Better not prosecute people who cut down the cameras then, since that's part of the non-real backlash.
adjejmxbdjdn · 2026-10-26 19:27:12 UTC
True. Such people clearly don’t exist and it’s obviously a company product failure and the company should be paying fines and penalties.
CGMthrowaway · 2026-10-26 18:28:45 UTC
As with most antistate issues today, there is a mix of bots/institutional interference (both foreign and domestic), and real people. Both can be true.
CodingJeebus · 2026-10-26 19:19:57 UTC
The concern with this is that it gives any company/government/etc. latitude to plant paid protestors or bot traffic in order to undermine opposition with greater efficacy in the AI era. Intelligence agencies have understood this tactic for many years.
slowin · 2026-10-26 19:21:46 UTC
Yeah, I don't think so. The backlash is 100% real people. I don't know a single pro-Flock person but I know 100s that want to go take them down.
bko · 2026-10-26 19:34:00 UTC
I am a pro-flock real person. I'll get down-voted and likely flagged for saying this so you may believe I don't exist but I do.
Crime has gone down considerably in the last two years.
> The declines were reflected in several of the FBI’s long-term measures. The 2025 robbery rate of 49.4 per 100,000 was the lowest in 20 years, while the rape rate of 36.1 was the lowest since 2012. The murder rate was the lowest in the past 20 years.
I imagine giving police the ability to apprehend violent criminals through technology is driving this reduction in crime. Not a stretch. You can think that this is not worth the tradeoff, but if you think giving police a tool like Flock will not have an impact of apprehension of criminals you have your head in the sand.
Supervisor Matt Dorsey in San Francisco is pro-camera-enforcement and I was glad to be able to meet him and thank him for his efforts both for speed cameras and for ALPR in San Francisco. For my part, I'm not wedded to Flock so if people get upset about the brand name, I'm happy if the government uses Axon instead to provide the same outcome. The use of drone policing, ALPR, and speed cameras has substantially improved safety in San Francisco.
derektank · 2026-10-26 20:22:47 UTC
Yeah, I am generally pro-surveillance of public spaces and public property, but I think Flock has taken a particularly careless approach to the project. I would much rather have another vendor simply sell the cameras to the municipality and have the government administer the network, rather than have a company like Flock retain the data themselves and make it available to unknown third parties. You can maintain public oversight much more directly that way.
rconti · 2026-10-26 19:40:51 UTC
Have you tried zooming out on the stats at all, or analyzing any other variables? You realize there was a crazy spike in crime in the wake of the pandemic, right? Certainly a reversion to the mean might happen alongside the implementation of cameras.
My own city's police (Redwood City, CA) credited Flock cameras with an increase in the clearance rate from 12% to 13%. Pardon me if I don't go out and celebrate.
felixgallo · 2026-10-26 19:49:25 UTC
You can imagine that, but at least in my city, no, crime was going down before Flock, and continued its trajectory; Flock did not cause that. Same for, e.g., SF.
bko · 2026-10-26 20:21:33 UTC
SF has (had?) a lot of car thefts.
Suppose there was a technology where, when you report your car as stolen, police would be able to track exactly where this car is currently and it's history over the last 2 weeks.
You don't think this would have ANY impact of police being able to apprehend the thief?
newspaper1 · 2026-10-26 20:49:43 UTC
This is a myopic view of the situation. Suppose you had $100M to spend. What would lower crime more:
1. Helping to shelter the homeless, deal with mental health issues and make sure people are properly fed.
2. Build a mass surveillance network at the expense of all of the above.
Regardless, mass surveillance is far worse than any amount of car theft.
simoncion · 2026-10-26 21:20:29 UTC
> You don't think this would have ANY impact of police being able to apprehend the thief?
Speaking as a San Francisco resident: No. SF cops give nearly zero shits about recovering stolen property.
Speaking as a USian: Even if it did lead the cops right to the car and provided unimpeachable evidence that what the footage showed was a theft, rather than something legal, I still don't want these electronic mass-surveillance systems to be deployed. Dragnet surveillance is plainly unacceptable.
If -somehow- we can magically build such surveillance systems to be completely unable to provide data that's unrelated to a search warrant or other such court order, I'd reconsider my stance. However, building such a system is simply impossible.
bko · 2026-10-26 23:11:58 UTC
You hold such a ridiculous position I don't know how to argue with it. Cops don't care about crime or stolen property? Why have cops at all? It's like arguing w a third grader
simoncion · 2026-10-26 23:24:04 UTC
> Cops don't care about crime or stolen property?
