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Comment by nullbio | Hacker News Reader

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> I'm certainly not pro-surveillance state

Right after expressing complete acceptance of living in a surveillance state.

Nice hyperbole. I'm concerned about govt listening to our private conversations and mining our inner dialogue. I could not care less if they know when my car passes a camera in public. People are instantly very emotional about this without reflecting on why. If you want to live in a safe country, you must give up some level of freedom. That's life. Otherwise, why not just ban all forms of surveillance? Make it a rule that unless police witness a crime first-hand, no one can be prosecuted? See how that plays out.

I think that a reasonable argument that tracking someone's movements can give significant insight into private communication. If you know who someone is talking to, when, where, and how often, then you can deduce a lot of what they are communicating.

I'm not sure about your argument about giving up freedom for security. One of the quotes that has become embedded in American social consciousness is Ben Franklin's "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety".

Great quote, but I don't consider this "essential liberty".

I get that you don't agree with it, but that quote is part of most American's understanding of our country. If the government derives its authority from the people, then that has to matter.

>If you want to live in a safe country, you must give up some level of freedom

Is that why prisons so safe and free of crime? How is that life? Electronic mass surveillance is how old, the late 90s?

Yes, let's ban all mass surveillance. I know where that gets you, the 70s or 80s when the height of technology was localized tape CCTV in a handful of places. Did everyone die and everything burn down? How can anyone with a straight face be this hysterical when most people currently alive grew up without any surveillance

The US in the 70's and 80's is not comparable to current US given different socioeconomic factors. China is far safer than the US is, if you want an accurate example.

> Is that why prisons so safe and free of crime?

Surveilled prisons are safer than non-surveilled ones. Compare a technology forward prison with a prison in a third world country if you want an example.

>The US in the 70's and 80's is not comparable to current US given different socioeconomic factors

The socioeconomic factors have become more favorable. Excluding surveillance there's been a secular crime drop due to aging demographics, family planning / abortions, potentially even decline in lead etc. The US is not as safe as China, but it's safer than the US 40 years ago all other things held equal. Of course an authoritarian state is safer but that's meaningless to compare yourself to if you value freedom.

What's actually changed is an absolute spread of paranoia and fear of imagined threats even in neighborhoods that look like as idyllic as a Scandinavian village.

So tracking your location without a warrant isn't a surveillance state problem? No right to privacy in public doesn't mean there should be the complete elimination of it, especially by the people supposed to represent us.

https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/victory-federal-...

It is. That's why I said "If they have better accountability in terms of law enforcement using it (warrant requirements, transparency, etc) I see no problem with it."

To be clear, I am not in favor of Flock in its current incarnation. I am in favor of it if these safeguards are introduced.

Crimes can be investigated without always-on survellience. Like has been done for decades.

Are all these deployed cameras actually solving crimes? What are the numbers? Aren't there already a bunch of other ways to track cars, like onstar sim chips?

Always-on survellience is always abused. It's already abused by US police officers. tracking their x-wives for example, the new boyfriends, etc. And there's room for much worse. Many of us grew up hearing about things that totalitarian communist governments were doing. The East German's would have loved to have such technologies.

New capabilities are being rolled out by flock- facial recognition and bluetooth tracking, for example.

This seems to be another example of the government contracting with private companies to do things that would be illegal for the government to do themselves.

Historically stuff like this ends up being abused by the establishment. facial recognition in Hong Kong. Protesters dissappeared. Stingray phone tracking in Portland. Protesters picked up by black SUVs. Freezing bank accounts in Ottawa. ICE deporting people without due process. Just keeps getting worse.

Think of all the modern niceties we enjoy that protesters earned. Will protesters of the future stand a chance when everyone is tracked all the time?

You don't see anything wrong with being tracked 24/7 ? The fact that it's already possible to be tracked with your phone signals that there is already a problem that needs fixing

Flock is not tracking you 24/7, your phone is. What is so dangerous about the government knowing that your car passed a camera at a particular point in time?

> What is so dangerous

We can make up plenty of scenarios where it's dangerous, but even without those, can we not just... not like something? To use the common analogy, my neighbor staring at me through the window all the time wouldn't be dangerous. But it's weird, it's uncomfortable. Can we just not do it? I want to be able to drive places without my movements being logged. Clearly many millions of people agree, given the backlash against Flock. This isn't some essential technology, we got along just fine without it.

