikely but average speed is possible.
If you were in one place at 13:00 and 5 miles down the road at 13:10 you must have gone at least 30mph at least once.
So... don't speed?
This has to be bait, but feel free to make a more substantiated argument… for example, how does privilege play into what you’ve said here?
I was responding to the point above. If getting a fine for speeding is one's concern about the cameras, then don't speed.
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If I recall correctly, "If LE looked at Flock in the process of investigating a crime that resulted in an arrest, it counts" (regardless of whether that look had any meaningful impact or any findings at all in the crime, just "in trying to solve this crime, did you run a search on Flock at all").
I don't know and DNGAF about Garry, but that argument is specious and reflects the conflict his business fundamentally creates for him. The smart move would be to be silent, not sure what you "admire".
A CEO of YC - the site you're currently on...
It boggles my mind how some people can seem to only think in terms of "teams". And can't think critically about their supposed team.
"I'm on their site so I'm on their team... Of course I back everything they do, I'm on their team."
Similarly (and slightly related) when a big part of your motivation is to see the "other" side upset you've lost the plot.
How exactly is that relevant? I doubt most people who use Amazon admire Andy Jassy.
Good for him. That’s certainly a worthy accomplishment.
The point stands i think. It is difficult for someone in his position to offer meaningful commentary about the topic without alienating his customers. As I mentioned in another comment, I’ve see firsthand how this type of tech resulted in a prosecution that would have been impossible without it.
But… there are glaring risks to the public with this tech. Everything from dragnet surveillance to cops stalking their exes. Move fast and break things is a menace in this context, and the gulf between a foreign boogeyman and something closer to home may not be as wide as someone would like it to be.
And? Do you want me to memorize the management and organizational structure of every website that I use?
I am perfectly capable of using this site and not giving a flying shit about the CEO of YCombinator
That does not make them immune from criticism.
I give it 1-2 years max before he hands over the personal login emails / IP of every user on this site to the thought police. There’s nothing admirable about mercenary capitalists.
> I admire Garry
Isn't it getting harder to say this, hearing this kind of rhetoric? "My bombs only kill the bad guys" is either hopelessly ignorant, or willfully malicious.
Way too many people in this industry value professional achievement over ethical considerations. And in doing so provide cover for obvious bad actors.
This knocked Garry down a solid 4 levels of respect in my own book. What an embarrassing level of thought to publish under one's name on such an important question.
The logic here works both ways. The number of wars prevented by mutually assured destruction, and the number of lives saved is beyond nontrivial, and likely outnumbers the lives lost.
I don't want to get into an argument about the dangers involved, I agree with Taleb about the fat tails of violence, and how standard statistics breaks down when there is infinite variance. My point is just that Tan's point is reasonable, even if there is risk. You need only look at the CCTV usage in the UK to see how you can have a reasonable society with strong surveillance.
Part of why CCTV in the UK is ubiquitous and yet hasn’t so far resulted in what many people describe as a surveillance state is that the cameras are all operated by different people. To hoover up data an agency needs to go ask the owner of every shop along a road for the video, while hoping they’ve not recorded over the tape yet.
That falls apart (and is falling apart) when the cameras are all operated by the same company. Now an agency can just go to that company and request video for an entire town in one go. There’s probably a self-service portal for this because the operator isn’t even based in that town, so has no skin in the game, no need to work out whether they agree this is something the video is needed for.
The UK has departed from being a reasonable society with strong surveillance. This happened about the same time the police started showing up at 2am for Facebook posts from old ladies.
>You need only look at the CCTV usage in the UK to see how you can have a reasonable society with strong surveillance.
It's not really 'surveillance' as the vast majority of those cameras are privately owned and on private property. The numbers that get thrown around are basically just guesses, given that there are no central records of privately owned CCTV cameras.
It’s dirty, extreme class divide , people don’t give a shit, you see young people homeless begging everywhere.
The UK is a dystopian society, an example on what not to do.
I am not from the UK, I just get forced to work there. I’ve been here for 2 out of the last 7 years.
Good music though
> I admire Garry
Why?
Irrespective of how you feel about this, its very strange to throw China under the bus here. If Chinese surveillance is so dystopian, don't you think China uses the same exact rhetoric for protecting their police state? After all China went from a bunch of farms to the second largest economy in 30 years.
Either you think mass surveillance is wrong or not.
He's not an oligarch in China, though, so of course theirs is bad.
Why do you admire him? Him and his ilk are responsible for the dystopia we're barreling towards.
What's to prevent US-based surveillance from becoming Chinese surveillance?
Also, what reason do you think China gives for its surveillance? It's the same: "protecting victims", "protecting citizens", "public safety".
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The slide into hell is steep and slippery. I’m afraid we’re in a dark period of history that’s only going to get darker.
I want proponents of this tech to explain something to me. Why has the rate of stochastic terrorism only increased since the NSA and Palantir started spying on all of us? Isn’t the whole point of this to preempt those kinds of things?
What is the counterfactual? Without knowing the number of attacks prevented by these tools, we don't know what the baseline would be.
