What's the point in helping the police catch criminals when they don't do anything after the fact!
It’s used for surveillance in the truest sense
Heaven forbid you are on someone’s watchlist, they will just track your movement across the city
This isn’t some fake CSI pop dream - this kind of tech isn’t used to catch the people breaking into your house
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-te...
People who are “soft on crime”, practically speaking, are the people and politicians so committed to dehumanizing others that they’d rather watch their neighbors wallow in poverty or rot in jail than to actually do something to address the root causes (the foremost of which being the aforementioned societal dehumanization of the poor).
California enacted a law in 2014 that turned all theft under $950 into a misdemeanor instead of a felony (reverted last year). Theft became so common that police wouldn't even respond to theft calls unless it was over $950, which enboldened theives. During covid especially, entire stores would be looted and robbed constantly.
When people were caught, the judges would often give them minimal sentences, and release them over and over. Then the same people would commit more crimes because they knew the judges were lienent.
I'm not saying every single person fits into this box, but it's common enough to be recognized as a trend that happens in liberal areas. Los Angeles, Oakland are prime examples.
So all states with $1000 Felony cutoffs or higher should have this issue, right?
So why don't they?
You know the National Retail Federation had to stop posting their annual shrink numbers after they demonstrated that shoplifting was not meaningfully higher than previous years.
Everyone has an annecdote. "it's common enough to be recognized as a trend" is equally justification for racial profiling, and at least racial crime statistics are easily citable. And you still haven't even put forth that modicum of effort.
I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't put words in my mouth. I never once suggested racial profiling as acceptable, and I wasn't insinuating it either. I know you were just using it as an adjacent example, but I don't appreciate that.
I'm just giving my experiences man, I lived in Los Angeles for years. Have you ever been here or lived here? There is very little respect for the law because the law is not enforced. I'm not saying I have all the answers, it's just what I've noticed.
I'm not trying to be rude, and I'm not a stupid bot. Am I not allowed to have a point of view and express it?
It's totally fine if those talking points resonate with you, but it makes me sad that you don't have the mental capability to actually think about what the career path of a judge entails, what kind of room for decision making they have, and what kind of trade-offs they might need to consider in order to adjust the punishments.
Ignorance is bliss.
I'm just saying there's a predictable result when you express it with the level of detail and amount of effort that you _did_. And frankly, your comments are no better than pre-reasoning era LLM rage-bait.
What level of engagement are you looking for here; support for your lack of citations, or "yeah that's also my personal experience rah rah"?
I'm having a meta-level discussion, if you can't tell. I'm not "putting words in your mouth", I'm trying to discuss: the quality of your discussion. I'm discussing the quality of your arguments and your evidence. If you think that "racial profiling" is too hot, substitute in something else; that's not the point.
You're going to need to back that claim up with statistics
Thats the loophole that flock capitalized on.
It obvious this should be the case, but when you dump billions of dollars getting around 4th amendment protections, lets just say it takes awhile to close the loopholes.
Also, Flock cameras are not just on roads. Many institutions use them for surveillance inside buildings. There is a community center in Atlanta that has them and there is evidence that random people with access to all Atlanta area cameras, including Flock employees and police officers in other jurisdictions, were watching juveniles at the pool. More than one deputy at a suburban Atlanta sheriff's department has been fired for abusing Flock cameras to track romantic interests
Like everything else in this country we've taken something that has a useful purpose when used in a limited, controlled fashion and pushed it to the maximum extreme. We can't do anything based on nuance anymore
There is still something to be said about the lack of alignment between Flock the company and the HOA as to how that data is used, but the compromise was explicit, and there was at least some coordination within the community. At the heart of the issue with automatic surveillance is the lack of accountability over those who retain the data and the lack of consent of those surveilled, and measures were taken to address one of those two within your community.
Honestly there are a number of incredibly weird comments like this throughout the discussion. Is Flock astroturfing every discussion about the company?
