hckrnws
"Thankfully, we live in a beautifully democratic and capitalistic society where we can fight in court."
Of course he's "thankful" for that, since in our "beautifully democratic and capitalistic" society, Flock can use their $658 million of VC funding [1] to wage lawfare against the have-nots with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers. [2]
1. https://websets.exa.ai/websets/directory/flock-safety-fundin...
2. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/lobbyis...
Felony contempt of business model? Weak. Today, companies sue for terrorist contempt of business model!
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-busine...
It isn't even just about money. It's more apparent than ever that freedom, democracy, justice, human rights in this country are increasily reserved for those with the right political alignments.
It’s not so much about political alignment as much as it’s about your bank account.
Not really.
neither democracy nor being a market economy implies the American state of litigiousness.
it's always interesting to hear the silent part out loud. in this case, he's saying "I can get what I want because I can game the courts".
The rich are increasingly uninterested in keeping up appearances.
And really, why should they? We've learned now that there was actually a worldwide network of child rapists purchasing girls from other wealthy child traffickers in positions of power in seemingly every Western nation, and the consensus thus far is to do exactly nothing about it.
Laws are for the poors.
Moments later (~1:13) he also said "we aren't forcing Flock on anyone"
False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE
No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled. And no, under the radar agreements with local cops and govts do NOT constitute my permission to be surveilled. If they want to go in with fully informed referendums in each community, then I'd accept it. But that is not Flock's business model.
> False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE
> No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled
As much as I dislike Flock, this is bad logic. There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces. Public spaces are defined by being public, in that everyone (even governments/corporations!) is free to observe everyone else in that same setting.
So in reality, everyone has permitted themselves to be surveilled, purely through the act of being in public.
This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
The idea that there's not a scale difference is, quite frankly, bogus.
Flock is not a natural person. Flock has no rights.
Mountain View recently turned off their Flock installs after they discovered Flock had enabled data sharing without notice and other agencies were searching through MV data.
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-came... > A separate “statewide lookup” feature had also been active on 29 of the city’s 30 cameras since the initial installation, running for 17 straight months until Mountain View found and disabled it on January 5. Through that tool, more than 250 agencies that had never signed any data agreement with Mountain View ran an estimated 600,000 searches over a single year, according to local paper the Mountain View Voice, which first uncovered the issue after filing a public records request.
A different town (Staunton, VA) also turned of their Flock installs after their CEO sent out an email claming:
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-ceo-goes-... > The attacks aren't new. You've been dealing with this for forever, and we've been dealing with this since our founding, from the same activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness. Now, they're producing YouTube videos with misleading headlines.
I'd like to see a database of municipalities that have passed an ordinance banning these systems (including 12 hour drone flyovers like they've been doing in Camden, NJ; drones are fine for specific or exigent circumstances, but flying them systematically is concerning!).
In fact, if anyone knows of municipalities that have done so let me know. I'd like to spend tourist money in those places that I haven't been able to spend in authoritarian-leaning locales as a reward for valuing freedom over suffocation of the constitution for little to no benefit.
The groups and companies that break the law and norms as usual part of business always complain about "lawlessness" when someone opposes them
Wow...
"...and then unfortunately there is terroristic organizations like DeFlock, whose primary motivation is chaos. They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else."
"We're not forcing Flock on anyone..."
It is a short 1:32 video, I encourage people to watch it for themselves.
I thought DeFlock was just publishing locations of cameras and lawfully convincing local governments to not use Flock, primarily through FOIA requests.
the line from authoritarians is often predictably to proclaim their opponents "terrorists" and the like
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/weakness-strongmen-step...
Twenty-some years back, I attended a talk by a classicist who was talking about how the Romans, Caesar specifically I think, basically used "pirate" the same way.
I saw an exhibition on cannibalism that mentioned a similar thing such that being called a "cannibal" was used in a similar fashion.
Are there any famous examples? Like did John Adams ever call an opponent a cannibal?
Comment was deleted :(
It's wild how it became mainstream in the US to equate Antifa = Bad.
Some geniuses proudly, openly self describe as anti antifa. Guess what that double negation makes you?
