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beloch 52 minutes ago [-]
Flock was pitched as the triumph of technology over criminality. It's surveillance network was supposed to end crime. However, when people witness extreme criminality thriving unpunished at the top levels of U.S. politics, the lie becomes evident. Flock isn't about ending crime. It's a tool of control to be used by criminals.
Who watches the watchers? Everyone.
matheusmoreira 40 minutes ago [-]
It's a nice idea. Everything is backwards right now. It should to be the other way around: random citizens should be essentially anonymous while all members of the government are surveilled 24/7. Surveillance should scale with power.
Jaxkr 43 minutes ago [-]
This is a perspective I hadn’t heard or considered before.
Often times common crime (petty/violent) is viewed as a totally different area as white-collar crime or corruption. But they’re related.
As someone who’s had bikes stolen and car broken into, I sympathize with the desire for surveillance (especially in San Francisco). But Flock has no safeguards against cops using it to stalk ex-wives or misusing a partial match.
bluefirebrand 40 minutes ago [-]
I think it would be kind of different if people were having cars broken into less often or bikes returned after being stolen
But it's clear that increased surveillance hasn't been leading to stolen property being recovered.
dyauspitr 18 minutes ago [-]
I put privacy over ending crime. That’s the unspoken stance everyone needs to decide on. Ubiquitous surveillance will end most crime but do we want that if the cost is our privacy?
EA-3167 12 minutes ago [-]
That's a HUGE assumption about the ability of surveillance to succeed, and it goes against the evidence of the most surveillance-heavy states in the present and history. There are flaws in systems that go beyond collecting evidence, for example corruption can undermine any technical approach as we see in places like China where surveillance is omnipresent.
Hell if "total surveillance" was the secret to ending crime, prisons would paradise. The panopticon would have been a great success. In reality the only way to make it work is to assign people two-by-two to watch each other 24/7, and that only works if they're both honest, attentive, and incorruptible.
dyauspitr 8 minutes ago [-]
Total surveillance would be watching people all the time, indoors too aka Fahrenheit. It would absolutely end 95% of crime.
themythfable 1 hours ago [-]
Passed an old guy sitting on the side of the road with a lawn chair today, he was holding a pool skimmer with cardboard attached at the end to block a flock camera. There was a local news story about it [1]. Happy to see it.
I'm sure my politics are very different than that man's, but at least we agree on the fact that Flock fucking sucks.
madrental 1 hours ago [-]
Despite differences in political beliefs you probably have more in common with this man than any of the politicians that claim to care about your or your values.
ungreased0675 3 hours ago [-]
When people feel like their voice isn’t heard, this is the inevitable result.
goodmythical 2 hours ago [-]
I had this thought just the other day. It is not possible for any governing body to completely ignore the governed unless the governed have no issues that that lead to speach/action. There will always be a petition/revolt/exodus which results in the governing body hearing the governed.
polishdude20 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah speech is the first way the populace indicates to the ruling what they want.
Physical action is inevitable if the speech isn't listened to.
georgemcbay 2 hours ago [-]
> Physical action is inevitable if the speech isn't listened to.
> the governed unless the governed have no issues that that lead to speach/action
What about if the speech is censored, shadow-banned, limited etc in some other ways? Where the governed does not know their speech was limited in reach, censored etc? (which btw is a real approach social media companies are taking today).
samrus 1 hours ago [-]
Theyll see no effect of their speech, and try something else. Like voting, protests, and violence. In thay order
customguy 1 hours ago [-]
... or infighting, or self-destruction, or doomscrolling... the pressure will go somewhere but not necessarily into channels that relieve it. That takes more effort and persistence, and also a society (our consumer societies hardly rate as such in my books).
felixgallo 1 hours ago [-]
the right to free speech has nothing to do with what social media companies do. Social media companies are not compelled by anything, in law or otherwise, to amplify your particular post.
Avicebron 23 minutes ago [-]
Is there any historical precedent for a defacto public square?