Cops have limited resources, so they must prioritize. Even the Supreme Court acknowledges this.
Because of this truth, SF cops give nearly zero shits about recovering stolen property. It has been decided that they spend their limited resources elsewhere.
> Why have cops at all?
Yeah, that's a really good question that folks who are poorly-served by their federal, state, and local police forces often find themselves asking. Folks who are well-served generally ask themselves that question far less often.
prmoustache · 2026-10-26 21:52:16 UTC
This would only work for a few months until car thieves start having a habit of mounting different plates.
Obviously the perfect crime is harder to do in an orwellian society. But happiness and freedom too so nothing good is gained from that.
bko · 2026-10-26 23:12:54 UTC
Or they move to a neighborhood not patrolled by flock?
izme · 2026-10-27 00:03:35 UTC
Is there a reason you say "patrolled by" and not "surveilled by" ?
felixgallo · 2026-10-26 22:44:34 UTC
Suppose there was a pre-pardoned, unaccountable, masked band of brownshirts in Temu youtuber military wannabe gear, stalking the streets with impunity, terrorizing people who aren't white, holding down American citizens and emptying guns into their backs. Suppose they have been given access to every database that the US has at its disposal, as well as sweeping powers to demand data from anyone they choose.
Suppose Flock's license agreement additionally said that they could give data to anyone they wanted to, as it does.
Suppose the leader of these brownshirts frequently talks about his opponents, protestors, etc., as enemies of the state and domestic terrorists.
How great do you feel about this nonexistent mystery technology of yours now?
bko · 2026-10-26 23:14:50 UTC
Congrats! You just hit the clever hypothetical on my anti flock bingo card!
Step one: find two things that differ in nearly every relevant respect
Step two: identify the broad category they share.
Step three: ask, “If you accept one, why don’t you accept the other?”
So your position is that if you can predict someone's arguments (valid or otherwise) before they make them that those arguments are less valid? Maybe if you had pre-countered them but looking at your comments here and the linked blurb that doesn't seem to be the case.
thereader12 · 2026-10-27 08:02:00 UTC
It wasn't a hypothetical, the op was listing things that both literally are happening and that ALPR's (and flock specifically) are enabling. "Hypothetically" was a bit of rhetorical flourish.
nemomarx · 2026-10-26 19:57:59 UTC
Take flock out of some cities and see if their crime trend continues. I expect you'll find the cameras really don't move the needle much.
bko · 2026-10-26 20:20:16 UTC
In Houston, three cameras near an attempted child abduction had been cut down. Police Chief Noe Diaz said investigators consequently could not use them to identify and track the suspect's red sedan.
Why do anti-flock activists insist that it doesn't help police apprehend criminals. It obviously does. It only makes sense that a police officer having access to cameras that track license plates in real time would help apprehend criminals escaping capture. Come on, you don't seriously believe this. What would have to be true about the world, police, criminals etc of this not to be true.
The issue, of course, isn't how cameras can be used to help apprehend criminals. It's that they can be abused by people who have access to them, in ways we haven't even imagined yet. People don't trust that appropriate safeguards are in place, and it's not clear how to defend against abuses, or that it's even possible. In a society that supposedly prioritizes liberty, privacy, and innocence until proven guilty, such technology should be treated with maximum suspicion.
cosmicgadget · 2026-10-26 22:43:03 UTC
> Houston Police Chief Noe Diaz said three cameras near the reported attempted kidnapping of a third-grade student had been cut down before investigators could use them to identify the suspect’s vehicle.
That's such a weird way to phrase it. The cameras were, presumably, cut down before the incident?
rconti · 2026-10-27 02:39:59 UTC
I'm sure they can help individual cases. It's less clear to me that surveillance societies have less crime. Criminals adjust.
Maybe if you can point to the crime-free paradises that have been enabled by pervasive surveillance, you'd have more people on your side. If you're just selectively pointing out individual cases where they helped, you're not really proving the overall point.
kortex · 2026-10-27 15:40:13 UTC
> Why do anti-flock activists insist that it doesn't help police apprehend criminals.
Seems like a strawman, i dont know anyone saying the cameras dont help police solve crimes at all. The issue is you have to balance crime benefits against civil rights, and the benefit right now seems pretty small, but the privacy implications are enormous.
