All of Winona Police Department's Flock cameras cut down and stolen
valleynewslive.com
valleynewslive.com
Yeah, that tracks.
> Camera data is owned by the police department and permanently deleted after 30 days.
I assume this means that the police department deletes one local copy?
The issue of which group (Flock/police/city) has the real copyright versus an expensive license is interesting to contemplate, but that list doesn't include monkey-agency either.
I think you’re being a little too generous here.
There's so much going on in that sentence! What a thing of pure PR beauty.
What does "owned" mean in this sentence? Probably fairly little.
What data does it even refer to? Just the actual video footage? Does the statement include derived data like license plate reads or ML models?
And surely if data is flagged as relevant to an investigation it is not deleted, so is there an implicit "*unless retained"?
(1) https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-came...
> Giannoulias’ Audit Finds License Plate Reader Company in Violation of Illinois State Law
> Flock Safety Shared Illinois Data with U.S. Customs and Border Protection Secretary, Orders Flock to Shut off Data Access
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flock-safety-and-texas...
> Last May, 404 Media obtained data revealing the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office conducted a nationwide search of more than 83,000 Flock ALPR cameras, giving the reason in the search log: “had an abortion, search for female.” Both the Sheriff's Office and Flock Safety have attempted to downplay the search as akin to a search for a missing person, claiming deputies were only looking for the woman to “check on her welfare” and that officers found a large amount of blood at the scene – a claim now contradicted by the responding investigator’s affidavit. Flock Safety went so far as to assert that journalists and advocates covering the story intentionally misrepresented the facts, describing it as "misreporting" and "clickbait-driven."
> Earlier this month, there was purposefully misleading reporting that a Texas police officer with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office used LPR “to target people seeking reproductive healthcare.” This organization is actively perpetuating narratives that have been proven false, even after the record has been corrected. According to the Sheriff in Johnson County himself, this claim is unequivocally false. That sheriff has since been arrested and indicted on felony counts in an unrelated sexual harassment and whistleblower retaliation case. He has also been charged with aggravated perjury for allegedly lying to a grand jury. EFF filed public records requests with Johnson County to obtain a more definitive account of events.
Of course they save the analysis and only thinkpeople care about the video. The journalists and police speak the same language of uncritical privacy violations.
If questioned, I can already imagine someone defending that sort of agreement as a standard consumer, contractual terms and practices of the time.
If the local police department were legally required to turn over all their computers and servers, it would only contain a fraction of what their contractor captured.
The contractor’s employees have also been proven to abuse access to the contractor’s video files across the nation. Something the local police department has little to no control over.
https://measuredcollective.com/flocks-ai-surveillance-camera...
https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/colorado-news/dougl...
https://www.wabe.org/cobb-county-youtuber-documents-flock-ca...
https://www.wflx.com/2026/01/09/flock-safety-exposed-live-po...
https://www.thegazette.com/news/vendor-error-exposed-some-ce...
https://www.404media.co/flock-leaked-cops-license-plate-sear...
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-c...
The list is pretty endless.
Did you check your own sources? The first three articles you linked cites the same youtuber as in the gp. I'm not going to check any more.
> For an unknown period, at least 60 AI-powered surveillance cameras manufactured by Flock Safety were accessible to anyone on the internet.
Past tense.
Where I work, this wouldn't fly.
> Flock Safety acknowledged the issue in March, stating some California agencies “had their camera networks inadvertently accessible to out-of-state law enforcement agencies for a period of time,” according to a company statement. The company said it was “impossible to determine a specific cause” for the data breach.
Trying to parse what that sentence means is useless. It isnt designed to mean anything. Their various mouth pieces have claimed every manner of excuse.
Semantic games are for everyone else to play and lose. Corporations always win.
Ben Jordan got ahold of one of them and proved that they even had footage from the f'n factory they were made in! Flock is lying to cities and/or cities are lying to us
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/police-used-flocks-lice...
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/1862/
https://academic.oup.com/policing/article-abstract/6/4/418/1...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13591...
I don't see any difference between what you just said and "13-85".
what does this specific lingo mean? normal searches and ai are both as confused as i am
Ahdunno, where's the lie?
Don't know, right there? I did martial arts and beat many people up, I even enjoyed it on many occasions. Doesn't mean I beat people in other contexts. It's called compartmentalizing.
Cop culture nationwide is toxic as fuck. Can’t say the same about martial arts culture.
Seems like that might be indicative of a problem?
Anyways, that study that everyone loves to cite is like 30 or 40 years old and unreplicated.
Not making any moral judgements, if I used violence professionally I’d expect myself to be more violent in general.
Applying group statistics to judge individual people is almost never proper, and lies at the root of an awful lot of inhumanity. I hope and imagine the women in question are capable of thinking (and judging) for themselves.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_in_lesbian_r...
[1] https://www.cawc.org/news/socioeconomic-risk-factors-for-dom...
[2] https://bjs.ojp.gov/violent-victimization-race-or-hispanic-o...
[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10087409/#hsc14028-...
> A 2010 CDC survey compared domestic violence victimization rates between lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women. The differences between most forms of reported domestic violence rates between lesbian women and heterosexual women were found to be non-significant due to insufficient statistical power.
