Evanston orders Flock to remove reinstalled cameras | Hacker News Reader

Evanston orders Flock to remove reinstalled cameras

evanstonroundtable.com

411 pointsptk264 comments

Even though it's become commonplace in the last 20 years, I'm still shocked to see how companies can pretty much ignore the law, do whatever they want, and have everyone involved shielded from any kind of significant consequences.

In situations like this, I think the person at the top of the chain that told employees to perform the illegal installations should be arrested and charged. On top of that, the company should be fined into bankruptcy. If the directors knew about it any companies they're involved with shouldn't be allowed to conduct future business in the municipality (or state).

They were co-operating/conspiring with CBP as an extension of the federal government.

Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense.

Don't think your company could just put up cameras and post the location of LEO and they'd let you get away with something like that.

> Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense.

This sounds like some sort of legal procedures adopted from the USSR.

It turns out capitalism devolves into authoritarianism too when money gets concentrated enough. Basically any extreme concentration of power (wealth concentration or Stalinism) is going to tend toward this kind of outcome.

Slight correction, capitalism has no political ideology and craves monopoly. Corporate feudalism and capitalism are totally compatible.

It isn't just USSR, it is the core Russian principle of "oprichnina" - you can violate any laws, human or God's, as long as you're serving the tzar, Secretary General or President Putin. We start to see a hint of it here with ICE, and i'm sure we'll see a bit more of it with the newly formed Domestic Terrorism Task Force.

And if I'd have to wager anyone that dare speaking out would be labelled antifa, therefore a terrorist, therefore free for all from a law enforcement perspective...

Things are going downhill at an impressive pace... Not going to lie watching the Trainwreck in slow motion is entertaining in a sort of morbid way. Though I wished that it wouldn't go that way...

Trainwreck spotting is best conducted from outside of the train.

I think that most cases of seemingly unwarranted depression and apathy in people today in fact stem from their subconscious acknowledgement of this trainwreck in progress, and failure of consciousness to accept that and/or do anything about it.

In other words, mass cognitive dissonance.

First articulated in 2005 by scholar Alexei Yurchak to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia, hypernormalization describes life in a society where two main things are happening.

The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.

>I think that most cases of seemingly unwarranted depression and apathy in people today in fact stem from their subconscious acknowledgement of this trainwreck in progress, and failure of consciousness to accept that and/or do anything about it

I think many sense this, want to get off the train, and away from the tracks but can't figure out how to do it. To pull off it seems overwhelming.

> "watching the Trainwreck in slow motion"

I only wish the train-wreck were in "slow motion" so there'd be a bit more time to take some meaningful actions as opposed to piling manufactured crises atop one another (and another, and another) in rapid succession as is currently happening.

Send help.

> It isn't just USSR, it is the core Russian principle of "oprichnina" - you can violate any laws, human or God's, as long as you're serving the tzar, Secretary General or President Putin.

“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.” — Oscar R. Benavides, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Óscar_R._Benavides

"oprichnina" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprichnina

> Domestic Terrorism Task Force

That is ... a surprisingly honest name for a force that'll terrorize any domestic opposition, gotta give them that at least.

It's not hard to draw potential dots:

Designate Venezuelan boats as "likely terrorists" (drug dealers). Authorize use of extrajudicial military lethal force (blow up boats with dealers aboard).

Justify the above due to "terrorism".

Designate "Antifa" as a "domestic terrorism group".

Not hard to see the next step of "deploy military force against individuals suspected of being Antifa". No need for pesky trials. They're terrorists. This is a war...

This mode of operation is completely the reverse of my country the Netherlands.

In Dutch society it doesn't really matter who the current ruling party is the big machine keeps rolling on. The names change frequently- governments keep tumbling down- but every day like clockwork people get up in the morning, go to work and follow their programming. Prime minister A is replaced by prime minister B.

In some ways having a personality cult is less scary. You can kill a man but how do you destroy a collective?

> "In some ways having a personality cult is less scary. You can kill a man but how do you destroy a collective?"

In some ways it's far more terrifying, because of the operative word "cult" there. Sometimes the object of such a "personality cult" can attract the mindset of an actual cult to form around them and create a highly destructive and dangerous "collective". It's happened many times already throughout recorded history, and it never really seems to go all that well for anyone involved.

You sound like someone who's never experienced a personality cult.

That's actually comparing two collectives:

1. A collective where there is a belief (however slow or stodgy) in the consistent application of known rules.

2. A collective where the only real rule is to make the cult leader happy even if it means a forest of contradictions and rewriting history.

While (2) can easily change on a whim... it's not your whim.

Which leads us to the practical question: Which collective do you think you and your community could best fight against when it starts hurting you? I think a majority of the time I'd rather be opposed to (1).

> I think a majority of the time I'd rather be opposed to (1)

This sounds terrible. Any political system can be good or bad, but some of them are much more prone to autocratic drift than others. There should be absolutely no hesitation: rule of law is much better than personal dictatorship. It is not sufficient because the law can be oppressive, but it is absolutely necessary.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. The phrase "I'd rather be opposed to" refers to choosing between two mutually-exclusive scenarios where I'm tasked to confront two different kinds of opponents.

If someone says: "Between catching Tuberculosis or AIDS, I'd rather be fighting Tuberculosis", that does not mean they have a favorable opinion towards AIDS.

This is one of the exact frustrations that has led the US to our current open fascism, so try not to take your state of affairs for granted. It's much easier to resist and avoid a bureaucracy (as it mostly operates on predictable rules), than a cult of personality autocrat who chooses new targets by the week.

No need to look abroad; companies have gotten away with this kind of stuff for most of the history of the US. Union busting is a particular flashpoint for engaging in illegal activity with the blessing of the government.

Well, you're probably right for some types of procedures.

But this type of thing (surveillance cameras) would actually fall under state security and be ordered by the Central Committee and done top down without any comments anywhere along the line (because everyone understood what was good for them).

You're probably thinking of the "we're making the wrong type of tractor ball bearings"/"we're making broken consumer radios" type of issue where yeah, they'd give you the runaround.

A bunch of companies seem to be relying on similar federal cover. To me it seems dumb because whatever legal exposure they create will outlast the current administration. It’s impossible to predict who will be running the federal government 3 years from now, and liability does not evaporate much in that time frame.

The next administration could decide to side with localities, and assist prosecutions of the companies and executives involved. Or even pursue their own federal prosecutions.

Do you have a source for their cooperation with CBP? I think that would make this an even bigger story.

Yes the posted article

  This decision came after Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias discovered that Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a “pilot program” against state law,

Flock promises all sorts of safeguards and ethics around, y'know, the law, but the reality is their perspective is "it's not our job to tell you that you can or can't do something, even if we know for a fact that you can't".

Reminds me when I build health insurance claims management software (pre-ACA). "We want to mine the database for familial history of conditions, based on familial claims and ICD codes".

"We can't do that."

"Why not? It's all in the database."

"It is. And we are legally forbidden from running such queries."

"..."

> Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court

The keep saying this and losing in court. I don’t have much respect left for these bootlickers who won’t fight.

As an ex-employee of Flock, I can guarantee that this most likely came from the top down. The founder has a vision that isn't just aspirational, but literal, in his eyes, "Flock should help eliminate all crime." Very much Minority Report. He sees Flock as the unsung heroes of the community, and any collateral damage is an acceptable price to pay, despite lip service being paid to ethics:

For example, their "suspicious behavior". Cameras reporting to HOAs and to LE of vehicle behavior that is suspicious or aberrant to their AI (changes in parking behavior and times, for example).

Sharing of data between entities that aren't meant to be sharing (HOAs sending data to LE, for example, when prohibited by the state. Flock's position is "not our job to stop you, even if we know that your state says not to").