We can't relegate (unwillingly even) every bit of our lives to the private sector and suddenly say rights shouldn't exist.
theendisney 1 hours ago [-]
Violence and destruction are perfectly natural ways of communicating. Some animals use sounds and almost all use body language.
One could even argue communicating over the phone or internet lacks the destructive component. Irl behavior is heavily modified by it.
Verbal communication is a work in progress. We really want it to work. Sometimes you have to make people listen. Get them back in the program :)
ElProlactin 1 hours ago [-]
> Violence and destruction are perfectly natural ways of communicating. Some animals use sounds and almost all use body language.
Except that animals don't have knives, guns, bombs and nuclear warheads.
> Sometimes you have to make people listen. Get them back in the program :)
Works great until you're the one being made to listen.
esseph 44 minutes ago [-]
> Except that animals don't have knives, guns, bombs and nuclear warheads.
Yeah, animals will spill your intestines out on the ground and start eating you asshole first while you scream.
And they may even do it for fun and not even eat you, and just let your fleshy bits rot in the sun.
altcognito 1 hours ago [-]
NO! Even if your voice is heard, the state doesn't need to track your every move.
lordnacho 40 minutes ago [-]
I think I may have a minority view about surveillance. At least I need someone to explain something to me.
Is the backlash really about privacy, or is the real problem a complete lack of trust in government?
Because if I thought someone would actually use the cameras to enforce the law, that's not actually such a bad outcome. You aren't supposed to speed, you aren't supposed to let your dog poop without cleaning up after it, and there's a bunch of other offences as well.
Why would I not support a hypothetical police that enforced these rules? Guy takes his dog for a walk, doesn't pick up, boom, cameras plus AI finds the person and issues a fine. Enforcing a social norm, cheaply. There seems to be evidence that it works with speeding: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250402181306.h...
The kind of story that I've actually come across is that someone with access to the public database abuses it. They peek into their ex girlfriend's records, that kind of thing. Obviously nobody thinks that's ok, and I can understand if the main pushback people have is that none of the first thing will happen and lots of the second thing will happen. But that doesn't seem to address the principle itself.
So what exactly is the argument for why we shouldn't have cameras catching people who break the law? Presumably we would have no issue with a cop seeing someone breaking the law, and enforcing. The issue comes up when we replace the policeman with a system that is always on and way cheaper to run than a cop.
EDIT
Just to be clear, I understand it if people don't trust the government. What I'm looking for is an argument other than that. Thus far every response has been along the lines of "you can't trust the government to use this fairly/correctly".
That's known, everybody can see that argument.
I want to know if there's a reason beyond that why widespread surveillance shouldn't be a thing.
dvdkon 3 minutes ago [-]
Our laws only work because of a hidden assumption that trivial or victimless crimes won't be prosecuted. This assumption isn't always upheld, but automatic surveilance would break it pretty much every time.
Even if our laws were actually written with perfect enforcement in mind, only outlawing what's actually antisocial, I don't think I could ever trust a government enough to give it that kind of power. Mass surveillance makes it easier to enforce any law, just or not, and most countries haven't been able to go even one lifetime without turning into a totalitarian hellhole or at least persecuting part of their population.
Another part of it may be that emigrating is so costly (not just in money) that most people won't ever be able to do it. When you're de facto forced to live in a country whose laws you (partly) disagree with, it's easier to add barriers to law enforcement than to get those laws changed.
eldridgea 22 minutes ago [-]
This answer might be US specific but one significant reason for the pushback (at least from me) is the centralizing force.
Generally the things cameras like that are good for enforcing are handled by local law enforcement. Probably at the city/county level, at most the state. So prior to Flock and their ilk, camera surveillance was used by local people in the community to enforce laws enacted by the community.
Flock enables that but also provides a nation wide, searchable database available to local and federal law enforcement. Recently SCOTUS ruled that broad geo-based warrants (law enforcement would ask Google for all devices in an area for a time frame) are illegal and overbroad.
A nationwide Flock network with facial recognition ends up in the same place of being able not only to enforce laws, but track people in a warrantless way.
