Flock may not actually be involved. YouTube video titles are often lying clickbait, and the video description starts off with "Flock and other surveillance cameras..."
No, people should say accurate things. If Flock was not actually invovled then it is just useless clickbait. Give your time to someone else who can report accurately.
When I was a kid twisting a swing so you could ride it as it untwisted was something that happend dozens of times every recess. This was something every kid did. If your playground equipment falls apart as a result of the standard way kids use a swing then I think that is a manufacture issue not criminal behavior by a 10 year old
"The borough also says visitors encounter its "Play Smart Rules" when entering the park, including a specific instruction: "Do not twist chains.""
So the town buys crappy swings, knowing full well that kids are going to spin them (who hasn't done this a million times as a kid?) Then they slap up a sign telling the kids not to do that. Basically entrapment.
Here's an idea for them: maybe the town shouldn't cheap out on unsafe equipment for children...
My company makes dangerous equipment like lawn mowers. Because of this, I have to go through training on how to design equipment to be safe.
And the rule is very clear. If there is any possibility of an issue, you need to redesign it so the problem can't happen, you need to put gaurds in place so the problem can't happen, or only if those two fail, are you allowed to put up a warning sign. That is an ordered list so if anything is possible in the previous step you cannot go to the next.
In this case a chain that can take twisting is obvious and so the sign won't protect them from liability should someone get hurt from twisting the chains.
You're both right. What you're describing is liability. A warning does not guarantee safety from liability suits, that's why the other options are preferable (only being a Chinese or outside-of-the-west manufacturer guarantees safety from liability suit).
But the problem with twisting chains is that it needs a warning.
And so both putting in the law, and arresting the kid, are a way to protect the borough, a government organization, from liability when something goes wrong.
If the town feels that arresting children is a good use of public money they that's their right. At some point the citizens have to actually care about how their town operates if they want it to get better. Most townspeople care about UX as much as f2p mobile shovelware developers.
It's marginally cheaper to install flimsy chains and surveillance than to pony up for a slightly thicker gauge chain get out of here with your common sense /s
Until someone gets hurt and the court find they are liable for millions because signs and cameras did not work and because they thought it would they apply punitive damages to make sure the message is sent.
I don't think we understand yet the kind of world we are building.
All the small decisions we are making will shape our future: algorithmic decision making, social network broadcasting and "self-reporting", light-speed meme transmission, always-on audio and video surveillance... the list goes on and on. One day we'll wake up to see we've build a jail around us we can't escape.
I was thinking few days ago something that is very common feature in my city, which made us unsafe in the name of safety without most of us realizing at all.
So, in my city each and every window has metal grills, without anyway to open them, nor we have fire exit, except very few. So, the only way out is the frontdoor. Reason being, It's unsafe to have open windows because of robbers, thieves, rapist etc, which is legit safety concern. But you only have one way out of your safe heaven, the frontdoor, so what happens the day your stairs caught fire? Or earthquake blocks the front door? Or someone just sits there with a gun? You have no way out of your own home.
We really have built jail around us, that we can't escape.
"Better to die in fire than let some dark-skinned person sneak into your home, rape your daughters, murder you, and steal your stuff." -The classic American right-wing rage machine
Oh, many of us understand quite clearly what world was being built. I'd argue most members of marginalized groups knew damn well what kind of world was being built by those in power.
That being said, one of the best ways to fight surveillance as a concept is authenticity. The goal of the watchers is enforce constraints - limit where you go, who you talk to, how you dress, how you behave, etc - and remaining defiantly authentic lets them know those tactics won't work while simultaneously broadcasting to others that you reject the power those cameras have over you.
Surveillance succeeds because of fear, and it always falls because of authenticity.
If things go bad then the problem they cause is so huge that nobody is capable of taking responsibility for it. The following is an illustration of what I mean:
Eg imagine if one of these surveillance companies gets hacked. Personal data and the habits of a hundred million people get compromised.
The penalties for this should be enough to make everyone affected whole.
If your neighbor had a secret camera in your home - what would it take to make you whole? I imagine most people would be okay with like $50k (or some other large sum like that).
Are these surveillance companies ready to pay $50k per person? Hell no. 100M * 50k = $5 trillion.
