Even though it's become commonplace in the last 20 years, I'm still shocked to see how companies can pretty much ignore the law, do whatever they want, and have everyone involved shielded from any kind of significant consequences.
In situations like this, I think the person at the top of the chain that told employees to perform the illegal installations should be arrested and charged. On top of that, the company should be fined into bankruptcy. If the directors knew about it any companies they're involved with shouldn't be allowed to conduct future business in the municipality (or state).
They were co-operating/conspiring with CBP as an extension of the federal government.
Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense.
Don't think your company could just put up cameras and post the location of LEO and they'd let you get away with something like that.
> Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense.
This sounds like some sort of legal procedures adopted from the USSR.
A bunch of companies seem to be relying on similar federal cover. To me it seems dumb because whatever legal exposure they create will outlast the current administration. It’s impossible to predict who will be running the federal government 3 years from now, and liability does not evaporate much in that time frame.
The next administration could decide to side with localities, and assist prosecutions of the companies and executives involved. Or even pursue their own federal prosecutions.
As an ex-employee of Flock, I can guarantee that this most likely came from the top down. The founder has a vision that isn't just aspirational, but literal, in his eyes, "Flock should help eliminate all crime." Very much Minority Report. He sees Flock as the unsung heroes of the community, and any collateral damage is an acceptable price to pay, despite lip service being paid to ethics:
For example, their "suspicious behavior". Cameras reporting to HOAs and to LE of vehicle behavior that is suspicious or aberrant to their AI (changes in parking behavior and times, for example).
Sharing of data between entities that aren't meant to be sharing (HOAs sending data to LE, for example, when prohibited by the state. Flock's position is "not our job to stop you, even if we know that your state says not to").
A very ... opaque ... "transparency report". In my county alone, there are at least four agencies using Flock that are not listed in their "Agencies using Flock" data.
Confiscate the shares. No compensation. Effectively nationalisation as punishment.
Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke, but the work still gets done.
If you click through to the follow up article, you’ll find that the city covered the cameras with black plastic.
Sometimes low tech solutions work pretty well. And since the cameras are under contract to the city, on city poles, I doubt there’s anything the feds can do.
It is pretty clear to me that many of the things companies do get away with would land regular Joe in jail with high reliability. I think we have to start making CEOs more liable for such things, especially when done on their explicit command.
Not even just regular Joe, a lot of the things large companies get away with would lead to far harsher consequences for small or medium sized ones. Any normal company spying on people's devices at the scale of Facebook, selling dodgy goods on the level Amazon does or ignoring guidelines in general like Uber and AirBnB used to would get absolutely wrecked by the legal system.
The system needs to be way more even when it comes to dealing with individuals and companies of every size possible.
Not just CEOs, make employees liable. Going after the soft targets first will reduce the resources and influence of the harder targets at the executive level.
> On top of that, the company should be fined into bankruptcy.
Fines need to increase with subsequent offenses, otherwise they become just a number in the cost of running business. If the fine is 100k, but the profit from breaking the law is 1M, then it makes more sense to keep breaking the law and keep paying the fine.
Instead the fine should increase every time. The first time it's easy to pay the 100k, but then it rises to 200k (still worth), 400k (not so much worth it), 800k (barely profitable), 1.6M (actual loss) and so on. Of course this only works if the fine keeps increasing faster than the profitability of the crime.
It was a mistake to treat corporations as the legal person responsible for these things. The officers of the corporations should be held legally responsible for breaking the law.
I've always maintained that if a corporation breaks the law, the entire C-suite should be individually charged as if they personally committed the crime. It's their company and their responsibility.
First of all, I think that this instinct to fine-'em, screw-'em, etc. is profoundly authoritarian. It is extremely important for a civil society not only that predictable laws are put into place, but also that predictable enforcement of those laws exist. I jaywalk almost every day. I understand that if a cop sees me jaywalk, he will fine me. I also understand that if the cop wants to put me in jail for jaywalking, he cannot do that, and the law would be on my side. On my side, me, the offender.
The reason is that the law not only specifies what people should do what is allowed and isn't allowed, but also what the penalties are for breaking the law. A law stating "People are required to do X" or "People are forbidden from doing Y", without any penalties specified is not worth the paper it is written on and cannot be enforced in any way (at least that's how it works in my jurisdiction, Romania).
And that is all very well, and how it should be, in a law-based state.
Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government.
"The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order. In much simpler terms, citizens and corporations are only required to follow legal orders and are not required to follow illegal orders, given by the executive. Who decides what is legal? The judiciary.
This is what it means to live in a society with a separation of powers.
> The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation.
A cease-and-desist by the executive is not a law. The corporation's opinion is that the contract termination is illegal. And therefore that the cease-and-desist is illegal. Perhaps they're right. Perhaps they're wrong. But they have the right to bring the thing to trail.
"Well maybe they have the right to bring the thing to trail, but until the trail is ruled in their case, they should follow the orders of the executive.", I hear the objection.
Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point.
"So the executive cannot do anything to get those cameras down until the trail is solved?"
Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter.
Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.
> “Flock unlawfully made data collected within Evanston and the State of Illinois available to federal agencies,” Ruggie wrote, referencing the findings of Giannoulias’ audit. “This is not a procedural error; it is an intentional and unauthorized disclosure of protected data… Let it be absolutely clear: this breach is material, intentional, and cannot be cured. The City will not entertain remediation efforts or renegotiation.” [0]
I can't seem to access the audit in question [1] and there are connected articles that seem to also be talking about forest park police using camera readers.
Whatever the case, there seems to be reasonable doubt in the trust in Flock Safety. I don't understand how an illegal termination of contract would result in anything other than Evanston having to pay out the remaining fees and maybe a cancellation fee.
> It is extremely important for a civil society not only that predictable laws are put into place, but also that predictable enforcement of those laws exist.
At the moment, this doesn't exist either. Particularly on the low end of offenses, selective enforcement and racial profiling run rampant, and not just in the US.
Any decent developed society takes laws that have gone outdated off the books entirely - the exceptions are the US and the UK, about the only nations in the world that didn't have at least one revolution, war, putsch or peaceful regime change that was used to reboot the entire legal system from scratch and incorporate decades if not centuries of progress.
You don't deserve the down votes you're getting for this clearly thoughtful comment.
You're wrong in a number of ways, and to me it reads like an unintentionally shallow take, built up more from cliches over deeper understanding. But it's still well above average or engagement and insight of the average HN comment, thank you for writing it.
> First of all, I think that this instinct to fine-'em, screw-'em, etc. is profoundly authoritarian.
It's not authoritarian, simply because when it's the citizens angry about some group acting against their interests, who've elected to ignore a reasonable and lawful order from the operations group of their elected officials. It might be dangerous, or needlessly hostile, or the result of toxic rage. But it's not authoritarian.
> Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government.
Except, that's exactly what they are doing. Flock is a privatized spy agency, who's been told by a city and it's population to "go away" They did, but then without explaining their actions, they reinstalled spy equipment. If it was as simple as not wanting to be ousted from a contract, there's contract law. They can collect the full amount, plus any damages without reinstalling the spy equipment they were already caught using to violate state law. Given they've already proven they're willing to violate state law, what would you say the operations branch *should* do? Roll over and say, you got us, keep spying on our citizens against their interests!
> "The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order.
This is technically true as in accurate, but it's not applicable to this story. This private company had a contract with the city, they violated the law to the detriment of the people while exercising the benefits provided by that contract. That's reason enough for the city to terminate the contract and demand the other side to comply and relinquish the previously granted contract benefits.
