"Thankfully, we live in a beautifully democratic and capitalistic society where we can fight in court."
Of course he's "thankful" for that, since in our "beautifully democratic and capitalistic" society, Flock can use their $658 million of VC funding [1] to wage lawfare against the have-nots with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers. [2]
It isn't even just about money. It's more apparent than ever that freedom, democracy, justice, human rights in this country are increasily reserved for those with the right political alignments.
Same as it's ever been. When the founders of this country cried about freedom, they meant for themselves to not pay taxes that would cover their debts, not freedom for their slaves or lower-class Americans. After all if you are at the top, then you are literally free to do as you wish
Which also tends to lean on a political set. But poor people will be deprived of their liberties be them left or right. For those useful to power it will take just a little bit longer to notice.
Why not? They hold all the cards and have aligned one of the most powerful governments in the world with them, while wielding enough money to make almost any nation, let alone individual, more inclined toward doing what they need. They will only become more powerful.
Cards that only work because of the current system that they hacking away at. Revolutions tend to eat their young, wannabe American oligarchs should check on how things turned out for the majority of post-soviet Russian oligarchs.
Authoritarian regimes don’t run on facts. They run on the primacy of Authority. Cameras record factual information. Facts are inconvenient for Authority. You know, 1984 Department of Truth style.
Yes, that if, the most powerful government stays intact. But as it turns out, tech CEOs want to dissolve the nation state and its government to implement their vision of a utopia. The same nation state, the same government that protect their interests and assets, and make lawfare possible in the first place.
I know about these plans, but even if they end up happening to their fullest extent, I don't see why people are so unanimously predicting that they'll definitely fumble the bag. By the time this can happen, they will almost certainly have the most advanced weaponry available and enormous groups of people working on defending them. Again, they can buy anything. In their dream world, power descends directly from them, making their governments obsolete. The direct power of the governments isn't just erased, it'll transition into their hands.
Tech CEOs are not statesmen, even if they consider themselves smart enough to govern. Nor are they warriors, and historically speaking, feudal lords were trained from early childhood in both the art of war and the art of governing. What I mean by that is that these people have no experience of governing, nor do they have any experience of violence and the horrors of war, i.e. they do not have the competence for being feudal lords, and network states or libertarian communes are essentially feudal-like arrangements. What will they do, if they are confronted with large nation-states such as China or Russia? What will they do when other small states don't respect the libertarian non-aggression principle? Will the Andreessens, Thiel and Zuckerbergs of this world be respected by the military, or will they shit their pants when
confronted with a military coup, or worse, the enemy's military?
Yes the rich have "all the cards" but the thing about societal reorganization is things get completely flip-flopped and the fact society recognizes you as owning a mansion and a screw factory today doesn't mean that they won't recognize Castro's lieutenant as controlling it tomorrow.
Possessions that are "yours" are only yours insofar as you can either defend it or others recognize it as yours. Thus you end up with situations like "Barbeque" in Haiti owning the streets and much of the rich's land/assets are now magically in the hands of barbeque or his crew and whatever money that one thought they could use to resist that turned out to not be their money anymore. The "rich" thus still hold all the cards but who is rich and who isn't isn't the same as when it started.
Cards can always be taken with violence. Chaos is progression to a state of all versus all, where the most important thing is having the biggest wrench: https://xkcd.com/538/.
And they will almost certainly have the biggest wrench. Before you consider the sheer difficulty of making mass violence happen (especially in a world where tech can be used to regulate a sufficient portion of people's worldviews as required), at some point they'll probably just have the upper hand militarily. As military tech gets better, wealth will be able to shift directly into physical power, amplifying their abilities against a comparatively powerless populace.
> Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (Russian: Николай Иванович Ежов, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ (j)ɪˈʐof]; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940), also spelt Ezhov, was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, at the height of the Great Purge. Yezhov organized mass arrests, torture, and executions during the Great Purge, but he fell out of favour with Stalin and was arrested, subsequently admitting in a confession to a range of anti-Soviet activity including "unfounded arrests" during the Purge. He was executed in 1940 along with others who were blamed for the Purge.
This guy was head of the secret police, didn’t help him out when he was purged aka murdered.
Apple has more cash reserves on hand than most countries do and yet its CEO had to scramble to stand behind Trump during the inauguration and offer a million-dollar tribute to stay in his good graces. Power > money.
The rich are increasingly uninterested in keeping up appearances.
And really, why should they? We've learned now that there was actually a worldwide network of child rapists purchasing girls from other wealthy child traffickers in positions of power in seemingly every Western nation, and the consensus thus far is to do exactly nothing about it.
I still argue that our current capitalist system is nothing more than an extension of the Norman system. Only capitalist executives see even less of the humanity of their ‘customers’ and the damage from their policies/maximal extraction than medieval lords saw in the serfs of the village that their policies/maximal extraction impacted.
Moments later (~1:13) he also said "we aren't forcing Flock on anyone"
False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE
No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled. And no, under the radar agreements with local cops and govts do NOT constitute my permission to be surveilled. If they want to go in with fully informed referendums in each community, then I'd accept it. But that is not Flock's business model.
> If they want to go in with fully informed referendums in each community, then I'd accept it.
I might accept it for this specific case. But, in general, just because the majority wants to do something doesn't mean it's legitimate to force everyone to accept it.
> No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled
As much as I dislike Flock, this is bad logic. There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces. Public spaces are defined by being public, in that everyone (even governments/corporations!) is free to observe everyone else in that same setting.
So in reality, everyone has permitted themselves to be surveilled, purely through the act of being in public.
This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America.
If this is what they thought was possible, why write the 4th Amendment?
Unreasonable search and overbearing government was one of the key issues of the American Revolution.
> I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety - Ben Frank
There's a ton of difference between a random person noting my presence at a single point in space-time and a commercial entity tracking and storing my movements all the time.
Being okay with people watching me in public does not imply being okay with someone aggregating the information about my whereabouts 24/7 even though it's "the same" information.
Btw it's a fallacy similar to the one debunked in "what colour are your bits". The context matters, not just the abstract information.
This is an unfortunate thing about a whole lot of legal precedent in the US.
Courts made a pretty reasonable set of tradeoffs around the 4th amendment for search warrant vs. subpoena, police officers observing you, etc.
During the 19th century.
Unfortunately, modern data processing completely undermines a lot of the rationale about how reasonable and intrusive various things are. Before, cops couldn't follow and surveil everyone; blanket subpoenas to get millions of peoples' information weren't possible because the information wasn't concentrated in one entity's hands and compliance would have been impossible; etc.
>This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
The idea that me an individual observing you, and a large, well funded company allied with the US government observing you has no difference, quite frankly, leads me to conclude* you are arguing in bad faith.
You can make an ideological argument that is the case, but not one based on fact and reality.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
If you followed me around all day taking photographs of my every move for no other reason than you felt like it, I would very likely have recourse via stalking and harassment laws.
There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology.
If I'm interesting enough to get a warrant for surveillance of my activities - fair game. Private investigators operate under a set of reasonable limits and must be licensed in most (all?) states for this reason as well.
It's quite obvious laws have simply not caught up with the state of modern technology that allows for the type of data collection and thus mass-surveillance that is now possible today. If you went back 50 years ago and asked anyone on the street if it was okay that every time they left the house their travel history would be recorded indefinitely they would talk to you about communist dystopias that could never happen here due to the 2nd amendment.
But Flock doesn't "follow you around"? It's fixed location cameras. If you avoid the locations, you avoid the cameras, and thus the tracking.
> There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology.
I feel like it's telling that no one has yet taken this logic to court. I think that means that while there may be no difference to you there is a difference according to the law. This gets at your later point.
Speaking of:
> If you went back 50 years ago and asked anyone on the street if it was okay that every time they left the house their travel history would be recorded indefinitely they would talk to you about communist dystopias that could never happen here due to the 2nd amendment.
I think you're doing a subtle motte-and-bailey here. As far as I'm aware, Flock has strict retention policies, numbering in the low single-digit months (Google says 30 days "by default"). There is no "recorded indefinitely" here, which significantly changes the characteristics of the argument here. This is roughly on par with CCTV systems, to the best of my knowledge.
I don't disagree that laws haven't caught up yet, but I also think a lot of the arguments against Flock are rife with hyperbolic arguments like this that do meaningfully misrepresent their model. I think this leads to bad solutioning, as a consequence.
I'd much rather have good solutions here than bad ones, because ALPRs and other "surveillance technologies" do drive improvements in crime clearance rates/outcomes, so they shouldn't be banned--just better controlled/audited/overseen
As the owner of a moral person (a company), I disagree.
