Mountain View recently turned off their Flock installs after they discovered Flock had enabled data sharing without notice and other agencies were searching through MV data.
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-came...
> A separate “statewide lookup” feature had also been active on 29 of the city’s 30 cameras since the initial installation, running for 17 straight months until Mountain View found and disabled it on January 5. Through that tool, more than 250 agencies that had never signed any data agreement with Mountain View ran an estimated 600,000 searches over a single year, according to local paper the Mountain View Voice, which first uncovered the issue after filing a public records request.
A different town (Staunton, VA) also turned of their Flock installs after their CEO sent out an email claming:
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-ceo-goes-...
> The attacks aren't new. You've been dealing with this for forever, and we've been dealing with this since our founding, from the same activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness. Now, they're producing YouTube videos with misleading headlines.
The Evanston IL case is worse. They told Flock to deactivate and remove them. The cameras were re-installed and re-activated w/o permission, so the city had to come out and cover them all.
> The company took down 15 of the 18 stationary cameras by Sept. 8, only to reinstall all of them by Tuesday. This was apparently without authorization from city officials, who sent Flock a cease-and-desist order to take them back down. [1]
> Flock CEO Garrett Langley released a statement ... where he writes that “some of our public statements inadvertently provided inaccurate information” about the company’s relationship with federal law enforcement, confirming that there were “limited pilots” with agencies under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security focused on “combatting human trafficking and fentanyl distribution.” [2]
I'd like to see a database of municipalities that have passed an ordinance banning these systems (including 12 hour drone flyovers like they've been doing in Camden, NJ; drones are fine for specific or exigent circumstances, but flying them systematically is concerning!).
In fact, if anyone knows of municipalities that have done so let me know. I'd like to spend tourist money in those places that I haven't been able to spend in authoritarian-leaning locales as a reward for valuing freedom over suffocation of the constitution for little to no benefit.
> A statement provided by a Flock Safety spokesperson said, “Flock helps law enforcement, including hundreds of agencies around Illinois, solve crimes and make communities safer, and we are proud of the results we have achieved in partnership with the Evanston PD. We continue to be optimistic that we will have the opportunity to have a constructive dialogue to address the City’s concerns, and resume our successful partnership making Evanston safer.” [0]
Hows that for taking no as an answer? My god, we are in big trouble if this is going to be a regular thing. IMHO we need to shut this country down.
INTERVIEWER: Surveillance is becoming more prevalent everywhere. There's an organization called Deflock that's become fairly well-known in activist circles. They take an aggressive approach—counting cameras and maintaining a Discord channel where they discuss potential activities to move against surveillance expansion and stop organizations like Flock. What's your perspective on this organization and their methods?
FLOCK CEO: I see two distinct groups of activists here. There are organizations like the ACLU and the EFF that take an above-board approach to fighting for their viewpoint. We're fortunate to live in a democratic, capitalistic country where we can fight through the courts. I have a lot of respect for those groups because they engage in reasonable debate while following the law.
FLOCK CEO: Unfortunately, there are also what I'd call terroristic organizations like Deflock, whose primary motivation appears to be chaos. They're closer to Antifa than anything else. That's disappointing because I don't want chaos - I value law and order and a society built on safety.
FLOCK CEO: For those groups, I think it's regrettable they haven't chosen a more constructive approach to achieve their goals. They do have the right to their views, but that's why we have a democratically elected process. We're not forcing Flock on anyone. Elected officials understand that communities and families want safety, and Flock is the best way to create safe communities.
INTERVIEWER: Deflock probably wouldn't agree with the "terroristic" label you've applied to them, but...
----
Yeah. "They have a right to their views" buuut also, they are terrorists, and implicitly therefore deserve to have their freedom taken away because of said views. So giving the public a map of flock cameras and organizing to advocate against these being used in our communities is terroristic, I suppose. There's one party here that should be in jail here. Seems like that ought to be the creeps that are filming everyone against their consent, but I guess that makes me a terrorist...
Counting cameras and maintaining a discord channel. It's almost like someone doesn't like being surveilled. Maybe by his own logic, Flock is a terrorist organization.
chaos to these out of touch oligarchs is when anything gets in the way of their plan, they're so used to getting their way all the time, they've never been told no, much less had an actual on–the–ground conflict to deal with
the more prosaic (the bear case) POV is that physically mounted outdoor street cameras have the same enforcement limitations as most other enforcement support technologies. flock isn't really bringing "number of unseen crimes" down from 1 to zero, he's bringing it from like 1000 to 999. a flock being easy to disable by a lay person, and a street corner not having witnesses - they're the same thing, it just isn't as good of a technology as he says (or people imagine) it to be.
so at the very beginning, the thing that threatens him the most is: simple ideas that sound objective and that make Gary Tan wary of putting $50m instead of $25m.
that said, very few things do that, bring "unseen crime" from N to 0. for example, legalization of something does that! he has found a very successful business nonetheless. it's more interesting to explore why. if he wanted to level constructive criticism at Deflock, i suppose we should wonder: how do they disrupt enterprise sales? flock is just, yet another failed IT project. it shouldn't be too hard. obviously, the best thing you can do is getting elected, and simply putting it in the law to not adopt the technology.
Flock is just, yet another failed IT project. it shouldn't be too hard.
Well I think this is the issue. The value of Flock is not what it says on the tin, it's everything else. Solving petty crimes yeah sure, yadda yadda. Ever had your bike stolen and told a cop about it?
It's the tracking part. That's where the juice is. Well obviously it'd violate the 4th amendment to slap a GPS tracker on your car to see if you're going to [known antifa member's] house - we'd never do that, but gee, this private company just happens to have a database of everywhere every person's car has ever been ...
> It's the tracking part. That's where the juice is.
how do you figure? everyone already has a perfect tracker carried around with them at all times, a cell phone. and i suppose, if someone is smart enough to not visit a thing with a phone, he'll be smart enough to not use a car, so... do you see what i mean? it still boils down to, "the technology is not really as good as it says it is." i mean i know that you say that it's not, it is. It is all about what it says on the tin.
That's enterprise sales. People have to stop making it about cerebral, academic political stuff. If municipalities understood that Flock is a waste of money, they wouldn't adopt it.
Law enforcement has a hard time negotiating with Google to get your location at all times. Oh Google knows it but they won't just send everyone's location all the time, only specific requests with or without a warrant. Same thing for Apple.
The carriers can provide almost as good location data through just doing fairly simple calculations on timings and signal strengths received by the cell towers, and their implicit knowledge about where those cell towers are located.
Good keywords for further reading are (("4G" or "LTE") and "GMLC") or ("5G" and "LMF") and/or OTDOA.
While Google and Apple may be hesitant, what are your thoughts about AT&T or Verizon?
Bonus, no amount of jailbreaking or trickery can get around the fact that if your baseband chip is connected to the network, they have your rough location.
A sinister aspect of the US' collective paranoia about public transit -- not that there aren't cameras on the train, but i can also wear a mask on the train. "Masking" my car would be illegal on many counts.
Fascists have argued for years, including today, that they've only "gone fascist" because their perceived left-wing opposition was so "insane."
At this point, I'm planning to tattoo my "terrorist" affidavit on my arm, assuming i survive the encounter after filming ICE through my window next time they tear gas a child in front of my house (which they did do, here in Chicago, but i don't want to be more specific than that for obvious reasons)
> We're fortunate to live in a democratic, capitalistic country where we can fight through the courts.
Translation: we're fortunate enough we can buy the courts, brainwash the populous, and crush all legalistic opposition; but even with all that might, we can't yet hunt down every last of you painting over our spewing camera network.
Make of this what you will and adjust your methods accordingly.
This is an excellent video documenting some Flock camera vulnerabilities by Benn Jordan, a security hobbyist/researcher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY. It's a bit long, but worth it.
His work on this and similar topics is very good, he has deep technical insight and is a good communicator, but it's a bit funny seeing him referred to as a security hobbyist as in my mind he's a musical genius and one of the greatest living US musicians/programmers.
The liberty at stake here is freedom of movement without a permanent, searchable record. There's a meaningful difference between "a person can see you in public" and "a corporation logs your plate, location, and timestamp thousands of times a month and makes it queryable." The Supreme Court moved in this direction in Carpenter v. United States, when it ruled that accessing historical location records constitutes a search even when the individual data points were shared with a third party, because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Some real-world examples of "the whole being greater than the sum of its parts":
- If your plate and another person's plate consistently show up at the same locations at the same times, that's evidence of a relationship. Now multiply that across everyone. You can map social networks, figure out who's meeting with who, identify affair partners, figure out who attends the same AA meeting every Tuesday.
- Regular trips to a mosque, a church, a union hall, a gun range, a protest staging area, a political campaign office. No single trip is meaningful, but the pattern over months tells you someone's affiliations and beliefs.
- Repeated visits to an oncology clinic, a methadone clinic, a fertility specialist, a psychiatrist's office. That's health information that would normally be protected under HIPAA if obtained through medical channels.
- When you leave for work, when you come home, what routes you take, when your house is empty. This is exactly the kind of information a stalker would want, and it's sitting in a database that (depending on the jurisdiction) may have minimal access controls.
The key point is that none of these individual observations are particularly sensitive. It's the longitudinal aggregation that transforms mundane location data into an intimate portrait of someone's life. And importantly, that portrait exists for essentially every driver, not just people under investigation.
You could argue that the 4th Amendment constrains state action, not corporate behavior. But it's not like Flock is collecting this data for some independent commercial purpose and the government occasionally subpoenas it. The product is government surveillance, just privatized. Outsourcing surveillance to a private contractor to avoid 4th Amendment scrutiny is arguably worse than the government doing it directly, because it bypasses the oversight mechanisms that keep the government in check (or at least, are supposed to do so).
Don't worry, when the Millennia's and Zoomers are running the world, Alpha and Beta will be writing the exact same cruft as above, and the cycle will continue forever.
>GenX? Yeah, it's not just the Boomers despite the memes.
No its not. This is pure ageism on your part. You either don't know much about GenX or are just making it up. Both generations are vastly different. GenX being the smallest generation has very little influence on the economy , politics or culture.
Physics is ageist. Our financially engineered economy GenX is currently benefiting from is ageism against youth.
GenX is the only generation that has not soured on Trump since he started his second term. They're absorbing the economic shocks just fine.
I am an older Millennial who has worked with GenX for two decades.
They have been the worst colleagues. More often sexist, racist, classist, nihilistic than Boomer colleagues who kept it polite.
I can't recall a Millennial or GenZ coworker ever acting like any of those things.
GenX make up a huge chunk of the anti-woke crowd. Hop on TikTok and witness all the 50+ Kid Rock Stan's complain about blue haired lesbian GenZ women and trans people.
Millennials and GenZ aren't pushing those memes with the same numbers.
I have been paying attention.
Dave Chappelle, Foo Fighters, Will Smith, Brad Pitt; the backbone of the entertainment industry the last 25-30 years have little influence on our culture?
Feels like you're projecting your own out of touch with reality as mine
It's amazing at how terrorism has been re-defined. When I was a kid you had to blow up skyscrapers or planes (or both at the same time), set off bombs in a crowded area, or a specifically targeted mass shooter to be labelled a terrorist.
I’m not saying it is historically accurate, but I would encourage anyone who didn’t experience interactions with law enforcement pre-9/11 (in the US) to watch early seasons of Law & Order.
It is pretty informative, even in the dramatic context of the show, to see police interactions and the respect for / erosion of individual rights when you view the seasons before 9/11/2001 and after 9/11/2001.
Yeah, after the initial shock and horror of seeing the Twin Towers go down was an overwhelming sense of dread in how that was going to justify an aggressive police state.
Yeah really does show you how it's now (actually for some time) just a label, conveniently morphing over time for people/groups you don't like, losing any actual meaning because it's applied so liberally.
And it's ironic because there are clearly "real terrorists" (i.e. 9/11 guys).
Labeling everyone "terrorists" became fashionable very quickly specifically after 9/11. I think it has decreased by 80-90% or so since then. "Terrorists" used to be everywhere.
"...and then unfortunately there is terroristic organizations like DeFlock, whose primary motivation is chaos. They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else."
"We're not forcing Flock on anyone..."
It is a short 1:32 video, I encourage people to watch it for themselves.
I thought DeFlock was just publishing locations of cameras and lawfully convincing local governments to not use Flock, primarily through FOIA requests.
Twenty-some years back, I attended a talk by a classicist who was talking about how the Romans, Caesar specifically I think, basically used "pirate" the same way.
Funnily enough, the currently airing Starz program, Spartacus: House of Ashur does this, has Caesar as a character and all political sides use “pirates” as a bogeyman to justify all sorts of things and stage false flag attacks while pretending to be pirates. It’s meant for entertainment not historicity but it’s kind of reminding me of Battlestar Galactica reboot touching political themes in this one aspect except with swords and prosethetics flying everywhere.
This would be a great point if antifa was some official org with fascist views.
It's not. Antifa is just a shortened form of the word anti-fascist. Anyone can call themselves antifa. And typically, only people who view themselves as fighting fascism call themselves antifa.
In short, saying "antifa are the real fascists" is like saying "vegetarians are the real meat eaters". It doesn't make sense.
I didn't say anything of that sort. North Korea calls itself "democratic people republic" and people who call themselves antifa claim they fight "fascists". In both cases, the claim is either completely made up or occasionally somewhat technically correct as they fight anything from corporations to corner store glass windows to journalists who happen to disagree with them and happen to find some fascist
Again, the DPRK is a singular entity. We can look at the behavior of the DPRK and analyze what its stance towards democracy is. We can see that it doesn't seem remotely committed to democracy, so being against the DPRK says nothing about one's views of democracy. Or even if the DPRK was truly committed to democracy, one could be against the DPRK for reasons completely unrelated to its democracy, and it would still not say anything about one's view of democracy.
Antifascism is just a political stance. It's shared by a wide range of disparate people who have nothing to do with each other. Just like vegetarianism is just the practice of not eating meat.
What does being anti-vegetarianism say about one's stance towards meat eating? Sure, you can look at any one guy or specific group of people who call themselves vegetarian, be against them for reasons unrelated to vegetarianism, and that doesn't say anything about your stance towards meat-eating. But being broadly anti-vegetarian?
...What does being broadly anti-antifascism say about one's stance towards fascism?
Which often leads to this point, as in Lord of War:
> Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, the Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.
The difference is that North Korea is a place, with an organization that claims to be its government. You can point to it on a map.
Antifa is an adjective that people with no connection to one another self-apply. I'm antifa, and I imagine you are too, but it doesn't mean that we've ever met or coordinated with one another in any meaningful way.
The word "antifa" is basically meaningless altogether, since virtually every person since the end of WW2 claims to oppose fascism.
Wikipedia doesn't use the phrase "group of people", and cites a symposium as a source for the assessment that "it is a highly decentralized array of autonomous groups in the United States," so, I'm not sure this advances the discussion.
It's obvious that the vast, overwhelming majority of people consider themselves anti-fascist. So I really don't think it possible for this term to ever actually describe a particular group of people, excluding other groups of people.
These attempts to shoehorn the word "antifa" into some kind of distinct organization seem like they are just a lingual change to make it more difficult to use this phrase, or more difficult to advance critiques of fascist tendencies wherever they may appear.
> Being anti-antifascist just make you a fascist, or a fascist-adjacent supporter.
If a loose-knit ideology/movement called "Anti-Rapists" emerged that evolved into a cohort of various disconnected thugs who targeted homosexuals for violence, would being Anti-"Anti-Rapist" make you a supporter of rapists or rapist-adjacent supporter?
Obviously, in the scenario you describe, people will continue describe themselves as "anti-rapist" and everybody will understand that they mean that they are opposed to rape.
There is no "loose-knit ideology/movement" called "antifa" - there are groups like SDS and Don't Shoot PDX and a zillion others who describe themselves as "antifa", using it as an adjective. I'm aware of no person or organization who has attempted to proclaim that they are the one true antifa org.
What has people who claimed to be antifacists done besides oppose facists? Because I have yet to see anybody except the the government and MAGA supporters claiming antifa has done anything else.
Well, some people who call themselves antifa also use slogans like "liberals get the bullet, too".
The right's play wasn't to invent antifa from the whole close, but to imply that those kinds of views are universal or nearly so among people who call themselves that.
(To be fair, it doesn't help that the historical antifa, i.e. KPD's Antifaschistische Aktion, considered social democrats to be its enemies, calling them "social fascists". It boggles my mind that anyone on the left who isn't a hardline Marxist-Leninist would adopt the name for themselves given its history.)
But that's really the height of silliness. I can say that all people who describe themselves as 'anticapitalist' are actually capitalists, but that doesn't change anything about those people, the ideology in question, or the world.
Are some people who call themselves antifa secretly fascists? I'm sure they are. So?
Funny thing is that in my German neighborhood we have Antifa stickers pretty much on any other street lamp. Given the fascist tendencies all around it actually makes me feel safer...
> in my German neighborhood we have Antifa stickers pretty much on any other street lamp. Given the fascist tendencies all around it actually makes me feel safer
My Polish-German godmother asked me, as a kid, "who would you hide."
I didn't get the question. And 6-year old me wasn't ready for Holocaust with grandma. But it comes back to me from time to time.
Who would you hide. Who would you stake your wealth and life on to keep from undeserved suffering. The stickers are good. But they only mean something if you're willing to fight for them. At least in America, I'm unconvinced most sticker-toters are willing to sacrifice anything. (It's what makes Minnesota and Texas different.)
Oh so Antifa is a single formal political party with card carrying members, a clear leadership structure and participation in mainstream public political life? I had no idea. Your analogy makes perfect sense. Where is the Antifa national headquarters?
Kinda funny, Noem claimed to have arrested the "Leader of Antifa" in Portland a few days ago [1]. Turned out it was just some guy who lived near I.C.E. HQ, who let nearby protesters use his bathroom and clean out mace from their eyes.
The American political situation is best characterized by the image of two deformed, monstrous, and vicious imbeciles wrestling for power. These are creatures that belong in a zoo, not in the political forum.
You should calm down and knock off the puerile snark.
I see I have to spell things out for you. It is of no relevance whether Antifa is a formalized organization with formal membership. That's why it's called an ANALOGY. You seem to have confused analogy with univocity...which is precisely what analogy is not. The essential point, which you seem to have missed by a mile, is that labels are irrelevant. That "Antifa" comes from "anti-fascist" tells me very little, if anything, about what the movement is actually, empirically about: what its principles actually are, what political ends it seeks to achieve, what means it uses to achieve them, and so on. The fact that the movement is informal actually makes the actions more relevant in characterizing and judging the movement, regardless of the label it uses.
In summary: the name given to a thing tells me nothing certain about the thing, and I would think this would be obvious to anyone.
Huge can of fallacies mixed with arrogance, as is typical in HN.
Pointing out the "socialist" in NSDAP or whatever is idiotic. Just because they used the same word later used by other people doesn't equate both. You can't say the Spanish socialist party is racist because they happen to use the word also used by the Germans 100 years ago.
The other slight of hand you're doing is reification - talking about an abstract concept as if it were concrete. Again, where is the national hq of Antifa? You can't tell me because there isn't one. And that is because it is not a single, organized movement.
When people like you say they are anti antifa, it doesn't take a lot of IQ to read between the lines. You don't need there to be a single formal entity to fight against because you are not against a concrete, specific movement. You are against the idea of anti fascism.
Although at odds with the official narrative of your country, this is hardly surprising or unprecedented. The US has a long and rich history of being anti anti fascist, or more simply, pro fascist.
You don't even need to use examples that westerners find polarizing because they want to minimize or maximize their badness for political reasons.
Africa is full of factions with grand names doing less than grand things that nobody here has any attachmennt to and do not cause complexities when comparing to.
> You don't even need to use examples that westerners find polarizing
Yes, but they are illustrative, because apparently, some people have a problem understanding that labels don't necessarily reflect the thing labeled. African factions are too foreign for most Westerners to appreciate the analogy. But if that helps someone understand what should be an obvious principle for any adult, then that's great.
"Despite the name, The Party of Peace and Love is actually authoritarian and horribly repressive, as you can see from the millions of people they've killed."
"Despite the name, Antifa is not just 'anti-fascist' but is actually _________"
The blank is "the OTHER group". Like brown people, poor people, and (say it quickly so it doesn't get too noticed) women.
And anyone from the OTHER group is the enemy. Stop thinking, you have arrived to the conclusion. Now, here are some news ... I mean, entertainment, to make you fear them more.
__an identity claimed by people who are taking direct action against what they perceive as fascism, but currently more often the term is applied as an unthinking boogeyman by right wing authoritarians__
Ah yes, I too conflate bills written by organized lobbyists with a loosely affiliated group that says American shouldn't be ran by Nazi's. The Nazi's running America get very mad about that and ensure to flood the airwaves with how cities in the US are mile wide smoking craters due to people who don't like authoritarians.
The point GP was making, which holds as a general rule, is that simply adopting a moniker does not necessarily mean that it accurately describes you. Your argument pre-supposed that just because Antifa self-describes as antifascist, it inherently is, and that the CEO was expressing an opposition to the concept of antifascism, rather than simply expressing opposition to the specific group.
If Antifa’s record speaks for itself, then you don’t need to play these kinds of word games. If some CEO spoke unflatteringly of The Red Cross or Habitat For Humanity, that would say more about them than anything, not because they have virtuous sounding names (though they admittedly do) but because they’ve established a specific track record of public service.
I don't even know what antifa _is_ anymore, honestly. I only see it used as a boogie man by the right in discourse online.
But I _do_ know that when someone tags someone as "antifa" they are making a political statement and aligning themselves with a certain group that perceives "antifa" a certain way. "See, I hate those damn' antifa terrorists, I'm in the same camp as you! Please help my company make money!"
I've read your comment twice, and I can't make heads or tails of what you're trying to say.
> If some CEO spoke unflatteringly of The Red Cross or Habitat For Humanity,
Those are organizations. "Antifa" is a descriptive term that many people and organizations use, whether they have connections to one another or not. What is the comparison you are trying to draw here?
> If Antifa’s record speaks for itself, then you don’t need to play these kinds of word games.
You are using the possessive here, "Antifa's", in a way that seems grammatically incorrect to me.
"Antifa" is usually an adjective, but sometimes a known, like "vegan" or "blonde". Saying "if blonde's record speaks for itself", it seems like obviously broken English.
Usually you'd use this phraseology to describe a person or organization, "Joe's record", "Nabisco's record", etc.
What is the entity or entities whose record(s) you are trying to describe?
>Those are organizations. "Antifa" is a descriptive term that many people and organizations use, whether they have connections to one another or not. What is the comparison you are trying to draw here?
How's this different than say how "alt right" is pejoratively used by the left?
It's very much the same thing, there is no single unifying "Alt-Right" central headquarters, subscription fees amd newsletter, just as there is no specific Antifa organisation, just many people and a few groups that self identify as being against facism.
On the AltRight side people might point to, say, Steven Miller and his Nazi adjacent statements, or to Nick Fuentes and the Groypers, or to Andrew Anglin and The Daily Stormer for more trad. Nazi views.
To be honest I'm not entirely sure what the leading antifa groups in central north america might be.
In terms of the silliness / uselessness, you're right that they're similar - nobody compares "The alt-right" to the Red Cross, as if they had an office and an accountant on staff.
But plenty of people will say that they are traditional conservatives, and say "I'm not alt-right". Virtually nobody describes their own political views by saying "I'm not anti-fascist."
> The point GP was making, which holds as a general rule, is that simply adopting a moniker does not necessarily mean that it accurately describes you.
I'm deeply curious why you think someone would identify as an anti-fascist if they were not, in fact, anti-fascist. Do you think they just really like the flag logo or...?
> Approximately nobody is against "antifa" because they're fighting "fascists".
So, I will say that far right, comservatives and fascists are against anti-fascism of any kind. Whether it is the boogeyman antifa or anything else. And there are a lot of people like that. Including in goverment.
They do take issue with anyone who openly opposes fascism.
I know we're not supposed to talk about it, but what in the world is happening to this site? Mistaking 'Antifa' for 'the concept of opposing fascism' is not the kind of failure mode I expect here. And this kind of thing has become endemic lately- emotive noise and sarcastic dunks drowning out substance in every thread, especially since the beginning of December. Or am I just imagining this?
Fighting fascist is the primary way to oppose them. The fighting bit often requires violence. That's what it takes, because it involves fighting a group of people that are not a peaceful bunch and have very violent intentions.
Yes, exactly my point. And once you are picking targets and taking violent actions, you can no longer excuse your aim and your violence by saying your heart is in the right place. Antifa has, for many decades, done wrong actions with good intentions. You can oppose them without being fascist.
Hm. Have you actually read that wikipedia page? I don't think it serves to validate your claims.
It does say that the Trump administration and one police department claims that they are like you say. On the same page it also mentions that the Trump administration has been involved on several hoaxes trying to incorrectly portray it.
Most of all the other groups paint it in a positive light.
> [g]iven the historical and current threat that white supremacist and fascist groups pose, it's clear to me that organized, collective self-defense is not only a legitimate response, but lamentably an all-too-necessary response to this threat on too many occasions.
I would not mind being associated with the group portrayed on that page.