Reducto ad absurdum: mandatory ankle monitors on everyone would help police apprehend criminals. Is that worth it? No? Ok, then where is the line in the sand? Flock's system is effectively tantamount to a gps tracker on every vehicle that uses surface roads.
slowin · 2026-10-26 20:09:20 UTC
The police (and larger state apparatus) turning antagonistic toward the public will certainly increase crime, not decrease it. When cops go to war with literally everyone, the "law" will cease to apply in any meaningful way. A small sample of this is people cutting down Flock cameras. That's a "crime" that wouldn't even exist had these mass surveillance networks not been constructed in the first place.
bko · 2026-10-26 20:15:46 UTC
> A small sample of this is people cutting down Flock cameras. That's a "crime" that wouldn't even exist had these mass surveillance networks not been constructed in the first place.
You can't destroy public property because you disagree with a policy. Let me give you an example.
Suppose I am against abortion. Firebombing an abortion clinic is a "crime" that wouldn't exist had these places that kill unborn children not been constructed in the first place.
Do you get it now?
newspaper1 · 2026-10-26 20:51:02 UTC
Abortion is not a 90/10 issue. Jaywalking is a more accurate analogy. When you turn normal people into "criminals", the law ceases to have meaning.
driverdan · 2026-10-26 21:29:00 UTC
Correlation is not causation. Do you actually have any data or research to support your claim from an unbiased source? A far right blogger is far from unbiased.
FWIW Benn Jordan, who has his own biases, analyzed this data in his latest video and found it had no impact on most crimes but did have a small improvement in clearance rates for one category.
thereader12 · 2026-10-27 08:08:12 UTC
Crime has been going down since they took the lead out of gasoline. The world and the US especially has been getting safer every year since before the 24 hour news cycle. Seriously, you are safe and have been safe for decades from random crime. It wasn't some busybody's cameras.
zer0x4d · 2026-10-26 19:36:09 UTC
Because the rest of the people just don't care about it and understand the technology has been a thing for a long time. You know 100 people that want to take them down but you probably also know 1000 people who don't care and aren't even speaking about it. People just became obsessed with one company, then some agitators sprinkled in a healthy dose of antisemitism plus conspiracies, now you got the public lynching of a company. It's unfortunate.
Don't get me wrong, Flock did have and still has some issues, just like any other company. They've been trying to fix the issues. But, as far as I'm concerned, the positives heavily outweigh the negatives, even though there are rare cases of abuse.
wyre · 2026-10-26 19:40:04 UTC
I think its more likely that people don't know about Flock, not that they don't care.
slowin · 2026-10-26 19:45:10 UTC
Antisemitism? Public lynching? We're talking about a fascist spy company not a human being.
rootusrootus · 2026-10-26 19:46:49 UTC
> healthy dose of antisemitism
Uh, what?
red_candle_wax · 2026-10-26 22:05:52 UTC
Its the new "terrorism", "fascism", and "communism" but all rolled up in one for brain dead propagandists.
You can kinda just apply it to anything you dont like to paint it as inherently bad.
felixgallo · 2026-10-26 19:48:22 UTC
I ran an in depth study of Flock for my city. It's been deployed here for several years. What I found is that there is no statistically significant correlation between Flock being installed and any reduction in any kind of crime. I suspect my city is not unique in this regard.
Flock rode a post-COVID wave of general crime reduction and claimed responsibility for it, but it appears that the only meaningfully effective use of Flock is for stalking, terrorizing immigrants, assembling opposition dossiers, and parallel construction.
chasd00 · 2026-10-26 20:17:29 UTC
It doesn't seem to me like Flock would reduce crime but increase the rate at which crime's are solved. Maybe a better stat would be median age of a criminal case involving a vehicle before and after Flock was deployed.
edit: i dont know if any stat would work at the city level, the advantage of Flock is the network works across state/county lines. So someone committing a crime in one state and then driving all night can still be located two states away without police departments having to coordinate a search.
However, the vast majority of vehicle thefts self-resolve ( 85% of passenger vehicle thefts are recovered, a third within one day ). Flock's apparent impact was that vehicles came back on average 1/4 day sooner; it did not appear to impact the rate at which they were recovered, so your instinct would be incorrect.
Additionally, vehicle theft has been steadily decreasing year-over-year since COVID, and it's possible/likely that the effects seen in the study were continuations of that trend rather than anything attributable to flock. The paper even says as much -- that the effect began in the months preceding flock installation.
