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...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-busine...
In reality they are very much interested in facts, because they give them info who to oppress harder
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.
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.
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?
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
>> 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.
Again, I'm pretty anti-Flock, but place the blame where it's due and use good logic to support that.
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
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?
The idea that there's not a scale difference is, quite frankly, bogus.
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".
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.
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.
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/
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.
"...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.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/weakness-strongmen-step...
Some geniuses proudly, openly self describe as anti antifa. Guess what that double negation makes you?
So they just said "These people are anti-fascist and this is a bad thing"
Aren't authoritarians great.
> 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.)
"Despite the name, Antifa is not just 'anti-fascist' but is actually _________"
What goes in the blank?
There is no antifa "organization". It is not centralized, there is no "leadership" or anyone in charge. It's more of a philosophy.
So when people talk about antifa as if it was the left wing equivalent of Osama Bin Laden's terror network, it's a self report they're forming their views based on strawman style propaganda, not engaging with the reality of it.
It’s a huge diff between someone being ”silenced” for speaking their minds on bike paths versus being ”silenced” for indirectly or even directly promoting a new holocaust. And from your vague responses it is not clear.
People who are "silenced" are not "googleable with 100s of examples."
It is like saying "the woke mob silenced a speaker", it doesn't mean anything. There isn't a 'woke organization' that is planning anything
But okay - I'm confused what sources you would accept? There are "Antifa" groups on social media that literally advocate for doing this, I've seen it first-hand.
>American Enterprise Institute, a prominent center-right think tank in Washington, D.C., that promotes free enterprise, limited government, and individual liberty through research and policy advocacy in areas like economics, foreign policy, and social studies
I too can get paid think tanks to publish hundreds of reports on how communists are taking over America... Doesn't mean communists are actually taking over America.
I've literally seen, with my own eyes, people of this movement shut down speech on my own college campus so many times. Probably everybody I've ever known at any college (Harvard, BU, BC, Northeastern, Middlebury, UC Berkeley, NYU, Columbia, etc) has seen this first-hand. How are you denying such an obvious reality?
That's not "commonly known", that's the spin you'll get from the right-wing in the US who just happen to have heavy fascist tendencies.
(Though I agree with you)
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?"
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.
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!"
If Flock's reputation spoke for itself, their CEO wouldn't have to play these kind of legal games.
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...?
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".
that's literally what it means in theory and in practice
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.
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.)
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.
[0] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...
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.
Pointing cameras at cameras? Terrorist organization
It's to make people like Garrett Langley feel protected from 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.
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...
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_SxlRQhHOA&list=RDZD8N9tDDQT4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vzXHhRBLnA&list=RDTgoAgYR4584
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHCg47cWIUc&list=RDXHCg47cWIUcAnd it's ironic because there are clearly "real terrorists" (i.e. 9/11 guys).
And that they're sharing their data with other non-local agencies (eg. ICE as it stands) without a warrant? That's outrageous, IMHO.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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...
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.
- “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?
no: terror is strictly about civilians.
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.
Telling illiberal authoritarians to go fuck themselves is reasonable. But power is still more important than insults.
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
> 5 months ago? c'mon OP
Thankfully OP is posting about it again, because I missed it the first time. Thank you OP!
https://archive.is/7iNyQ - this is an excellent piece breaking down the many many flaws in that figure and quotes the 2 academics involved who later said highlighted the issues.
->"“This 'study' rings a cacophony of alarm bells: the closer you look at it, the more it looks like a marketing scheme than data science,” Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me. “Nobody should be repeating the claims until the data can be verified and the conclusions replicated by independent data scientists without a direct tie to the company that stands to benefit."
>The researcher, Johnny Nhan of Texas Christian University, said that he has pivoted future research on Flock because he found “the information that is collected by the police departments are too varied and incomplete for us to do any type of meaningful statistical analysis on them.”
Just because something works doesn't make it right. Personally, giving up what the law is suppose to protect (individual rights) in the name of the law is something I can only see as a fool's bargain.
Have to ask for a citation there. Also, what are "real crimes"? Also, aren't these cameras? How are they tackling these 700k suspects?