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Comments (437)

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  furyg3
  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).
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  naz
  Tangential but why do articles about Flock never have (YC S17) in the title like articles about other YC companies?
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  ghm2199
  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.
• beams_of_light
  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.
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  gblargg
  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).
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  canelonesdeverd
  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.
• FlockIsYC
  Investors at places like YC funded flock and want this future.YC is your villain.Local governments are banning them, and/or cutting deals with investors
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  slibhb
  I'm generally in favor of mass surveillance, as long as it's in public. I think it can prevent a lot of crime and I don't believe we have a right to "privacy in public". Red light cameras, for example, strike me as unalloyed good.However, I'd be interested to see if opponents of mass surveillance could draft good legislation to curb potential abuses. For example, the laws around who owns/controls data from cameras could be changed/redefined, as could the process of accessing that data.
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  afarah1
  They want to make money. Their buyers want a closely surveilled world with no exits.
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  cm2012
  Fundamentally this is silly because Flock only tracks cars and not individual people. It doesn't do facial recognition surveillance. Society decided a long time ago that driving is a privilege that can be regulated in a variety of ways.
• afishisafish
  Relevant Def Con talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcK-TDmzshcDEF CON 34 - ESP32 as counter-surveillance platform - Cybertiger, Colonel Panic, The Wrew
• pseudolus
  https://archive.ph/vLfJz
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  quacked
  I've been very pleased to see the reaction to Flock in the US. I was talking to a younger guy, very normal kid who keeps his nose clean, studying criminal justice in his junior year at college. I jokingly mentioned to him that maybe he could bring some anti-surveillance awareness to whatever law enforcement agency he goes to work for and he said, very seriously, "oh yeah, definitely. I've only gotten two cameras so far but I want to get at least five." It turns out that he and his friends all follow an app that marks the location of Flock cameras and there's a whole youth culture around knocking them down.I wonder if we can win that battle as a society over the decades. A "traditional" human-only surveillance state is bad enough, but with LLMs involved it's just a nightmare. It would be extremely cheap to now have full automated surveillance over cameras, phone lines, etc. "Computer, send me a scored list of any dissident violations conducted on any channel under surveillance in District 14 over the past two weeks. Cut off their credit cards and send a notice to appear in Civilian Oversight Court".
• anon
  undefined
• throwitaway222
  At some point Flock will be drones that fly for 30 minutes, get a replacement drone in its place, and the 30 minute one will land, automatically swap batteries and take off again and get into a different zone.
• Kuyawa
  Briff [1] works with some sites that bother readers with pay/subscribe to read, good to knowSecond test, please ignore mehttps://briff.site/s/flock-wants-a-closely-surveilled-b8et
• __msh__
  Just chop 'em down already
• dmje
  Click into the article and I'm given a box which reads:"We Care About Your Privacy. We, and our 229 partners use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences...."229 "partners".Oh the irony.
• Footnote7341
  The real protections are where and how the data is allowed to be used, the state has had the technical capability of breaking into your home, following you, and reading your mail forever. But they aren't allowed to use it in court to prosecute you.
• thataccount
  Nothing new about that desire. Only thing different is the technology has caught up with the desire such that some technocrats can make living in that hell a reality.
• nbulka
  When I drive by a Flock camera, my streaming music in my 2014 Rav starts to get scrambled. These cameras are intercepting bluetooth. It seems Toyota didn't account for that latency :facepalm:
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  eunos
  Not an American, what made Flock special compared to other surveillance cameras? Informationized or intelligentized surveillances cameras arent a new thing.
• natali_gray
  I just watched this week how John Oliver went over how the cops are using it to look children's playgrounds and hotel pools. And in the same week, I also watched how some protester showed up to talk in favor of Flock, dressed in a Darth Vadar costume. Honestly, all of this "we're just doing this for your own good" stuff sounds like a explicit loophole to not get a warrant. Fourth Amendment be damned I guess???
• NoImmatureAdHom
  The solution to this is legislation. Legislation enshrining a right to not be studied, a right to be forgotten, penalties for even creating certain kinds of datasets.I think the Americans should push for a constitutional amendment that protects one's right to privacy.