Intuitively, you'd think that flock cameras would help a lot. I would think so too! But at least in my small-to-mid-sized city, they don't noticeably help at all with any kind of crime.
Unless you've been very careful to only surround yourself with people who share your exact views, you probably do know some. They just don't speak up, because: what's the point debating it with you?
slowin · 2026-10-26 19:46:45 UTC
The vast majority of people are not pro-techno fascism and mass surveillance. I think you'd have to work very hard to find that kind of person. People on the left and the right are very united in their hatred of spy cams.
xboxnolifes · 2026-10-26 20:07:30 UTC
I find it very easy to find people who support systems marketed as empowering police to better catch criminals.
nkrisc · 2026-10-26 19:59:02 UTC
Data centers and Flock are the two things uniting left and right protesters.
zmgsabst · 2026-10-26 22:26:03 UTC
Also food safety.
For example, community supported agriculture programs cross traditional political boundaries.
If someone doesn't know a pro-Flock person, he/she is living in a bubble. Agreed with the first responder: You likely know multiple people, but they're scared to reveal themselves.
Freedom2 · 2026-10-26 20:07:56 UTC
I think this point is most accurate. I know a few pro-Flock people - most are either working for a YC company or are in the process of their application.
BoxwoodSeed · 2026-10-27 09:05:17 UTC
I've got no opinion on Flock, but I certainly agree that it is a lot easier to affirm the world view of fundamentalists than to debate them in real life. Especially since they tend to get aggressive and are vindictive long-term.
No matter what it is, if the other party holds the strict belief that they can't be wrong, I avoid to debate them privately.
majorchord · 2026-10-27 18:54:53 UTC
> I've got no opinion on Flock
And this attitude is exactly why they get away with it.
CGMthrowaway · 2026-10-26 23:34:09 UTC
>Yeah, I don't think so. The backlash is 100% real people. I don't know a single pro-Flock person but I know 100s that want to go take them down.
That's not a sound refutation. For example, 100% of published opinion can be 100% anti-Floc, while still being composed of 50% real people and 50% astroturf.
Perhaps you misunderstood my comment.
slowin · 2026-10-27 00:18:22 UTC
You made the claim that it's bots, so you're going to need to provide some sort of proof of astroturfing. It's wholly unnecessary since the vast majority of real people despise Flock.
BoxwoodSeed · 2026-10-27 09:12:21 UTC
What do people despise about them? I never quite understood what is special about their cameras compared to all the other cameras in public. All camera footage can be fed to and analyzed by AI.
psd1 · 2026-10-27 11:34:47 UTC
"The broad-spectrum surveillance and social-credit state predicated on technofascists working hand-in-glove with repressive government" is a bit of a mouthful. "Flock" is an elision.
slowin · 2026-10-27 14:04:37 UTC
I despise all mass surveillance.
rexpop · 2026-10-26 18:42:35 UTC
I'm attending in-person local political organizing meetings and we're all just locals concerned about, among other things, Flock.
I would like to personally register my own homegrown, organic, hard-working American backlash.
verdverm · 2026-10-26 18:54:28 UTC
If they installed flock at county board meetings and gov rep town halls, they would know what real people think about their company
BoxwoodSeed · 2026-10-26 18:50:30 UTC
Historically it was an easy step going from "these people are not real" to "these people are now dead".
bko · 2026-10-26 19:26:40 UTC
What does this mean? Flock CEO will start... killing people?
nilamo · 2026-10-26 19:27:56 UTC
More like another reason for cops to mow down protesters. True Citizens would never protest something so obviously beneficial to everyone /s
alterom · 2026-10-26 19:41:22 UTC
>What does this mean? Flock CEO will start... killing people?
No, he'll merely facilitate that, at scale.
IBM technically didn't kill any Jews too in WW2[1].
Many of the Nazis didn't kill people themselves, they just helped in the process.
Zigurd · 2026-10-27 12:59:49 UTC
The typical citizen soldier wasn't capable of atrocities, which is why they had the special selected einsatzgruppen. ICE rhymes with that word.
buildsjets · 2026-10-26 21:23:25 UTC
If it generates profit, yes.
vkou · 2026-10-26 21:28:55 UTC
Do you think he will shut down LEO access to its systems if the government decides to have a purge of the undesirables, or two?
natebc · 2026-10-26 21:39:08 UTC
In yesterday's video from Benn Jordan [0] there was a Flock employee that told 911 multiple times "I'm not sure if they are armed." when reporting that a few people were filming from the perimeter of a Flock office building in Georgia.