A very ... opaque ... "transparency report". In my county alone, there are at least four agencies using Flock that are not listed in their "Agencies using Flock" data.

Why would you work for such a fucked up dystopian Orwellian corporation?

Appreciate any other insider details you have to share.

> Why would you work for such a fucked up dystopian Orwellian corporation?

I never understood how someone can ask such a question. It's not like you can just change jobs like you can change clothes. Some people have a family to feed so they can't just decide to be jobless for a few months. Finding a new job takes time you might not have if you still have to show up to your existing job and keep up the mask as if you have no intention of quitting. Sometimes the shittiest jobs pay the most and you cannot afford the pay cut. And sometimes all options are equally bad, e.g. if you don't want to participate in planned obsolescence, but every company out there is making products designed to break. What's the alternative? Make your own company?

"Because of the broken socio-economic hellscape we are forced to exist in" is certainly a valid-ish answer.

> What's the alternative? Make your own company?

Check address bar? :)

Ex-employee.

Yes, I read that, thank you.

Confiscate the shares. No compensation. Effectively nationalisation as punishment.

Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke, but the work still gets done.

> Confiscate the shares. No compensation

This is better than corporate death penalties but still more complicated than fines. Massive fines are the answer.

> Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke

So do fines and bankruptcy. CEO won’t go to jail, but they’ll spend the rest of their lives fighting shareholder lawsuits. Feed them to the wolves.

> CEO won’t go to jail, but they’ll spend the rest of their lives fighting shareholder lawsuits.

One important lesson to be learned from the past 20 years: if you're sued, don't go to court. If you're dragged to court, say "fuck you, I'm not going and I'm not paying." If you have enough money, they literally will not do anything. They'll just have endless sham court cases that you're free to ignore and there will never be any consequences.

Alex Jones is up to a few billion dollars in settlements against him. He's had court cases against him for, what, over 10 years now? He's still running his show, still getting money, and he's openly mocking the courts. Judges don't care. Whatever people work in the frameworks that allegedly exist to enforce judgments don't care. They're getting their salary either way.

I think you're reading the wrong lesson from this. If someone cares enough to take you down, your strategy isn't just useless, it's actively harming you. It's a "for my friends everything, for my enemies the law" situation.

A better lesson is that you can be "on the radar" but far enough from the central hotspot that you are not a priority. Alternatively you need someone to have your back and be your heatshield while you keep trudging along.

The actual takeaway here is the newly formed Soviet United States of America.

The issue mentioned above around how justice works has always been a problem in the US. Justice isn't blind, or fair. Best justice money can buy. The current administration just went all out for this.

The soviets had better healthcare funding and lower rates of homelessness. We may be collectively richer than the soviets, but our state hates us more, and the people who run most of this privatized country (ie, capitalists—board members, executives, and rich shareholders) have more contempt for us than soviet politicians and apparatchiks ever could muster.

I personally don't understand what makes executives so special that they are exempted from the same sort of criminal proceeding the average Joe is faced with. By all accounts they hold these lofty positions precisely because they can (and should) be held responsible for their company's dirty deeds.

A fine is low stakes because the company more likely than not will have a way to recoup that loss. There is an obvious calculus to that which is practically a cliché to mention. A lawsuit just puts it on the people to succeed in civil proceedings at their own expense, over a potentially lengthy period of time.

Western countries like the UK and US tend to be quite soft on businesses engaging in practices that would land an unremarkable working class person in prison if they were caught doing the same.

If corporations are people then they can be taken into custody.

If you click through to the follow up article, you’ll find that the city covered the cameras with black plastic.

Sometimes low tech solutions work pretty well. And since the cameras are under contract to the city, on city poles, I doubt there’s anything the feds can do.

And here I was about to post this completely unrelated link: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Thermite

I find that camera sensors often fail in close proximity to 2 watt láser diodes. It’s very strange.

It is pretty clear to me that many of the things companies do get away with would land regular Joe in jail with high reliability. I think we have to start making CEOs more liable for such things, especially when done on their explicit command.

Not even just regular Joe, a lot of the things large companies get away with would lead to far harsher consequences for small or medium sized ones. Any normal company spying on people's devices at the scale of Facebook, selling dodgy goods on the level Amazon does or ignoring guidelines in general like Uber and AirBnB used to would get absolutely wrecked by the legal system.

The system needs to be way more even when it comes to dealing with individuals and companies of every size possible.

Yeah good point. The question is how can we effectively change incentives in such way the decision-makers in big corporations will feel they are taking a personal risk that can ruin their lives instead of a situation where the worst that can happen is a (compared to revenue) tiny symbolic fine made by the company and not by them?

For me the important thing is that the buck needs to stop somewhere human in certain cases. And in doubt that should be the CEO, potentially even multiple people at once.

If we want a free market where new players can enter and compete, big corporations needs to fear harsher punishment not lighter ones.

And who is gonna lobby/s the government to do so? Same companies / CEOs that buy the government in a first place

Not just CEOs, make employees liable. Going after the soft targets first will reduce the resources and influence of the harder targets at the executive level.

> On top of that, the company should be fined into bankruptcy.

Fines need to increase with subsequent offenses, otherwise they become just a number in the cost of running business. If the fine is 100k, but the profit from breaking the law is 1M, then it makes more sense to keep breaking the law and keep paying the fine.

Instead the fine should increase every time. The first time it's easy to pay the 100k, but then it rises to 200k (still worth), 400k (not so much worth it), 800k (barely profitable), 1.6M (actual loss) and so on. Of course this only works if the fine keeps increasing faster than the profitability of the crime.

It was a mistake to treat corporations as the legal person responsible for these things. The officers of the corporations should be held legally responsible for breaking the law.

I've always maintained that if a corporation breaks the law, the entire C-suite should be individually charged as if they personally committed the crime. It's their company and their responsibility.

First of all, I think that this instinct to fine-'em, screw-'em, etc. is profoundly authoritarian. It is extremely important for a civil society not only that predictable laws are put into place, but also that predictable enforcement of those laws exist. I jaywalk almost every day. I understand that if a cop sees me jaywalk, he will fine me. I also understand that if the cop wants to put me in jail for jaywalking, he cannot do that, and the law would be on my side. On my side, me, the offender.

The reason is that the law not only specifies what people should do what is allowed and isn't allowed, but also what the penalties are for breaking the law. A law stating "People are required to do X" or "People are forbidden from doing Y", without any penalties specified is not worth the paper it is written on and cannot be enforced in any way (at least that's how it works in my jurisdiction, Romania).

And that is all very well, and how it should be, in a law-based state.

Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government.

"The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order. In much simpler terms, citizens and corporations are only required to follow legal orders and are not required to follow illegal orders, given by the executive. Who decides what is legal? The judiciary.

This is what it means to live in a society with a separation of powers.

> The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation.

A cease-and-desist by the executive is not a law. The corporation's opinion is that the contract termination is illegal. And therefore that the cease-and-desist is illegal. Perhaps they're right. Perhaps they're wrong. But they have the right to bring the thing to trail.

"Well maybe they have the right to bring the thing to trail, but until the trail is ruled in their case, they should follow the orders of the executive.", I hear the objection.

Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point.

"So the executive cannot do anything to get those cameras down until the trail is solved?"

Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter.

Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.

> “Flock unlawfully made data collected within Evanston and the State of Illinois available to federal agencies,” Ruggie wrote, referencing the findings of Giannoulias’ audit. “This is not a procedural error; it is an intentional and unauthorized disclosure of protected data… Let it be absolutely clear: this breach is material, intentional, and cannot be cured. The City will not entertain remediation efforts or renegotiation.” [0]

I can't seem to access the audit in question [1] and there are connected articles that seem to also be talking about forest park police using camera readers. Whatever the case, there seems to be reasonable doubt in the trust in Flock Safety. I don't understand how an illegal termination of contract would result in anything other than Evanston having to pay out the remaining fees and maybe a cancellation fee.