??
That's literally the job of statistics: make use of a lot of data about a population of instances to make a decision about an instance.
It's like saying, it's unfair to use safety data about Chevys in deciding whether to buy one.
> Flock Safety cameras are automated license plate readers
Like Ring is a door chime.
What, you don’t like “sharing”? It would be selfish not to “share”!
Truly the move from “send copies to” to “share” is one of the great linguistic dirty tricks the social-media-era firms have pulled.
Especially here, where what’s being “shared” is, in a meaningful sense, operational control and enforcement prerogative.
And don’t get me started on the minimizing formulation “third-party companies and federal agencies”…
> and stolen
Nope, Flock bills out the ass for replacement cost right to the taxpayer. The grift continues!
Alternatively, "defunding the police" by way of smashing Flocks is another view point, from what I've heard.
License to use but responsible for loss
The point is the city is on the hook for damaged hardware.
Is this an autistic thing?
https://www.ycombinator.com/library/N0-unpopular-ideas-that-...
None of that justifies the massive invasion of privacy that these cameras represent. You don't have a right to not be individually surveiled in public, but that doesn't mean it's OK for the government to warrantlessly track everyone everywhere they go 24x7, or to do it by proxy with a private company such as Flock. The potential for abuse is just too high, and we've seen many cases of that too.
edit: to be clear, I dont think Tan is capable of "enlightening" anyone. I was responding to the lazy comment above...
*Garry Tan has been characterized as a True Believer, in that he sincerely believes Flock's vision will reduce crime and not be misused. on the flip side they don't invest in Palantir, Anduril, Applied Intuition, etc. or other defense stuff. so it's very exceptional for them.
9 Mothers.
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/industry/defense
And beyond this there are a number of defense-dependent companies like ProvenMetal (whose value proposition largely depends on a customer’s deep need to do onshore manufacturing)
It makes sense. From 2000-2015 it was pretty difficult for anyone to break into defense and really own a brand. Breakout companies like EOTech were really rare. Generally founders would be at the mercy/grace of the major defense incumbents ('primes'), getting scraps from their tables.
That’s changed lately. For a wide variety of reasons (political, technical, and on active battlefields) there’s a lot more room for startups to really own their own slice of the industry and build some moats of their own.
but. paul graham doesn't like defense stuff. there were plenty of great defense seed investments (palantir), and he runs the best seed venture firm in the world, always has, so his opinion matters. but it was out of a righteous place, it wasn't because he thought it couldn't make money.
y combinator is a much bigger fund now with lots of people in charge. the "2000-2015" era you are talking about: valuations of everything were 1/10th of what they are now. it's hard to make any definitive comparisons about venture trends.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/08/michelle-stephens-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trae_Stephens
It's hard for me to understand how any of this is very Christian.
Disappointing to see this is the future they are trying to invest in.
I can understand the benefit of being able to track coming and going and criminal activity etc but there is no oversight and it is already being abused.
Keeping this data within the municipality and requiring bureaucracy to coordinate with others might be the best solution I've heard, since it prevents dragnets and builds in auditing as part of the process.
See also this article about hiding usage of flock https://www.404media.co/do-not-mention-alpr-usage-how-cops-a...
Only if they replace them...
Moreover, the quote was about budget - it only hits the budget if they replace them. Likewise, if someone steals your car, it only hits your budget if you replace it or otherwise incur other expenses (taxi, etc). If you shrug because you have 4 other cars, or just walk and bike most of the time, its not really hitting your budget.
The city is basically leasing the cameras, and responsible for their cost.
All eight cameras were taken Aug. 1, according to the Winona Police Department. A patrol officer first noticed the cameras had not sent any alerts in 24 hours. When officers checked the locations, they found the cameras had been cut from their poles and taken. The poles were left behind.
Two additional Flock cameras on the Mississippi River Bridge, owned by Buffalo County, were also stolen in the same manner.
Each camera is valued at approximately $3,000, putting the total loss at roughly $24,000. That cost falls directly on the Winona Police Department’s budget.
The eight WPD cameras were positioned at key highway entry and exit points throughout the city: near Highway 61 and Bundy Boulevard, Highway 43 and Homer Road, Highway 14 and Knapp Valley Drive, and Highway 61 and Highway 14. Two cameras were stationed at each location.
Flock Safety cameras are automated license plate readers that capture images of plates along with a vehicle’s make, model and color. Police use the technology to investigate crimes such as hit-and-runs and to locate missing persons. Camera data is owned by the police department and permanently deleted after 30 days.
The thefts are part of a broader national trend. Flock cameras have been vandalized and cut down in communities across the country. The technology has drawn criticism from civil liberties advocates who argue the cameras expand government surveillance and raise concerns about data being shared with third-party companies or federal agencies.
No suspects have been identified. The investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Winona Police Department.
Disgusting copy. We all know that's not their primary function.
Flock collects these images, and uses them to train statistical models, and sells those models to police departments as a one-click crime solving solution.
That means that their primary function is to passively aggregate driver behavior into an automated judgement system, where the entire judicial system (designed to check and balance itself) is laundered away. Flock cameras exist to fundamentally replace police work, not to assist with it.