He also said several times that "we're under lockdown here."
/shrug Seems like he was certainly trying to cause some form of harm.
He already has been. Flock cameras routinely draw the police into situations where they're not need and cause shootings/high speed chases that end in dead bodies.
ted_bunny · 2026-10-27 00:35:13 UTC
SWATting, but with a lot more resources
red-iron-pine · 2026-10-27 18:33:35 UTC
they'll sure be on board when it happens. helping make it happen.
customguy · 2026-10-26 20:21:24 UTC
It's everywhere though. Not to detract from the massive problem of mass surveillance, but just recently when that data center in Russia got, and those derpy images of "stats about Russian" bots were circulated, I saw a lot of "the right-wing support is not organic" stuff.
Something is driving people into bubbles so they only talk about the other, never with. And both agree that "centrists", "normies", etc. are the most despicable of all. Seems like a recipe for something.
datsci_est_2015 · 2026-10-26 20:34:05 UTC
Idk seems like a lot of cross-aisle discussion happens in this forum. The tech world in general is somewhat a clash of cultures across the spectrum from anarchists to neofeudalists.
In fact, just look at this thread…
twodave · 2026-10-26 20:56:21 UTC
My experience has been more talking past each other and being downvoted. Which is why I rarely engage anymore.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 2026-10-26 18:54:26 UTC
"Paid protesters"
Every accusation is a confession. Flock pays for support. They have a marketing department and they tell cops what to tell elected officials to think.
boringg · 2026-10-26 19:12:42 UTC
It would be funnier if it was paid protesters that they had paid so that they could say that.
axus · 2026-10-26 20:04:22 UTC
Those are FBI agents, not Flock contractors
dylan604 · 2026-10-26 19:35:46 UTC
Can you remind me where I can submit my invoices to get paid for my protests? I must have misplaced my memo
derbOac · 2026-10-26 18:58:04 UTC
Clearly a company denying that the public comprises real people with real autonomy should be entrusted with privacy issues.
zelphirkalt · 2026-10-26 21:24:45 UTC
It seems to be a typical case of unscrupulous people getting ahead. The more ruthless, the fewer obstacles, the easier they can beat competition. The more they grow, the more they get affirmation of "doing well", which only reinforces their corruption.
alexjplant · 2026-10-26 19:18:42 UTC
> “I give my wife a lot of credit. She was, like, you should never apologize,” Langley said. “Sure, people make mistakes. I've made a lot of mistakes in the last nine years. I made a lot of mistakes this summer. But we do good work.”
So this guy admits he did things that he shouldn't have then contends that he shouldn't have to say sorry for them? Am I reading this right? Isn't the point of an apology to acknowledge the bad outcome and signal to aggrieved parties that the offender will try avoid repeating the negative behavior? If yes and this guy is refusing to do it then what does that say about his world view?
applebottomjean · 2026-10-26 19:31:51 UTC
I mean, it works for the president of the US. I think this attitude is a lot more common than people would like to admit.
toomuchtodo · 2026-10-26 19:48:03 UTC
The president is unlikely to feel consequences for the attitude, but Langley likely will as Flock enterprise value trends towards zero.
If there is something the president has truly shown me is that just because consequences look inevitable, does not make them so. He exemplifies the ability to avoid consequences and responsibility.
I only trust that consequences will arrive when they actually arrive.
someguyiguess · 2026-10-26 21:59:30 UTC
He isn’t avoiding consequences. Only delaying them.
philipov · 2026-10-26 22:10:00 UTC
If he can delay them long enough that he dies of old age first, he will have avoided them.
R1D3R · 2026-10-26 22:53:03 UTC
No, he is avoiding them. He was found guilty of 34 felonies related to election interference in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. Judge Juan Merchan declined to sentence him to any punishment whatsoever. He was then re-elected president. He will never face any consequences for those crimes.
The Supreme Court has ruled that (Republican) presidents are above the law. Official actions can't be prosecuted, but you have to ask the court what official means on a case-by-case basis, making the ruling implicitly partisan. Trump will thus never face consequences for his crimes in office.
