I said this a few days ago and got down voted to hell. It amazes me how HN likes to abdicate YC of all wrong doing or negative outcomes from the companies they fund. YC/PG is also the reason that @sama is where he is.
And this is the ideology that got us to where we are now. There is no problem with making money but bending politics/society to your will, and even voting for destructive parties, only for the good of personal interest is abhorrent, antisocial behavior.
One would think that these "geniuses" would understand that living in a society where lower class people do not live with constant existential threats would be a positive for them too...but I guess they find it easier to be hated by everyone and be forced to hire bodyguards, private armies, and live in gated communities and bunkers in fear of getting in touch with the real world.
I don't particularly agree with Ezra Klein or Francis Fukuyama, often vehemently disagree. But on the latest episode of Klein's NYT show it was interesting to hear Francis mention this coupling of wealth and political power being one of the core problems the US is grappling with.
Separate the nouveau robber barons from political power like we did the clergy?
I was literally not aware of this. I don't know if I'm going to be coming back to this site anymore. I've got some thinking to do. I am so ridiculously anti-Flock that I am not willing to discuss it, because it would be a pointless conversation.
I understand what you mean but I do not think the answer is to disengage. They will not stop. HN is an amazing place with brilliant people. I have been wrong so many times here and I own it; the amazing thing is the grace I have been shown, the support and all of the ways the community here has made me a better, more knowledgable person.
Unfortunately the signal to noise ratio has become too much work than worth.
New people who come here as novices now are given horribly bad to wrong advice constantly and even technically wrong examinations. And beyond that, now the same larping types here downvote real expertise.
It’s normal for forums so I can’t complain too much, but be aware as nice as this place is, it’s wildly uninformed.
Does Axon retain the data it is collecting? If so, even if they have no plans to use it like Flock does, those plans can change, sometimes even without the company's blessing. They sound like the lesser evil right now, but the core issue that goes well beyond Flock, Axon, and similar companies is that if data is collected and retained, someone will find leverage to use it for their own purposes.
Personally I think that having funding from investors rather than taxes doesn't preclude evil from being called out (although in this case a lot of revenue certainly comes from tax money)
It's really both. And that applies to a lot of HN darlings. Sadly, people's perspective can get cloudy when a positive perspective is tied to their financial well-being.
Flock was seed round funded by YC, not "a YC company".
It's not like they control it, manage it, and what was pitched may be significantly different than what happened since then.
YC isn't perfect, but what words you use, and their order is important. And the way you're phrasing it, you make it sound as if they are a subsidiary of YC. Or as if YC is on the board.
If any of these things are true, you should plainly state them. Otherwise, what you're saying is incorrect.
YC funds companies and we are all aware of that so by saying it's a YC company because they gave them seed money is already exactly the correct wording
I’m not making anything up any more than you are. Neither of us was there. My point: you don’t get YC funding unless you have a disruptive business idea. “Cameras, but to a niche HOA market” is not that.
Same thing on a smaller scale, and they never would have got venture capital funding if they didn't have an upward trajectory from HOAs. There's only one path upward from private HOA surveillance, and that's government surveillance.
> From the moment we started Flock Safety, we had an incredibly clear, boldly audacious mission ... We provide a life-or-death product, a mission-critical system for cities
I don't really have a strong opinion either way on Flock but this is a strange objection. YC is a well-known startup accelerator that makes (pre-seed!) investments. I don't know if anyone has ever sincerely taken "YC company" to mean a subsidiary of YC. That's like confusing "a Sequoia company" as a subsidiary of Sequoia.
> When Demo Day was over, after we had booked meetings with investors and were well on our way to our first fundraising round, YC set the tone for scaling Flock doggedly, purposefully, and with consistent velocity, for years to come.
Damn, its almost like YC really set the stage for mass AI surveillance from the founders own mouth
Random people calling 911 on other people filming them is a staple of Youtube; banks, coffee store workers, hairdressers, most especially restaurant managers. I don't know why anyone would expect technicians from Flock to be different. It's worse for the technician in this case, because he really was being followed --- that's not unlawful but it's unnerving.
You'd think from the response that this was like the VP/Sales of Flock Safety. But it's just some installer dude probably making $65k/year to climb poles and fasten cameras. I guess that's praxis for you though.
Well, when you’re on the clock, you’re an agent of that company. And when you’re installing an indiscriminate mass-surveillance camera, calling the police on someone that’s video recording you is kind of bananas. Perhaps you don’t find that to be an interesting event, but a lot of people who are rightfully angry at the non-consensual deployment of a mass surveillance network disagree.
It's not bananas. It happens all the time. The police show up, check things out, and inform the caller that the person recording has a right to do so. In this case, it's even less bananas, because the people recording him were literally following him around, which is not what generally happens in these "audit" scenarios where someone parks themselves on the street outside a restaurant or bank.
There's pretty clearly a vibe on this thread that calling 911 is itself a use of coercive force. It is not. 911 is how you're ordinarily supposed to reach the police. In my neighborhood, it's how you'd report a stolen bicycle. It's the job of the police to handle those calls appropriately, and I don't see any indication that the call was handled inappropriately here.
The story doesn't want to give you that context because their goal isn't to inform you, it's to get your blood pumping.
> It's worse for the technician in this case, because he really was being followed --- that's not unlawful but it's unnerving.
The technician was in public, bearing a company logo, performing an activity in which there is widespread public interest, and identified himself to law enforcement as an agent of Flock Safety. He is entitled to be unnerved but has no reasonable expectation of privacy here.
The response is stronger because your hairdressers and baristas aren't actively providing a service for surveillance as part of their work. The bar should be higher for a company that's ostensibly being trusted to provide a law enforcement tool that's prone to misuse than for providing beverages or cosmetology.
>The response is stronger because your hairdressers and baristas aren't actively providing a service for surveillance as part of their work.