While originally they seemed to be complying, but then reversed course and caused more damage to the city. This is clearly (to me) bad faith behavior, and deserving of additional punishment, the other comments you are chastising, with takes that are charitably described as shallow, are only enumerating common punishments they they feel would compell pro-social behavior from CEOs and companies. Two groups that have proven to be very resistant to acting in a pro-social way.
> Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point.
You're simply wrong here. The only loss this company can show, is the contractual payments. The invasion of privacy and loss of safety felt by the citizens can't be cured by more money as easily as the losses the private spying company might incure. Thus while waiting for the court judgment, the company should be the party to bear the restraint.
Additionally they can't violate state laws to make money. Which they did and are still doing. Their agreement with the federal government I assume is contract and payment based, and they weren't served with a warrant to reinstall the cameras.
> Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter.
The operations side of the government can also ask and make demands. And if Flock cared about their public image they would comply eagerly. If they cared about protecting what the citizens wanted, they would comply eagerly. If they didn't want to be the bad guys in the story, they would comply eagerly. Contacts can be amended through the agreements of both sides. Flock might have had a chance to pretend they were acting in good faith, but reinstalling the spy cameras they removed without a clear public explanation absolved them of any good faith.
> Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.
The system was built to serve the needs and desires of the people who live within the government and society. No matter what you or Flock feel like contract law should let them get away with, is irrelevant to if the system is working correctly. Flock is acting outside the interest of the society they're spying on. Rules lawyering doesn't mean that the system is working.
If government fails to prosecute crime then laws are pointless, and in the west we have had a significant swing, especially in high population centres, towards electing governments and officials that refuse to prosecute crimes.
That is because we are moving away from Democracy and rule of law and towards Feudalism and aristocracy. In such a system, the law is not blind but it is applied depending on the accused social status.
Feudalism is not a good goverment system to produce wealth nor well-being. It is very good at concentrating the diminishing wealth in a few hands, thou.
That's Silicon Valley and tech's whole thing: move fast and break things (the law). Uber, Spotify, OpenAI: all began by flouting laws and were rewarded. And of course now we have a convicted felon of fraud as President doing his best to remove any chance of prosecuting fraud. This whole site is built on people wanting to break laws.
Well, if we consider it fine for people to commit crimes like shoplift, rob, or assault people it seems fairly normal to permit groups of people to violate the law too.
Lots of fans of Luigi Mangione and this hasn't directly killed anyone yet.
I'd say it's just a general tolerance to the idea that the rules we have are baroque and anything goes when trying to reach your aims. This seems fairly cross politically unifying.
Those who want the law obeyed are kind of rare. Most are happy to have the law violated to hurt their political opponents. Then they feel surprisingly aggrieved to have same strategy played against them.
The difference is that people are fans of Luigi Mangione because he enforced a punishment for what people feel should be illegal. You're trying to paint vigilante justice with the same brush as lawlessness, when in fact it's the opposite.
One is breaking the law to punish someone that the law failed to, the other is breaking the law to avoid punishment.
The CEO caused vast death and suffering with the policies he enacted in the name of profit, yet the law didn't touch him. Enforcing what the people think should be enforced isn't the same as enforcing what the people think shouldn't be enforced (mass surveillance). It is, in fact, the opposite.
There is a larger issue that other commenters are missing:
> The city has paid the first two years of that extension but would still owe $145,500 for the final three years if the contract is upheld. The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation.
The city is trying to terminate a contract with Flock. Under that contract, the city agreed to pay Flock for three more years of service. Flock maintains that the city doesn't have the right to nullify the contract. The linked article says almost nothing about the contract dispute, but another article [1] has some details.
I don't know whether the city is correct about its power to terminate the contract, or whether instead Flock is correct. Either way, I wonder whether Flock is re-installing the cameras out of fear that, if it doesn't, it will be voiding its right to future payment under the contract.
> I don't know whether the city is correct about its power to terminate the contract
They were unambiguously violating state law intended to prevent this exact scenario when they were sharing the data with the federal government. Some lawyer is going to be having a bad year and a black mark on their resume if they didn't have a statutory breach clause in the contract with a city government and even if such a clause doesn't exist there is an extremely strong case for it regardless.
They have self-inflicted a business disaster upon themselves for doing that in a state like Illinois. In the event this holds up under that legal theory every municipality in the state has a case to dump them, to say nothing of getting new contracts there and in any place that has the same values.
What you're missing is they can get that money without putting the cameras back up. That's what you do when a customer doesn't want your service/product but they still have an active contract.
Yep, paying out the remaining value of the contract is generally the default-court acceptable manner to terminate a contract. And it's probably in there as a clause.
However, if Flock was really being evil, they could argue in court they are losing on the value of spying on the American populace.
"Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a 'pilot program' against state law" they are already violating state law, aren't they?
The core of the debate is that Flock has "fixed the issue", and hence doesn't think the contract should be escapable, the services provided today are ostensibly legal. Definitely a question for lawyers on how the exact terms shake out, if the city has an out or if Flock met their obligations by fixing the access issue.
If what they did was illegal and against city law then the contract with flock is not binding anyway. A bookie can't force you via "the legal system" to pay him back for a bet you made since gambling is illegal. However, he has the option to hit your knee cap with a ball peen hammer until you pay up, also not legal, but effective. Not sure if Flock has similar remedies.
> This decision came after Illinois Secretary of State [...] discovered that Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a “pilot program” against state law, and after the RoundTable reported in June that out-of-state law enforcement agencies were able to search Flock’s data for assistance in immigration cases.
This illustrates the textbook argument for why mass surveillance is bad: these tools can quickly end up in the wrong hands.
The people pitching for said surveillance are always the wrong hands if they're from the government. "We here from the government, we're here to help" are very scary words, and be careful if you take them up on the offer
I feel as if ALPRs are already a fact of life. Not thrilled about it, but that’s sort of what license plates are for (ALPRs are really just automated cop eyeballs).
The most disturbing thing, is the behavior of the company. It’s pretty clear that they have a separate contract with the feds, and that contract is the one they care about more.
It’s also an illustration of the faustian bargain that customers make, when establishing these types of contracts. That goes for regular customers, like consumers of social media, SaaS, or data storage apps; not just municipalities, running ALPRs and redlight cameras. It’s like a roach motel; your data checks in, but doesn’t check out. Camel’s nose, and all that.
Basically, all of SV’s business, is about gathering data. That’s why my solitaire apps keep trying to get me to sign onto public challenges and leaderboards.
As lots of folks here have indicated, this behavior will only be changed, by truly holding corporations and corporate directors (and maybe also shareholders) accountable. That’s pretty difficult, in practice. I guess it shouldn’t be easy, as we’d have endless frivolous litigation, but it shouldn’t be impossible, either.
You're right, of course, but the real issue is the lack of corporate accountability, and data stewardship. Since HN has a lot of folks that really don't want people talking about corporate accountability, the discussions are pretty much guaranteed to devolve into macguffins.
Case in point: notice how fast this discussion will dive off the front page. Happens quite frequently, when the topic is one that makes certain folks uncomfortable.
I don’t think that’s the current desired use either. (What they were intended for 120 years ago, doesn’t seem super important though). Setting aside the concerns that dominate all political discussion today on this topic amongst the 31% of voters who voted for Harris (that’s turnout * popular vote), these things are used every day to solve actual crimes. For instance, recently in my state, some dude murdered a woman and then hopped in his car and was caught because of an ALPR about an hour and a half away from the scene of the crime. When the police cornered him, he fired on them repeatedly. If it was not for ALPRs that guy would probably still be on the loose.
