Comment by mlsu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mlsu | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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?

It has apparently gotten easier:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/hom...

A nice “grab their data” button for the current administration.

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.

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.

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