The problem with Flock is not who owns the data, it's the potential for abuse.
The solution is not making humans more virtuous but reducing the capability and the harm done that unethical humans can do.
> If we cannot trust them with the very basics of ethical behavior they are absolutely in the wrong job and there need to be very clear consequences.
Police should not be trusted because they are police. There should be audits and controls that prevent abuse and unethical behavior. Small unethical behaviors should result in corrective measures but not termination, since when the punishment becomes too great you create incentives for cover ups or scapegoats. A small number of minor punishments, that catch people as soon as they step over the line, functions better as a deterrent than a large scale punishments that are unlikely to be actually enforced. Granted if a police officer does a major crime, they should face serious consequences, but the goal should be to creating a system that makes major crimes by police less likely. If they know they will get caught for minor crimes, they are less likely to commit bigger crimes.
From what it sounds like, it’s likely not on any sizable group’s top 10 priority list in LA.
Now there’s plenty of loopholes where you can craft “unique defenses” based on nearly identical underlying offenses. But it’s important to have the distinction
Of course it does. You dissolve the police department and create a new one. New York did it twice, first replacing the city-controlled Municipals with the state-controlled Metropolitans [1], and then in 1870 creating the NYPD [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Police_riot
[2] https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/about/history/history-timeline...
If a police department reuses to accept accountability, and dig in their heels by refusing to work, "just" dissolve it. And while at it, half the calls could be handled by folks without guns.
In practice that obviously would not go over well, people are too attached to the status quo. We just lack the political will to rethink and retool the system (despite most Americans favoring police reform).
This can't be emphasized enough. A lot of enforcement and "civil order" work does not require guns, and in many cases (e.g., mental health crises), they're the wrong people to be engaged to resolve.
I think one of the biggest issues with policing is that they are supported by the "law and order" crowd, which is a euphemism for keeping "others" in their place.
I swear to god that "Defund the police" was an inside job to discredit police reform by turning it into an all or nothing proposition and that's not gonna fly.
Oakland CA has serious crime problems because there's "not enough" policing and a lot of people are emboldened to do all the crime they want because nobody's there to stop them. One of many articles on this: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/oakland-business-o...
I believe there are some fundamental changes to the system that could correct a lot of this:
1. End the War on Drugs. It's literally designed to create crime and it's low hanging fruit for cops to focus on rather than real crime.
2. Legalize and regulate sex work. Like drugs, this is a moral issue and by driving it underground it's designed to create more crime. Regulate and monitor the fuck out of it to minimize opportunities for sex trafficking. It's also a favored low-hanging fruit for cops to bust.
3. Use social workers for mental health emergencies and have the cops notified for possible backup
4. Invest in housing/mental health/rehab services and get the homeless off the streets
5. Revisit the legal system to avoid catch and release scenarios (though most of it is #1 and #2). If the cops are busting the same people over and over again that disincentives them to even bother
6. Fix qualified immunity and put some teeth into it. We should never simply take the officer's word for anything without some sort of proof (like leaving their body cams on).
7. Make the police self-insured backed by their pension fund. They have no skin in the game and municipalities pay out vast sums of money for the misdeeds of officers.
Easy peasy!
They also have months or years of cop training, not weeks.
Since they are all unionized and replacing them is crazy slow and expensive, nothing happens.
Society is not starting at zero right now, it has developed for 10.000 years with many genocidal wars. As a result, 1% of the population has achieved generational wealth due to some sort of "value creation" by their ancestors.
Through trial and error and a lot of violence, humanity has noticed that with free trade and free enterprise, the welfare of everyone else can significantly improve (toilets, food, entertainment), while the overall amount of violence significantly decreases.
Because when people put their money where their mouth is, capital can be allocated much more efficient than through other means (e.g. the King of England forcing a levy and centrally deciding what industry to invest it).