I would also like it if people would wake up to their phones tracking them, etc, and demand that laws be passed to deal with that. But this is a good start!

And what percentage of that backlash is by people with a criminal record? And what percentage of these criminals are the ones pushing the narrative of this being some grave invasion of privacy that must be stopped for "mah freedom"?

It's easy to work people up about anything involving monitoring, their brains immediately shut down and think emotionally about the subject. But not all forms of monitoring are equivalent, and some of it is useful and has net-benefit.

Lol pretty much everyone I've seen talking about Flock is a terminally online nerdy type (myself included). The people I see protesting it in the news and such are either similar young privacy-minded people or boomers. I don't think either of these groups tend to have criminal records, nor that there's a grand conspiracy of petty criminals working together to get rid of Flock, the one superhero that would defeat them once and for all.

Maybe it's easy to work people up about it because people don't like being monitored.

I agree it's not all equivalent and some of it is useful, but people have clearly made their voices heard that they think blanket license plate recording is excessive and makes them uncomfortable. Perhaps society will listen.

Until now the only uproar I've seen about it has been people posting Tiktok videos of them cutting down cameras or burning them with lasers, ergo commiting crimes.

"People with a criminal record" sort of implies that they were criminals before the whole Flock thing and are angry at Flock because they are criminals.

Regardless, I'm not sure where you're going with this. The Tiktokers actually going out and cutting down cameras are probably 0.01% of the "vaguely mad at Flock/ALPR" group.

If I'm the ex-partner of a government employee?

Ideally we'd democratically decide whether we want this or not. We can make spurrious tracking (which is usually for profit) illegal, if we want.

People in former communist countries and other oppressive places often have a different attitude about such things. They learned the hard way.

Tread on us harder!

What are you so concerned about exactly?

Imagine having a life you value. Now, imagine you have opinions you express.

Now, imagine expressing those opinions destroys the first.

Before you jump in with a rebuttal, any comment you reply with here must include your full name and address, otherwise, you admit to being a bot and therefore worthless.

That's the concern.

Now imagine that none of that is relevant because we're not talking about listening devices or communication tapping.

This is just false equivalence, and this false equivalence is why people are immediately so defensive of anyone who suggest Flock is a good idea in principle.

As for the 'full name and address', also not relevant, Flock is not obtaining either of these details.

If I can track your car, I can determine if you went to a protest. If I can determine if you went to a protest, then I can punish your speech.

99% of the people who attend protests take their phone with them. Furthermore, Flock does not prove you participated in a protest. What if you were going to a shop near a protest? What if you were going to the park? This would never be considered sufficient evidence for anything actionable.

Also what's to say you aren't counter-protesting?

It would be pretty easy to determine most people's basic political alignment (e.g. party registration is public record) and therefore which side of a protest someone was on. I don't think it is likely that an authoritarian government would care if they could prove that you were actually at the protest. Even just prosecuting someone, even if it has no chance of success, is a significant punishment.

It's just that flock is insecure and is also used in a negative manner by those who wield it.

I mean functionally, given cell phones and ring doorbells we're already in a surveillance state.

Right, and I think that part of Flock should be fixed. But I don't think in general it is a bad idea. Do these same people also think it is bad that the police can get a warrant to read your text messages?

If the warrant is a real warrant, not some rubber stamp or FISA court, then I'd have less of a problem with the Flock cameras. However, that's not how America works.

They certainly think it would be bad for police to read your text messages without a warrant.

I agree with that too. So if the argument is: "Flock is good in principle but right now it doesn't have the necessary safeguards", well, that's exactly what I said in my original post.

The problem is that the safeguards will inevitably be bent, ignored, parallel constructioned, or repealed. As long as the cameras are there, they are a threat.

You also said you "honestly don't understand the hate Flock gets". Which seems to suggests that the status quo is really no big deal, even with the current (lacking) safeguards.

My real argument would probably be that this system is probably not unconstitutional but is very problematic and easily abused. Flock gets the hate that it does because it can be abused, and has been abused, and will in all likelihood continue to be abused.

All kinds of ideas - especially involving having a very powerful government - would be great in theory if we could have "the necessary safeguards", but the necessary safeguards do not exist and I am not sure if they can be made to exist, at least in a practical realistic way.

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