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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

I was surprised to learn that many countries have what amounts to a flock equivalent. UK for instance has a National ANPR Service w 12k fixed cameras and 90-100m plates read a day. They also store it much longer.

Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-anpr-ser...

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The UK has been a surveillance state for decades. Heck you can’t even watch television without going on a register and inspectors coming to your door verifying your TV paperwork is in order. Imagine trying that in the US!

This sort of thing is just starting more broadly in the US and Americans are not happy about it.

It’s the new political hot potato where behind the scenes they’re pressured to support it but publicly saying so is political kryptonite.

For US politicians the only thing worse than saying you support Flock cameras is advocating for an AI data center in your community.

I never thought of UK as a police state. How about Netherlands w a similar program? Non watchlist plates are kept for 28 days compared to most flock implementations that keep for 7

https://www.politie.nl/informatie/waar-staan-anpr-cameras.ht...

Uk has been widely know as a budding police state for years. V for Vendetta was written in the 80s partially as a commentary on the British states turn towards a police state.

This poster is from 2002:

https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/po...

And right after seeing those posters you’d see big ads on the Tube walls that says things like:

>>We have the name and address of everyone in the UK without a TV license. Inspectors on on their way now to your home to investigate.

Also lookup “TV detector vans” which is another hilarious bit of the theatre of the UK police state

Seeing that as someone visiting the UK on vacation was a real eye opener, like what the heck kind of police state is this

I always thought of the UK and London especially as most tightly monitored city on the planet. By far.

Why not? The UK has been a police state for decades. They have a long history of mass surveillance and of cracking down on protests.

The funny thing is that countries commonly called “police states” aren’t, while countries not thought of as such are.

Most Western countries have 2-3 times as many police officers per capita as China and Russia. Many people in China have had not a single encounter with authorities in their lifetime (other than basic administrative tasks).

Meanwhile, in some EU countries, you need government approval to add a roof window to your own house, and you better believe there are inspectors and fines enforcing that.

By “police state” people generally mean one where day to day behavior, speech, and thought are tightly controlled by the government. Not so much police per capita or building codes.

We can debate whether the government has a legitimate interest in ensuring that rooftop windows don’t make house fires dramatically more dangerous, but I don’t think there’s much debate to be had about whether it should be a crime to own a picture of a man standing in front of a tank.

Yes, instead the UK and Europe “debank” and sanction opposition journalists so that they can’t continue functioning, without so much as a public hearing and with no way to contest it.

Not sure which is worse, actually. At least everyone in China knew that you shouldn’t mention June 4th. When there’s a clear line, you can avoid it or use indirect references to make your point.

> By “police state” people generally mean one where day to day behavior, speech, and thought are tightly controlled by the government.

That describes most Western countries today.

Western countries are richer per capita, they can afford more government per capita.

Higher yields mean more overhead for taxes. More overhead more taxes means more money for the lord. More money for the lord means more men at arm. More men at arms means more ability to shake down the peasants for even more.

It's a self feeding cycle, well until you get out competed by the next country that didn't waste all that overhead trying to enforce a local maximum.

Not at all true of your average Chinese. Remember, the Great Leap Forward and it's enormous famine and death and violent social upheaval is all within living memory. A few small pockets of the country had only minimal starving thanks to local authorities that quietly disobeyed Mao's directives and managed to 'fly under the radar' so to speak, but outside of those areas virtually everyone was touched in one way or another. Most of them are also extremely aware and very effected by the modern day rural/urban birth location apartheid, where if you're born outside of certain areas you can move to others -- but your kids will get 2nd-rate (if any) education, you won't get health care, etc.

And that's not to even speak of your lived experience if you're an ethnic minority in China. Tibetans don't self-immolate out of boredom.

Can't speak about Russia, the Russians I know personally all left before the Putin era really got going and isn't reflective of the current state of affairs over there, but what you said is the opposite of truth regarding China.

For the record, the honorable governer of texas, a mr. abbott, pledges his undivided love for the Donald.

And he has publicly denounced Flock cameras and data center development in the past month.

Amazing what polling does to a politician.

Because Flock is privately owned while ANPR seems to my cursory research to be government owned. And we all know what private corporations do to peoples data.

Yes, people pretend to not understand the difference.

