the big irony, of course, is that i'm much more comfortable with China surveilling me than the US, since the latter can throw me in jail, seize my assets, and ruin my family's life, while the former cannot.
I've already placed my bets that current president will be the first to serve at least three terms since the two-term limit was introduced. Judging by what's happening, seems like a safer and safer bet every day.
Like he said he didn't know anything about project 2025?
Steve Bannon is the one working on this, has said they have a plan to do it. Trump himself seems to believe that if the country is at war elections are postponed because that is how it works in Ukraine. Ergo Venezuela.
> it amazes me how often I see this kind of anti-democratic institition sentiment.
leeoniya didn't say anything about democracy. The practical reality is that regardless of what forms of government are involved, whichever government has the ability to arrest you is the government which is the greatest threat in your day-to-day life.
> government has the ability to arrest you is the government which is the greatest threat in your day-to-day life
Assuming every government is the same, which I'm not so sure about. I rather be arrested by the German government than the US government, mainly because I don't want to disappear to black site and be made to disappear for years while I'm t̶o̶r̶t̶u̶r̶e̶d̶ receiving enhanced discussion techniques. At least I know I'll be treated relatively OK by Germany, while my fear is pretty much the opposite from a lot of other governments out there.
Yes the US is a democracy, but a lot of our systems suck ass and are also close in proximity. You DO NOT want to get into legal trouble in the US. Our justice system is beyond fucked. If there's one way to permanently ruin your life in the US, it's getting into legal trouble. You're better off smoking crack cocaine, that's probably healthier for your livelihood.
I don't know about China's legal system, but even assuming it's more fucked, it's all the way over there. Not here.
The main trouble with Flock and companies like them is that they attach to our broken systems like a tumor. If the system fails, which it often does, these accelerate it and make it worse. If you get falsely accused of something or piss off the wrong PD, this shit can ruin your life. Permanently and expeditiously.
Even if you are the most Moral Orel you should be skeptical of these crime reduction claims. They don't just beat down crime, they beat down regular people, too. And if you ask them, they don't know the difference.
> I don't know about China's legal system, but even assuming it's more fucked, it's all the way over there. Not here.
You're saying that the US legal system is extremely bad, shouldn't the assumption be that other countries have it better? I don't know much about either country's legal systems, but I do know that if I feel like my country is extremely bad at something, other countries probably do it better, at least that what I'll assume until I see evidence of something else.
Maybe, I mostly gave that disclaimer to say that it actually doesn't matter much. Even if it's worse, that's still better, because it's over there.
But yes, generally, I assume virtually every developed country (and some of the kind of developed countries) have a more just and competent legal system than the US.
The US is an interesting beast, because when you compare it to the entire world on a bunch of stuff, it doesn't seem so bad. But when you compare to countries that have, like, clean running water, then it really falls flat in a lot of ways. This allows apologists to basically justify anything the US does, because somebody, somewhere, is doing it much worse. Hey guys, look at Uganda, they're genociding gay people!
Another sign of Chinese ideological dominance is that nobody can conceive of a future that does not mimic China's solutions to social problems. Trump says frequently that he's jealous of Xi's position as dictator, tech firms envy 996 culture, public safety advocates are pivoting to restricting internet speech and constant surveillance.. etc. etc.
jesus fuck the gloves really came off in the past few years. noone even cares to hide it anymore.
i could almost admire the transparency of these people, the way they're apparently okay accepting collateral damage of their schemes, up to the complete destruction of the fabric of society... as long as there's money to be made.
American venture capitalism ironically creates all of the same authoritarian issues as Chinese state capitalism, but without any of the lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty part.
Lack of rule of law by various states, counties, cities, fraud by their councils, and violent offenders are the direct cause of Flocks adoption.
Blues create the chaos to justify the surveillance so they can selectively enforce who gets charged. They revoke self protection laws and tell people to wait for the police they defunded. They rarely target criminals, overwhelmingly political dissidents.
The police are usually pretty good at their jobs, within reason. It's almost always going to take them several minutes at least to respond to your call, but when they do manage to arrive on the scene they are usually pretty good about eliminating the threat and rendering first aid/etc. There are some infamous cases where this severely broke down, instances of cops not entering an active crime scene and instead seeing fit to stop the public from taking matters into their own hands, but these instances are so notorious because of how unusual and counter to American values they were.