[0] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/28/flock-challenges-c...

[1] https://www.ilsos.gov/news/2025/august-25-2025-giannoulias-a...

While all that may be very true, and you may be right, that is all for the judge to decide, is it not?

I am not taking the side of the company, I am taking the side of rule of law and due process.

This is so abundantly hilarious to read. Cooperating with the Federal government cannot plausibly be a crime in the United States. It'd be like if I was sentenced to a Federal pentitiary, reported in to serve my sentence and was then found guilty of collaboration with the Federal government in some state court.

Realistically if Flock didn't cooperate, the Federal government would just show up with a warrant, subpoena, or other document. Given that Flock themselves is not being investigated, there isn't really any incentive for them to go that route.

Now the state may be abundantly pissed that the Feds are in their backyard, but they have the right to regulate interstate commerce. They are entirely within their rights to also terminate the contract of course.

> Cooperating with the Federal government cannot plausibly be a crime in the United States.

Authotrized agents from government show up and demand that I turn over video they call evidence. Then then suggest that I should continue to record video and that I should also enable audio recording too. I comply with all 3 requests.

Later the court rules that original request was an illegal search and seizure, and that no reasonable agent would suggest that I should continue to record video with audio, and in this case/example, elects to reject a qualified immunity claim from the agency.

I just participated in an illegal act by cooperating with the federal government.

> Realistically if Flock didn't cooperate, the Federal government would just show up with a warrant, subpoena, or other document. Given that Flock themselves is not being investigated, there isn't really any incentive for them to go that route.

It's a weird take to suggest that the federal governnment themselves shouldn't need to be bothered by following the law they are expected to enforce... If they want data a state law says is private.... they should get a warrant.

There's a word for the belief that you should do what the executive branch says without demanding they follow the the law... wanna guess what that word is?

The sentence "I should record audio and video in this case and elects to reject a qualified immunity claim." is English but not even comprehensible. I have no idea what you mean.

Joseph Nacchio certainly would not agree with your opinion here that "they should get a warrant"

Yeah, phone artifact, sorry about that. let me try to fix it.

Edited the original comment, hope that's better?

> Joseph Nacchio certainly would not agree with your opinion here that "they should get a warrant"

Citing Wikipedia

> He claimed in court, with documentation, that his was the only company to demand legal authority for surreptitious mass surveillance demanded by the NSA

Sounds like he would agree with me? Or do you mean how he was convicted of insider trading which appears to be unethical retaliation for resisting an illegal request?

I refuse to advocate that anyone should act unethically because they fear retaliation. whether or not it's the prudent decision, I'm too much of a pedant with low self-preservation instincts to behave in such a despicable way.

> I refuse to advocate that anyone should act unethically because they fear retaliation.

There are parallels here with other civil rights: It would be a [4th/1st] Amendment rights violation to use the threat of a future [warrant/gag-order] to coerce someone into [disclosing/censoring] something in advance.

Suppose a private entity commits a state crime, and their defense is "the feds made us do it"... except it's not true, and the feds merely offered a negotiated cash deal, and never took any of the required steps to prove a legitimate need and actually compel action.

Even if I have sympathy for the person/company caught between competing jurisdictions, "they have reputation and I like money" simply isn't a credible defense against the state-crime charges.

> Realistically if Flock didn't cooperate, the Federal government would just show up with a warrant, subpoena, or other document.

Not necessarily, their ability to get a warrant/ subpoena is not a foregone conclusion... If it were, we wouldn't even have the test/authorization system in the first place!

A prediction is not a substitute for the process. Imagine the same equivalence being used to kill a suspected murderer: "Well I was really sure sure the guy would get the death penalty in a trial anyway, so... No problem, right?"

> Cooperating with the Federal government cannot plausibly be a crime in the United States.

Quibble: I'm pretty sure you intended to include it, but this is missing an important "legal under federal law" piece. If a real government agent shows up at your door telling you to do something heinous like strangle a baby, there is no plausible way that's legal just because you "cooperated with" the agent.

While I can see your point about "strangle a baby", I don't think there are any events that unfolded like that. If someone shows up and asks me for something they technically aren't supposed to have, how am I supposed to know that?

> If someone shows up and asks me for something they technically aren't supposed to have, how am I supposed to know

Well, in this case, you know because "you" happen to be a ~$3.5b company with a legal department that already works regularly on negotiations and compliance to state/local rules, and likely months to calmly investigate and decide on a policy.

Has Flock Security made any statements claiming they were tricked or rushed by the feds?

No because there would be no reason for them to do that. I'm not even sure how an agent could "trick" someone in this scenario.

But if some federal agents show up & ask for some data then you respond with "sure, let me just run this by legal" they might just follow up with "OK, take a few days if you need to. The DoJ has really been breathing down our backs to go over these mortgage documents you signed last year. We can use this time to do that"

Replace your mortage with your daughter, brother-in-law, cousin, or whatever family member you prefer.

What does the contract or the law say?

The “Feds asked nicely” doesn’t change the law. I worked for a company that processed state income tax data. Improper disclosure was a felony punishable by 5 years in prison.

Regulating interstate commerce doesn’t give the content the power to renegotiate state contracts or dismiss state law.

The regulation of interstate absolutely gives the Federal government the ability to agbrogate or invalidate state law. If it didn't there would not be any reason to have it. Although the Federal government actually owns far more land than just D.C. most commerce does not happen there.

If it didn't give the federal government this power then every state would just pass a "nuh uh!" law every time the federal added a tax or whatever to stuff.

> This is so abundantly hilarious to read. Cooperating with the Federal government cannot plausibly be a crime in the United States.

It’s yet another constitutional crisis. There is nothing hilarious in that. On what ground should random federal agents be able to coerce companies to ignore state laws? Or federal law in a bunch of well-known, high profile cases?

> It is extremely important for a civil society not only that predictable laws are put into place, but also that predictable enforcement of those laws exist.

At the moment, this doesn't exist either. Particularly on the low end of offenses, selective enforcement and racial profiling run rampant, and not just in the US.

Any decent developed society takes laws that have gone outdated off the books entirely - the exceptions are the US and the UK, about the only nations in the world that didn't have at least one revolution, war, putsch or peaceful regime change that was used to reboot the entire legal system from scratch and incorporate decades if not centuries of progress.

> Particularly on the low end of offenses, selective enforcement and racial profiling run rampant

I think most people will agree to this. When they do, some will be thinking of disparate enforcement of traffic regulations and others lax enforcement of shoplifting/retail theft.

That's only the tip of the iceberg. Literally every enforcement agency targets the bottom of whatever section of the social and economic ladder they deal in.

If anything dealing with the police is actually way better than any of the civil enforcement agencies because accused criminals have "real rights" whereas all the other agencies have the same sort of kangaroo administrative sort of processes that ICE drew ire for.

What that may all be very true, would it not be better if law enforcement was predictable and in accord with the written law passed by the legislature and settled, in cases of dispute, by the judiciary?

There's never really been any enforcement on the low end that I am aware of. Even as a little kid I asked my dad about things like speeding, jaywalking, driving without insurance, etc. and he pointed that basically no one is actually even investigated for those things.

TIL that no one has ever been in trouble for driving without insurance.

You don't deserve the down votes you're getting for this clearly thoughtful comment.

You're wrong in a number of ways, and to me it reads like an unintentionally shallow take, built up more from cliches over deeper understanding. But it's still well above average or engagement and insight of the average HN comment, thank you for writing it.

> First of all, I think that this instinct to fine-'em, screw-'em, etc. is profoundly authoritarian.