Well their view ist that antifa are actually fascists, which makes anti antifa democrats.
Funny thing is that in my German neighborhood we have Antifa stickers pretty much on any other street lamp. Given the fascist tendencies all around it actually makes me feel safer...
> in my German neighborhood we have Antifa stickers pretty much on any other street lamp. Given the fascist tendencies all around it actually makes me feel safer
My Polish-German godmother asked me, as a kid, "who would you hide."
I didn't get the question. And 6-year old me wasn't ready for Holocaust with grandma. But it comes back to me from time to time.
Who would you hide. Who would you stake your wealth and life on to keep from undeserved suffering. The stickers are good. But they only mean something if you're willing to fight for them. At least in America, I'm unconvinced most sticker-toters are willing to sacrifice anything. (It's what makes Minnesota and Texas different.)
Is there a general term for metastatic semantic overinclusivity?
Terrorist. Racist. Colonist. Fascist. Historically-rooted and precise terms that are collectively decohering in a self-amplifying and propagating way as everyone feels increasingly free to detach more and more words from their original meanings.
Death of the author.
you have seriously got to read and understand Eco's 14 tenets of Ur-Fascism [0] if you think that contemporary applications of the term "fascist" are inaccurate in describing what's happening right now in the US.
[0] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...
> if you think that contemporary applications of the term "fascist" are inaccurate in describing what's happening right now in the US
Didn't say that. I'm saying I've seen the term thrown around wildly to apply to all manner of things. Like the other terms.
The term is probably fundamentally fucked. If you asked Hitler if he's a Nazi, he'd say yes. If you asked Mussolini if he's a Fascist, he'd say yes. These were the words they used to describe themselves. The reason I'm describing the phenomenon versus blaming the folks using the terms broadly is because I don't think this is a personal failing by anyone as much as something that's linguistically happening.
Ah yes, and the antifa line. Wonder if these assholes ever stop to think what being anti-antifa actually means.
It's not uncommon for fascists to call themselves anti-antifa.
> They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else.
So they just said "These people are anti-fascist and this is a bad thing"
Aren't authoritarians great.
Great at telling everyone else what they are, at least.
>So they just said "These people are anti-fascist and this is a bad thing"
A: "Hey guys, I think think this PATRIOT act thing is bad"
B: "Wait, you're saying patriots are bad? What are you, some sort of seditious non-patriot?"
Ah yes, I too conflate bills written by organized lobbyists with a loosely affiliated group that says American shouldn't be ran by Nazi's. The Nazi's running America get very mad about that and ensure to flood the airwaves with how cities in the US are mile wide smoking craters due to people who don't like authoritarians.
>Ah yes, I too conflate bills written by organized lobbyists with a loosely affiliated group that says American shouldn't be ran by Nazi's.
Somebody doesn't understand analogies, so let me spell it out explicitly for you:
Approximately nobody is against "antifa" because they're fighting "fascists". Here's an excerpt from wikipedia:
>Antifa activists' actions have since received support and criticism from various organizations and pundits. Some on the political left and some civil rights organizations criticize antifa's willingness to adopt violent tactics, which they describe as counterproductive and dangerous, arguing that these tactics embolden the political right and their allies.[13] Both Democratic and Republican politicians have condemned violence from antifa.[14][15][16][17] Many right-wing politicians and groups have characterized antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, or use antifa as a catch-all term,[18] which they adopt for any left-leaning or liberal protest actions.[19] According to some scholars, antifa is a legitimate response to the rise of the far right.[20][21] Scholars tend to reject an equivalence between antifa and right-wing extremism.[2][22][23] Some research suggests that most antifa action is nonviolent.[24][25][26]
Those allegations might not have merit, and it's okay to have a productive discussion over the merits of that, but it's wholly unjustified to round everyone who oppose antifa off to "they're against antifa because they're fascists, because why else would you be against a group that's anti-fascist?". Doing so is making the same mistake as the PATRIOT act above. It's fine to be against the patriot act, or even support it. But it's totally poor reasoning to skip all that logic and go with "you oppose the PATRIOT act so you must be not a patriot".