The article from Freddie deBoer is from 2021. He writes:
> The association of antifa with violence stems from the fact [in Europe] that these fascists or neofascists would often prowl the streets [...] Though many people would love to pretend that this isn’t the case, we are not in fact living in an America where Proud Boys wander through Chelsea randomly beating up gay people without resistance from the police
I think he would write something very different today. He does mention one case were a journalist was shot paint and mace and was thrown on the group by a group that could have been antifa. Or not.
Third link is from 2017. Black-clad anarchists swarm "anti-hate" rally in California, says the title. But it was an "anti-marxist" and "pro-trump" rally, which was cancelled(?). But people showed up anyway(?). And then:
> officers were told not to actively confront the anarchists
Come on. That reeks of being staged. The people in black were almost certainly proud boys. The wikipedia page mentions their leader employing this exact tactic:
> In posts on Parler, leaders of the Proud Boys had disclosed plans to attend the rally wearing "all black" clothing associated with antifa activists and arrive "incognito" in an apparent effort to shift blame for any violence on antifa
I did this analysis in a bit more than 10 minutes, no LLMs used.
You mention the years a few times- the claim I was asked to cite was in the past tense and I deliberately sought sources from before the current regime. This is your sole criticism of the deBoer article. Antifa was still called Antifa and it was still short for anti-fascist in 2017 and 2021.
Wiki says:
>Some on the political left and some civil rights organizations criticize antifa's willingness to adopt violent tactics, which they describe as counterproductive and dangerous, arguing that these tactics embolden the political right and their allies.
>Both Democratic and Republican politicians have condemned violence from antifa
>CNN describes antifa as "known for causing damage to property during protests."
Among many other similar statements; I think your summary is inadequate.
I can't argue with false flag conspiracy theories, so I'll leave it at that.
If they genocided German citizens, yes! We still argue today about whether Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified; nobody argues they weren't antifascist.
Of course I'm not saying this! There's no way to read what I said and get this out unless you put it in! You're supposed to be charitable here and you are actively doing the opposite.
If you punch John Doe in the face becaune you think he's Hitler; if you torture Hitler's parents just to stick it to him, yes, you are in the wrong.
By physically opposing fascism, I assume you mean they are taking specific practical actions rather than becoming one with the platonic concept of opposition to fascism.
It may seem an obvious or insignificant point, but it is critical here. If they physically oppose fascism by following and filming ICE, I'm very much on board. If they oppose it by molotoving innocent local government buildings, I am against. If both of these actions are the concept of opposing fascism, what does it mean to be against that?
Antifa are belligerants. They undermine protests by having the maturity to die for a cause but not to live for one. One can be against that without being fascist.
So your contention is that people who are following and filming ICE cannot be considered 'antifa' because you have decided that 'antifa' means 'people engaging in bad violence'.
That's the intent but most people know it's not true. It's right up there with "woke" and "progressive" as generic, shapeless, boogeyman words. No real meaning besides "something bad".
Pretty sure most who claim the mantle of “Antifa” would welcome that Communist label, and plenty would endorse violence if it’s against the “right” people, so if the shoe fits…
They're kinda famous for punching people (physically) unprovoked at this point. There was a whole discourse around it that comes back up pretty regularly, I don't know how you could miss it.
You vote for my friends to be directly physically harmed, and you think it’s scary that some people respond to your violence with their own?
You’re not “better” because you vote for political violence, my man, though I get that brings up conflicting feelings for you.
It’s actually weird how often people try to pretend that their shitty actions (vis-a-vis making sure Grok can create CSAM, or that Facebook can more effectively give teenage girls depression) are morally neutral because they’re second order effects. You’re still a pretty shitty human being if you directly enable it, even if you’re not the sole cause. Some of y’all need to stop sniffing your own farts (or Elon’s/Thiel’s/etc.) and learn that.
The real question is where do you draw the line with these ideologies? I don't think anyone deserves violence just for thinking the wrong things, but we're currently seeing the result of when those thoughts inevitably turn into actions.
It doesn't seem like America ended up on the right side of the paradox of tolerance, so I'm curious how you think we could have avoided our current fascist leadership?
"A majority of individuals involved are anarchists, communists, and socialists, although some social democrats also participate in the antifa movement. The name antifa and the logo with two flags representing anarchism and communism are derived from the German antifa movement." [0]
The air quotes around 'right' are interesting there. Yes, violence against Nazis and Fascists is acceptable. Do you disagree? I thought it was pretty much settled, we did a whole world war about it.
None of his views had anything to do with Naziism but failure to fall in line with all of the Left's current positions makes one "a Nazi" to them. And yes, much the same way as right-wing extremists like to paint all 'liberals' as "gun grabbing Marxists." The difference is you can find a lot more liberals who would happily glorify Marx than you can find Americans of any party who would glorify the Nazi regime or its acts.
In case it's unclear, I do not support Nazis either.
It's like a square and a rectangle. All Nazis are fascist, but not all fascists are Nazis. It's just like how I'm an environmentalist, but I'm not a member of the Green party. It may seem pedantic, but I find it's important to be exact these days because fascists love weaselly word games. Kirk was not a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party, but he shared the majority of their general beliefs and behaviors and those are undeniably fascist.
It's wild what the perception is in the right echo chamber right now. I was talking with my brother, who I love, but who, through his practicing Christian faith is essentially pulled into this right-wing cultural environment and propaganda machine. So he was making the point that the politics in the US have drifted so much more to the left that the right is actually the center. My jaw dropped off the floor. How do these thing even get propagated? It's borderline ridiculous and I don't know how this firehouse of bullshit can ever be countered.
Right, but that makes it pretty much impossible to stop anyone from claiming to be antifa or anyone accusing someone of being antifa... a lot of people will accuse anyone who is doing anything they don't like as being antifa
I live in Portland. I've met many people that label themselves antifa. They're just protestors that are willing to be a little more aggro. That's literally it.
So when people talk about antifa as if it was the left wing equivalent of Osama Bin Laden's terror network, it's a self report they're forming their views based on strawman style propaganda, not engaging with the reality of it.
Theres no organisation but they are well organised in a distributed sense. Horizontally, theres lots of tradecraft and opsec details that get spread around to help people fight. Thing is, theres no central pillar you can break to stop that spread.
What gets me is how right wing protesters specifically eschew good opsec. "mask off rallys", visible tattoos etc. They love the police state and then look like idiots when that big police state they demanded rounds them up with absolute ease because they took selfies with their swastikas out during a protest.
eeeeeh comment requires some nuance tbh. I can think of enough examples. And there are rightish elements of a lot of movements that get slammed.
I think its more hubris than anything. Even right wing protesters who love the government have enemies that could hurt them. Opsec isnt conditional on the opposition being the government.
Is this the part where people list of left wing regimes and you sort them into "Actually did nothing wrong" and "They became right wing so it doesnt count"
That's a pretty weird and ultimately boring place to live.
> Antifa is commonly known as an ironically fascist organization that uses violence and intimidation to silence speakers — it's like how the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is not really democratic.
That's not "commonly known", that's the spin you'll get from the right-wing in the US who just happen to have heavy fascist tendencies.
I Googles that exact string and I can't say that I see even enough cases to count on one hand. Do you have any concrete examples that you think are representative for the behavior that you are referencing?
Googling “earth is flat” nets you thousands of results from very passionate people willing to share their experience and expertise. (I just did to verify)
Which SPECIFIC persons are being silenced and which SPECIFIC topics were they attempting to speak on?
It’s a huge diff between someone being ”silenced” for speaking their minds on bike paths versus being ”silenced” for indirectly or even directly promoting a new holocaust. And from your vague responses it is not clear.
A movement is better terminology than an organization, fair.
But okay - I'm confused what sources you would accept? There are "Antifa" groups on social media that literally advocate for doing this, I've seen it first-hand.
Ah yes, when the first result on Google is from a group known as a right wing think tank...
>American Enterprise Institute, a prominent center-right think tank in Washington, D.C., that promotes free enterprise, limited government, and individual liberty through research and policy advocacy in areas like economics, foreign policy, and social studies
I too can get paid think tanks to publish hundreds of reports on how communists are taking over America... Doesn't mean communists are actually taking over America.
When a Nazi wants to speak on a college campus, they point out the speaker is a Nazi and the administration cancels the speaking appointment.
But not really, because administrations are fine with Nazis giving speeches. The actual reality is that 5-20 people stand near the speaking place with picket signs reading "this guy is a Nazi". The Nazi speaks as planned, and the listeners (who are also Nazis) complain the speech was shut down.
Joe Rogan called himself cancelled. Literally the biggest podcaster in the world who says anything he wants to. Complains that he can't say anything and has no audience.
Is there a general term for metastatic semantic overinclusivity?
Terrorist. Racist. Colonist. Fascist. Historically-rooted and precise terms that are collectively decohering in a self-amplifying and propagating way as everyone feels increasingly free to detach more and more words from their original meanings.
you have seriously got to read and understand Eco's 14 tenets of Ur-Fascism [0] if you think that contemporary applications of the term "fascist" are inaccurate in describing what's happening right now in the US.
> if you think that contemporary applications of the term "fascist" are inaccurate in describing what's happening right now in the US
Didn't say that. I'm saying I've seen the term thrown around wildly to apply to all manner of things. Like the other terms.
The term is probably fundamentally fucked. If you asked Hitler if he's a Nazi, he'd say yes. If you asked Mussolini if he's a Fascist, he'd say yes. These were the words they used to describe themselves. The reason I'm describing the phenomenon versus blaming the folks using the terms broadly is because I don't think this is a personal failing by anyone as much as something that's linguistically happening.
There's also a pragmatic elephant in the room: By the time certain labels are perfectly and undeniably true to say, it's no longer safe for people to speak out and use them!
So our desire for word-correctness should be tempered by our desire for word-utility.
> that's a great way to side line people that are actually talking about real harms
Valid. This is a real linguistic process. But it absolutely debases the original term. I’m not convinced we have to choose between empathy, on one hand, and accuracy, on the other hand.
i think a great example to back your point is that the terminally online turn out in droves to apply the nazi label to all those not in favor of maximising immigration , rational discourse seems to have broken down and the resulting vacuum of meaning is filled by hyperbole as people scamble to feel heard in a world of weak voices & closed ears
"all those not in favor of maximising immigration" is an hyperbole. Do you think the comparison between ICE and the Gestapo is completely unwarranted? Obviously the scales are very different (for now), but it feels justified enough to associate the two, if for no other reason than to remind people that we are on similar tracks that led to the worst times of our shared History.
Seems to me that "all those not in favor of maximising immigration" have largely turned out to be perfectly happy with revoking status from legal immigrants and using unnecessary violence to round people up. The line was always, "We're fine with legal immigrants," which turned out to be a lie, and "follow the law and you have nothing to worry about" which also turned out to be a lie.
How many of those people who got called Nazis are now fighting against the administration's lawless crackdown?
plenty of people get executed under regimes of parties both left and right , im referring to the idea at global scale not specific to any particular country
Mussolini literally coined the word "fascist" to name his movement. Hitler never hid the fact he based his own movement on Mussolini's, so he'd probably describe his party as fascist too. Later, the word became extremely negative for obvious reasons, such that current fascists pretend not to be such, but it doesn't mean they aren't. Overall, I'd say it's used well enough.
I think most people who are being described as racists, colonists, or fascists are racists, colonists, or fascists, but they're the same people who own the megaphone that tells you they're not. Can you bring specific examples?
Perhaps, but the same argument also works for "Communist" and "Socialist" and so on.
A former partner's mother was once called a liberal or a democrat for something minor, I forget what now possibly asking for a tip, and her response was "No sir, I'm a communist".
I'm never actually delved too deeply into the mother's political views, but my ex herself was openly, explicitly, literally, a communist.
(For various reasons, even though said ex is American by birth, I suspect her well-documented politics may now cause me difficulty entering the USA were I to attempt it).
The TV series Person of Interest [1] becomes more on point as years go by, even though by now it has been 15 years since its S1. One of the scenes [2] from that series where "terrorist" are shown as being in control over ghoulish CEOs like the one from this posted video.
While I think the use of the term “terrorist” is unwarranted, I do think deflock is seeking political change. The decision to use flock is a government policy choice, right?
>> “I was stunned to learn late yesterday that after convening a task force of local and national experts, Mayor Johnston has been negotiating secretly with the discredited CEO of Flock Safety and signing another unilateral extension of this mass surveillance contract with no public process and no vote from the City Council or input from his own task force,” Councilmember Sarah Parady told The Denver Gazette.
What is the point of this comment? Are you saying that deflock are not terrorists but are terrorist adjacent? Why respond to someone defining terrorism by pointing out that 2 words at the end of the definition also apply to deflock? Do those not apply to basically everyone who participates in their country's society, including literally everyone who votes and all politicians?
There are tens of millions of people pirating software and media and blocking ads. There are not enough prisons to hold them all so the law is not enforceable at that scale.
Likewise there have always been and will always be effective non violent forms of resistance with sufficient systems of coordination and communication, because the public is always larger in number than the oppressors.
And yet, people do. Perhaps by slipping into some unsurveilled hidey hole, changing into a black hoodie, doing the crime, and running away before the police arrive
This guy gives all villain vibes you see in futuristic movies, funny how he resembles a young version of “Fletcher” in minority report movie, a movie about mass surveillance to provide a “safer community” to all.
Flock btw isn’t just an ALPR, it is a car finger printing technology, I have seen some videos of police IDing cars with no plates and they knew the owner by using flock cams.
These clean-shaven wide-eyed SV types give me the uncanny valley heebie-jeebies. Everything, from their tone of voice, to their appearance, to (most importantly) the way they phrase things... there's an almost AI-generated quality.
Everything about his body language screams, "I'm doing something slimy and I know it, but here, listen to these words spoken authoritatively whilst I wave my hands around and forget about it."
"The media" in general, sure. They often still do. My point was just that one person not doing this in an intimidating 1:1 interview doesn't make that person spineless.
These wretched wastes of skin that contribute to the surveillance system need to have the full brunt of that same surveillance apparatus turned toward them full time, published for all to see. This should include elected officials that voted for and paid for these systems as well. You don't want a system that allows more anonymous movement? You want that data collected and stored and collated and analyzed without end? Ok, pull down your pants and have yourselves offered up as the first and most prominent ones to be tracked and then see if you change your tune.
Good luck trying to subject them to the same level of scrutiny. They live in places with high walls and armed guards, a lot of them don't even drive themselves if they drive at all. Even when using helicopters or planes their private ownership means a lower level of scrutiny. "The plane" was a big part of how Epstein was able to do what he did. Obviously, these types never step foot on public transit.
Even if hypothetically speaking you could support volunteers to follow them around and film them, I would think the asymmetry of resources would practically make it impossible. It's not about privacy, it's about wealth. Take their wealth away and then they'll actually have to live the way they tell you to. They don't care because they don't live in the world they are creating, you do.
I wonder how he would feel about a competitor putting a flock-like camera outside his house so that anyone who wants to can learn whenever any car, perhaps his car, enters or leaves his home driveway.
Would he be happy with this, or would he become a "terrorist" by objecting?
I'm a deflock user - I'm a libertarian. These cameras are a huge privacy violation, its amazing how fast Flock has grown ubiquitous. There is a strong Fourth Amendment argument against Flock, they have a generous interpretation of the constitution that your car has no rights and neither does your license plate therefore you have no privacy while on the road.
I've also been on the receiving end of secret Federal subpoenas for private user information at a YC backed startup. They include gag orders and management does not question the orders - they simply comply. It happens more often than you think.
However you feel about the current administration, imagine this power in the hands of the other.
Flock isn't American in any sense of the word. We should work in our communities, through legal, procedural, and civil means to eliminate these terrible, terrible cameras. The cost is much worse than the benefits on offer.
It's interesting to read how flock is positioning themselves as all pro-law-and-order. In countries where I hang out in, Flock would be pretty much illegal.
It's not just Flock positioning themselves that way. It's that they have broad support from American police and other law enforcement agencies.
My state (WA) is currently trying to pass a bill that places considerable restrictions on Flock - not an outright ban, but limits on data sharing, how long data can be retained etc; really basic stuff that you'd think wouldn't be controversial. So far as I can tell, every single LEO organization in the state is vocally against it.
In the Netherlands the municipality would remove all the cameras; and the national authorities would fine the company into the ground and arrest key persons.
In Belgium much the same, except multiple overlapping authorities would tear it apart.
Germany would dissolve the company, destroy their data, hunt down many of the employees for criminal conspiracy; and the Bundestag would hear of it. Germany has... experience. [1]
[1] Depending on legal theory. I'm going for the good old 'and we're going to put them in prison for 200 years' worst case scenario. ;-)
Their are documented cases of Flock cameras that can see into private residences. What if one of those cameras recorded an underage person? Would Flock be responsible for collecting and distributing CSAM?
We saw this with Twitter's child porn maker. When it was called out, did Elon turn it off? No he saw it was popular so he paywalled it. He got away with that, but he's only well connected in the US not in France so he didn't get away with it in France.
This statement essentially boils down to "The only right way to fight me is in an environment where I expect to win"
That's how you know the DeFlock strategy is effective. They aren't playing the game that the CEO wants to play, they are playing the actual game.
The actual game is minimizing the impact of cameras that are now everywhere.
Some individuals may take it upon themselves to vandalize the cameras, which can't be planned via conspiracy (that would be illegal), but those radical individuals can be "set up for success" through information.
This strategy of creating an environment where effective vandalism is easy, is also part of the actual game.
I “like” how Overton window (??? I hope I use it right) shifted dramatically in USA.
- “law and order” is “good”, when _de facto_ most of constitution is not being applied for a year and laws or court orders are applied selectively. Not to say that “law and order” is vastly different depending on the size of your bank account;
- “terrorist” now is anything you don’t like, especially if it’s anti establishment. True freedom of speech is now apparently “violence” (and of course this dictatorial (adjacent) government would think that, as it’s biggest danger);
- “antifa” is apparently now a boogeyman, though I’d say he used it correctly as he is (apparently) fascist;
Also it is forced against people, how population can choose otherwise?
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition...There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
I'm honestly tired of all these knuckleheads. They've got a few bucks in their bank accounts and pretend that makes them smarter than everyone else. They're just gaming the system, nothing more, and they have every incentive to keep it alive.
He can shove his cameras deep in his ** as far as I'm concerned.
The "system" is not hapless or ignorant here. In fact, this company would not exist, if the "system" didn't have specific desires to effectively enslave the entire population.
Who wouldn't want to become a new age digital pharaoh? Wouldn't this be precisely the type of panopticon they would try to create?
Anyone aware of people doing something like over here in Europe? And how legal/illegal it might be? I'm talking about putting government-operated security cameras on a map, for the general public to be aware of their locations.
Seems like “terrorists” = citizens standing up for their rights. We aren’t past the point of no return but we are rapidly approaching it. What will it be Americans? Liberty or death?
This is a social problem. So long as people want to see Orwellian enforcement on their preferred petty issues (examples abound on HN and elsewhere) this type of activity will ping pong around enforcement subjects likely only growing and ratcheting tighter. Until people get so sick of it on the 11/12 issues they don't like, they're willing to give up the dream of Orwellian enforcement on the thing they do care about.
The fee for the first time you get caught without a plate on your registered vehicle is $10 (2nd is $20).
Trailer hitch balls do not "count" when considering whether a vehicle's plate is obstructed — I literally have one hung across my Camry, not technically obstructing the plate (but you can't see shit).
YMMV. Lasers might be a good offensive, but defense is more important.
Unfortunately, you cannot hide by obscuring your license plate. The ALPR system recognizes vehicles by type, color, and any outstanding features (bumper stickers, trailers, etc.) So, even if you removed your license plate completely they would still be able to track your car as a blue, 1999 Toyota Camry, with a "I love Peaches" sticker in the back window.
You are correct. Although I drive a very common car/color, it is naïve to think that these systems aren't monitoring me as the grey sedan without visible license plate. I did remove the bumper stickers [0]
My local newspaper retracted a story this month about how the police were able to locate a certain colored vehicle within minutes. Perhaps it was too revealing for general consumption?
My "obstruction" is more (legal) protest? Better to just move to a de-flocked city/state..?
[0] I consider this similar to how some property appraisal maps allow people to remove their names from searches (either through LLC or black-out), but you can still request beneficial owner information of specific parcels; just one/two additional layers of protection to throw off the scent (have to know what you're looking for, not just simple plate# lookup — although I'm sure there are aliases/forwarders in advanced CCTVai systems).
They are building a surveillance state, LOL. The AI, Datacenters, the flock cameras, slow social media ban, the private police, etc. West, especially USA is slowly getting the taste of their own medicine.
"Thankfully, we live in a beautifully democratic and capitalistic society where we can fight in court."
Of course he's "thankful" for that, since in our "beautifully democratic and capitalistic" society, Flock can use their $658 million of VC funding [1] to wage lawfare against the have-nots with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers. [2]
It's pretty funny—the only think Deflock does is map out the locations of Flock cameras.
When Flock decides to track people's activities, they're "following the law" and "open to reasonable debate," but when people decide they want to track Flock's activities right back, that makes them terrorists.
It isn't even just about money. It's more apparent than ever that freedom, democracy, justice, human rights in this country are increasily reserved for those with the right political alignments.
Why not? They hold all the cards and have aligned one of the most powerful governments in the world with them, while wielding enough money to make almost any nation, let alone individual, more inclined toward doing what they need. They will only become more powerful.
In an authoritarian regime, it's all competition, no co-operation. Whoever the big dog is gets to say what happens, right up until a bunch of the little dogs drag him down and then fight each other to replace him. If he's lucky and skillful he'll have worked this out and kept the little dogs at each other's throats so they don't gang up on him.
The whole operation of government becomes about "who's the boss?" and the boss gets to run the government to favour himself and his cronies, acquiring more power and wealth.
Any pause to consider the ordinary folks caught up in this is a weakness, that will be taken advantage of by the other wannabe bosses.
It's not a utopia for any of them because of the constant paranoia and fighting. Try to rest on your laurels and enjoy the spoils of what you got for a second, and boom; you get thrown out of a window.
Nah, billionaires understand class solidarity (not intentionally, but coercively, because they have to to get where they are). They'll carve out fiefdoms where they don't step on each other but step on all us (for a tech example, see ISPs)
On the way up, yes. But once they're there, no. As soon as the only way of getting more power is to take over someone else's fiefdom, all that class solidarity disappears.
See the recent purges of the military leadership in China. Or Putin's cronies continually accidentally falling out of windows. It's not safe near the top.
Authoritarian regimes don’t run on facts. They run on the primacy of Authority. Cameras record factual information. Facts are inconvenient for Authority. You know, 1984 Department of Truth style.
Facts _are_ weapons for them though. If they have the video they can pick out the 12 seconds that looks like what they want, or if it's all bad just hide it.
You're talking about partial facts and misrepresentations at this point. You're also saying it yourself, facts aren't their primary concern, sure they can be convenient, anything can be made convenient if you're allowed to cherry pick. But the bigger problem is they also have no problems lying and making shit up. Not what I would call caring about facts.
I'm specifically saying that them having access to thousands of random cameras is to their benefit, and not because it will lead to accurate law enforcement.
Yes, they can take advantage of privacy violations, being able to misrepresent facts, and pointing to an infallible technology stack even though it is not.
Sometimes they don't even need real evidence. In 10 years if they get their way, if the AI says you're guilty, you're guilty. Not to mention all the extrajudicial punishments like getting banned from having a bank account or a job, which is like a death sentence.
Municipal cameras do exist for speeding, tolls, and maybe other road research. But Flock is the definition of let's get everyone in dragnet surveillance so we can pick on whoever we want, at least try.
You will need a lot of evidence to make such a counterintuitive claim, when surgically eliminating your enemies without bothering anyone else is such a logical strategy.
I don't think fascists are that smart, they will go after those that get in the way and those who they perceive as weak. They are bullies who are cowards and all that.
> Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (Russian: Николай Иванович Ежов, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ (j)ɪˈʐof]; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940), also spelt Ezhov, was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, at the height of the Great Purge. Yezhov organized mass arrests, torture, and executions during the Great Purge, but he fell out of favour with Stalin and was arrested, subsequently admitting in a confession to a range of anti-Soviet activity including "unfounded arrests" during the Purge. He was executed in 1940 along with others who were blamed for the Purge.
This guy was head of the secret police, didn’t help him out when he was purged aka murdered.
Yes, that if, the most powerful government stays intact. But as it turns out, tech CEOs want to dissolve the nation state and its government to implement their vision of a utopia. The same nation state, the same government that protect their interests and assets, and make lawfare possible in the first place.
I know about these plans, but even if they end up happening to their fullest extent, I don't see why people are so unanimously predicting that they'll definitely fumble the bag. By the time this can happen, they will almost certainly have the most advanced weaponry available and enormous groups of people working on defending them. Again, they can buy anything. In their dream world, power descends directly from them, making their governments obsolete. The direct power of the governments isn't just erased, it'll transition into their hands.