It's not authoritarian, simply because when it's the citizens angry about some group acting against their interests, who've elected to ignore a reasonable and lawful order from the operations group of their elected officials. It might be dangerous, or needlessly hostile, or the result of toxic rage. But it's not authoritarian.

> Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government.

Except, that's exactly what they are doing. Flock is a privatized spy agency, who's been told by a city and it's population to "go away" They did, but then without explaining their actions, they reinstalled spy equipment. If it was as simple as not wanting to be ousted from a contract, there's contract law. They can collect the full amount, plus any damages without reinstalling the spy equipment they were already caught using to violate state law. Given they've already proven they're willing to violate state law, what would you say the operations branch *should* do? Roll over and say, you got us, keep spying on our citizens against their interests!

> "The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order.

This is technically true as in accurate, but it's not applicable to this story. This private company had a contract with the city, they violated the law to the detriment of the people while exercising the benefits provided by that contract. That's reason enough for the city to terminate the contract and demand the other side to comply and relinquish the previously granted contract benefits.

While originally they seemed to be complying, but then reversed course and caused more damage to the city. This is clearly (to me) bad faith behavior, and deserving of additional punishment, the other comments you are chastising, with takes that are charitably described as shallow, are only enumerating common punishments they they feel would compell pro-social behavior from CEOs and companies. Two groups that have proven to be very resistant to acting in a pro-social way.

> Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point.

You're simply wrong here. The only loss this company can show, is the contractual payments. The invasion of privacy and loss of safety felt by the citizens can't be cured by more money as easily as the losses the private spying company might incure. Thus while waiting for the court judgment, the company should be the party to bear the restraint.

Additionally they can't violate state laws to make money. Which they did and are still doing. Their agreement with the federal government I assume is contract and payment based, and they weren't served with a warrant to reinstall the cameras.

> Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter.

The operations side of the government can also ask and make demands. And if Flock cared about their public image they would comply eagerly. If they cared about protecting what the citizens wanted, they would comply eagerly. If they didn't want to be the bad guys in the story, they would comply eagerly. Contacts can be amended through the agreements of both sides. Flock might have had a chance to pretend they were acting in good faith, but reinstalling the spy cameras they removed without a clear public explanation absolved them of any good faith.

> Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.

The system was built to serve the needs and desires of the people who live within the government and society. No matter what you or Flock feel like contract law should let them get away with, is irrelevant to if the system is working correctly. Flock is acting outside the interest of the society they're spying on. Rules lawyering doesn't mean that the system is working.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

Unfortunately, my comment was simply not a defense of the company, since I know little about the situation, nor was it an attack on the city's actions. It was a reply to the comment I was responding too, which voiced a call to "lock 'em up" and punish them more, which I see all too often.

I certainly do not support government surveillance for any reason.

My comment was a defense of the legal proceedings as-we-have-them, in which the city issues a cease-and-desist, the company ignores it, the problem persists for a while, litigation start, the city demand a court order etc. And in the end the company is massively screwed, if they were wrong.

The alternative is simply that city decides, and the company is forced to follow.

The problem is procedural and structural, not consequentialist.

Sure, with the caveat that thinking exclusively in procedural terms is a mistake. I feel like all my comments still stand. Given the company already removed the cameras, which obviously imply that they agreed that the city had the right or at least the position to demand their removal. What procedural grounds did they have to reinstall them? Their behavior demonstrates they already accepted the modification of the contract. If they were planning to contest it why remove them? Why reinstall them?

The comment you replied to was quite banal. Fines are the remedy for a company invading the privacy of citizens. Then when you assume the company executives or agents knew the contract was terminated because of the violation of state law, reinstalling them demonstrates the intent to continue violating the law. The remedy for that is being arrested.

The comment seems to me to be slightly hyperbolic, and expressing frustration about how individuals make clearly malign decisions, and then get away with that asshattery because they hide behind documents of incorporation. But even if you think it was literal, arrested and charged is still operating within the bounds of the law, is it not?

If government fails to prosecute crime then laws are pointless, and in the west we have had a significant swing, especially in high population centres, towards electing governments and officials that refuse to prosecute crimes.

That is because we are moving away from Democracy and rule of law and towards Feudalism and aristocracy. In such a system, the law is not blind but it is applied depending on the accused social status.

Feudalism is not a good goverment system to produce wealth nor well-being. It is very good at concentrating the diminishing wealth in a few hands, thou.

The problem is would-be aristocrats who prefer neofeudalism fighting it out with other would-be aristocrats who prefer to rule through directed mobocracy and information control. The former pretends they are fighting for decency, morals, and individual freedoms, while the latter pretends they are fighting for the common good, democracy, and “freedom from” various bad things. God help us if either group succeeds.

That's Silicon Valley and tech's whole thing: move fast and break things (the law). Uber, Spotify, OpenAI: all began by flouting laws and were rewarded. And of course now we have a convicted felon of fraud as President doing his best to remove any chance of prosecuting fraud. This whole site is built on people wanting to break laws.

Well, if we consider it fine for people to commit crimes like shoplift, rob, or assault people it seems fairly normal to permit groups of people to violate the law too.

Lots of fans of Luigi Mangione and this hasn't directly killed anyone yet.

I'd say it's just a general tolerance to the idea that the rules we have are baroque and anything goes when trying to reach your aims. This seems fairly cross politically unifying.

Those who want the law obeyed are kind of rare. Most are happy to have the law violated to hurt their political opponents. Then they feel surprisingly aggrieved to have same strategy played against them.

The difference is that people are fans of Luigi Mangione because he enforced a punishment for what people feel should be illegal. You're trying to paint vigilante justice with the same brush as lawlessness, when in fact it's the opposite.

One is breaking the law to punish someone that the law failed to, the other is breaking the law to avoid punishment.

The CEO caused vast death and suffering with the policies he enacted in the name of profit, yet the law didn't touch him. Enforcing what the people think should be enforced isn't the same as enforcing what the people think shouldn't be enforced (mass surveillance). It is, in fact, the opposite.

> The CEO caused vast death and suffering with the policies he enacted in the name of profit, yet the law didn't touch him.

If the CEO caused someone to die indirectly, how much more did the doctors involved cause people to die by refusing to schedule and perform procedures for free? They didn't.

Might as well jack up the price of all procedures and medication to "all your money", then.

Did you forgot that health insurance is something you have to pay for?

The Flock guys are breaking the law to reactivate their cameras so that they can catch people doing things that are illegal or that they think should be illegal. Seems to be an exact match actually.

You have to apply some Theory of Mind. Just like you think you're doing the right thing so do they.

They'll be reporting them to the police, you reckon?

The entire problem here is that these cities don't want ICE to have the camera data from Flock and Flock providing that to ICE over their express wishes so yes, they will be reporting targets to federal law enforcement.

And do you think it's the city here that's expressing the will of the majority of city inhabitants, or the federal government?

I think that just like Luigi Mangione acted against the law to do a thing that he wanted and lots of people think that's fine; you should be unsurprised that Flock is acting against the law to a do a thing that they want.

If you condone violation of the law, it will become commonplace. Acting like your violations of the law are fine but others' violations of the law aren't fine is a position you can take but considering that you're in the minority on both, I don't think it's going to result in anything. Sleep with the dogs, wake up with fleas.

EDIT: And I'll add some facts here and an example to my last statement here:

Luigi Mangione's act is a minority approved act actually https://archive.is/hXNhj

So about 18% approve of his act.

And no, in the US the will of the majority is not sufficient. There are damping influences on time-localized desires by design. A typical example might be that California's Proposition 8 banned gay marriage but was nonetheless struck down by the California Supreme Court. The will of the majority is not irrelevant but it is not paramount.

The law isn't a thing that was handed down from the heavens on stone tablets, it should reflect the will of the majority. What Mangione did is something that the majority wanted, or at least was fine with. What Flock did wasn't. It's as simple as that.