Should other law enforcement contractors also be subject to the same higher standard? For instance, should dell get extra flak if one of their contractors called 911, because they were installing PCs for a police department? If not, this just seems like a way of applying a double standard, just because you hate flock. It's fine to hate flock, but it should be actually justified reasons (eg. "they're enabling mass surveillance" or whatever), not spurious ones like "they did a bad that's vaguely common, but we're gonna admonish them extra hard for it because we hate them")
I don't buy into your premise. A hairdresser, barista, Dell installer, etc are not out in the open public. These people are in places open to the public but not considered public. These people can deny your "right" to be there, and impose rules/restrictions on what you can do in their open to the public space. Go against those rules/restrictions and you are no longer welcome.
You are really trying to contort yourself into some very uninteresting twists.
If they called 911 because they were worried about privacy when publically installing a privacy-violating tool, then yes, they 100% should be. Having higher standards for higher impact things isn't somehow hypocritical.
>If they called 911 because they were worried about privacy when publically installing a privacy-violating tool, then yes, they 100% should be.
Seems like the installer was calling because he thought he was being harassed?
>As Keefe began to shoot video, the installer saw him and immediately packed up his equipment and drove away, so Keefe also returned to his car and followed several cars behind, hoping to document the next stop.
>...
>“I work with Flock Safety. And I called originally because I’m getting followed,” the installer can be heard telling a dispatcher after being transferred. “I was getting harassed, pretty much. Taking videos and pictures. And now, the same vehicle that pulled over where I was working at has been following me.”
Sure, you can try to equate "flock setting up a surveillance network" to "physically following flock employees", but what's the implication here? That anyone working for flock should be fair game as a stalking target? What about someone working for NSA? Should it be fine to look through their emails?
> one should be held to a different standard than the other.
harassing a worker is not the way to fix the problem. The worker has no agency to affect the changes desired by the harasser. It's an issue with the gov't, and needs civic procedures to change.
This behaviour is the same as harassing hospitality staff for bad prices. Harassers would be considered borderline committing terrorism if they go further.
Do they even have their own technicians? I believe there have been Dish Network technicians seen working on and setting up flock cameras and even those technicians are contractors of Dish network.
Mix of. Large metros they'll use their own staff to install, rural Americana they'll use Dish's OnTech division. Dish realized they have an entire 'trained' workforce of cable/dish techs that they can put to other technical use, so they pushed into more managed hands tech services.
I noticed a more prominently branded "OnTech" van roaming around my rural slice of life that had a smaller Dish brand logo on it that seemed to be more of that side of the business.
Guy is not just a technician, he's a technician working for Flock installing surveillance tech to monitor the public. Wrong life choices have consequences like being filmed being complicit in establishing a surveillance regime.
Especially when chances are that this camera installation was the result of local government asking and paying Flock to put it up. I'm not sure why the anger is directed at the company instead of local elected officials, and I understand the plight of the installer who's worried about being labeled as a bad guy for executing public works contracts.
> I understand the plight of the installer who's worried about being labeled as a bad guy for executing public works contracts.
You do unpopular things, you gotta expect to be an unpopular person.
Sophisticated, educated types might understand that parking wardens are just doing their jobs, and they didn't make the policy they're enforcing. But to 70% of the population, the person putting a ticket on their car is an asshole.
The company could have rejected the government deal if they cared about the moral aspect of spying on citizens instead of money; by accepting the deal and executing the contract they are complicit.
I think if you're worried about being harassed by your neighbours if they find out what you do during the day, you should be thinking hard about what you do during the day.
In my opinion, yes, that makes you a radical. I don’t want an armed organization with a trillion dollar budget stalking me. That’s the common stance in America. We even put it in our constitution.
Well, the government can use Flock camera footage, and YouTubers can film with personal devices on public property. So I guess their capabilities are already pretty different
If someone were following around and filming someone who was posting anti-Flock fliers, I would also feel that crosses into harassment after a certain amount of time.
A TV news crew filmed me when I was a freshman setting up my old travel trailer in a new university trailer park. I hated it, but it didn't last long. If they had continued following and filming indefinitely despite my protests, I would have wanted some kind of legal protection from them.
There was an organization I came across that was working with private property owners to set up cameras outside/pointed at politicians, etc and sharing the footage. I can’t recall the name though
yea it is similar to robot mark zuckerburg who purchased everything near his house to protect privacy, but his app is the biggest privacy nightmares, especially rayban glasses.
It's kind of ironic that US built the infrastructure(adtech, social media) to track people around the world on the Internet and now their own people are getting tracked in real life.
>The officer said the installer was also concerned about privacy.
"And his worry more than anything is that, you know, he's just an employee. Anybody like you and me. And now he's going to be in the news and he doesn't know if it's going to be targeted at him or his family."
Don’t you understand? He was just following orders.
Too bad somehow the face that ends up out there as the face of surveillance isn’t the CEO of Flock, not their coders, not the YC people who gave them money to do exactly what they’re doing. It’s the lowest of the low in the chain, the guy sitting in the sun to install the cameras on a post.
I've gotta mention it because everyone seems to have a learned helplessness with this type of thing. I went and spoke at my county commissioners meeting a couple times after the initial flock roll out (voted on with no discussion a couple years prior) started becoming apparent. The first meeting, the group of me and two other people were half of the people making public comment. Every single person was against it unless they worked for the county. At the second meeting there were a whole lot more people. Again, every single person who spoke who didn't work for the county was against it, this time they had eight+ police officers speak in favor of it.
We managed to swing a couple of the county commissioners who were in favor of it before and were not in favor of it after hearing about the constitutional issues as well as the cyber security issues that flock doesn't really care about.
Pasco county Florida is now removing all the cameras on the public right of ways at the end of this month.
The real trick, is to stop going to these meetings, and start running against these politicians. Get the forms, stand out in front of your local post office, collect the signatures, and primary them. Run against them. That's the only thing they listen to
man, these guys bungled their PR so, so hard. What they should have done is pre-seeded a ton of stories about flock catching some notorious criminal, helping solve xyz serious crimes, helping solve abc minor nuisance issue crimes, and maybe some lines about reducing direct law enforcement interactions.
On the flip side, let Axon, Motorola take some of the heat, paint your enemies as "defund the police", and stop being so obviously branded. Take a page out of Phillip Morris/Altria playbook and keep a lower profile.