Conceptually at least, this feels very similar to government attacks on encryption where a government wants to see and have access to everything without cause just in case, which is definitely at least in sprint opposed to the right of free association. Flock does the same kind of thing but in the physical world.
I also think a general computer security rule of thumb probably applies here, where for the best security/safety, trust should be provable. If trusting a human is required to make a system work correctly, the system is flawed.
All of that to say I don't think the majority of pushback is against enforcing laws by camera specifically, but a Panopticon-ness of it and all the downstream effects that causes.
Vinnl 38 minutes ago [-]
Laws are not perfectly moral, and future laws might be even less so. Same goes for governments - their power should not outweigh the governed's.
nitwit005 26 minutes ago [-]
Real world results are poor. I've gotten a ticket for not coming to a "full and complete stop" at an empty intersection at 2AM. I drove up to the corner extremely slowly instead. A $500 fine.
That tends to be people's experience with this sort of thing. Laws the police generally wouldn't bother enforcing are maximally enforced, because it generates revenue.
They got rid of that camera eventually because it was "too easy for people to get out of tickets", meaning they were getting tossed when people challenged them.
AvAn12 33 minutes ago [-]
1. If someone is running to a cop because someone didn’t pick up after their dog, that is a sad state of affairs.
2. If we are so interested in enforcing laws, what about all of the white collar crime, crypto scams, insider trading, and grifting off of the public sector? Clearly doing more harm to society than some dog poop. Where are the $8bn market cap companies that go around enforcing securities laws?
preg_match 21 minutes ago [-]
Even if our current government is perfect, there's a misunderstanding of the argument here. When you argue for building vast surveillance infrastructure, you're not implicitly arguing the government is perfect. You're arguing every government, until the end of time, including hypothetical unknowable governments of the future, will be perfect.
And that argument is just really hard to defend, so much so that most people feel confident just dismissing it entirely.
I liked president Obama, now we have Trump. It's barely been over a decade. If this stuff was installed under president Obama, I would have protested it then, too. Even though I didn't foresee Trump. And we still don't know if this is "the end". The US could slip into a completely totalitarian fascist state. It's happened to many countries before.
18 minutes ago [-]
thex10 1 hours ago [-]
They’re hiring software engineers!
theendisney 42 minutes ago [-]
I think it should depend on what residents living in the street want with several tiers. Public cam, paywall, law enforcement 24/7 or for a specific case, encrypted court order only, fake cams.
Each with different aproval requirements. A public cam would require 100%. Fake cams req only one vote. etc
superkuh 2 hours ago [-]
Lets instead talk about the growing vigalante action by Flock corporation refusing to allow cities to remove cameras from their property after the contract is cancelled. Some cities have been forced to cover the cameras with trash bags.
Local politicians need to coordinate to remove their Flock cameras at the same time and pass laws to prevent any new one from being put up. Flock doesn't have the resources to sue every single one of them, especially if every city commits to dragging out the process for as long as possible by creating as many legal hurdles as they can, all of which Flock would have to have a court rule on.
Kind of like how practically every Scientologist filed suit against the IRS over CoS having their tax exempt status revoked, to which the IRS eventually relented.
Avicebron 1 hours ago [-]
It's also wild to me we live in a country where people who _live_ in a region are not allowed to make decisions about something as foul as surveillance cameras. If people who live, work, and are affected by these don't want them that should be the end of the conversation.
It should be to the people who live in an area to make decisions about it. With the legal ability to tell a company like Flock to fuck off.
mylifeandtimes 1 hours ago [-]
If I were a city government, I would just start charging Flock rent.
ares623 57 minutes ago [-]
They'll be gone the next day!
ButlerianJihad 1 hours ago [-]
Congratulations, Flock, on establishing the most successful honeypot of all time!
No matter what the level of corruption, no matter which side of the surveillance state you support, no matter which side of the cameras you're on, Flock has a way to shine a spotlight on you and bring you out of the closet!
Currently following a YouTuber who knows all the roadside regulations for signposts and he points out how the Flock poles are all installed dangerously wrong, and will surely impale the next driver to crash out on the shoulder!