> Most are happy to have the law violated to hurt their political opponents.

Way to make me feel like an outcast.

> Lots of fans of Luigi Mangione and this hasn't directly killed anyone yet.

There are also fans of Charles Manson, that doesn't mean we should automatically excuse any bad behavior that falls short of his.

No, we shouldn't. I think we'll find that as we excuse bad behavior with certain political alignments, those with opposed alignments will find it easier to excuse other bad behavior with the net effect being a total lowering in quality of life as median behavior becomes less good.

So yes, I'm in agreement that neither is good. I'm accusing people of supporting a bad thing and opposing a crime less than that bad thing.

There is a larger issue that other commenters are missing:

> The city has paid the first two years of that extension but would still owe $145,500 for the final three years if the contract is upheld. The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation.

The city is trying to terminate a contract with Flock. Under that contract, the city agreed to pay Flock for three more years of service. Flock maintains that the city doesn't have the right to nullify the contract. The linked article says almost nothing about the contract dispute, but another article [1] has some details.

I don't know whether the city is correct about its power to terminate the contract, or whether instead Flock is correct. Either way, I wonder whether Flock is re-installing the cameras out of fear that, if it doesn't, it will be voiding its right to future payment under the contract.

[1] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/28/flock-challenges-c...

> I don't know whether the city is correct about its power to terminate the contract

They were unambiguously violating state law intended to prevent this exact scenario when they were sharing the data with the federal government. Some lawyer is going to be having a bad year and a black mark on their resume if they didn't have a statutory breach clause in the contract with a city government and even if such a clause doesn't exist there is an extremely strong case for it regardless.

They have self-inflicted a business disaster upon themselves for doing that in a state like Illinois. In the event this holds up under that legal theory every municipality in the state has a case to dump them, to say nothing of getting new contracts there and in any place that has the same values.

> I wonder whether Flock is re-installing the cameras out of fear that

They are already being accused of breach and the city ordered them to remove them. Reinstalling devices out of "fear" is not a reasonable response.

What you're missing is they can get that money without putting the cameras back up. That's what you do when a customer doesn't want your service/product but they still have an active contract.

Yep, paying out the remaining value of the contract is generally the default-court acceptable manner to terminate a contract. And it's probably in there as a clause.

However, if Flock was really being evil, they could argue in court they are losing on the value of spying on the American populace.

> However, if Flock was really being evil, they could argue in court they are losing on the value of spying on the American populace.

We don't know they won't say this! All the surveillance they do absolutely has value in being able to sell it to other government agencies and private security. Later on, once they've been around a while each customer is less important, but right now every single one is key so I would not be surprised if they fight to keep the cameras up so they can gather metrics for internal use and marketing/sales. They very well may say, "the contract calls for the surveillance to be active. Removing the cameras reduces our ability to further improve the system, so we're financially harmed by that." They won't win, but they very well may try it.

"Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a 'pilot program' against state law" they are already violating state law, aren't they?

Company fears not being paid, has no fear of committing a crime.

I would think the commission of state crimes would have an impact on the contract. If the city does nothing they would be an accessory to those crimes

The core of the debate is that Flock has "fixed the issue", and hence doesn't think the contract should be escapable, the services provided today are ostensibly legal. Definitely a question for lawyers on how the exact terms shake out, if the city has an out or if Flock met their obligations by fixing the access issue.

> Flock has "fixed the issue"

Strong office space vibes in this one [1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUE0PPQI3is

It’ll just work itself out naturally.

If what they did was illegal and against city law then the contract with flock is not binding anyway. A bookie can't force you via "the legal system" to pay him back for a bet you made since gambling is illegal. However, he has the option to hit your knee cap with a ball peen hammer until you pay up, also not legal, but effective. Not sure if Flock has similar remedies.

> This decision came after Illinois Secretary of State [...] discovered that Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a “pilot program” against state law, and after the RoundTable reported in June that out-of-state law enforcement agencies were able to search Flock’s data for assistance in immigration cases.

This illustrates the textbook argument for why mass surveillance is bad: these tools can quickly end up in the wrong hands.

Play silly games, win silly prizes.

> these tools can quickly end up in the wrong hands.

With respect, they ALWAYS end up in the wrong hands.

The people pitching for said surveillance are always the wrong hands if they're from the government. "We here from the government, we're here to help" are very scary words, and be careful if you take them up on the offer

This statement from Reagan is why we’re in this mess. There’s nothing wrong having the government come help you. The problem is regulatory capture, corruption, and a population that seems ok with it. A competent government with people who care can be a powerful force in people lives, eg social security, national parks, public schools.

I don't really want private parties doing mass surveillance either.

me either, but their power is limit. Governments can ruin you forever and even disappear you without any real consequences

Governments can equally allow private companies this same capacity.

I have recourse against the government. I have less recourse against private companies.

I feel as if ALPRs are already a fact of life. Not thrilled about it, but that’s sort of what license plates are for (ALPRs are really just automated cop eyeballs).

The most disturbing thing, is the behavior of the company. It’s pretty clear that they have a separate contract with the feds, and that contract is the one they care about more.

It’s also an illustration of the faustian bargain that customers make, when establishing these types of contracts. That goes for regular customers, like consumers of social media, SaaS, or data storage apps; not just municipalities, running ALPRs and redlight cameras. It’s like a roach motel; your data checks in, but doesn’t check out. Camel’s nose, and all that.

Basically, all of SV’s business, is about gathering data. That’s why my solitaire apps keep trying to get me to sign onto public challenges and leaderboards.

As lots of folks here have indicated, this behavior will only be changed, by truly holding corporations and corporate directors (and maybe also shareholders) accountable. That’s pretty difficult, in practice. I guess it shouldn’t be easy, as we’d have endless frivolous litigation, but it shouldn’t be impossible, either.

Licesne plates were never intended to be recorded all the time to create a data set of who went where when.

They were so that in the non-standard case where something other than "business as usual" has happened an owner could be identified.

You're right, of course, but the real issue is the lack of corporate accountability, and data stewardship. Since HN has a lot of folks that really don't want people talking about corporate accountability, the discussions are pretty much guaranteed to devolve into macguffins.

Case in point: notice how fast this discussion will dive off the front page. Happens quite frequently, when the topic is one that makes certain folks uncomfortable.

Because having the .gov build and maintain the lists would be so much better?

The problem isn't that "evil capitalists are doing the thing" it's that anyone is doing the thing.

I can’t help but notice that we’re still not talking about corporate accountability.

I don’t think that’s the current desired use either. (What they were intended for 120 years ago, doesn’t seem super important though). Setting aside the concerns that dominate all political discussion today on this topic amongst the 31% of voters who voted for Harris (that’s turnout * popular vote), these things are used every day to solve actual crimes. For instance, recently in my state, some dude murdered a woman and then hopped in his car and was caught because of an ALPR about an hour and a half away from the scene of the crime. When the police cornered him, he fired on them repeatedly. If it was not for ALPRs that guy would probably still be on the loose.

Having these keep data for a very short amount of time is a reasonable idea. I don’t think most reasonable people, including law-enforcement really thinks it would be ideal to build a permanent database of everywhere everybody goes. If anyone is convinced that is what they want, I encourage you to try speaking to someone outside your own political party instead of only operating in a social media echo chamber because I think you’ll be surprised how much real people don’t have cartoon villain ambitions.

> Having these keep data for a very short amount of time is a reasonable idea.

I agree that this is more reasonable than the status quo (although I’d still prefer no cameras at all). Now show me the politicians who are willing to limit ALPR data retention by law on the federal level. As far as I know it hasn’t even been proposed, nor will it be, until some kind of major public scandal emerges. I’d rather not wait until major harm is done.