Tech CEOs are not statesmen, even if they consider themselves smart enough to govern. Nor are they warriors, and historically speaking, feudal lords were trained from early childhood in both the art of war and the art of governing. What I mean by that is that these people have no experience of governing, nor do they have any experience of violence and the horrors of war, i.e. they do not have the competence for being feudal lords, and network states or libertarian communes are essentially feudal-like arrangements. What will they do, if they are confronted with large nation-states such as China or Russia? What will they do when other small states don't respect the libertarian non-aggression principle? Will the Andreessens, Thiel and Zuckerbergs of this world be respected by the military, or will they shit their pants when
confronted with a military coup, or worse, the enemy's military?
I mildly disagree mostly because I can’t get hard evidence, but everything’s I’ve heard from faang workers is that they are basically run like nation states on a logistical level. Complete with their own forms of courts to handle interdepartmental disputes and PMCs that they like to keep very quiet about.
The US military is famously a logistics network that dabbles in shooting things, and companies like Amazon are already very very good at that.
Cards that only work because of the current system that they are hacking away at. Revolutions tend to eat their young, wannabe American oligarchs should check on how things turned out for the majority of post-soviet Russian oligarchs.
Money and power don’t usually make you smarter, in fact they usually make you dumber. You can have every anti social belief and the intentions of the antichrist, but if you’re smart and run your system well everyone will still benefit.
When people feel they have nothing left to lose they will happily drag everyone else, especially those of means, down into the mud with them, even if it costs them their own life because they already think it is worthless.
Yes the rich have "all the cards" but the thing about societal reorganization is things get completely flip-flopped and the fact society recognizes you as owning a mansion and a screw factory today doesn't mean that they won't recognize Castro's lieutenant as controlling it tomorrow.
Possessions that are "yours" are only yours insofar as you can either defend it or others recognize it as yours. Thus you end up with situations like "Barbeque" in Haiti owning the streets and much of the rich's land/assets are now magically in the hands of barbeque or his crew and whatever money that one thought they could use to resist that turned out to not be their money anymore. The "rich" thus still hold all the cards but who is rich and who isn't isn't the same as when it started.
Cards can always be taken with violence. Chaos is progression to a state of all versus all, where the most important thing is having the biggest wrench: https://xkcd.com/538/.
And they will almost certainly have the biggest wrench. Before you consider the sheer difficulty of making mass violence happen (especially in a world where tech can be used to regulate a sufficient portion of people's worldviews as required), at some point they'll probably just have the upper hand militarily. As military tech gets better, wealth will be able to shift directly into physical power, amplifying their abilities against a comparatively powerless populace.
If you own everything, and you bomb the populace, you bomb your own stuff.
If everybody works for you, and you bomb the populace, you bomb your own serfs.
And those faceless individuals who are actually holding the weapons, and actually know how they work, and actually know, in a detailed, hands-on way, how to do coordinated violence with them? It turns out they're secretly members of the populace. You'd better make sure they think it's in their interest to keep using the weapons the way you want them to.
Yeah this is why the US fails everytime they try to keep "boots on the ground."
You can bomb people into oblivion but if you actually want to control them, most of the things that give superiority to a fixed group of rich are useless. Violence is still democratic if you're trying to get anything useful out of the people you seek to control. If you have 5 people and 3 of them are slaves with an AK-47 and a donkey, you have 0 slaves not 5 slaves.
Obviously the rich/powerful can't stay that way in a glass desert with no plebs to do their bidding, at least for now, so most of the technology the government and rich have are useless for subjecting a hostile populace.
> And they will almost certainly have the biggest wrench
Tech CEOs can easily outlive their usefulness once the machinery is built, and can easily find themselves labeled "terrorists" if they try to fight back with whatever feeble power they have.
Political factions, purges and patronage is what comes next, amd despite their inflated egos, they won't be the patrons.
Nikolai Yezhov held all the cards under Stalin, right up until he got purged by Beria. Then Beria held all the cards until he was ousted and shot in turn. In a dog-eat-dog world, the top dog is the biggest target.
..That said, what you're saying could be true. I think the truth is that we don't know, and I'm pretty sure we would've felt the same way about the people in the above pictures.
Which also tends to lean on a political set. But poor people will be deprived of their liberties be them left or right. For those useful to power it will take just a little bit longer to notice.
Same as it's ever been. When the founders of this country cried about freedom, they meant for themselves to not pay taxes that would cover their debts, not freedom for their slaves or lower-class Americans. After all if you are at the top, then you are literally free to do as you wish
Apple has more cash reserves on hand than most countries do and yet its CEO had to scramble to stand behind Trump during the inauguration and offer a million-dollar tribute to stay in his good graces. Power > money.
He didn't have to do a single damn thing. He did the cost-benefit analysis and chose to cozy up to a corrupt administration.
Given how much the typical Apple consumer skews left and has extreme brand loyalty, if Apple got tariffed simply because Tim failed to bow down, Apple would be in a stronger position to fight it than any other tech company. They could have stood up, but chose not to.
> Given how much the typical Apple consumer skews left
idk, that might just be something people believe but i haven't seen any evidence of that... many right-leaning pundits are apple users; even rush limbaugh was a mac user!
I think your forgetting that governments can just shut a company down, or even worse completely take it over and nationalise it. At the end of the day sovereigns rule over all else. Money means nothing when a gun is pointed at your head.
Moments later (~1:13) he also said "we aren't forcing Flock on anyone"
False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE
No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled. And no, under the radar agreements with local cops and govts do NOT constitute my permission to be surveilled. If they want to go in with fully informed referendums in each community, then I'd accept it. But that is not Flock's business model.
> If they want to go in with fully informed referendums in each community, then I'd accept it.
I might accept it for this specific case. But, in general, just because the majority wants to do something doesn't mean it's legitimate to force everyone to accept it.
> But, in general, just because the majority wants to do something doesn't mean it's legitimate to force everyone to accept it.
I mean, isn't that the literal definition of democracy? I tend to agree that "tyranny of the majority" can have some pretty bad outcomes, but that is what a democracy ultimately boils down to, is it not?
> No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled
As much as I dislike Flock, this is bad logic. There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces. Public spaces are defined by being public, in that everyone (even governments/corporations!) is free to observe everyone else in that same setting.
So in reality, everyone has permitted themselves to be surveilled, purely through the act of being in public.
This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America.
If this is what they thought was possible, why write the 4th Amendment?
Unreasonable search and overbearing government was one of the key issues of the American Revolution.
> I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety - Ben Frank
I know this is supposed to be some kind of "gotcha", but I'm legitimately curious: what essential liberty is someone giving up being surveilled in public?
public surveillance cameras erode personal privacy because there were no cameras with ID and tracking before. Widespread camera networks with tracking, ID and record keeping in a networked environment that is accessed by many varied agencies (e.g. federal immigration related) constitute new government surveillance. The US Constitution's Fourth Amendment provides explicit protection against unwarranted searches and seizures. Socially, constant monitoring creates a chilling effect on free behavior in public spaces, undermining individual liberty. For example, three teenagers dress oddly on Saturday night in association with a music culture. Authority officers show up with weapons, bright lights and harsh questions? That happens more than once. Is that "chilling" ?
Mission creep and abuse are major concerns. Examples are documented where systems introduced for limited purposes — like traffic enforcement or terrorism prevention — expand into broader, unchecked surveillance by multiple agencies, commercially and maybe gray or black markets, too. Imagine cameras initially deployed in work zones may later be used citywide, enabling mass tracking of individuals without probable cause.
Lack of oversight and due process further fuels opposition. Automated systems, such as those issuing speeding tickets without human review, deny individuals fair recourse. The absence of judicial warrants and transparency in deployment is seen as enabling government overreach and hidden revenue generation, disproportionately impacting low-income communities. Long-term record keeping may contain errors, omissions and misjudgements that remain uncorrected.
Financial and civil costs are real. Surveillance systems are expensive, yet studies show limited effectiveness in actually preventing crime or terrorism. Civil libertarians argue that resources should instead support community-based safety solutions that respect constitutional freedoms.
Ultimately, strict legal limits or outright bans on public video surveillance are in effect right now in many places, and those cases can be discussed among an informed voting public.
> Socially, constant monitoring creates a chilling effect on free behavior in public spaces, undermining individual liberty.
I was skeptical from the first sentence, but I stopped here.
This "chilling effect" is a favorite of privacy advocates, but it's purely a hypothetical. I have asked for and received no evidence of its practical effect in the real world, and can find plenty of evidence to the contrary.
New York City, for example, is one of the most highly-surveilled cities in the US, and yet turnout for things like protests is seemingly unaffected.
This is one of the centerpieces of your entire argument, yet is literally taken on faith.
I am! If the rest of your post is predicated on an unsupported point, it means it's unsupported, by definition. That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence[1].
I agree that the hypothetical "chilling effect", as presented, is plausible and reasonable, but it lacks evidence. As such, I saved myself the effort of reading what might be a plausible argument until such time as it becomes supported by evidence.
I went back and read it, and you supported it with more hypotheticals, not evidence. So congratulations, you made me waste a couple minutes of my life! But this just tells me I once again made the right judgement call in not reading it the first time, and doesn't really help further your cause, or convince me I'm mistaken in this regard.
There's a ton of difference between a random person noting my presence at a single point in space-time and a commercial entity tracking and storing my movements all the time.
Being okay with people watching me in public does not imply being okay with someone aggregating the information about my whereabouts 24/7 even though it's "the same" information.
Btw it's a fallacy similar to the one debunked in "what colour are your bits". The context matters, not just the abstract information.
This is an unfortunate thing about a whole lot of legal precedent in the US.
Courts made a pretty reasonable set of tradeoffs around the 4th amendment for search warrant vs. subpoena, police officers observing you, etc.
During the 19th century.
Unfortunately, modern data processing completely undermines a lot of the rationale about how reasonable and intrusive various things are. Before, cops couldn't follow and surveil everyone; blanket subpoenas to get millions of peoples' information weren't possible because the information wasn't concentrated in one entity's hands and compliance would have been impossible; etc.
Actually the courts of the US have stated that mass dragnet surveillance is not allowed. I can't find the argument I'm thinking of but it referenced how the police can sit outside your house and surveil you, but physically cannot do that to everyone all the time, and that is an inherent limit to their ability to conduct surveillance that gives you some freedoms and that limit should be respected. Making a machine that can do exactly that is not something cops are allowed to do.
The actual legal problem is that, the above does not apply to private companies. You have no fourth amendment rights from private companies. The constitution gives you no rights against companies.
So the company does exactly what the police aren't allowed to do, and then sell access to the police. For some reason, this literal circumvention of their restrictions has been explicitly allowed.
This is why Surveillance Capitalism is such a big deal. It is a direct circumvention of your explicit constitutional rights, and it just so happens to accomplish that because of the profit earned in the process. For a lot of assholes, this is the winingest of win-wins.
> Actually the courts of the US have stated that mass dragnet surveillance is not allowed.
There isn’t a sweeping precedent that says “mass surveillance is illegal.
The Supreme Court has signaled concern (Knotts’ “dragnet-type” reservation; echoed in Jones/Carpenter), but mostly we rely upon older third-party/plain-view doctrines and very fact-specific scope/retention questions.
So we have things like law enforcement successfully subpoenaing gmail metadata at large scale.
The law is perhaps changing, slowly -- we have geofencing heading to the Supremes, and active litigation about ALPR.
Also, “private company” isn’t an automatic workaround—if a vendor is acting as an agent of law enforcement, Fourth Amendment limits apply.
But this is not what Flock or other ALPRs do. They do not monitor nor aggregate your movements, unless specifically asked to. Or, at least, that's how they say they're being used, and until we find evidence to the contrary (we haven't), we should take them at their word and think about the model a little differently. If no one is looking for your movements in particular, after some period of time, the data that contains evidence of your movements if deleted. The vet result for most users is a temporary record of a short history of their movements that no one ever sees, and which is permanently forgotten after some period of time.
This is like when people complain that Facebook and Google are "selling their data". They aren't, but they are doing a closely-related thing: selling access to you, based on your data. These are not the same thing, and the difference is important when it comes to finding solutions to the problems it causes!
If we all voted to ban companies like Facebook and Google from selling your data, they'd shrug and say "sure I guess, we weren't selling it anyway", and nothing would change.
If we all voted to ban Flock from "tracking all of us", they'd shrug and say "that's already true" and it would not have any impact on their operations.
What we should instead vote for is strict controls over how long they can store the data, and how it is allowed to be used, and apply steep penalties for its misuse or unauthorized disclosure.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is bogus
Okay: Just how long would you permit someone to follow you around with a camera, recording everything you do?
The thing about a stranger watching you in public is that eventually you go somewhere else, and they can't watch you anymore. A surveillance organization like Flock, however, is waiting for you wherever you go. In this sense they're much more like a stalker following you around than a stranger who happens to see you.
This analogy bears out in practice: Cops have used Flock data to stalk their exes.¹
> Okay: Just how long would you permit someone to follow you around with a camera, recording everything you do?
Probably not long. I might also make it clear I'm not a fan, but at the end of the day, they're generally within their rights to record me in public. Sucks, but not much I can do.
> The thing about a stranger watching you in public is that eventually you go somewhere else, and they can't watch you anymore. A surveillance organization like Flock, however, is waiting for you wherever you go. In this sense they're much more like a stalker following you around than a stranger who happens to see you.
I mean, I don't buy this argument, because a stranger can legally follow me to all the same places where Flock is present. I mean, surely if I get into a car and drive away, they can get into a car and follow me. So long as we're both in public roads, they're within their rights to do so?
Granted, if they keep it up long enough, I can probably file charges for stalking. Perhaps the same can be done against Flock? Hell, this would even be a situation where Flock would be useful: proving that someone was following me around all day, thus supporting my bid for a restraining order or something.
> This analogy bears out in practice: Cops have used Flock data to stalk their exes.¹
Indeed, and this is where oversight, strict rules around usage and retention, and effective penalties for violations are needed.
Banning Flock is not the only solution! I mean, I would be in favor of banning Flock specifically (because they've demonstrated a willingness to act in bad faith), but I would not support a ban of ALPRs entirely. They do provide benefits, and coupled with the right rules, can be a net benefit to society.
> Probably not long. I might also make it clear I'm not a fan, but at the end of the day, they're generally within their rights to record me in public. Sucks, but not much I can do.
You should not test this. If you record someone for hours or days in public, you may find yourself with a restraining order, a ticket for stalking (or assault), or a civil suit for invasion of privacy or IIED or something similar. This depends on the jurisdiction and the person you are recording, but what you are citing about not having an expectation of privacy is mostly meant with regards to point-in-time instances (one photo), not ongoing continuous surveillance.
Yes, the only distinction between any and all of these things and a legal recording is the length of time and the invasiveness of the collection of data. No, there is no bright line where you are definitely guilty or definitely safe (few things in law have one).
I don't understand this argument. How is Flock "collaborating" by selling their product? Sure they're happy their product is selling. How does that imply collaboration?
I mean, you're welcome to buy an Apple Vision Pro, but you making poor decisions with your money doesn't make Apple responsible for that.
>>everyone (even governments/corporations!) is free to observe everyone else in that same setting
If you want to manually observe me in public, as in WITH A HUMAN PERSON'S LIVING EYEBALLS, go right ahead.
Even if you want to use a manually-operated still or video camera and microphone, one device per person, go ahead. Or even a radar gun operated by a human, one observer with one device.
But if you start littering the entire planet with cameras and create a panopticon, even if it is absolutely in public space, that is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, and absolutely infringing on any reasonable concept of public/private space!
Consider simple speeding. An ordinary person who usually follows speed limits will rarely get stopped and fined, even if they occasionally exceed a limit in an emergency or when doing the safest thing in dense traffic that is over the speed limit, match the speed of traffic. But with universal surveillance, even watching 100% in public spaces, that person in an emergency could get dozens of tickets for minor infractions.
This is setting up Cardinal Richlieu's ideal tyranny: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."
With a panopticon of all public spaces, any petty tyrant can find enough evidence in six minutes to imprison anyone.
> This is setting up Cardinal Richlieu's ideal tyranny: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."
It's a good thing, then, that most criminal convictions require a jury of our peers, and not just the word of a tyrant. And that appeals exist, etc etc.
> With a panopticon of all public spaces, any petty tyrant can find enough evidence in six minutes to imprison anyone.
This is a blatant strawman. Said "panopticon" already exists in major areas, and this kind of abuse of power still rarely happens. It's possible to have increased surveillance come with stricter rules and increased oversight, you know.
For example, it's pretty telling that Mandani, largely seen as a promising progressive candidate, has opted to change so little about the NYPD, which conducts massive city-wide surveillance, on the level of your "panopticon". Perhaps it's because he understands the benefits it provides to public safety, and is implicitly voting in confidence of its current level of oversight?
>> this kind of abuse of power still rarely happens
It is not even close to "rarely happens"
It happens in EVERY authoritarian state that has the technology, to BILLIONS of people around the world.
It is also already happening a LOT in the US (presumably where your comment is limited to).
Flock is used specifically to create parallel construction, where they observe cars moving "in a pattern" that might indicate "smuggling immigrants" such as driving from a border county, or working with pro-immigrant groups (a 100% legal activity), and local/regional police are alerted to find a pretext to stop the car, and often results in charges for someone who would otherwise never have been noticed.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
This has been known for thousands of years.
This type of systems are only a step away from absolute power
>> most criminal convictions require a jury of our peers
Tell that to the people kidnapped by ICE, with ZERO due process, based on just a sighting and tracking with a camera that matches a racial profile, then they wind up in detention and deported, or dead, with zero judicial intervention.
Stop acting like this doesn't happen or the current 'administration' actually follows the rules. This administration is on the well-traveled road to corrupting democracy and implementing fascism, and systems like Flock actively help it happen.
You are arguing sophistry on the wrong side of the facts, the wrong side of civil society, and the wrong side of history. Reconsider your life
You and I have very different definitions of "rarely", apparently.
It is rare, by most definitions of "rare" (at least in the US, where I'm implicitly limiting this discussion, in general). What's yours?
If your definition of "rarely" is "more than never", a) you're setting an unreasonable standard, and b) letting the lack of perfection be an easy way to discredit anyone who disagrees with you, which is intellectually lazy.
I certainly agree that abuse happens! Unfortunately, that's just a fact of life. The best we can do is minimize abuse, and we should be making every effort to do so.
But this does not mean reactionary banning of every new technology, regardless of the benefits it may bring. That's just reactionary conservatism, which I think (based on the rest your comment), you vehemently disagree with!
> Flock is used specifically to create parallel construction, where they observe cars moving "in a pattern" that might indicate "smuggling immigrants" such as driving from a border county, or working with pro-immigrant groups (a 100% legal activity), and local/regional police are alerted to find a pretext to stop the car, and often results in charges for someone who would otherwise never have been noticed.
[Citation needed]. This is certainly plausible, but is currently presented without evidence, and can likewise be dismissed without evidence.
> Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Cool truism. Except we're not talking about "absolute power" by any stretch of the definition.
> This type of systems are only a step away from absolute power
Okay this is just bullshit and hyperbole.
The rest of your comment is equally disingenuous and wildly emotional. I refuse to engage with this. Either calm down and have a real conversation, or go away. Your subsequent ad-hominems and strawmen are entirely unwarranted and uncalled-for.
As the owner of a moral person (a company), I disagree.
There are even weirder stuff than companies being considered a "moral person". For example if a person speeds way too much in France (say more than 50 kilometers/hour above the speed limit on the highway, e.g. 180 km/h // 111 mph instead of the 130 km/h // 80 mph)... Well then that person gets arrested. And his driving license is confiscated on the spot. But here's the absolute crazy thing: even if the car belong to someone else, to a company, to a rental company... Doesn't matter: the French state consider that the car itself was complicit in the act. So the car is seized too (for 8 days if it doesn't belong to the person who was driving it and potentially much more if it does belong to the person driving it).
Companies are persons and cars (I'm not even talking about self-driving cars) have rights and obligations. That's the world we live in.
"Company" is a generic collective noun. "Corporation" is the legal term directly referencing a constructed singular entity with a corpus/body to be treated like a natural person.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
If you followed me around all day taking photographs of my every move for no other reason than you felt like it, I would very likely have recourse via stalking and harassment laws.
There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology.
If I'm interesting enough to get a warrant for surveillance of my activities - fair game. Private investigators operate under a set of reasonable limits and must be licensed in most (all?) states for this reason as well.
It's quite obvious laws have simply not caught up with the state of modern technology that allows for the type of data collection and thus mass-surveillance that is now possible today. If you went back 50 years ago and asked anyone on the street if it was okay that every time they left the house their travel history would be recorded indefinitely they would talk to you about communist dystopias that could never happen here due to the 2nd amendment.
>There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology.
There is a difference, the company is doing it to everyone, technology enables new things to happen and laws don't cover it. Before it was impractical for police to assign everyone a personal stalker but tech has made it practical.
By default if something is new enough it has a pretty good chance of being legal because the law hasn't caught up or considered it in advance.
But Flock doesn't "follow you around"? It's fixed location cameras. If you avoid the locations, you avoid the cameras, and thus the tracking.
> There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology.
I feel like it's telling that no one has yet taken this logic to court. I think that means that while there may be no difference to you there is a difference according to the law. This gets at your later point.
Speaking of:
> If you went back 50 years ago and asked anyone on the street if it was okay that every time they left the house their travel history would be recorded indefinitely they would talk to you about communist dystopias that could never happen here due to the 2nd amendment.
I think you're doing a subtle motte-and-bailey here. As far as I'm aware, Flock has strict retention policies, numbering in the low single-digit months (Google says 30 days "by default"). There is no "recorded indefinitely" here, which significantly changes the characteristics of the argument here. This is roughly on par with CCTV systems, to the best of my knowledge.
I don't disagree that laws haven't caught up yet, but I also think a lot of the arguments against Flock are rife with hyperbolic arguments like this that do meaningfully misrepresent their model. I think this leads to bad solutioning, as a consequence.
I'd much rather have good solutions here than bad ones, because ALPRs and other "surveillance technologies" do drive improvements in crime clearance rates/outcomes, so they shouldn't be banned--just better controlled/audited/overseen
But Flock DOES follow you around, in the sense that you can't really escape being observed by a series of ALPRs on a highway network.
Read some cases of who's suffering now. Cops (or ICE) can choose a passing vehicle to run a ALPR search on, finding out what states it just passed through. When they consider it "suspicious", said driver gets stopped, searched, and even detained.
Look at how ALPR is being used and whose rights are being violated as a result. Hint: it's not criminals.
If you're only reading the stories of the false positives or the abuses of power, you're making your judgements on only a fraction of the available information.
I think the suffering/abuse is able to be reasonably controlled through increased/better oversight, more publicly available information, and more strict regulations around the use of the data produced by these devices.
I also think they're able to impart a whole lot of good on their communities. If they contribute to an increase in the number of arrests and convictions for crimes, that might end up being a net good.
I think starting from the assumption that they are net bad, and then telling me I should only look at the negatives is an uncompelling argument.
I need not look further than the testimony of people who used to commit crimes in areas with increased surveillance (i.e., San Francisco), and I see a compelling argument for their upsides. Now I have to weigh the positives and negatives against each other, and it stops being the clear-cut argument you're disingenuously presenting it as.
> If you're only reading the stories of the false positives or the abuses of power, you're making your judgements on only a fraction of the available information.
If you're only reading the stories of the homosexual people in Germany in the 1940s, you're making your judgements on only a fraction of the available information.
I think starting from "put surveillance cameras everywhere, because IF they contribute to a number of arrests that MIGHT end up being a net good" is an uncompelling argument.
How about you give me your bank account details and permission to make free use of all your money, and then IF I contribute more value with your money than you do that MIGHT end up being a net good, so let's try it first and find out later?
"stop reading about the abuses of power, just ignore them" is a really poor position to take.
> I think starting from "put surveillance cameras everywhere, because IF they contribute to a number of arrests that MIGHT end up being a net good" is an uncompelling argument.
I'm not starting from this argument, though. I'm starting from the argument that we shouldn't be inherently opposed to putting up more of we think the benefit outweighs the negatives or risks of abuse
Your level of strawmanning here tells me you're not arguing in good faith
> But Flock doesn't "follow you around"? It's fixed location cameras.
This is a really silly thing to say. It’s the “stop hitting yourself” of surveillance bullshit. Come on. Calling them “fixed cameras” so you can ignore the intent in the original comment is middle school shit.
What if I run my own cameras, my own local models, and my own analysis? All from the privacy of my own home... Is that okay?
What if I recruit a few friends around my town to do the same, and we share data and findings? Is that also fine?
What if I pay a bunch of people I don't know to collect this data for me, but do all the analysis myself?
Where do you draw the line? Being able to concretely define a line here is something I've seen privacy proponents be utterly incapable of doing. Yet it's important to do so, because on one end of the spectrum is a set of protected liberties, and on the other is authoritarian dystopia. If you can't define some point at which freedom stops being freedom, you leave the door wide open to the kind of bullshit arguments we see any time "privacy in public" comes up: 100% feels, and 0% logic.
Because it seems clear to me that if an individual was to surveil and build up a dossier on any random stranger as much as an entity like Facebook or Google does that this would be considered stalking.
I've never been able to quite figure out why incorporating and doing it to basically everyone some how makes it legal. I think the secret ingredient is money but I'm not exactly sure how that works.