The only problem with this model is deflation, because if there is no incentive to deploy capital, then the overall pie shrinks and people start fighting about keeping their shares. That's why central banks talk about target inflation rates of 2%, because purchasing power of your hoarded capital needs to shrink in order to incentivize you to use your capital in a productive way, which also increases the overall pie for society.
The main thing one can criticize about generational wealth such as Trump, Epstein, Musk or Thiel is the fact that they have to lie about its existence, and keep up a charade of "I'm self-made" due to their low self esteem.
The alternatives are always worse for the common person. I'd rather have Trump, Epstein, Musk and Thiel than even bigger capital concentration like it was with the British crown and the Catholic church in their full bloom.
Ideally, those figures would also follow the moral code of the rest of society, but still it's much better than their parents who did crazy shit in Africa only 50 years ago, or the crown and the catholic inquisition a couple hundred years ago.
Nationally, I trust a system where the data are split up between siloes more than a single, privately-owned database.
I get that it helps solve crimes, but solving crime is not the end-all-be-all of improving society. If anything, it's a highly symptom-oriented solution, and we absolutely have plenty of levers we could be trying to pull if we wanted to prevent crime instead.
Forget whether one global surveillance network is more trustworthy than another global surveillance network for a minute. Do we want this at all?
I think that's a fair question for each local jurisdiction to make on its own.
Unless you'd rather prioritize liberty over safety. I want crimes to be harder to solve if the alternative is a panopticon.
Also, once crime does cross state lines the local FBI gets involved and they have a lot more resources than a small-town police force
If my family gets kidnapped, I want a department to be able to check a camera. I’ll wait for the judge’s signature.
But that’s night & day from today’s reality. I simply cannot stand being recorded to the cloud by a creepy corporation everywhere I drive in California with just about no oversight.
It requires better access controls.
Even invasive ideas like automated license plate scanning city-wide can have its data only accessible to an API to eg, track a stolen car across the city to avoid a dangerous high-speed chase in populated areas.
I think to throw the baby out with the bathwater around networked security cameras is failure around designing robust and secure APIs and systems (including audit trails).
The one who owns the data is the one who should be responsible to provide proper guardrails in certain cases if not all, specially like these ones. It comes down to the fine line around business, rules and regulations. The motivation of business is to make most profit with least cost and implementing regulatory mechanisms are cost. Abuses are natural to happen in the absence of guardrails and audits.
I'm not sure what a realistic solution is for Flock to try and manage data they do not own nor if it makes sense for them to deny access to data they are not the owners of.
With Flock? Good luck.
The potential for abuse rises with the number of people who have access to that data, regardless of who they work for. Restricting access strictly to users in the municipality under contract reduces the number of people with access and thereby mitigates some abuse vectors.
The profession attracts individuals who are willing to abuse power for their own purposes. That's not to say that every cop is in the job to abuse power, but many are, and we have to build our law enforcement structures in a way that directly acknowledges and addresses this fact.
Same basic reason I'd rather have the cops after me than have the environmental/zoning/whatever civil enforcement jerks after me. There's just sooooo much more scrutiny (which really says a lot considering how bad the cops are).
Nearly your rights go out the window when it's non-criminal prosecution. The organizations also aren't nearly as robustly structured to limit damage by "bad apples" as real police departments are.
I know this sounds insane in light of how bad the cops are. That's because it is. Civil enforcement is essentially 50yr behind policing when it comes to transparency and accountability.
As opposed to their mayor/governor/president, who they not only can easily find out who it is if they don't already, but can also vote out (and who often will have term limits)?
Try to get something out of the CEO of Bank of America or some other faceless corporation
I have. It's easier than you think.
(Yes, I know that shareholders have the ability to vote on board proposals as well, but even if you think those mechanisms are equivalent, there's a pretty huge difference between "if you buy stock, you get the right to vote" and "you have inherent human rights including but not limited to the ones enumerated by a written constitution")
Peter Thiel and his ilk absolutely adore what China has done. You have an elite - in this case, the CCP - that is entitled to their position by law. It bills itself as the "best and brightest" of society and has ideological constraints that it gets to impose on its members through the cadre system. The rest of the population labors for the benefit of this elite with little-to-no input on the operation of the ruling class.