There are even weirder stuff than companies being considered a "moral person". For example if a person speeds way too much in France (say more than 50 kilometers/hour above the speed limit on the highway, e.g. 180 km/h // 111 mph instead of the 130 km/h // 80 mph)... Well then that person gets arrested. And his driving license is confiscated on the spot. But here's the absolute crazy thing: even if the car belong to someone else, to a company, to a rental company... Doesn't matter: the French state consider that the car itself was complicit in the act. So the car is seized too (for 8 days if it doesn't belong to the person who was driving it and potentially much more if it does belong to the person driving it).
Companies are persons and cars (I'm not even talking about self-driving cars) have rights and obligations. That's the world we live in.
they could instead be limiting flock to private places.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
if you followed me everywhere and took pictures of me everywhwre i went outside from my door in the morning to my door in the evening, id want to get a restraining order on you as a stalker. this is stalking
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you from a park bench in public and hundreds of thousands of clones of me watching you from every street corner in public is, quite frankly, bogus
To paraphrase the quote, quantity has a quality of its own.
Mountain View recently turned off their Flock installs after they discovered Flock had enabled data sharing without notice and other agencies were searching through MV data.
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-came...
> A separate “statewide lookup” feature had also been active on 29 of the city’s 30 cameras since the initial installation, running for 17 straight months until Mountain View found and disabled it on January 5. Through that tool, more than 250 agencies that had never signed any data agreement with Mountain View ran an estimated 600,000 searches over a single year, according to local paper the Mountain View Voice, which first uncovered the issue after filing a public records request.
A different town (Staunton, VA) also turned of their Flock installs after their CEO sent out an email claming:
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-ceo-goes-...
> The attacks aren't new. You've been dealing with this for forever, and we've been dealing with this since our founding, from the same activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness. Now, they're producing YouTube videos with misleading headlines.
I'd like to see a database of municipalities that have passed an ordinance banning these systems (including 12 hour drone flyovers like they've been doing in Camden, NJ; drones are fine for specific or exigent circumstances, but flying them systematically is concerning!).
In fact, if anyone knows of municipalities that have done so let me know. I'd like to spend tourist money in those places that I haven't been able to spend in authoritarian-leaning locales as a reward for valuing freedom over suffocation of the constitution for little to no benefit.
> A statement provided by a Flock Safety spokesperson said, “Flock helps law enforcement, including hundreds of agencies around Illinois, solve crimes and make communities safer, and we are proud of the results we have achieved in partnership with the Evanston PD. We continue to be optimistic that we will have the opportunity to have a constructive dialogue to address the City’s concerns, and resume our successful partnership making Evanston safer.” [0]
Hows that for taking no as an answer? My god, we are in big trouble if this is going to be a regular thing. IMHO we need to shut this country down.
"...and then unfortunately there is terroristic organizations like DeFlock, whose primary motivation is chaos. They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else."
"We're not forcing Flock on anyone..."
It is a short 1:32 video, I encourage people to watch it for themselves.
I thought DeFlock was just publishing locations of cameras and lawfully convincing local governments to not use Flock, primarily through FOIA requests.
Twenty-some years back, I attended a talk by a classicist who was talking about how the Romans, Caesar specifically I think, basically used "pirate" the same way.
Oh so Antifa is a single formal political party with card carrying members, a clear leadership structure and participation in mainstream public political life? I had no idea. Your analogy makes perfect sense. Where is the Antifa national headquarters?
"Despite the name, The Party of Peace and Love is actually authoritarian and horribly repressive, as you can see from the millions of people they've killed."
"Despite the name, Antifa is not just 'anti-fascist' but is actually _________"
The blank is "the OTHER group". Like brown people, poor people, and (say it quickly so it doesn't get too noticed) women.
And anyone from the OTHER group is the enemy. Stop thinking, you have arrived to the conclusion. Now, here are some news ... I mean, entertainment, to make you fear them more.
__an identity claimed by people who are taking direct action against what they perceive as fascism, but currently more often the term is applied as an unthinking boogeyman by right wing authoritarians__
"Antifa" is understood as violent communist street thugs by most huge swaths of people. You may not think that's accurate, but that's the definition he is calling to mind.
That's the intent but most people know it's not true. It's right up there with "woke" and "progressive" as generic, shapeless, boogeyman words. No real meaning besides "something bad".
Pretty sure most who claim the mantle of “Antifa” would welcome that Communist label, and plenty would endorse violence if it’s against the “right” people, so if the shoe fits…
They're kinda famous for punching people (physically) unprovoked at this point. There was a whole discourse around it that comes back up pretty regularly, I don't know how you could miss it.
The air quotes around 'right' are interesting there. Yes, violence against Nazis and Fascists is acceptable. Do you disagree? I thought it was pretty much settled, we did a whole world war about it.
"A majority of individuals involved are anarchists, communists, and socialists, although some social democrats also participate in the antifa movement. The name antifa and the logo with two flags representing anarchism and communism are derived from the German antifa movement." [0]
Ah yes, I too conflate bills written by organized lobbyists with a loosely affiliated group that says American shouldn't be ran by Nazi's. The Nazi's running America get very mad about that and ensure to flood the airwaves with how cities in the US are mile wide smoking craters due to people who don't like authoritarians.
The point GP was making, which holds as a general rule, is that simply adopting a moniker does not necessarily mean that it accurately describes you. Your argument pre-supposed that just because Antifa self-describes as antifascist, it inherently is, and that the CEO was expressing an opposition to the concept of antifascism, rather than simply expressing opposition to the specific group.
If Antifa’s record speaks for itself, then you don’t need to play these kinds of word games. If some CEO spoke unflatteringly of The Red Cross or Habitat For Humanity, that would say more about them than anything, not because they have virtuous sounding names (though they admittedly do) but because they’ve established a specific track record of public service.
I don't even know what antifa _is_ anymore, honestly. I only see it used as a boogie man by the right in discourse online.
But I _do_ know that when someone tags someone as "antifa" they are making a political statement and aligning themselves with a certain group that perceives "antifa" a certain way. "See, I hate those damn' antifa terrorists, I'm in the same camp as you! Please help my company make money!"
> The point GP was making, which holds as a general rule, is that simply adopting a moniker does not necessarily mean that it accurately describes you.
I'm deeply curious why you think someone would identify as an anti-fascist if they were not, in fact, anti-fascist. Do you think they just really like the flag logo or...?
>Ah yes, I too conflate bills written by organized lobbyists with a loosely affiliated group that says American shouldn't be ran by Nazi's.
Somebody doesn't understand analogies, so let me spell it out explicitly for you:
Approximately nobody is against "antifa" because they're fighting "fascists". Here's an excerpt from wikipedia:
>Antifa activists' actions have since received support and criticism from various organizations and pundits. Some on the political left and some civil rights organizations criticize antifa's willingness to adopt violent tactics, which they describe as counterproductive and dangerous, arguing that these tactics embolden the political right and their allies.[13] Both Democratic and Republican politicians have condemned violence from antifa.[14][15][16][17] Many right-wing politicians and groups have characterized antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, or use antifa as a catch-all term,[18] which they adopt for any left-leaning or liberal protest actions.[19] According to some scholars, antifa is a legitimate response to the rise of the far right.[20][21] Scholars tend to reject an equivalence between antifa and right-wing extremism.[2][22][23] Some research suggests that most antifa action is nonviolent.[24][25][26]
Those allegations might not have merit, and it's okay to have a productive discussion over the merits of that, but it's wholly unjustified to round everyone who oppose antifa off to "they're against antifa because they're fascists, because why else would you be against a group that's anti-fascist?". Doing so is making the same mistake as the PATRIOT act above. It's fine to be against the patriot act, or even support it. But it's totally poor reasoning to skip all that logic and go with "you oppose the PATRIOT act so you must be not a patriot".
I know we're not supposed to talk about it, but what in the world is happening to this site? Mistaking 'Antifa' for 'the concept of opposing fascism' is not the kind of failure mode I expect here. And this kind of thing has become endemic lately- emotive noise and sarcastic dunks drowning out substance in every thread, especially since the beginning of December. Or am I just imagining this?
> Approximately nobody is against "antifa" because they're fighting "fascists".
So, I will say that far right, comservatives and fascists are against anti-fascism of any kind. Whether it is the boogeyman antifa or anything else. And there are a lot of people like that. Including in goverment.
They do take issue with anyone who openly opposes fascism.
Funny thing is that in my German neighborhood we have Antifa stickers pretty much on any other street lamp. Given the fascist tendencies all around it actually makes me feel safer...