Nobody can afford to pay that much. They either end up going bankrupt or are absolved of this responsibility. Either way, the people affected will not be made whole.
American citizens are not choosing to be surveilled via Flock.
That is a decision that is being made by billionaires like Paul Graham who fund and profit from it, and authoritarian individuals at police departments and governments who get influenced by the perceived convenience of warrant and subpoena-free surveillance.
I carry a cell phone... and thankfully the Supreme Court has agreed that my location data that comes off of it is protected from warrantless search.
The heart of your argument is that people shouldn't do anything new unless they accept all of the downsides as-is... but that's a moronic argument. Society is built by people doing new things _but also_ working to come up with new agreements on how to manage the side effects of those new things. This is normal and natural.
What's wild is your decision to mock people who want to preserve liberty while advancing technology.
American Patriots need to keep fighting to deal with the whole host of issues that will keep arising as the ability to acquire, store, and analyze data gets cheaper and cheaper.
If the chain broke from twisting it up and letting it go, it was in disrepair before the kids started using it. Maybe the city admin should be charged with negligence for letting the infrastructure crumble.
How much money did they waste in police and court resources over a swing obviously in disrepair if it broke so easily? How much resources/money did they waste having someone create invoices for numerous children/families? How much resources/money did they waste on harassing/tormenting children and their families instead of just fixing the damn thing?
So nice to see such enormous time and resources being spent on catching actual criminals
Bulk of these cameras are actually installed at the behest of the control freaks sitting on HOAs. They are the real target audience for these cameras because they love the power trip over other people. It seems if you don't get enough attention as a child, you will just grow up to become a control freak.
We talked about them in my neighborhood mainly because of package theft. If I ever thought there was a real chance of enforcement action, I’d be in favor.
You would rather infringe on the privacy of your community and invite a company known for indiscriminate multi-pronged dragnet surveillance (plates/faces/bluetooth beacons/etc.), with a nation-wide blanket coverage network that has already been provably abused by police on multiple occasions, all because of a handful of petty package theft cases?
Or pedophile cops just use the system directly. I don't even want "good" people surveilling me and everyone else, but with all of these systems you can assume the worst person that has access to them will be using them nefariously.
> They tell me in a lengthy statement in part that the department would never issue an ultimatum of pay for the damage or your children will be charged. They tell me quote, "We simply don't operate that way." Rather, the department's approach was consistent among the five juveniles involved in the incident. The damage was divided equally and an opportunity was provided to address the matter through restitution rather than unnecessarily continuing juvenile proceeding.
Lol. The same thing, but obfuscated. It's not "pay for the damage"; it's "an opportunity was provided to address the matter through restitution". It's not "or your children will be charged"; it's "rather than unnecessarily continuing juvenile proceeding". Add extra fluff at the start to bury the lede, then avoid the trigger words and pretend it's something different.
1. Why is the city creeping on children with surveillance cameras? I'd be tempted to run for city council and beat that drum until the head broke (but then I'd have to serve on the city council).
2. How did they identify the children enough to come to their home? Might have read the license plate, but reporting is unclear.
3. Why is our municipality buying such crappy equipment that it fails when kids do what kids have done with swings for 100 years or more?
Surveillance cameras (not Flock, sounds like) are what allowed the police to spend ridiculous amounts of the city's time chasing (checks notes) $295 of damage to a swing from totally normal use by a couple of pre-teens.
Swings have always broken. Before widespread surveillance the swing would have just been replaced or not and everyone would have moved on.
OK, big surveillance fans: please explain why this is OK because "it's not the government", and this keeps us safe, and we don't have any expectation of privacy. It's inevitable that someone is going to claim it's a great idea. Let's get it out of the way.
Which is why I think traditional media outlets are much more trustworthy than random influencers when it comes to news reporting. They don't have a perfect record but have standards and ethics. Sadly it's not worth anything these days.
LPR cameras are only one of the camera types Flock has. Flock also has PTZ and fixed cameras meant for general surveillance and not LPR. The description of the PTZ cameras on the Flock website even mentions them being ideal for parks.
"Single and dual lens live and recorded video cameras with remote PTZ controls. Ideal for open areas like parking lots, intersections and parks."
True disruption! In 1933 the Nazis needed a human, called Blockwart, to surveil the immediate neighborhood block. This has been automated. Shall we call the cameras Flockwart?