For the record: they prevented essentially nothing in our muni. We're 4.5 square miles sandwiched between the Austin neighborhood of Chicago (our neighbor to the east; many know it by its reputation) one side and Maywood/Broadview/Melrose Park on the other, directly off I-290; the broader geographic area we're in is high crime.
We ran a pilot with the cameras in hot spots (the entrances to the village from I-290, etc).
Just on stolen cars alone, roughly half the flags our PD reacted to turned out to be bogus. In Illinois, Flock runs off the Illinois LEADS database (the "hotlist"). As it turns out: LEADS is stale as fuck: cars are listed stolen in LEADS long after they're returned. And, of course, the demography of owners of stolen cars is sharply biased towards Black and Latino owners (statistically, they live in poorer, higher-crime areas), which meant that Flock was consistently requesting the our PD pull over innocent Black drivers.
We recently kicked Flock out (again: I'm not thrilled about this; long story) over the objections of our PD (who wanted to keep the cameras as essentially a better form of closed-circuit investigatory cameras; they'd essentially stopped responding to Flock alerts over a year ago). In making a case for the cameras, our PD was unable to present a single compelling case of the cameras making a difference for us. What they did manage to do was enforce a bunch of failure-to-appear warrants for neighboring munis; mostly, what Flock did to our PD was turn them into debt collectors.
Whatever else you think about the importance of people showing up to court for their speeding tickets, this wasn't a good use our sworn officers' time.
> As it turns out: LEADS is stale as fuck: cars are listed stolen in LEADS long after they're returned.
Is this related to rental companies reporting cars as "stolen" if they are an hour overdue on their scheduled return?
Can you elaborate on why you're not thrilled about Flock being removed?
The metro area is blanketed in ALPRs and we were the only ones actually writing real policy about them. Now we don't have any ALPRs and can't build policy or shop it to any of our neighbors. We had harm reduction for the cameras and a plausible strategy for reducing their harm throughout the area, and instead we did something performative.
Why is it better to reduce the harm of a practically useless anti-crime device than remove it entirely?
That's a good and reasonable question. The answer is: the cameras weren't going to do any meaningful harm in Oak Park (they were heavily restricted by policies we wrote about them, and we have an exceptionally trustworthy police department and an extremely police-skeptical political majority). But you can drive through Oak Park in about 5 minutes on surface streets, and on either side of that drive you'll be in places that are blanketed with ALPRs with absolutely no policy or restrictions whatsoever.
Had we kept the cameras, we'd have some political capital to get our neighboring munis (and like-minded munis in Chicagoland like Schaumberg) to take our ordinances and general orders as models. Now we don't. We're not any safer: our actions don't meaningfully change our residents exposure to ALPRs (and our residents weren't the targets anyways; people transiting through Oak Park were) because of their prevalence outside our borders.
What people don't get about this is that a lot of normal, reasonable people see these cameras as a very good thing. You can be upset about that or you can work with it to accomplish real goals. We got upset about it.
Why do you have political capital to convince neighboring counties to copy your legislation, but not to copy your decision to remove the cameras?
(And you can still pass legislation restricting cameras even when they aren’t in your county…)
Because regulating cameras is an easier sell than disabling them, because ordinary people do not share HN's priors about surveillance technology, like, at all.
I'm not sure I agree with this, unless by "ordinary people" you mean a particular group. In my experience, the vast majority of members of oppressed or marginalized groups are strongly against these things. The only people I know who defend it are those that can hide behind "if I'm not doing anything wrong what do I have to hide"
It's not like we're going to have to argue about this in the abstract for long. Check in with me in a year and we'll see: are there more ALPRs or less ALPRs in the near west suburbs of Chicago? I would put money on a lot more. Dozens more were getting rolled out in our neighboring munis right as we announced we were canceling our contract.
I'm sure you're right, but that doesn't imply to me that "ordinary people" are okay with surveillance technology. At least 1 other explanation would be that they don't understand the implications.
Anyway, we'll check back in a year and see: are they actually effective and used responsibly? I would put money on "no"
I'm not wondering about it; I've watched the two sides of this issue play out. Progressive activists turn out with stuff about surveillance and resisting the Trump administration (I'm sympathetic!) and liberals (we only have progressives and liberals here) turn out talking about public safety and how the camera enforcement is less racist than human discretionary enforcement (I'm sympathetic to that argument too, but as I've noted elsewhere on the thread: the cameras aren't effective here).
This played out over years here; I attended all the board meetings, transcribed them, took notes, kept tallies of who was saying what. I was involved in our last election and the two mayoral candidates squared off on this issue (among several others).
> What people don't get about this is that a lot of normal, reasonable people see these cameras as a very good thing. You can be upset about that or you can work with it to accomplish real goals. We got upset about it.
An alternative is you can try to convince those people that, while their desire to reduce crime is perfectly understandable, this might not be the way to do it effectively, to say nothing of the potential avenues for abuse (and in current day America, I'd be very wary of such avenues)
It remains an issue of trust for me. You not only have to trust your police and government(s), but you have to trust Flock too - and that trust has to remain throughout changing governments and owners of that company. I have a healthy distrust of both, particularly lately.