That's what Thiel wants, just with his kind in the positions of power. It'd eliminate any opposition to what they imagine as the "right" way of doing things and reduce the friction to the creation of economic value for their holdings.
Note that "friction" in this case means things like human rights, democracy, competition, workers rights, etc.
This sounds like a lot more than your average flock installation at a local PD
https://salem.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=7375982...
OpenALPR is not open source despite the open name, sigh
(Not updated in years though.)
do not have the money to invest in developing a camera system that is sovereignly owned by the city
What Flock is selling is the whole package: The hardware (including power, networking, and the pole), the software, the infrastructure, the logic design, the connectivity. For someone who doesn't want to operate and support a wide area network of IoT devices, you can see why "just give them money to watch your streets" looks appealing.
Police get access to software no costs (AFAIK) for BOLO alerts on tags.
(Go check the FCC docs for X4GS06009 and note that there's a Quectel KG100S sitting on the power supply board. https://fccid.io/X4GS06009)
> "Some locals have taken matters into their own hands by dismantling Flock cameras and covering them with trash bags"
This techcrunch article incorrectly characterizes this need and required behavior as something done by random citizens. But it is actually the cities themselves having to resort to it, totally officially and legally, because of Flock behaving badly.
https://highways.dot.gov/safety/local-rural/maintenance-sign...
I do not want to live in a society that is under 24/7 surveillance. Of course, if the cops can watch everything you do all the time, there will be less crime. But that is not a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
I disagree there. If cops watch us at all times then more crimes will be prosecuted, think they'll just sit bored with nothing happening? They will find things, real or not.
The reality is that crime is way down, we do not need more enforcement. Leave us alone already. https://www.opencrime.us/years
If you think cops like cracking heads and dealing with petty crime that they'll just invent otherwise and use to harass people, you're out of your mind. You really need to get out more.
The second is not. There are absolutely people who take pleasure in the bullying behavior cops are often associated with. They're the ones who want the cushy jobs in Greenwich but don't get them (probably for the aforementioned reasons in many cases) and wind up being doubly punitive and cruel to people in Bridgeport.
>If you think cops like cracking heads
They adore getting to crack heads. That's the entire reason they became cops. They love being able to use their power, rightfully or not, they don't really care.
Cops themselves say this!
You can enjoy your "freedom", but based on the real estate prices, I think more people have my preference.
Most crime is spontaneous. Plenty of examples from across the world that installing cameras or other checks at best shifts crime to other areas.
Flock is essentially a private loophole that creates a nationwide dragnet.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Ben Franklin
In CA: Kostas Linardos had 17 tickets — including for speeding, reckless driving and street racing — and had been in four collisions. Then, in November 2022, he gunned his Ram 2500 truck as he entered a Placer County highway and slammed into the back of a disabled sedan, killing a toddler, court records show. He’s now facing felony manslaughter charges.
In December of last year, while that case was open, the DMV renewed his driver’s license.
https://calmatters.org/investigation/2025/04/license-to-kill...
Voting in CA:In most cases, a California voter is not required to show identification to a polling place worker before casting a ballot
https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voting-resources/voting-cal...
3D printer regulation: A.B. 2047 goes further than any other legislation on algorithmic print-blocking by making it a misdemeanor for the owners of these devices to disable, deactivate, or otherwise circumvent these mandated algorithms. Not only does this effectively criminalize use of any third-party, open-source 3D printer firmware, but it also enables print-blocking algorithms to parallel anti-consumer behaviors seen with DRM.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/dangers-californias-le...
the flock scam was engineered to be resilient to political pressure by giving departments and jursidictions this fake exit ability while the data continues to be harvested, it is a noose that only tightens; the amount of flock cameras recording only ever goes up not down.