Here is a direct news link to the actual incident: https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/springdale-girls-cou...
The article has no mention of Flock
The details are they were caught with surveillance cameras, we don't know which provider.
Flock may not actually be involved. YouTube video titles are often lying clickbait, and the video description starts off with "Flock and other surveillance cameras..."
Might as well call them Kleenex surveillance cameras. The point stands.
No, people should say accurate things. If Flock was not actually invovled then it is just useless clickbait. Give your time to someone else who can report accurately.
Yeah read the full article and no mention of flock.
That link is an activist YouTube channel. Closest I could find to a news organization reporting on this:
https://www.wtae.com/article/springdale-playground-swing-cou...
No mention of Flock anywhere in the text
When I was a kid twisting a swing so you could ride it as it untwisted was something that happend dozens of times every recess. This was something every kid did. If your playground equipment falls apart as a result of the standard way kids use a swing then I think that is a manufacture issue not criminal behavior by a 10 year old
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/pennsylvania-girls-10...
"The borough also says visitors encounter its "Play Smart Rules" when entering the park, including a specific instruction: "Do not twist chains.""
So the town buys crappy swings, knowing full well that kids are going to spin them (who hasn't done this a million times as a kid?) Then they slap up a sign telling the kids not to do that. Basically entrapment.
Here's an idea for them: maybe the town shouldn't cheap out on unsafe equipment for children...
My company makes dangerous equipment like lawn mowers. Because of this, I have to go through training on how to design equipment to be safe.
And the rule is very clear. If there is any possibility of an issue, you need to redesign it so the problem can't happen, you need to put gaurds in place so the problem can't happen, or only if those two fail, are you allowed to put up a warning sign. That is an ordered list so if anything is possible in the previous step you cannot go to the next.
In this case a chain that can take twisting is obvious and so the sign won't protect them from liability should someone get hurt from twisting the chains.
You're both right. What you're describing is liability. A warning does not guarantee safety from liability suits, that's why the other options are preferable (only being a Chinese or outside-of-the-west manufacturer guarantees safety from liability suit).
But the problem with twisting chains is that it needs a warning.
And so both putting in the law, and arresting the kid, are a way to protect the borough, a government organization, from liability when something goes wrong.
Decent swing chains $250. Mass surveillance recurring cost of $5000/mo. Someone please help me budget this, I'm dying.
If the town feels that arresting children is a good use of public money they that's their right. At some point the citizens have to actually care about how their town operates if they want it to get better. Most townspeople care about UX as much as f2p mobile shovelware developers.
> If the town feels that arresting children is a good use of public money they that's their right.
TF? Doesn't your country have a Constitution?
Does your country have a constitution that explicitly handles this scenario?
Of a government body deciding to go around arresting people for no reason? Yes.
Why is a 3rd party company keeping videos of people's children? Why aren't the parents concerned about this?
Right? Growing up in the eighties we'd twist, stand on them, double up, back flip out of them.
And if you really had the balls, the 360 ...
Yep! We used to call it "twist and shout". Tons of fun.
It's marginally cheaper to install flimsy chains and surveillance than to pony up for a slightly thicker gauge chain get out of here with your common sense /s
Until someone gets hurt and the court find they are liable for millions because signs and cameras did not work and because they thought it would they apply punitive damages to make sure the message is sent.
I don't think we understand yet the kind of world we are building.
All the small decisions we are making will shape our future: algorithmic decision making, social network broadcasting and "self-reporting", light-speed meme transmission, always-on audio and video surveillance... the list goes on and on. One day we'll wake up to see we've build a jail around us we can't escape.
I was thinking few days ago something that is very common feature in my city, which made us unsafe in the name of safety without most of us realizing at all.
So, in my city each and every window has metal grills, without anyway to open them, nor we have fire exit, except very few. So, the only way out is the frontdoor. Reason being, It's unsafe to have open windows because of robbers, thieves, rapist etc, which is legit safety concern. But you only have one way out of your safe heaven, the frontdoor, so what happens the day your stairs caught fire? Or earthquake blocks the front door? Or someone just sits there with a gun? You have no way out of your own home.
We really have built jail around us, that we can't escape.