But this is incorrect. Flock is just incidentally watching you. Assuming they're being honest about their retention policies (which I would definitely that take with a grain of salt, but I'm making the assumption to steelman here), if no one searches for you, you're forgotten from their system after 30 days.
Stalking is targeted. Passively observing and making that information easy to search for a limited period of time is not quite the same thing, and the distinction has important implications
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you from a park bench in public and hundreds of thousands of clones of me watching you from every street corner in public is, quite frankly, bogus
To paraphrase the quote, quantity has a quality of its own.
>This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
The idea that me an individual observing you, and a large, well funded company allied with the US government observing you has no difference, quite frankly, leads me to conclude* you are arguing in bad faith.
You can make an ideological argument that is the case, but not one based on fact and reality.
> The idea that me an individual observing you, and a large, well funded company allied with the US government observing you has no difference, quite frankly, leads me to conclude* you are arguing in bad faith.
I mean, in both cases, I'm being observed in public, with unknown intent. Until that observation becomes action of some kind, there is no difference to me.
That tells me it's the concrete result of the surveillance that makes the difference, not whether or not it's an individual or a government doing the surveillance.
As far as I can tell, if no one searches for my vehicle in Flock's database within 30 days of being observed, whether or not Flock observed me becomes moot. For the vast majority of individuals observed by Flock, there will not exist any permanent record of their movements.
Now, all that is assuming they're above board with their retention policies, which they may well not be! I trust them about as far as I can throw them, but I haven't seen any evidence that they're lying about their retention practices, or that they're engaging in "dragnet-style" surveillance. I'm optimistic that any lawfare they engage in will out any bad behavior in that regard, thanks to discovery.
This does pose an interesting question: is an individual with perfect memory, who regularly sees you in public and who could recall every detail of every time they've ever seen you, better or worse than Flock, which "forgets" you after 30 days?
they could instead be limiting flock to private places.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
if you followed me everywhere and took pictures of me everywhwre i went outside from my door in the morning to my door in the evening, id want to get a restraining order on you as a stalker. this is stalking
Scenario A: A person or drone follows you and takes a sequence of photos of your activities (approximately) wherever you go in public.
Scenario B: An array of cameras is installed (approximately) everywhere and takes a series of photos that include you, and the sequence of photos of your activities (approximately) wherever you go in public is assembled in real-time.
You claim these are different.
Other than details of the the technology, they are the same. The result is the stalker has a complete surveillance of your activities.
Scenario B is even worse, as the stalker now has a complete surveillance of EVERYONE, for the same cost, with zero regard for legitimate legal suspicion.
Ironic, coming from someone blatantly ignoring the reality of things like retention policies.
Scenario B reduces to "you were never seen or followed" if no one has a reason to search for you within the retention window.
Scenario A requires intent. Scenario B only reduces to Scenario A when that intent exists. When it does not, Scenario B is essentially a noop, and has 0 actual impact on you
Scenario B requires intent ANY TIME. Someone in the system can decide they want to track me RETROACTIVELY and do it even more effectively than if they had planned in advance. With malicious intent, they can find or fabricate charges retroactively.
Yes, it is only potential, until it is actualized. Potential energy is still energy, and it is still different from not having potential energy in place.
This is why things like retention policies exist, though? Retroactively being able to query ALPR data is massively impactful to the ability to prosecute criminal wrongdoing, especially when a crime can be tied to a vehicle (such as theft of a vehicle). That utility significantly degrades with time, however!
Banning ALPRs outright is a strictly inferior solution, when compared to putting strict limits on their data retention.
This also inherently limits their potential for misuse, which seems to be your primary concern here?
The idea that a single CCTV feed is at all comparable to aggregatable Flock data is a deeply unserious position. I’m not clear why you think you can pretend that single cameras and a network of cameras are either similar or comparable, in this context? Or why traffic cameras aren’t essentially identical, if they’re used identically?
I’d like to give the benefit of the doubt, but it feels very sea-liony and intentionally disingenuous.
The rich are increasingly uninterested in keeping up appearances.
And really, why should they? We've learned now that there was actually a worldwide network of child rapists purchasing girls from other wealthy child traffickers in positions of power in seemingly every Western nation, and the consensus thus far is to do exactly nothing about it.
Has anyone filed a CCPA-related lawsuit against Flock for retention and sharing of this data? How about a civil action for stalking? I assume it will just take one creative individual to find the right tort and then Flock will be buried under lawsuits.
Too many people are focused on the criminal aspects of this (4th amendment) and government surveillance. The fact that this is a corporation may give you more options.
In the 1300s you could be broke but if you had the blue blood you still had power.
People today can become wealthy, and wealthy people can lose wealth, much much easily than nobility was created or revoked under feudalism.
There's objectively more social mobility. That's an improvement. Don't confuse "it's an improvement" with "it's an acceptable and desirable end state".
I still argue that our current capitalist system is nothing more than an extension of the Norman system. Only capitalist executives see even less of the humanity of their ‘customers’ and the damage from their policies/maximal extraction than medieval lords saw in the serfs of the village that their policies/maximal extraction impacted.
"Thankfully, we live in a beautifully democratic and capitalistic society where we can fight in court [(...) where we can bankrupt the opposition even if we can't win the case.]"
Does anyone have a template for a network audit that one could request of a local police department that would disclose access logs for Flock Safety data?
A lot of jurisdictions actually require the data to be public! For example, ctrl-f "download csv" on this page for central LA PD: https://transparency.flocksafety.com/central-la-pd- . Not all jurisdictions require this, but if you can guess the URLs (https://transparency.flocksafety.com/<DEPARTMENT ID>) you can find quite a few, or just Google "YOUR PD flock safety portal". (EDIT: You'll want to regularly download these if you're trying to build a comprehensive record. The PDs I've been monitoring are only required to keep data for 30 days, so the CSVs are just a rolling window cut off at EXACTLY today minus 30 days.)
Our city council voted 5-0 to install more. A unanimous vote which includes democrats who ran on disrupting a council that had the same members for decades.
The thing is the billionaires are terrified of US. The point of these surveillance systems isn't to make us safer. Because we're actually pretty safe already. We're not going to be assassinated, kidnapped, or beaten because we pissed someone off.
It's to make people like Garrett Langley feel protected from us.
> The thing is the billionaires are terrified of US.
Are they though? The odds of any kind of coordinated response that could seriously threaten the billionaires seem next-to-none. Flock seems to be a lot more offensive than defensive - it enables the targeting and mass surveillance in order to find and punish the 'right people', as well as mass tracking to create yet another datapoint to understand the way people move, think and coordinate. The defensive side is already covered through internet services, like social media. They don't have much to fear. I reckon that a powerful/rich enough person could kill a stranger on the street in plain view of a huge crowd and have absolutely nothing happen to them.
Friend of mine used to work for a single digit billionaire. No one you know. His name barely comes up in a search. He said he found out after a few years that the guy had been kidnapped and held for ransom.
No he didn't. Luigi turned out to be an anomaly. He proved the public didn't have the stomach for revolution because none was forthcoming. He was reduced to a meme and thrown in prison.
He allegedly murdered a CEO — regardless whether it was him or not, a bloodthirsty CEO was murdered by a random member of the public. Other bloodthirsty CEOs no longer feel safe from the public.
Anyone can get shot by a random member of the public, that's the price we all pay for our American freedoms. The fear (and some might say hope) was that Luigi represented something bigger, an actual dawning of class consciousness in the US, but he didn't. He was just a guy with a gun and a grudge and there are literally millions of those.
"some" implies more than one. There was only one. There weren't any more, and there doesn't seem to be any sign of more. And this happened in a city where people get shot to death every day.
Life is literally no less safe for CEOs in the US post-Mangione then prior. The whole narrative that he represented some kind of social or cultural inflection point against CEOs was simply false, and the ones that are actually afraid already hire security because getting kidnapped for ransom is a much bigger threat than being shot in the street.
Dehumanizing other people as terrorists without applying the scholar definition in order to defame them should be called terrorism. Oh wait, defamation is already a thing. Let's just call it that, and it may end up being libel/slander, but the bar seems to be pretty high for that in USA and Europe as well.
I didn't even know about flock, and I still don't quite understand what it is, other than that they seem to want everyone being spied upon every second of their lives they're outside the hose, or something. For our protection / against crime / terrorism / pedophiles / communists / zombies or whatever. Usually it's governments and their law enforcement arms that push for that, but in the US private enterprise is king so I guess in this domain as well?
Anyway, assuming I've gotten the gist of it - I support De-flocking and de-surveillance'ing and will be happily to carry the label of an antifa terrorist all day long :-)
I swear, every fascist has the same playbook. They use the same phrases, same accusations, same lies, sometimes even same wordings. It is like they have a single hive mind - for which everyone else is the enemy and is subject to destruction or enslaving.
The Epstein files are revealing a web of surprising connections. Epstein's network knew about 9/11 and made stock trades beforehand. He was personally involved in some UK corruption to lower taxes on bank executives.
It was originally shortened in German from ”Antifaschistische Aktion” and ”Außerparlamentarische Opposition”. Then that carried over to other languages as a common name. Feel free to go back to the roots! ;)
disregarding the history of the term, you see that even posters on Hacker News Dot Com dispute the accuracy of the term "fascism" as applied to contemporary american politics, so what difference would it make? people who are okay with fascistic politics will not distinguish opposition with a name change.
What's Flock? What's Deflock? Why should I care? There's absolutely no context but just another smug American with that same accent as all the other smug American dickhead CEOs speaking in that exact American CEO way they all do (is there like a school or something they all go to?).
If i were the kind of person to say "i told you so" (and i am), i would point out that people have been screaming since like 1994 that the term "terrorist" is a tool of the state to punish anyone they find inconvenient.
Unfortunately for me i was born in 1991 and so i wasn't actually screaming in 1994 or 1998 or 2001 or 2003 but god damnit EVERYONE just decided "ah, typical left wing cranks" and said fuck it, let's let the president do whatever he wants, it's fine?
Obama executed a US citizen without trial on allegations of terrorism. I was absolutely screaming then.
You know that you are dealing with a fascist scumbag the moment you hear "terrorist", "antifa" and "law and order" in the same phrase. Flock is a disgrace for the industry, and this fascist sociopath is a disgrace for mankind.
Genuinely hilarious that this is banned off the front page. A YC alum is calling people who publish data terrorists and the fascism apologist bros are like "this site isn't for politics"
That figure is straight from Flok's own press release. There were deep deep methological flaws in the calculation of that figure.
https://archive.is/7iNyQ - this is an excellent piece breaking down the many many flaws in that figure and quotes the 2 academics involved who later said highlighted the issues.
->"“This 'study' rings a cacophony of alarm bells: the closer you look at it, the more it looks like a marketing scheme than data science,” Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me. “Nobody should be repeating the claims until the data can be verified and the conclusions replicated by independent data scientists without a direct tie to the company that stands to benefit."
That's a claim Flock makes. They poison their own well a bit when they then also claim that Deflock are terrorists. One might point out that one claim was made off the cuff while the other is has a white paper detailing why they're making this claim but said white paper has a number of it's own issues. See, unless perhaps you think they're a terrorist news organization: https://www.404media.co/researcher-who-oversaw-flock-surveil... which quotes one of the consulting academic researchers as saying:
>The researcher, Johnny Nhan of Texas Christian University, said that he has pivoted future research on Flock because he found “the information that is collected by the police departments are too varied and incomplete for us to do any type of meaningful statistical analysis on them.”
Well then... let's eliminate any due process and fourth amendment protections, maybe requiring something sensible like "officer suspicion", or maybe just a program of "random" searches.. you know keep everybody on their toes. I also bet that real crimes (whatever that means) goes down...
Just because something works doesn't make it right. Personally, giving up what the law is suppose to protect (individual rights) in the name of the law is something I can only see as a fool's bargain.
has anything ever good come out of silicon valley or the wall street? one greedy capitalist after another and you wonder why the world has turn to a shithole! the inequality between the rich and the poor is reaching the level of ambani vs. mumbai slums.
Mountain View recently turned off their Flock installs after they discovered Flock had enabled data sharing without notice and other agencies were searching through MV data.
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-came... > A separate “statewide lookup” feature had also been active on 29 of the city’s 30 cameras since the initial installation, running for 17 straight months until Mountain View found and disabled it on January 5. Through that tool, more than 250 agencies that had never signed any data agreement with Mountain View ran an estimated 600,000 searches over a single year, according to local paper the Mountain View Voice, which first uncovered the issue after filing a public records request.
A different town (Staunton, VA) also turned of their Flock installs after their CEO sent out an email claming:
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-ceo-goes-... > The attacks aren't new. You've been dealing with this for forever, and we've been dealing with this since our founding, from the same activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness. Now, they're producing YouTube videos with misleading headlines.
San Marcos in central Texas also disabled them recently
Santa Clara County (which includes MV) seems on the precipice of doing the same
Evanston, IL found them to be in violation of state privacy laws and disabled them in Sep.
In Eugene, OR the police tried to disable them in December but Flock turned them back on
Here is a map of upcoming city council meetings in the US where Flock surveillance will be discussed: https://alpr.watch/
The Evanston IL case is worse. They told Flock to deactivate and remove them. The cameras were re-installed and re-activated w/o permission, so the city had to come out and cover them all.
> The company took down 15 of the 18 stationary cameras by Sept. 8, only to reinstall all of them by Tuesday. This was apparently without authorization from city officials, who sent Flock a cease-and-desist order to take them back down. [1]
> Flock CEO Garrett Langley released a statement ... where he writes that “some of our public statements inadvertently provided inaccurate information” about the company’s relationship with federal law enforcement, confirming that there were “limited pilots” with agencies under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security focused on “combatting human trafficking and fentanyl distribution.” [2]
L O fucking L
[1] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/09/25/city-covers-up-flo...
[2] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/26/evanston-shuts-dow...
In one city the city covered them with black bags because they were illegal to remove
I'd like to see a database of municipalities that have passed an ordinance banning these systems (including 12 hour drone flyovers like they've been doing in Camden, NJ; drones are fine for specific or exigent circumstances, but flying them systematically is concerning!).
In fact, if anyone knows of municipalities that have done so let me know. I'd like to spend tourist money in those places that I haven't been able to spend in authoritarian-leaning locales as a reward for valuing freedom over suffocation of the constitution for little to no benefit.
Cambridge, MA.
After the city deactivated the existing cameras, Flock got caught putting more up. The city terminated their contract with Flock for material breach.
Evanston IL canceled their contract and took down the cameras, then Flock went and reinstalled the cameras.
> A statement provided by a Flock Safety spokesperson said, “Flock helps law enforcement, including hundreds of agencies around Illinois, solve crimes and make communities safer, and we are proud of the results we have achieved in partnership with the Evanston PD. We continue to be optimistic that we will have the opportunity to have a constructive dialogue to address the City’s concerns, and resume our successful partnership making Evanston safer.” [0]
Hows that for taking no as an answer? My god, we are in big trouble if this is going to be a regular thing. IMHO we need to shut this country down.
[0]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/29/after-evanston-fir...
The groups and companies that break the law and norms as usual part of business always complain about "lawlessness" when someone opposes them
Transcript
INTERVIEWER: Surveillance is becoming more prevalent everywhere. There's an organization called Deflock that's become fairly well-known in activist circles. They take an aggressive approach—counting cameras and maintaining a Discord channel where they discuss potential activities to move against surveillance expansion and stop organizations like Flock. What's your perspective on this organization and their methods?
FLOCK CEO: I see two distinct groups of activists here. There are organizations like the ACLU and the EFF that take an above-board approach to fighting for their viewpoint. We're fortunate to live in a democratic, capitalistic country where we can fight through the courts. I have a lot of respect for those groups because they engage in reasonable debate while following the law.
FLOCK CEO: Unfortunately, there are also what I'd call terroristic organizations like Deflock, whose primary motivation appears to be chaos. They're closer to Antifa than anything else. That's disappointing because I don't want chaos - I value law and order and a society built on safety.
FLOCK CEO: For those groups, I think it's regrettable they haven't chosen a more constructive approach to achieve their goals. They do have the right to their views, but that's why we have a democratically elected process. We're not forcing Flock on anyone. Elected officials understand that communities and families want safety, and Flock is the best way to create safe communities.
INTERVIEWER: Deflock probably wouldn't agree with the "terroristic" label you've applied to them, but...
----
Yeah. "They have a right to their views" buuut also, they are terrorists, and implicitly therefore deserve to have their freedom taken away because of said views. So giving the public a map of flock cameras and organizing to advocate against these being used in our communities is terroristic, I suppose. There's one party here that should be in jail here. Seems like that ought to be the creeps that are filming everyone against their consent, but I guess that makes me a terrorist...
> an aggressive approach — counting cameras and maintaining a Discord channel
Aggressive? Any more passive and it would be nil!
Counting cameras and maintaining a discord channel. It's almost like someone doesn't like being surveilled. Maybe by his own logic, Flock is a terrorist organization.
The surveillance company calls surveillance terrorism.
And millions nod along.
Reality writes great satire.
> Deflock, whose primary motivation appears to be chaos. They're closer to Antifa than anything else
so publishing the location of cameras is chaos? also, Antifa's goal is chaos? wtaf?
> We're not forcing Flock on anyone.
except that Flock put cameras back up when cities cancelled their contracts and took them down; that sounds like forcing to me
chaos to these out of touch oligarchs is when anything gets in the way of their plan, they're so used to getting their way all the time, they've never been told no, much less had an actual on–the–ground conflict to deal with
the more prosaic (the bear case) POV is that physically mounted outdoor street cameras have the same enforcement limitations as most other enforcement support technologies. flock isn't really bringing "number of unseen crimes" down from 1 to zero, he's bringing it from like 1000 to 999. a flock being easy to disable by a lay person, and a street corner not having witnesses - they're the same thing, it just isn't as good of a technology as he says (or people imagine) it to be.
so at the very beginning, the thing that threatens him the most is: simple ideas that sound objective and that make Gary Tan wary of putting $50m instead of $25m.
that said, very few things do that, bring "unseen crime" from N to 0. for example, legalization of something does that! he has found a very successful business nonetheless. it's more interesting to explore why. if he wanted to level constructive criticism at Deflock, i suppose we should wonder: how do they disrupt enterprise sales? flock is just, yet another failed IT project. it shouldn't be too hard. obviously, the best thing you can do is getting elected, and simply putting it in the law to not adopt the technology.
Flock is just, yet another failed IT project. it shouldn't be too hard.
Well I think this is the issue. The value of Flock is not what it says on the tin, it's everything else. Solving petty crimes yeah sure, yadda yadda. Ever had your bike stolen and told a cop about it?
It's the tracking part. That's where the juice is. Well obviously it'd violate the 4th amendment to slap a GPS tracker on your car to see if you're going to [known antifa member's] house - we'd never do that, but gee, this private company just happens to have a database of everywhere every person's car has ever been ...
> It's the tracking part. That's where the juice is.
how do you figure? everyone already has a perfect tracker carried around with them at all times, a cell phone. and i suppose, if someone is smart enough to not visit a thing with a phone, he'll be smart enough to not use a car, so... do you see what i mean? it still boils down to, "the technology is not really as good as it says it is." i mean i know that you say that it's not, it is. It is all about what it says on the tin.
That's enterprise sales. People have to stop making it about cerebral, academic political stuff. If municipalities understood that Flock is a waste of money, they wouldn't adopt it.
Law enforcement has a hard time negotiating with Google to get your location at all times. Oh Google knows it but they won't just send everyone's location all the time, only specific requests with or without a warrant. Same thing for Apple.
The carriers can provide almost as good location data through just doing fairly simple calculations on timings and signal strengths received by the cell towers, and their implicit knowledge about where those cell towers are located. Good keywords for further reading are (("4G" or "LTE") and "GMLC") or ("5G" and "LMF") and/or OTDOA.
While Google and Apple may be hesitant, what are your thoughts about AT&T or Verizon?
Why would they go to Google or Apple for GPS data when your mobile network provider will sell it openly to a third party who resells it to the cops?
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/dhs-is-circumve...
Bonus, no amount of jailbreaking or trickery can get around the fact that if your baseband chip is connected to the network, they have your rough location.
It has apparently gotten easier:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/hom...
A nice “grab their data” button for the current administration.
A sinister aspect of the US' collective paranoia about public transit -- not that there aren't cameras on the train, but i can also wear a mask on the train. "Masking" my car would be illegal on many counts.
Fascists have argued for years, including today, that they've only "gone fascist" because their perceived left-wing opposition was so "insane."
At this point, I'm planning to tattoo my "terrorist" affidavit on my arm, assuming i survive the encounter after filming ICE through my window next time they tear gas a child in front of my house (which they did do, here in Chicago, but i don't want to be more specific than that for obvious reasons)
Their "insanity" is literally that trans people are being in the open, kids in universities are required to learn pronouns, etc.
The nazi's did the same shit, claiming they had to do what they did because of "degeneracy" from the weimer republic.
Some of the current stuff is straight up rebranding of what they did.
Oh no! You had to wear a mask for a year and a half to not kill grandma! Let's go deport all minorities as retaliation!
> We're fortunate to live in a democratic, capitalistic country where we can fight through the courts
... and the one with more capital has an outsized chance of winning - which is us. <insert evil laughter>
> We're fortunate to live in a democratic, capitalistic country where we can fight through the courts.
Translation: we're fortunate enough we can buy the courts, brainwash the populous, and crush all legalistic opposition; but even with all that might, we can't yet hunt down every last of you painting over our spewing camera network.
Make of this what you will and adjust your methods accordingly.
This is an excellent video documenting some Flock camera vulnerabilities by Benn Jordan, a security hobbyist/researcher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY. It's a bit long, but worth it.
His work on this and similar topics is very good, he has deep technical insight and is a good communicator, but it's a bit funny seeing him referred to as a security hobbyist as in my mind he's a musical genius and one of the greatest living US musicians/programmers.
Some disucssion on that one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945960
The liberty at stake here is freedom of movement without a permanent, searchable record. There's a meaningful difference between "a person can see you in public" and "a corporation logs your plate, location, and timestamp thousands of times a month and makes it queryable." The Supreme Court moved in this direction in Carpenter v. United States, when it ruled that accessing historical location records constitutes a search even when the individual data points were shared with a third party, because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Some real-world examples of "the whole being greater than the sum of its parts":
- If your plate and another person's plate consistently show up at the same locations at the same times, that's evidence of a relationship. Now multiply that across everyone. You can map social networks, figure out who's meeting with who, identify affair partners, figure out who attends the same AA meeting every Tuesday.
- Regular trips to a mosque, a church, a union hall, a gun range, a protest staging area, a political campaign office. No single trip is meaningful, but the pattern over months tells you someone's affiliations and beliefs.
- Repeated visits to an oncology clinic, a methadone clinic, a fertility specialist, a psychiatrist's office. That's health information that would normally be protected under HIPAA if obtained through medical channels.
- When you leave for work, when you come home, what routes you take, when your house is empty. This is exactly the kind of information a stalker would want, and it's sitting in a database that (depending on the jurisdiction) may have minimal access controls.
The key point is that none of these individual observations are particularly sensitive. It's the longitudinal aggregation that transforms mundane location data into an intimate portrait of someone's life. And importantly, that portrait exists for essentially every driver, not just people under investigation.
You could argue that the 4th Amendment constrains state action, not corporate behavior. But it's not like Flock is collecting this data for some independent commercial purpose and the government occasionally subpoenas it. The product is government surveillance, just privatized. Outsourcing surveillance to a private contractor to avoid 4th Amendment scrutiny is arguably worse than the government doing it directly, because it bypasses the oversight mechanisms that keep the government in check (or at least, are supposed to do so).
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Don't worry, when the Millennia's and Zoomers are running the world, Alpha and Beta will be writing the exact same cruft as above, and the cycle will continue forever.
Now get off my lawn!
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Two differences between the generations this time; inequality and job opportunities
The old snark doesn't seem to apply as Boomers and GenX were able to launch their adult lives 20-30 years ago.
The olds aren't even hiding their ageism. Hilarious watching them complain about virtual reality while popping blue pills to simulate virility.
I don't know that they will be. Millennials and Zoomers aren't lead poisoned.
>GenX? Yeah, it's not just the Boomers despite the memes.
No its not. This is pure ageism on your part. You either don't know much about GenX or are just making it up. Both generations are vastly different. GenX being the smallest generation has very little influence on the economy , politics or culture.
Physics is ageist. Our financially engineered economy GenX is currently benefiting from is ageism against youth.
GenX is the only generation that has not soured on Trump since he started his second term. They're absorbing the economic shocks just fine.
I am an older Millennial who has worked with GenX for two decades.
They have been the worst colleagues. More often sexist, racist, classist, nihilistic than Boomer colleagues who kept it polite.
I can't recall a Millennial or GenZ coworker ever acting like any of those things.
GenX make up a huge chunk of the anti-woke crowd. Hop on TikTok and witness all the 50+ Kid Rock Stan's complain about blue haired lesbian GenZ women and trans people.
Millennials and GenZ aren't pushing those memes with the same numbers.
I have been paying attention.
Dave Chappelle, Foo Fighters, Will Smith, Brad Pitt; the backbone of the entertainment industry the last 25-30 years have little influence on our culture?