Trump is an admitted (Access Hollywood) and convicted (E Jean Carroll) sexual predator. He has paid several million dollars to E Jean Carroll for raping her but that is the extent of any consequence he has suffered. He continues to be president.
jmcqk6 · 2026-10-27 16:03:39 UTC
Wish I could have that hope. I don't believe he will ever experience consequences for the vast majority of things he's done. Even if he does finally receive some justice for one thing, it's a practical impossibility that he will experience justice for everything he's done.
And I honestly see no reason to believe he's simply delaying consequences. He was out of the presidency for four years during which time he was convicted of multiple felonies. Is that a consequence? Was that justice? It didn't end up meaning anything.
someguyiguess · 2026-10-26 21:59:01 UTC
Let’s hope so
tw04 · 2026-10-26 22:10:05 UTC
I highly doubt apologizing would’ve had any effect on the outcome. He never had any intention of changing the direction of the company.
Comments
Crime has gone down considerably in the last two years.
> The declines were reflected in several of the FBI’s long-term measures. The 2025 robbery rate of 49.4 per 100,000 was the lowest in 20 years, while the rape rate of 36.1 was the lowest since 2012. The murder rate was the lowest in the past 20 years.
I imagine giving police the ability to apprehend violent criminals through technology is driving this reduction in crime. Not a stretch. You can think that this is not worth the tradeoff, but if you think giving police a tool like Flock will not have an impact of apprehension of criminals you have your head in the sand.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/violent-crime-falls-at-hist...
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/flock-mass-surveillance-and...
My own city's police (Redwood City, CA) credited Flock cameras with an increase in the clearance rate from 12% to 13%. Pardon me if I don't go out and celebrate.
Suppose there was a technology where, when you report your car as stolen, police would be able to track exactly where this car is currently and it's history over the last 2 weeks.
You don't think this would have ANY impact of police being able to apprehend the thief?
1. Helping to shelter the homeless, deal with mental health issues and make sure people are properly fed.
2. Build a mass surveillance network at the expense of all of the above.
Regardless, mass surveillance is far worse than any amount of car theft.
Speaking as a San Francisco resident: No. SF cops give nearly zero shits about recovering stolen property.
Speaking as a USian: Even if it did lead the cops right to the car and provided unimpeachable evidence that what the footage showed was a theft, rather than something legal, I still don't want these electronic mass-surveillance systems to be deployed. Dragnet surveillance is plainly unacceptable.
If -somehow- we can magically build such surveillance systems to be completely unable to provide data that's unrelated to a search warrant or other such court order, I'd reconsider my stance. However, building such a system is simply impossible.
Cops have limited resources, so they must prioritize. Even the Supreme Court acknowledges this.
Because of this truth, SF cops give nearly zero shits about recovering stolen property. It has been decided that they spend their limited resources elsewhere.
> Why have cops at all?
Yeah, that's a really good question that folks who are poorly-served by their federal, state, and local police forces often find themselves asking. Folks who are well-served generally ask themselves that question far less often.
Obviously the perfect crime is harder to do in an orwellian society. But happiness and freedom too so nothing good is gained from that.
Suppose Flock's license agreement additionally said that they could give data to anyone they wanted to, as it does.
Suppose the leader of these brownshirts frequently talks about his opponents, protestors, etc., as enemies of the state and domestic terrorists.
How great do you feel about this nonexistent mystery technology of yours now?
Step one: find two things that differ in nearly every relevant respect
Step two: identify the broad category they share.
Step three: ask, “If you accept one, why don’t you accept the other?”
https://mleverything.substack.com/p/anti-flock-activist-bing...
Why do anti-flock activists insist that it doesn't help police apprehend criminals. It obviously does. It only makes sense that a police officer having access to cameras that track license plates in real time would help apprehend criminals escaping capture. Come on, you don't seriously believe this. What would have to be true about the world, police, criminals etc of this not to be true.
https://www.police1.com/alprs-in-focus/why-cities-are-rethin...
That's such a weird way to phrase it. The cameras were, presumably, cut down before the incident?
Maybe if you can point to the crime-free paradises that have been enabled by pervasive surveillance, you'd have more people on your side. If you're just selectively pointing out individual cases where they helped, you're not really proving the overall point.
Seems like a strawman, i dont know anyone saying the cameras dont help police solve crimes at all. The issue is you have to balance crime benefits against civil rights, and the benefit right now seems pretty small, but the privacy implications are enormous.
Reducto ad absurdum: mandatory ankle monitors on everyone would help police apprehend criminals. Is that worth it? No? Ok, then where is the line in the sand? Flock's system is effectively tantamount to a gps tracker on every vehicle that uses surface roads.
