Comment by donmcronald
4 months ago
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.
It turns out capitalism devolves into authoritarianism too when money gets concentrated enough. Basically any extreme concentration of power (wealth concentration or Stalinism) is going to tend toward this kind of outcome.
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It isn't just USSR, it is the core Russian principle of "oprichnina" - you can violate any laws, human or God's, as long as you're serving the tzar, Secretary General or President Putin. We start to see a hint of it here with ICE, and i'm sure we'll see a bit more of it with the newly formed Domestic Terrorism Task Force.
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No need to look abroad; companies have gotten away with this kind of stuff for most of the history of the US. Union busting is a particular flashpoint for engaging in illegal activity with the blessing of the government.
Well, you're probably right for some types of procedures.
But this type of thing (surveillance cameras) would actually fall under state security and be ordered by the Central Committee and done top down without any comments anywhere along the line (because everyone understood what was good for them).
You're probably thinking of the "we're making the wrong type of tractor ball bearings"/"we're making broken consumer radios" type of issue where yeah, they'd give you the runaround.
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.
Yes the posted article
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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.
> Why would you work for such a fucked up dystopian Orwellian corporation?
I never understood how someone can ask such a question. It's not like you can just change jobs like you can change clothes. Some people have a family to feed so they can't just decide to be jobless for a few months. Finding a new job takes time you might not have if you still have to show up to your existing job and keep up the mask as if you have no intention of quitting. Sometimes the shittiest jobs pay the most and you cannot afford the pay cut. And sometimes all options are equally bad, e.g. if you don't want to participate in planned obsolescence, but every company out there is making products designed to break. What's the alternative? Make your own company?
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Ex-employee.
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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.
> CEO won’t go to jail, but they’ll spend the rest of their lives fighting shareholder lawsuits.
One important lesson to be learned from the past 20 years: if you're sued, don't go to court. If you're dragged to court, say "fuck you, I'm not going and I'm not paying." If you have enough money, they literally will not do anything. They'll just have endless sham court cases that you're free to ignore and there will never be any consequences.
Alex Jones is up to a few billion dollars in settlements against him. He's had court cases against him for, what, over 10 years now? He's still running his show, still getting money, and he's openly mocking the courts. Judges don't care. Whatever people work in the frameworks that allegedly exist to enforce judgments don't care. They're getting their salary either way.
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I personally don't understand what makes executives so special that they are exempted from the same sort of criminal proceeding the average Joe is faced with. By all accounts they hold these lofty positions precisely because they can (and should) be held responsible for their company's dirty deeds.
A fine is low stakes because the company more likely than not will have a way to recoup that loss. There is an obvious calculus to that which is practically a cliché to mention. A lawsuit just puts it on the people to succeed in civil proceedings at their own expense, over a potentially lengthy period of time.
Western countries like the UK and US tend to be quite soft on businesses engaging in practices that would land an unremarkable working class person in prison if they were caught doing the same.
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
I find that camera sensors often fail in close proximity to 2 watt láser diodes. It’s very strange.
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.
Yeah good point. The question is how can we effectively change incentives in such way the decision-makers in big corporations will feel they are taking a personal risk that can ruin their lives instead of a situation where the worst that can happen is a (compared to revenue) tiny symbolic fine made by the company and not by them?
For me the important thing is that the buck needs to stop somewhere human in certain cases. And in doubt that should be the CEO, potentially even multiple people at once.
If we want a free market where new players can enter and compete, big corporations needs to fear harsher punishment not lighter ones.
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...
While all that may be very true, and you may be right, that is all for the judge to decide, is it not?
I am not taking the side of the company, I am taking the side of rule of law and due process.
This is so abundantly hilarious to read. Cooperating with the Federal government cannot plausibly be a crime in the United States. It'd be like if I was sentenced to a Federal pentitiary, reported in to serve my sentence and was then found guilty of collaboration with the Federal government in some state court.
Realistically if Flock didn't cooperate, the Federal government would just show up with a warrant, subpoena, or other document. Given that Flock themselves is not being investigated, there isn't really any incentive for them to go that route.
Now the state may be abundantly pissed that the Feds are in their backyard, but they have the right to regulate interstate commerce. They are entirely within their rights to also terminate the contract of course.
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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.
> Particularly on the low end of offenses, selective enforcement and racial profiling run rampant
I think most people will agree to this. When they do, some will be thinking of disparate enforcement of traffic regulations and others lax enforcement of shoplifting/retail theft.
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What that may all be very true, would it not be better if law enforcement was predictable and in accord with the written law passed by the legislature and settled, in cases of dispute, by the judiciary?
There's never really been any enforcement on the low end that I am aware of. Even as a little kid I asked my dad about things like speeding, jaywalking, driving without insurance, etc. and he pointed that basically no one is actually even investigated for those things.
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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.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
Unfortunately, my comment was simply not a defense of the company, since I know little about the situation, nor was it an attack on the city's actions. It was a reply to the comment I was responding too, which voiced a call to "lock 'em up" and punish them more, which I see all too often.
I certainly do not support government surveillance for any reason.
My comment was a defense of the legal proceedings as-we-have-them, in which the city issues a cease-and-desist, the company ignores it, the problem persists for a while, litigation start, the city demand a court order etc. And in the end the company is massively screwed, if they were wrong.
The alternative is simply that city decides, and the company is forced to follow.
The problem is procedural and structural, not consequentialist.
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Me: "I do not think the population should live under fear of excessive, arbitrary and unaccountable law enforcement. The company may be entirely in the wrong in which case they should be punished to the full extent of the law, including for present non-compliance, but that should be up to the judge and to the extent determined in the written law."
"Bootlicker"
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.
The problem is would-be aristocrats who prefer neofeudalism fighting it out with other would-be aristocrats who prefer to rule through directed mobocracy and information control. The former pretends they are fighting for decency, morals, and individual freedoms, while the latter pretends they are fighting for the common good, democracy, and “freedom from” various bad things. God help us if either group succeeds.
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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.
> The CEO caused vast death and suffering with the policies he enacted in the name of profit, yet the law didn't touch him.
If the CEO caused someone to die indirectly, how much more did the doctors involved cause people to die by refusing to schedule and perform procedures for free? They didn't.
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The Flock guys are breaking the law to reactivate their cameras so that they can catch people doing things that are illegal or that they think should be illegal. Seems to be an exact match actually.
You have to apply some Theory of Mind. Just like you think you're doing the right thing so do they.
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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.
No, we shouldn't. I think we'll find that as we excuse bad behavior with certain political alignments, those with opposed alignments will find it easier to excuse other bad behavior with the net effect being a total lowering in quality of life as median behavior becomes less good.
So yes, I'm in agreement that neither is good. I'm accusing people of supporting a bad thing and opposing a crime less than that bad thing.