Here is a podcast about it. https://internationalflavor.podbean.com/e/the-surveillance-s...
On the other hand, it wouldn't be surprising if a single county commissioner got in trouble for just deciding by fiat to take civic infrastructure down himself. That's not a power county commissioners have. Was there a county board vote authorizing that action?
Sorry if this is answered in the pod, don't have time for it immediately.
In this case, the county voted for an ordinance banning them. Ike was threatened saying your going to be charged this is potentially state property, he did a sunshine request to see that they were privately owned by flock. Then he requested flock take them down but they didn't. After a few months he decided he will enforce the ordinance as the sheriff refused too.
He took them down brought them to his office. Then later 5 state officers (4 in plain clothing, one in uniform) were looking for him at his house. He brought them to the cameras and said here have them back.
Still got charged with theft somehow...
Moral of the story, that doesn't really sound like democracy to me. That sounds like kinda the opposite of democracy.
Anyway it's worth a listen if you have time. This isn't how these things should go and shows there is a little more than meets the eye here. Even if citizens perfectly execute democracy, these things may not budge. And there is a larger net of protection keeping these in place.
[1]: https://www.sunshinerequest.com/
https://www.muckrock.com
IANAL but based on the facts available to me, they can't. It's a sham held up by intimidating local officials. The cameras were installed on public property, that's that.
If they somehow keep this nonsense running for very long, I'd anticipate a Meigs Field-esque incident at some point.
But if it's not tied to that, does that mean that anyone can install cameras anywhere? What grounds would they have to give permits to Flock while refusing them to other interested parties, like StalkingMyEx LLC. and CopTrack Corp.?
"With the contract set to expire on May 31st, the Sheriff’s Office informed Flock Safety that all 26 cameras must be removed by that date. When removal did not occur, the Sheriff’s Office took steps to ensure the cameras were not in use and placed covers over them."
https://www.danecounty.gov/PressDetail/11899
I submitted a CCPA request to them to give me and delete everything they had on me.
Their response is that they own no data, and I have to make the request to their customer, whomever that may be.
If they're retaining any identifying data about me and then selling it to new customers, they are explicitly violating CCPA.
This allows them to promise that they don't keep any data and have strict retention policies etc. to jurisdictions that are on the fence or where the contract-purchasers are constrained by law in some way, but they can transfer identifying information at any point in the future to any customer, by mixing raw data and a model.
How could this seriously hold legal weight? The data is identifiable. Just because it’s gated by some transformation doesn’t mean they are magically not holding my identifiable information.
Can they? Does anyone know the terms of these contracts? Does flock just look the other way if a licensee just gives away the data to some other entity without getting a fee for it? I can see arguments on both sides from flock's perspective, i.e., revenue vs lock-in.
People with electric saws love pulling them down.
They're only as permanent as their protection.
Especially if the propellant tank is pressurized using a solar powered compressor.
(Theoretically, of course. I wouldn’t advocate destroying private property.)
Would you take the knife out of your robber? Or is that stealing private property?
Surveillance endangers society/democracy and it's a threat too
I think the general idea is that if you could (legally) go stand in that public space (sidewalks, roads, parks) and watch something happen then you're allowed to record what you see.
This is probably good - I think it's the basis of being able to record misbehavior (by private citizens and/or the police), for example.
In contrast you're generally not allowed to record stuff happening in a private space unless everyone's been informed that this will happen.
This is why you'll see signs saying "Warning - this place is under surveillance" signs on every single door going into a corporation that wants to use security cameras.
People shouldn't expect privacy in public, sure. They should expect they may be overheard or witnessed. But that's not really equivalent to mass surveillance and long-term recording
"You should not expect privacy in public" does not imply "you should expect no privacy and you should expect everything you do is recorded and stored forever"
if the cameras continue recording, LA can subpoena those recordings on an as needed basis.
No problem paying taxes - my entire gripe is with what what the moneys spent on