Who would include "Anyone with information is asked to contact the Winona Police Department." in a HN comment?
If you clicked the link and read the article, you'd quickly realize that they copy/pasted the article into a comment.
From deflock.org itself:
> Flock is not the only ALPR vendor, and other vendors still participate in similar practices. See this list of other common ALPR vendors.[1]
Wow so they did all 8 in in 24 hours. That's quite impressive
https://www.anarchistfederation.net/new-zine-birds-of-a-feat...
People don't want Big Brother. Politicians unironically trying to positively refer to them as an enhanced Big Brother is completely tone deaf.
And we know that police departments were working with ICE during Metro Surge:
> But the Star Tribune found law enforcement agencies around the country searched several Twin Cities suburbs’ camera data and labeled their queries as civil immigration enforcement — a mechanism used to detain those in the country illegally who have not committed other crimes. A vast majority of the searches were run on Fridley’s Flock Safety cameras as it had looser restrictions on its data than other agencies.
https://www.startribune.com/twin-cities-suburbs-license-plat...
This dozen even get into the dozens of documented instances of officers using the system to stalk people... couple that with Stingray devices. It's not hyperbole to say we're existing under the thumb of Big Brother.
Resistance to or acceptance of Flock/Axon is going to be a big tipping point in an already over-surveilled country.
Also: Don't sell the World Cup to Private Equity.
Of course, until the revenue knob needs a little tweak, and they start hashing the human data....
They describe it as a "motion activated camera" but I think it's pretty clear they're just recording 24x7 (but probably not uploading! most of the time!)
I'm guessing some on-device logic does the "motion capture" logic. What software then decides an "object of interest" and decides how to hash it? Are the still frame(s)/video sent to a server for analysis, or is that done on-device?
We know they store and catalog vehicles based on license plates and other bits of metadata. But what is uploaded, where does the processing happen, what is actually stored, etc?
Obviously it's a camera so it's trivial to turn it into a facial recognition camera, but does the on-camera software need to be updated for this to happen, or can it just be done server-side? Are they already retaining stills and videos of people on purpose (rather than just incidentally), but not _yet_ cataloging it (officially?)
Anyway. I'm curious what the public answer to all of these questions is, and then, obviously, I'm curious what's _actually_ happening behind the scenes. We know what can happen, but there are a lot of things we don't know for sure.
Does Winona Police Department actually own these cameras? Or is this heading technically deceptive.
I discovered that with my Sony Ericsson k700i with a laser pointer when trying to take a picture of the laser.
Sawzall, 1m 15s, circular saw 1m, circular saw like 20s.
https://youtube.com/shorts/aAc3Kq0bFPs
Yet to see anyone describe what to do once they are down. They for sure have all manners of wicked battery backed up trackers etc, I'm sure.
(This would be highly illegal to do and you should not do it, even to evil surveillance cameras that hoover up our lives to terrifying central databases, even if these are ragingly unpopular.)
Manual pole cutters have existed for at least 100 years. No batteries. Almost zero noise.
You put one on the pole, walk around the pole once, and it's cut. They were used a lot in the 1970's when people were rebelling against parking meters.
I believe it's part of the opening scene of the film Cool Hand Luke.
An efficient, conspicuous alternative would be a handheld bandsaw which is faster than a sawzall.
this is not how you affect political change no matter how noble
over $1000 in damage so felony
and if they went from location to location with a smartphone pinging, all cops have to do is find out what phone was at all those locations
Wow. Those must be some really nice cameras...
I thought flocked owned the hardware?
In many 3rd World places you must conceal/hide surveillance cameras because they are a valuable asset worth stealing.
not really. the word has evolved enough that dictionaries and wikipedia acknowledge the common-day usage of "underdeveloped"
sorry, but no one is taking some random HN user's definition over established dictionaries on what a word means.
perhaps you can convince enough people that the word will evolve into whatever you imagine it to mean, and then the dictionaries will be updated to match.
if you poll 100 random english speakers and the majority come back saying that they have no idea what "third world" means, or say that the term is meaningless, i will concede and donate $1,000 to a charity of your choice.
and despite not explicitly claiming authority, when you declare normal authorities (dictionaries, wikipedia) as well as other commenters unequivocally wrong, you are implicitly claiming authority
This is at least as likely to be theft as much as civic action. There are far easier ways one might permanently inhibit these cameras than cutting them down and taking them away.
Like what? Setting them on fire or shooting them might be easier, but it's more dangerous.
Maybe if police weren't using Flock cameras to stalk their ex-wives [1][2].
There's an interesting angle to the Flock issue I heard recently. Some predominantly black communities prefer Flock cameras because they're over-policed, black men in particular are more likely to be pulled over on "routine" traffic stops and those stops have a skewed chance of ending in violence of death. As a reminder, US law enforcement kills over 1000 civilians every single year. Over half of those are black men and black men are only ~6% of the population.
But that's really a lesser evil type situation because the police simply shouldn't be killing so many people.
[1]: https://www.firstalert4.com/2026/08/03/brentwood-officer-acc...
[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-pol...