Just as importantly, but more to the point, is still the question of whether they're actually useful. To that end, does not the same logic apply to being able to pressure nearby municipalities to remove the cameras?
In any case, while I remain fundamentally opposed to such surveillance, you raise very good points, and I appreciate you taking the time to explain your position in this thread.
I'm fine that we took the cameras down. As you can see from my first comment on this part of the thread: they weren't working, and before we stopped our PD from responding to stolen car alerts, they were actively doing harm. But I disagree with you about the long-term strategy. I'd have kept the cameras --- locked down (we had an offer from Flock to simply disable them while leaving them up, so that they wouldn't even be powered up) --- and written a formal ALPR ordinance. Then I'd have worked with the Metro Mayors Caucus and informal west suburban mayor networking to get other munis to adopt it.
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I don't care. The world is a dangerous place, we make it safer by promoting freedom and education and goodwill and faith in people, not by growing the police state. We do know for a fact however that in the near future anything "think of the children" or "just looking for criminals" ultimately gets turned against all of us as the government grows and grows without limit, our rights will become fewer and fewer with the encroachment. It's not "panic" or "exaggeration" it has happened all through history of nation-states.
We also don't know the number of attacks indirectly caused by these tools, by instilling a more fraught social environment.
> Why has the rate of stochastic terrorism only increased since the NSA and Palantir started spying on all of us?
…is this true? What timespan are we looking at? My understanding was that crime has been on the decline pretty much from the 90s up until 2020. And in 2020 the world changed in a way that kind of made everyone go nuts.
Violent crimes stats look the same pretty much everywhere in the west, there are way more variables than "surveillance on/off", probably a lot of socio economic variables if I had to guess, as it turns out most people who are well fed, have a good life and look forward to a brighter future don't just walk around and commit violent crimes.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mirta-Gordon/publicatio...
Let’s start with school shootings which only started AFTER the surveillance apparatus went online.
You're making the same mistake that lots of people do, looking at the big events that make the news instead of actual crime stats. The former doesn't really tell you anything about crime rates.
This is a big problem that leads to things like these surveillance measures, because people think crime is really high even when it's the lowest it has ever been, because of the media environment.
I'm not American so please educate me if I'm wrong but haven't y'all had school shootings every single day for at least a decade or something?
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public. That includes being recorded on video, or audio.
I disagree and think it is very reasonable and very possible. Don't put up cameras everywhere, don't put up listening devices everywhere, don't allow the government to buy this information from corporations. There should be a clear line drawn between me or you or a bar putting up a camera and the government gaining access to that data. It's not hard, it really isn't. Saying what you're saying it just trite and not looking at what is possible.
It's part of the same first amendment that gives you the right to free speech. Go look it up. There is no such thing as privacy in public, and if you feel like you have a right to privacy in public, then you need to read up on the first amendment. The only thing that requires permission is when the footage is used for commercial purposes, then you need permission to use it.
And FWIW, citizens have a right to get the footage the government records. You can get any camera footage from any government building, and even personal cellphones of government emplpoyees if they happen to film something with their personal cellphone while on the job.
The first amendment doesn’t mention recording, although I admit that an argument could be made regarding an implied right. But then why are wiretapping laws allowed? Hiding a recorder in an otherwise public meeting area can violate these laws in some states (notably Illinois and Oregon). Are these laws unconstitutional?
Besides, the first amendment does not give the government the right to record or to benefit from those recordings. Rather, it prevents the government from restricting speech acts of private citizens. Therefore there should be no conflict with the 1st if a hypothetical law prevents the government from recording or accessing private recordings, even if private recordings are considered protected speech.
I actually agree with you but I think two things can be true at once.
- There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public. Any individual with a camera can record you at any time. (Otherwise the entire genre of street photography basically wouldn't exist, and journalists could get arrested for documenting stories in the public interest.)
- We shouldn't have automated cameras recording all the time and feeding that information into a massive database where people's movements can be correlated and tracked across the country.
>massive database where people's movements can be correlated and tracked across the country.
Video (and audio) recording isn't even the best way to track someone, everyone has a cellphone these days, and turning them off doesn't always stop the tracking.
It's not recording in public that is the problem - that is a right - the separate problem is mining that data and making connections where there aren't any.
Some people say "both parties are the same", but I disagree. With the current administration, they are all-in on mass surveillance, they love Anduril and Palantir, and any attempt to protest their overreach will be met with force, and they are using these technologies to track protesters. The Democrats on the other hand will respond to protests, and we can push them in the right direction. I guess I'm trying to say, be careful who you vote for.
There's no reasonable expectation of pervasive video/audio capture, permanent recording, and complete AI analysis of all actions in public by all citizens forever, either. But that's the direction in which we're rapidly heading.
(Vouched for this comment, which was somehow already dead at 2 minutes old.)
Someone will always say "there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public", for whatever reason. So someone always has to respond to that, for the benefit of anyone who doesn't know that not everyone agrees with that dismissive assertion.
>Someone will always say "there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public", for whatever reason.
It isn't "for whatever reason", it is part of the first amendment. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it hasn't been the law for a very long time.