The federal government has an unfortunate habit of illegally harassing the disfavored group du jour (which rotates about once a decade). State and local governments are often worse, with personal grudges getting into the mix. I’d rather not provide tools to make the harassment even more effective! At some point you begin to enable new “official” crime with the tools you use to stop typical criminals. And the impact of state-level crimes can be much larger and more widespread.

> I think you’ll be surprised how much real people don’t have cartoon villain ambitions.

Most don’t, but some do, and unfortunately they are attracted to power like moths to a flame. Not that everyone in government is a bad guy, but many are when given means and motive.

Edit: edited to specify data retention at the federal level, actually I was surprised to see that a few states do limit data retention.

Flock is so much more than an ALPR, that'd be one thing. They recognize vehicles based on all the metadata you'd expect, color, etc. But they also look at vehicle panels that are a different color, collision damage, bumper stickers and window decals, roof racks, tow hitches, wheels and rims to identify a vehicle.

And then they'll happily run their AI over that knowledge and based on their prompt, if the vehicle is "behaving suspiciously", then they'll ping law enforcement directly and proactively.

It is utterly Minority Report-lite.

I was led to believe that alerts are based on matching cars on a hot list. Is alerting based on behavior an advertised feature?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44860000

I think there is probably a core difference between recording the position of any plate which is wanted pertaining to a crime and recording the position of every plate. I have zero issue with Flock finding suspect plates, but the fact some journalists were able to get logs of where their cars were indicates it is far more overbroad of collection than an automated cop's eyeballs.

In my city of 55,000, Flock's transparency portal states that they've had 330,000 vehicle captures in the last 30 days.

From being a previous employee of Flock I know that each of those captures has some location and timestamp data.

Yes, but most of my comment was about corporate accountability, which no one wants to talk about.

These are a lot more than ALPRs. Look into them more / see my other comment in this thread.

I’m sure you’re correct, but I was talking about enforcing corporate accountability, a lot more than anything else.

https://deflock.me/

Neat. There's only one city in my state that has these cameras. Its the wealthy blue city of Jackson Hole [1] that can't manage to fix potholes. I only pass through that place when taking someone to the airport. Curious if they were able to read my previous military plate which changes number every 5 years. Now I want to get one of these things to play with to see how it interprets my plate. I think I can see a flock on a pole in the live stream.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoUOrTJbIu4 [live camera, town square]

Thankfully, in my city, it seems to be all retail parking lots. But it’s disturbing to see other very, very adjacent cities go all-in on flock.

Same in mine very large suburb. Pretty obvious why they are putting them in Home Depot parking lots too given the amount of shoplifting we've gone through the last few years.

One of the closest points in my area is Made/Operated by: "Unknown".

Very helpful. In my general area there are almost 100.

Operated by: "Unknown" is going to be very common. One popped up near my work recently, and I have no idea who "operates" it officially.

There's a Flock camera at the end of my driveway. I'm next to a city line, so it's a reasonable location.

I wonder if I can file a CCPA request and get a list of my comings and goings.

Yes you can, see this article

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/virginia-police-used-f...

You might reach out to the folks at the Institute for Justice, they have written letters to the cities to get the cameras taken down in these scenarios, https://ij.org/press-release/victory-arkansas-city-moves-sur...

I think you can file a CCPA request to demand that they never store your data at all. Yes, that would be an utter pain in the ass for them, if so. And yet, that's their problem, not yours.

I'm basically in the same boat. There is no practical way for me to avoid having my picture taken 6 or more times every single day. I flip the camera off each and every time I drive/walk by it. It's infuriating.

Maybe you need to pick up a box of black plastic bags next time you pass by the grocery store?

Why do you care if you're not doing anything illegal?

In this particular case, because criminals can hack Flock's databases. You can tell whether I'm leaving to go to work, coming home for lunch, figure out my patterns, and schedule a robbery. There are PLENTY of other reasons why I don't appreciate having a camera sitting at the end of my driveway, I wasn't notified about their decision nor had any input so it feels a bit intrusive, but surely you can appreciate that no system is 100% secure and that's why these persistent surveillance gear are so troubling.

This argument has been shot down so many times, it's a wonder anyone bothers to bring it up without googling it first.

So you would be okay with me personally tracking everything you do and recording you 24/7 then right? Because if you aren't doing anything wrong...

Because I'm not a criminal, so why should I put up with being treated like one?

Show me the man and I'll show you the crime

…or someone could knock the damn thing offline.

No that’s vandalism, what you do is get a nice printout of the exact view the camera has and just plop it in front of the thing, like a for sale sign or something. Tape if you have to.

Engaging official channels instantly gets you on a list. These institutions aren't stupid, they're evil. Easier to just back a trailer into it or something. And if some scrappers haul the downed pole off a week after that you didn't see them.

Furthermore, it's beyond naive to care about whether it's technically vandalism. You can't beat the establishment within the law because the establishment makes the law.

In theory, constitutional rights would be the ideal tool of choice on your second point. Of course that requires a civil suit against the state and really expensive attorneys.

To add to your point, it’s naive to believe that those protections are effective for anyone who isn’t incredibly wealthy at this point. The issue is most people can’t afford to take a case all the way, let alone start one.

Our constitutional rights have been effectively nullified - first with a slowly creeping "it's fine if a corpo does it", then with "it's fine if the President directs it", and now recently with a shameless full-on embrace of both.

vandalism is kinda funny - personally, i’d rather see graffiti than billboards. but with that, my affinity for jaywalking, and willingness to smash surveillance devices well you can just call me a hardened scofflaw!

It's almost like battery-powered angle grinders should be regular items in the neighbourhood tool lending library.

It takes no longer than five minutes to cut through the poles used to hold this equipment up with a sawzall, when metal straps aren't used to attach it to existing infrastructure, I've been told.

https://deflock.me/

Or dress up in a gorilla suit, then paint it in festive Halloween colors.

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety

Literally looks like every stereotypical villain in any “crime prevention” movie, which is usually the puppet of some other entity behind him.

"Are we the baddies?"

Yes. Absolutely. We incrementally pushed society to this point by incrementally approving more and more surveillance and government intervention across a myriad of issue until it ultimately built up the institutions and precedents and honed the workflows that we're now seeing used for stuff that even the stupid are at least kinda uneasy about.

Additional info on the “pilot program” they took issue with: https://apnews.com/article/immigration-abortion-license-plat...

Why sue? Why not impound and fine like they would illegally parked vehicles?

The cameras are not meaningfully worth a whole lot of money.

And neither is a beater but they still get impounded.

They'd be worth something to a handful of reasonably competent hackers. There's no way these things are actually secure, they're IOT devices after all.

Indeed, but the data they get from them is.

Is there a good public list of Flock Safety cities? Would be particularly interesting to see where they are in blue states.

The best you can get is https://deflock.me/map, which is crowd-sourced, and therefore both incomplete and inaccurate.

Cities tend to resist public records requests for camera locations.

But Flock is currently in ~5,000 communities around the country. They have managed to spread very quickly, and very quietly, and the public has only become aware of it relatively recently.

There is also a good site at https://eyesonflock.com/ that parses data from the transparency pages that some places publish.

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/list/?q=Flock

https://www.404media.co/tag/flock/

You can search for cities' transparency portals. Not sure if every Flock customer has one though.

  site:transparency.flocksafety.com

Ex Flock employee - they do not. Your best bet for determining Flock usage is to ask the agency directly and/or look at council meeting minutes, etc.

In my county, multiple law enforcement agencies are not on Flock's transparency portal, despite posting fairly regularly on FB about "responding to a Flock hit on a vehicle".

They installed some here at a Home Depot parking lot right when the ice raids started. It was weird that only the home deport owned portion of the parking lot got them which lead to some investigation into who put them up and sure enough flock has a contract with HD.