Instead, they've managed to unite left and right in hatred. Clown show.
Their problem is they believed their own bullshit and thought they were offering people a good deal that basically amounted to "the government 1984s you more than they already do but your package thief gets arrested, maybe".
Ignoring the fact that that deal is not necessarily good, if they had been slightly scummier, not given two shits about actually reducing petty crimes against the people and instead set out to help municipalities collect civil fines (which have basically no 4th-8th amendment protections these days) they probably could have gotten away without scrutiny for a very long time and gotten their systems deeply entrenched. The useful idiots would've eaten it right up with the flimsiest of pretexts so long as each segment of useful idiots was peddled to individually.
"The truck we saw carrying 2-tons of waste tires away from your tire shop is not owned by an entity on the state approved list, pay up"
"We saw you leaving home depot with a water heater but you didn't pull a permit, prove it didn't go into your house or pay the fine"
"we saw your 2004 Altima emit a puff of blue leaving a light. Per vehicle code XYZ any vehicle that emmits a visible cloud cannot pass emissions inspection, submit proof of passing withing 30d or your resigstration is revoked"
If they had done that a lot of people would have eaten it up and asked for more. But nope, they believed their own BS and built a system for "real" law enforcement. And of course that leads to a bunch of bad interactions with cops and the public doesn't like that.
Would be nice, but we (in France) have plenty of cameras already. They may not be branded Flock, but they're there nonetheless. And as far as I'm aware, none of them are ablaze.
Absolutely horrible. They show up on Saturday's yelling at empty buildings. Very rarely does an American protest against a government body change policy. If you want to really do something, show up on a Tuesday morning, stop traffic, flood the phone lines, and the email systems, relentlessly day after day. Americans are far too comfortable to truly protest.
Yes, it really is. Florida is a cultural punching bag, and we take that in stride too. We have a balanced budget, no state income tax, and no flock cameras. We are close to abolishing property taxes as well. Our natural disaster response is some of the most robust anywhere in the world as well.
Florida is also ironically how we may get cookie banners in line and to actually opt users out as they prosecute websites there as illegal wire taps if you still put cookies on the page after or before the opt out happens.
Nope. Florida simply led the way and calmly banned Flock cameras from the entire state. Every other state that cares about individual liberty should follow suit.
I mean, let's not get carried away. Florida still has very oppressive anti-second-amendment legislation and laws on the books, and until they get rid of that, I wouldn't call them anywhere close to having individual liberty.
When I lived in FLA and it was super easy to get a concealed weapon permit. I carried a gun not infrequently just to exercise that right. I was serious about training with it as well.
The other states I’ve lived in haven’t been so straight forward.
To be fair to people, TSA attracts people who live near airports and need jobs, doesn't it?
ICE, yes. At this point you cannot make an argument at all that you are going to join a fair-minded organisation that treats people decently while upholding a lawful function.
People who work for Flock should be considering their futures, but I suspect people who install Flock cameras are more in the TSA bracket: it is a job that will be near them that pays.
Flock has solved crimes in my state, including a few horrendous violent crimes.
We forget US society was configured (imperfectly) to allow families to raise their children in stability and safety, with guardrails around both sides of liberty. Surveillance has a legit role in protecting communities and their families - especially the most vulnerable.
Willing to be most of the Flock hate crowd doesn't have kids walking to school in areas where bad things happen - many probably don't have kids.
I tend to agree that when used correctly, a surveillance system like this could have benefits at a societal level.
The problem is the many stories we already have of misuses of this equipment, showing that people in power are not mentally capable of actually managing a surveillance system like this in a societally beneficial way.
If the use of the system was designated as only being allowed to stop heinous crimes and we had a track record and way to prove this was always the case, then I would be 100% in support. But given it has already proven to not be possible is likely why most people are against it.
I simply don't think Humans are capable of proper use of a system like this.
The problem is that these system are setup specifically to be able to be used incorrectly. Flock is getting all the rage right now but they aren't the only vendor. An acquisition and rename later and everyone will have forgotten this all. Police (others?) are setting up stingrays. Stalin's secret police had a maxim: "Show me the man, and I'll find you the crime." Remember, everyone who installed a Ring doorbell camera paid to help set up these kinds of networks. (all so that a porch pirate might get caught even though Amazon will reship for free). These systems also set up a huge target for bad actors to hack outside of the law.
If these things were only ever used with the a valid search warrant, that would be a great step forward. But even that will only stop "honest" people from abusing the system.
There is also a large difference between local surveillance (home/business/area CCTV), public surveillance (openly accessible cameras like traffic cams), and dragnet surveillance- I generally trust my local police precincts but don't like the fact that the alphabet soup of federal agencies has warrantless access to track me on the way to and from church or work or Facebook marketplace deals
It just doesn't feel good or sit right with me to be tracked all over the place, and even though none of what I do is illegal (besides taking speed limits as suggestions from time to time, as is the American way /s) just being nearby can get you stuck with charges for things you didn't do.
The fed govt in the US has been doing questionable things on and off American soil for a long time:
- bad analysis
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/09/09/the-cowboy-of-the-nsa
- not to mention the massive surveillance state exposed by Edward Snowden
Does that matter? It's one where I share a common belief in a higher being with other people and we try to build a community and become better people and followers of our specific beliefs.
> Honest question: If the feds were actually tracking you on your way to church, how does that impact you?
Why do you suppose that stalking is illegal?
Before you write up any "clever" retorts, remember that many illegal activities (theft, kidnapping, murder, etc) are permitted when permission is obtained from a judge.
Except there was literally just a piece a few days back here on HN where a Mom was arrested for letting her kid walk half a mile alone in a gated community with active security patrols. The guardrails you describe aren’t for child safety so much as adult persecution. Surveillance may help solve some crimes, but its goal isn’t safety of the people surveilled as much as protecting the power of those doing the surveilling. Research continues pointing out that cameras don’t do shit to deter crime, and its actual ability to solve crimes is limited to the humans using said tools - and with a longer history of abuses than successes, it’s a fairly safe conclusion that mass surveillance does fuck all to actually protect the populace.
