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Comment by driggs | Hacker News Reader

I love a good taste-of-their-own-medicine story like anyone else, but the headline is false.

It seems that this is about a YouTuber stalking a Flock employee's vehicle through traffic for 10-15 minutes, which is why the police were called.

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That’s literally exactly what Flock does. I can’t find sympathy for the company on this.

Maybe I’m a radical but I am okay with the government having capabilities that are different from what a youtuber is allowed to do.

In my opinion, yes, that makes you a radical. I don’t want an armed organization with a trillion dollar budget stalking me. That’s the common stance in America. We even put it in our constitution.

Well, the government can use Flock camera footage, and YouTubers can film with personal devices on public property. So I guess their capabilities are already pretty different

A frequent argument made in Flock's favor is that if you are in public there isn't an expectation of privacy. That Flock can see where you go just like any other driver. Particularly since Flock is a private entity not the government. This is the Other Driver behaving antisocially towards one driver EXACTLY as Flock does to all drivers.

I agree that that is not a good argument. I am perfectly fine with the government having access to things, for instance taxation or armed enforcers + bodycams, that are illegal for the youtuber.

In general I agree. I like having a State, whose definition is more or less the (hopefully judicious) monopoly on such violence.

But the State seems to be doing an end run on restrictions against unreasonable (warrantless) search which we've agreed it should be constrained on, by giving private entities carte blanche to lowjack the entire population and sell that data to whomever they like (so long as the State gets to cheat by buying from them too).

And so far, the most notable uses of this workaround by government seems to be..... cops stalking women for fun.

All in all l, I'm not particularly happy with the government having this power while it is clearly not being used responsibly.

I generally agree with courts that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the plate itself or, ordinarily, in being observed at a particular point on a public road. I feel similarly about these things to speed cameras. I appreciate that these cameras reduce police + civilian interactions that often escalate to police shootings. I don't fully understand where this outrage is coming from.

That said, I do support stricter access control standards. However, AFAIU Flock cameras used by the cops do not sell data to 'whomever they like.'

Yes, they should be different. In almost all cases, they should be less.

But what I really wanted to mention is that flock is not the government, and flock's services are not exclusively available to governments.

Same goes for their competitors.

The government represents the public will of the people and has democratic legitimacy. The notion that it should be more constrained than private actors seems absurd. I'm okay with taxation, pulling people over for speeding, automated speeding enforcement, fining parents who don't send their kids to school, garnishing wages, etc. that would be unacceptable from a private actor who is not imbued with the public's will.

Due to the monopoly on violence, governments need additional more constraints in some areas. If your government dislikes you and they can track every step you take out in public, it becomes much easier for them to violate your rights without anyone stopping them. And because the government could fetch the same data from any company collecting it, companies too must be banned from doing so.

>The notion that it should be more constrained than private actors seems absurd.

That is precisely the notion of the US constitution. If some random person chose to take down a flier criticizing the president, that is fair game (legally, or at least it defers to private policy). If a government agent did that, it verges on breaking the first amendment because we know that is a form of government suppression of speech. The first 10 amendments to the constitution pretty much all work to some extent of this logic.

> I'm okay with taxation, pulling people over for speeding, automated speeding enforcement, fining parents who don't send their kids to school, garnishing wages, etc. that would be unacceptable from a private actor who is not imbued with the public's will.

Those are all pretty much state laws outside of taxation, not part of the Constitution. We could setup campaigns to restrict those powers anytime we want to, or to grant them to private citizens in some cases.

Speech and surveillance fall under the constitution. Restricting/granting such power requires a much higher standard of process.

Not sure if I'd use the term radical but there are other words which come to mind.

...no. flock doesnt have robot cars weaving through traffic. Its not the same thing literally or figuratively.

So their tracking is OK because it's immobile. That's an interesting and novel defense of a surveillance state which I hadn't heard before.

Not illegal, and like all the other comments here, isn’t this exactly what Flock does? But they do it indiscriminately to all vehicles at all times?

It's not the same because it is indiscriminate.

Flock cameras do the same thing to me so I guess I'd better call the cops.

Not a YouTuber, a local reporter in Atlanta

Yeah! Nobody should be able to track your movements along public roads.

Watching and following everywhere someone drives is stalking? Damn, that's crazy.

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