Blue city in SoCal with lots of migrant laborers.

Home Depot has had an incredibly aggressive retail theft problem for about half a decade now across virtually every market.

Their response of putting 10 ALPRs in each store's parking lot and locking up everything seems rational based upon what I've seen. There's something about stealing Milwaukee tools that gets certain groups of people very excited. They even have some tool manufacturers designing activation at checkout mechanisms to discourage theft.

I have a hard time believing this stuff is making them any money or is a secret government arrangement. It seems purely about loss prevention in the case of HD. They have been an easy target up until recently.

Home Depot seems like the one compelling win I've seen so far regarding these cameras. You'd have to be pretty crazy to try and steal tools these days. The speed with which law enforcement can react to these signals is incredible. I don't necessarily like the implications for other things but it does make shopping in certain retail environments feel much safer.

So, cameras in the HD and Apple Store parking lots seem acceptable to me based upon the risk these businesses endure. Cameras in public I don't like, but without them the ones in private wouldn't be able to accomplish as much (I.e., interception of felony retail theft suspects while they still have all of the evidence on them).

Home Depot is still garbage at shoplifting preventation. Can never walk in and buy a p-trap kit without every one of them missing parts.

Every Lowes nationwide has installed them at the entrances to all of their stores and/or plazas they're in, even if they're not on the map.

So, if I understand you correctly, Home Depot was actively collaborating with ICE to get their best customer lures arrested? How the fuck does that make sense?!

There's a crowdsourced collection of ALPRs in OpenStreetMap. deflock.me/map has a display of that data.

They don’t have a public list, but this blog post conveniently has a map of their locations: https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/introducing-law-enforcement...

Judging by the places they advertise, it’s mostly smaller cities/towns. I think the larger cities in the US tend to run their own cameras.

>Would be particularly interesting to see where they are in blue states

The answer is going to be "the snooty inner ring suburbs and wealthy rural-ish commuter communities that already had overstaffed PDs harassing teenagers"

>>Would be particularly interesting to see where they are in blue states

>The answer is going to be "the snooty inner ring suburbs and wealthy rural-ish commuter communities that already had overstaffed PDs harassing teenagers"

TFA is about Evanston, IL[0] which is in Cook County[1] and abuts the city of Chicago.

It is relatively wealthy, but is certainly not a "rural-ish commuter community," in fact it's not suburban either.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evanston%2C_Illinois

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_County%2C_Illinois

https://deflock.me/map

Check your assumptions, the Bay Area and LA are littered with them. They're in Berkeley for fucks sake.

I was thinking Fairfax county VA when I wrote that but Berkley fits the bill really well too.

Big enough to have enough "real city" problems to get people who have no real existential problems worried, but not enough to keep the police/security busy with "real crime", small enough these people can think that there's serious accountability preventing mundane abuse/misuse (whereas almost nobody in NYC would think that there's accountability for any misuse that isn't regional news worthy) and rich enough to not have to seriously care about resource allocation toward unnecessary security apparatus.

Because it's relevant to many on this site, most bay area cities are users

Community note: it is my understanding, based on teardowns that I've found online, that Flock cameras should be assumed to contain a cellular modem and at least one GPS receiver. At least some have been found to contain an addition, obfuscated GPS receiver.

Yes, worked for speed camera company. It does have a cellular modem connecting over VPN or some tunneling with cloud infrastructure.

So they aren't even hardwired to the net and can easily be jammed with commonly available Jamming hardware?

Pretty casual about committing federal crimes.

Argumentum ad legem.

Was slavery moral because slavery was legal?

Apart from that,the device's raison d’etre is committing federal crimes, namely violating the 4th amendment rights of private citizens. Previous case law has found mining historical cell phone location data to be a 4A violation requiring a warrant.

Couple things. I pointed out a risk, I said nothing about morality. If these devices are a fourth amendment violation, there's a solution that doesn't involve jamming.

Not an american, here in germany you'd barely get a fine if they even bother to prosecute you for using a jammer for a few minutes here and there. But I don't yet have to deal with ai powered surveillance cams by private companies in my city.

Well that is too bad. I am glad it is taken seriously here in the US because wireless jamming is a serious public safety issue.

> Well that is too bad. I am glad it is taken seriously here in the US because wireless jamming is a serious public safety issue.

Yet evidently we don't care about an actual massive public safety issue in the form of these cameras cataloging each person's habits and frequented locations and freely handing them out like candy to any organizations willing to fork out the cash.

Go figure, at least people can't jam the cameras, imagine how bad that would be...?

if the EU maintains it's current trajectory, you'll be dealing with this or a similar problem in the future.

Dog whistle!

Wow, so glad you were here, or no one could have possibly understood what GP was getting at.

Thanks, senior autism, whatever would we have done without you.

Oh, and that's sarcasm, by the way.

I thought I was being pretty explicit TBH.

I’m curious - what dog whistle do you see?

On many forums. Cough reddit. You can barely say anything slightly spicy without a warning/ban so people are constantly talking in riddles to say more sinister stuff especially if there is implication of encouraging direct action. This is like that. At 30khz it says "get your jammers out!"

To a dog the whistle is explicit. (Not using dog as a derogatory or complimentary term here... more the fact the dog can hear the high frequency)

Ah, gotcha. I'm familiar with the term, I just didn't see how it could be interpreted that way.

Thanks :)

I'm playing with a new "AI browser" these days (Dia), so here's an excerpt from its interpretation of how it could be seen as a dog whistle:

> There are a few ways this lands: > • Benign interpretation: it’s a factual note from teardown reports, relevant to understanding capabilities and privacy implications. > • Critical interpretation: in context of posts about jamming or blinding cameras, component details function as implicit guidance for defeating them, which some view as incitement. > • Political reading: emphasizing hidden/“obfuscated” tracking signals an anti‑surveillance stance and rallies opponents of privatized policing

That seems fair to me, but to be clear - I didn't mean to hide that. I wanted to give people who might be considering action a warning of a hidden anti-theft measure that could get them in trouble while stopping short of encouraging it.

I can see the justification to act, and I generally agree. The risk/reward just isn't right for me.

There was a YouTube video published about them yesterday - https://youtu.be/vWj26RIlN_I

It is really amazing how much power and impact private company can have on public.

So Fun facts about digital cameras like these: Strong infrared leds at night blind them completely. They sometimes even switch into daymode and become useless at night. Also, lasers are usually not enough to destroy the ccd sensor but only cause small dots to appear[0]. But a Spraycan on a stick can be very effective and of course a silenced airgun for those hard to reach places can be very effective.

[0] Lab Test here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNWNQb2AvQM

Firing projectiles to destroy cameras (it doesn't matter how the slug is thrown) is... oh why bother, people won't change.

spray-chalk on a stick.

Installing cameras to _violate_ peoples rights is.. why bother, corporations won't change.

Nobody is saying "do nothing". The point is that shooting guns into the air is dangerous and you shouldn't do it. If you want to disable the cameras, do so in a way that doesn't recklessly endanger people (i.e spray chalk on a stick).

Shine a Blue laser at the iris of the camera, burn the sensor from inside out.

Hack the planet. But yeah, don't do this.

As I linked in my original post, that doesn't really work.

But airguns are usually much less regulated, much quieter and easier to supress and the legal liability for firing an airgun somewhere vs a firearm is usually much different. And they usually have enough power for that purpose without risking too much colleteral damage.

I don’t even think an airgun could really have an effect, but for anyone contemplating this kind of thing, please at least deconstruct the device and put it into something different looking. There is no point in getting offed with impunity by some Idiocracy goon because he saw a finger gun.

Better use of one’s efforts could be to support legal challenges of this clearly unconstitutional mass surveillance by the government through its corporate, or in this case, YC cutouts.