Feels like you're projecting your own out of touch with reality as mine
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It's amazing at how terrorism has been re-defined. When I was a kid you had to blow up skyscrapers or planes (or both at the same time), set off bombs in a crowded area, or a specifically targeted mass shooter to be labelled a terrorist.
I’m not saying it is historically accurate, but I would encourage anyone who didn’t experience interactions with law enforcement pre-9/11 (in the US) to watch early seasons of Law & Order.
It is pretty informative, even in the dramatic context of the show, to see police interactions and the respect for / erosion of individual rights when you view the seasons before 9/11/2001 and after 9/11/2001.
Yeah, after the initial shock and horror of seeing the Twin Towers go down was an overwhelming sense of dread in how that was going to justify an aggressive police state.
A Conservative Supreme Court Justice once pointed to the television show 24 as justification for why torture is okay.
The cast of 24 was brought to run a panel for the Heritage Foundation in one of their gatherings.
Yeah really does show you how it's now (actually for some time) just a label, conveniently morphing over time for people/groups you don't like, losing any actual meaning because it's applied so liberally.
And it's ironic because there are clearly "real terrorists" (i.e. 9/11 guys).
Labeling everyone "terrorists" became fashionable very quickly specifically after 9/11. I think it has decreased by 80-90% or so since then. "Terrorists" used to be everywhere.
Specifically you had to do those things and not be in the US military, or in a military geopolitically aligned with the US.
It hasn't been though. These clowns are just using the term disingenuously.
Kind of the same thing as being a Nazi, apparently.
Louis CK has a good bit on this https://youtu.be/VrpKQ0ISZl4?si=7IcugNOccB6m7LET&t=93
Terrorism is the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
It was a different world when you were a kid. People weren’t as incendiary in their speech.
So this statement by the Flock CEO is terrorism — it's intended to intimidate.
If we're terrorists for marking Flock cameras on a map, we might as well go all the way and start breaking them.
If surveiling the surveillance is terrorism, why isn't the original surveillance terrorism? Makes no sense.
If peaceful forms of protest and dissent are delegitemised, only the alternative is left.
But but that wouldn't be the peaceful protest they can ignore
Wow...
"...and then unfortunately there is terroristic organizations like DeFlock, whose primary motivation is chaos. They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else."
"We're not forcing Flock on anyone..."
It is a short 1:32 video, I encourage people to watch it for themselves.
I thought DeFlock was just publishing locations of cameras and lawfully convincing local governments to not use Flock, primarily through FOIA requests.
the line from authoritarians is often predictably to proclaim their opponents "terrorists" and the like
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/weakness-strongmen-step...
Twenty-some years back, I attended a talk by a classicist who was talking about how the Romans, Caesar specifically I think, basically used "pirate" the same way.
Funnily enough, the currently airing Starz program, Spartacus: House of Ashur does this, has Caesar as a character and all political sides use “pirates” as a bogeyman to justify all sorts of things and stage false flag attacks while pretending to be pirates. It’s meant for entertainment not historicity but it’s kind of reminding me of Battlestar Galactica reboot touching political themes in this one aspect except with swords and prosethetics flying everywhere.
art comments on life and life imitates art
I saw an exhibition on cannibalism that mentioned a similar thing such that being called a "cannibal" was used in a similar fashion.
Are there any famous examples? Like did John Adams ever call an opponent a cannibal?
The Spanish used it as justification for what they did to the Aztecs during their conquest in the 1500s.
https://daily.jstor.org/first-ugly-election-america-1800/
Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandenbek%C3%A4mpfung
https://archive.is/IBKgO
It's wild how it became mainstream in the US to equate Antifa = Bad.
Some geniuses proudly, openly self describe as anti antifa. Guess what that double negation makes you?
If you are against a self-professed democratic people's republic (of Korea), does that make you anti-democratic or anti-people?
This would be a great point if antifa was some official org with fascist views.
It's not. Antifa is just a shortened form of the word anti-fascist. Anyone can call themselves antifa. And typically, only people who view themselves as fighting fascism call themselves antifa.
In short, saying "antifa are the real fascists" is like saying "vegetarians are the real meat eaters". It doesn't make sense.
Antifa is a word with a very specific history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifaschistische_Aktion
So no, it doesn't just mean "anti-fascist".
I didn't say anything of that sort. North Korea calls itself "democratic people republic" and people who call themselves antifa claim they fight "fascists". In both cases, the claim is either completely made up or occasionally somewhat technically correct as they fight anything from corporations to corner store glass windows to journalists who happen to disagree with them and happen to find some fascist
Again, the DPRK is a singular entity. We can look at the behavior of the DPRK and analyze what its stance towards democracy is. We can see that it doesn't seem remotely committed to democracy, so being against the DPRK says nothing about one's views of democracy. Or even if the DPRK was truly committed to democracy, one could be against the DPRK for reasons completely unrelated to its democracy, and it would still not say anything about one's view of democracy.
Antifascism is just a political stance. It's shared by a wide range of disparate people who have nothing to do with each other. Just like vegetarianism is just the practice of not eating meat.
What does being anti-vegetarianism say about one's stance towards meat eating? Sure, you can look at any one guy or specific group of people who call themselves vegetarian, be against them for reasons unrelated to vegetarianism, and that doesn't say anything about your stance towards meat-eating. But being broadly anti-vegetarian?
...What does being broadly anti-antifascism say about one's stance towards fascism?
Which often leads to this point, as in Lord of War:
> Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, the Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.
The difference is that North Korea is a place, with an organization that claims to be its government. You can point to it on a map.
Antifa is an adjective that people with no connection to one another self-apply. I'm antifa, and I imagine you are too, but it doesn't mean that we've ever met or coordinated with one another in any meaningful way.
The word "antifa" is basically meaningless altogether, since virtually every person since the end of WW2 claims to oppose fascism.
Antifa is also a noun describing a group of people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States)
Wikipedia doesn't use the phrase "group of people", and cites a symposium as a source for the assessment that "it is a highly decentralized array of autonomous groups in the United States," so, I'm not sure this advances the discussion.
It's obvious that the vast, overwhelming majority of people consider themselves anti-fascist. So I really don't think it possible for this term to ever actually describe a particular group of people, excluding other groups of people.
These attempts to shoehorn the word "antifa" into some kind of distinct organization seem like they are just a lingual change to make it more difficult to use this phrase, or more difficult to advance critiques of fascist tendencies wherever they may appear.
Who is in that group?
Everyone with more than an ounce of gray matter.
Everyone who declared themselves to oppose fascism
But it's not about meanings of words with these people. It's about exercising power. Facts and logic don't matter.
There is a logic to it... above failed premises and false pretenses.
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Well, it makes you antiDPRK. Being anti-antifascist just make you a fascist, or a fascist-adjacent supporter.
> Being anti-antifascist just make you a fascist, or a fascist-adjacent supporter.
If a loose-knit ideology/movement called "Anti-Rapists" emerged that evolved into a cohort of various disconnected thugs who targeted homosexuals for violence, would being Anti-"Anti-Rapist" make you a supporter of rapists or rapist-adjacent supporter?
I can't tell if you are disputing or agreeing?
Obviously, in the scenario you describe, people will continue describe themselves as "anti-rapist" and everybody will understand that they mean that they are opposed to rape.
There is no "loose-knit ideology/movement" called "antifa" - there are groups like SDS and Don't Shoot PDX and a zillion others who describe themselves as "antifa", using it as an adjective. I'm aware of no person or organization who has attempted to proclaim that they are the one true antifa org.
There will never be "one true" org for groups like this anymore. There is no rational reason for a group to put a target on their back.
Leading isolated cells by social media is the new techique to cause change/chaos (depending on your viewpoint).
What has people who claimed to be antifacists done besides oppose facists? Because I have yet to see anybody except the the government and MAGA supporters claiming antifa has done anything else.
Well, some people who call themselves antifa also use slogans like "liberals get the bullet, too".
The right's play wasn't to invent antifa from the whole close, but to imply that those kinds of views are universal or nearly so among people who call themselves that.
(To be fair, it doesn't help that the historical antifa, i.e. KPD's Antifaschistische Aktion, considered social democrats to be its enemies, calling them "social fascists". It boggles my mind that anyone on the left who isn't a hardline Marxist-Leninist would adopt the name for themselves given its history.)
Well their view ist that antifa are actually fascists, which makes anti antifa democrats.
That’s not their view, it’s their propaganda. No one has ever made any actual, credible argument that anything about “antifa” is actually “fascist”.
But that's really the height of silliness. I can say that all people who describe themselves as 'anticapitalist' are actually capitalists, but that doesn't change anything about those people, the ideology in question, or the world.
Are some people who call themselves antifa secretly fascists? I'm sure they are. So?
Funny thing is that in my German neighborhood we have Antifa stickers pretty much on any other street lamp. Given the fascist tendencies all around it actually makes me feel safer...
> in my German neighborhood we have Antifa stickers pretty much on any other street lamp. Given the fascist tendencies all around it actually makes me feel safer
My Polish-German godmother asked me, as a kid, "who would you hide."
I didn't get the question. And 6-year old me wasn't ready for Holocaust with grandma. But it comes back to me from time to time.
Who would you hide. Who would you stake your wealth and life on to keep from undeserved suffering. The stickers are good. But they only mean something if you're willing to fight for them. At least in America, I'm unconvinced most sticker-toters are willing to sacrifice anything. (It's what makes Minnesota and Texas different.)
wow.. "who would you hide" - christ. thanks for posting that - it's powerful.
Agreed with other comment thanks so much for posting.
> They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else.
So they just said "These people are anti-fascist and this is a bad thing"
Aren't authoritarians great.
Great at telling everyone else what they are, at least.
By your logic, if the NSDAP or the Bolsheviks named themselves "The Party of Peace and Love", you would have written
> So they just said "These people are anti-violence and anti-hate and this is a bad thing"
(Frankly, our political situation is rife with insanity. I think the hotheads across the political spectrum need more nous and less thumos.)
Oh so Antifa is a single formal political party with card carrying members, a clear leadership structure and participation in mainstream public political life? I had no idea. Your analogy makes perfect sense. Where is the Antifa national headquarters?
Kinda funny, Noem claimed to have arrested the "Leader of Antifa" in Portland a few days ago [1]. Turned out it was just some guy who lived near I.C.E. HQ, who let nearby protesters use his bathroom and clean out mace from their eyes.
[1] https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2026/02/antifa-safehouse...
The American political situation is best characterized by the image of two deformed, monstrous, and vicious imbeciles wrestling for power. These are creatures that belong in a zoo, not in the political forum.
You should calm down and knock off the puerile snark.
I see I have to spell things out for you. It is of no relevance whether Antifa is a formalized organization with formal membership. That's why it's called an ANALOGY. You seem to have confused analogy with univocity...which is precisely what analogy is not. The essential point, which you seem to have missed by a mile, is that labels are irrelevant. That "Antifa" comes from "anti-fascist" tells me very little, if anything, about what the movement is actually, empirically about: what its principles actually are, what political ends it seeks to achieve, what means it uses to achieve them, and so on. The fact that the movement is informal actually makes the actions more relevant in characterizing and judging the movement, regardless of the label it uses.
In summary: the name given to a thing tells me nothing certain about the thing, and I would think this would be obvious to anyone.
Huge can of fallacies mixed with arrogance, as is typical in HN.
Pointing out the "socialist" in NSDAP or whatever is idiotic. Just because they used the same word later used by other people doesn't equate both. You can't say the Spanish socialist party is racist because they happen to use the word also used by the Germans 100 years ago.
The other slight of hand you're doing is reification - talking about an abstract concept as if it were concrete. Again, where is the national hq of Antifa? You can't tell me because there isn't one. And that is because it is not a single, organized movement.
When people like you say they are anti antifa, it doesn't take a lot of IQ to read between the lines. You don't need there to be a single formal entity to fight against because you are not against a concrete, specific movement. You are against the idea of anti fascism.
Although at odds with the official narrative of your country, this is hardly surprising or unprecedented. The US has a long and rich history of being anti anti fascist, or more simply, pro fascist.
>NSDAP or the Bolsheviks
You don't even need to use examples that westerners find polarizing because they want to minimize or maximize their badness for political reasons.
Africa is full of factions with grand names doing less than grand things that nobody here has any attachmennt to and do not cause complexities when comparing to.
> You don't even need to use examples that westerners find polarizing
Yes, but they are illustrative, because apparently, some people have a problem understanding that labels don't necessarily reflect the thing labeled. African factions are too foreign for most Westerners to appreciate the analogy. But if that helps someone understand what should be an obvious principle for any adult, then that's great.
"Despite the name, The Party of Peace and Love is actually authoritarian and horribly repressive, as you can see from the millions of people they've killed."
"Despite the name, Antifa is not just 'anti-fascist' but is actually _________"
What goes in the blank?
The blank is "the OTHER group". Like brown people, poor people, and (say it quickly so it doesn't get too noticed) women.
And anyone from the OTHER group is the enemy. Stop thinking, you have arrived to the conclusion. Now, here are some news ... I mean, entertainment, to make you fear them more.
__an identity claimed by people who are taking direct action against what they perceive as fascism, but currently more often the term is applied as an unthinking boogeyman by right wing authoritarians__
The question was what antifa actually is not what right wing authoritarians say it is
"an identity claimed by people who are taking direct action against what they perceive as fascism"
>So they just said "These people are anti-fascist and this is a bad thing"
A: "Hey guys, I think think this PATRIOT act thing is bad"
B: "Wait, you're saying patriots are bad? What are you, some sort of seditious non-patriot?"
Well you see the difference is that antifa means anti fascist but the PATRIOT act isn't patriotic, it's just called that. Hope this helps.
Ah yes, I too conflate bills written by organized lobbyists with a loosely affiliated group that says American shouldn't be ran by Nazi's. The Nazi's running America get very mad about that and ensure to flood the airwaves with how cities in the US are mile wide smoking craters due to people who don't like authoritarians.
The point GP was making, which holds as a general rule, is that simply adopting a moniker does not necessarily mean that it accurately describes you. Your argument pre-supposed that just because Antifa self-describes as antifascist, it inherently is, and that the CEO was expressing an opposition to the concept of antifascism, rather than simply expressing opposition to the specific group.
If Antifa’s record speaks for itself, then you don’t need to play these kinds of word games. If some CEO spoke unflatteringly of The Red Cross or Habitat For Humanity, that would say more about them than anything, not because they have virtuous sounding names (though they admittedly do) but because they’ve established a specific track record of public service.
I don't even know what antifa _is_ anymore, honestly. I only see it used as a boogie man by the right in discourse online.
But I _do_ know that when someone tags someone as "antifa" they are making a political statement and aligning themselves with a certain group that perceives "antifa" a certain way. "See, I hate those damn' antifa terrorists, I'm in the same camp as you! Please help my company make money!"
No disagreement there, and I think it was an inane comment on Langley’s part, to be clear
I've read your comment twice, and I can't make heads or tails of what you're trying to say.
> If some CEO spoke unflatteringly of The Red Cross or Habitat For Humanity,
Those are organizations. "Antifa" is a descriptive term that many people and organizations use, whether they have connections to one another or not. What is the comparison you are trying to draw here?
> If Antifa’s record speaks for itself, then you don’t need to play these kinds of word games.
You are using the possessive here, "Antifa's", in a way that seems grammatically incorrect to me.
"Antifa" is usually an adjective, but sometimes a known, like "vegan" or "blonde". Saying "if blonde's record speaks for itself", it seems like obviously broken English.
Usually you'd use this phraseology to describe a person or organization, "Joe's record", "Nabisco's record", etc.
What is the entity or entities whose record(s) you are trying to describe?
>Those are organizations. "Antifa" is a descriptive term that many people and organizations use, whether they have connections to one another or not. What is the comparison you are trying to draw here?
How's this different than say how "alt right" is pejoratively used by the left?
It's very much the same thing, there is no single unifying "Alt-Right" central headquarters, subscription fees amd newsletter, just as there is no specific Antifa organisation, just many people and a few groups that self identify as being against facism.
On the AltRight side people might point to, say, Steven Miller and his Nazi adjacent statements, or to Nick Fuentes and the Groypers, or to Andrew Anglin and The Daily Stormer for more trad. Nazi views.
To be honest I'm not entirely sure what the leading antifa groups in central north america might be.
In terms of the silliness / uselessness, you're right that they're similar - nobody compares "The alt-right" to the Red Cross, as if they had an office and an accountant on staff.
But plenty of people will say that they are traditional conservatives, and say "I'm not alt-right". Virtually nobody describes their own political views by saying "I'm not anti-fascist."
The point pixl97 was making was that they believed anti-anti-fascist described the Flock CEO.
If Flock's reputation spoke for itself, their CEO wouldn't have to play these kind of legal games.
What's relevant is whether antifa is anti fascist, not the general case of whether everything is what it's called
> The point GP was making, which holds as a general rule, is that simply adopting a moniker does not necessarily mean that it accurately describes you.
I'm deeply curious why you think someone would identify as an anti-fascist if they were not, in fact, anti-fascist. Do you think they just really like the flag logo or...?
Why does north Korea identify as democratic people's republic?
Because identifying as a Democracy confers benefits. Though it's worth noting nobody believes them.
Identifying as anti-fascist in the current environment, if anything, confers suspicion.
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Being opposed to antifa because some of the people using the label are violent seems to be painting with an overly broad brush.
"I'm opposed to atheism because some atheists are violent. I'm also opposed to vegetarianism because some vegetarians are violent."
You know what's telling? They're only ever against one side. Some anti–antifa are violent too, but they never care about that.
> Approximately nobody is against "antifa" because they're fighting "fascists".
So, I will say that far right, comservatives and fascists are against anti-fascism of any kind. Whether it is the boogeyman antifa or anything else. And there are a lot of people like that. Including in goverment.
They do take issue with anyone who openly opposes fascism.
I know we're not supposed to talk about it, but what in the world is happening to this site? Mistaking 'Antifa' for 'the concept of opposing fascism' is not the kind of failure mode I expect here. And this kind of thing has become endemic lately- emotive noise and sarcastic dunks drowning out substance in every thread, especially since the beginning of December. Or am I just imagining this?
What is Antifa, then?
> Mistaking 'Antifa' for 'the concept of opposing fascism'
that's literally what it means in theory and in practice
'The concept of opposing fascism' doesn't mean anything in practice. You have to implement practice around it, you can't just literally do a concept!
Fighting fascist is the primary way to oppose them. The fighting bit often requires violence. That's what it takes, because it involves fighting a group of people that are not a peaceful bunch and have very violent intentions.
Yes, exactly my point. And once you are picking targets and taking violent actions, you can no longer excuse your aim and your violence by saying your heart is in the right place. Antifa has, for many decades, done wrong actions with good intentions. You can oppose them without being fascist.
> done wrong actions with good intentions
I would like some evidence there, please
Okay, well you can look at the wikipedia page referenced above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States)
You can read Freddie deBoer's (notable communist writer) article: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/antifa-is-a-fatherless-...
Or this article on PBS: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/black-clad-anarchists-sw...
Or google it or ask an LLM to google it for you and put 10 minutes into actually participating in this conversation?
Hm. Have you actually read that wikipedia page? I don't think it serves to validate your claims.
It does say that the Trump administration and one police department claims that they are like you say. On the same page it also mentions that the Trump administration has been involved on several hoaxes trying to incorrectly portray it.
Most of all the other groups paint it in a positive light.
> [g]iven the historical and current threat that white supremacist and fascist groups pose, it's clear to me that organized, collective self-defense is not only a legitimate response, but lamentably an all-too-necessary response to this threat on too many occasions.
I would not mind being associated with the group portrayed on that page.
The article from Freddie deBoer is from 2021. He writes:
> The association of antifa with violence stems from the fact [in Europe] that these fascists or neofascists would often prowl the streets [...] Though many people would love to pretend that this isn’t the case, we are not in fact living in an America where Proud Boys wander through Chelsea randomly beating up gay people without resistance from the police
I think he would write something very different today. He does mention one case were a journalist was shot paint and mace and was thrown on the group by a group that could have been antifa. Or not.
Third link is from 2017. Black-clad anarchists swarm "anti-hate" rally in California, says the title. But it was an "anti-marxist" and "pro-trump" rally, which was cancelled(?). But people showed up anyway(?). And then:
> officers were told not to actively confront the anarchists
Come on. That reeks of being staged. The people in black were almost certainly proud boys. The wikipedia page mentions their leader employing this exact tactic:
> In posts on Parler, leaders of the Proud Boys had disclosed plans to attend the rally wearing "all black" clothing associated with antifa activists and arrive "incognito" in an apparent effort to shift blame for any violence on antifa
I did this analysis in a bit more than 10 minutes, no LLMs used.
Thank you for the effort.
You mention the years a few times- the claim I was asked to cite was in the past tense and I deliberately sought sources from before the current regime. This is your sole criticism of the deBoer article. Antifa was still called Antifa and it was still short for anti-fascist in 2017 and 2021.
Wiki says:
>Some on the political left and some civil rights organizations criticize antifa's willingness to adopt violent tactics, which they describe as counterproductive and dangerous, arguing that these tactics embolden the political right and their allies.
>Both Democratic and Republican politicians have condemned violence from antifa
>CNN describes antifa as "known for causing damage to property during protests."
Among many other similar statements; I think your summary is inadequate.
I can't argue with false flag conspiracy theories, so I'll leave it at that.
It works. It worked in WW2. Were the Allied soldiers fascist?
If they genocided German citizens, yes! We still argue today about whether Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified; nobody argues they weren't antifascist.
Are you saying that if someone punches a Nazi (or let's say Hitler himself) in the face, they're a bad person?
Of course I'm not saying this! There's no way to read what I said and get this out unless you put it in! You're supposed to be charitable here and you are actively doing the opposite.
If you punch John Doe in the face becaune you think he's Hitler; if you torture Hitler's parents just to stick it to him, yes, you are in the wrong.
Of course it means something. It means the concept of opposing fascism...
you say that as if people are not actively physically opposing fascism in deed in the united states right now!
By physically opposing fascism, I assume you mean they are taking specific practical actions rather than becoming one with the platonic concept of opposition to fascism.
It may seem an obvious or insignificant point, but it is critical here. If they physically oppose fascism by following and filming ICE, I'm very much on board. If they oppose it by molotoving innocent local government buildings, I am against. If both of these actions are the concept of opposing fascism, what does it mean to be against that?
Antifa are belligerants. They undermine protests by having the maturity to die for a cause but not to live for one. One can be against that without being fascist.
So your contention is that people who are following and filming ICE cannot be considered 'antifa' because you have decided that 'antifa' means 'people engaging in bad violence'.
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Only to those of a particular political persuasion. Every group has their own shorthand.
That's the intent but most people know it's not true. It's right up there with "woke" and "progressive" as generic, shapeless, boogeyman words. No real meaning besides "something bad".
And "communist". But the same criticism can be made of leftist nomenclature.
Our politics is a perfect saturation of stupidity, ignorance, and ill will.
They're not understood, but propagandized that way.
Is there a difference for the incurious?
(Though I agree with you)
Pretty sure most who claim the mantle of “Antifa” would welcome that Communist label, and plenty would endorse violence if it’s against the “right” people, so if the shoe fits…
Self defense is a kind of violence, I guess.
They're kinda famous for punching people (physically) unprovoked at this point. There was a whole discourse around it that comes back up pretty regularly, I don't know how you could miss it.
Punching people who think you and your friends should be killed just for existing is a form of self-defense.
> Punching people who think you and your friends should be killed just for existing is a form of self-defense.
This is such an incredibly radicalized and detached from reality statement. It's genuinely scary that there are people who think this way.
You vote for my friends to be directly physically harmed, and you think it’s scary that some people respond to your violence with their own?
You’re not “better” because you vote for political violence, my man, though I get that brings up conflicting feelings for you.
It’s actually weird how often people try to pretend that their shitty actions (vis-a-vis making sure Grok can create CSAM, or that Facebook can more effectively give teenage girls depression) are morally neutral because they’re second order effects. You’re still a pretty shitty human being if you directly enable it, even if you’re not the sole cause. Some of y’all need to stop sniffing your own farts (or Elon’s/Thiel’s/etc.) and learn that.
Yeah, it is terrifying there are people who think other people deserve to be killed just for existing and yet, behold, the world is what it is.
I find it genuinely scary that you have a serious problem with people punching eugenicists and hardcore authoritarians.
The real question is where do you draw the line with these ideologies? I don't think anyone deserves violence just for thinking the wrong things, but we're currently seeing the result of when those thoughts inevitably turn into actions.
It doesn't seem like America ended up on the right side of the paradox of tolerance, so I'm curious how you think we could have avoided our current fascist leadership?
> I'm curious how you think we could have avoided our current fascist leadership?
"Have you stopped beating your wife?"
???
That's the classic example of a loaded question.
How is it relevant to the context?
What would people like Trump, Noem, and Miller have to do differently for you to think that they are fascists?
This is a genuine question. I want to understand how you view the world.
Ah, you mean when they punched the nazi guy?
Punching normal average people? Or punching Nazis?