Everyone has heard the phrase. It doesn't necessarily mean what the person saying it thinks it means.
For example, you can't legally photograph people in certain ways in public in some US jurisdictions. (Because "no expectation of privacy" perverts
There are also restrictions on secret audio recording without consent under circumstances that some people would try to claim are public.
For another example, there are restrictions on how you use that "no expectation of privacy", US-wide (e.g., commercial use of photographs, or cyberbullying).
And that's before we get into common decency, or arguable conflicting laws or principles.
But of course, every single time there is an opportunity for some new person to dismiss a good point with "no reasonable expectation of privacy!" such a new person materialize. And so someone else has to spend their time responding.
No, you can't film people in public restrooms, but that is an exception. There are limits to freedom of speech. You also can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater if there is no fire.
But yes, recording in public is generally very much allowed, and for good reason. I'm happy that we can film our govenment and dissemenate those recordings when they do something wrong. And that is the same first amendment right that gives government the ability to record too. And there are very few restrictions on recording, so yes, there is no REASONABLE expectation of privacy in public - the situations you outlined are all unreasonable. There are limits to free speech, but that doesn't mean recording in public isn't generally allowed.
You can hate it all you want, but it's the first amendment that makes it legal to record in public. I'm honestly glad we have the right to record in public, else the government would be able to hide some nefarious shit that the public has been able to record and dissemenate. If we couldn't record in public, then that would be extremely dystopian. Maybe using AI on recorded data is the real problem you're having, and I agree there should be laws against that - it is a separate issue than recording in public, but it's unlikely to ever be regulated with the current administration.
> stochastic terrorism
This is a bugbear for me. The point of terrorism is that it’s a random act of violence.
The stochastic part is who is doing it (random people being incited) vs an organized cell who has members engaging in random acts of violence
Right, it's the inverse of saying a "random dice roll" isn't happening because there isn't a random human throwing a random selection of polyhedra. Different aspects.
That said, even "random" has so many different interpretations that "random targets" it can still be a misleading shorthand. What happens is something closer to "unpredictably unjust and disproportionate"... but of course nobody wants to keep saying a mouthful like that.
The Stochastic part is that the proponents of terrorism don't know where it will manifest, they just incite and hope someone's listening. In contrast a terrorist act like 9-11 was carefully planned and had approval up Al Qaeda's 'chain of command'.
Stochastic terrorism usually refers to incitement, afaict.
Edit: it's got a Wikipedia article, which says it's a particular kind of incitement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism
>The point of terrorism is that it’s a random act of violence.
That's absolutely incorrect. Terrorism is violence used to achieve political goals.
>"Terrorism is the calculated use of violence or threat of violence against civilians and property to intimidate or coerce a population or government to achieve political, religious, or ideological goals" - a simple google search
It's not random at all. Random acts of violence are not meant to achieve any goal - they spur-of-the-moment, unplanned, etc. Terrorists have a goal, they typically have a target in mind to achieve a goal, it isn't very random at all. Sure random people might get hurt in the incident, but the incident itself isn't typically random. Terrorists usually prepare for it, for months or years. Was flying two planes into the twin towers random? No, it was not. Was blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma City random? No, it was not. These were very carefully selected targets.
Terrorism isn't even an actual action. Its a threat of a random action to the public.
For example, saying "there is a planned school shooting at a school in $metro_city", even though there is absolutely nobody doing that - that causes terror. Doesn't have to be backed by any actions at all.
Like, with the shooting of UHC CEO, there was no grandiose statements or otherwise causing terror ahead of time. It was 3 bullets and leave.
They did fail to prove terrorism in court in that case - I think generally there needs to be some attempt to use the terror to achieve a political aim or change public opinion?
Just making people afraid is a different thing.
“Human distress” today, and “human everything” tomorrow. They probably just don't currently have the processing capability or upload bandwidth for all the passersby talking, the only issue is technical and not moral. Flock is in this for money, all morals are turned off --corporations are not really people-- and will sell cops and the government anything they are willing to pay for, including listening for wrongthink. Every time I read a story like this I send EFF or the ACLU another $20
> will sell cops and the government anything they are willing to pay for
Anything they are willing to force us to pay for.
"Listening on normal conversations can uncover serious crimes being executed or planned" - just an imaginary excuse from the future, along the small gradual steps taken, like this one.
That should be Flock (YC 2017)
There are a lot of ideas that are bad for society but great for business. YC is business first, always.
Yeah, and yet YC has backed literal scams on some exuberance of hope (uBiome)
We stopped putting that in submission titles years ago. An exception is for Launch HNs.
Yes. My intention was how it should be in mind space rather than literally.
1984 was a pretty mild vision of the surveillance state. If tech continues to improve we will not too far into the future have full surveillance around the clock of everybody. No way around it and it will not even cost a lot. The big question is who will have access to the data.
The logical next step is replace the microphones with the ones we carry around in our pockets every day: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IRELLH86Edo
1960: "I have a great idea! lets have every person in the country carry a radio tracking beacon!" "That'll never fly!" 2012: "I can has TWO iphones??"
Surely this will never be used for evil
They promised. Possibly even pinky promised!