Having these keep data for a very short amount of time is a reasonable idea. I don’t think most reasonable people, including law-enforcement really thinks it would be ideal to build a permanent database of everywhere everybody goes. If anyone is convinced that is what they want, I encourage you to try speaking to someone outside your own political party instead of only operating in a social media echo chamber because I think you’ll be surprised how much real people don’t have cartoon villain ambitions.
Flock is so much more than an ALPR, that'd be one thing. They recognize vehicles based on all the metadata you'd expect, color, etc. But they also look at vehicle panels that are a different color, collision damage, bumper stickers and window decals, roof racks, tow hitches, wheels and rims to identify a vehicle.
And then they'll happily run their AI over that knowledge and based on their prompt, if the vehicle is "behaving suspiciously", then they'll ping law enforcement directly and proactively.
I think there is probably a core difference between recording the position of any plate which is wanted pertaining to a crime and recording the position of every plate. I have zero issue with Flock finding suspect plates, but the fact some journalists were able to get logs of where their cars were indicates it is far more overbroad of collection than an automated cop's eyeballs.
Neat. There's only one city in my state that has these cameras. Its the wealthy blue city of Jackson Hole [1] that can't manage to fix potholes. I only pass through that place when taking someone to the airport. Curious if they were able to read my previous military plate which changes number every 5 years. Now I want to get one of these things to play with to see how it interprets my plate. I think I can see a flock on a pole in the live stream.
Same in mine very large suburb. Pretty obvious why they are putting them in Home Depot parking lots too given the amount of shoplifting we've gone through the last few years.
I think you can file a CCPA request to demand that they never store your data at all. Yes, that would be an utter pain in the ass for them, if so. And yet, that's their problem, not yours.
I'm basically in the same boat. There is no practical way for me to avoid having my picture taken 6 or more times every single day. I flip the camera off each and every time I drive/walk by it. It's infuriating.
No that’s vandalism, what you do is get a nice printout of the exact view the camera has and just plop it in front of the thing, like a for sale sign or something. Tape if you have to.
Yes. Absolutely. We incrementally pushed society to this point by incrementally approving more and more surveillance and government intervention across a myriad of issue until it ultimately built up the institutions and precedents and honed the workflows that we're now seeing used for stuff that even the stupid are at least kinda uneasy about.
They'd be worth something to a handful of reasonably competent hackers. There's no way these things are actually secure, they're IOT devices after all.
The best you can get is https://deflock.me/map, which is crowd-sourced, and therefore both incomplete and inaccurate.
Cities tend to resist public records requests for camera locations.
But Flock is currently in ~5,000 communities around the country. They have managed to spread very quickly, and very quietly, and the public has only become aware of it relatively recently.
There is also a good site at https://eyesonflock.com/ that parses data from the transparency pages that some places publish.
Ex Flock employee - they do not. Your best bet for determining Flock usage is to ask the agency directly and/or look at council meeting minutes, etc.
In my county, multiple law enforcement agencies are not on Flock's transparency portal, despite posting fairly regularly on FB about "responding to a Flock hit on a vehicle".
They installed some here at a Home Depot parking lot right when the ice raids started. It was weird that only the home deport owned portion of the parking lot got them which lead to some investigation into who put them up and sure enough flock has a contract with HD.
Home Depot has had an incredibly aggressive retail theft problem for about half a decade now across virtually every market.
Their response of putting 10 ALPRs in each store's parking lot and locking up everything seems rational based upon what I've seen. There's something about stealing Milwaukee tools that gets certain groups of people very excited. They even have some tool manufacturers designing activation at checkout mechanisms to discourage theft.
I have a hard time believing this stuff is making them any money or is a secret government arrangement. It seems purely about loss prevention in the case of HD. They have been an easy target up until recently.
Home Depot seems like the one compelling win I've seen so far regarding these cameras. You'd have to be pretty crazy to try and steal tools these days. The speed with which law enforcement can react to these signals is incredible. I don't necessarily like the implications for other things but it does make shopping in certain retail environments feel much safer.
So, cameras in the HD and Apple Store parking lots seem acceptable to me based upon the risk these businesses endure. Cameras in public I don't like, but without them the ones in private wouldn't be able to accomplish as much (I.e., interception of felony retail theft suspects while they still have all of the evidence on them).
So, if I understand you correctly, Home Depot was actively collaborating with ICE to get their best customer lures arrested? How the fuck does that make sense?!
>Would be particularly interesting to see where they are in blue states
The answer is going to be "the snooty inner ring suburbs and wealthy rural-ish commuter communities that already had overstaffed PDs harassing teenagers"
>>Would be particularly interesting to see where they are in blue states
>The answer is going to be "the snooty inner ring suburbs and wealthy rural-ish commuter communities that already had overstaffed PDs harassing teenagers"
TFA is about Evanston, IL[0] which is in Cook County[1] and abuts the city of Chicago.
It is relatively wealthy, but is certainly not a "rural-ish commuter community," in fact it's not suburban either.
Community note: it is my understanding, based on teardowns that I've found online, that Flock cameras should be assumed to contain a cellular modem and at least one GPS receiver. At least some have been found to contain an addition, obfuscated GPS receiver.
So Fun facts about digital cameras like these: Strong infrared leds at night blind them completely. They sometimes even switch into daymode and become useless at night. Also, lasers are usually not enough to destroy the ccd sensor but only cause small dots to appear[0]. But a Spraycan on a stick can be very effective and of course a silenced airgun for those hard to reach places can be very effective.
But airguns are usually much less regulated, much quieter and easier to supress and the legal liability for firing an airgun somewhere vs a firearm is usually much different. And they usually have enough power for that purpose without risking too much colleteral damage.
They can and do identify vehicles based on a myriad of other factors. Paint wear, dents, roof racks, bumper stickers, and more.
There's currently a suit filed against them for 4A violations, with supporting case law. I'm also investigating possibility of a federal suit or suit against my municipality for the same. Previous case law has ruled cell phone searches with historical data are a 4A violation and illegal without a warrant.
Documenting the downfall isn't enough. What are people going to do about it? Get involved with your local government. Go to city counsel meetings. Join local boards. This is one city that is doing the right thing but more cities could do the right thing if people showed up and demanded this type of invasive blanket search is blocked. We slipped slowly into this but we can claw it back by just showing up.
> This decision came after Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias discovered that Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a “pilot program” against state law, and after the RoundTable reported in June that out-of-state law enforcement agencies were able to search Flock’s data for assistance in immigration cases.
Well it's obvious then that if it's helping to deport illegals, then keep going!
Would destroying the cameras be a legitimate act of social disobedience, considering that the company shows a total defiance and lack of respect for the law and society? I would argue it is.
Is that a bad thing? I would imagine the only people who don't like this are criminals. But why are so many seemingly law-abiding citizens here up in arms about it?
> I would imagine the only people who don't like this are criminals
The problem is that the system doesn't only work on criminals, there's rarely enough oversight to prevent abuse, and it's only going to get more invasive. There's been case after case where cops use it to stalk their ex-girlfriends/ex-wives or similar, for example: https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article29105...
They collect data that allows tracking the movement and locations of individuals to a reasonably high degree of fidelity. Governments cannot be trusted to protect this data or to use it legally and responsibly.