You can't destroy public property because you disagree with a policy. Let me give you an example.
Suppose I am against abortion. Firebombing an abortion clinic is a "crime" that wouldn't exist had these places that kill unborn children not been constructed in the first place.
Do you get it now?
FWIW Benn Jordan, who has his own biases, analyzed this data in his latest video and found it had no impact on most crimes but did have a small improvement in clearance rates for one category.
Don't get me wrong, Flock did have and still has some issues, just like any other company. They've been trying to fix the issues. But, as far as I'm concerned, the positives heavily outweigh the negatives, even though there are rare cases of abuse.
Uh, what?
You can kinda just apply it to anything you dont like to paint it as inherently bad.
Flock rode a post-COVID wave of general crime reduction and claimed responsibility for it, but it appears that the only meaningfully effective use of Flock is for stalking, terrorizing immigrants, assembling opposition dossiers, and parallel construction.
edit: i dont know if any stat would work at the city level, the advantage of Flock is the network works across state/county lines. So someone committing a crime in one state and then driving all night can still be located two states away without police departments having to coordinate a search.
However, the vast majority of vehicle thefts self-resolve ( 85% of passenger vehicle thefts are recovered, a third within one day ). Flock's apparent impact was that vehicles came back on average 1/4 day sooner; it did not appear to impact the rate at which they were recovered, so your instinct would be incorrect.
Additionally, vehicle theft has been steadily decreasing year-over-year since COVID, and it's possible/likely that the effects seen in the study were continuations of that trend rather than anything attributable to flock. The paper even says as much -- that the effect began in the months preceding flock installation.
Intuitively, you'd think that flock cameras would help a lot. I would think so too! But at least in my small-to-mid-sized city, they don't noticeably help at all with any kind of crime.
https://ij.org/how-flock-is-trying-to-take-credit-for-the-po...
For example, community supported agriculture programs cross traditional political boundaries.
35% of Democrats are pro-Flock.
54% of Republicans.
If someone doesn't know a pro-Flock person, he/she is living in a bubble. Agreed with the first responder: You likely know multiple people, but they're scared to reveal themselves.
No matter what it is, if the other party holds the strict belief that they can't be wrong, I avoid to debate them privately.
And this attitude is exactly why they get away with it.
That's not a sound refutation. For example, 100% of published opinion can be 100% anti-Floc, while still being composed of 50% real people and 50% astroturf.
Perhaps you misunderstood my comment.
I would like to personally register my own homegrown, organic, hard-working American backlash.
No, he'll merely facilitate that, at scale.
IBM technically didn't kill any Jews too in WW2[1].
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/mar/29/humanities.hig...
He also said several times that "we're under lockdown here."
/shrug Seems like he was certainly trying to cause some form of harm.
Flock sucks.
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP5GDiLZ1Nw
https://youtu.be/OP5GDiLZ1Nw?t=1130 if you want a timestamp.
Something is driving people into bubbles so they only talk about the other, never with. And both agree that "centrists", "normies", etc. are the most despicable of all. Seems like a recipe for something.
In fact, just look at this thread…
Every accusation is a confession. Flock pays for support. They have a marketing department and they tell cops what to tell elected officials to think.
So this guy admits he did things that he shouldn't have then contends that he shouldn't have to say sorry for them? Am I reading this right? Isn't the point of an apology to acknowledge the bad outcome and signal to aggrieved parties that the offender will try avoid repeating the negative behavior? If yes and this guy is refusing to do it then what does that say about his world view?
Flock Offers Employees Buyouts as Customers Flee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835 - September 2026 (45 comments)
Cities terminate Flock contracts at record pace in August - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/cities-terminate... - August 28th, 2026
I only trust that consequences will arrive when they actually arrive.
The Supreme Court has ruled that (Republican) presidents are above the law. Official actions can't be prosecuted, but you have to ask the court what official means on a case-by-case basis, making the ruling implicitly partisan. Trump will thus never face consequences for his crimes in office.
Trump is an admitted (Access Hollywood) and convicted (E Jean Carroll) sexual predator. He has paid several million dollars to E Jean Carroll for raping her but that is the extent of any consequence he has suffered. He continues to be president.
And I honestly see no reason to believe he's simply delaying consequences. He was out of the presidency for four years during which time he was convicted of multiple felonies. Is that a consequence? Was that justice? It didn't end up meaning anything.