• StopTheBS
  Someone with high rep post a Tell HN that Flock is YC
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  freeopinion
  It's interesting to me that most of the people who are motivated to vandalize Flock cameras seem to balk at vandalizing Ring cameras. Indeed, they may own and operate their own Ring cameras.Most everyone can understand the utility of monitoring their own doorstep. They might even think it useful to start tracking the patterns of traffic on their doorstep. I expect that most people could not articulate the line between acceptable and unacceptable surveillance.
• Thegn
  Those who would ask you to trade your privacy for security don’t have your security in mind.
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  jimmar
  The sad truth is that many citizens want a closely surveilled world. Flock delivers the product they want.Imagine a shooting took place in the downtown area of a major city next week that lacked cameras. Do you think people would praise that city's respect for their citizens' privacy? Or would people blame the city leaders for not keeping the citizens safe?
• trinsic2
  The article reads more like a reverse psychology article directed at the public rather than a real criticism of mass surveillance.It's almost as if they want to convince their audience that the practice is justified. The article spends an inordinate amount of time on flocks history from the point of view of the perpetrators of the practice rather than how it's harming society. This is a typical tactic the establishment uses to keep the focus on an evil scapegoat so the practice can be slipping in under the radar by another less well know contractor.
• qoez
  This is basically a version of rage bait that I find most productive trying to stay away from reading
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  vrganj
  > Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on- Larry Ellisonhttps://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."
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  kbos87
  I hate that this has to be an all or nothing conversation. There is a path where technology can deliver benefits without significant harm to individual privacy.San Francisco has turned the tide on smash and grab crime through license plate readers and drone response. New Hampshire requires law enforcement agencies to delete unflagged license plate data within three minutes of collection. These two conditions can exist at the same time, in the same place, if we don’t allow the narrative to be pulled toward either extreme. Unfortunately that’s very tough to accomplish in today’s political climate in the US.
• esseph
  Larry Ellison must love them, they are helping carry out his idea.
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  LightBug1
  Hey HN ... use your mega brains to make the following kind of thing realistic, effective, and widespread for all:https://urban-privacy.com/pages/anti-surveillance-clothingfock flock
• josefritzishere
  Mass surveillance is a crime against humanity. They want us all to live in an open air prison. Garrett Langley should be regarded as a domestic terrorist and be in a real prison.
• anon
  undefined
• adolph
  One might say the same of newyorker.com:The company, which has six trackers monitoring access to a single web page, frames privacy as a worthwhile trade-off for reading an article for free, echoing the language of the social media industry.
• snvzz
  These aren't surveillance cameras, but social cameras.They'll present them like that. Not my idea, but from [0].0. https://www.novelupdates.com/series/accel-world/
• lenerdenator
  Given that their cameras are being shot, spray-painted, stolen, cut down, and bagged, I'd say that what they want is irrelevant.Perhaps they could try a different market. The UK seems more amicable to such things.
• AtlasBarfed
  Once flick gets its way it's basically game over for democracy.Unless our judiciary gets serious about what started with 9/11, authoritarianism is inevitable.This actually is my primary candidate for the great filter.
• k33n
  Florida already banned them from the state entirely.
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  amazingamazing
  Whine about flock on the forum created by their funders. Ironic.
• YCcreatedFlock
  YC created Flock 10 years ago.
• m0llusk
  Linked cameras everywhere all the time has been coming for a while. Cheap hardware, connectivity, and analysis means who pays is not only not limited to governments and big companies but is barely even relevant. The remaining question is what if any rules there will be.
• christkv
  Flock can go flock itself
• YCisVeryBad
  Never trust HN articles or high karma accounts.
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  gyanchawdhary
  As a non american, can someone explain the Flock story from a US perspective (ideally a reasonably centrist one)? .. i keep seeing them in the news here on HN .. apparently ~178 results in the past month . and it seems to get a disproportionate amount of front page coverage
• api
  Whenever someone says things like this without at least addressing the "who watches the watchers" problem, I know they're being disingenuous. It's such an obvious problem that if you have no answer, the hidden answer must be "I believe that myself and my cronies will be the watchers" or perhaps the naive and delusional "we will find morally incorruptible magic people to be the watchers."AI isn't an answer because that really means whoever is running, training, and prompting the AI.