Being opposed to antifa because some of the people using the label are violent seems to be painting with an overly broad brush.
I know we're not supposed to talk about it, but what in the world is happening to this site? Mistaking 'Antifa' for 'the concept of opposing fascism' is not the kind of failure mode I expect here. And this kind of thing has become endemic lately- emotive noise and sarcastic dunks drowning out substance in every thread, especially since the beginning of December. Or am I just imagining this?
> Mistaking 'Antifa' for 'the concept of opposing fascism'
that's literally what it means in theory and in practice
'The concept of opposing fascism' doesn't mean anything in practice. You have to implement practice around it, you can't just literally do a concept!
you say that as if people are not actively physically opposing fascism in deed in the united states right now!
> Approximately nobody is against "antifa" because they're fighting "fascists".
So, I will say that far right, comservatives and fascists are against anti-fascism of any kind. Whether it is the boogeyman antifa or anything else. And there are a lot of people like that. Including in goverment.
They do take issue with anyone who openly opposes fascism.
The point GP was making, which holds as a general rule, is that simply adopting a moniker does not necessarily mean that it accurately describes you. Your argument pre-supposed that just because Antifa self-describes as antifascist, it inherently is, and that the CEO was expressing an opposition to the concept of antifascism, rather than simply expressing opposition to the specific group.
If Antifa’s record speaks for itself, then you don’t need to play these kinds of word games. If some CEO spoke unflatteringly of The Red Cross or Habitat For Humanity, that would say more about them than anything, not because they have virtuous sounding names (though they admittedly do) but because they’ve established a specific track record of public service.
I don't even know what antifa _is_ anymore, honestly. I only see it used as a boogie man by the right in discourse online.
But I _do_ know that when someone tags someone as "antifa" they are making a political statement and aligning themselves with a certain group that perceives "antifa" a certain way. "See, I hate those damn' antifa terrorists, I'm in the same camp as you! Please help my company make money!"
No disagreement there, and I think it was an inane comment on Langley’s part, to be clear
The point pixl97 was making was that they believed anti-anti-fascist described the Flock CEO.
If Flock's reputation spoke for itself, their CEO wouldn't have to play these kind of legal games.
> The point GP was making, which holds as a general rule, is that simply adopting a moniker does not necessarily mean that it accurately describes you.
I'm deeply curious why you think someone would identify as an anti-fascist if they were not, in fact, anti-fascist. Do you think they just really like the flag logo or...?
By your logic, if the NSDAP or the Bolsheviks named themselves "The Party of Peace and Love", you would have written
> So they just said "These people are anti-violence and anti-hate and this is a bad thing"
(Frankly, our political situation is rife with insanity. I think the hotheads across the political spectrum need more nous and less thumos.)
Oh so Antifa is a single formal political party with card carrying members, a clear leadership structure and participation in mainstream public political life? I had no idea. Your analogy makes perfect sense. Where is the Antifa national headquarters?
"Despite the name, The Party of Peace and Love is actually authoritarian and horribly repressive, as you can see from the millions of people they've killed."
"Despite the name, Antifa is not just 'anti-fascist' but is actually _________"
What goes in the blank?
__an identity claimed by people who are taking direct action against what they perceive as fascism, but currently more often the term is applied as an unthinking boogeyman by right wing authoritarians__
[flagged]
Presumably you mean that it is commonly presented that way by authoritarians who have no idea what they are talking about.
It's wild what the perception is in the right echo chamber right now. I was talking with my brother, who I love, but who, through his practicing Christian faith is essentially pulled into this right-wing cultural environment and propaganda machine. So he was making the point that the politics in the US have drifted so much more to the left that the right is actually the center. My jaw dropped off the floor. How do these thing even get propagated? It's borderline ridiculous and I don't know how this firehouse of bullshit can ever be countered.
You can disagree, but "Presumably you meant the opposite of what you said" is condescending nonsense.
It's the most charitable interpretation. I think HN rules require that you give others the benefit of the doubt and assume that most charitable case.
He gave you a charitable interpretation of your absolutely nonsense comment.
> ironically fascist organization
There is no antifa "organization". It is not centralized, there is no "leadership" or anyone in charge. It's more of a philosophy.