"This technology can be abused" and "this technology provides no public-safety value" are two entirely different claims.
Saying their ability to solve crimes is "limited to the humans using the tools" isn't much of an argument against the technology. That's true of fingerprints, DNA databases, radios, firearms databases, and virtually every other investigative tool.
A police officer can misuse a DMV database to stalk an ex. That means the officer should be prosecuted and access to the database tightly controlled. It doesn't demonstrate that DMV records have no legitimate investigative purpose. The same reasoning applies to LPRs.
By the way, that mom that was arrested? The kid was 5 years old, and was intentionally sent to a pond.
I'm 100% in favor of LPR cameras. Any technology can be abused. The handful of corrupt officers that were caught using the cameras for nefarious reasons shouldn't overshadow the incredible benefit these are.
> Willing to [bet] most of the Flock hate crowd doesn't...
...have a reason at all to worry about LPR cameras tracking their car. Just "something something government."
If someone came up to me and started filming me while I was in public, and then when I got in my car they followed me, I would also call the police.
The double standard demonstrated by Flock isn't the issue, they are the pieces of shit and of course they have no moral consistency.
But "He who fights with monsters should be careful, lest he thereby become a monster." I thought we were united that people have a reasonable sense of temporal privacy in public - that being in public is ephemeral and not some permanent record to be analyzed in perpetuity. We should not be fine stalking people and making them feel threatened, even those that want to build the panopticon state.
But you're not working for Flock, are you? We could go on much further until we reach the what Popper called the Tolerance Paradox: "If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
The point is that total surveillance is like the destruction of tolerance or in thie case privacy, and it makes watching the watchmen impossible. There's a point of no return and before that one is reached resistance IS allowed or else you lose everything.
Flock is a YC company, HN tries to make it seem like it’s evil govts but it’s them
I said this a few days ago and got down voted to hell. It amazes me how HN likes to abdicate YC of all wrong doing or negative outcomes from the companies they fund. YC/PG is also the reason that @sama is where he is.
> HN likes to abdicate YC of all wrong doing or negative outcomes
My take is that we like to hang out on PG's blog and make fun of his avarice. Is there a better place to do this?
Wait til you find out what money does to people.
I'd love to have some first hand experience.
ethnographies of the rich and the famous
Back of the line, buddy!
And this is the ideology that got us to where we are now. There is no problem with making money but bending politics/society to your will, and even voting for destructive parties, only for the good of personal interest is abhorrent, antisocial behavior.
One would think that these "geniuses" would understand that living in a society where lower class people do not live with constant existential threats would be a positive for them too...but I guess they find it easier to be hated by everyone and be forced to hire bodyguards, private armies, and live in gated communities and bunkers in fear of getting in touch with the real world.
I don't particularly agree with Ezra Klein or Francis Fukuyama, often vehemently disagree. But on the latest episode of Klein's NYT show it was interesting to hear Francis mention this coupling of wealth and political power being one of the core problems the US is grappling with.
Separate the nouveau robber barons from political power like we did the clergy?
I was literally not aware of this. I don't know if I'm going to be coming back to this site anymore. I've got some thinking to do. I am so ridiculously anti-Flock that I am not willing to discuss it, because it would be a pointless conversation.
I understand what you mean but I do not think the answer is to disengage. They will not stop. HN is an amazing place with brilliant people. I have been wrong so many times here and I own it; the amazing thing is the grace I have been shown, the support and all of the ways the community here has made me a better, more knowledgable person.
Unfortunately the signal to noise ratio has become too much work than worth.
New people who come here as novices now are given horribly bad to wrong advice constantly and even technically wrong examinations. And beyond that, now the same larping types here downvote real expertise.
It’s normal for forums so I can’t complain too much, but be aware as nice as this place is, it’s wildly uninformed.
So the governments that install them aren't somehow complicit?
Two things can be true at once.
Many governments are banning them because they were installed before authority knew what it really was.
As they all find out what it is, they are canceling and rejecting the contracts they had with them.
Happening across several cities and states.
Fact check this if you’re really curious, don’t trust HN
Beware of cities 'ditching Flock' only to immediately replace them with Axon, which is the same thing.
No it’s not.
Axon does not let you search for people in a database based on what they currently look like or are wearing like Flock does.
It’s not the same thing at all.
Axon is the company that made tasers for cops in the 90s and started making body cams in the 00s.
Flock is a YC startup that is going after mass surveillance of the public, allowing people with access to search and find people.
Unbelievable comparison to say they are “the same thing”
Does Axon retain the data it is collecting? If so, even if they have no plans to use it like Flock does, those plans can change, sometimes even without the company's blessing. They sound like the lesser evil right now, but the core issue that goes well beyond Flock, Axon, and similar companies is that if data is collected and retained, someone will find leverage to use it for their own purposes.
What’s worse is flock is actively suing those local governments hoping to override democratic process.
Personally I think that having funding from investors rather than taxes doesn't preclude evil from being called out (although in this case a lot of revenue certainly comes from tax money)
It's really both. And that applies to a lot of HN darlings. Sadly, people's perspective can get cloudy when a positive perspective is tied to their financial well-being.
Flock was seed round funded by YC, not "a YC company".
It's not like they control it, manage it, and what was pitched may be significantly different than what happened since then.
YC isn't perfect, but what words you use, and their order is important. And the way you're phrasing it, you make it sound as if they are a subsidiary of YC. Or as if YC is on the board.
If any of these things are true, you should plainly state them. Otherwise, what you're saying is incorrect.
YC funds companies and we are all aware of that so by saying it's a YC company because they gave them seed money is already exactly the correct wording
How about the "it’s them" part?
No, no it isn't.
Would you balk similarly at someone calling reddit or airbnb a "YC company"?
Me personally? No. Label fits.
If the they didn't pitch the massive surveillance and data capturing aspects they wouldn’t have got the funding.
Blantantly making stuff up is a bad look, they were founded as an HOA (private neighborhood) security service.
>Flock’s camera and accompanying software is geared towards private neighborhoods and neighborhood associations looking to decrease petty crime.[1]
[1]https://www.hypepotamus.com/flock-safety-funding-round-growt...