A ton of people hold some of these core beliefs, which are subjective (meaning not exactly provable/disprovable) and aren’t subject to critical reevaluation:
• the federal government cannot be trusted when the president belongs to the other “team” regardless of whether the election was fair
• all decision makers in such a government are seeking a fascist and racist agenda that is a threat to all of us, and they are also seeking to harm anyone who even uses their First Amendment right to speak against them.
• therefore, they cannot be allowed to enforce immigration laws at all because we cannot trust them to not make any mistakes/break any rules
• the dangers of those rules being broken outweighs any dangers posed by criminals who happen to be undocumented immigrants.
• also as a result they cannot be trusted with any data that could aid in enforcement of laws or aid them in pursuing their political enemies.
This will escalate - every new car on the road comes with a bevy of cheap cameras integrated - I get 360 degree views when backing up from my 2018 Chevy Bolt. It's really only a matter of time before license plate scanning computers get integrated - there's already a cellular modem integrated into the vehicle - I don't use or pay for that feature, but it's an opportunity.
This will escalate - every new car on the road comes with a bevy of cheap cameras integrated
Back when DOGE was making headlines and a certain car salesman was using the Oval Office as daycare for his kid, there were a people on HN and elsewhere noting that every Tesla could easily be turned into a roving real-time government surveillance unit.
There's already a full cottage market of ALPR-on-cellphone applications. They can just mount a cellphone on the windshield and it's gonna run ALPR all day every day.
Same thing with fingerprint capture - they've now just got mobile apps to take a picture of your hands and submit for print processing.
I unplugged the cellular modem from my car and I suggest you do the same. These days it is basically impossible to buy a car without one, and if carmakers don't listen, we have to take matters into our own hands.
Unfortunately, in addition to being dangerous to others, this approach pretty much always comes with increased exposure to prosecution and increased penalties.
The optimal approach seems to be vandalism - spray painting over the front of the cameras, placing other objects to block their view, or permanently blinding them with lasers. All of these things are still illegal and would likely subject you to the legal system, but they at least require on-site intervention to remedy and keep the actor out of prison (but maybe not jail).
The least risky approach I've found is also the least effective - they're often on public property, so place _yourself_ in front of them. It takes them out of commission for a while and should be legal. Coordinated action would likely get the attention of Flock, law enforcement, and the media. Unfortunately, even that could be construed as "interfering with law enforcement operations" or similar, and/or conspiracy if you're organizing or participating in mass resistance.
If the federal government decides they want to step in on Flock's behalf, they could put you under the jail. :\
My family is from Evanston and I'm 100% behind this. Evanston isn't a town where the people want mass tech surveillance and I guarantee you knowing my cousins and shit that if you fuck around the wrong way you'll learn the meaning of,
"Move fast, break things" seems to me that is also the Trump admin's MO at the sacrifice of democracy. The SV mantra has moved up into politics and is causing permanent damage. If rules aren't enforced why would anyone follow them?
Aside the topic, but I wonder how HN, as a community, and as a moderation team, weighs this on the intellectual curiosity vs primarily politics scale.
This seems politics to me. Very important politics that a lot of people in tech have a special interest for, but politics nonetheless, and much more pressing topics seem to be absent through the on-topic rule.
I tend to dislike it when purely political posts show up here, but I appreciate the ones that intersect with technology, particularly ones that relate to privacy issues.
This does not seem to be a prevalent opinion on here, and I was trying to be diplomatic, but I guess it still comes out as "why is it OK to post / comment politics here if it's a less contentious topic many people on HN care about, but I regularly get downvoted for even relating information to my association with a demographic group forcefully enlisted to the front of the culture war".
Even though it's become commonplace in the last 20 years, I'm still shocked to see how companies can pretty much ignore the law, do whatever they want, and have everyone involved shielded from any kind of significant consequences.
In situations like this, I think the person at the top of the chain that told employees to perform the illegal installations should be arrested and charged. On top of that, the company should be fined into bankruptcy. If the directors knew about it any companies they're involved with shouldn't be allowed to conduct future business in the municipality (or state).
They were co-operating/conspiring with CBP as an extension of the federal government.
Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense.
Don't think your company could just put up cameras and post the location of LEO and they'd let you get away with something like that.
> Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense.
This sounds like some sort of legal procedures adopted from the USSR.
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A bunch of companies seem to be relying on similar federal cover. To me it seems dumb because whatever legal exposure they create will outlast the current administration. It’s impossible to predict who will be running the federal government 3 years from now, and liability does not evaporate much in that time frame.
The next administration could decide to side with localities, and assist prosecutions of the companies and executives involved. Or even pursue their own federal prosecutions.
Do you have a source for their cooperation with CBP? I think that would make this an even bigger story.
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> Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court
The keep saying this and losing in court. I don’t have much respect left for these bootlickers who won’t fight.
As an ex-employee of Flock, I can guarantee that this most likely came from the top down. The founder has a vision that isn't just aspirational, but literal, in his eyes, "Flock should help eliminate all crime." Very much Minority Report. He sees Flock as the unsung heroes of the community, and any collateral damage is an acceptable price to pay, despite lip service being paid to ethics:
For example, their "suspicious behavior". Cameras reporting to HOAs and to LE of vehicle behavior that is suspicious or aberrant to their AI (changes in parking behavior and times, for example).
Sharing of data between entities that aren't meant to be sharing (HOAs sending data to LE, for example, when prohibited by the state. Flock's position is "not our job to stop you, even if we know that your state says not to").
A very ... opaque ... "transparency report". In my county alone, there are at least four agencies using Flock that are not listed in their "Agencies using Flock" data.
Why would you work for such a fucked up dystopian Orwellian corporation?
Appreciate any other insider details you have to share.
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Confiscate the shares. No compensation. Effectively nationalisation as punishment.
Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke, but the work still gets done.
> Confiscate the shares. No compensation
This is better than corporate death penalties but still more complicated than fines. Massive fines are the answer.
> Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke
So do fines and bankruptcy. CEO won’t go to jail, but they’ll spend the rest of their lives fighting shareholder lawsuits. Feed them to the wolves.
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If corporations are people then they can be taken into custody.
If you click through to the follow up article, you’ll find that the city covered the cameras with black plastic.
Sometimes low tech solutions work pretty well. And since the cameras are under contract to the city, on city poles, I doubt there’s anything the feds can do.
And here I was about to post this completely unrelated link: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Thermite
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It is pretty clear to me that many of the things companies do get away with would land regular Joe in jail with high reliability. I think we have to start making CEOs more liable for such things, especially when done on their explicit command.
Not even just regular Joe, a lot of the things large companies get away with would lead to far harsher consequences for small or medium sized ones. Any normal company spying on people's devices at the scale of Facebook, selling dodgy goods on the level Amazon does or ignoring guidelines in general like Uber and AirBnB used to would get absolutely wrecked by the legal system.
The system needs to be way more even when it comes to dealing with individuals and companies of every size possible.
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And who is gonna lobby/s the government to do so? Same companies / CEOs that buy the government in a first place
Not just CEOs, make employees liable. Going after the soft targets first will reduce the resources and influence of the harder targets at the executive level.
> On top of that, the company should be fined into bankruptcy.
Fines need to increase with subsequent offenses, otherwise they become just a number in the cost of running business. If the fine is 100k, but the profit from breaking the law is 1M, then it makes more sense to keep breaking the law and keep paying the fine.
Instead the fine should increase every time. The first time it's easy to pay the 100k, but then it rises to 200k (still worth), 400k (not so much worth it), 800k (barely profitable), 1.6M (actual loss) and so on. Of course this only works if the fine keeps increasing faster than the profitability of the crime.