> in my German neighborhood we have Antifa stickers pretty much on any other street lamp. Given the fascist tendencies all around it actually makes me feel safer
My Polish-German godmother asked me, as a kid, "who would you hide."
I didn't get the question. And 6-year old me wasn't ready for Holocaust with grandma. But it comes back to me from time to time.
Who would you hide. Who would you stake your wealth and life on to keep from undeserved suffering. The stickers are good. But they only mean something if you're willing to fight for them. At least in America, I'm unconvinced most sticker-toters are willing to sacrifice anything. (It's what makes Minnesota and Texas different.)
Is there a general term for metastatic semantic overinclusivity?
Terrorist. Racist. Colonist. Fascist. Historically-rooted and precise terms that are collectively decohering in a self-amplifying and propagating way as everyone feels increasingly free to detach more and more words from their original meanings.
you have seriously got to read and understand Eco's 14 tenets of Ur-Fascism [0] if you think that contemporary applications of the term "fascist" are inaccurate in describing what's happening right now in the US.
> if you think that contemporary applications of the term "fascist" are inaccurate in describing what's happening right now in the US
Didn't say that. I'm saying I've seen the term thrown around wildly to apply to all manner of things. Like the other terms.
The term is probably fundamentally fucked. If you asked Hitler if he's a Nazi, he'd say yes. If you asked Mussolini if he's a Fascist, he'd say yes. These were the words they used to describe themselves. The reason I'm describing the phenomenon versus blaming the folks using the terms broadly is because I don't think this is a personal failing by anyone as much as something that's linguistically happening.
The thing is the billionaires are terrified of US. The point of these surveillance systems isn't to make us safer. Because we're actually pretty safe already. We're not going to be assassinated, kidnapped, or beaten because we pissed someone off.
It's to make people like Garrett Langley feel protected from us.
> The thing is the billionaires are terrified of US.
Are they though? The odds of any kind of coordinated response that could seriously threaten the billionaires seem next-to-none. Flock seems to be a lot more offensive than defensive - it enables the targeting and mass surveillance in order to find and punish the 'right people', as well as mass tracking to create yet another datapoint to understand the way people move, think and coordinate. The defensive side is already covered through internet services, like social media. They don't have much to fear. I reckon that a powerful/rich enough person could kill a stranger on the street in plain view of a huge crowd and have absolutely nothing happen to them.
Friend of mine used to work for a single digit billionaire. No one you know. His name barely comes up in a search. He said he found out after a few years that the guy had been kidnapped and held for ransom.
INTERVIEWER: Surveillance is becoming more prevalent everywhere. There's an organization called Deflock that's become fairly well-known in activist circles. They take an aggressive approach—counting cameras and maintaining a Discord channel where they discuss potential activities to move against surveillance expansion and stop organizations like Flock. What's your perspective on this organization and their methods?
FLOCK CEO: I see two distinct groups of activists here. There are organizations like the ACLU and the EFF that take an above-board approach to fighting for their viewpoint. We're fortunate to live in a democratic, capitalistic country where we can fight through the courts. I have a lot of respect for those groups because they engage in reasonable debate while following the law.
FLOCK CEO: Unfortunately, there are also what I'd call terroristic organizations like Deflock, whose primary motivation appears to be chaos. They're closer to Antifa than anything else. That's disappointing because I don't want chaos - I value law and order and a society built on safety.
FLOCK CEO: For those groups, I think it's regrettable they haven't chosen a more constructive approach to achieve their goals. They do have the right to their views, but that's why we have a democratically elected process. We're not forcing Flock on anyone. Elected officials understand that communities and families want safety, and Flock is the best way to create safe communities.
INTERVIEWER: Deflock probably wouldn't agree with the "terroristic" label you've applied to them, but...
----
Yeah. "They have a right to their views" buuut also, they are terrorists, and implicitly therefore deserve to have their freedom taken away because of said views. So giving the public a map of flock cameras and organizing to advocate against these being used in our communities is terroristic, I suppose. There's one party here that should be in jail here. Seems like that ought to be the creeps that are filming everyone against their consent, but I guess that makes me a terrorist...
the more prosaic (the bear case) POV is that physically mounted outdoor street cameras have the same enforcement limitations as most other enforcement support technologies. flock isn't really bringing "number of unseen crimes" down from 1 to zero, he's bringing it from like 1000 to 999. a flock being easy to disable by a lay person, and a street corner not having witnesses - they're the same thing, it just isn't as good of a technology as he says (or people imagine) it to be.
so at the very beginning, the thing that threatens him the most is: simple ideas that sound objective and that make Gary Tan wary of putting $50m instead of $25m.
that said, very few things do that, bring "unseen crime" from N to 0. for example, legalization of something does that! he has found a very successful business nonetheless. it's more interesting to explore why. if he wanted to level constructive criticism at Deflock, i suppose we should wonder: how do they disrupt enterprise sales? flock is just, yet another failed IT project. it shouldn't be too hard. obviously, the best thing you can do is getting elected, and simply putting it in the law to not adopt the technology.
This is an excellent video documenting some Flock camera vulnerabilities by Benn Jordan, a security hobbyist/researcher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY. It's a bit long, but worth it.
His work on this and similar topics is very good, he has deep technical insight and is a good communicator, but it's a bit funny seeing him referred to as a security hobbyist as in my mind he's a musical genius and one of the greatest living US musicians/programmers.
It's amazing at how terrorism has been re-defined. When I was a kid you had to blow up skyscrapers or planes (or both at the same time), set off bombs in a crowded area, or a specifically targeted mass shooter to be labelled a terrorist.
Yeah really does show you how it's now (actually for some time) just a label, conveniently morphing over time for people/groups you don't like, losing any actual meaning because it's applied so liberally.
And it's ironic because there are clearly "real terrorists" (i.e. 9/11 guys).
I wonder how he would feel about a competitor putting a flock-like camera outside his house so that anyone who wants to can learn whenever any car, perhaps his car, enters or leaves his home driveway.
Would he be happy with this, or would he become a "terrorist" by objecting?
There are tens of millions of people pirating software and media and blocking ads. There are not enough prisons to hold them all so the law is not enforceable at that scale.
Likewise there have always been and will always be effective non violent forms of resistance with sufficient systems of coordination and communication, because the public is always larger in number than the oppressors.
Everything about his body language screams, "I'm doing something slimy and I know it, but here, listen to these words spoken authoritatively whilst I wave my hands around and forget about it."
This statement essentially boils down to "The only right way to fight me is in an environment where I expect to win"
That's how you know the DeFlock strategy is effective. They aren't playing the game that the CEO wants to play, they are playing the actual game.
The actual game is minimizing the impact of cameras that are now everywhere.
Some individuals may take it upon themselves to vandalize the cameras, which can't be planned via conspiracy (that would be illegal), but those radical individuals can be "set up for success" through information.
This strategy of creating an environment where effective vandalism is easy, is also part of the actual game.
Their are documented cases of Flock cameras that can see into private residences. What if one of those cameras recorded an underage person? Would Flock be responsible for collecting and distributing CSAM?
There are those who have been propagandized to fear a vast, powerful and streamlined domestic terrorist organization, those people are just not too bright. Then there are those who realize that anyone vaguely identifying as anti-fascist must be their enemy.
I'm honestly tired of all these knuckleheads. They've got a few bucks in their bank accounts and pretend that makes them smarter than everyone else. They're just gaming the system, nothing more, and they have every incentive to keep it alive.
He can shove his cameras deep in his ** as far as I'm concerned.
The "system" is not hapless or ignorant here. In fact, this company would not exist, if the "system" didn't have specific desires to effectively enslave the entire population.
Who wouldn't want to become a new age digital pharaoh? Wouldn't this be precisely the type of panopticon they would try to create?
I “like” how Overton window (??? I hope I use it right) shifted dramatically in USA.
- “law and order” is “good”, when _de facto_ most of constitution is not being applied for a year and laws or court orders are applied selectively. Not to say that “law and order” is vastly different depending on the size of your bank account;
- “terrorist” now is anything you don’t like, especially if it’s anti establishment. True freedom of speech is now apparently “violence” (and of course this dictatorial (adjacent) government would think that, as it’s biggest danger);
- “antifa” is apparently now a boogeyman, though I’d say he used it correctly as he is (apparently) fascist;
Also it is forced against people, how population can choose otherwise?
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition...There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Does anyone have a template for a network audit that one could request of a local police department that would disclose access logs for Flock Safety data?
A lot of jurisdictions actually require the data to be public! For example, ctrl-f "download csv" on this page for central LA PD: https://transparency.flocksafety.com/central-la-pd- . Not all jurisdictions require this, but if you can guess the URLs (https://transparency.flocksafety.com/<DEPARTMENT ID>) you can find quite a few, or just Google "YOUR PD flock safety portal". (EDIT: You'll want to regularly download these if you're trying to build a comprehensive record. The PDs I've been monitoring are only required to keep data for 30 days, so the CSVs are just a rolling window cut off at EXACTLY today minus 30 days.)
This guy gives all villain vibes you see in futuristic movies, funny how he resembles a young version of “Fletcher” in minority report movie, a movie about mass surveillance to provide a “safer community” to all.
Flock btw isn’t just an ALPR, it is a car finger printing technology, I have seen some videos of police IDing cars with no plates and they knew the owner by using flock cams.
The TV series Person of Interest [1] becomes more on point as years go by, even though by now it has been 15 years since its S1. One of the scenes [2] from that series where "terrorist" are shown as being in control over ghoulish CEOs like the one from this posted video.
These clean-shaven wide-eyed SV types give me the uncanny valley heebie-jeebies. Everything, from their tone of voice, to their appearance, to (most importantly) the way they phrase things... there's an almost AI-generated quality.
Anyone aware of people doing something like over here in Europe? And how legal/illegal it might be? I'm talking about putting government-operated security cameras on a map, for the general public to be aware of their locations.
These wretched wastes of skin that contribute to the surveillance system need to have the full brunt of that same surveillance apparatus turned toward them full time, published for all to see. This should include elected officials that voted for and paid for these systems as well. You don't want a system that allows more anonymous movement? You want that data collected and stored and collated and analyzed without end? Ok, pull down your pants and have yourselves offered up as the first and most prominent ones to be tracked and then see if you change your tune.
Good luck trying to subject them to the same level of scrutiny. They live in places with high walls and armed guards, a lot of them don't even drive themselves if they drive at all. Even when using helicopters or planes their private ownership means a lower level of scrutiny. "The plane" was a big part of how Epstein was able to do what he did. Obviously, these types never step foot on public transit.
Even if hypothetically speaking you could support volunteers to follow them around and film them, I would think the asymmetry of resources would practically make it impossible. It's not about privacy, it's about wealth. Take their wealth away and then they'll actually have to live the way they tell you to. They don't care because they don't live in the world they are creating, you do.
Seems like “terrorists” = citizens standing up for their rights. We aren’t past the point of no return but we are rapidly approaching it. What will it be Americans? Liberty or death?
It was originally shortened in German from ”Antifaschistische Aktion” and ”Außerparlamentarische Opposition”. Then that carried over to other languages as a common name. Feel free to go back to the roots! ;)
disregarding the history of the term, you see that even posters on Hacker News Dot Com dispute the accuracy of the term "fascism" as applied to contemporary american politics, so what difference would it make? people who are okay with fascistic politics will not distinguish opposition with a name change.
Our city council voted 5-0 to install more. A unanimous vote which includes democrats who ran on disrupting a council that had the same members for decades.
I swear, every fascist has the same playbook. They use the same phrases, same accusations, same lies, sometimes even same wordings. It is like they have a single hive mind - for which everyone else is the enemy and is subject to destruction or enslaving.
has anything ever good come out of silicon valley or the wall street? one greedy capitalist after another and you wonder why the world has turn to a shithole! the inequality between the rich and the poor is reaching the level of ambani vs. mumbai slums.
"Thankfully, we live in a beautifully democratic and capitalistic society where we can fight in court."
Of course he's "thankful" for that, since in our "beautifully democratic and capitalistic" society, Flock can use their $658 million of VC funding [1] to wage lawfare against the have-nots with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers. [2]
1. https://websets.exa.ai/websets/directory/flock-safety-fundin...
2. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/lobbyis...
Felony contempt of business model? Weak. Today, companies sue for terrorist contempt of business model!
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-busine...
It isn't even just about money. It's more apparent than ever that freedom, democracy, justice, human rights in this country are increasily reserved for those with the right political alignments.
Same as it's ever been. When the founders of this country cried about freedom, they meant for themselves to not pay taxes that would cover their debts, not freedom for their slaves or lower-class Americans. After all if you are at the top, then you are literally free to do as you wish
No, just the right amount of wealth.
Which also tends to lean on a political set. But poor people will be deprived of their liberties be them left or right. For those useful to power it will take just a little bit longer to notice.
The messed up thing is that despite what they think, these dudes will not thrive in the chaotic world they are trying to bring forth.
Why not? They hold all the cards and have aligned one of the most powerful governments in the world with them, while wielding enough money to make almost any nation, let alone individual, more inclined toward doing what they need. They will only become more powerful.
> Why not? They hold all the cards...
Cards that only work because of the current system that they hacking away at. Revolutions tend to eat their young, wannabe American oligarchs should check on how things turned out for the majority of post-soviet Russian oligarchs.
Authoritarian regimes don’t run on facts. They run on the primacy of Authority. Cameras record factual information. Facts are inconvenient for Authority. You know, 1984 Department of Truth style.
well if you never read about how any of those work you might think that.
In reality they are very much interested in facts, because they give them info who to oppress harder
When you control the cameras you can memory hole any inconvenient truths.
They will have the AI just make a video of you doing whatever they feel like accusing you of and publish that from a .gov website.
Yes, that if, the most powerful government stays intact. But as it turns out, tech CEOs want to dissolve the nation state and its government to implement their vision of a utopia. The same nation state, the same government that protect their interests and assets, and make lawfare possible in the first place.
I know about these plans, but even if they end up happening to their fullest extent, I don't see why people are so unanimously predicting that they'll definitely fumble the bag. By the time this can happen, they will almost certainly have the most advanced weaponry available and enormous groups of people working on defending them. Again, they can buy anything. In their dream world, power descends directly from them, making their governments obsolete. The direct power of the governments isn't just erased, it'll transition into their hands.
Tech CEOs are not statesmen, even if they consider themselves smart enough to govern. Nor are they warriors, and historically speaking, feudal lords were trained from early childhood in both the art of war and the art of governing. What I mean by that is that these people have no experience of governing, nor do they have any experience of violence and the horrors of war, i.e. they do not have the competence for being feudal lords, and network states or libertarian communes are essentially feudal-like arrangements. What will they do, if they are confronted with large nation-states such as China or Russia? What will they do when other small states don't respect the libertarian non-aggression principle? Will the Andreessens, Thiel and Zuckerbergs of this world be respected by the military, or will they shit their pants when confronted with a military coup, or worse, the enemy's military?
Yes the rich have "all the cards" but the thing about societal reorganization is things get completely flip-flopped and the fact society recognizes you as owning a mansion and a screw factory today doesn't mean that they won't recognize Castro's lieutenant as controlling it tomorrow.
Possessions that are "yours" are only yours insofar as you can either defend it or others recognize it as yours. Thus you end up with situations like "Barbeque" in Haiti owning the streets and much of the rich's land/assets are now magically in the hands of barbeque or his crew and whatever money that one thought they could use to resist that turned out to not be their money anymore. The "rich" thus still hold all the cards but who is rich and who isn't isn't the same as when it started.
Cards can always be taken with violence. Chaos is progression to a state of all versus all, where the most important thing is having the biggest wrench: https://xkcd.com/538/.
And they will almost certainly have the biggest wrench. Before you consider the sheer difficulty of making mass violence happen (especially in a world where tech can be used to regulate a sufficient portion of people's worldviews as required), at some point they'll probably just have the upper hand militarily. As military tech gets better, wealth will be able to shift directly into physical power, amplifying their abilities against a comparatively powerless populace.
Why not? We have examples from history to look at.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_So...
> Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (Russian: Николай Иванович Ежов, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ (j)ɪˈʐof]; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940), also spelt Ezhov, was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, at the height of the Great Purge. Yezhov organized mass arrests, torture, and executions during the Great Purge, but he fell out of favour with Stalin and was arrested, subsequently admitting in a confession to a range of anti-Soviet activity including "unfounded arrests" during the Purge. He was executed in 1940 along with others who were blamed for the Purge.
This guy was head of the secret police, didn’t help him out when he was purged aka murdered.
It’s not so much about political alignment as much as it’s about your bank account.
Apple has more cash reserves on hand than most countries do and yet its CEO had to scramble to stand behind Trump during the inauguration and offer a million-dollar tribute to stay in his good graces. Power > money.
He didn't have to do a single damn thing. He did the cost/benefit analysis and chose to cozy up to a corrupt administration.
And worst of all he had to watch "Melania"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_(film)#Release
Not really.
neither democracy nor being a market economy implies the American state of litigiousness.
it's always interesting to hear the silent part out loud. in this case, he's saying "I can get what I want because I can game the courts".
The rich are increasingly uninterested in keeping up appearances.
And really, why should they? We've learned now that there was actually a worldwide network of child rapists purchasing girls from other wealthy child traffickers in positions of power in seemingly every Western nation, and the consensus thus far is to do exactly nothing about it.
Laws are for the poors.
Great. Less runway for hires and product development.
The rich aren't the only ones who can "flood the field".
File all the lawsuits, Flock. Let's get some discovery going. Who is the CEO cozied up with?
> "Thankfully, we live in a beautifully democratic and capitalistic society where we can fight in court."
Probably not great for investor relations for him to be hyping up the democracy angle. They get a big chunk of their funding from Andreesen Horowitz.
We still live in a 'Might makes right' society. The only thing that has changed since Medieval times is 'Might' means 'Money'.
To be fair this is at least an improvement over Medieval times when 'Might' meant 'ancestry'.
How is this different to being born into wealth?
I still argue that our current capitalist system is nothing more than an extension of the Norman system. Only capitalist executives see even less of the humanity of their ‘customers’ and the damage from their policies/maximal extraction than medieval lords saw in the serfs of the village that their policies/maximal extraction impacted.
Moments later (~1:13) he also said "we aren't forcing Flock on anyone"
False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE
No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled. And no, under the radar agreements with local cops and govts do NOT constitute my permission to be surveilled. If they want to go in with fully informed referendums in each community, then I'd accept it. But that is not Flock's business model.
> If they want to go in with fully informed referendums in each community, then I'd accept it.
I might accept it for this specific case. But, in general, just because the majority wants to do something doesn't mean it's legitimate to force everyone to accept it.
> False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE
> No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled
As much as I dislike Flock, this is bad logic. There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces. Public spaces are defined by being public, in that everyone (even governments/corporations!) is free to observe everyone else in that same setting.
So in reality, everyone has permitted themselves to be surveilled, purely through the act of being in public.
This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America.
If this is what they thought was possible, why write the 4th Amendment?
Unreasonable search and overbearing government was one of the key issues of the American Revolution.
> I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety - Ben Frank
Iirc he was a founder
There's a ton of difference between a random person noting my presence at a single point in space-time and a commercial entity tracking and storing my movements all the time.
Being okay with people watching me in public does not imply being okay with someone aggregating the information about my whereabouts 24/7 even though it's "the same" information.
Btw it's a fallacy similar to the one debunked in "what colour are your bits". The context matters, not just the abstract information.
This is an unfortunate thing about a whole lot of legal precedent in the US.
Courts made a pretty reasonable set of tradeoffs around the 4th amendment for search warrant vs. subpoena, police officers observing you, etc.
During the 19th century.
Unfortunately, modern data processing completely undermines a lot of the rationale about how reasonable and intrusive various things are. Before, cops couldn't follow and surveil everyone; blanket subpoenas to get millions of peoples' information weren't possible because the information wasn't concentrated in one entity's hands and compliance would have been impossible; etc.
>This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
The idea that me an individual observing you, and a large, well funded company allied with the US government observing you has no difference, quite frankly, leads me to conclude* you are arguing in bad faith.
You can make an ideological argument that is the case, but not one based on fact and reality.
*edited for spelling
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
If you followed me around all day taking photographs of my every move for no other reason than you felt like it, I would very likely have recourse via stalking and harassment laws.
There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology.
If I'm interesting enough to get a warrant for surveillance of my activities - fair game. Private investigators operate under a set of reasonable limits and must be licensed in most (all?) states for this reason as well.
It's quite obvious laws have simply not caught up with the state of modern technology that allows for the type of data collection and thus mass-surveillance that is now possible today. If you went back 50 years ago and asked anyone on the street if it was okay that every time they left the house their travel history would be recorded indefinitely they would talk to you about communist dystopias that could never happen here due to the 2nd amendment.
But Flock doesn't "follow you around"? It's fixed location cameras. If you avoid the locations, you avoid the cameras, and thus the tracking.
> There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology.
I feel like it's telling that no one has yet taken this logic to court. I think that means that while there may be no difference to you there is a difference according to the law. This gets at your later point.
Speaking of:
> If you went back 50 years ago and asked anyone on the street if it was okay that every time they left the house their travel history would be recorded indefinitely they would talk to you about communist dystopias that could never happen here due to the 2nd amendment.
I think you're doing a subtle motte-and-bailey here. As far as I'm aware, Flock has strict retention policies, numbering in the low single-digit months (Google says 30 days "by default"). There is no "recorded indefinitely" here, which significantly changes the characteristics of the argument here. This is roughly on par with CCTV systems, to the best of my knowledge.
I don't disagree that laws haven't caught up yet, but I also think a lot of the arguments against Flock are rife with hyperbolic arguments like this that do meaningfully misrepresent their model. I think this leads to bad solutioning, as a consequence.
I'd much rather have good solutions here than bad ones, because ALPRs and other "surveillance technologies" do drive improvements in crime clearance rates/outcomes, so they shouldn't be banned--just better controlled/audited/overseen
>> False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE
>> No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled
> As much as I dislike Flock, this is bad logic. There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces.
You're agreeing that he is forcing flock on people. Legality doesn't make it not-forced. Not needing consent is different from receiving consent.
I mean, he's not. Police departments and other organizations who buy and install Flock cameras are the ones doing the "forcing".
Again, I'm pretty anti-Flock, but place the blame where it's due and use good logic to support that.
Flock is not a natural person. Flock has no rights.
As the owner of a moral person (a company), I disagree.
There are even weirder stuff than companies being considered a "moral person". For example if a person speeds way too much in France (say more than 50 kilometers/hour above the speed limit on the highway, e.g. 180 km/h // 111 mph instead of the 130 km/h // 80 mph)... Well then that person gets arrested. And his driving license is confiscated on the spot. But here's the absolute crazy thing: even if the car belong to someone else, to a company, to a rental company... Doesn't matter: the French state consider that the car itself was complicit in the act. So the car is seized too (for 8 days if it doesn't belong to the person who was driving it and potentially much more if it does belong to the person driving it).
Companies are persons and cars (I'm not even talking about self-driving cars) have rights and obligations. That's the world we live in.
Companies have plenty of rights in the US.
this is still forcing flock on everyone.
they could instead be limiting flock to private places.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
if you followed me everywhere and took pictures of me everywhwre i went outside from my door in the morning to my door in the evening, id want to get a restraining order on you as a stalker. this is stalking
I agree, this is stalking.
But again, this is not what Flock is doing.
By this same logic, traffic cameras and CCTV surveillance are "stalking", which doesn't seem accurate?
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
The idea that there's not a scale difference is, quite frankly, bogus.
Okay, can you articulate the difference?
I don't disagree that quantity has a quality of it's own in some circumstances, but that's not an inherent property of "quantity".
You peeking out your curtains at me is fine. It doesn’t scale.
Everyone doing it 24/7 via their cameras and running it through AI analysis and providing it to the cops for $$$ is not.
The difference is that Flock is stalking me, not incidentally watching me.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you from a park bench in public and hundreds of thousands of clones of me watching you from every street corner in public is, quite frankly, bogus
To paraphrase the quote, quantity has a quality of its own.
To paraphrase the quote, quantity has a quality of its own.
The central dogma of machine learning. Which Flock and its defenders know very well.
Mountain View recently turned off their Flock installs after they discovered Flock had enabled data sharing without notice and other agencies were searching through MV data.
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-came... > A separate “statewide lookup” feature had also been active on 29 of the city’s 30 cameras since the initial installation, running for 17 straight months until Mountain View found and disabled it on January 5. Through that tool, more than 250 agencies that had never signed any data agreement with Mountain View ran an estimated 600,000 searches over a single year, according to local paper the Mountain View Voice, which first uncovered the issue after filing a public records request.
A different town (Staunton, VA) also turned of their Flock installs after their CEO sent out an email claming:
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-ceo-goes-... > The attacks aren't new. You've been dealing with this for forever, and we've been dealing with this since our founding, from the same activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness. Now, they're producing YouTube videos with misleading headlines.
I'd like to see a database of municipalities that have passed an ordinance banning these systems (including 12 hour drone flyovers like they've been doing in Camden, NJ; drones are fine for specific or exigent circumstances, but flying them systematically is concerning!).
In fact, if anyone knows of municipalities that have done so let me know. I'd like to spend tourist money in those places that I haven't been able to spend in authoritarian-leaning locales as a reward for valuing freedom over suffocation of the constitution for little to no benefit.
Evanston IL canceled their contract and took down the cameras, then Flock went and reinstalled the cameras.
> A statement provided by a Flock Safety spokesperson said, “Flock helps law enforcement, including hundreds of agencies around Illinois, solve crimes and make communities safer, and we are proud of the results we have achieved in partnership with the Evanston PD. We continue to be optimistic that we will have the opportunity to have a constructive dialogue to address the City’s concerns, and resume our successful partnership making Evanston safer.” [0]
Hows that for taking no as an answer? My god, we are in big trouble if this is going to be a regular thing. IMHO we need to shut this country down.
[0]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/29/after-evanston-fir...
San Marcos in central Texas also disabled them recently
Santa Clara County (which includes MV) seems on the precipice of doing the same
Evanston, IL found them to be in violation of state privacy laws and disabled them in Sep.
In Eugene, OR the police tried to disable them in December but Flock turned them back on
Here is a map of upcoming city council meetings in the US where Flock surveillance will be discussed: https://alpr.watch/
The groups and companies that break the law and norms as usual part of business always complain about "lawlessness" when someone opposes them
Wow...
"...and then unfortunately there is terroristic organizations like DeFlock, whose primary motivation is chaos. They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else."
"We're not forcing Flock on anyone..."
It is a short 1:32 video, I encourage people to watch it for themselves.
I thought DeFlock was just publishing locations of cameras and lawfully convincing local governments to not use Flock, primarily through FOIA requests.
the line from authoritarians is often predictably to proclaim their opponents "terrorists" and the like
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/weakness-strongmen-step...
Twenty-some years back, I attended a talk by a classicist who was talking about how the Romans, Caesar specifically I think, basically used "pirate" the same way.
I saw an exhibition on cannibalism that mentioned a similar thing such that being called a "cannibal" was used in a similar fashion.
Are there any famous examples? Like did John Adams ever call an opponent a cannibal?
https://daily.jstor.org/first-ugly-election-america-1800/
It's wild how it became mainstream in the US to equate Antifa = Bad.
Some geniuses proudly, openly self describe as anti antifa. Guess what that double negation makes you?
If you are against a self-professed democratic people's republic (of Korea), does that make you anti-democratic or anti-people?
Well their view ist that antifa are actually fascists, which makes anti antifa democrats.
> They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else.
So they just said "These people are anti-fascist and this is a bad thing"
Aren't authoritarians great.
Great at telling everyone else what they are, at least.
By your logic, if the NSDAP or the Bolsheviks named themselves "The Party of Peace and Love", you would have written
> So they just said "These people are anti-violence and anti-hate and this is a bad thing"
(Frankly, our political situation is rife with insanity. I think the hotheads across the political spectrum need more nous and less thumos.)
Oh so Antifa is a single formal political party with card carrying members, a clear leadership structure and participation in mainstream public political life? I had no idea. Your analogy makes perfect sense. Where is the Antifa national headquarters?
>NSDAP or the Bolsheviks
You don't even need to use examples that westerners find polarizing because they want to minimize or maximize their badness for political reasons.
Africa is full of factions with grand names doing less than grand things that do not cause complexities when comparing to.
"Despite the name, The Party of Peace and Love is actually authoritarian and horribly repressive, as you can see from the millions of people they've killed."
"Despite the name, Antifa is not just 'anti-fascist' but is actually _________"
What goes in the blank?
The blank is "the OTHER group". Like brown people, poor people, and (say it quickly so it doesn't get too noticed) women.
And anyone from the OTHER group is the enemy. Stop thinking, you have arrived to the conclusion. Now, here are some news ... I mean, entertainment, to make you fear them more.
__an identity claimed by people who are taking direct action against what they perceive as fascism, but currently more often the term is applied as an unthinking boogeyman by right wing authoritarians__
"Antifa" is understood as violent communist street thugs by most huge swaths of people. You may not think that's accurate, but that's the definition he is calling to mind.
Only to those of a particular political persuasion. Every group has their own shorthand.
They're not understood, but propagandized that way.
Is there a difference for the incurious?
(Though I agree with you)
That's the intent but most people know it's not true. It's right up there with "woke" and "progressive" as generic, shapeless, boogeyman words. No real meaning besides "something bad".
Pretty sure most who claim the mantle of “Antifa” would welcome that Communist label, and plenty would endorse violence if it’s against the “right” people, so if the shoe fits…
Self defense is a kind of violence, I guess.
They're kinda famous for punching people (physically) unprovoked at this point. There was a whole discourse around it that comes back up pretty regularly, I don't know how you could miss it.
Ah, you mean when they punched the nazi guy?
Punching people who think you and your friends should be killed just for existing is a form of self-defense.
Punching normal average people? Or punching Nazis?
The air quotes around 'right' are interesting there. Yes, violence against Nazis and Fascists is acceptable. Do you disagree? I thought it was pretty much settled, we did a whole world war about it.
WWII revisionism is back in fashion these days, even in spaces that historically would have been only mildly to the right of center.
The trouble with that logic is that we also had a fair few wars against Communists.
We'll worry about that when the Presidency and both houses of Congress are controlled by the Communist Party
"A majority of individuals involved are anarchists, communists, and socialists, although some social democrats also participate in the antifa movement. The name antifa and the logo with two flags representing anarchism and communism are derived from the German antifa movement." [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States)
>So they just said "These people are anti-fascist and this is a bad thing"
A: "Hey guys, I think think this PATRIOT act thing is bad"
B: "Wait, you're saying patriots are bad? What are you, some sort of seditious non-patriot?"
Ah yes, I too conflate bills written by organized lobbyists with a loosely affiliated group that says American shouldn't be ran by Nazi's. The Nazi's running America get very mad about that and ensure to flood the airwaves with how cities in the US are mile wide smoking craters due to people who don't like authoritarians.
The point GP was making, which holds as a general rule, is that simply adopting a moniker does not necessarily mean that it accurately describes you. Your argument pre-supposed that just because Antifa self-describes as antifascist, it inherently is, and that the CEO was expressing an opposition to the concept of antifascism, rather than simply expressing opposition to the specific group.
If Antifa’s record speaks for itself, then you don’t need to play these kinds of word games. If some CEO spoke unflatteringly of The Red Cross or Habitat For Humanity, that would say more about them than anything, not because they have virtuous sounding names (though they admittedly do) but because they’ve established a specific track record of public service.
I don't even know what antifa _is_ anymore, honestly. I only see it used as a boogie man by the right in discourse online.
But I _do_ know that when someone tags someone as "antifa" they are making a political statement and aligning themselves with a certain group that perceives "antifa" a certain way. "See, I hate those damn' antifa terrorists, I'm in the same camp as you! Please help my company make money!"
No disagreement there, and I think it was an inane comment on Langley’s part, to be clear
The point pixl97 was making was that they believed anti-anti-fascist described the Flock CEO.
If Flock's reputation spoke for itself, their CEO wouldn't have to play these kind of legal games.
> The point GP was making, which holds as a general rule, is that simply adopting a moniker does not necessarily mean that it accurately describes you.
I'm deeply curious why you think someone would identify as an anti-fascist if they were not, in fact, anti-fascist. Do you think they just really like the flag logo or...?
>Ah yes, I too conflate bills written by organized lobbyists with a loosely affiliated group that says American shouldn't be ran by Nazi's.
Somebody doesn't understand analogies, so let me spell it out explicitly for you:
Approximately nobody is against "antifa" because they're fighting "fascists". Here's an excerpt from wikipedia:
>Antifa activists' actions have since received support and criticism from various organizations and pundits. Some on the political left and some civil rights organizations criticize antifa's willingness to adopt violent tactics, which they describe as counterproductive and dangerous, arguing that these tactics embolden the political right and their allies.[13] Both Democratic and Republican politicians have condemned violence from antifa.[14][15][16][17] Many right-wing politicians and groups have characterized antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, or use antifa as a catch-all term,[18] which they adopt for any left-leaning or liberal protest actions.[19] According to some scholars, antifa is a legitimate response to the rise of the far right.[20][21] Scholars tend to reject an equivalence between antifa and right-wing extremism.[2][22][23] Some research suggests that most antifa action is nonviolent.[24][25][26]
Those allegations might not have merit, and it's okay to have a productive discussion over the merits of that, but it's wholly unjustified to round everyone who oppose antifa off to "they're against antifa because they're fascists, because why else would you be against a group that's anti-fascist?". Doing so is making the same mistake as the PATRIOT act above. It's fine to be against the patriot act, or even support it. But it's totally poor reasoning to skip all that logic and go with "you oppose the PATRIOT act so you must be not a patriot".
Being opposed to antifa because some of the people using the label are violent seems to be painting with an overly broad brush.