I’m not making anything up any more than you are. Neither of us was there. My point: you don’t get YC funding unless you have a disruptive business idea. “Cameras, but to a niche HOA market” is not that.
YC won’t invest unless you convince them you’re potentially $100B company.
The scope is always the largest possible audience…
Well until there is solid evidence of them wanting a government mass surveillance apperatus, I'm not gonna grab a pitchfork.
I've been on the internet too long to give credence to people who resort to conspiracy when data doesn't fit their desired narrative.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49683853#49684407
Founders own words
From 2017 please...
Unfortunately Google seems to have removed the ability to search only in specific time frames, but the original pitch I'm sure does exist out there.
There are over 350K HOAs in the US, so scaling to just HOAs would still be an undertaking
You’re not being honest.
You don’t mention that they were reading license plates with cameras from Day 1 already tracking people - that was the technology and still is
I'm pretty sure HOAs would honestly want that, and I don't think the anyone would care about pocket networks in private communities.
He’s right. You’re wrong or lying on purpose. Fact check it. They have been reading license plates from the beginning. That’s what it is.
Let me rephrase my comment you are replying to for clarity
"Yes, HOAs would honestly want plate readers.."
You went from that user “blatantly making up” that they surveil and collect data to “well because HOAs want that”
Bad look
I don't think private HOA networks count as "mass surveillance".
Same thing on a smaller scale, and they never would have got venture capital funding if they didn't have an upward trajectory from HOAs. There's only one path upward from private HOA surveillance, and that's government surveillance.
Doesn't seem to be what their YC Pitch was
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety
> From the moment we started Flock Safety, we had an incredibly clear, boldly audacious mission ... We provide a life-or-death product, a mission-critical system for cities
Links from 2017 would be the best way to see what YC invested in, no?
I don't really have a strong opinion either way on Flock but this is a strange objection. YC is a well-known startup accelerator that makes (pre-seed!) investments. I don't know if anyone has ever sincerely taken "YC company" to mean a subsidiary of YC. That's like confusing "a Sequoia company" as a subsidiary of Sequoia.
Having your seed round funded by YC is what being a "YC company" means. That is exactly what people are referring to every time they say that phrase.
Using misleading language is the best way to get up votes though!
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety
> When Demo Day was over, after we had booked meetings with investors and were well on our way to our first fundraising round, YC set the tone for scaling Flock doggedly, purposefully, and with consistent velocity, for years to come.
Damn, its almost like YC really set the stage for mass AI surveillance from the founders own mouth
That’s such a damning quote, that it makes all other comments ITT obsolete lol
Random people calling 911 on other people filming them is a staple of Youtube; banks, coffee store workers, hairdressers, most especially restaurant managers. I don't know why anyone would expect technicians from Flock to be different. It's worse for the technician in this case, because he really was being followed --- that's not unlawful but it's unnerving.
You'd think from the response that this was like the VP/Sales of Flock Safety. But it's just some installer dude probably making $65k/year to climb poles and fasten cameras. I guess that's praxis for you though.
I think this is just a ragebait piece.
Well, when you’re on the clock, you’re an agent of that company. And when you’re installing an indiscriminate mass-surveillance camera, calling the police on someone that’s video recording you is kind of bananas. Perhaps you don’t find that to be an interesting event, but a lot of people who are rightfully angry at the non-consensual deployment of a mass surveillance network disagree.
It's not bananas. It happens all the time. The police show up, check things out, and inform the caller that the person recording has a right to do so. In this case, it's even less bananas, because the people recording him were literally following him around, which is not what generally happens in these "audit" scenarios where someone parks themselves on the street outside a restaurant or bank.
There's pretty clearly a vibe on this thread that calling 911 is itself a use of coercive force. It is not. 911 is how you're ordinarily supposed to reach the police. In my neighborhood, it's how you'd report a stolen bicycle. It's the job of the police to handle those calls appropriately, and I don't see any indication that the call was handled inappropriately here.
The story doesn't want to give you that context because their goal isn't to inform you, it's to get your blood pumping.
> It's worse for the technician in this case, because he really was being followed --- that's not unlawful but it's unnerving.
The technician was in public, bearing a company logo, performing an activity in which there is widespread public interest, and identified himself to law enforcement as an agent of Flock Safety. He is entitled to be unnerved but has no reasonable expectation of privacy here.
Nobody disagrees, though "calling 911" is exactly what he's supposed to do if he thinks he's being followed.
> it's just some installer dude probably making $65k/year to climb poles and fasten cameras
I find it hard to be persuaded by the salary idea. A hitman who works for $100 is just as bad as one who works for $10,000.
In fact other immoral activities work the opposite, bizarrely (a whore who works for $100 is worse than one who works for $10,000)
Most jobs are imoral. If we were to do only the moral ones… we’d have probably 75% unemployment or something like that.
This is the kind of thing that someone knowing they are doing bad things at their job says to justify it to themselves.
It’s not true. You can go find something worthwhile to do instead.
The response is stronger because your hairdressers and baristas aren't actively providing a service for surveillance as part of their work. The bar should be higher for a company that's ostensibly being trusted to provide a law enforcement tool that's prone to misuse than for providing beverages or cosmetology.
>The response is stronger because your hairdressers and baristas aren't actively providing a service for surveillance as part of their work.
Should other law enforcement contractors also be subject to the same higher standard? For instance, should dell get extra flak if one of their contractors called 911, because they were installing PCs for a police department? If not, this just seems like a way of applying a double standard, just because you hate flock. It's fine to hate flock, but it should be actually justified reasons (eg. "they're enabling mass surveillance" or whatever), not spurious ones like "they did a bad that's vaguely common, but we're gonna admonish them extra hard for it because we hate them")
I don't buy into your premise. A hairdresser, barista, Dell installer, etc are not out in the open public. These people are in places open to the public but not considered public. These people can deny your "right" to be there, and impose rules/restrictions on what you can do in their open to the public space. Go against those rules/restrictions and you are no longer welcome.
You are really trying to contort yourself into some very uninteresting twists.