• ratelimitsteve
  Flock wants people like you and me in a closely surveilled world. Flock cameras will never catch aristocrats committing aristocrat crimes, only regular people finding money in a parking lot.
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  stego-tech
  I’ll get on board with mass surveillance just as soon as every single elected and unelected leader, business executive, politician, celebrity, oligarch, Capitalist, all board members, all C-Suites, and every single VC has a live, uninterrupted, 24/7 publicly-accessible feed of their lives as they live by example and demonstrate the benefits of such a regime.Which is to say I will never, ever be on board with mass surveillance, because those in or of power are conveniently left out of its dragnet.
• manojactor52
  [flagged]
• anon
  undefined
• YCisFlock
  [dead]
• rdevilla
  [dead]
• YCHNPopcorn
  [dead]
• YCisVeryBad
  [flagged]
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  HNIsEvil2
  Flock is YC.HN mods are complicit and are shaping the narrative here.PG, Garry Tan, Dan Gackle, Tom Howard, Aaron Epstein, Jared Friedman, and all YC staff are enemies of the people.
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  mrngld
  The political left has really decided to go nuclear over Flock, but I'm not understanding the fundamental principle from which this view arises. Libertarian sorts don't like it either -- but that's entirely consistent with their entire existence. Is this a broad-based phenomenon on the left, or are sections perfectly fine with it? Some of the other comments here seem to endorse full on 1984-style surveillance, so perhaps this is just a libertarian-left-leaning Silicon Valley strain of leftism that's in revolt against Flock? While possible I don't traditionally see outfits like New Yorker falling in that category. When the worldview is very permissive of broad state power and often admiring of Europe, which has itself been struggling to fight off legislation weakening encryption, it's hard to make sense of this.I'd be curious to see if Mamdani or someone similar employing Flock or an equivalent would yield the same firestorm; if not, then it's not a principled stand against surveillance, rather just another form of political warfare. Perhaps Antifa wants to not be tracked in certain locales, is less concerned in other politically favorable locales because they know they won't be prosecuted anyway?
• alexnewman
  I find palantir and flock are more obsessed with rules on data. The seriously insidious companies tend to be international and change names every year or so. The idea that you could get that flock CE to bend the rules for the feds are basically 0. Some random middle eastern country, the issue is trusting them .
• gib444
  Surprised Pikachu face when the public who carry spying devices in their pockets, purchased HomePods and Echos for their homes, championed American big tech, bought lots of other smart devices by the bucketload, gave away all their data...find out it will eventually then be used against you
• idkithought
  Flock (YC 17)YC has been working on this for a decade.
• YCIsComplicit
  How are HN users this stupid?There is no “government” it’s companies - lobbying exists.The cameras are for ads.HN is complicit in this propaganda.
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  mahrain
  Already a reality in mainland China, which is a country with very little street crime, grafitti, vandalism etc.
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  bko
  I was surprised to learn that many countries have what amounts to a flock equivalent. UK for instance has a National ANPR Service w 12k fixed cameras and 90-100m plates read a day. They also store it much longer.Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online.https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-anpr-ser...
• blurbleblurble
  Everyone's talking about flock but what about the IEEE ISAC and the broader 5G/6G projects? They're running laps around flock on surveillance.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMox8qeMvlY
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  GardenLetter27
  Good. It helps solve crimes, and can even resolve general anti-social behaviour.I'd rather have the cameras than have family members die to drugged up drivers, or robbers get away with their crimes.
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  lifeisstillgood
  Some ways to help think about this:1. Privacy is not secrecy. Your neighbours know what you are doing, they just politely don’t mention it, or try to sell you something on the back of it.2. Almost everything we do we do in public, with our face uncovered for the world to see.3. The benefits of a mass surveilled world are enormous - epidemiology is gonna rock in 20 years. New medical insights as well as simple stuff like “how many passengers take the train regularly” (not how many passenger journeys but how many individual people will get inconvenienced if we shut this line down.4. The problem is not you thought your life was secret, it never has been, the problem is what will we as society allow people to do with this new information. At some basic level treat it like HIPPA or medical data - keep it well managed and use in the best interests of the individual. (I disagree with the Chinese justification of “best interests of society - that can be warped so easily)In short society is like your grandfathers financial advice - look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves