Hacker News

This breakdown in rule of law is unfortunate. Ideally, this would be handled by, in order of desirability:

  - Flock decision-makers and customers holding ethics as a priority, and not taking the actions they are due to sense of duty, community, morals etc
  - Peer pressure resulting in ostracization of Flock execs and decision makers until they stop the unethical behavior
  - Governments using legislation and law enforcement to prevent the cameras being used in the way they are

Below this, is citizens breaking the law to address the situation, e.g. through this destruction. It is not ideal, but it is necessary when the higher-desirability options are not working.

> While some communities are calling on their cities to end their contracts with Flock, others are taking matters into their own hands.

This is absolutely the right thing to do.

Remove and smash the cellular modem in your car while you are at it.

If I was someone on the run, then I would just get a fake license plate. They record plates on the interstates as well. Also, they have cameras and presumably can alert of a certain make and model + color car trailer on AI near a last seen area. Only way to bypass that is by swapping cars or getting a really generic popular car.

Yet everybody is happy giving plaid and therefore palintir there entire financial history and future data

These kinds of headlines always read like wishful thinking on the author's part more than a real trend

Recent: Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras (bloodinthemachine.com) | 456 points by latexr 2 days ago | 293 comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47095134

Kind of weird all of those people weren't all up in arms about it before the whole ice thing, why would you be mad that they're tracking somebody else but not mad that they have been slurping up data about your movements and habits this whole time, then monetizing said data by selling it to industries like insurance companies etc.

Good. Flock deserves it. So, do all big tech companies that have been "move fast break things"

> broken and smashed Flock cameras

I wonder how resistant the cameras are to strong handheld lasers. I suppose they could harden them against some common wavelengths with filters, but that'd affect the image clarity in normal use.

it's wild to me that Americand accept a private company plastering their town with surveillance cameras, given you know, everything

Additionally, that you draw the line at sharing that juicy data with law enforcement. I mean sure, yeah, but even before that, sharing essentially all your movement data with some company because...?

Could someone explain how they are doing this, safely and without detection or damage to municipal property?

The easier fix seems like doxxing politicians and embarrassing them until they protect all of their constituents against things like this. We got a small modicum of privacy with the Video Privacy Protection Act [0] after Bork's video rental history was going to be released.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=video+r...

Doesn’t that just mean Flock makes more money from making replacements?

America is really now two Americas. The divide between traditional freedoms and neo-authoritarianism is getting wider. But America is so large that even the minority (just) that believes in freedom is still 167 million people. Even if only a small percentage of that number, from either side of the divide, believes in violent activism, things are going to get worse before they get better.

All they had to do was not air a very expensive superbowl commercial

Why were those installed in the first place?

> Merchant reports instances of broken and smashed Flock cameras in La Mesa, California, just weeks after the city council approved the continuation of Flock cameras deployed in the city, despite a clear majority of attendees favoring their shutdown.

Well who could've seen that coming.

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47095134

This is my America. Bravo.

good.

A little direct action a day, keeps the fascists away

God Bless America

Oh no.

[dead]

GOOD

This site is turning into an echo chamber for antifa apologists. Reddit take 2. I think I’m done. The signal to noise ratio is so low with all the “AI” slop spam, far-left extreme political content where any dissent is flagged into oblivion, and generally just pointless fluff.

HN was special while it lasted o7

Waow (based based based)

The authors misspelled “domestic terrorists”.

This is really bad for all the reasons that people have mentioned (vigilante "justice" never is a good thing) but people have a misplaced understanding of right and wrong here. Flock cameras have helped solve some major crimes, and people will be glad to have this technology around if they are ever a victim.