This is the one response here so far I agree with — I should've said movement to be more accurate.
Right, but that makes it pretty much impossible to stop anyone from claiming to be antifa or anyone accusing someone of being antifa... a lot of people will accuse anyone who is doing anything they don't like as being antifa
I live in Portland. I've met many people that label themselves antifa. They're just protestors that are willing to be a little more aggro. That's literally it.
So when people talk about antifa as if it was the left wing equivalent of Osama Bin Laden's terror network, it's a self report they're forming their views based on strawman style propaganda, not engaging with the reality of it.
Ahh yes let's list out the people who have been silenced by antifa....oh yeah that didn't happen
Google "Antifa silences speaker," and you'll find literally hundreds of cases of exactly that (I just did to verify).
I Googles that exact string and I can't say that I see even enough cases to count on one hand. Do you have any concrete examples that you think are representative for the behavior that you are referencing?
Googling “earth is flat” nets you thousands of results from very passionate people willing to share their experience and expertise. (I just did to verify)
Which SPECIFIC persons are being silenced and which SPECIFIC topics were they attempting to speak on?
It’s a huge diff between someone being ”silenced” for speaking their minds on bike paths versus being ”silenced” for indirectly or even directly promoting a new holocaust. And from your vague responses it is not clear.
I guarantee it's just a bunch of heavily edited clips of people like Tim Pool being told they're idiots by college kids.
I don't think you understand what "silencing" is. If they were actually silenced, you wouldn't be able to find anything about it online.
People who are "silenced" are not "googleable with 100s of examples."
Those articles are using the word 'antifa' as a slur, not as an organization.
It is like saying "the woke mob silenced a speaker", it doesn't mean anything. There isn't a 'woke organization' that is planning anything
A movement is better terminology than an organization, fair.
But okay - I'm confused what sources you would accept? There are "Antifa" groups on social media that literally advocate for doing this, I've seen it first-hand.
Sure, but since anyone can claim the term, what is to stop someone from creating a false flag group on social media to make them look bad?
Ah yes, when the first result on Google is from a group known as a right wing think tank...
>American Enterprise Institute, a prominent center-right think tank in Washington, D.C., that promotes free enterprise, limited government, and individual liberty through research and policy advocacy in areas like economics, foreign policy, and social studies
I too can get paid think tanks to publish hundreds of reports on how communists are taking over America... Doesn't mean communists are actually taking over America.
If you don't trust a center-right think tank with video evidence, but you're advocating for a far-left movement... you need to see more center.
I've literally seen, with my own eyes, people of this movement shut down speech on my own college campus so many times. Probably everybody I've ever known at any college (Harvard, BU, BC, Northeastern, Middlebury, UC Berkeley, NYU, Columbia, etc) has seen this first-hand. How are you denying such an obvious reality?
> Antifa is commonly known as an ironically fascist organization that uses violence and intimidation to silence speakers — it's like how the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is not really democratic.
That's not "commonly known", that's the spin you'll get from the right-wing in the US who just happen to have heavy fascist tendencies.
"Antifa" is understood as violent communist street thugs by most huge swaths of people. You may not think that's accurate, but that's the definition he is calling to mind.
Only to those of a particular political persuasion. Every group has their own shorthand.
They're not understood, but propagandized that way.
Is there a difference for the incurious?
(Though I agree with you)
That's the intent but most people know it's not true. It's right up there with "woke" and "progressive" as generic, shapeless, boogeyman words. No real meaning besides "something bad".
Pretty sure most who claim the mantle of “Antifa” would welcome that Communist label, and plenty would endorse violence if it’s against the “right” people, so if the shoe fits…
Self defense is a kind of violence, I guess.
The air quotes around 'right' are interesting there. Yes, violence against Nazis and Fascists is acceptable. Do you disagree? I thought it was pretty much settled, we did a whole world war about it.
WWII revisionism is back in fashion these days, even in spaces that historically would have been only mildly to the right of center.