I know we're not supposed to talk about it, but what in the world is happening to this site? Mistaking 'Antifa' for 'the concept of opposing fascism' is not the kind of failure mode I expect here. And this kind of thing has become endemic lately- emotive noise and sarcastic dunks drowning out substance in every thread, especially since the beginning of December. Or am I just imagining this?
What is Antifa, then?
> Mistaking 'Antifa' for 'the concept of opposing fascism'
that's literally what it means in theory and in practice
'The concept of opposing fascism' doesn't mean anything in practice. You have to implement practice around it, you can't just literally do a concept!
you say that as if people are not actively physically opposing fascism in deed in the united states right now!
> Approximately nobody is against "antifa" because they're fighting "fascists".
So, I will say that far right, comservatives and fascists are against anti-fascism of any kind. Whether it is the boogeyman antifa or anything else. And there are a lot of people like that. Including in goverment.
They do take issue with anyone who openly opposes fascism.
Funny thing is that in my German neighborhood we have Antifa stickers pretty much on any other street lamp. Given the fascist tendencies all around it actually makes me feel safer...
> in my German neighborhood we have Antifa stickers pretty much on any other street lamp. Given the fascist tendencies all around it actually makes me feel safer
My Polish-German godmother asked me, as a kid, "who would you hide."
I didn't get the question. And 6-year old me wasn't ready for Holocaust with grandma. But it comes back to me from time to time.
Who would you hide. Who would you stake your wealth and life on to keep from undeserved suffering. The stickers are good. But they only mean something if you're willing to fight for them. At least in America, I'm unconvinced most sticker-toters are willing to sacrifice anything. (It's what makes Minnesota and Texas different.)
Is there a general term for metastatic semantic overinclusivity?
Terrorist. Racist. Colonist. Fascist. Historically-rooted and precise terms that are collectively decohering in a self-amplifying and propagating way as everyone feels increasingly free to detach more and more words from their original meanings.
Death of the author.
you have seriously got to read and understand Eco's 14 tenets of Ur-Fascism [0] if you think that contemporary applications of the term "fascist" are inaccurate in describing what's happening right now in the US.
[0] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...
> if you think that contemporary applications of the term "fascist" are inaccurate in describing what's happening right now in the US
Didn't say that. I'm saying I've seen the term thrown around wildly to apply to all manner of things. Like the other terms.
The term is probably fundamentally fucked. If you asked Hitler if he's a Nazi, he'd say yes. If you asked Mussolini if he's a Fascist, he'd say yes. These were the words they used to describe themselves. The reason I'm describing the phenomenon versus blaming the folks using the terms broadly is because I don't think this is a personal failing by anyone as much as something that's linguistically happening.
Ah yes, and the antifa line. Wonder if these assholes ever stop to think what being anti-antifa actually means.
It's not uncommon for fascists to call themselves anti-antifa.
Pointing cameras at people? Law and order
Pointing cameras at cameras? Terrorist organization
Who watches the watchmen? Terrorists
This film is dedicated to the brave freedom fighters of the Mujahideen!
The thing is the billionaires are terrified of US. The point of these surveillance systems isn't to make us safer. Because we're actually pretty safe already. We're not going to be assassinated, kidnapped, or beaten because we pissed someone off.
It's to make people like Garrett Langley feel protected from us.
> The thing is the billionaires are terrified of US.
Are they though? The odds of any kind of coordinated response that could seriously threaten the billionaires seem next-to-none. Flock seems to be a lot more offensive than defensive - it enables the targeting and mass surveillance in order to find and punish the 'right people', as well as mass tracking to create yet another datapoint to understand the way people move, think and coordinate. The defensive side is already covered through internet services, like social media. They don't have much to fear. I reckon that a powerful/rich enough person could kill a stranger on the street in plain view of a huge crowd and have absolutely nothing happen to them.
Friend of mine used to work for a single digit billionaire. No one you know. His name barely comes up in a search. He said he found out after a few years that the guy had been kidnapped and held for ransom.
Transcript
INTERVIEWER: Surveillance is becoming more prevalent everywhere. There's an organization called Deflock that's become fairly well-known in activist circles. They take an aggressive approach—counting cameras and maintaining a Discord channel where they discuss potential activities to move against surveillance expansion and stop organizations like Flock. What's your perspective on this organization and their methods?
FLOCK CEO: I see two distinct groups of activists here. There are organizations like the ACLU and the EFF that take an above-board approach to fighting for their viewpoint. We're fortunate to live in a democratic, capitalistic country where we can fight through the courts. I have a lot of respect for those groups because they engage in reasonable debate while following the law.
FLOCK CEO: Unfortunately, there are also what I'd call terroristic organizations like Deflock, whose primary motivation appears to be chaos. They're closer to Antifa than anything else. That's disappointing because I don't want chaos - I value law and order and a society built on safety.
FLOCK CEO: For those groups, I think it's regrettable they haven't chosen a more constructive approach to achieve their goals. They do have the right to their views, but that's why we have a democratically elected process. We're not forcing Flock on anyone. Elected officials understand that communities and families want safety, and Flock is the best way to create safe communities.
INTERVIEWER: Deflock probably wouldn't agree with the "terroristic" label you've applied to them, but...
----
Yeah. "They have a right to their views" buuut also, they are terrorists, and implicitly therefore deserve to have their freedom taken away because of said views. So giving the public a map of flock cameras and organizing to advocate against these being used in our communities is terroristic, I suppose. There's one party here that should be in jail here. Seems like that ought to be the creeps that are filming everyone against their consent, but I guess that makes me a terrorist...
the more prosaic (the bear case) POV is that physically mounted outdoor street cameras have the same enforcement limitations as most other enforcement support technologies. flock isn't really bringing "number of unseen crimes" down from 1 to zero, he's bringing it from like 1000 to 999. a flock being easy to disable by a lay person, and a street corner not having witnesses - they're the same thing, it just isn't as good of a technology as he says (or people imagine) it to be.
so at the very beginning, the thing that threatens him the most is: simple ideas that sound objective and that make Gary Tan wary of putting $50m instead of $25m.
that said, very few things do that, bring "unseen crime" from N to 0. for example, legalization of something does that! he has found a very successful business nonetheless. it's more interesting to explore why. if he wanted to level constructive criticism at Deflock, i suppose we should wonder: how do they disrupt enterprise sales? flock is just, yet another failed IT project. it shouldn't be too hard. obviously, the best thing you can do is getting elected, and simply putting it in the law to not adopt the technology.
This is an excellent video documenting some Flock camera vulnerabilities by Benn Jordan, a security hobbyist/researcher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY. It's a bit long, but worth it.
His work on this and similar topics is very good, he has deep technical insight and is a good communicator, but it's a bit funny seeing him referred to as a security hobbyist as in my mind he's a musical genius and one of the greatest living US musicians/programmers.
Some disucssion on that one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945960
If we're terrorists for marking Flock cameras on a map, we might as well go all the way and start breaking them.
If surveiling the surveillance is terrorism, why isn't the original surveillance terrorism? Makes no sense.
If peaceful forms of protest and dissent are delegitemised, only the alternative is left.
It's amazing at how terrorism has been re-defined. When I was a kid you had to blow up skyscrapers or planes (or both at the same time), set off bombs in a crowded area, or a specifically targeted mass shooter to be labelled a terrorist.
Specifically you had to do those things and not be in the US military, or in a military geopolitically aligned with the US.
Yeah really does show you how it's now (actually for some time) just a label, conveniently morphing over time for people/groups you don't like, losing any actual meaning because it's applied so liberally.
And it's ironic because there are clearly "real terrorists" (i.e. 9/11 guys).
Thanks for sharing this. It completely destroyed the little respect I had left for Flock.
And that they're sharing their data with other non-local agencies (eg. ICE as it stands) without a warrant? That's outrageous, IMHO.
I wonder how he would feel about a competitor putting a flock-like camera outside his house so that anyone who wants to can learn whenever any car, perhaps his car, enters or leaves his home driveway.
Would he be happy with this, or would he become a "terrorist" by objecting?
Probably worth posting some links to the Institute for Justice's "Project on the Fourth Amendment":
https://ij.org/issues/ijs-project-on-the-4th-amendment/
This Project includes work to fight technologies such as Flock's in the courts:
https://ij.org/issues/ijs-project-on-the-4th-amendment/licen...
I've always felt good contributing to IJ and the topic and takes in the posted video are precisely why I do so.
I dislike this person and company. That is putting it mildly.
If you wanna go a little further than leaving milquetoast comments on the internet:
https://alpr.watch/
Flock is a terrorist organization
Flock (YC17)
I've been online long enough that when I hear "Flock," I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_(web_browser)
I would not do this now, but teenage me would be spray painting every lens. Not to give anyone ideas...