Do you think Flock is in the same category of installing PCs for police departments, when it comes to public impact?
If they called 911 because they were worried about privacy when publically installing a privacy-violating tool, then yes, they 100% should be. Having higher standards for higher impact things isn't somehow hypocritical.
>If they called 911 because they were worried about privacy when publically installing a privacy-violating tool, then yes, they 100% should be.
Seems like the installer was calling because he thought he was being harassed?
>As Keefe began to shoot video, the installer saw him and immediately packed up his equipment and drove away, so Keefe also returned to his car and followed several cars behind, hoping to document the next stop.
>...
>“I work with Flock Safety. And I called originally because I’m getting followed,” the installer can be heard telling a dispatcher after being transferred. “I was getting harassed, pretty much. Taking videos and pictures. And now, the same vehicle that pulled over where I was working at has been following me.”
Sure, you can try to equate "flock setting up a surveillance network" to "physically following flock employees", but what's the implication here? That anyone working for flock should be fair game as a stalking target? What about someone working for NSA? Should it be fine to look through their emails?
> It's worse for the technician in this case, because he really was being followed --- that's not unlawful but it's unnerving.
Isn't that exactly what Flock are doing to tens of thousands of people a day? So why the double-standard.
I actually agree it is unnerving, I just don't agree that one should be held to a different standard than the other.
> one should be held to a different standard than the other.
harassing a worker is not the way to fix the problem. The worker has no agency to affect the changes desired by the harasser. It's an issue with the gov't, and needs civic procedures to change.
This behaviour is the same as harassing hospitality staff for bad prices. Harassers would be considered borderline committing terrorism if they go further.
> technicians from Flock
Do they even have their own technicians? I believe there have been Dish Network technicians seen working on and setting up flock cameras and even those technicians are contractors of Dish network.
Mix of. Large metros they'll use their own staff to install, rural Americana they'll use Dish's OnTech division. Dish realized they have an entire 'trained' workforce of cable/dish techs that they can put to other technical use, so they pushed into more managed hands tech services.
https://www.ontechsmartservices.com/
I noticed a more prominently branded "OnTech" van roaming around my rural slice of life that had a smaller Dish brand logo on it that seemed to be more of that side of the business.
Well then everyone is innocent except CEO's or management lol.
This isn't how world works.
Guy is not just a technician, he's a technician working for Flock installing surveillance tech to monitor the public. Wrong life choices have consequences like being filmed being complicit in establishing a surveillance regime.
Especially when chances are that this camera installation was the result of local government asking and paying Flock to put it up. I'm not sure why the anger is directed at the company instead of local elected officials, and I understand the plight of the installer who's worried about being labeled as a bad guy for executing public works contracts.
> I understand the plight of the installer who's worried about being labeled as a bad guy for executing public works contracts.
You do unpopular things, you gotta expect to be an unpopular person.
Sophisticated, educated types might understand that parking wardens are just doing their jobs, and they didn't make the policy they're enforcing. But to 70% of the population, the person putting a ticket on their car is an asshole.
The company could have rejected the government deal if they cared about the moral aspect of spying on citizens instead of money; by accepting the deal and executing the contract they are complicit.
What? Is that not their whole business?
Well, politicians are to pay for the fact they have allowed something like Flock cameras to be put up and spy to egregiously on their constituents.
But Flock itself should not be spared . They are building things that are going against widely accepted values.
Since when Americans are okay with that level of erosion of their privacy?
Same thing with Meta building pervert glasses.
I think if you're worried about being harassed by your neighbours if they find out what you do during the day, you should be thinking hard about what you do during the day.
Flock (YC 2017) missing from title.
We never see, "Flock (YC S17) Is Hiring an Engineer of Mass Surveillance" on the jobs.
I love a good taste-of-their-own-medicine story like anyone else, but the headline is false.
It seems that this is about a YouTuber stalking a Flock employee's vehicle through traffic for 10-15 minutes, which is why the police were called.
Not illegal, and like all the other comments here, isn’t this exactly what Flock does? But they do it indiscriminately to all vehicles at all times?
Flock cameras do the same thing to me so I guess I'd better call the cops.
That’s literally exactly what Flock does. I can’t find sympathy for the company on this.
Maybe I’m a radical but I am okay with the government having capabilities that are different from what a youtuber is allowed to do.
In my opinion, yes, that makes you a radical. I don’t want an armed organization with a trillion dollar budget stalking me. That’s the common stance in America. We even put it in our constitution.
Well, the government can use Flock camera footage, and YouTubers can film with personal devices on public property. So I guess their capabilities are already pretty different
...no. flock doesnt have robot cars weaving through traffic. Its not the same thing literally or figuratively.
So their tracking is OK because it's immobile. That's an interesting and novel defense of a surveillance state which I hadn't heard before.
Yeah! Nobody should be able to track your movements along public roads.
Not a YouTuber, a local reporter in Atlanta
Watching and following everywhere someone drives is stalking? Damn, that's crazy.
If someone were following around and filming someone who was posting anti-Flock fliers, I would also feel that crosses into harassment after a certain amount of time.
A TV news crew filmed me when I was a freshman setting up my old travel trailer in a new university trailer park. I hated it, but it didn't last long. If they had continued following and filming indefinitely despite my protests, I would have wanted some kind of legal protection from them.
flock's business model is recording people. they do not get to complain about being recorded.
Privacy for me but not for thee - Flock
A really interesting experiment would be to give the public access to all of Flock's data, in real time. I say we try it and see how that goes.
There was an organization I came across that was working with private property owners to set up cameras outside/pointed at politicians, etc and sharing the footage. I can’t recall the name though
yea it is similar to robot mark zuckerburg who purchased everything near his house to protect privacy, but his app is the biggest privacy nightmares, especially rayban glasses.
“Just an employee” isn’t trained to not say full name on 911 so you can’t be identified in future publishing. That’s a member.
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49618447
It's kind of ironic that US built the infrastructure(adtech, social media) to track people around the world on the Internet and now their own people are getting tracked in real life.