It was a mistake to treat corporations as the legal person responsible for these things. The officers of the corporations should be held legally responsible for breaking the law.
I've always maintained that if a corporation breaks the law, the entire C-suite should be individually charged as if they personally committed the crime. It's their company and their responsibility.
First of all, I think that this instinct to fine-'em, screw-'em, etc. is profoundly authoritarian. It is extremely important for a civil society not only that predictable laws are put into place, but also that predictable enforcement of those laws exist. I jaywalk almost every day. I understand that if a cop sees me jaywalk, he will fine me. I also understand that if the cop wants to put me in jail for jaywalking, he cannot do that, and the law would be on my side. On my side, me, the offender.
The reason is that the law not only specifies what people should do what is allowed and isn't allowed, but also what the penalties are for breaking the law. A law stating "People are required to do X" or "People are forbidden from doing Y", without any penalties specified is not worth the paper it is written on and cannot be enforced in any way (at least that's how it works in my jurisdiction, Romania).
And that is all very well, and how it should be, in a law-based state.
Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government.
"The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order. In much simpler terms, citizens and corporations are only required to follow legal orders and are not required to follow illegal orders, given by the executive. Who decides what is legal? The judiciary.
This is what it means to live in a society with a separation of powers.
> The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation.
A cease-and-desist by the executive is not a law. The corporation's opinion is that the contract termination is illegal. And therefore that the cease-and-desist is illegal. Perhaps they're right. Perhaps they're wrong. But they have the right to bring the thing to trail.
"Well maybe they have the right to bring the thing to trail, but until the trail is ruled in their case, they should follow the orders of the executive.", I hear the objection.
Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point.
"So the executive cannot do anything to get those cameras down until the trail is solved?"
Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter.
Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.
> “Flock unlawfully made data collected within Evanston and the State of Illinois available to federal agencies,” Ruggie wrote, referencing the findings of Giannoulias’ audit. “This is not a procedural error; it is an intentional and unauthorized disclosure of protected data… Let it be absolutely clear: this breach is material, intentional, and cannot be cured. The City will not entertain remediation efforts or renegotiation.” [0]
I can't seem to access the audit in question [1] and there are connected articles that seem to also be talking about forest park police using camera readers. Whatever the case, there seems to be reasonable doubt in the trust in Flock Safety. I don't understand how an illegal termination of contract would result in anything other than Evanston having to pay out the remaining fees and maybe a cancellation fee.
[0] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/28/flock-challenges-c...
[1] https://www.ilsos.gov/news/2025/august-25-2025-giannoulias-a...
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> It is extremely important for a civil society not only that predictable laws are put into place, but also that predictable enforcement of those laws exist.
At the moment, this doesn't exist either. Particularly on the low end of offenses, selective enforcement and racial profiling run rampant, and not just in the US.
Any decent developed society takes laws that have gone outdated off the books entirely - the exceptions are the US and the UK, about the only nations in the world that didn't have at least one revolution, war, putsch or peaceful regime change that was used to reboot the entire legal system from scratch and incorporate decades if not centuries of progress.
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You don't deserve the down votes you're getting for this clearly thoughtful comment.
You're wrong in a number of ways, and to me it reads like an unintentionally shallow take, built up more from cliches over deeper understanding. But it's still well above average or engagement and insight of the average HN comment, thank you for writing it.
> First of all, I think that this instinct to fine-'em, screw-'em, etc. is profoundly authoritarian.
It's not authoritarian, simply because when it's the citizens angry about some group acting against their interests, who've elected to ignore a reasonable and lawful order from the operations group of their elected officials. It might be dangerous, or needlessly hostile, or the result of toxic rage. But it's not authoritarian.
> Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government.
Except, that's exactly what they are doing. Flock is a privatized spy agency, who's been told by a city and it's population to "go away" They did, but then without explaining their actions, they reinstalled spy equipment. If it was as simple as not wanting to be ousted from a contract, there's contract law. They can collect the full amount, plus any damages without reinstalling the spy equipment they were already caught using to violate state law. Given they've already proven they're willing to violate state law, what would you say the operations branch *should* do? Roll over and say, you got us, keep spying on our citizens against their interests!
> "The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order.
This is technically true as in accurate, but it's not applicable to this story. This private company had a contract with the city, they violated the law to the detriment of the people while exercising the benefits provided by that contract. That's reason enough for the city to terminate the contract and demand the other side to comply and relinquish the previously granted contract benefits.
While originally they seemed to be complying, but then reversed course and caused more damage to the city. This is clearly (to me) bad faith behavior, and deserving of additional punishment, the other comments you are chastising, with takes that are charitably described as shallow, are only enumerating common punishments they they feel would compell pro-social behavior from CEOs and companies. Two groups that have proven to be very resistant to acting in a pro-social way.
> Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point.
You're simply wrong here. The only loss this company can show, is the contractual payments. The invasion of privacy and loss of safety felt by the citizens can't be cured by more money as easily as the losses the private spying company might incure. Thus while waiting for the court judgment, the company should be the party to bear the restraint.
Additionally they can't violate state laws to make money. Which they did and are still doing. Their agreement with the federal government I assume is contract and payment based, and they weren't served with a warrant to reinstall the cameras.
> Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter.
The operations side of the government can also ask and make demands. And if Flock cared about their public image they would comply eagerly. If they cared about protecting what the citizens wanted, they would comply eagerly. If they didn't want to be the bad guys in the story, they would comply eagerly. Contacts can be amended through the agreements of both sides. Flock might have had a chance to pretend they were acting in good faith, but reinstalling the spy cameras they removed without a clear public explanation absolved them of any good faith.
> Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.
The system was built to serve the needs and desires of the people who live within the government and society. No matter what you or Flock feel like contract law should let them get away with, is irrelevant to if the system is working correctly. Flock is acting outside the interest of the society they're spying on. Rules lawyering doesn't mean that the system is working.
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If government fails to prosecute crime then laws are pointless, and in the west we have had a significant swing, especially in high population centres, towards electing governments and officials that refuse to prosecute crimes.
That is because we are moving away from Democracy and rule of law and towards Feudalism and aristocracy. In such a system, the law is not blind but it is applied depending on the accused social status.
Feudalism is not a good goverment system to produce wealth nor well-being. It is very good at concentrating the diminishing wealth in a few hands, thou.
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That's Silicon Valley and tech's whole thing: move fast and break things (the law). Uber, Spotify, OpenAI: all began by flouting laws and were rewarded. And of course now we have a convicted felon of fraud as President doing his best to remove any chance of prosecuting fraud. This whole site is built on people wanting to break laws.
Well, if we consider it fine for people to commit crimes like shoplift, rob, or assault people it seems fairly normal to permit groups of people to violate the law too.
Lots of fans of Luigi Mangione and this hasn't directly killed anyone yet.
I'd say it's just a general tolerance to the idea that the rules we have are baroque and anything goes when trying to reach your aims. This seems fairly cross politically unifying.
Those who want the law obeyed are kind of rare. Most are happy to have the law violated to hurt their political opponents. Then they feel surprisingly aggrieved to have same strategy played against them.
The difference is that people are fans of Luigi Mangione because he enforced a punishment for what people feel should be illegal. You're trying to paint vigilante justice with the same brush as lawlessness, when in fact it's the opposite.
One is breaking the law to punish someone that the law failed to, the other is breaking the law to avoid punishment.
