Hacker News Reader

loteckon Is surveillance risk chilling your online speech?

It's like asking the prisoners in the panopticon whether they behave differently due to the risk of being watched. The answer is 100% yes, whether they know it or not. That's the point.

loteckon Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

I came in to the thread anticipating a highly placed tptacek comment defending Flock without grappling with any of their numerous problems, and claiming that "regular people" love Flock. Weird how predictable that's become.

loteckon Flock license plate reader wrongly linked a San Diego man to a violent crime

They simply didn't properly identify the vehicle because Flock's ALPR gave them the pass. The innocent person would not have needed "photo proof" of his distant location if the ALPR didn't exist in the first place. Then he would not have been forced to spend a month of his life in jail.

loteckon Flock license plate reader wrongly linked a San Diego man to a violent crime

We blame the technology because police misusing their powers is a tale as old as police, is demonstrably not fixable, and this technology is at fault for aggressively selling itself to police to give them these powers that we all know will be misused. Flock absolutely bears significant responsibility for creating the technology and conditions for this unjust behavior to exist, and continuing to advocate against those pushing back on it by trying to brand them as terrorists.

loteckon More License Plate Reader Mission Creep: School Residency Verification, More

In my city, our police recently reported that in one year, they searched the ALPR database 240,000 times.

Of those searches, approximately 165 of them assisted any police case, in any way.

What is ALPR being used for the other 99.8% of the time?

loteckon The FBI Wants 'Near Real-Time' Access to US License Plate Readers

"Ownership" of data may have little or nothing to do with control of the data, depending on what other rights you agree to give up. Your Flock contract may specify your ownership of the data and then in the next sentence release to Flock all or most control of that data (you still own it!).

loteckon The FBI Wants 'Near Real-Time' Access to US License Plate Readers

It’s possible - tech is neutral

The people creating, funding, controlling, developing, deploying and using the tech are not neutral, and the technology is indistinguishable from those people. In light of that, I would argue your assertion, that the "tech is neutral", is nothing more than rhetoric and that in every meaningful way the tech lacks neutrality.

loteckon How to convert between wealth and income tax

Isn't PG's conflation of Denmark's high income tax with a proposed wealth tax a clear flaw in his math and argument re: "the highest taxes in the world"? Why wouldn't you instead compare to other countries that also have both income and wealth taxes?

loteckon America's Expanding Domestic Surveillance

What is libertarian about funding, building and defending government mass surveillance for money?

loteckon Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests

The data set IJ is providing here is situations where stalking was reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted. Other stalking cases could fail any one of those stages and be invisible to the public.

loteckon Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests

In my town, we have Flock. I request the audit logs that show how police are searching the Flock system.

In November 2025 and prior, the logs were listed by USERID and I could independently correlate quantity of searches by USERID to detect unusual search behavior. This same methodology has been used to catch police stalking in at least one other city.

In December 2025, Flock decided to "improve" its system. All searches on the audit log are now completely serialized, anonymized. This "improvement" came after 2025 turned out several cases of police stalking using Flock.

loteckon US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

Where is this?

loteckon Jack Dorsey says Block employees now bring prototypes, not slides, to meetings

Since the crux of this seems to be about replacing middle managers, what do people think prevents AI from successfully managing 140 direct reports on day to day operations on behalf of a lone CEO? I'm reading "it doesn't work," but that sounds like more of a potential opportunity to me than a truism.

loteckon Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

I wish people would care a lot less about sports.

loteckon Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous 'Stop Cop City' Protester

Where are the stories about all the other mail providers who routinely cough up everything about your email account, including full content, metadata, and full payment details, on a daily basis?

Proton is one of the few services who accepts anonymous payment, and cannot themselves provide encrypted content in cleartext. They cannot save you from yourself, though.

loteckon Cell Service for the Fairly Paranoid

Hi Cape team,

I'd like a service like yours that allows private signups and that works continuously to prove ongoing private operations. I don't need huge data plans, I'm fine with WiFi mostly. It needs to cost way less per month than your current pricing. It would be cool if you could find a way to serve people like me.

loteckon Cell Service for the Fairly Paranoid

Can you please respond with a full throated opinion of what Palantir is today? This seems to be what everyone is thirsting for and what you are perhaps inadvertently dancing around.

loteckon State Attorneys General Want to Tie Online Access to ID

Nobody who would be any good at the job wants to waste their life campaigning for it.

loteckon Flock Hardcoded the Password for America's Surveillance Infrastructure 53 Times

What city is this?

loteckon Reminder that HN Active exists and is arguably better

HN's hidden Active section surfaces stories that are getting a lot of comments, which on its own is helpful. The most helpful part of Active is that it doesn't hide Flagged submissions. You may want to be especially aware of a submission that is getting a lot of comments but is flagged.

I'm grateful for HN Active.

loteckon New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men

I appreciate this comment creating somewhere for people to discuss flagging. In my ideal HN you wouldn't be down voted but there would be a rigorous comment thread underneath it.

loteckon The impact of the Salesloft Drift breach on Cloudflare and our customers

From OP:

Given that Salesforce support case data contains the contents of support tickets with Cloudflare, any information that a customer may have shared with Cloudflare in our support system—including logs, tokens or passwords—should be considered compromised, and we strongly urge you to rotate any credentials that you may have shared with us through this channel.

loteckon FBI cyber cop: Salt Typhoon pwned 'nearly every American'

Any discussion of Salt Typhoon should start with the unusual fact that it is still an active and uncontained incident, despite having been widely revealed in 2024. Typically we are accustomed to discussing lessons learned during a post mortem. This particular mortem has not yet posted. We are still owned and data continues to be compromised.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/28/china_salt_typhoon_al...

loteckon I know genomes and I didn’t delete my data from 23andMe

This commentary attempts to reassure people about staying with 23 and me, but ultimately ends up concluding that there's virtually nothing useful to be gleaned from the data created from the 23 and me process.

Author dismissed privacy concerns in the same way we see others downplay it: you already are giving up your privacy in other parts of your life, why not give it up here, too? Total nonsense, IMO.

The conclusion I came to from this, that I don't believe the author intended, is that you should delete your data from this company because it is pointless.

loteckon I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

Hi Peter - do you have any specific thoughts for people posting about immigration scenarios here, to help keep themselves safe? Given that it was recently revealed that ICE is monitoring these comments.[0][1]

[0] https://www.404media.co/the-200-sites-an-ice-surveillance-co...

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VyAaJaWCutyJyMiTXuDH...

loteckon What 'Project Hail Mary' teaches us about the PlanetScale vs. Neon debate

Almost nothing is worth the hype but the book is an enjoyable page turner if you like space adventures and speculative science. Audiobook also got some extra attention, I'd go with that if you like audiobooks.

loteckon Bill to block OpenAI's for-profit conversion gets mysteriously gutted

It's called a gut and amend procedure. Welcome to the California legislature!

[0] https://capitolweekly.net/the-micheli-files-gut-and-amend-bi...

loteckon I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud

Jeff's opposition to this technology is not based on principle, rather it is based on the question of convenience of a few hours of time. A lot of commenters reacting to this story based on principle should take note of how many others gripe but roll over for it. Certainly, vendors are taking note of that.

loteckon The 200+ Sites an ICE Surveillance Contractor is Monitoring

Hacker News is on this list of sites being monitored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. People here openly post about their identities and immigration status, they should be aware!