Flock is YC
>The officer said the installer was also concerned about privacy. "And his worry more than anything is that, you know, he's just an employee. Anybody like you and me. And now he's going to be in the news and he doesn't know if it's going to be targeted at him or his family."
Don’t you understand? He was just following orders.
Totally wild that someone installing a surveillance camera is "concerned about privacy." Only his privacy is important I guess.
Too bad somehow the face that ends up out there as the face of surveillance isn’t the CEO of Flock, not their coders, not the YC people who gave them money to do exactly what they’re doing. It’s the lowest of the low in the chain, the guy sitting in the sun to install the cameras on a post.
Milgram agrees
I've gotta mention it because everyone seems to have a learned helplessness with this type of thing. I went and spoke at my county commissioners meeting a couple times after the initial flock roll out (voted on with no discussion a couple years prior) started becoming apparent. The first meeting, the group of me and two other people were half of the people making public comment. Every single person was against it unless they worked for the county. At the second meeting there were a whole lot more people. Again, every single person who spoke who didn't work for the county was against it, this time they had eight+ police officers speak in favor of it.
We managed to swing a couple of the county commissioners who were in favor of it before and were not in favor of it after hearing about the constitutional issues as well as the cyber security issues that flock doesn't really care about.
Pasco county Florida is now removing all the cameras on the public right of ways at the end of this month.
The real trick, is to stop going to these meetings, and start running against these politicians. Get the forms, stand out in front of your local post office, collect the signatures, and primary them. Run against them. That's the only thing they listen to
The audacity.
man, these guys bungled their PR so, so hard. What they should have done is pre-seeded a ton of stories about flock catching some notorious criminal, helping solve xyz serious crimes, helping solve abc minor nuisance issue crimes, and maybe some lines about reducing direct law enforcement interactions.
On the flip side, let Axon, Motorola take some of the heat, paint your enemies as "defund the police", and stop being so obviously branded. Take a page out of Phillip Morris/Altria playbook and keep a lower profile.
Instead, they've managed to unite left and right in hatred. Clown show.
Nah, what they should have done is called themselves the UK government and then all of HN would be praising them instead
Their problem is they believed their own bullshit and thought they were offering people a good deal that basically amounted to "the government 1984s you more than they already do but your package thief gets arrested, maybe".
Ignoring the fact that that deal is not necessarily good, if they had been slightly scummier, not given two shits about actually reducing petty crimes against the people and instead set out to help municipalities collect civil fines (which have basically no 4th-8th amendment protections these days) they probably could have gotten away without scrutiny for a very long time and gotten their systems deeply entrenched. The useful idiots would've eaten it right up with the flimsiest of pretexts so long as each segment of useful idiots was peddled to individually.
"The truck we saw carrying 2-tons of waste tires away from your tire shop is not owned by an entity on the state approved list, pay up"
"We saw you leaving home depot with a water heater but you didn't pull a permit, prove it didn't go into your house or pay the fine"
"we saw your 2004 Altima emit a puff of blue leaving a light. Per vehicle code XYZ any vehicle that emmits a visible cloud cannot pass emissions inspection, submit proof of passing withing 30d or your resigstration is revoked"
If they had done that a lot of people would have eaten it up and asked for more. But nope, they believed their own BS and built a system for "real" law enforcement. And of course that leads to a bunch of bad interactions with cops and the public doesn't like that.
US citizens are bad at protesting. In my area these cameras would be on fire weekly.
French? I was impressed by:
Yellow vests knock out 60% of all speed cameras in France
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46822472
Would be nice, but we (in France) have plenty of cameras already. They may not be branded Flock, but they're there nonetheless. And as far as I'm aware, none of them are ablaze.
This story isn't related this issue at all. This was about a fuel tax, not actually about the cameras themselves
What country?
Absolutely horrible. They show up on Saturday's yelling at empty buildings. Very rarely does an American protest against a government body change policy. If you want to really do something, show up on a Tuesday morning, stop traffic, flood the phone lines, and the email systems, relentlessly day after day. Americans are far too comfortable to truly protest.
na, we are just more civilized.
In Florida, we just talked to our reps and got them banned from the entire state. It was easy and didn’t require protests at all.
Florida is a model democracy that all states should look up to.
Yes, it really is. Florida is a cultural punching bag, and we take that in stride too. We have a balanced budget, no state income tax, and no flock cameras. We are close to abolishing property taxes as well. Our natural disaster response is some of the most robust anywhere in the world as well.
Florida is also ironically how we may get cookie banners in line and to actually opt users out as they prosecute websites there as illegal wire taps if you still put cookies on the page after or before the opt out happens.
Did they switch to Axon?
Nope. Florida simply led the way and calmly banned Flock cameras from the entire state. Every other state that cares about individual liberty should follow suit.
I mean, let's not get carried away. Florida still has very oppressive anti-second-amendment legislation and laws on the books, and until they get rid of that, I wouldn't call them anywhere close to having individual liberty.
When I lived in FLA and it was super easy to get a concealed weapon permit. I carried a gun not infrequently just to exercise that right. I was serious about training with it as well.
The other states I’ve lived in haven’t been so straight forward.
Florida has permit-less, constitutional open-carry. Not sure what more you could ask for from a 2A perspective.
US Citizens have been tamed by “social” and other media propaganda by the people in power. But we got 2A handy to you know, hunt for rabbits and shit
Irony is dead.
Alternative title: “Torment Nexus technician complains about local mass surveillance resistance”.
the weird thing about anti-flock is they are just replaced with another brand
also they are just putting 24/7 recorders now in police vehicles and even delivery services
so you can't just be anti-flock, you have to be anti-recording without policy for use and retention
your phone and even your watch may be recording your audio right now
Outfits like TSA, ICE, Flock attract all the wrong people.
To be fair to people, TSA attracts people who live near airports and need jobs, doesn't it?
ICE, yes. At this point you cannot make an argument at all that you are going to join a fair-minded organisation that treats people decently while upholding a lawful function.
People who work for Flock should be considering their futures, but I suspect people who install Flock cameras are more in the TSA bracket: it is a job that will be near them that pays.
Government jobs attract all the wrong people.