The CEO caused vast death and suffering with the policies he enacted in the name of profit, yet the law didn't touch him. Enforcing what the people think should be enforced isn't the same as enforcing what the people think shouldn't be enforced (mass surveillance). It is, in fact, the opposite.
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> Most are happy to have the law violated to hurt their political opponents.
Way to make me feel like an outcast.
> Lots of fans of Luigi Mangione and this hasn't directly killed anyone yet.
There are also fans of Charles Manson, that doesn't mean we should automatically excuse any bad behavior that falls short of his.
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There is a larger issue that other commenters are missing:
> The city has paid the first two years of that extension but would still owe $145,500 for the final three years if the contract is upheld. The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation.
The city is trying to terminate a contract with Flock. Under that contract, the city agreed to pay Flock for three more years of service. Flock maintains that the city doesn't have the right to nullify the contract. The linked article says almost nothing about the contract dispute, but another article [1] has some details.
I don't know whether the city is correct about its power to terminate the contract, or whether instead Flock is correct. Either way, I wonder whether Flock is re-installing the cameras out of fear that, if it doesn't, it will be voiding its right to future payment under the contract.
[1] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/28/flock-challenges-c...
> I don't know whether the city is correct about its power to terminate the contract
They were unambiguously violating state law intended to prevent this exact scenario when they were sharing the data with the federal government. Some lawyer is going to be having a bad year and a black mark on their resume if they didn't have a statutory breach clause in the contract with a city government and even if such a clause doesn't exist there is an extremely strong case for it regardless.
They have self-inflicted a business disaster upon themselves for doing that in a state like Illinois. In the event this holds up under that legal theory every municipality in the state has a case to dump them, to say nothing of getting new contracts there and in any place that has the same values.
> I wonder whether Flock is re-installing the cameras out of fear that
They are already being accused of breach and the city ordered them to remove them. Reinstalling devices out of "fear" is not a reasonable response.
What you're missing is they can get that money without putting the cameras back up. That's what you do when a customer doesn't want your service/product but they still have an active contract.
Yep, paying out the remaining value of the contract is generally the default-court acceptable manner to terminate a contract. And it's probably in there as a clause.
However, if Flock was really being evil, they could argue in court they are losing on the value of spying on the American populace.
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"Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a 'pilot program' against state law" they are already violating state law, aren't they?
Company fears not being paid, has no fear of committing a crime.
I would think the commission of state crimes would have an impact on the contract. If the city does nothing they would be an accessory to those crimes
The core of the debate is that Flock has "fixed the issue", and hence doesn't think the contract should be escapable, the services provided today are ostensibly legal. Definitely a question for lawyers on how the exact terms shake out, if the city has an out or if Flock met their obligations by fixing the access issue.
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If what they did was illegal and against city law then the contract with flock is not binding anyway. A bookie can't force you via "the legal system" to pay him back for a bet you made since gambling is illegal. However, he has the option to hit your knee cap with a ball peen hammer until you pay up, also not legal, but effective. Not sure if Flock has similar remedies.
> This decision came after Illinois Secretary of State [...] discovered that Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a “pilot program” against state law, and after the RoundTable reported in June that out-of-state law enforcement agencies were able to search Flock’s data for assistance in immigration cases.
This illustrates the textbook argument for why mass surveillance is bad: these tools can quickly end up in the wrong hands.
Play silly games, win silly prizes.
> these tools can quickly end up in the wrong hands.
With respect, they ALWAYS end up in the wrong hands.
The people pitching for said surveillance are always the wrong hands if they're from the government. "We here from the government, we're here to help" are very scary words, and be careful if you take them up on the offer
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I feel as if ALPRs are already a fact of life. Not thrilled about it, but that’s sort of what license plates are for (ALPRs are really just automated cop eyeballs).
The most disturbing thing, is the behavior of the company. It’s pretty clear that they have a separate contract with the feds, and that contract is the one they care about more.
It’s also an illustration of the faustian bargain that customers make, when establishing these types of contracts. That goes for regular customers, like consumers of social media, SaaS, or data storage apps; not just municipalities, running ALPRs and redlight cameras. It’s like a roach motel; your data checks in, but doesn’t check out. Camel’s nose, and all that.
Basically, all of SV’s business, is about gathering data. That’s why my solitaire apps keep trying to get me to sign onto public challenges and leaderboards.
As lots of folks here have indicated, this behavior will only be changed, by truly holding corporations and corporate directors (and maybe also shareholders) accountable. That’s pretty difficult, in practice. I guess it shouldn’t be easy, as we’d have endless frivolous litigation, but it shouldn’t be impossible, either.
Licesne plates were never intended to be recorded all the time to create a data set of who went where when.
They were so that in the non-standard case where something other than "business as usual" has happened an owner could be identified.
You're right, of course, but the real issue is the lack of corporate accountability, and data stewardship. Since HN has a lot of folks that really don't want people talking about corporate accountability, the discussions are pretty much guaranteed to devolve into macguffins.
Case in point: notice how fast this discussion will dive off the front page. Happens quite frequently, when the topic is one that makes certain folks uncomfortable.
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I don’t think that’s the current desired use either. (What they were intended for 120 years ago, doesn’t seem super important though). Setting aside the concerns that dominate all political discussion today on this topic amongst the 31% of voters who voted for Harris (that’s turnout * popular vote), these things are used every day to solve actual crimes. For instance, recently in my state, some dude murdered a woman and then hopped in his car and was caught because of an ALPR about an hour and a half away from the scene of the crime. When the police cornered him, he fired on them repeatedly. If it was not for ALPRs that guy would probably still be on the loose.
Having these keep data for a very short amount of time is a reasonable idea. I don’t think most reasonable people, including law-enforcement really thinks it would be ideal to build a permanent database of everywhere everybody goes. If anyone is convinced that is what they want, I encourage you to try speaking to someone outside your own political party instead of only operating in a social media echo chamber because I think you’ll be surprised how much real people don’t have cartoon villain ambitions.
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Flock is so much more than an ALPR, that'd be one thing. They recognize vehicles based on all the metadata you'd expect, color, etc. But they also look at vehicle panels that are a different color, collision damage, bumper stickers and window decals, roof racks, tow hitches, wheels and rims to identify a vehicle.
And then they'll happily run their AI over that knowledge and based on their prompt, if the vehicle is "behaving suspiciously", then they'll ping law enforcement directly and proactively.
It is utterly Minority Report-lite.
I was led to believe that alerts are based on matching cars on a hot list. Is alerting based on behavior an advertised feature?
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I think there is probably a core difference between recording the position of any plate which is wanted pertaining to a crime and recording the position of every plate. I have zero issue with Flock finding suspect plates, but the fact some journalists were able to get logs of where their cars were indicates it is far more overbroad of collection than an automated cop's eyeballs.
In my city of 55,000, Flock's transparency portal states that they've had 330,000 vehicle captures in the last 30 days.
From being a previous employee of Flock I know that each of those captures has some location and timestamp data.
Yes, but most of my comment was about corporate accountability, which no one wants to talk about.
These are a lot more than ALPRs. Look into them more / see my other comment in this thread.
I’m sure you’re correct, but I was talking about enforcing corporate accountability, a lot more than anything else.
https://deflock.me/
Neat. There's only one city in my state that has these cameras. Its the wealthy blue city of Jackson Hole [1] that can't manage to fix potholes. I only pass through that place when taking someone to the airport. Curious if they were able to read my previous military plate which changes number every 5 years. Now I want to get one of these things to play with to see how it interprets my plate. I think I can see a flock on a pole in the live stream.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoUOrTJbIu4 [live camera, town square]
Thankfully, in my city, it seems to be all retail parking lots. But it’s disturbing to see other very, very adjacent cities go all-in on flock.