>No Federal agency may purchase, deploy, operate, access, or contract for any automated surveillance system that identifies, tracks, or records individuals [. . .]
Emphasis mine.
Am I wrong or does this 1. not outlaw the purchase of the data, just the systems themselves, 2. not outlaw the use of the data unless it was obtained by the federal government through a system they have purchased, and 3. not outlaw local or state law enforcement from buying it, just outlaws the use of federal funds to buy these systems.
So flock feed the data through brokers instead of directly, correct? Or am I reading this wrong?
Akronymus 51 minutes ago [-]
AFAICT, municipalities get paid to put up the cameras, which isn't federal, so flock can then use those cameras to freely gather data and sell it to police
kurtoid 24 minutes ago [-]
> municipalities get paid to put up the cameras
I've read lots of FOIAd flock contracts, and I have yet to see any municipality get paid by flock - they pay flock per-camera. Is that just a hunch, or are there cases of towns getting money from flock?
Akronymus 19 minutes ago [-]
I appear to have misread some things. I'll have to re-research the stuff.
Who watches the watchers? Everyone.
Often times common crime (petty/violent) is viewed as a totally different area as white-collar crime or corruption. But they’re related.
As someone who’s had bikes stolen and car broken into, I sympathize with the desire for surveillance (especially in San Francisco). But Flock has no safeguards against cops using it to stalk ex-wives or misusing a partial match.
But it's clear that increased surveillance hasn't been leading to stolen property being recovered.
Hell if "total surveillance" was the secret to ending crime, prisons would paradise. The panopticon would have been a great success. In reality the only way to make it work is to assign people two-by-two to watch each other 24/7, and that only works if they're both honest, attentive, and incorruptible.
[1] https://www.cltampa.com/news/a-77-year-old-republican-man-is...
Physical action is inevitable if the speech isn't listened to.
see also: "The Four boxes of liberty"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty
What about if the speech is censored, shadow-banned, limited etc in some other ways? Where the governed does not know their speech was limited in reach, censored etc? (which btw is a real approach social media companies are taking today).
We can't relegate (unwillingly even) every bit of our lives to the private sector and suddenly say rights shouldn't exist.
One could even argue communicating over the phone or internet lacks the destructive component. Irl behavior is heavily modified by it.
Verbal communication is a work in progress. We really want it to work. Sometimes you have to make people listen. Get them back in the program :)
Except that animals don't have knives, guns, bombs and nuclear warheads.
> Sometimes you have to make people listen. Get them back in the program :)
Works great until you're the one being made to listen.
Yeah, animals will spill your intestines out on the ground and start eating you asshole first while you scream.
And they may even do it for fun and not even eat you, and just let your fleshy bits rot in the sun.
Is the backlash really about privacy, or is the real problem a complete lack of trust in government?
Because if I thought someone would actually use the cameras to enforce the law, that's not actually such a bad outcome. You aren't supposed to speed, you aren't supposed to let your dog poop without cleaning up after it, and there's a bunch of other offences as well.
Why would I not support a hypothetical police that enforced these rules? Guy takes his dog for a walk, doesn't pick up, boom, cameras plus AI finds the person and issues a fine. Enforcing a social norm, cheaply. There seems to be evidence that it works with speeding: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250402181306.h...
The kind of story that I've actually come across is that someone with access to the public database abuses it. They peek into their ex girlfriend's records, that kind of thing. Obviously nobody thinks that's ok, and I can understand if the main pushback people have is that none of the first thing will happen and lots of the second thing will happen. But that doesn't seem to address the principle itself.
So what exactly is the argument for why we shouldn't have cameras catching people who break the law? Presumably we would have no issue with a cop seeing someone breaking the law, and enforcing. The issue comes up when we replace the policeman with a system that is always on and way cheaper to run than a cop.
EDIT
Just to be clear, I understand it if people don't trust the government. What I'm looking for is an argument other than that. Thus far every response has been along the lines of "you can't trust the government to use this fairly/correctly".