To be clear, that doesn't mean everyone working for the government is the wrong people.
Oh the irony
Flock has solved crimes in my state, including a few horrendous violent crimes.
We forget US society was configured (imperfectly) to allow families to raise their children in stability and safety, with guardrails around both sides of liberty. Surveillance has a legit role in protecting communities and their families - especially the most vulnerable.
Willing to be most of the Flock hate crowd doesn't have kids walking to school in areas where bad things happen - many probably don't have kids.
I tend to agree that when used correctly, a surveillance system like this could have benefits at a societal level.
The problem is the many stories we already have of misuses of this equipment, showing that people in power are not mentally capable of actually managing a surveillance system like this in a societally beneficial way.
If the use of the system was designated as only being allowed to stop heinous crimes and we had a track record and way to prove this was always the case, then I would be 100% in support. But given it has already proven to not be possible is likely why most people are against it.
I simply don't think Humans are capable of proper use of a system like this.
The problem is that these system are setup specifically to be able to be used incorrectly. Flock is getting all the rage right now but they aren't the only vendor. An acquisition and rename later and everyone will have forgotten this all. Police (others?) are setting up stingrays. Stalin's secret police had a maxim: "Show me the man, and I'll find you the crime." Remember, everyone who installed a Ring doorbell camera paid to help set up these kinds of networks. (all so that a porch pirate might get caught even though Amazon will reship for free). These systems also set up a huge target for bad actors to hack outside of the law.
If these things were only ever used with the a valid search warrant, that would be a great step forward. But even that will only stop "honest" people from abusing the system.
There is also a large difference between local surveillance (home/business/area CCTV), public surveillance (openly accessible cameras like traffic cams), and dragnet surveillance- I generally trust my local police precincts but don't like the fact that the alphabet soup of federal agencies has warrantless access to track me on the way to and from church or work or Facebook marketplace deals
Honest question: If the feds were actually tracking you on your way to church, how does that impact you? Is that a real fear you have?
Yes, I often wonder if Martin Luther King felt at all concerned by the Feds tracking him on his way to church.
It just doesn't feel good or sit right with me to be tracked all over the place, and even though none of what I do is illegal (besides taking speed limits as suggestions from time to time, as is the American way /s) just being nearby can get you stuck with charges for things you didn't do.
The fed govt in the US has been doing questionable things on and off American soil for a long time: - bad analysis https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/09/09/the-cowboy-of-the-nsa - not to mention the massive surveillance state exposed by Edward Snowden
And then more specifically, Flock cameras:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/one-alpr-camera-hit-e... https://reason.com/2026/08/13/flock-cameras-and-license-plat... https://www.riaclu.org/news/flock-safety-image-led-to-false-... https://ij.org/dozens-of-innocent-motorists-have-been-pulled... https://ij.org/the-ij-database-of-alpr-abuse/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-pol... https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/26/us/flock-kentucky-police-offi... https://www.aol.com/articles/milwaukee-police-officer-charge... https://ij.org/police-have-reportedly-used-license-plate-rea...
What kind of church…?
Does that matter? It's one where I share a common belief in a higher being with other people and we try to build a community and become better people and followers of our specific beliefs.
> Honest question: If the feds were actually tracking you on your way to church, how does that impact you?
Why do you suppose that stalking is illegal?
Before you write up any "clever" retorts, remember that many illegal activities (theft, kidnapping, murder, etc) are permitted when permission is obtained from a judge.
We could solve even more crimes if the police were allowed to install cameras in everyone's homes.
Sum up the number of kids harmed or murdered by the state (pick the top n dictators in the last 100 years for example).
Sum up the number of kids harmed or murdered by random people (remember that, for example, non-family abductions are 1% of abductions).
Compare.
I guarantee you that an empowered state is worse for child welfare than random criminals.
Oh, yes, "think of the children", nobody has ever explored this angle to push unpopular things before.
Except there was literally just a piece a few days back here on HN where a Mom was arrested for letting her kid walk half a mile alone in a gated community with active security patrols. The guardrails you describe aren’t for child safety so much as adult persecution. Surveillance may help solve some crimes, but its goal isn’t safety of the people surveilled as much as protecting the power of those doing the surveilling. Research continues pointing out that cameras don’t do shit to deter crime, and its actual ability to solve crimes is limited to the humans using said tools - and with a longer history of abuses than successes, it’s a fairly safe conclusion that mass surveillance does fuck all to actually protect the populace.
"This technology can be abused" and "this technology provides no public-safety value" are two entirely different claims.
Saying their ability to solve crimes is "limited to the humans using the tools" isn't much of an argument against the technology. That's true of fingerprints, DNA databases, radios, firearms databases, and virtually every other investigative tool.
A police officer can misuse a DMV database to stalk an ex. That means the officer should be prosecuted and access to the database tightly controlled. It doesn't demonstrate that DMV records have no legitimate investigative purpose. The same reasoning applies to LPRs.
By the way, that mom that was arrested? The kid was 5 years old, and was intentionally sent to a pond.
I'm 100% in favor of LPR cameras. Any technology can be abused. The handful of corrupt officers that were caught using the cameras for nefarious reasons shouldn't overshadow the incredible benefit these are.
> Willing to [bet] most of the Flock hate crowd doesn't...
...have a reason at all to worry about LPR cameras tracking their car. Just "something something government."
If someone came up to me and started filming me while I was in public, and then when I got in my car they followed me, I would also call the police.
The double standard demonstrated by Flock isn't the issue, they are the pieces of shit and of course they have no moral consistency.
But "He who fights with monsters should be careful, lest he thereby become a monster." I thought we were united that people have a reasonable sense of temporal privacy in public - that being in public is ephemeral and not some permanent record to be analyzed in perpetuity. We should not be fine stalking people and making them feel threatened, even those that want to build the panopticon state.
But you're not working for Flock, are you? We could go on much further until we reach the what Popper called the Tolerance Paradox: "If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
The point is that total surveillance is like the destruction of tolerance or in thie case privacy, and it makes watching the watchmen impossible. There's a point of no return and before that one is reached resistance IS allowed or else you lose everything.