I'm not sure about your exp w government agencies, but in my experience, I much prefer private companies. Much easier to hold to account.

Just as an example, NYC mayor is going after landlords for violations and tenant rights. He has hearings regularly. However there is no enforcement of the law when it comes to government owned housing projects, which are very often not kept up to code and are outright dangerously mismanaged

What big-tech companies have been _actually_ held accountable for data misuse, as in, 'consequences that actually mattered'? Being able to absorb fines just turns them into a cost-of-doing-business tax.

Billions in fines is at least an incentive to invest in measures to prevent data leaks or misuse.

For instance, in July 2026 the D.C. Department of Health Care Finance discovered that two reports published on its own website contained hidden underlying personal data that unauthorized users could access. The reports were supposed to show aggregate statistics, but the accessible data could include Medicaid IDs, birth dates, provider names, race, gender, ward, and ethnicity. The exposure potentially existed from 2023 until July 2026.

Do you want to guess how many billions in fines or people were fired due to the leak?

https://dhcf.dc.gov/page/dhcf-data-incident

Does the city have exclusive jurisdiction over those projects? Honest question, not familiar with NYC government housing. Some places have county, state, or federal preemption.

The US isn't the UK or China and different cultures deem different things as acceptable. The UK for example is also a monarchy, which would rial up people in the US if proposed there.

Additionally the trust that the government uses these cameras as intended is apparently higher in the UK than the trust of Americans that Flock will not misuse their surveillance technology.

Doesn't UK arrest a few thousand people a year for social media posts? What are you basing this high degree of trust on?

In the UK overall, 64% of the population support police use of facial recognition technology to some degree and only 11% were opposed to its use [1]. The survey also looks at support for different szenarios, but overall many generally did not oppose it, while in the US 47% oppose the use of flock cameras [2].

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-attitudes-... [2] https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/florida-bans-highwa...

The Flock stat is interesting because 46% of Americans believe widespread use of facial recognition would be a good thing (27% unsure).

Maybe people oppose Flock because it's not going far enough! Or maybe there is a coordinated campaign against a license plate reader for some weird reason

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/03/17/public-more-...

My guess would be that opinions just changed since 2022 AND that support for flock might differ from general support.

No, it arrests several thousands of people every year for breaches of the communications act(s) - this could be for online harassment, stalking or trying to defraud people over Facebook messenger.

It's the equivalent of 'wire fraud' in the US.

They are arresting them for social media posts. You are lying

Have you got any proof that anyone has been arrested specifically for a social media post?

The most common case is Lucy Connolly, who was arrested for inciting racial hatred and pleaded guilty to the crime which carries a prison sentence.

Or are you just a random non UK citizen who has been reading disinformation on social media?

Source for “a few thousand”?

> The UK for example is also a monarchy, which would rial up people in the US if proposed there.

I'm not so sure about that: https://www.newsweek.com/white-house-donald-trump-king-time-...

Flock became a controversy when it was being used for ICE raids and tracking people who got abortions rather than its original stated purpose of finding stolen cars.

Or you know, just stalking exs using Flock like most cops charged with wrongdoing have been.

Yes, but in that very link it explains how they work with the public to establish some trust?

"Any current issues of public concern?

It is recognised the extent of the UK network is a privacy concern and the scale of that network is likely to remain so for...

The NPCC ANPR lead has established an Independent Advisory Group (IAG) chaired by the Surveillance Camera Commissioner (SCC), with a broad representation from civil society and other..."

Oh good, there's a government agency to submit complaints and comments to. I was concerned for a second.

So what's the expectation here?

We all know that governments are going to be corrupted. We all know that democracy sucks sometimes or even alot of the time. At least if there is a government agency to communicate with that collects that data and keeps it over time, when the government changes there is the possibility to seek redress.

If the information and systems are held by corporations or other unaccountable third parties who may not be subject to public scrutiny or records keeping requirements, then how do you seek redress and enforcement over time?

That fact that in the UK or China you are surveiled non-stop it does not mean Americans want the same to happen to them.

Don't forget Belgium, Netherlands, sweden, Germany, France and many others!

Google national ANPR [country]

Apples to oranges. Sure, there are ANPR systems in other countries, but they have to operate under very different regulations, and cannot collect information haphazardly like Flock.