Same in mine very large suburb. Pretty obvious why they are putting them in Home Depot parking lots too given the amount of shoplifting we've gone through the last few years.
One of the closest points in my area is Made/Operated by: "Unknown".
Very helpful. In my general area there are almost 100.
Operated by: "Unknown" is going to be very common. One popped up near my work recently, and I have no idea who "operates" it officially.
There's a Flock camera at the end of my driveway. I'm next to a city line, so it's a reasonable location.
I wonder if I can file a CCPA request and get a list of my comings and goings.
Yes you can, see this article
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/virginia-police-used-f...
You might reach out to the folks at the Institute for Justice, they have written letters to the cities to get the cameras taken down in these scenarios, https://ij.org/press-release/victory-arkansas-city-moves-sur...
I think you can file a CCPA request to demand that they never store your data at all. Yes, that would be an utter pain in the ass for them, if so. And yet, that's their problem, not yours.
I'm basically in the same boat. There is no practical way for me to avoid having my picture taken 6 or more times every single day. I flip the camera off each and every time I drive/walk by it. It's infuriating.
Maybe you need to pick up a box of black plastic bags next time you pass by the grocery store?
Why do you care if you're not doing anything illegal?
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…or someone could knock the damn thing offline.
No that’s vandalism, what you do is get a nice printout of the exact view the camera has and just plop it in front of the thing, like a for sale sign or something. Tape if you have to.
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It's almost like battery-powered angle grinders should be regular items in the neighbourhood tool lending library.
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Or dress up in a gorilla suit, then paint it in festive Halloween colors.
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety
Literally looks like every stereotypical villain in any “crime prevention” movie, which is usually the puppet of some other entity behind him.
"Are we the baddies?"
Yes. Absolutely. We incrementally pushed society to this point by incrementally approving more and more surveillance and government intervention across a myriad of issue until it ultimately built up the institutions and precedents and honed the workflows that we're now seeing used for stuff that even the stupid are at least kinda uneasy about.
Additional info on the “pilot program” they took issue with: https://apnews.com/article/immigration-abortion-license-plat...
Why sue? Why not impound and fine like they would illegally parked vehicles?
The cameras are not meaningfully worth a whole lot of money.
And neither is a beater but they still get impounded.
They'd be worth something to a handful of reasonably competent hackers. There's no way these things are actually secure, they're IOT devices after all.
Indeed, but the data they get from them is.
Is there a good public list of Flock Safety cities? Would be particularly interesting to see where they are in blue states.
The best you can get is https://deflock.me/map, which is crowd-sourced, and therefore both incomplete and inaccurate.
Cities tend to resist public records requests for camera locations.
But Flock is currently in ~5,000 communities around the country. They have managed to spread very quickly, and very quietly, and the public has only become aware of it relatively recently.
There is also a good site at https://eyesonflock.com/ that parses data from the transparency pages that some places publish.
https://www.muckrock.com/foi/list/?q=Flock
https://www.404media.co/tag/flock/
You can search for cities' transparency portals. Not sure if every Flock customer has one though.
Ex Flock employee - they do not. Your best bet for determining Flock usage is to ask the agency directly and/or look at council meeting minutes, etc.
In my county, multiple law enforcement agencies are not on Flock's transparency portal, despite posting fairly regularly on FB about "responding to a Flock hit on a vehicle".
They installed some here at a Home Depot parking lot right when the ice raids started. It was weird that only the home deport owned portion of the parking lot got them which lead to some investigation into who put them up and sure enough flock has a contract with HD.
Blue city in SoCal with lots of migrant laborers.
Home Depot has had an incredibly aggressive retail theft problem for about half a decade now across virtually every market.
Their response of putting 10 ALPRs in each store's parking lot and locking up everything seems rational based upon what I've seen. There's something about stealing Milwaukee tools that gets certain groups of people very excited. They even have some tool manufacturers designing activation at checkout mechanisms to discourage theft.
I have a hard time believing this stuff is making them any money or is a secret government arrangement. It seems purely about loss prevention in the case of HD. They have been an easy target up until recently.
Home Depot seems like the one compelling win I've seen so far regarding these cameras. You'd have to be pretty crazy to try and steal tools these days. The speed with which law enforcement can react to these signals is incredible. I don't necessarily like the implications for other things but it does make shopping in certain retail environments feel much safer.
So, cameras in the HD and Apple Store parking lots seem acceptable to me based upon the risk these businesses endure. Cameras in public I don't like, but without them the ones in private wouldn't be able to accomplish as much (I.e., interception of felony retail theft suspects while they still have all of the evidence on them).
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Every Lowes nationwide has installed them at the entrances to all of their stores and/or plazas they're in, even if they're not on the map.
So, if I understand you correctly, Home Depot was actively collaborating with ICE to get their best customer lures arrested? How the fuck does that make sense?!
There's a crowdsourced collection of ALPRs in OpenStreetMap. deflock.me/map has a display of that data.
They don’t have a public list, but this blog post conveniently has a map of their locations: https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/introducing-law-enforcement...
Judging by the places they advertise, it’s mostly smaller cities/towns. I think the larger cities in the US tend to run their own cameras.
>Would be particularly interesting to see where they are in blue states
The answer is going to be "the snooty inner ring suburbs and wealthy rural-ish commuter communities that already had overstaffed PDs harassing teenagers"
>>Would be particularly interesting to see where they are in blue states
>The answer is going to be "the snooty inner ring suburbs and wealthy rural-ish commuter communities that already had overstaffed PDs harassing teenagers"
TFA is about Evanston, IL[0] which is in Cook County[1] and abuts the city of Chicago.
It is relatively wealthy, but is certainly not a "rural-ish commuter community," in fact it's not suburban either.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evanston%2C_Illinois
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_County%2C_Illinois
https://deflock.me/map
Check your assumptions, the Bay Area and LA are littered with them. They're in Berkeley for fucks sake.
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Because it's relevant to many on this site, most bay area cities are users
Community note: it is my understanding, based on teardowns that I've found online, that Flock cameras should be assumed to contain a cellular modem and at least one GPS receiver. At least some have been found to contain an addition, obfuscated GPS receiver.
Yes, worked for speed camera company. It does have a cellular modem connecting over VPN or some tunneling with cloud infrastructure.
So they aren't even hardwired to the net and can easily be jammed with commonly available Jamming hardware?
Pretty casual about committing federal crimes.
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Dog whistle!
Wow, so glad you were here, or no one could have possibly understood what GP was getting at.
Thanks, senior autism, whatever would we have done without you.
Oh, and that's sarcasm, by the way.
I thought I was being pretty explicit TBH.
I’m curious - what dog whistle do you see?
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There was a YouTube video published about them yesterday - https://youtu.be/vWj26RIlN_I
It is really amazing how much power and impact private company can have on public.
So Fun facts about digital cameras like these: Strong infrared leds at night blind them completely. They sometimes even switch into daymode and become useless at night. Also, lasers are usually not enough to destroy the ccd sensor but only cause small dots to appear[0]. But a Spraycan on a stick can be very effective and of course a silenced airgun for those hard to reach places can be very effective.
[0] Lab Test here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNWNQb2AvQM
Firing projectiles to destroy cameras (it doesn't matter how the slug is thrown) is... oh why bother, people won't change.
spray-chalk on a stick.
Installing cameras to _violate_ peoples rights is.. why bother, corporations won't change.