"A majority of individuals involved are anarchists, communists, and socialists, although some social democrats also participate in the antifa movement. The name antifa and the logo with two flags representing anarchism and communism are derived from the German antifa movement." [0]
Transcript
INTERVIEWER: Surveillance is becoming more prevalent everywhere. There's an organization called Deflock that's become fairly well-known in activist circles. They take an aggressive approach—counting cameras and maintaining a Discord channel where they discuss potential activities to move against surveillance expansion and stop organizations like Flock. What's your perspective on this organization and their methods?
FLOCK CEO: I see two distinct groups of activists here. There are organizations like the ACLU and the EFF that take an above-board approach to fighting for their viewpoint. We're fortunate to live in a democratic, capitalistic country where we can fight through the courts. I have a lot of respect for those groups because they engage in reasonable debate while following the law.
FLOCK CEO: Unfortunately, there are also what I'd call terroristic organizations like Deflock, whose primary motivation appears to be chaos. They're closer to Antifa than anything else. That's disappointing because I don't want chaos - I value law and order and a society built on safety.
FLOCK CEO: For those groups, I think it's regrettable they haven't chosen a more constructive approach to achieve their goals. They do have the right to their views, but that's why we have a democratically elected process. We're not forcing Flock on anyone. Elected officials understand that communities and families want safety, and Flock is the best way to create safe communities.
INTERVIEWER: Deflock probably wouldn't agree with the "terroristic" label you've applied to them, but...
----
Yeah. "They have a right to their views" buuut also, they are terrorists, and implicitly therefore deserve to have their freedom taken away because of said views. So giving the public a map of flock cameras and organizing to advocate against these being used in our communities is terroristic, I suppose. There's one party here that should be in jail here. Seems like that ought to be the creeps that are filming everyone against their consent, but I guess that makes me a terrorist...
Pointing cameras at people? Law and order
Pointing cameras at cameras? Terrorist organization
Who watches the watchmen? Terrorists
This film is dedicated to the brave freedom fighters of the Mujahideen!
The thing is the billionaires are terrified of US. The point of these surveillance systems isn't to make us safer. Because we're actually pretty safe already. We're not going to be assassinated, kidnapped, or beaten because we pissed someone off.
It's to make people like Garrett Langley feel protected from us.
This is an excellent video documenting some Flock camera vulnerabilities by Benn Jordan, a security hobbyist/researcher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY. It's a bit long, but worth it.
Some disucssion on that one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945960
Probably worth posting some links to the Institute for Justice's "Project on the Fourth Amendment":
https://ij.org/issues/ijs-project-on-the-4th-amendment/
This Project includes work to fight technologies such as Flock's in the courts:
https://ij.org/issues/ijs-project-on-the-4th-amendment/licen...
I've always felt good contributing to IJ and the topic and takes in the posted video are precisely why I do so.
If we're terrorists for marking Flock cameras on a map, we might as well go all the way and start breaking them.
This statement essentially boils down to "The only right way to fight me is in an environment where I expect to win"
That's how you know the DeFlock strategy is effective. They aren't playing the game that the CEO wants to play, they are playing the actual game. The actual game is minimizing the impact of cameras that are now everywhere.
Some individuals may take it upon themselves to vandalize the cameras, which can't be planned via conspiracy (that would be illegal), but those radical individuals can be "set up for success" through information. This strategy of creating an environment where effective vandalism is easy, is also part of the actual game.
I dislike this person and company. That is putting it mildly.
Flock (YC17)
I've been online long enough that when I hear "Flock," I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_(web_browser)
Man everything about this interview is so cringe.
Would have been nice if the interviewer pushed back more than "lol I don't think they would agree". Spineless.
Spineless seems a bit harsh. The interviewee did open with an unveiled threat of legal action against anyone who disagrees with him.
Yep.
Everything about his body language screams, "I'm doing something slimy and I know it, but here, listen to these words spoken authoritatively whilst I wave my hands around and forget about it."
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
I would not do this now, but teenage me would be spray painting every lens. Not to give anyone ideas...
This is inefficient. Some semi-transparent laquer applied to the lens that makes the picture permanently blurred would be much less conspicuous.