Using your exact suggested query for Germany will quickly tell you that mass retention of ANPR data is illegal, and only matching against "targeted suspect databases" is acceptable. Even usages of the technology in private areas have to comply with data protection rules.

That's funny because ANPR systems are much looser in other countries including much longer retention. It helps that you don't have national newspapers printing negative articles around the technology every day!

There is a difference between ANPR and what Flock does.

Which is...

I like how you're so nuanced when I'm pretty sure you never heard the acronym ANPR before

You are right.

Putting aside how disproportionately noisy some activist types are, it probably has to do with Americans having practically no trust in one another, corporations in particular, and their government by extension. At the same time, Americans tend to value some positive forms of liberty - like the ability to say and do what you want in one moment - far more than other forms of liberty - like the ability for all people to feel safe enough to be able to do the things they want.

I’m an American living in Japan, I’ve always felt a great sense of liberty because of how safe it is here; I can live a lifestyle that would get me robbed pretty much immediately in the USA. While crime rates have always been relatively low here; part of that is because Japan got tough on crime around the turn of the century, and one part of that was pervasive rollout of automated license scanners used for reconstructing vehicle movement, like Flock. I suspect that Japanese people didn’t accept this because they don’t care about privacy - they absolutely do - but instead because they have a healthy enough social context to be able to consider the tradeoffs, and a government responsive enough to design around those tradeoffs; rather than immediately flying into a rage and vandalizing their cities like some angry Americans are doing now.

The same thing plays out for other things that would pretty clearly be a good thing, like having a real secure national ID instead of relying on social security numbers for identity verification (terrible). Can’t do it, people (as well as criminals) value the liberty of being difficult to trace far more than the liberty of not being defrauded regularly, or having a civil service that is able to do basic functions like authenticating you for benefits efficiently. Sigh…

In the US flock is routinely used by law enforcement personnel to stalk exes and for other abuses. Are police in those other countries equally untrustworthy?

To me, that’s a problem of oversight, audit trails, consequences, and the relationship of police with their communities; not of Flock itself. And based on what I’m reading, they are reacting - criminal case IDs will be required to do searches and automated monitoring of misuse will be mandatory by default soon. So the anger against Flock itself seems misplaced.

Sure, in the same way that anger against guns is misplaced, in the US, because the US is unique in the world with its social psychosis around guns.

Yeah, and the way to change US culture/laws around guns probably isn’t to break the windows of random gun shops.

The UK arrests ~11,000 people a year for wrongthink.

https://archive.is/vaCkJ

Most of the outraged people live in the US where we have Flock. Presumably people in other countries are outraged about their local equivalent.

> Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online.

Nobody really cared until they realized that it could be used to more effectively round up our precious illegal immigrants.

We care about the immigrants becaus we know the rest of the fucking poem.

I too base my political beliefs on poetry

I'm sure you do. The poem can be taken both as a lesson in why one should defend all humans, as well as a lesson in exclusion from the bottom up.

You do realize that humans use art to communicate difficult or emotional ideas including political beliefs, right?

It makes me feel so much better than someone can be one-shotted into a political belief with a poem. I was worried they would rely too much on reasoning and evidence.

The poem in question conveys not just accurate history, but also it presents an argument in favor of standing for your neighbors . Even more, it conveys the feeling of loneliness when it comes to be your turn - both another argument for community and just a reminder that actual real humans are involves.

Not bad for a few lines of text... very efficient.

Of course your whole statement is ridiculous - the notion that a poem is the foundation of a belief rather than a good conveyance of it, is so stupid that all you are saying is that you can't come up with a good argument and are reaching for bad, unfunny snark to deflect.

> Never understood why the outrage of flock in particular is so big online.

A big reason is because there's virtually no oversight, and it's managed by a single private corporation nationwide. Neither of those things are true in the UK case.

You should really educate yourself on things like this. They matter, and by your apathy and ignorance you're helping sleepwalk your country into a dystopia.

> UK for instance

It's one of the most dystopian western countries when it comes to that, not sure I'd use it as an example

How are you defining dystopian exactly? The climate is dystopian, all the rest follows naturally from that.

It's not my opinion...

> Britain rated worst in Europe for protecting privacy

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/dec/31/uk.eu

> 'UK surveillance is worse than 1984' says UN privacy chief

https://www.wired.com/story/uk-digital-surveillance-joseph-c...

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