"Better to die in fire than let some dark-skinned person sneak into your home, rape your daughters, murder you, and steal your stuff." -The classic American right-wing rage machine
"One day"? You're years late I'd say. Enjoy the downhill ride, it's not about to end.
The vermin that are building it understand it just fine.
Oh, many of us understand quite clearly what world was being built. I'd argue most members of marginalized groups knew damn well what kind of world was being built by those in power.
That being said, one of the best ways to fight surveillance as a concept is authenticity. The goal of the watchers is enforce constraints - limit where you go, who you talk to, how you dress, how you behave, etc - and remaining defiantly authentic lets them know those tactics won't work while simultaneously broadcasting to others that you reject the power those cameras have over you.
Surveillance succeeds because of fear, and it always falls because of authenticity.
The consumer chooses convenience for skill/knowledge and then complains about the outcome of their choice.
It's wild.
It'S ThEiR FaUlT, I'M juSt MaKinG mOneY. Is such a lame excuse. A real engineer knows ethical boundaries. Get lost.
If things go bad then the problem they cause is so huge that nobody is capable of taking responsibility for it. The following is an illustration of what I mean:
Eg imagine if one of these surveillance companies gets hacked. Personal data and the habits of a hundred million people get compromised.
The penalties for this should be enough to make everyone affected whole.
If your neighbor had a secret camera in your home - what would it take to make you whole? I imagine most people would be okay with like $50k (or some other large sum like that).
Are these surveillance companies ready to pay $50k per person? Hell no. 100M * 50k = $5 trillion.
Nobody can afford to pay that much. They either end up going bankrupt or are absolved of this responsibility. Either way, the people affected will not be made whole.
American citizens are not choosing to be surveilled via Flock.
That is a decision that is being made by billionaires like Paul Graham who fund and profit from it, and authoritarian individuals at police departments and governments who get influenced by the perceived convenience of warrant and subpoena-free surveillance.
I carry a cell phone... and thankfully the Supreme Court has agreed that my location data that comes off of it is protected from warrantless search.
The heart of your argument is that people shouldn't do anything new unless they accept all of the downsides as-is... but that's a moronic argument. Society is built by people doing new things _but also_ working to come up with new agreements on how to manage the side effects of those new things. This is normal and natural.
What's wild is your decision to mock people who want to preserve liberty while advancing technology.
How is your location data protected? They may not be able to force a company to hand it over without a warrant… but they can just buy it.
Chatrie v. US is a great start.
American Patriots need to keep fighting to deal with the whole host of issues that will keep arising as the ability to acquire, store, and analyze data gets cheaper and cheaper.
If the chain broke from twisting it up and letting it go, it was in disrepair before the kids started using it. Maybe the city admin should be charged with negligence for letting the infrastructure crumble.
There are plenty of people here working on surveillance tech. Is this the world you want to be building?
I’d say a lot of people don’t care if it doesn’t affect them directly, and if they can exploit a moral boundary to get rich they’ll do it.
How much money did they waste in police and court resources over a swing obviously in disrepair if it broke so easily? How much resources/money did they waste having someone create invoices for numerous children/families? How much resources/money did they waste on harassing/tormenting children and their families instead of just fixing the damn thing?
So nice to see such enormous time and resources being spent on catching actual criminals
To be fair, the powers that be do see children and their families as "actual criminals." They literally charged them with a crime!
This is their idea of what counts as a real criminal. Instead of, say, someone who rapes children. They'll vote for that person!
right, it probably cost two new swing sets in people's time to make this even happen.
Bulk of these cameras are actually installed at the behest of the control freaks sitting on HOAs. They are the real target audience for these cameras because they love the power trip over other people. It seems if you don't get enough attention as a child, you will just grow up to become a control freak.
We talked about them in my neighborhood mainly because of package theft. If I ever thought there was a real chance of enforcement action, I’d be in favor.
You would rather infringe on the privacy of your community and invite a company known for indiscriminate multi-pronged dragnet surveillance (plates/faces/bluetooth beacons/etc.), with a nation-wide blanket coverage network that has already been provably abused by police on multiple occasions, all because of a handful of petty package theft cases?
Honestly, I'm at a loss for words.
Is it weird for me that i think this helps pedophiles so much in finding victims?