There are airguns available otc with the power equal to roughly a 45 ACP fired from a pistol. I doubt these cameras can resist that.

These are not "license plate readers".

They can and do identify vehicles based on a myriad of other factors. Paint wear, dents, roof racks, bumper stickers, and more.

There's currently a suit filed against them for 4A violations, with supporting case law. I'm also investigating possibility of a federal suit or suit against my municipality for the same. Previous case law has ruled cell phone searches with historical data are a 4A violation and illegal without a warrant.

Documenting the downfall isn't enough. What are people going to do about it? Get involved with your local government. Go to city counsel meetings. Join local boards. This is one city that is doing the right thing but more cities could do the right thing if people showed up and demanded this type of invasive blanket search is blocked. We slipped slowly into this but we can claw it back by just showing up.

Relevant video about Flock's ALPRs

https://youtu.be/vWj26RIlN_I [18:56]

> This decision came after Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias discovered that Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a “pilot program” against state law, and after the RoundTable reported in June that out-of-state law enforcement agencies were able to search Flock’s data for assistance in immigration cases.

Well it's obvious then that if it's helping to deport illegals, then keep going!

It would be a shame if people starting to break it

Legal questions aside, thats another thread, hypothetically speaking, would a burning laser pointer be effective on these?

sounds like it’s your civic responsibility to take these devices offline.

I mean, your local enforcers have publicly stated they're annoyed about them there.

What are they gonna do other than wring their hands and say "oh no, anyway" if they go missing?

Would destroying the cameras be a legitimate act of social disobedience, considering that the company shows a total defiance and lack of respect for the law and society? I would argue it is.

No, no, that would be wrong. https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Thermite

I would agree.

If I were a corrupt government official I would:

- install these cameras everywhere

- make the data available for everyone via an API

- make content about how we're all being spied on

- form sponsorship deals from Incogni & DeleteMe

- profit

Wow. License plate readers are everywhere.

Is that a bad thing? I would imagine the only people who don't like this are criminals. But why are so many seemingly law-abiding citizens here up in arms about it?

> I would imagine the only people who don't like this are criminals

The problem is that the system doesn't only work on criminals, there's rarely enough oversight to prevent abuse, and it's only going to get more invasive. There's been case after case where cops use it to stalk their ex-girlfriends/ex-wives or similar, for example: https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article29105...

They collect data that allows tracking the movement and locations of individuals to a reasonably high degree of fidelity. Governments cannot be trusted to protect this data or to use it legally and responsibly.

Yes it is. Mass surveillance is always a problem in every form.

A ton of people hold some of these core beliefs, which are subjective (meaning not exactly provable/disprovable) and aren’t subject to critical reevaluation:

• the federal government cannot be trusted when the president belongs to the other “team” regardless of whether the election was fair

• all decision makers in such a government are seeking a fascist and racist agenda that is a threat to all of us, and they are also seeking to harm anyone who even uses their First Amendment right to speak against them.

• therefore, they cannot be allowed to enforce immigration laws at all because we cannot trust them to not make any mistakes/break any rules

• the dangers of those rules being broken outweighs any dangers posed by criminals who happen to be undocumented immigrants.

• also as a result they cannot be trusted with any data that could aid in enforcement of laws or aid them in pursuing their political enemies.

Please do not call these "license plate readers". They are far more sinister and have far more advanced capabilities.

That city should just make it legal that the citizens can paintball or spray those cameras anytime and anywhere.

This will escalate - every new car on the road comes with a bevy of cheap cameras integrated - I get 360 degree views when backing up from my 2018 Chevy Bolt. It's really only a matter of time before license plate scanning computers get integrated - there's already a cellular modem integrated into the vehicle - I don't use or pay for that feature, but it's an opportunity.

This will escalate - every new car on the road comes with a bevy of cheap cameras integrated

Back when DOGE was making headlines and a certain car salesman was using the Oval Office as daycare for his kid, there were a people on HN and elsewhere noting that every Tesla could easily be turned into a roving real-time government surveillance unit.

There's already a full cottage market of ALPR-on-cellphone applications. They can just mount a cellphone on the windshield and it's gonna run ALPR all day every day.

Same thing with fingerprint capture - they've now just got mobile apps to take a picture of your hands and submit for print processing.

I unplugged the cellular modem from my car and I suggest you do the same. These days it is basically impossible to buy a car without one, and if carmakers don't listen, we have to take matters into our own hands.

Nothing dictates you must own and drive new cars.

If you want a new car, I imagine disabling the modem should be trivial.

I agree with your comment though.

Cop and other enforcement cars routinely get plate scanner cameras built in these days, so... that's already there.

Nothing a big, heavy mallet can't solve.

I was thinking more super soaker paint?

They are mounted quite high.

If these were installed without authorization, I assume citizens can rip them down without the same.

Black trash bags would be a cheap, non damaging way to cost them money removing them.

Or more likely, make use of the 2nd Amendment on them.

Discharging firearms in proximity to occupied buildings, very intelligent.

I've given this a lot of thought.

Unfortunately, in addition to being dangerous to others, this approach pretty much always comes with increased exposure to prosecution and increased penalties.

The optimal approach seems to be vandalism - spray painting over the front of the cameras, placing other objects to block their view, or permanently blinding them with lasers. All of these things are still illegal and would likely subject you to the legal system, but they at least require on-site intervention to remedy and keep the actor out of prison (but maybe not jail).

The least risky approach I've found is also the least effective - they're often on public property, so place _yourself_ in front of them. It takes them out of commission for a while and should be legal. Coordinated action would likely get the attention of Flock, law enforcement, and the media. Unfortunately, even that could be construed as "interfering with law enforcement operations" or similar, and/or conspiracy if you're organizing or participating in mass resistance.

If the federal government decides they want to step in on Flock's behalf, they could put you under the jail. :\

Know your target and backstop. What goes up must come down.

My family is from Evanston and I'm 100% behind this. Evanston isn't a town where the people want mass tech surveillance and I guarantee you knowing my cousins and shit that if you fuck around the wrong way you'll learn the meaning of,

"try that in a small town" in a fucking hurry.

"Move fast, break things" seems to me that is also the Trump admin's MO at the sacrifice of democracy. The SV mantra has moved up into politics and is causing permanent damage. If rules aren't enforced why would anyone follow them?

Aside the topic, but I wonder how HN, as a community, and as a moderation team, weighs this on the intellectual curiosity vs primarily politics scale.

This seems politics to me. Very important politics that a lot of people in tech have a special interest for, but politics nonetheless, and much more pressing topics seem to be absent through the on-topic rule.

I tend to dislike it when purely political posts show up here, but I appreciate the ones that intersect with technology, particularly ones that relate to privacy issues.

This site has always been fairly interested in mass surveillance stuff (which is, naturally, inherently political).

It's whatever the mods feel like. For example, posts about Charlie Kirk being assassinated were allowed to stay, and that was basically pure politics.

HN is 90% AI and politics these days, or so it seems.

That rule is ... kind of nonsense anyways.

One can't be intellectually curious and not think about politics. Politics is applied intellectual curiosity.

This does not seem to be a prevalent opinion on here, and I was trying to be diplomatic, but I guess it still comes out as "why is it OK to post / comment politics here if it's a less contentious topic many people on HN care about, but I regularly get downvoted for even relating information to my association with a demographic group forcefully enlisted to the front of the culture war".

Orange site bad.

Because this has a tech angle and its local. Plus it connects to big tech companies collecting data on everyone.

Which is different from a Gaza discussion which has no tech angle and two sides telling each other what the other side has done.

Calling anything "local" to HN is pretty funny US-centrism, for someone posting before 8 AM EST. And I'd never call what's happening in Gaza a "culture war", that would seem trivializing - although my issue seems to be escalating more and more as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com