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But airguns are usually much less regulated, much quieter and easier to supress and the legal liability for firing an airgun somewhere vs a firearm is usually much different. And they usually have enough power for that purpose without risking too much colleteral damage.
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These are not "license plate readers".
They can and do identify vehicles based on a myriad of other factors. Paint wear, dents, roof racks, bumper stickers, and more.
There's currently a suit filed against them for 4A violations, with supporting case law. I'm also investigating possibility of a federal suit or suit against my municipality for the same. Previous case law has ruled cell phone searches with historical data are a 4A violation and illegal without a warrant.
Documenting the downfall isn't enough. What are people going to do about it? Get involved with your local government. Go to city counsel meetings. Join local boards. This is one city that is doing the right thing but more cities could do the right thing if people showed up and demanded this type of invasive blanket search is blocked. We slipped slowly into this but we can claw it back by just showing up.
Relevant video about Flock's ALPRs
https://youtu.be/vWj26RIlN_I [18:56]
> This decision came after Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias discovered that Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a “pilot program” against state law, and after the RoundTable reported in June that out-of-state law enforcement agencies were able to search Flock’s data for assistance in immigration cases.
Well it's obvious then that if it's helping to deport illegals, then keep going!
It would be a shame if people starting to break it
Legal questions aside, thats another thread, hypothetically speaking, would a burning laser pointer be effective on these?
sounds like it’s your civic responsibility to take these devices offline.
I mean, your local enforcers have publicly stated they're annoyed about them there.
What are they gonna do other than wring their hands and say "oh no, anyway" if they go missing?
Would destroying the cameras be a legitimate act of social disobedience, considering that the company shows a total defiance and lack of respect for the law and society? I would argue it is.
No, no, that would be wrong. https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Thermite
I would agree.
If I were a corrupt government official I would:
- install these cameras everywhere
- make the data available for everyone via an API
- make content about how we're all being spied on
- form sponsorship deals from Incogni & DeleteMe
- profit
Wow. License plate readers are everywhere.
Is that a bad thing? I would imagine the only people who don't like this are criminals. But why are so many seemingly law-abiding citizens here up in arms about it?
> I would imagine the only people who don't like this are criminals
The problem is that the system doesn't only work on criminals, there's rarely enough oversight to prevent abuse, and it's only going to get more invasive. There's been case after case where cops use it to stalk their ex-girlfriends/ex-wives or similar, for example: https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article29105...
They collect data that allows tracking the movement and locations of individuals to a reasonably high degree of fidelity. Governments cannot be trusted to protect this data or to use it legally and responsibly.
Yes it is. Mass surveillance is always a problem in every form.
A ton of people hold some of these core beliefs, which are subjective (meaning not exactly provable/disprovable) and aren’t subject to critical reevaluation:
• the federal government cannot be trusted when the president belongs to the other “team” regardless of whether the election was fair
• all decision makers in such a government are seeking a fascist and racist agenda that is a threat to all of us, and they are also seeking to harm anyone who even uses their First Amendment right to speak against them.
• therefore, they cannot be allowed to enforce immigration laws at all because we cannot trust them to not make any mistakes/break any rules
• the dangers of those rules being broken outweighs any dangers posed by criminals who happen to be undocumented immigrants.
• also as a result they cannot be trusted with any data that could aid in enforcement of laws or aid them in pursuing their political enemies.
Please do not call these "license plate readers". They are far more sinister and have far more advanced capabilities.
That city should just make it legal that the citizens can paintball or spray those cameras anytime and anywhere.
This will escalate - every new car on the road comes with a bevy of cheap cameras integrated - I get 360 degree views when backing up from my 2018 Chevy Bolt. It's really only a matter of time before license plate scanning computers get integrated - there's already a cellular modem integrated into the vehicle - I don't use or pay for that feature, but it's an opportunity.
This will escalate - every new car on the road comes with a bevy of cheap cameras integrated
Back when DOGE was making headlines and a certain car salesman was using the Oval Office as daycare for his kid, there were a people on HN and elsewhere noting that every Tesla could easily be turned into a roving real-time government surveillance unit.
There's already a full cottage market of ALPR-on-cellphone applications. They can just mount a cellphone on the windshield and it's gonna run ALPR all day every day.
Same thing with fingerprint capture - they've now just got mobile apps to take a picture of your hands and submit for print processing.
I unplugged the cellular modem from my car and I suggest you do the same. These days it is basically impossible to buy a car without one, and if carmakers don't listen, we have to take matters into our own hands.
Nothing dictates you must own and drive new cars.
If you want a new car, I imagine disabling the modem should be trivial.
I agree with your comment though.
Cop and other enforcement cars routinely get plate scanner cameras built in these days, so... that's already there.
Nothing a big, heavy mallet can't solve.
I was thinking more super soaker paint?
They are mounted quite high.
If these were installed without authorization, I assume citizens can rip them down without the same.
Black trash bags would be a cheap, non damaging way to cost them money removing them.
Or more likely, make use of the 2nd Amendment on them.
Discharging firearms in proximity to occupied buildings, very intelligent.
I've given this a lot of thought.
Unfortunately, in addition to being dangerous to others, this approach pretty much always comes with increased exposure to prosecution and increased penalties.
The optimal approach seems to be vandalism - spray painting over the front of the cameras, placing other objects to block their view, or permanently blinding them with lasers. All of these things are still illegal and would likely subject you to the legal system, but they at least require on-site intervention to remedy and keep the actor out of prison (but maybe not jail).
The least risky approach I've found is also the least effective - they're often on public property, so place _yourself_ in front of them. It takes them out of commission for a while and should be legal. Coordinated action would likely get the attention of Flock, law enforcement, and the media. Unfortunately, even that could be construed as "interfering with law enforcement operations" or similar, and/or conspiracy if you're organizing or participating in mass resistance.
If the federal government decides they want to step in on Flock's behalf, they could put you under the jail. :\
Know your target and backstop. What goes up must come down.
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My family is from Evanston and I'm 100% behind this. Evanston isn't a town where the people want mass tech surveillance and I guarantee you knowing my cousins and shit that if you fuck around the wrong way you'll learn the meaning of,
"try that in a small town" in a fucking hurry.
"Move fast, break things" seems to me that is also the Trump admin's MO at the sacrifice of democracy. The SV mantra has moved up into politics and is causing permanent damage. If rules aren't enforced why would anyone follow them?
Aside the topic, but I wonder how HN, as a community, and as a moderation team, weighs this on the intellectual curiosity vs primarily politics scale.
This seems politics to me. Very important politics that a lot of people in tech have a special interest for, but politics nonetheless, and much more pressing topics seem to be absent through the on-topic rule.
I tend to dislike it when purely political posts show up here, but I appreciate the ones that intersect with technology, particularly ones that relate to privacy issues.
This site has always been fairly interested in mass surveillance stuff (which is, naturally, inherently political).
It's whatever the mods feel like. For example, posts about Charlie Kirk being assassinated were allowed to stay, and that was basically pure politics.
HN is 90% AI and politics these days, or so it seems.
That rule is ... kind of nonsense anyways.
One can't be intellectually curious and not think about politics. Politics is applied intellectual curiosity.
This does not seem to be a prevalent opinion on here, and I was trying to be diplomatic, but I guess it still comes out as "why is it OK to post / comment politics here if it's a less contentious topic many people on HN care about, but I regularly get downvoted for even relating information to my association with a demographic group forcefully enlisted to the front of the culture war".
Orange site bad.
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