"A majority of individuals involved are anarchists, communists, and socialists, although some social democrats also participate in the antifa movement. The name antifa and the logo with two flags representing anarchism and communism are derived from the German antifa movement." [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States)
The air quotes around 'right' are interesting there. Yes, violence against Nazis and Fascists is acceptable. Do you disagree? I thought it was pretty much settled, we did a whole world war about it.
WWII revisionism is back in fashion these days, even in spaces that historically would have been only mildly to the right of center.
The trouble with that logic is that we also had a fair few wars against Communists.
We'll worry about that when the Presidency and both houses of Congress are controlled by the Communist Party
What is a communist? And before you respond with a tautology, I’ll just ask - what is communism, and when have we fought anyone practicing it?
Surely you’re not using scare words you don’t understand. Right?
Problem is "Nazi" = "Anyone who disagrees with me" in most Left-friendly spaces today. For instance: https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/was-charlie-kirk-a...
None of his views had anything to do with Naziism but failure to fall in line with all of the Left's current positions makes one "a Nazi" to them. And yes, much the same way as right-wing extremists like to paint all 'liberals' as "gun grabbing Marxists." The difference is you can find a lot more liberals who would happily glorify Marx than you can find Americans of any party who would glorify the Nazi regime or its acts.
In case it's unclear, I do not support Nazis either.
Charlie Kirk was not a Nazi, but he was definitely a fascist.
What distinction do you draw?
It's like a square and a rectangle. All Nazis are fascist, but not all fascists are Nazis. It's just like how I'm an environmentalist, but I'm not a member of the Green party. It may seem pedantic, but I find it's important to be exact these days because fascists love weaselly word games. Kirk was not a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party, but he shared the majority of their general beliefs and behaviors and those are undeniably fascist.
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Presumably you mean that it is commonly presented that way by authoritarians who have no idea what they are talking about.
It's wild what the perception is in the right echo chamber right now. I was talking with my brother, who I love, but who, through his practicing Christian faith is essentially pulled into this right-wing cultural environment and propaganda machine. So he was making the point that the politics in the US have drifted so much more to the left that the right is actually the center. My jaw dropped off the floor. How do these thing even get propagated? It's borderline ridiculous and I don't know how this firehouse of bullshit can ever be countered.
You can disagree, but "Presumably you meant the opposite of what you said" is condescending nonsense.
It's the most charitable interpretation. I think HN rules require that you give others the benefit of the doubt and assume that most charitable case.
He gave you a charitable interpretation of your absolutely nonsense comment.
> ironically fascist organization
There is no antifa "organization". It is not centralized, there is no "leadership" or anyone in charge. It's more of a philosophy.
This is the one response here so far I agree with — I should've said movement to be more accurate.
Right, but that makes it pretty much impossible to stop anyone from claiming to be antifa or anyone accusing someone of being antifa... a lot of people will accuse anyone who is doing anything they don't like as being antifa
I live in Portland. I've met many people that label themselves antifa. They're just protestors that are willing to be a little more aggro. That's literally it.
So when people talk about antifa as if it was the left wing equivalent of Osama Bin Laden's terror network, it's a self report they're forming their views based on strawman style propaganda, not engaging with the reality of it.
Theres no organisation but they are well organised in a distributed sense. Horizontally, theres lots of tradecraft and opsec details that get spread around to help people fight. Thing is, theres no central pillar you can break to stop that spread.
What gets me is how right wing protesters specifically eschew good opsec. "mask off rallys", visible tattoos etc. They love the police state and then look like idiots when that big police state they demanded rounds them up with absolute ease because they took selfies with their swastikas out during a protest.
Police states usually don't round up right wing protestors because the state is just as right wing as the protestors
eeeeeh comment requires some nuance tbh. I can think of enough examples. And there are rightish elements of a lot of movements that get slammed.
I think its more hubris than anything. Even right wing protesters who love the government have enemies that could hurt them. Opsec isnt conditional on the opposition being the government.
Um, there are left-wing police states also...
Really, which ones?
North Korea. If you allow me "was" when I said "is", China under Mao, Cambodia, East Germany...
Is this the part where people list of left wing regimes and you sort them into "Actually did nothing wrong" and "They became right wing so it doesnt count"
That's a pretty weird and ultimately boring place to live.
> Antifa is commonly known as an ironically fascist organization that uses violence and intimidation to silence speakers — it's like how the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is not really democratic.
That's not "commonly known", that's the spin you'll get from the right-wing in the US who just happen to have heavy fascist tendencies.
Ahh yes let's list out the people who have been silenced by antifa....oh yeah that didn't happen
Google "Antifa silences speaker," and you'll find literally hundreds of cases of exactly that (I just did to verify).
I Googles that exact string and I can't say that I see even enough cases to count on one hand. Do you have any concrete examples that you think are representative for the behavior that you are referencing?
Googling “earth is flat” nets you thousands of results from very passionate people willing to share their experience and expertise. (I just did to verify)
Which SPECIFIC persons are being silenced and which SPECIFIC topics were they attempting to speak on?
It’s a huge diff between someone being ”silenced” for speaking their minds on bike paths versus being ”silenced” for indirectly or even directly promoting a new holocaust. And from your vague responses it is not clear.
Those articles are using the word 'antifa' as a slur, not as an organization.
It is like saying "the woke mob silenced a speaker", it doesn't mean anything. There isn't a 'woke organization' that is planning anything
A movement is better terminology than an organization, fair.
But okay - I'm confused what sources you would accept? There are "Antifa" groups on social media that literally advocate for doing this, I've seen it first-hand.
Sure, but since anyone can claim the term, what is to stop someone from creating a false flag group on social media to make them look bad?
I don't think you understand what "silencing" is. If they were actually silenced, you wouldn't be able to find anything about it online.
People who are "silenced" are not "googleable with 100s of examples."
I guarantee it's just a bunch of heavily edited clips of people like Tim Pool being told they're idiots by college kids.
Conservative speakers are so very sensitive to being called stupid.
Ah yes, when the first result on Google is from a group known as a right wing think tank...
>American Enterprise Institute, a prominent center-right think tank in Washington, D.C., that promotes free enterprise, limited government, and individual liberty through research and policy advocacy in areas like economics, foreign policy, and social studies
I too can get paid think tanks to publish hundreds of reports on how communists are taking over America... Doesn't mean communists are actually taking over America.
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Through what mechanism do they "shut down speech"?
When a Nazi wants to speak on a college campus, they point out the speaker is a Nazi and the administration cancels the speaking appointment.
But not really, because administrations are fine with Nazis giving speeches. The actual reality is that 5-20 people stand near the speaking place with picket signs reading "this guy is a Nazi". The Nazi speaks as planned, and the listeners (who are also Nazis) complain the speech was shut down.
Joe Rogan called himself cancelled. Literally the biggest podcaster in the world who says anything he wants to. Complains that he can't say anything and has no audience.
It's all grift.
Ah yes, and the antifa line. Wonder if these assholes ever stop to think what being anti-antifa actually means.
It's not uncommon for fascists to call themselves anti-antifa.
Is there a general term for metastatic semantic overinclusivity?
Terrorist. Racist. Colonist. Fascist. Historically-rooted and precise terms that are collectively decohering in a self-amplifying and propagating way as everyone feels increasingly free to detach more and more words from their original meanings.
you have seriously got to read and understand Eco's 14 tenets of Ur-Fascism [0] if you think that contemporary applications of the term "fascist" are inaccurate in describing what's happening right now in the US.
[0] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...
> if you think that contemporary applications of the term "fascist" are inaccurate in describing what's happening right now in the US
Didn't say that. I'm saying I've seen the term thrown around wildly to apply to all manner of things. Like the other terms.
The term is probably fundamentally fucked. If you asked Hitler if he's a Nazi, he'd say yes. If you asked Mussolini if he's a Fascist, he'd say yes. These were the words they used to describe themselves. The reason I'm describing the phenomenon versus blaming the folks using the terms broadly is because I don't think this is a personal failing by anyone as much as something that's linguistically happening.
Unless you are suggesting an alternative word, IMHO, that's a great way to side line people that are actually talking about real harms.
There's also a pragmatic elephant in the room: By the time certain labels are perfectly and undeniably true to say, it's no longer safe for people to speak out and use them!
So our desire for word-correctness should be tempered by our desire for word-utility.
> that's a great way to side line people that are actually talking about real harms
Valid. This is a real linguistic process. But it absolutely debases the original term. I’m not convinced we have to choose between empathy, on one hand, and accuracy, on the other hand.
Orwell said something similar.
George Orwell - What is Fascism? https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/e...
i think a great example to back your point is that the terminally online turn out in droves to apply the nazi label to all those not in favor of maximising immigration , rational discourse seems to have broken down and the resulting vacuum of meaning is filled by hyperbole as people scamble to feel heard in a world of weak voices & closed ears
"all those not in favor of maximising immigration" is an hyperbole. Do you think the comparison between ICE and the Gestapo is completely unwarranted? Obviously the scales are very different (for now), but it feels justified enough to associate the two, if for no other reason than to remind people that we are on similar tracks that led to the worst times of our shared History.
Seems to me that "all those not in favor of maximising immigration" have largely turned out to be perfectly happy with revoking status from legal immigrants and using unnecessary violence to round people up. The line was always, "We're fine with legal immigrants," which turned out to be a lie, and "follow the law and you have nothing to worry about" which also turned out to be a lie.
How many of those people who got called Nazis are now fighting against the administration's lawless crackdown?
plenty of people get executed under regimes of parties both left and right , im referring to the idea at global scale not specific to any particular country
How many US citizens did the Biden regime execute?
Mussolini literally coined the word "fascist" to name his movement. Hitler never hid the fact he based his own movement on Mussolini's, so he'd probably describe his party as fascist too. Later, the word became extremely negative for obvious reasons, such that current fascists pretend not to be such, but it doesn't mean they aren't. Overall, I'd say it's used well enough.
It's called newspeak. There was a documentary written about it in 1948.
I think most people who are being described as racists, colonists, or fascists are racists, colonists, or fascists, but they're the same people who own the megaphone that tells you they're not. Can you bring specific examples?
Perhaps, but the same argument also works for "Communist" and "Socialist" and so on.
A former partner's mother was once called a liberal or a democrat for something minor, I forget what now possibly asking for a tip, and her response was "No sir, I'm a communist".
I'm never actually delved too deeply into the mother's political views, but my ex herself was openly, explicitly, literally, a communist.
(For various reasons, even though said ex is American by birth, I suspect her well-documented politics may now cause me difficulty entering the USA were I to attempt it).
Death of the author.
Thanks for sharing this. It completely destroyed the little respect I had left for Flock.
And that they're sharing their data with other non-local agencies (eg. ICE as it stands) without a warrant? That's outrageous, IMHO.
Probably worth posting some links to the Institute for Justice's "Project on the Fourth Amendment":
https://ij.org/issues/ijs-project-on-the-4th-amendment/
This Project includes work to fight technologies such as Flock's in the courts:
https://ij.org/issues/ijs-project-on-the-4th-amendment/licen...
I've always felt good contributing to IJ and the topic and takes in the posted video are precisely why I do so.
"Above aboard", "Capitalistic", "Terroristic". Interesting cluster of idiom and register errors. Suggests limited exposure to written English.
The TV series Person of Interest [1] becomes more on point as years go by, even though by now it has been 15 years since its S1. One of the scenes [2] from that series where "terrorist" are shown as being in control over ghoulish CEOs like the one from this posted video.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igKb2DhP7Ao
That's insane. Deflock is a map of Flock cameras.
Definition of terrorism is:
the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
couldn't be further apart from that.
While I think the use of the term “terrorist” is unwarranted, I do think deflock is seeking political change. The decision to use flock is a government policy choice, right?
Just the people’s choice, right? They voted for this government policy, right???!? https://www.coloradopolitics.com/2025/10/22/denver-mayor-ext...
>> “I was stunned to learn late yesterday that after convening a task force of local and national experts, Mayor Johnston has been negotiating secretly with the discredited CEO of Flock Safety and signing another unilateral extension of this mass surveillance contract with no public process and no vote from the City Council or input from his own task force,” Councilmember Sarah Parady told The Denver Gazette.
Political parties seek political change too, but that doesn't make them terrorists. Deflock isn't trying to intimidate or cause violence to citizens.
What is the point of this comment? Are you saying that deflock are not terrorists but are terrorist adjacent? Why respond to someone defining terrorism by pointing out that 2 words at the end of the definition also apply to deflock? Do those not apply to basically everyone who participates in their country's society, including literally everyone who votes and all politicians?
If corporations can be people, cameras can be people too! Think of the cameras! /s
Please don't give them ideas like that, even in jest.
Flock (YC17)
I've been online long enough that when I hear "Flock," I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_(web_browser)
I would not do this now, but teenage me would be spray painting every lens. Not to give anyone ideas...
This is inefficient. Some semi-transparent laquer applied to the lens that makes the picture permanently blurred would be much less conspicuous.
An infrared laser beam could also do the trick. The beam would be invisible to the human eye
This is America. Just shoot them.
People are so out of touch with how far the US has slipped into surveillance capitalism. You simply cannot get away with doing stuff like that today.
Not with that attitude.
There are tens of millions of people pirating software and media and blocking ads. There are not enough prisons to hold them all so the law is not enforceable at that scale.
Likewise there have always been and will always be effective non violent forms of resistance with sufficient systems of coordination and communication, because the public is always larger in number than the oppressors.
>Not with that attitude.
LOL. Love that. You got to have a better attitude if you want to fight the system my friend.
And yet, people do. Perhaps by slipping into some unsurveilled hidey hole, changing into a black hoodie, doing the crime, and running away before the police arrive
It's not so much about being caught as it is the consequences of if you do get caught. They're charging anyone for terrorism nowadays
>I like law and order
When it benefits me.
This guy gives all villain vibes you see in futuristic movies, funny how he resembles a young version of “Fletcher” in minority report movie, a movie about mass surveillance to provide a “safer community” to all.
Flock btw isn’t just an ALPR, it is a car finger printing technology, I have seen some videos of police IDing cars with no plates and they knew the owner by using flock cams.
I dislike this person and company. That is putting it mildly.
If you wanna go a little further than leaving milquetoast comments on the internet:
https://alpr.watch/
These clean-shaven wide-eyed SV types give me the uncanny valley heebie-jeebies. Everything, from their tone of voice, to their appearance, to (most importantly) the way they phrase things... there's an almost AI-generated quality.
[flagged]
Man everything about this interview is so cringe.
Yep.
Everything about his body language screams, "I'm doing something slimy and I know it, but here, listen to these words spoken authoritatively whilst I wave my hands around and forget about it."
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Would have been nice if the interviewer pushed back more than "lol I don't think they would agree". Spineless.
Spineless seems a bit harsh. The interviewee did open with an unveiled threat of legal action against anyone who disagrees with him.
There was a time when the media would take pride in smacking down some moron who thought they could use the law to suppress speech they don't like.
I heard The Onion still does this
"The media" in general, sure. They often still do. My point was just that one person not doing this in an intimidating 1:1 interview doesn't make that person spineless.
These wretched wastes of skin that contribute to the surveillance system need to have the full brunt of that same surveillance apparatus turned toward them full time, published for all to see. This should include elected officials that voted for and paid for these systems as well. You don't want a system that allows more anonymous movement? You want that data collected and stored and collated and analyzed without end? Ok, pull down your pants and have yourselves offered up as the first and most prominent ones to be tracked and then see if you change your tune.
Good luck trying to subject them to the same level of scrutiny. They live in places with high walls and armed guards, a lot of them don't even drive themselves if they drive at all. Even when using helicopters or planes their private ownership means a lower level of scrutiny. "The plane" was a big part of how Epstein was able to do what he did. Obviously, these types never step foot on public transit.
Even if hypothetically speaking you could support volunteers to follow them around and film them, I would think the asymmetry of resources would practically make it impossible. It's not about privacy, it's about wealth. Take their wealth away and then they'll actually have to live the way they tell you to. They don't care because they don't live in the world they are creating, you do.
What if a drone with facial recognition could do it? And an ALPR network for their vehicle
Shoot down the drone one way or another? Don't you guys have guns? /s
Flock is a terrorist organization
I wonder how he would feel about a competitor putting a flock-like camera outside his house so that anyone who wants to can learn whenever any car, perhaps his car, enters or leaves his home driveway.
Would he be happy with this, or would he become a "terrorist" by objecting?
Or tracking the tail number of his private jet, published each time it moves.
He would cry and cry
I'm a deflock user - I'm a libertarian. These cameras are a huge privacy violation, its amazing how fast Flock has grown ubiquitous. There is a strong Fourth Amendment argument against Flock, they have a generous interpretation of the constitution that your car has no rights and neither does your license plate therefore you have no privacy while on the road.
I've also been on the receiving end of secret Federal subpoenas for private user information at a YC backed startup. They include gag orders and management does not question the orders - they simply comply. It happens more often than you think.
However you feel about the current administration, imagine this power in the hands of the other.
Flock isn't American in any sense of the word. We should work in our communities, through legal, procedural, and civil means to eliminate these terrible, terrible cameras. The cost is much worse than the benefits on offer.
It's interesting to read how flock is positioning themselves as all pro-law-and-order. In countries where I hang out in, Flock would be pretty much illegal.
It's not just Flock positioning themselves that way. It's that they have broad support from American police and other law enforcement agencies.
My state (WA) is currently trying to pass a bill that places considerable restrictions on Flock - not an outright ban, but limits on data sharing, how long data can be retained etc; really basic stuff that you'd think wouldn't be controversial. So far as I can tell, every single LEO organization in the state is vocally against it.
Ok, so after a bit of research:
In the Netherlands the municipality would remove all the cameras; and the national authorities would fine the company into the ground and arrest key persons.
In Belgium much the same, except multiple overlapping authorities would tear it apart.
Germany would dissolve the company, destroy their data, hunt down many of the employees for criminal conspiracy; and the Bundestag would hear of it. Germany has... experience. [1]
[1] Depending on legal theory. I'm going for the good old 'and we're going to put them in prison for 200 years' worst case scenario. ;-)
Their are documented cases of Flock cameras that can see into private residences. What if one of those cameras recorded an underage person? Would Flock be responsible for collecting and distributing CSAM?
Of course not. CSAM rules apply only the plebs, not the rich and well connected.
We saw this with Twitter's child porn maker. When it was called out, did Elon turn it off? No he saw it was popular so he paywalled it. He got away with that, but he's only well connected in the US not in France so he didn't get away with it in France.
This statement essentially boils down to "The only right way to fight me is in an environment where I expect to win"
That's how you know the DeFlock strategy is effective. They aren't playing the game that the CEO wants to play, they are playing the actual game. The actual game is minimizing the impact of cameras that are now everywhere.
Some individuals may take it upon themselves to vandalize the cameras, which can't be planned via conspiracy (that would be illegal), but those radical individuals can be "set up for success" through information. This strategy of creating an environment where effective vandalism is easy, is also part of the actual game.
Thank Mr. Flock CEO!
I've never heard about Deflock, but your tantrum motivated me to know it. And I like it!
But the best part are the implications: it is ok for Flock to spy people, it isn't ok for people to spy Flock.
I “like” how Overton window (??? I hope I use it right) shifted dramatically in USA.
- “law and order” is “good”, when _de facto_ most of constitution is not being applied for a year and laws or court orders are applied selectively. Not to say that “law and order” is vastly different depending on the size of your bank account;
- “terrorist” now is anything you don’t like, especially if it’s anti establishment. True freedom of speech is now apparently “violence” (and of course this dictatorial (adjacent) government would think that, as it’s biggest danger);
- “antifa” is apparently now a boogeyman, though I’d say he used it correctly as he is (apparently) fascist;
Also it is forced against people, how population can choose otherwise?
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition...There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law"
I'm honestly tired of all these knuckleheads. They've got a few bucks in their bank accounts and pretend that makes them smarter than everyone else. They're just gaming the system, nothing more, and they have every incentive to keep it alive.
He can shove his cameras deep in his ** as far as I'm concerned.
> They're just gaming the system
The "system" is not hapless or ignorant here. In fact, this company would not exist, if the "system" didn't have specific desires to effectively enslave the entire population.
Who wouldn't want to become a new age digital pharaoh? Wouldn't this be precisely the type of panopticon they would try to create?
His last name being “Langley” is a bit too on the nose. Like something out of a Pynchon novel.
Anyone aware of people doing something like over here in Europe? And how legal/illegal it might be? I'm talking about putting government-operated security cameras on a map, for the general public to be aware of their locations.
Anything the government doesn't like is terrorism, same as America. You can do it anyway.
Seems like “terrorists” = citizens standing up for their rights. We aren’t past the point of no return but we are rapidly approaching it. What will it be Americans? Liberty or death?
This is a social problem. So long as people want to see Orwellian enforcement on their preferred petty issues (examples abound on HN and elsewhere) this type of activity will ping pong around enforcement subjects likely only growing and ratcheting tighter. Until people get so sick of it on the 11/12 issues they don't like, they're willing to give up the dream of Orwellian enforcement on the thing they do care about.
Flock is a terrorist organization.
Tennessee pro-tip:
Most trailers do not require license plates.
The fee for the first time you get caught without a plate on your registered vehicle is $10 (2nd is $20).
Trailer hitch balls do not "count" when considering whether a vehicle's plate is obstructed — I literally have one hung across my Camry, not technically obstructing the plate (but you can't see shit).
YMMV. Lasers might be a good offensive, but defense is more important.
Unfortunately, you cannot hide by obscuring your license plate. The ALPR system recognizes vehicles by type, color, and any outstanding features (bumper stickers, trailers, etc.) So, even if you removed your license plate completely they would still be able to track your car as a blue, 1999 Toyota Camry, with a "I love Peaches" sticker in the back window.
You are correct. Although I drive a very common car/color, it is naïve to think that these systems aren't monitoring me as the grey sedan without visible license plate. I did remove the bumper stickers [0]
My local newspaper retracted a story this month about how the police were able to locate a certain colored vehicle within minutes. Perhaps it was too revealing for general consumption?
My "obstruction" is more (legal) protest? Better to just move to a de-flocked city/state..?
[•] https://xkcd.com/1105/ [License Plate Police]
[0] I consider this similar to how some property appraisal maps allow people to remove their names from searches (either through LLC or black-out), but you can still request beneficial owner information of specific parcels; just one/two additional layers of protection to throw off the scent (have to know what you're looking for, not just simple plate# lookup — although I'm sure there are aliases/forwarders in advanced CCTVai systems).
"Terrorism" has become everything the critics of The Patriot Act and post-9/11 rhetoric warned about.
Definition of terrorism: anything I don't like
Whereas most pf the rest of America considers Flock to be a terrorist organization.
They are building a surveillance state, LOL. The AI, Datacenters, the flock cameras, slow social media ban, the private police, etc. West, especially USA is slowly getting the taste of their own medicine.
Foucault's boomerang
"Thankfully, we live in a beautifully democratic and capitalistic society where we can fight in court."
Of course he's "thankful" for that, since in our "beautifully democratic and capitalistic" society, Flock can use their $658 million of VC funding [1] to wage lawfare against the have-nots with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers. [2]
1. https://websets.exa.ai/websets/directory/flock-safety-fundin...
2. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/lobbyis...
Felony contempt of business model? Weak. Today, companies sue for terrorist contempt of business model!
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-busine...
It's pretty funny—the only think Deflock does is map out the locations of Flock cameras.
When Flock decides to track people's activities, they're "following the law" and "open to reasonable debate," but when people decide they want to track Flock's activities right back, that makes them terrorists.
I identified three in my neighborhood—added them to the map.
Watch out, I'm a mad man!
;-)
Do as I say, not as I do. It’s a standard operating model for hypocrites.
It isn't even just about money. It's more apparent than ever that freedom, democracy, justice, human rights in this country are increasily reserved for those with the right political alignments.
The messed up thing is that despite what they think, these dudes will not thrive in the chaotic world they are trying to bring forth.
Why not? They hold all the cards and have aligned one of the most powerful governments in the world with them, while wielding enough money to make almost any nation, let alone individual, more inclined toward doing what they need. They will only become more powerful.
Because they'll turn on each other.
In an authoritarian regime, it's all competition, no co-operation. Whoever the big dog is gets to say what happens, right up until a bunch of the little dogs drag him down and then fight each other to replace him. If he's lucky and skillful he'll have worked this out and kept the little dogs at each other's throats so they don't gang up on him.
The whole operation of government becomes about "who's the boss?" and the boss gets to run the government to favour himself and his cronies, acquiring more power and wealth.
Any pause to consider the ordinary folks caught up in this is a weakness, that will be taken advantage of by the other wannabe bosses.
It's not a utopia for any of them because of the constant paranoia and fighting. Try to rest on your laurels and enjoy the spoils of what you got for a second, and boom; you get thrown out of a window.
Nah, billionaires understand class solidarity (not intentionally, but coercively, because they have to to get where they are). They'll carve out fiefdoms where they don't step on each other but step on all us (for a tech example, see ISPs)
On the way up, yes. But once they're there, no. As soon as the only way of getting more power is to take over someone else's fiefdom, all that class solidarity disappears.
See the recent purges of the military leadership in China. Or Putin's cronies continually accidentally falling out of windows. It's not safe near the top.
Authoritarian regimes don’t run on facts. They run on the primacy of Authority. Cameras record factual information. Facts are inconvenient for Authority. You know, 1984 Department of Truth style.
