For a country that staged a revolution over a tea tax modern Americans sure seem to love having their rights trampled.
From their views, the right isn't trampled. It's a win
It feels like some juvenile "I can't kill you but I can pay this guy $200k to make you go away"
Almost every house in my neighborhood has 1-2 cameras pointing around their houses. When there's an issue, my neighbors share the footages with the group, and that's so useful. And I live in a very very democrat state/city.
Also, we should definitely address the privacy and access control issue with Flock. Removing the cameras isn't the right solution.
You might be right that the issues could be solved without removing the cameras, but they definitely will be solved by removing the cameras.
We'll see.
Working as it was designed to.
And yet there are still so many working class people who try to profess how "voting is useless, it doesn't change anything".
Big difference in issue. You can't gerrymander a local bill so those kinds of votes are arguably more important than nationals. And you'd be surprised how big a difference a visit with a few dozen of your peers can make to a townhall meeting. That's something we seem to forget until our backs are truly to a wall.
Hallmark of a healthy democracy.
1. I don't think Texas was around during the Tea Party, and
2. Property is also a right, so this is just about how much privacy you are willing to sacrifice for how much property.
You already have a unique plate tied to the registered owner of the car, and a range of court cases have held you can be stopped, ordered out of the car, questioned (by both police and immigration enforcement), etc.
If you happened upon me on a public street, I'd say "that I'm here on this street now is not private information".
If you installed sensors across the entire city with 2-5 block resolution and could tell me everywhere I have been in the last 30 days (and hence where I'm liable to be tomorrow), I'd say "you are grossly violating my right to be secure in my person against unreasonable search - this is wrong".
The panic over Flock is silly unless you're already living in a hut in the woods, because it's not capturing 5% of what you describe. But, I guarantee your phone provider, Meta, and email provider do know all those things.
All of these require a search warrant.
Volume isn’t the distinction that matters, who holds the data and what is possible as a result is. Meta can sell my movements to an advertiser. It can’t pull me over, detain me unjustly, or hand my neighbor over to ICE. With Flock, police aren’t a downstream buyer; they’re the direct customer.
And “you already gave it away” is no longer good law. Chatrie v. United States (2026): Chatrie had opted into Google Location History, and the Court still held that disclosure to a third party doesn’t forfeit your Fourth Amendment interest.
Worth noting where we started, though. Two comments ago there was no plausible connection between public roads and privacy. Now there’s one, it’s just smaller than Meta’s. I'm really glad you have had this anparently eye opening moment here on HN.
Nice to see we got to what this really was though: not a genuine privacy concern, but an “Orange Man Bad” concern because ICE could use Flock to deport illegal immigrants.
Trying to discredit my substance based on a single of many examples tells me you're not arguing authentically here, nor elsewhere in this thread. We are failing to be productive past this point.
You got me there, pal ;) I didn't use the exact technical terms you expected, my argument is now void, nooo.
I guess I should go and install one of those cameras right outside my house now.
I'm not saying you have to reply in a technical term - just explain how being seen and recorded driving down a public street, in a vehicle that's required to display an identifiable plate you've registered with the government, constitutes a search, seizure, or even an invasion of your privacy.
Nobody's saying you have to install a camera outside your house (ignoring the dozens of cameras your neighbors have willingly installed to replace their doorbell or to deter theft/burglary). But you can't argue that the government or private businesses can't deploy cameras because you expect privacy in the middle of a road.
And this is where US caselaw and my personal beliefs about privacy start to differ. Why can't we expect some level of privacy in a public place? There are some countries that confer that, to certain levels.
Because it’s a public place. We already have laws covering things like harassment, voyeurism, etc; so existing legal conduct in a public place should remain legal.
The US used to be one of those countries, then 9/11 happened and the loudest folks (or at least the folks with the most money to influence law) started eroding privacy and now more folks just accept our current state and views like OP’s.
It’s really interesting…you can even watch a TV crime drama series, like Law & Order, and see the privacy erosion in the TV show. That transition is basically a reflection of what happened in the US.
I believe the current status quo is a direct violation of the 4th Amendment.
The fact of being in public or on a vehicle isn't the key point. It's that electronic systems aggregating location data are 4th amendment protected. Which was established in Carpenter.
The aggregation creates a comprehensive system.
Aggregated location data over months creates a comprehensive chronicle of your life that's categorically different from someone observing you on one street corner. Aggregation changes the constitutional analysis.
It’s only the government searching that database without a warrant that would be unconstitutional under some hypothetical future case.
Privacy is about being in your home away from others, correspondence etc. Once you are interacting with others it's not a feature.
Unless we are agents of certain law enforcement agencies...
I don't live in the US, but it seems that constant monitoring via government sanctioned facial recognition technology falls under that umbrella.
Flock cameras using facial recognition to surveil citizens in public spaces without a warrant is a 4th amendment violation under any rational reading, and it is up to the American people whether they want to live in country that no longer holds itself accountable to the law or not.
It really has no impact on my life beyond the looming existential crisis of the world's largest military and nuclear power slowly becoming a rogue fascist state.
As just mentioned, being watched in a public space doesn't constitute a violation of the 4th Amendment. Under any rational reading, you are not being searched.
It really has no impact on anyone's life, especially if they participate in any part of society. Your phone records, credit cards, and every social media and email account are all far more invasive tracking and without even the veneer of accountability. Even for criminals, it hardly makes a difference if they pull an ID from Flock, your cell records, or the bodega security camera and Ring doorbell footage people would happily offer to a cop. Investigating a crime by looking at a security camera is not fascism, just like deporting an illegal immigrant or dispersing a riot isn't fascism.
New wrongs aren't justified by existing wrongs.
Roberts did use the word 'narrow' in the Carpenter opinion. That part is accurate. But read what narrow actually meant: the Court said it wasn't overturning all of third-party doctrine at once, and wasn't addressing every possible surveillance technology.
It was not saying 'this principle only applies to cell phones forever.' The actual holding was that a warrant is required whenever someone has a legitimate privacy interest in records held by a third party.
That's not phone-specific. Roberts even wrote that the ruling must account for 'more sophisticated systems already in use.' He was explicitly anticipating future applications.
Chatrie v. United States, decided June 29th this year, just 2 months ago, is exactly that next application:
Chatrie v. United States, decided June 29, 2026, 6-3: SCOTUS held that when police use a "geofence warrant" demanding that Google hand over location data from all devices near a crime scene during a specific time window constitutes a Fourth Amendment search requiring a warrant backed by probable cause.
There’s the potential for searching the database to require a warrant, but the cameras themselves, and being recorded on a public street (which everyone’s crying about) has no reasonable pathway to being unconstitutional.
I'm still upset that we have a TCPA to protect consumers from spam calls, and then refuse to ever enforce it.
Such extensive surveillance is likely a necessary precondition for governments to be able to take any number of horribly authoritarian steps against their populace. Given the likelihood that this leads to violations of all other rights, I find it hard to argue that these cameras don't violate people's rights.
The first amendment, fourth amendment, and the fourteenth amendment of the US Constitution. You should read it.
For the first, assumably you think you can’t be observed coming or going from a riot? That’s not true.
For the fourth, a Flock camera existing is not inherently a search, just like how a database of cell records is not unconstitutional (Carpenter, Chatrie, Katz).
Is the 14th just a nebulous due process argument? Again, the camera existing is not an unconstitutional, see 4th.
You should read them again.
"These Americans", "Modern Americans".
If you have never heard of that before then someone failed you during your education.