(hackers too, to never steal data from them)
And then they'll start proactively reporting to law enforcement when their AI model thinks what you're saying is "suspicious", just like they do now when it thinks the movement patterns of behavior of your car is suspicious.
Flock's CEO openly says the he intends that "Flock will help eliminate ALL crime", and has shown he has no concerns about how dystopian or Minority Report-esque Flock would need to be to accomplish that mission.
I’m not worried that much about random acts of violence from desperate or misguided strangers.
The crime I want eliminated is that of the elite.
I think you're going to find that working class people living in low and middle income neighborhoods do not agree with you about this. They're unhappy with how police response tends to traumatize the innocent in their neighborhoods, but they're even more unhappy with how police response appears only to halfheartedly address crime, which falls heavier (both in frequency and impact) on lower-income people than it does on the wealthy.
You can read meeting minutes from neighborhood and beat meetings to confirm this (there's probably lots of things you can read to confirm it, but the nerdiest way to do it is to get the raw data.)
A shorter way to say all of this: you're expressing a luxury belief.
How it is "luxury" to want to address large scale crimes such as wage theft, price collusion, corruption, unequal access, and institutional racism/classism that are major underlying factors in street crime, including the lack of enforcement you mention here? From a nerd perspective, it's seems obvious that addressing underlying causes is beneficial to all of us. In fact, it seems likely that it's the only thing that will work in the long run. Policing might also be necessary in some cases, but it's not going to fix our long-standing social issues.
It's luxury to suggest that street and property crime should take a backburner to whatever your issues are, because you are (demographically speaking; I have no idea who you are personally) (1) much less likely to experience street and property crime than someone in a low-income neighborhood and (2) much more able to metabolize the impacts of those crimes.
The whole thing is silly; it isn't the job of municipal police to investigate price collusion and corruption in the first place. You might just as meaningfully say that the trash collection service should be prioritizing institutional racism.
You’re right. It’s a luxury to have the space away from the problem to think about it systemically. Certainly, part of the work is to learn from each other.
Will surveillance cameras in low-income areas (if that’s where they’ll put them) mean that the police will be more responsive to crime in those areas? If the police are already not responsive in supposedly high-crime areas, what’s the underlying cause? Would the Black Panthers have felt the need to have armed patrols in their neighborhoods if the police could’ve put up a surveillance system?
You live in a upper class city. Your example is great albeit not quite applicable to the first paragraph.
Tell me more about the upper class west side of Chicago.
Yeah the real issue that most Americans (and probably other countries) is that 0.1% of the populace is wagging the rest of the 99.9% around based on how much they're willing to pay to politicians.
When one cares not about false positives, eliminating all true positives is trivial.
"We will all be on our best behaviour because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on"
They film us on the street. They film us at traffic signals, from law enforcement vehicles, and drones, parks and even through our doorbell cameras. I don't mean this glibly, or in its entirety, but the big screen watching your every move in 1984 seems not too far off..
And now with the advent of highly capable LLMs, we don't even need humans watching and listening. The data streams can be captured, analyzed, summarized, for any behavior, mention, suspicion, or hallucination of undesirable activity. In a population inured to masked agents snatching people off the street domestically and semi*-autonomous drone strikes abroad*, our future doesn't look rosy.
* for now
Exactly. Roll it out first to see who is being "productive" at work.
This is the key realization which is missing from talks about AI dangers.
Total surveillance used to be impossible because the government needed people to spy on other people. They needed to find somebody willing and pay them.
Now it can be automated.
The war won't be humans vs an AI controlling robots. It'll be humans vs the government and rich people controlling AI controlling robots.
There will be no war. As long as people are fed, they won't revolt.
At least we don't have listening devices in our homes!
Hey, Alexa?
Yeah, that would be so sad... Hey Alexa, play Despacito 2.
Seems like we need more peaceful citizen defense tools.
ICE will go after you for organizing such tools (unrelated to immigration cases): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45475525
Larry Ellison, major asshole and big ally of the current authoritarian regime:
"Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on," Ellison said, describing what he sees as the benefits from automated oversight from AI and automated alerts for when crime takes place.
Ellison, Vance, Musk, Thiel, Luckey, Zuckerberg and many of the tech oligarch assholes want us to live in their surveillance state.
They're currently making good progress. What will you do to help stop them?
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/omnip...
Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on
These people live in fantasyland bubbles, powered by their unshakeable belief in their own intelligence and "hyper rational" nonsense.
People already film themselves committing crimes. There are a great many people who, over and over again, make decisions in the present that will have strongly negative consequences in their own futures.
"If we watch people they won't do bad things." Sure, in some other universe maybe.
And so plebians vs patricians turns into citizens vs entrepreneurs.
It's not just about who owns the means of production anymore, it's about who owns the means of surveillance (the so called AI).
Two thousand years and humans have learned nothing. Power and money still lead to more power and money which lead to abuse, which after decades gets so bad it leads to revolution. Except this time they want to make revolutions impossible. So they _have_ learned but common people have not.
And this guy is going to own TikTok through a deal with Trump, he's literally going to be the thought police
It's funny because they were constantly recorded at epstein's island and yet not on their best behavior...