I'm honestly tired of all these knuckleheads. They've got a few bucks in their bank accounts and pretend that makes them smarter than everyone else. They're just gaming the system, nothing more, and they have every incentive to keep it alive.
He can shove his cameras deep in his ** as far as I'm concerned.
> They're just gaming the system
The "system" is not hapless or ignorant here. In fact, this company would not exist, if the "system" didn't have specific desires to effectively enslave the entire population.
Who wouldn't want to become a new age digital pharaoh? Wouldn't this be precisely the type of panopticon they would try to create?
Their are documented cases of Flock cameras that can see into private residences. What if one of those cameras recorded an underage person? Would Flock be responsible for collecting and distributing CSAM?
His last name being “Langley” is a bit too on the nose. Like something out of a Pynchon novel.
is it terrorism if it's a corporation who is in terror?
no: terror is strictly about civilians.
Does anyone have a template for a network audit that one could request of a local police department that would disclose access logs for Flock Safety data?
A lot of jurisdictions actually require the data to be public! For example, ctrl-f "download csv" on this page for central LA PD: https://transparency.flocksafety.com/central-la-pd- . Not all jurisdictions require this, but if you can guess the URLs (https://transparency.flocksafety.com/<DEPARTMENT ID>) you can find quite a few, or just Google "YOUR PD flock safety portal". (EDIT: You'll want to regularly download these if you're trying to build a comprehensive record. The PDs I've been monitoring are only required to keep data for 30 days, so the CSVs are just a rolling window cut off at EXACTLY today minus 30 days.)
You can also do FOIA requests directly to departments, like this one: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/novato-296/flock-alprs-cameras-...
Good news is that even the images captured by the cameras is FOIA-able! https://www.404media.co/judge-rules-flock-surveillance-image...
>I like law and order
When it benefits me.
This guy gives all villain vibes you see in futuristic movies, funny how he resembles a young version of “Fletcher” in minority report movie, a movie about mass surveillance to provide a “safer community” to all.
Flock btw isn’t just an ALPR, it is a car finger printing technology, I have seen some videos of police IDing cars with no plates and they knew the owner by using flock cams.
Freedom is slavery
Anyone aware of people doing something like over here in Europe? And how legal/illegal it might be? I'm talking about putting government-operated security cameras on a map, for the general public to be aware of their locations.
The TV series Person of Interest [1] becomes more on point as years go by, even though by now it has been 15 years since its S1. One of the scenes [2] from that series where "terrorist" are shown as being in control over ghoulish CEOs like the one from this posted video.
Whereas most pf the rest of America considers Flock to be a terrorist organization.
I “like” how Overton window (??? I hope I use it right) shifted dramatically in USA.
- “law and order” is “good”, when _de facto_ most of constitution is not being applied for a year and laws or court orders are applied selectively. Not to say that “law and order” is vastly different depending on the size of your bank account;
- “terrorist” now is anything you don’t like, especially if it’s anti establishment. True freedom of speech is now apparently “violence” (and of course this dictatorial (adjacent) government would think that, as it’s biggest danger);
- “antifa” is apparently now a boogeyman, though I’d say he used it correctly as he is (apparently) fascist;
Also it is forced against people, how population can choose otherwise?
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition...There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Someone just had to come up with the goofy name "antifa" instead of just using "anti fascist".
It was originally shortened in German from ”Antifaschistische Aktion” and ”Außerparlamentarische Opposition”. Then that carried over to other languages as a common name. Feel free to go back to the roots! ;)
disregarding the history of the term, you see that even posters on Hacker News Dot Com dispute the accuracy of the term "fascism" as applied to contemporary american politics, so what difference would it make? people who are okay with fascistic politics will not distinguish opposition with a name change.
These wretched wastes of skin that contribute to the surveillance system need to have the full brunt of that same surveillance apparatus turned toward them full time, published for all to see. This should include elected officials that voted for and paid for these systems as well. You don't want a system that allows more anonymous movement? You want that data collected and stored and collated and analyzed without end? Ok, pull down your pants and have yourselves offered up as the first and most prominent ones to be tracked and then see if you change your tune.