This is inefficient. Some semi-transparent laquer applied to the lens that makes the picture permanently blurred would be much less conspicuous.
An infrared laser beam could also do the trick. The beam would be invisible to the human eye
People are so out of touch with how far the US has slipped into surveillance capitalism. You simply cannot get away with doing stuff like that today.
Not with that attitude.
There are tens of millions of people pirating software and media and blocking ads. There are not enough prisons to hold them all so the law is not enforceable at that scale.
Likewise there have always been and will always be effective non violent forms of resistance with sufficient systems of coordination and communication, because the public is always larger in number than the oppressors.
Flock is a terrorist organization.
Man everything about this interview is so cringe.
Yep.
Everything about his body language screams, "I'm doing something slimy and I know it, but here, listen to these words spoken authoritatively whilst I wave my hands around and forget about it."
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Would have been nice if the interviewer pushed back more than "lol I don't think they would agree". Spineless.
Spineless seems a bit harsh. The interviewee did open with an unveiled threat of legal action against anyone who disagrees with him.
This statement essentially boils down to "The only right way to fight me is in an environment where I expect to win"
That's how you know the DeFlock strategy is effective. They aren't playing the game that the CEO wants to play, they are playing the actual game. The actual game is minimizing the impact of cameras that are now everywhere.
Some individuals may take it upon themselves to vandalize the cameras, which can't be planned via conspiracy (that would be illegal), but those radical individuals can be "set up for success" through information. This strategy of creating an environment where effective vandalism is easy, is also part of the actual game.
Their are documented cases of Flock cameras that can see into private residences. What if one of those cameras recorded an underage person? Would Flock be responsible for collecting and distributing CSAM?
Of course not. CSAM rules apply only the plebs, not the rich and well connected.
His last name being “Langley” is a bit too on the nose. Like something out of a Pynchon novel.
I've decided that anyone who uses the term "antifa" in a serious, scaremongering manner must be fascist.
There are those who have been propagandized to fear a vast, powerful and streamlined domestic terrorist organization, those people are just not too bright. Then there are those who realize that anyone vaguely identifying as anti-fascist must be their enemy.
I'm honestly tired of all these knuckleheads. They've got a few bucks in their bank accounts and pretend that makes them smarter than everyone else. They're just gaming the system, nothing more, and they have every incentive to keep it alive.
He can shove his cameras deep in his ** as far as I'm concerned.
> They're just gaming the system
The "system" is not hapless or ignorant here. In fact, this company would not exist, if the "system" didn't have specific desires to effectively enslave the entire population.
Who wouldn't want to become a new age digital pharaoh? Wouldn't this be precisely the type of panopticon they would try to create?
I “like” how Overton window (??? I hope I use it right) shifted dramatically in USA.
- “law and order” is “good”, when _de facto_ most of constitution is not being applied for a year and laws or court orders are applied selectively. Not to say that “law and order” is vastly different depending on the size of your bank account;
- “terrorist” now is anything you don’t like, especially if it’s anti establishment. True freedom of speech is now apparently “violence” (and of course this dictatorial (adjacent) government would think that, as it’s biggest danger);
- “antifa” is apparently now a boogeyman, though I’d say he used it correctly as he is (apparently) fascist;
Also it is forced against people, how population can choose otherwise?
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition...There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Does anyone have a template for a network audit that one could request of a local police department that would disclose access logs for Flock Safety data?
A lot of jurisdictions actually require the data to be public! For example, ctrl-f "download csv" on this page for central LA PD: https://transparency.flocksafety.com/central-la-pd- . Not all jurisdictions require this, but if you can guess the URLs (https://transparency.flocksafety.com/<DEPARTMENT ID>) you can find quite a few, or just Google "YOUR PD flock safety portal". (EDIT: You'll want to regularly download these if you're trying to build a comprehensive record. The PDs I've been monitoring are only required to keep data for 30 days, so the CSVs are just a rolling window cut off at EXACTLY today minus 30 days.)
You can also do FOIA requests directly to departments, like this one: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/novato-296/flock-alprs-cameras-...
Good news is that even the images captured by the cameras is FOIA-able! https://www.404media.co/judge-rules-flock-surveillance-image...
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
>I like law and order
When it benefits me.
This guy gives all villain vibes you see in futuristic movies, funny how he resembles a young version of “Fletcher” in minority report movie, a movie about mass surveillance to provide a “safer community” to all.
Flock btw isn’t just an ALPR, it is a car finger printing technology, I have seen some videos of police IDing cars with no plates and they knew the owner by using flock cams.
Thank Mr. Flock CEO!
I've never heard about Deflock, but your tantrum motivated me to know it. And I like it!
But the best part are the implications: it is ok for Flock to spy people, it isn't ok for people to spy Flock.
is it terrorism if it's a corporation who is in terror?
no: terror is strictly about civilians.
The TV series Person of Interest [1] becomes more on point as years go by, even though by now it has been 15 years since its S1. One of the scenes [2] from that series where "terrorist" are shown as being in control over ghoulish CEOs like the one from this posted video.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igKb2DhP7Ao
Freedom is slavery
Can we update the title to include the name, Garrett Langley? Everyone should know his name.
These clean-shaven wide-eyed SV types give me the uncanny valley heebie-jeebies. Everything, from their tone of voice, to their appearance, to (most importantly) the way they phrase things... there's an almost AI-generated quality.
Almost certainly a degenerate amphetamine addict and a pedophile.
Anyone aware of people doing something like over here in Europe? And how legal/illegal it might be? I'm talking about putting government-operated security cameras on a map, for the general public to be aware of their locations.
Whereas most pf the rest of America considers Flock to be a terrorist organization.
“If you’ve got nothing to hide, let me profit off your surveillance”
These wretched wastes of skin that contribute to the surveillance system need to have the full brunt of that same surveillance apparatus turned toward them full time, published for all to see. This should include elected officials that voted for and paid for these systems as well. You don't want a system that allows more anonymous movement? You want that data collected and stored and collated and analyzed without end? Ok, pull down your pants and have yourselves offered up as the first and most prominent ones to be tracked and then see if you change your tune.
Good luck trying to subject them to the same level of scrutiny. They live in places with high walls and armed guards, a lot of them don't even drive themselves if they drive at all. Even when using helicopters or planes their private ownership means a lower level of scrutiny. "The plane" was a big part of how Epstein was able to do what he did. Obviously, these types never step foot on public transit.
Even if hypothetically speaking you could support volunteers to follow them around and film them, I would think the asymmetry of resources would practically make it impossible. It's not about privacy, it's about wealth. Take their wealth away and then they'll actually have to live the way they tell you to. They don't care because they don't live in the world they are creating, you do.
Seems like “terrorists” = citizens standing up for their rights. We aren’t past the point of no return but we are rapidly approaching it. What will it be Americans? Liberty or death?
Someone just had to come up with the goofy name "antifa" instead of just using "anti fascist".
It was originally shortened in German from ”Antifaschistische Aktion” and ”Außerparlamentarische Opposition”. Then that carried over to other languages as a common name. Feel free to go back to the roots! ;)
disregarding the history of the term, you see that even posters on Hacker News Dot Com dispute the accuracy of the term "fascism" as applied to contemporary american politics, so what difference would it make? people who are okay with fascistic politics will not distinguish opposition with a name change.
Winning local elections means having the political power and thus economic power to Deflock your town.
Telling illiberal authoritarians to go fuck themselves is reasonable. But power is still more important than insults.
Our city council voted 5-0 to install more. A unanimous vote which includes democrats who ran on disrupting a council that had the same members for decades.
It seems like at the next open mic, people should read FOIA'ed Flock records which shows their car driving by adult store etc.
I swear, every fascist has the same playbook. They use the same phrases, same accusations, same lies, sometimes even same wordings. It is like they have a single hive mind - for which everyone else is the enemy and is subject to destruction or enslaving.
5 months ago;
Source article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2025/09/03/ai-st...
Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45119847
and at the same time:
Pump the Brakes on Your Police Department's Use of Flock Safety
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45128605
The parent's entire original comment in case anyone is wondering why it was flagged:
> 5 months ago? c'mon OP
Thankfully OP is posting about it again, because I missed it the first time. Thank you OP!
Saw that too.
Bad faith is misleading submission when news is from 5 months ago with previous discussion. Make that clear instead of misleading.
has anything ever good come out of silicon valley or the wall street? one greedy capitalist after another and you wonder why the world has turn to a shithole! the inequality between the rich and the poor is reaching the level of ambani vs. mumbai slums.