We know that the leader flock is having security problems where literally anyone could access the livestreams, the others are probably not better.
My worst fear would be that pedophiles would use the streams to find and abduct victims in broad daylight by posing as cops.
Or pedophile cops just use the system directly. I don't even want "good" people surveilling me and everyone else, but with all of these systems you can assume the worst person that has access to them will be using them nefariously.
> They tell me in a lengthy statement in part that the department would never issue an ultimatum of pay for the damage or your children will be charged. They tell me quote, "We simply don't operate that way." Rather, the department's approach was consistent among the five juveniles involved in the incident. The damage was divided equally and an opportunity was provided to address the matter through restitution rather than unnecessarily continuing juvenile proceeding.
Lol. The same thing, but obfuscated. It's not "pay for the damage"; it's "an opportunity was provided to address the matter through restitution". It's not "or your children will be charged"; it's "rather than unnecessarily continuing juvenile proceeding". Add extra fluff at the start to bury the lede, then avoid the trigger words and pretend it's something different.
"Your children won't be charged! They'll just be arrested"
https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/325_PublicPlaygroundSafetyH...
'Children tend to swing on their stomach. This behavior should be discouraged.'
Not banned, discouraged.
I recommend reading the whole thing, it is surprisingly well done and covers a lot of things that should be obvious but are easy to forget.
Three questions:
1. Why is the city creeping on children with surveillance cameras? I'd be tempted to run for city council and beat that drum until the head broke (but then I'd have to serve on the city council).
2. How did they identify the children enough to come to their home? Might have read the license plate, but reporting is unclear.
3. Why is our municipality buying such crappy equipment that it fails when kids do what kids have done with swings for 100 years or more?
As much as I dislike flock, this only seems like an indictment on the police.
Surveillance cameras (not Flock, sounds like) are what allowed the police to spend ridiculous amounts of the city's time chasing (checks notes) $295 of damage to a swing from totally normal use by a couple of pre-teens.
Swings have always broken. Before widespread surveillance the swing would have just been replaced or not and everyone would have moved on.
OK, big surveillance fans: please explain why this is OK because "it's not the government", and this keeps us safe, and we don't have any expectation of privacy. It's inevitable that someone is going to claim it's a great idea. Let's get it out of the way.
You already know the answer. It's a sacrifice they are willing to make just in case someone in a rusty Altima does a hit and run on their Tesla.
You know it. They also lack the imagination to see how this could be used against them, instead of the "right" people.
So the kids were playing on equipment that fell apart and now they owe money? The city is lucky they didn't get injured.
I thought these cameras were only used to read license plates. What happened to that discussion?
In addition to their LPR cameras Flock also has PTZ and fixed cameras meant for general surveillance.
The content creator is using "Flock" as a shorthand for all surveillance cameras, which muddies the conversation.
Which is why I think traditional media outlets are much more trustworthy than random influencers when it comes to news reporting. They don't have a perfect record but have standards and ethics. Sadly it's not worth anything these days.
They are. These aren't Flock cameras. The post is a lie, but it's one people want to believe.
LPR cameras are only one of the camera types Flock has. Flock also has PTZ and fixed cameras meant for general surveillance and not LPR. The description of the PTZ cameras on the Flock website even mentions them being ideal for parks.
"Single and dual lens live and recorded video cameras with remote PTZ controls. Ideal for open areas like parking lots, intersections and parks."
I like how you come to Flock's rescue 3 times within 3 minutes on this one post lmao. Next you're going to tell me I can't google something on Bing.
It was never true.
Is everyone going to ignore that those are not Flock cameras?
Why is the quality of discussion on this topic on HN so poor? I'm not even pro-Flock, but a blatantly false post like this is just pathetic discourse.
There are a few posts discussing that here.
poor quality of HN discussion -- that's something not with thinking about. Flag the submission and move on.
How do you know they aren't Flock cameras? Flock makes PTZ and fixed cameras intended for general surveillance along with the LPR cameras.
Government and industry enter the Epstein zone. Creep-shooting little kids.
Not surprised at all.
True disruption! In 1933 the Nazis needed a human, called Blockwart, to surveil the immediate neighborhood block. This has been automated. Shall we call the cameras Flockwart?
How did they ID the children from photos?