Recording isn't enough you also need follow-up and if there's anything we've learned over the years is that the police are going to follow up on somebody throwing their soda can into Ellison's yard but not breaking your front door.
With WiFi even being able to detect our heartbeats [0], we'll get to enjoy dynamic pricing on our insurance on a second-by-second basis!
Remember kids, if the invasive tracking is done by the government and a couple of companies, then it's the good kind of dystopia! /s
[0]: https://news.ucsc.edu/2025/09/pulse-fi-wifi-heart-rate/
Looking beyond the obvious surveillance issues, how long until all the location are made public and people start in with the pranks/activism/etc diverting responders away from real emergencies?
"officers we're just rehearsing a play in a public space ... " or something like that
Is there an audio stream that tends to ruin speech recognition?
Play multiple lyrical songs at the same time? Bonus for multi-language.
1. This is illegal eavesdropping
2. I will start screaming at the Flock cameras
1. This is illegal eavesdropping
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/plain_view_doctrine_0
might apply, though IANAL
That's probably exactly the rationalization for this. No expectation of privacy in a public space, and therefore no requirement for warrant to eavesdrop. I may not like it, but the government will find absolutely any way to do things we don't like in spite of the infinite attempts to restrain it from doing so decades or centuries ahead of time.
There are eavesdropping laws specifically about audio recording. Not sure if it's federal or state by state.
Next week: App that emits frequencies that block Flock microphones
2 weeks from now: Google and Apple remove AntiFlock apps; developers arrested
(Only slightly sarcastic. We should be talking about ways of making these things useless, as well as illegal)
EMP devices.
Get little throwable "annoy-o-tron" devices with a button-cell and a magnet that randomly play little gunshot sounds or fake screams and throw them near the Raven sensors.
Seems we are not far away from full-on 1984.
How's this different than shotspotter?
It’s webscale
I'm going to go around these things all day screaming, "help, rape!"
It's like that old prank where you order pizzas to someone's house that didn't order them. That's how we used to fight against the man. Now we scream, "rape" randomly in public.
What a time to be alive.
Don't worry. If LEOs are dispatched reacting to a Flock event, they will be using Carbyne, a company founded by Epstein and Ehud Barak.
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Disgusting.
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I'm yet to be convinced that the removal of privacy has any effect on the level of crime, nor do I believe that to be the primary motivation for it
Nor a viable solution to the problem.
That’s a good point. I can tell you from firsthand experience that the abundance of cameras in our society absolutely have a profound effect on the ability of law enforcement to solve individual crimes. To the point you are making how do we transfer those successes into reducing the level of crime?
My thoughts on that are probably not very popular on here and those are to just build larger jails and equip those with drug rehabilitation options. The larger jails allow us to not just kick the people back on the streets immediately but compel steps that help eliminate recidivism. Another source of criminal behavior is mental illness. I have no clues on how to fix that except perhaps concentrate on the causes.
All these cameras and recording devices exist for that same reason Advil exists in that it helps a toothache. Doesn’t really solve the problem but fights the symptoms.
If you think prisons turn criminals into law abiding individuals, or that that's even their purpose, you've got some more figuring out to do before teaching.
The US already has the largest prison population in the world and yet still has extremely high crime on par with countries that lack functioning goverments. So how exactly are more prisons and arrests going to lower crime when it has failed to do so for decade after decade?
Your cure is worse than the disease! Our risk of violent crime is lower now than almost any point in history. We make crime better by improving the lives of the average person. Jails don't fix socioeconomic issues, they in fact make them worse.
If that was true, there would be no crime in London.
The current system is all downsides - no privacy while the police ignore crimes like bike thefts despite ample CCTV coverage. Worse, CCTV and other surveillance tools are used with glee to target protestors who the government dislike.
Completely agree. Generally speaking, America’s homicide closure rate isn’t great compared to other western countries and is unfortunately trending downward in recent years.
I can certainly understand concerns about privacy but the other sides of this discussion should not be ignored.
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172775448/people-murder-unso...
Before discussing trade-offs between those two, what about prevention of crime?
How would that work? Assume that I'm willing to bribe the underclass with welfare to prevent crime (hell, assume I'm only worried about the worst types of crime)... how much bribery for how much reduction?
Flock won't prevent you from being stabbed by a homeless junkie. It might help catch the guy and prevent him from stabbing someone else (until he's released three months later).
Knowing this, wouldn't you prefer that we spend the money on crime prevention programs that "bribes" the underclass, instead of in a system that won't prevent crime at all but will rob all of us of privacy?
The single best resolution to crime is to dramatically reduce poverty.
The single best way to reduce poverty is to pay (bribe) the poor to stop having children, which ends the cycle of poverty (which is extraordinarily difficult to break and tends to trap generations). That should go hand-in-hand with free birth control, free day-after pills, free abortions, comprehensive sexual education, etc.
A large share of the bottom 1/3 in the US will never step foot outside of poverty, most of them will never hold a job on a sustained basis. Pay them to not have children, which simultaneously benefits their lives in the here and now, while preventing the mistake of bringing children into poverty. It's one of the most humane things the US could do as a society. It would very rapidly improve poverty (and reduce crime) in the US.