Yeah but the camera was broken that day the policeman beat you. On protest day? It's magically up and running.
They will have the AI just make a video of you doing whatever they feel like accusing you of and publish that from a .gov website.
It’s not a coincidence that the CIA just took down the World Fact Book.
When you control the cameras you can memory hole any inconvenient truths.
well if you never read about how any of those work you might think that.
In reality they are very much interested in facts, because they give them info who to oppress harder
This is really a failure to understand how oppressive regimes work.
The goal is not to accurately target people, the whole point is you don't care. The exercise of power is the point.
It doesn't matter who's door you kicked in: you were right to do it no matter what, and they were guilty no matter what.
Facts _are_ weapons for them though. If they have the video they can pick out the 12 seconds that looks like what they want, or if it's all bad just hide it.
They don't need it, but it's convenient.
You're talking about partial facts and misrepresentations at this point. You're also saying it yourself, facts aren't their primary concern, sure they can be convenient, anything can be made convenient if you're allowed to cherry pick. But the bigger problem is they also have no problems lying and making shit up. Not what I would call caring about facts.
I'm specifically saying that them having access to thousands of random cameras is to their benefit, and not because it will lead to accurate law enforcement.
Yes, they can take advantage of privacy violations, being able to misrepresent facts, and pointing to an infallible technology stack even though it is not.
Sometimes they don't even need real evidence. In 10 years if they get their way, if the AI says you're guilty, you're guilty. Not to mention all the extrajudicial punishments like getting banned from having a bank account or a job, which is like a death sentence.
Municipal cameras do exist for speeding, tolls, and maybe other road research. But Flock is the definition of let's get everyone in dragnet surveillance so we can pick on whoever we want, at least try.
You will need a lot of evidence to make such a counterintuitive claim, when surgically eliminating your enemies without bothering anyone else is such a logical strategy.
I don't think fascists are that smart, they will go after those that get in the way and those who they perceive as weak. They are bullies who are cowards and all that.
Why not? We have examples from history to look at.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_So...
> Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (Russian: Николай Иванович Ежов, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ (j)ɪˈʐof]; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940), also spelt Ezhov, was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, at the height of the Great Purge. Yezhov organized mass arrests, torture, and executions during the Great Purge, but he fell out of favour with Stalin and was arrested, subsequently admitting in a confession to a range of anti-Soviet activity including "unfounded arrests" during the Purge. He was executed in 1940 along with others who were blamed for the Purge.
This guy was head of the secret police, didn’t help him out when he was purged aka murdered.
Yes, that if, the most powerful government stays intact. But as it turns out, tech CEOs want to dissolve the nation state and its government to implement their vision of a utopia. The same nation state, the same government that protect their interests and assets, and make lawfare possible in the first place.
I know about these plans, but even if they end up happening to their fullest extent, I don't see why people are so unanimously predicting that they'll definitely fumble the bag. By the time this can happen, they will almost certainly have the most advanced weaponry available and enormous groups of people working on defending them. Again, they can buy anything. In their dream world, power descends directly from them, making their governments obsolete. The direct power of the governments isn't just erased, it'll transition into their hands.
Tech CEOs are not statesmen, even if they consider themselves smart enough to govern. Nor are they warriors, and historically speaking, feudal lords were trained from early childhood in both the art of war and the art of governing. What I mean by that is that these people have no experience of governing, nor do they have any experience of violence and the horrors of war, i.e. they do not have the competence for being feudal lords, and network states or libertarian communes are essentially feudal-like arrangements. What will they do, if they are confronted with large nation-states such as China or Russia? What will they do when other small states don't respect the libertarian non-aggression principle? Will the Andreessens, Thiel and Zuckerbergs of this world be respected by the military, or will they shit their pants when confronted with a military coup, or worse, the enemy's military?
> Tech CEOs are not statesmen…
I mildly disagree mostly because I can’t get hard evidence, but everything’s I’ve heard from faang workers is that they are basically run like nation states on a logistical level. Complete with their own forms of courts to handle interdepartmental disputes and PMCs that they like to keep very quiet about.
The US military is famously a logistics network that dabbles in shooting things, and companies like Amazon are already very very good at that.
Because
"When the last tree has fallen
and the rivers are poisoned
you cannot eat money, on no."
-- Aurora, The Seed
> Why not? They hold all the cards...
Cards that only work because of the current system that they are hacking away at. Revolutions tend to eat their young, wannabe American oligarchs should check on how things turned out for the majority of post-soviet Russian oligarchs.
Private property for example. Every libertarian wants to demolish the state but keep private property. Who do they think enforces private property?
Money and power don’t usually make you smarter, in fact they usually make you dumber. You can have every anti social belief and the intentions of the antichrist, but if you’re smart and run your system well everyone will still benefit.
When people feel they have nothing left to lose they will happily drag everyone else, especially those of means, down into the mud with them, even if it costs them their own life because they already think it is worthless.
Yes the rich have "all the cards" but the thing about societal reorganization is things get completely flip-flopped and the fact society recognizes you as owning a mansion and a screw factory today doesn't mean that they won't recognize Castro's lieutenant as controlling it tomorrow.
Possessions that are "yours" are only yours insofar as you can either defend it or others recognize it as yours. Thus you end up with situations like "Barbeque" in Haiti owning the streets and much of the rich's land/assets are now magically in the hands of barbeque or his crew and whatever money that one thought they could use to resist that turned out to not be their money anymore. The "rich" thus still hold all the cards but who is rich and who isn't isn't the same as when it started.
Cards can always be taken with violence. Chaos is progression to a state of all versus all, where the most important thing is having the biggest wrench: https://xkcd.com/538/.
And they will almost certainly have the biggest wrench. Before you consider the sheer difficulty of making mass violence happen (especially in a world where tech can be used to regulate a sufficient portion of people's worldviews as required), at some point they'll probably just have the upper hand militarily. As military tech gets better, wealth will be able to shift directly into physical power, amplifying their abilities against a comparatively powerless populace.
Difficulty: the "populace" is everywhere.
If you own everything, and you bomb the populace, you bomb your own stuff.
If everybody works for you, and you bomb the populace, you bomb your own serfs.
And those faceless individuals who are actually holding the weapons, and actually know how they work, and actually know, in a detailed, hands-on way, how to do coordinated violence with them? It turns out they're secretly members of the populace. You'd better make sure they think it's in their interest to keep using the weapons the way you want them to.
Yeah this is why the US fails everytime they try to keep "boots on the ground."
You can bomb people into oblivion but if you actually want to control them, most of the things that give superiority to a fixed group of rich are useless. Violence is still democratic if you're trying to get anything useful out of the people you seek to control. If you have 5 people and 3 of them are slaves with an AK-47 and a donkey, you have 0 slaves not 5 slaves.
Obviously the rich/powerful can't stay that way in a glass desert with no plebs to do their bidding, at least for now, so most of the technology the government and rich have are useless for subjecting a hostile populace.
> And they will almost certainly have the biggest wrench
Tech CEOs can easily outlive their usefulness once the machinery is built, and can easily find themselves labeled "terrorists" if they try to fight back with whatever feeble power they have.
Political factions, purges and patronage is what comes next, amd despite their inflated egos, they won't be the patrons.
The US lost the Vietnam war against diffuse individual actors.
Nikolai Yezhov held all the cards under Stalin, right up until he got purged by Beria. Then Beria held all the cards until he was ousted and shot in turn. In a dog-eat-dog world, the top dog is the biggest target.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
[0] https://cdn8.openculture.com/2017/08/20195126/800px-Soviet_c...
[1] https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/41868a585464d87b...
..That said, what you're saying could be true. I think the truth is that we don't know, and I'm pretty sure we would've felt the same way about the people in the above pictures.
The imperial boomerang will ensure they self-destruct.
Yeah but sometimes that takes a few centuries.
No, just the right amount of wealth.
Which also tends to lean on a political set. But poor people will be deprived of their liberties be them left or right. For those useful to power it will take just a little bit longer to notice.
Same as it's ever been. When the founders of this country cried about freedom, they meant for themselves to not pay taxes that would cover their debts, not freedom for their slaves or lower-class Americans. After all if you are at the top, then you are literally free to do as you wish
Always was, you're just no longer in the in-group (which used to be slightly less partisan-motivated but equally racially and class motivated)
It’s not so much about political alignment as much as it’s about your bank account.
Apple has more cash reserves on hand than most countries do and yet its CEO had to scramble to stand behind Trump during the inauguration and offer a million-dollar tribute to stay in his good graces. Power > money.
He didn't have to do a single damn thing. He did the cost-benefit analysis and chose to cozy up to a corrupt administration.
Given how much the typical Apple consumer skews left and has extreme brand loyalty, if Apple got tariffed simply because Tim failed to bow down, Apple would be in a stronger position to fight it than any other tech company. They could have stood up, but chose not to.
How do we know the typical apple user skews left?
I think your forgetting that governments can just shut a company down, or even worse completely take it over and nationalise it. At the end of the day sovereigns rule over all else. Money means nothing when a gun is pointed at your head.
And worst of all he had to watch "Melania"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_(film)#Release
Not really.
Moments later (~1:13) he also said "we aren't forcing Flock on anyone"
False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE
No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled. And no, under the radar agreements with local cops and govts do NOT constitute my permission to be surveilled. If they want to go in with fully informed referendums in each community, then I'd accept it. But that is not Flock's business model.
> If they want to go in with fully informed referendums in each community, then I'd accept it.
I might accept it for this specific case. But, in general, just because the majority wants to do something doesn't mean it's legitimate to force everyone to accept it.
> But, in general, just because the majority wants to do something doesn't mean it's legitimate to force everyone to accept it.
I mean, isn't that the literal definition of democracy? I tend to agree that "tyranny of the majority" can have some pretty bad outcomes, but that is what a democracy ultimately boils down to, is it not?
We have chosen to not live in a pure democracy in part because of these concerns. So:
> I mean, isn't that the literal definition of democracy?
isn't relevant. A) we're not in a pure democracy, and B) no one argued that something is or would not be democracy.
No, Liberal Democracy is not about forcing the wishes of the majority into everybody. It's about respecting people freedoms.
That's why countries have constitutions, that usually can not be completely replaced.
> That's why countries have constitutions, that usually can not be completely replaced.
Except, of course, by the action of a (super)majority, at least in the US.
Considering what the world looked like before democracy I wager the "tyranny" is worth it.
But all these rich people want to go back to a time when they could impregnate their 14 year old housekeeper.
> False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE
> No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled
As much as I dislike Flock, this is bad logic. There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces. Public spaces are defined by being public, in that everyone (even governments/corporations!) is free to observe everyone else in that same setting.
So in reality, everyone has permitted themselves to be surveilled, purely through the act of being in public.
This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America.
If this is what they thought was possible, why write the 4th Amendment?
Unreasonable search and overbearing government was one of the key issues of the American Revolution.
> I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety - Ben Frank
Iirc he was a founder
I know this is supposed to be some kind of "gotcha", but I'm legitimately curious: what essential liberty is someone giving up being surveilled in public?
public surveillance cameras erode personal privacy because there were no cameras with ID and tracking before. Widespread camera networks with tracking, ID and record keeping in a networked environment that is accessed by many varied agencies (e.g. federal immigration related) constitute new government surveillance. The US Constitution's Fourth Amendment provides explicit protection against unwarranted searches and seizures. Socially, constant monitoring creates a chilling effect on free behavior in public spaces, undermining individual liberty. For example, three teenagers dress oddly on Saturday night in association with a music culture. Authority officers show up with weapons, bright lights and harsh questions? That happens more than once. Is that "chilling" ?
Mission creep and abuse are major concerns. Examples are documented where systems introduced for limited purposes — like traffic enforcement or terrorism prevention — expand into broader, unchecked surveillance by multiple agencies, commercially and maybe gray or black markets, too. Imagine cameras initially deployed in work zones may later be used citywide, enabling mass tracking of individuals without probable cause.
Lack of oversight and due process further fuels opposition. Automated systems, such as those issuing speeding tickets without human review, deny individuals fair recourse. The absence of judicial warrants and transparency in deployment is seen as enabling government overreach and hidden revenue generation, disproportionately impacting low-income communities. Long-term record keeping may contain errors, omissions and misjudgements that remain uncorrected.
Financial and civil costs are real. Surveillance systems are expensive, yet studies show limited effectiveness in actually preventing crime or terrorism. Civil libertarians argue that resources should instead support community-based safety solutions that respect constitutional freedoms.
Ultimately, strict legal limits or outright bans on public video surveillance are in effect right now in many places, and those cases can be discussed among an informed voting public.
> Socially, constant monitoring creates a chilling effect on free behavior in public spaces, undermining individual liberty.
I was skeptical from the first sentence, but I stopped here.
This "chilling effect" is a favorite of privacy advocates, but it's purely a hypothetical. I have asked for and received no evidence of its practical effect in the real world, and can find plenty of evidence to the contrary.
New York City, for example, is one of the most highly-surveilled cities in the US, and yet turnout for things like protests is seemingly unaffected.
This is one of the centerpieces of your entire argument, yet is literally taken on faith.
> I was skeptical from the first sentence, but I stopped here.
aren't you declaring that you did not even read the whole post?
I am! If the rest of your post is predicated on an unsupported point, it means it's unsupported, by definition. That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence[1].
I agree that the hypothetical "chilling effect", as presented, is plausible and reasonable, but it lacks evidence. As such, I saved myself the effort of reading what might be a plausible argument until such time as it becomes supported by evidence.
I went back and read it, and you supported it with more hypotheticals, not evidence. So congratulations, you made me waste a couple minutes of my life! But this just tells me I once again made the right judgement call in not reading it the first time, and doesn't really help further your cause, or convince me I'm mistaken in this regard.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor
Sorry, which part of the facial recognition cameras is liberty?
The part where you have the liberty to deploy your own network of them
Just like how it's equally illegal for the rich or poor to sleep under a bridge
Was the Flock guy rich before he did Flock?
There's a ton of difference between a random person noting my presence at a single point in space-time and a commercial entity tracking and storing my movements all the time.
Being okay with people watching me in public does not imply being okay with someone aggregating the information about my whereabouts 24/7 even though it's "the same" information.
Btw it's a fallacy similar to the one debunked in "what colour are your bits". The context matters, not just the abstract information.
This is an unfortunate thing about a whole lot of legal precedent in the US.
Courts made a pretty reasonable set of tradeoffs around the 4th amendment for search warrant vs. subpoena, police officers observing you, etc.
During the 19th century.
Unfortunately, modern data processing completely undermines a lot of the rationale about how reasonable and intrusive various things are. Before, cops couldn't follow and surveil everyone; blanket subpoenas to get millions of peoples' information weren't possible because the information wasn't concentrated in one entity's hands and compliance would have been impossible; etc.
Actually the courts of the US have stated that mass dragnet surveillance is not allowed. I can't find the argument I'm thinking of but it referenced how the police can sit outside your house and surveil you, but physically cannot do that to everyone all the time, and that is an inherent limit to their ability to conduct surveillance that gives you some freedoms and that limit should be respected. Making a machine that can do exactly that is not something cops are allowed to do.
The actual legal problem is that, the above does not apply to private companies. You have no fourth amendment rights from private companies. The constitution gives you no rights against companies.
So the company does exactly what the police aren't allowed to do, and then sell access to the police. For some reason, this literal circumvention of their restrictions has been explicitly allowed.
This is why Surveillance Capitalism is such a big deal. It is a direct circumvention of your explicit constitutional rights, and it just so happens to accomplish that because of the profit earned in the process. For a lot of assholes, this is the winingest of win-wins.
> Actually the courts of the US have stated that mass dragnet surveillance is not allowed.
There isn’t a sweeping precedent that says “mass surveillance is illegal.
The Supreme Court has signaled concern (Knotts’ “dragnet-type” reservation; echoed in Jones/Carpenter), but mostly we rely upon older third-party/plain-view doctrines and very fact-specific scope/retention questions.
So we have things like law enforcement successfully subpoenaing gmail metadata at large scale.
The law is perhaps changing, slowly -- we have geofencing heading to the Supremes, and active litigation about ALPR.
Also, “private company” isn’t an automatic workaround—if a vendor is acting as an agent of law enforcement, Fourth Amendment limits apply.
Exactly. Constantly monitoring and aggregating your movements everywhere is basically stalking.
But this is not what Flock or other ALPRs do. They do not monitor nor aggregate your movements, unless specifically asked to. Or, at least, that's how they say they're being used, and until we find evidence to the contrary (we haven't), we should take them at their word and think about the model a little differently. If no one is looking for your movements in particular, after some period of time, the data that contains evidence of your movements if deleted. The vet result for most users is a temporary record of a short history of their movements that no one ever sees, and which is permanently forgotten after some period of time.
This is like when people complain that Facebook and Google are "selling their data". They aren't, but they are doing a closely-related thing: selling access to you, based on your data. These are not the same thing, and the difference is important when it comes to finding solutions to the problems it causes!
If we all voted to ban companies like Facebook and Google from selling your data, they'd shrug and say "sure I guess, we weren't selling it anyway", and nothing would change.
If we all voted to ban Flock from "tracking all of us", they'd shrug and say "that's already true" and it would not have any impact on their operations.
What we should instead vote for is strict controls over how long they can store the data, and how it is allowed to be used, and apply steep penalties for its misuse or unauthorized disclosure.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is bogus
Okay: Just how long would you permit someone to follow you around with a camera, recording everything you do?
The thing about a stranger watching you in public is that eventually you go somewhere else, and they can't watch you anymore. A surveillance organization like Flock, however, is waiting for you wherever you go. In this sense they're much more like a stalker following you around than a stranger who happens to see you.
This analogy bears out in practice: Cops have used Flock data to stalk their exes.¹
[1]: https://www.kwch.com/2022/10/31/kechi-police-lieutenant-arre...
> Okay: Just how long would you permit someone to follow you around with a camera, recording everything you do?
Probably not long. I might also make it clear I'm not a fan, but at the end of the day, they're generally within their rights to record me in public. Sucks, but not much I can do.
> The thing about a stranger watching you in public is that eventually you go somewhere else, and they can't watch you anymore. A surveillance organization like Flock, however, is waiting for you wherever you go. In this sense they're much more like a stalker following you around than a stranger who happens to see you.
I mean, I don't buy this argument, because a stranger can legally follow me to all the same places where Flock is present. I mean, surely if I get into a car and drive away, they can get into a car and follow me. So long as we're both in public roads, they're within their rights to do so?
Granted, if they keep it up long enough, I can probably file charges for stalking. Perhaps the same can be done against Flock? Hell, this would even be a situation where Flock would be useful: proving that someone was following me around all day, thus supporting my bid for a restraining order or something.
> This analogy bears out in practice: Cops have used Flock data to stalk their exes.¹
Indeed, and this is where oversight, strict rules around usage and retention, and effective penalties for violations are needed.
Banning Flock is not the only solution! I mean, I would be in favor of banning Flock specifically (because they've demonstrated a willingness to act in bad faith), but I would not support a ban of ALPRs entirely. They do provide benefits, and coupled with the right rules, can be a net benefit to society.
> Probably not long. I might also make it clear I'm not a fan, but at the end of the day, they're generally within their rights to record me in public. Sucks, but not much I can do.
You should not test this. If you record someone for hours or days in public, you may find yourself with a restraining order, a ticket for stalking (or assault), or a civil suit for invasion of privacy or IIED or something similar. This depends on the jurisdiction and the person you are recording, but what you are citing about not having an expectation of privacy is mostly meant with regards to point-in-time instances (one photo), not ongoing continuous surveillance.
Yes, the only distinction between any and all of these things and a legal recording is the length of time and the invasiveness of the collection of data. No, there is no bright line where you are definitely guilty or definitely safe (few things in law have one).
>> False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE
>> No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled
> As much as I dislike Flock, this is bad logic. There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces.
You're agreeing that he is forcing flock on people. Legality doesn't make it not-forced. Not needing consent is different from receiving consent.
I mean, he's not. Police departments and other organizations who buy and install Flock cameras are the ones doing the "forcing".
Again, I'm pretty anti-Flock, but place the blame where it's due and use good logic to support that.
When a government department takes down Flock cameras why does Flock put new ones up?
I mean, that's a really good question.
Do you have an answer? I certainly don't
Because they are building a global mass surveillance network to track everyone all the time, not helping out cities.
Except that's a conspiracy theory, not reality?
But Flock is happy to see them installed that way. They are collaborating and all responsible.
I don't understand this argument. How is Flock "collaborating" by selling their product? Sure they're happy their product is selling. How does that imply collaboration?
I mean, you're welcome to buy an Apple Vision Pro, but you making poor decisions with your money doesn't make Apple responsible for that.
>>everyone (even governments/corporations!) is free to observe everyone else in that same setting
If you want to manually observe me in public, as in WITH A HUMAN PERSON'S LIVING EYEBALLS, go right ahead.
Even if you want to use a manually-operated still or video camera and microphone, one device per person, go ahead. Or even a radar gun operated by a human, one observer with one device.
But if you start littering the entire planet with cameras and create a panopticon, even if it is absolutely in public space, that is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, and absolutely infringing on any reasonable concept of public/private space!
Consider simple speeding. An ordinary person who usually follows speed limits will rarely get stopped and fined, even if they occasionally exceed a limit in an emergency or when doing the safest thing in dense traffic that is over the speed limit, match the speed of traffic. But with universal surveillance, even watching 100% in public spaces, that person in an emergency could get dozens of tickets for minor infractions.
This is setting up Cardinal Richlieu's ideal tyranny: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."
With a panopticon of all public spaces, any petty tyrant can find enough evidence in six minutes to imprison anyone.
[0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu
> This is setting up Cardinal Richlieu's ideal tyranny: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."
It's a good thing, then, that most criminal convictions require a jury of our peers, and not just the word of a tyrant. And that appeals exist, etc etc.
> With a panopticon of all public spaces, any petty tyrant can find enough evidence in six minutes to imprison anyone.
This is a blatant strawman. Said "panopticon" already exists in major areas, and this kind of abuse of power still rarely happens. It's possible to have increased surveillance come with stricter rules and increased oversight, you know.
For example, it's pretty telling that Mandani, largely seen as a promising progressive candidate, has opted to change so little about the NYPD, which conducts massive city-wide surveillance, on the level of your "panopticon". Perhaps it's because he understands the benefits it provides to public safety, and is implicitly voting in confidence of its current level of oversight?
>> this kind of abuse of power still rarely happens
It is not even close to "rarely happens"
It happens in EVERY authoritarian state that has the technology, to BILLIONS of people around the world.
It is also already happening a LOT in the US (presumably where your comment is limited to).
Flock is used specifically to create parallel construction, where they observe cars moving "in a pattern" that might indicate "smuggling immigrants" such as driving from a border county, or working with pro-immigrant groups (a 100% legal activity), and local/regional police are alerted to find a pretext to stop the car, and often results in charges for someone who would otherwise never have been noticed.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
This has been known for thousands of years.
This type of systems are only a step away from absolute power
>> most criminal convictions require a jury of our peers
Tell that to the people kidnapped by ICE, with ZERO due process, based on just a sighting and tracking with a camera that matches a racial profile, then they wind up in detention and deported, or dead, with zero judicial intervention.
Stop acting like this doesn't happen or the current 'administration' actually follows the rules. This administration is on the well-traveled road to corrupting democracy and implementing fascism, and systems like Flock actively help it happen.
You are arguing sophistry on the wrong side of the facts, the wrong side of civil society, and the wrong side of history. Reconsider your life
> It is not even close to "rarely happens"
You and I have very different definitions of "rarely", apparently.
It is rare, by most definitions of "rare" (at least in the US, where I'm implicitly limiting this discussion, in general). What's yours?
If your definition of "rarely" is "more than never", a) you're setting an unreasonable standard, and b) letting the lack of perfection be an easy way to discredit anyone who disagrees with you, which is intellectually lazy.
I certainly agree that abuse happens! Unfortunately, that's just a fact of life. The best we can do is minimize abuse, and we should be making every effort to do so.
But this does not mean reactionary banning of every new technology, regardless of the benefits it may bring. That's just reactionary conservatism, which I think (based on the rest your comment), you vehemently disagree with!
> Flock is used specifically to create parallel construction, where they observe cars moving "in a pattern" that might indicate "smuggling immigrants" such as driving from a border county, or working with pro-immigrant groups (a 100% legal activity), and local/regional police are alerted to find a pretext to stop the car, and often results in charges for someone who would otherwise never have been noticed.
[Citation needed]. This is certainly plausible, but is currently presented without evidence, and can likewise be dismissed without evidence.
> Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Cool truism. Except we're not talking about "absolute power" by any stretch of the definition.
> This type of systems are only a step away from absolute power
Okay this is just bullshit and hyperbole.
The rest of your comment is equally disingenuous and wildly emotional. I refuse to engage with this. Either calm down and have a real conversation, or go away. Your subsequent ad-hominems and strawmen are entirely unwarranted and uncalled-for.
Flock is not a natural person. Flock has no rights.
As the owner of a moral person (a company), I disagree.
