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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>The response is stronger because your hairdressers and baristas aren't actively providing a service for surveillance as part of their work.

Should other law enforcement contractors also be subject to the same higher standard? For instance, should dell get extra flak if one of their contractors called 911, because they were installing PCs for a police department? If not, this just seems like a way of applying a double standard, just because you hate flock. It's fine to hate flock, but it should be actually justified reasons (eg. "they're enabling mass surveillance" or whatever), not spurious ones like "they did a bad that's vaguely common, but we're gonna admonish them extra hard for it because we hate them")

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I don't buy into your premise. A hairdresser, barista, Dell installer, etc are not out in the open public. These people are in places open to the public but not considered public. These people can deny your "right" to be there, and impose rules/restrictions on what you can do in their open to the public space. Go against those rules/restrictions and you are no longer welcome.

You are really trying to contort yourself into some very uninteresting twists.

If they called 911 because they were worried about privacy when publically installing a privacy-violating tool, then yes, they 100% should be. Having higher standards for higher impact things isn't somehow hypocritical.

>If they called 911 because they were worried about privacy when publically installing a privacy-violating tool, then yes, they 100% should be.

Seems like the installer was calling because he thought he was being harassed?

>As Keefe began to shoot video, the installer saw him and immediately packed up his equipment and drove away, so Keefe also returned to his car and followed several cars behind, hoping to document the next stop.

>...

>“I work with Flock Safety. And I called originally because I’m getting followed,” the installer can be heard telling a dispatcher after being transferred. “I was getting harassed, pretty much. Taking videos and pictures. And now, the same vehicle that pulled over where I was working at has been following me.”

Sure, you can try to equate "flock setting up a surveillance network" to "physically following flock employees", but what's the implication here? That anyone working for flock should be fair game as a stalking target? What about someone working for NSA? Should it be fine to look through their emails?

The implication is "setting up public security cameras in a city should be fair game to document by journalists". If anything, the solution here seems like it would be a requirement that the date, time, and location of each camera being set up should be public information, so then no one needs to get followed to be able to document what's happening.

Do you think Flock is in the same category of installing PCs for police departments, when it comes to public impact?

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