Good luck trying to subject them to the same level of scrutiny. They live in places with high walls and armed guards, a lot of them don't even drive themselves if they drive at all. Even when using helicopters or planes their private ownership means a lower level of scrutiny. "The plane" was a big part of how Epstein was able to do what he did. Obviously, these types never step foot on public transit.
Even if hypothetically speaking you could support volunteers to follow them around and film them, I would think the asymmetry of resources would practically make it impossible. It's not about privacy, it's about wealth. Take their wealth away and then they'll actually have to live the way they tell you to. They don't care because they don't live in the world they are creating, you do.
Seems like “terrorists” = citizens standing up for their rights. We aren’t past the point of no return but we are rapidly approaching it. What will it be Americans? Liberty or death?
“If you’ve got nothing to hide, let me profit off your surveillance”
Can we update the title to include the name, Garrett Langley? Everyone should know his name.
These clean-shaven wide-eyed SV types give me the uncanny valley heebie-jeebies. Everything, from their tone of voice, to their appearance, to (most importantly) the way they phrase things... there's an almost AI-generated quality.
Almost certainly a degenerate amphetamine addict and a pedophile.
Winning local elections means having the political power and thus economic power to Deflock your town.
Telling illiberal authoritarians to go fuck themselves is reasonable. But power is still more important than insults.
Our city council voted 5-0 to install more. A unanimous vote which includes democrats who ran on disrupting a council that had the same members for decades.
I swear, every fascist has the same playbook. They use the same phrases, same accusations, same lies, sometimes even same wordings. It is like they have a single hive mind - for which everyone else is the enemy and is subject to destruction or enslaving.
5 months ago;
Source article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2025/09/03/ai-st...
Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45119847
and at the same time:
Pump the Brakes on Your Police Department's Use of Flock Safety
The parent's entire original comment in case anyone is wondering why it was flagged:
> 5 months ago? c'mon OP
Thankfully OP is posting about it again, because I missed it the first time. Thank you OP!
Saw that too.
Bad faith is misleading submission when news is from 5 months ago with previous discussion. Make that clear instead of misleading.
Comment was deleted :(
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That figure is straight from Flok's own press release. There were deep deep methological flaws in the calculation of that figure.
https://archive.is/7iNyQ - this is an excellent piece breaking down the many many flaws in that figure and quotes the 2 academics involved who later said highlighted the issues.
->"“This 'study' rings a cacophony of alarm bells: the closer you look at it, the more it looks like a marketing scheme than data science,” Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me. “Nobody should be repeating the claims until the data can be verified and the conclusions replicated by independent data scientists without a direct tie to the company that stands to benefit."
That's a claim Flock makes. They poison their own well a bit when they then also claim that Deflock are terrorists. One might point out that one claim was made off the cuff while the other is has a white paper detailing why they're making this claim but said white paper has a number of it's own issues. See, unless perhaps you think they're a terrorist news organization: https://www.404media.co/researcher-who-oversaw-flock-surveil... which quotes one of the consulting academic researchers as saying:
>The researcher, Johnny Nhan of Texas Christian University, said that he has pivoted future research on Flock because he found “the information that is collected by the police departments are too varied and incomplete for us to do any type of meaningful statistical analysis on them.”
Well then... let's eliminate any due process and fourth amendment protections, maybe requiring something sensible like "officer suspicion", or maybe just a program of "random" searches.. you know keep everybody on their toes. I also bet that real crimes (whatever that means) goes down...
Just because something works doesn't make it right. Personally, giving up what the law is suppose to protect (individual rights) in the name of the law is something I can only see as a fool's bargain.
>helping police solve 700k real crimes per year.
Have to ask for a citation there. Also, what are "real crimes"? Also, aren't these cameras? How are they tackling these 700k suspects?
Those are statistics given by Flock themselves and are manipulated
That’s a lot of speeding tickets and jwalking, well done flock!
So crime is down?
It actually is hugely down nationwide, but flock probably had nothing to do with that or very little
Says who? Flock?
has anything ever good come out of silicon valley or the wall street? one greedy capitalist after another and you wonder why the world has turn to a shithole! the inequality between the rich and the poor is reaching the level of ambani vs. mumbai slums.
Crafted by Rajat
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