There are even weirder stuff than companies being considered a "moral person". For example if a person speeds way too much in France (say more than 50 kilometers/hour above the speed limit on the highway, e.g. 180 km/h // 111 mph instead of the 130 km/h // 80 mph)... Well then that person gets arrested. And his driving license is confiscated on the spot. But here's the absolute crazy thing: even if the car belong to someone else, to a company, to a rental company... Doesn't matter: the French state consider that the car itself was complicit in the act. So the car is seized too (for 8 days if it doesn't belong to the person who was driving it and potentially much more if it does belong to the person driving it).
Companies are persons and cars (I'm not even talking about self-driving cars) have rights and obligations. That's the world we live in.
"Company" is a generic collective noun. "Corporation" is the legal term directly referencing a constructed singular entity with a corpus/body to be treated like a natural person.
Companies have plenty of rights in the US.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
If you followed me around all day taking photographs of my every move for no other reason than you felt like it, I would very likely have recourse via stalking and harassment laws.
There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology.
If I'm interesting enough to get a warrant for surveillance of my activities - fair game. Private investigators operate under a set of reasonable limits and must be licensed in most (all?) states for this reason as well.
It's quite obvious laws have simply not caught up with the state of modern technology that allows for the type of data collection and thus mass-surveillance that is now possible today. If you went back 50 years ago and asked anyone on the street if it was okay that every time they left the house their travel history would be recorded indefinitely they would talk to you about communist dystopias that could never happen here due to the 2nd amendment.
>There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology.
There is a difference, the company is doing it to everyone, technology enables new things to happen and laws don't cover it. Before it was impractical for police to assign everyone a personal stalker but tech has made it practical.
By default if something is new enough it has a pretty good chance of being legal because the law hasn't caught up or considered it in advance.
But Flock doesn't "follow you around"? It's fixed location cameras. If you avoid the locations, you avoid the cameras, and thus the tracking.
> There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology.
I feel like it's telling that no one has yet taken this logic to court. I think that means that while there may be no difference to you there is a difference according to the law. This gets at your later point.
Speaking of:
> If you went back 50 years ago and asked anyone on the street if it was okay that every time they left the house their travel history would be recorded indefinitely they would talk to you about communist dystopias that could never happen here due to the 2nd amendment.
I think you're doing a subtle motte-and-bailey here. As far as I'm aware, Flock has strict retention policies, numbering in the low single-digit months (Google says 30 days "by default"). There is no "recorded indefinitely" here, which significantly changes the characteristics of the argument here. This is roughly on par with CCTV systems, to the best of my knowledge.
I don't disagree that laws haven't caught up yet, but I also think a lot of the arguments against Flock are rife with hyperbolic arguments like this that do meaningfully misrepresent their model. I think this leads to bad solutioning, as a consequence.
I'd much rather have good solutions here than bad ones, because ALPRs and other "surveillance technologies" do drive improvements in crime clearance rates/outcomes, so they shouldn't be banned--just better controlled/audited/overseen
But Flock DOES follow you around, in the sense that you can't really escape being observed by a series of ALPRs on a highway network.
Read some cases of who's suffering now. Cops (or ICE) can choose a passing vehicle to run a ALPR search on, finding out what states it just passed through. When they consider it "suspicious", said driver gets stopped, searched, and even detained.
Look at how ALPR is being used and whose rights are being violated as a result. Hint: it's not criminals.
If you're only reading the stories of the false positives or the abuses of power, you're making your judgements on only a fraction of the available information.
I think the suffering/abuse is able to be reasonably controlled through increased/better oversight, more publicly available information, and more strict regulations around the use of the data produced by these devices.
I also think they're able to impart a whole lot of good on their communities. If they contribute to an increase in the number of arrests and convictions for crimes, that might end up being a net good.
I think starting from the assumption that they are net bad, and then telling me I should only look at the negatives is an uncompelling argument.
I need not look further than the testimony of people who used to commit crimes in areas with increased surveillance (i.e., San Francisco), and I see a compelling argument for their upsides. Now I have to weigh the positives and negatives against each other, and it stops being the clear-cut argument you're disingenuously presenting it as.
> If you're only reading the stories of the false positives or the abuses of power, you're making your judgements on only a fraction of the available information.
If you're only reading the stories of the homosexual people in Germany in the 1940s, you're making your judgements on only a fraction of the available information.
Could you make your point plainly?
I think starting from "put surveillance cameras everywhere, because IF they contribute to a number of arrests that MIGHT end up being a net good" is an uncompelling argument.
How about you give me your bank account details and permission to make free use of all your money, and then IF I contribute more value with your money than you do that MIGHT end up being a net good, so let's try it first and find out later?
"stop reading about the abuses of power, just ignore them" is a really poor position to take.
> I think starting from "put surveillance cameras everywhere, because IF they contribute to a number of arrests that MIGHT end up being a net good" is an uncompelling argument.
I'm not starting from this argument, though. I'm starting from the argument that we shouldn't be inherently opposed to putting up more of we think the benefit outweighs the negatives or risks of abuse
Your level of strawmanning here tells me you're not arguing in good faith
Quoting you and swapping the terms around is not strawmanning, it's "turnabout is fair play".
> But Flock doesn't "follow you around"? It's fixed location cameras.
This is a really silly thing to say. It’s the “stop hitting yourself” of surveillance bullshit. Come on. Calling them “fixed cameras” so you can ignore the intent in the original comment is middle school shit.
[flagged]
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
The idea that there's not a scale difference is, quite frankly, bogus.
Okay, can you articulate the difference?
I don't disagree that quantity has a quality of it's own in some circumstances, but that's not an inherent property of "quantity".
You peeking out your curtains at me is fine. It doesn’t scale.
Everyone doing it 24/7 via their cameras and running it through AI analysis and providing it to the cops for $$$ is not.
What if I run my own cameras, my own local models, and my own analysis? All from the privacy of my own home... Is that okay?
What if I recruit a few friends around my town to do the same, and we share data and findings? Is that also fine?
What if I pay a bunch of people I don't know to collect this data for me, but do all the analysis myself?
Where do you draw the line? Being able to concretely define a line here is something I've seen privacy proponents be utterly incapable of doing. Yet it's important to do so, because on one end of the spectrum is a set of protected liberties, and on the other is authoritarian dystopia. If you can't define some point at which freedom stops being freedom, you leave the door wide open to the kind of bullshit arguments we see any time "privacy in public" comes up: 100% feels, and 0% logic.
Yeah, it's an interesting question to me too.
Because it seems clear to me that if an individual was to surveil and build up a dossier on any random stranger as much as an entity like Facebook or Google does that this would be considered stalking.
I've never been able to quite figure out why incorporating and doing it to basically everyone some how makes it legal. I think the secret ingredient is money but I'm not exactly sure how that works.
> Where do you draw the line? Being able to concretely define a line here is something I've seen privacy proponents be utterly incapable of doing.
There are many things in life where the exact location of the line isn't clear, but quite a few cases are clearly over said line.
As examples: Fraud, threats, child abuse/neglect, obscenity.
Sure, and I agree with these examples, in general.
How does this apply to the topic at hand, though? I think you're straying too far into hypotheticals, perhaps?
The difference is that Flock is stalking me, not incidentally watching me.
But this is incorrect. Flock is just incidentally watching you. Assuming they're being honest about their retention policies (which I would definitely that take with a grain of salt, but I'm making the assumption to steelman here), if no one searches for you, you're forgotten from their system after 30 days.
Stalking is targeted. Passively observing and making that information easy to search for a limited period of time is not quite the same thing, and the distinction has important implications
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you from a park bench in public and hundreds of thousands of clones of me watching you from every street corner in public is, quite frankly, bogus
To paraphrase the quote, quantity has a quality of its own.
To paraphrase the quote, quantity has a quality of its own.
The central dogma of machine learning. Which Flock and its defenders know very well.
>This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
The idea that me an individual observing you, and a large, well funded company allied with the US government observing you has no difference, quite frankly, leads me to conclude* you are arguing in bad faith.
You can make an ideological argument that is the case, but not one based on fact and reality.
*edited for spelling
> The idea that me an individual observing you, and a large, well funded company allied with the US government observing you has no difference, quite frankly, leads me to conclude* you are arguing in bad faith.
I mean, in both cases, I'm being observed in public, with unknown intent. Until that observation becomes action of some kind, there is no difference to me.
That tells me it's the concrete result of the surveillance that makes the difference, not whether or not it's an individual or a government doing the surveillance.
As far as I can tell, if no one searches for my vehicle in Flock's database within 30 days of being observed, whether or not Flock observed me becomes moot. For the vast majority of individuals observed by Flock, there will not exist any permanent record of their movements.
Now, all that is assuming they're above board with their retention policies, which they may well not be! I trust them about as far as I can throw them, but I haven't seen any evidence that they're lying about their retention practices, or that they're engaging in "dragnet-style" surveillance. I'm optimistic that any lawfare they engage in will out any bad behavior in that regard, thanks to discovery.
This does pose an interesting question: is an individual with perfect memory, who regularly sees you in public and who could recall every detail of every time they've ever seen you, better or worse than Flock, which "forgets" you after 30 days?
this is still forcing flock on everyone.
they could instead be limiting flock to private places.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
if you followed me everywhere and took pictures of me everywhwre i went outside from my door in the morning to my door in the evening, id want to get a restraining order on you as a stalker. this is stalking
I agree, this is stalking.
But again, this is not what Flock is doing.
By this same logic, traffic cameras and CCTV surveillance are "stalking", which doesn't seem accurate?
Scenario A: A person or drone follows you and takes a sequence of photos of your activities (approximately) wherever you go in public.
Scenario B: An array of cameras is installed (approximately) everywhere and takes a series of photos that include you, and the sequence of photos of your activities (approximately) wherever you go in public is assembled in real-time.
You claim these are different.
Other than details of the the technology, they are the same. The result is the stalker has a complete surveillance of your activities.
Scenario B is even worse, as the stalker now has a complete surveillance of EVERYONE, for the same cost, with zero regard for legitimate legal suspicion.
Stop being pedantic and ignoring reality
> Stop being pedantic and ignoring reality
Ironic, coming from someone blatantly ignoring the reality of things like retention policies.
Scenario B reduces to "you were never seen or followed" if no one has a reason to search for you within the retention window.
Scenario A requires intent. Scenario B only reduces to Scenario A when that intent exists. When it does not, Scenario B is essentially a noop, and has 0 actual impact on you
>>0 actual impact on you
Nonsense.
Sure, scenario A requires intent in advance
Scenario B requires intent ANY TIME. Someone in the system can decide they want to track me RETROACTIVELY and do it even more effectively than if they had planned in advance. With malicious intent, they can find or fabricate charges retroactively.
Yes, it is only potential, until it is actualized. Potential energy is still energy, and it is still different from not having potential energy in place.
This is why things like retention policies exist, though? Retroactively being able to query ALPR data is massively impactful to the ability to prosecute criminal wrongdoing, especially when a crime can be tied to a vehicle (such as theft of a vehicle). That utility significantly degrades with time, however!
Banning ALPRs outright is a strictly inferior solution, when compared to putting strict limits on their data retention.
This also inherently limits their potential for misuse, which seems to be your primary concern here?
It's accurate, they are stalking
The idea that a single CCTV feed is at all comparable to aggregatable Flock data is a deeply unserious position. I’m not clear why you think you can pretend that single cameras and a network of cameras are either similar or comparable, in this context? Or why traffic cameras aren’t essentially identical, if they’re used identically?
I’d like to give the benefit of the doubt, but it feels very sea-liony and intentionally disingenuous.
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> There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
Might I interest you in the concepts of stalking and restraining orders?
I'd be curious if one could file a restraining order against Flock, and if that would actually be enforceable?
I mean, it might be a viable way to push back against them.
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neither democracy nor being a market economy implies the American state of litigiousness.
it's always interesting to hear the silent part out loud. in this case, he's saying "I can get what I want because I can game the courts".
The rich are increasingly uninterested in keeping up appearances.
And really, why should they? We've learned now that there was actually a worldwide network of child rapists purchasing girls from other wealthy child traffickers in positions of power in seemingly every Western nation, and the consensus thus far is to do exactly nothing about it.
Laws are for the poors.
Great. Less runway for hires and product development.
The rich aren't the only ones who can "flood the field".
File all the lawsuits, Flock. Let's get some discovery going. Who is the CEO cozied up with?
> "Thankfully, we live in a beautifully democratic and capitalistic society where we can fight in court."
Probably not great for investor relations for him to be hyping up the democracy angle. They get a big chunk of their funding from Andreesen Horowitz.
He knows what he's doing. He doesn't support democracy, just plays it on TV.
Thank you for pointing this out.
Capitalism is great… when it has limits.
Why they supported the fascist:
https://a16z.com/podcast/trump-is-about-to-change-everything...
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Has anyone filed a CCPA-related lawsuit against Flock for retention and sharing of this data? How about a civil action for stalking? I assume it will just take one creative individual to find the right tort and then Flock will be buried under lawsuits.
Too many people are focused on the criminal aspects of this (4th amendment) and government surveillance. The fact that this is a corporation may give you more options.
We still live in a 'Might makes right' society. The only thing that has changed since Medieval times is 'Might' means 'Money'.
To be fair this is at least an improvement over Medieval times when 'Might' meant 'ancestry'.
How is this different to being born into wealth?
In the 1300s you could be broke but if you had the blue blood you still had power.
People today can become wealthy, and wealthy people can lose wealth, much much easily than nobility was created or revoked under feudalism.
There's objectively more social mobility. That's an improvement. Don't confuse "it's an improvement" with "it's an acceptable and desirable end state".
I don’t know. For some reason when I think of social mobillity I think of Genghis Khan.
Exactly. He's notable because he was so unusual.
How many people in the US have been born into a lower to middle class family, and gone on to make more than $10 million in the last 30 years?
> Exactly. He's notable because he was so unusual.
Now I have been taken to communicate that Genghis Khan with his KPI of human ears was an example of positive social mobility.
This is peak move fast across the steppe and break things mindset.
Well, off hand, Bill Clinton, Obama and JD Vance all fit this rubric.
There are likely to be many other examples. These are just well known ones.
Yes, my point is there are tons of them. Not just White House residents, but tons of people who own random businesses all over the country.
I still argue that our current capitalist system is nothing more than an extension of the Norman system. Only capitalist executives see even less of the humanity of their ‘customers’ and the damage from their policies/maximal extraction than medieval lords saw in the serfs of the village that their policies/maximal extraction impacted.
"Thankfully, we live in a beautifully democratic and capitalistic society where we can fight in court [(...) where we can bankrupt the opposition even if we can't win the case.]"
One would wonder what capitalism has to do with having a court system.
Yeah the whole "justice is blind" turns out to be propaganda that allows the poors to cope.
This guy is literally smirking while talking about this. It's like he's proud of himself for being able to produce doublespeak so effectively.
Does anyone have a template for a network audit that one could request of a local police department that would disclose access logs for Flock Safety data?
A lot of jurisdictions actually require the data to be public! For example, ctrl-f "download csv" on this page for central LA PD: https://transparency.flocksafety.com/central-la-pd- . Not all jurisdictions require this, but if you can guess the URLs (https://transparency.flocksafety.com/<DEPARTMENT ID>) you can find quite a few, or just Google "YOUR PD flock safety portal". (EDIT: You'll want to regularly download these if you're trying to build a comprehensive record. The PDs I've been monitoring are only required to keep data for 30 days, so the CSVs are just a rolling window cut off at EXACTLY today minus 30 days.)
You can also do FOIA requests directly to departments, like this one: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/novato-296/flock-alprs-cameras-...
Good news is that even the images captured by the cameras is FOIA-able! https://www.404media.co/judge-rules-flock-surveillance-image...
I've decided that anyone who uses the term "antifa" in a serious, scaremongering manner must be fascist.
Well by definition yes. Being anti anti-fascist would imply you're pro-fascist.
Flock is a terrorist organization. So there. Now what.
> Now what
Flock's terrorist cameras must be destroyed. With airstrikes and poisoned ice cream.
If Deflock is 'closer to Antifa than anything else' logically where does that place Flock?
Flock is Fa---
Winning local elections means having the political power and thus economic power to Deflock your town.
Telling illiberal authoritarians to go fuck themselves is reasonable. But power is still more important than insults.
Our city council voted 5-0 to install more. A unanimous vote which includes democrats who ran on disrupting a council that had the same members for decades.
It seems like at the next open mic, people should read FOIA'ed Flock records which shows their car driving by adult store etc.
is it terrorism if it's a corporation who is in terror?
no: terror is strictly about civilians.
Reminder that Flock is a YC company and is still listed on YC's site: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety
From what I can tell no one from YC has issued a statement about Flock since the public realized how terrible they are.
This is how all authoritarians of the far right react when they are threatened. Take note - it means you're doing the right thing.
Pointing cameras at people? Law and order
Pointing cameras at cameras? Terrorist organization
Who watches the watchmen? Terrorists
This film is dedicated to the brave freedom fighters of the Mujahideen!
Hahaha, Rambo 3.
The thing is the billionaires are terrified of US. The point of these surveillance systems isn't to make us safer. Because we're actually pretty safe already. We're not going to be assassinated, kidnapped, or beaten because we pissed someone off.
It's to make people like Garrett Langley feel protected from us.
Not yet, but with the right infrastructure, that could be a reality.
> The thing is the billionaires are terrified of US.
Are they though? The odds of any kind of coordinated response that could seriously threaten the billionaires seem next-to-none. Flock seems to be a lot more offensive than defensive - it enables the targeting and mass surveillance in order to find and punish the 'right people', as well as mass tracking to create yet another datapoint to understand the way people move, think and coordinate. The defensive side is already covered through internet services, like social media. They don't have much to fear. I reckon that a powerful/rich enough person could kill a stranger on the street in plain view of a huge crowd and have absolutely nothing happen to them.
Friend of mine used to work for a single digit billionaire. No one you know. His name barely comes up in a search. He said he found out after a few years that the guy had been kidnapped and held for ransom.
Luigi Mangione proved they're not safe.
No he didn't. Luigi turned out to be an anomaly. He proved the public didn't have the stomach for revolution because none was forthcoming. He was reduced to a meme and thrown in prison.
He allegedly murdered a CEO — regardless whether it was him or not, a bloodthirsty CEO was murdered by a random member of the public. Other bloodthirsty CEOs no longer feel safe from the public.
Anyone can get shot by a random member of the public, that's the price we all pay for our American freedoms. The fear (and some might say hope) was that Luigi represented something bigger, an actual dawning of class consciousness in the US, but he didn't. He was just a guy with a gun and a grudge and there are literally millions of those.
And some of them are turning on bloodthirsty CEOs, which didn't happen before.
"some" implies more than one. There was only one. There weren't any more, and there doesn't seem to be any sign of more. And this happened in a city where people get shot to death every day.
Life is literally no less safe for CEOs in the US post-Mangione then prior. The whole narrative that he represented some kind of social or cultural inflection point against CEOs was simply false, and the ones that are actually afraid already hire security because getting kidnapped for ransom is a much bigger threat than being shot in the street.
5 months ago;
Source article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2025/09/03/ai-st...
Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45119847
and at the same time:
Pump the Brakes on Your Police Department's Use of Flock Safety
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45128605
The parent's entire original comment in case anyone is wondering why it was flagged:
> 5 months ago? c'mon OP
Thankfully OP is posting about it again, because I missed it the first time. Thank you OP!
Saw that too.
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I think the clerk who wouldn't accept my return at Home Depot is a terrorist. Also my cat.
Flock is a terrorist organization
Dehumanizing other people as terrorists without applying the scholar definition in order to defame them should be called terrorism. Oh wait, defamation is already a thing. Let's just call it that, and it may end up being libel/slander, but the bar seems to be pretty high for that in USA and Europe as well.
Making people not feel safe ANYWHERE for being watched is the definition of terror.....
“If you’ve got nothing to hide, let me profit off your surveillance”
He's looking for air cover from MAGA, trying to get on Trump's radar. Flock is law-and-order. DeFlock is Antifa.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
Jesus buddy, you're not supposed to drink the Kool-Aid.
"I put cameras in your neighbourhood to track every aspect of your public life" == Apple pie and sunshine
"You get together with your neighbours and make a map of their locations" == terrorist
I didn't even know about flock, and I still don't quite understand what it is, other than that they seem to want everyone being spied upon every second of their lives they're outside the hose, or something. For our protection / against crime / terrorism / pedophiles / communists / zombies or whatever. Usually it's governments and their law enforcement arms that push for that, but in the US private enterprise is king so I guess in this domain as well?
Anyway, assuming I've gotten the gist of it - I support De-flocking and de-surveillance'ing and will be happily to carry the label of an antifa terrorist all day long :-)
is there a list of municipalities where Flock has installed cameras? I'd like to check if they're in our town
Freedom is slavery
Can we update the title to include the name, Garrett Langley? Everyone should know his name.
I swear, every fascist has the same playbook. They use the same phrases, same accusations, same lies, sometimes even same wordings. It is like they have a single hive mind - for which everyone else is the enemy and is subject to destruction or enslaving.
The Epstein files are revealing a web of surprising connections. Epstein's network knew about 9/11 and made stock trades beforehand. He was personally involved in some UK corruption to lower taxes on bank executives.
Yup, the specific one in use here by Flock is accusation in a mirror.
Those are the same words fascists would use to describe peaceful activist groups such as Deflock.
It makes me wonder what his values are.
We're so busy thinking about if we can enable omnipresent AI surveillance, we didn't stop to think of we should.
We must, as a society, reject the full capability of technology to observe the public.
Someone just had to come up with the goofy name "antifa" instead of just using "anti fascist".
It was originally shortened in German from ”Antifaschistische Aktion” and ”Außerparlamentarische Opposition”. Then that carried over to other languages as a common name. Feel free to go back to the roots! ;)
It was shortened as the acronym AFA.
disregarding the history of the term, you see that even posters on Hacker News Dot Com dispute the accuracy of the term "fascism" as applied to contemporary american politics, so what difference would it make? people who are okay with fascistic politics will not distinguish opposition with a name change.
What's Flock? What's Deflock? Why should I care? There's absolutely no context but just another smug American with that same accent as all the other smug American dickhead CEOs speaking in that exact American CEO way they all do (is there like a school or something they all go to?).
If i were the kind of person to say "i told you so" (and i am), i would point out that people have been screaming since like 1994 that the term "terrorist" is a tool of the state to punish anyone they find inconvenient.
Unfortunately for me i was born in 1991 and so i wasn't actually screaming in 1994 or 1998 or 2001 or 2003 but god damnit EVERYONE just decided "ah, typical left wing cranks" and said fuck it, let's let the president do whatever he wants, it's fine?
Obama executed a US citizen without trial on allegations of terrorism. I was absolutely screaming then.
You know that you are dealing with a fascist scumbag the moment you hear "terrorist", "antifa" and "law and order" in the same phrase. Flock is a disgrace for the industry, and this fascist sociopath is a disgrace for mankind.
Techno-fascist that leases cameras would like governments to pay him his cut of a "law and order" society. News at 11.
Genuinely hilarious that this is banned off the front page. A YC alum is calling people who publish data terrorists and the fascism apologist bros are like "this site isn't for politics"
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That figure is straight from Flok's own press release. There were deep deep methological flaws in the calculation of that figure.
https://archive.is/7iNyQ - this is an excellent piece breaking down the many many flaws in that figure and quotes the 2 academics involved who later said highlighted the issues.
->"“This 'study' rings a cacophony of alarm bells: the closer you look at it, the more it looks like a marketing scheme than data science,” Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me. “Nobody should be repeating the claims until the data can be verified and the conclusions replicated by independent data scientists without a direct tie to the company that stands to benefit."
That's a claim Flock makes. They poison their own well a bit when they then also claim that Deflock are terrorists. One might point out that one claim was made off the cuff while the other is has a white paper detailing why they're making this claim but said white paper has a number of it's own issues. See, unless perhaps you think they're a terrorist news organization: https://www.404media.co/researcher-who-oversaw-flock-surveil... which quotes one of the consulting academic researchers as saying:
>The researcher, Johnny Nhan of Texas Christian University, said that he has pivoted future research on Flock because he found “the information that is collected by the police departments are too varied and incomplete for us to do any type of meaningful statistical analysis on them.”
>helping police solve 700k real crimes per year.
Have to ask for a citation there. Also, what are "real crimes"? Also, aren't these cameras? How are they tackling these 700k suspects?
Well then... let's eliminate any due process and fourth amendment protections, maybe requiring something sensible like "officer suspicion", or maybe just a program of "random" searches.. you know keep everybody on their toes. I also bet that real crimes (whatever that means) goes down...
Just because something works doesn't make it right. Personally, giving up what the law is suppose to protect (individual rights) in the name of the law is something I can only see as a fool's bargain.
Those are legal now. A Kavanaugh stop allows an officer to stop and search a person based on their ethnicity or spoken language.
Those are statistics given by Flock themselves and are manipulated
That’s a lot of speeding tickets and jwalking, well done flock!
So crime is down?
It actually is hugely down nationwide, but flock probably had nothing to do with that or very little
Says who? Flock?
has anything ever good come out of silicon valley or the wall street? one greedy capitalist after another and you wonder why the world has turn to a shithole! the inequality between the rich and the poor is reaching the level of ambani vs. mumbai slums.