Comment by jjwiseman
2 days ago
The CEO of Flock, Garrett Langley, called Deflock a terrorist group. It's unhinged. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-kZGrDz7PU
2 days ago
The CEO of Flock, Garrett Langley, called Deflock a terrorist group. It's unhinged. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-kZGrDz7PU
I live in an Atlanta neighborhood where one of the founders lived. A prototype for Flock Camera was designed by three Georgia Tech grads because someone kept breaking into their car (not uncommon in our neighborhood tbh).
The trick is that the camera was pointed towards a middle school. Which means they were constantly recording kids without adult consent.
Now, years later, Atlanta is the most surveilled city in North America and one of the most in the world. Flock cameras are everywhere. There are 124 cameras for every 1,000 people. Just last week, a ex-urb police chef was arrested for using the Flock network to stalk and harass citizens.
I know a lot of people who work at Flock. I’m shocked that they do though.
I don’t know when it stops.
You shouldn't be shocked.
People gladly line up to work for organizations who willfully erode their civil rights all the time.
Just look at all the people here who work for Google, FB, Palantir etc.
It stops when we gather outside these CEO's houses and burn them to the ground.
That makes a lot of sense… I’m in the rich/middle class north Atlanta burbs visiting family, and the entrance to every cul-de-sac has a flock LPR pointing inwards.
I didn’t notice it at all last year but the cameras were there. Benn blew the cap off and now they’re omnipresent.
>There are 124 cameras for every 1,000 people
How does that make any kind of economic sense? Morals aside, that’s a ridiculous amount of devices, data collected and transmitted, and so on.
The police has never made economic sense. If you look up your local PD's budget, you will be shocked.
There's only so much military-grade vehicles you can spend that on, I guess. Cameras will do.
Gonna have to write more speeding tickets to pay for these, I guess
>How does that make any kind of economic sense?
It's not about economics, it's about control.
Honestly, not really. If you actually want to have decent coverage to observe crimes and track criminals, that's a ballpark reasonable figure.
And it's not really that expensive, and the idea is that it ultimately saves money in terms of the crime it prevents and fewer police and detectives needed.
I'm not defending it, but in terms of economic sense it's quite well justified. Opposition to it is moral/ideological around privacy/freedom, not economic.
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The cameras don't make economic sense unless the goal is to enrich contractors or generate money on speed/red light tickets.
The bottleneck in solving crime is going after the criminals. There's already not enough resources to go after the crimes that are open and shut.
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It's wild how stalking isn't considered by these people from day one.
Hire anyone whos worked in healthcare privacy or compliance and they will tell you without a doubt ex-girlfriends, bitter rivals and celebrities are the #1 item people abuse their access for.
And car break-ins aren't happening any less frequently.
> constantly recording kids without adult consent
Why do they need consent in a public place? Children vandalize, steal, etc. as well - should they just be immune from detection because they are below some arbitrary age?
Do banks just shut off all surveillance when a child walks past their front door?
He has said his goal is for a "world with no crime. Thanks to Flock." and his goal is not aspirational, visionary, but quite literal.
He sees false negatives as more problematic than false positives. He has admitted being inspired by Minority Report (to me it's always very telling when someone takes a cautionary tale like this and finds it "inspirational").
It is right to be amazingly concerned.
Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus
Show HN: Torment nexus. Built in Rust (YC W25).
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Expect more of this. The masks are coming off.
“Are the fires of Hell a-glowing? Is the grisly reaper mowing? Yes! The danger must be growing For the rowers keep on rowing And they're certainly not showing Any signs that they are slowing!” - Willie Wonka
"like Antifa". Very telling how he uses a far-right boogeyman as comparison point, literally antifascists.
If you're anti-antifascist, you are exposing yourself.
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How are they conspiring to destroy it? Are you saying that coordinating attempts to change policy counts as destroying the previous policy, or are you drawing a line from identifying and locating the cameras to (possibly other) people actively vandalizing them?
If they were doing that, that would be a criminal conspiracy, not terrorism. Authoritarians often like to call ordinary criminals, political opponents, and dissenters terrorists to delegitimize them and justify harsher behavior against them. I assume that's what Garrett Langley was trying to do when he called them a "terroristic organization".
Luckily for DeFlock they're not doing anything "terroristic" or even criminal.
As another commenter said, it's a criminal conspiracy or something to that effect. If terrorism is supposed to be the use of violence against non-combatants to attain a political or ideological goal... then would de-Flock be anti-terrorism? Removing Flock cameras makes me feel less terrorized.