Paying an entire class of people to not have children is eugenics. There is a massive line between that and increasing (free) access to reproductive services.
How about helping them out of poverty instead of subjecting them to eugenics?
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Barring any massive mental illness, humans are great optimizers. Crime is basically the optimal policy within environmentm where illegal activites with their added risk have a potential much greater reward than leading your life normally and doing things by the book.
Its not hard to inject money in the right places to either decrease the reward, or increase the risk.
>Crime is basically the optimal policy within environmentm where illegal activites with their added risk have a potential much greater reward than
An interesting theory. But there exists a class of criminals who commit crimes not because the tradeoffs come out with the crime ahead of the lawfulness, but because they are impulsive, malicious, bored, and apathetic. Some of them continue to commit crime even after they are well out of poverty, even when the tradeoffs have shifted in the other direction. And this isn't some tiny fraction of crime, I suspect it is the majority of it. Crime has become their culture, and no one casually gives up culture and adopts a new one. More importantly, while one single person might do that, an entire group does not do this because they reinforce each other's continuation of that culture.
This makes it difficult or impossible to inject money anywhere and have measurable results. It makes it difficult or impossible to do anything at all about it. And for that reason, I'd prefer we not pursue a trillion dollar boondoggle.
>And this isn't some tiny fraction of crime, I suspect it is the majority of it.
Nope.
Lets take the famous example of low income area gang activity. They have examples of everything from local powerful people in charge having enough money to buy nice cars, to things like famous rappers with origins in same gangs. The reason why they commit crime is because the alternative actually sucks - you have to put up with boredom, lack of money, poverty, lack of any social support, all into a system that is going to discriminate against you even if you do everything right. This is where proper money injection with adequate policing can easily fix the problem.
As for people continuing to do crime after being financially off, this is still just a matter of tradeoff still favoring the crime side. The crime that most of these people commit is stuff like illegal firearms, drugs, and/or financial fraud - i.e stuff that is really not that relevant to society, with potentially a big payoff instead of investment. At the worst, some people get scammed. Meanwhile, the perpetrator gets usually punished financially or minimal jailing.
There are always going to be mentally unwell people who end up being serial killers, but the risk to society from those people is minuscule.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
When do we start removing white-collar crime?
What crime? The system is working as designed. /i
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Holy false dichotomy Batman. The amount of crime you can reduce by funding decent law enforcement training and a working law system and just by having a general halfway welfare system dwarfs the effects these privacy invading solutions could ever produces. Absolute lunacy to believe that.
"Never give power to authorities that wouldnt want them to have if someone you didnt like was in charge"
While I fully agree with your statement, until we as a society learn to self regulate and prevent things like orange man happening, its best that we live in a world where people in charge have as little power as possible.
But we want to build fancy tech and not listen to those annoying humanists, so no
Having adequate law enforcement training and funding, is not mutually exclusive with leveraging technology for more effective enforcement. In fact that's where some of the funding goes. I would be interested in seeing some data reflecting a reduction in crime as a result of increasing the welfare system, as you claim.
I mean compared to corporate written Wikipedia articles from privacy invading dystopian nightmare companies the evidence that welfare reduces crime is so obvious that even a quick google search drowns one in 3rd party validate studies:
https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/137/4/2263/658... https://news.uchicago.edu/does-welfare-reduce-crime https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intel... https://pp.ethz.ch/news/2025/03/higher-welfare-payments-redu... And probably a gazillion more
But again, by the time we did all the non privacy invading stuff that doesn't target me as a law abiding citizen the discussion about these devices becomes moot because crime isn't that much of a problem anymore.
It is now fair game to destroy their illegal surveillance devices. Please do.
It's a problem entirely made up from America's insistence on guns. IMHO that's like when you have a website that serves a few requests per second, and then someone has the bright idea of using Kafka and Kubernetes because reasons, and now you have a horrible mess that requires multiple developers to support and, instead of questioning the original technical decision, everybody instead piles up technical "solutions."
At least nobody actually says "The founding engineers knew everything, our job is protect their original technical decisions, because otherwise our great company will fall."
Regulate guns and all these problems go away. As a bonus, you'll find out they were neither necessary nor useful for defending your rights.
Guns aren't the cause of America's crime problems. Guns existing don't make people walk out of homedepot with a cart full of tools or out of a walmart with a TV. Guns don't make people drive recklessly or commit DUIs. Guns don't burglarize peoples houses or make people sell or use drugs.
> Regulate guns and all these problems go away.
Firearms are regulated in the United States. Quite heavily, in fact. This goes back to the National Firearm Act of 1934, carries through the Gun Control Act of 1968, then loops in the Firearm Owners' Protection Act (FOPA) of 1986 (which included the famous Volkmer-McClure amendment that all but outlawed fully automatic weapons for civilians) and runs through at least the Brady Act of 1993. And that's without getting into the smorgasbord of state, county, and municipal laws that also apply.
The idea that the US is still living in the Wild West era with regards to firearms is a complete myth.