That's known, everybody can see that argument.
I want to know if there's a reason beyond that why widespread surveillance shouldn't be a thing.
Even if our laws were actually written with perfect enforcement in mind, only outlawing what's actually antisocial, I don't think I could ever trust a government enough to give it that kind of power. Mass surveillance makes it easier to enforce any law, just or not, and most countries haven't been able to go even one lifetime without turning into a totalitarian hellhole or at least persecuting part of their population.
Another part of it may be that emigrating is so costly (not just in money) that most people won't ever be able to do it. When you're de facto forced to live in a country whose laws you (partly) disagree with, it's easier to add barriers to law enforcement than to get those laws changed.
Generally the things cameras like that are good for enforcing are handled by local law enforcement. Probably at the city/county level, at most the state. So prior to Flock and their ilk, camera surveillance was used by local people in the community to enforce laws enacted by the community.
Flock enables that but also provides a nation wide, searchable database available to local and federal law enforcement. Recently SCOTUS ruled that broad geo-based warrants (law enforcement would ask Google for all devices in an area for a time frame) are illegal and overbroad.
A nationwide Flock network with facial recognition ends up in the same place of being able not only to enforce laws, but track people in a warrantless way.
Conceptually at least, this feels very similar to government attacks on encryption where a government wants to see and have access to everything without cause just in case, which is definitely at least in sprint opposed to the right of free association. Flock does the same kind of thing but in the physical world.
I also think a general computer security rule of thumb probably applies here, where for the best security/safety, trust should be provable. If trusting a human is required to make a system work correctly, the system is flawed.
All of that to say I don't think the majority of pushback is against enforcing laws by camera specifically, but a Panopticon-ness of it and all the downstream effects that causes.
That tends to be people's experience with this sort of thing. Laws the police generally wouldn't bother enforcing are maximally enforced, because it generates revenue.
They got rid of that camera eventually because it was "too easy for people to get out of tickets", meaning they were getting tossed when people challenged them.
2. If we are so interested in enforcing laws, what about all of the white collar crime, crypto scams, insider trading, and grifting off of the public sector? Clearly doing more harm to society than some dog poop. Where are the $8bn market cap companies that go around enforcing securities laws?
And that argument is just really hard to defend, so much so that most people feel confident just dismissing it entirely.
I liked president Obama, now we have Trump. It's barely been over a decade. If this stuff was installed under president Obama, I would have protested it then, too. Even though I didn't foresee Trump. And we still don't know if this is "the end". The US could slip into a completely totalitarian fascist state. It's happened to many countries before.
Each with different aproval requirements. A public cam would require 100%. Fake cams req only one vote. etc
https://www.404media.co/flock-objects-to-our-removing-their-...
https://www.wmtv15news.com/2026/06/05/dane-county-covers-flo...
Kind of like how practically every Scientologist filed suit against the IRS over CoS having their tax exempt status revoked, to which the IRS eventually relented.
It should be to the people who live in an area to make decisions about it. With the legal ability to tell a company like Flock to fuck off.
No matter what the level of corruption, no matter which side of the surveillance state you support, no matter which side of the cameras you're on, Flock has a way to shine a spotlight on you and bring you out of the closet!
Currently following a YouTuber who knows all the roadside regulations for signposts and he points out how the Flock poles are all installed dangerously wrong, and will surely impale the next driver to crash out on the shoulder!
[0] https://youtube.com/@theguardrailguy
H.R.9800 - Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act - https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/9800...
>No Federal agency may purchase, deploy, operate, access, or contract for any automated surveillance system that identifies, tracks, or records individuals [. . .]
Emphasis mine.
Am I wrong or does this 1. not outlaw the purchase of the data, just the systems themselves, 2. not outlaw the use of the data unless it was obtained by the federal government through a system they have purchased, and 3. not outlaw local or state law enforcement from buying it, just outlaws the use of federal funds to buy these systems.
So flock feed the data through brokers instead of directly, correct? Or am I reading this wrong?