> As a bonus, you'll find out they were neither necessary nor useful for defending your rights.
That's not an experiment I'm willing to indulge in personally. As the old saying goes "I'd rather have my guns and not need them, than need them and not have them."
It really isn't though. Sure I can't go and buy a full auto AR15/AK47 without a special license. However it's pretty easy for me to go buy semi-auto version of that which can also do a lot of damage. There are a few red flag laws like in Texas but they are easily gotten around by private trade, and that's true for most "Red" states. Often no waiting period either if you go to an actual store. It really varies a lot state to state.
The 2019 Dayton shooter used a semi-automatic AR-15 and killed 9 people and wounded 17 others in the 30 seconds it took from his first shot fired to his death at the hands of police. 30 seconds to respond and kill the shooter. You cannot really ask for a more ideal response time than that. But 26 lives are directly impacted by those bullets, never mind the number of folks impacted because it was their loved ones being killed. All so conservatives can cosplay as freedom fighters at the shooting range.
You don't think a motivated individual could kill and injure about as many people, in about as much time, by just driving a box truck into the waiting line in front of a popular night club, or something? I get what you're saying, but I still believe that the problem is the motivation / mental state of these people, not the specific tools they choose to act out their horrible vision.
We don't have an epidemic of people driving box trucks into schools to kill children, and parents don't run their children over with box trucks when they mistake them for an intruder in their home. The fact that people can still do horrible things to each other doesn't mean that we shouldn't make it harder. Also, how do you propose fixing the mental state of these people? Are you lobbying for increased funding of mental health programs in your area? Calling your senators? Volunteering your time to help those with mental health issues? Or are you just saying this problem is unsolvable despite the fact that almost every other country on earth has solved it?
Is that a solution to a problem, or just a change in social mores? It solves the problem of people being dangerous with guns, by stopping them having guns. Same as with legs. Most crimes and dangerous actions are facilitated by the use of legs, so further harm reduction could be carried out by cutting everybody's legs off. And personally I'd support that, I never liked walking much anyway and it annoys me when people have busy lifestyles, but the plan won't get widespread support because it's against customary expectations. People enjoy, and expect to maintain, the use of their legs: they claim it's important.
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>The idea that the US is still living in the Wild West era with regards to firearms is a complete myth.
Compared to every other country in the world, including those with private firearm ownership, the US very much is still in the Wild West.
>That's not an experiment I'm willing to indulge in personally.
You're indulging in it now. Your rights are being eroded and nullified daily by an increasingly militarized police force, an ever more pervasive surveillance state and an authoritarian government going off the rails. How are your guns helping?
> You're indulging in it now.
I meant the experiment of further restricting firearms ownership.
> Your rights are being eroded and nullified daily by an increasingly militarized police force, an ever more pervasive surveillance state and an authoritarian government going off the rails.
On that we can agree, at least.
> How are your guns helping?
There's really no way to answer that, except in retrospective. I'll leave the final word on that to the historians who will come along well after I'm gone.
That said, I will note that it's very possible (but probably impossible to prove one way or the other) that the knowledge of how heavily armed the US populace is has in fact at least slowed the erosion of our rights, as the leaders (the ones who aren't brain dead stupid) fear the prospect of an outright shooting civil war.
And even short of a full fledged war, we have already seen cases where armed civilians confronted the government, and the government eventually backed down - even though they could have easily squashed the resisters in terms of absolute power. That is presumably again because they knew that doing that squashing would just lead to further escalation and Bad Things happening. I'm referring here to the "Bundy Cattle Standoff" or whatever they dubbed it, back in 2014.[1]
[1]: It's not my intent here to say that Bundy and his crew were in the right. Merely pointing out that being armed and willing to point guns at agents of the government ultimately led to a outcome other than them all being slaughtered. And I think they got their cattle back, or whatever it was they were trying to accomplish.
There are more civilian guns than civilians in the US.
There are more guns than people in this country yet only around 1/3rd of the population owns guns. About 14% of gun owners or roughly 3% of the US population owns between 8 and 170 guns. These "super" gun owners account for the majority of "extra" weapons floating around in society. And largely these people aren't the problem. I don't think we need to enable their obvious obsession, but they aren't the cause of mass shootings. It's the proliferation of weapons in the suburbs for "home defense" that leads to more senseless deaths.
And gun owners do a really shit job of defending their fetish. Because honestly that's all it is. None of these clowns are "defending democracy" or whatever other bullshit they spew about why gun ownership is "sO nEcEsSaRy"! And they lie constantly about what gun control is. They always frame it as "they are taking all of our guns away from us!" yet even in the most gun controlled countries there are paths to gun ownership for hunting and sport. It a group of very disingenuous and whiny people who do a lot of damage to our country.
We're not going to regulate guns this way, so this point, valid or not, isn't meaningful to US policy.
Dangerous freedom > peaceful slavery
The non-American mind simply can't comprehend, and that's okay.
But the argument doesn’t make any sense. History isn’t full of examples where handguns prevented tyranny. It’s America that is running the experiment, not the rest of the world. And the conclusion is lots of people die as a result, and right now it looks very much like you’re headed toward tyranny anyway.