It's usually prosecutors and judges who drop the ball.
We’re pretending our upper middle class SV bubble is reality. Poor and historically disadvantaged people don’t exist for the purposes of this conversation. /s
I've never heard about this Tan guy before, I don't keep up with politics/corporatism anymore, but is that possibly sarcasm? It sure feels like it to me. But again, I don't know this person, but if I came across that by itself I feel like it's pretty clearly sarcastic, as Twitter tends to be. Maybe I'm just tone deaf myself to how tone deaf others could be?
He probably being sincere. If you're logged in (or use something like xcancel), you can see the full thread, where he starts off with
> Flock Safety currently solves 700,000 reported cases of crime per year, which is about 10% of reported crime nationwide
> And they're just getting started
His profile also says:
>President & CEO @ycombinator —Founder @Initialized—designer/engineer who helps founders—SF Dem accelerating the boom loop—haters not allowed in my sauna
It's really interesting the different cultures "YCombinator the startup incubator" and "Ycombinator/HN the internet forum has". A comment being so oblivious about surveillance would probably be flagged here, at least heavily downvoted, while this guy is actively the president and CEO of Ycombinator today?
pg, what happened? Ycombinator used to be a beacon of sense in a sea of uselessness, but now uselessness is running Ycombinator?
Don't look to pg for anything that can be seen as "woke" - he wants that mind-virus eliminated forever[0]. Many billionaires revealed their true colors after November 2024, remember this when they adjust their public posture to follow the political winds.
Generally speaking, today, surveillance capitalism is the foundation of both our political culture, economy, and the tech industry that backs them.
In polite circles we call surveillance "user telemetry" and the like. It's not just Palantir and FLock; where does Meta's money come from...? Google's for that matter...?
Really valuable research. A benefit to public safety, and drawing attention to a sloppy vendor in the security space, claiming to secure the public, but instead putting the public at risk. However I'm deeply concerned for the researcher and all involved because this may be a criminal violation under the CFAA - accessing these systems without authorization, even if they don't have authentication.
In Brazil there is a similar problem, but it's not as widely discussed. Here, police investigations revealed that a website sold access for less than $4 to the nation-wide surveillance system, which included live feed of public safety cameras and person search by tax identifier. It was also shown that criminal organizations used it to locate their targets. Access was through the open internet, with leaked credentials, the federal government's system requires no VPN for access.
“Are the fires of Hell a-glowing?
Is the grisly reaper mowing?
Yes! The danger must be growing
For the rowers keep on rowing
And they're certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing!” - Willie Wonka
flock is the most heinous reflection of the ills of our current socioeconomic structure. absolutely nobody should be okay with mass surveillance, much less mass surveillance enabled by a private company.
If you find yourself sympathetic to Flock, you should ask yourself: do we have a right to any kind of privacy in a public space or is public space by definition a denial of any sort of privacy? This is the inherent premise in this technology that's problematic.
In Japan, for instance, there are very strict laws about broadcasting people's faces in public because there is a cultural assumption that one deserves anonymity as a form of privacy, regardless of the public visibility of their person.
I think I'd prefer to live in a place where I have some sort of recourse over when and how I'm recorded. Something more than "avoid that public intersection if you don't like it."
Surveillance technology doesn't stop property crime, so it isn't a tradeoff question.
The necessary and sufficient steps to stop property crime are:
1. Secure the stuff.
2. Take repeat criminals off the street.
Against random 'crime of opportunity' with new parties nothing but proactive security is particularly effective because even if you catch the person after the fact the damage is already done. The incentive to commit a crime comes from the combination of the opportunity and the deterrence-- and not everyone is responsive to deterrence so controlling the opportunity is critical.
Against repeated or organized criminals nothing but taking them out of society is very effective. Because they are repeated extensive surveillance is not required-- eventually they'll be caught even if not in the first instance. If you fail to take them off the streets no amount of surveillance will ever help, as they'll keep doing it again and again.
Many repeat criminals are driven by mental illness, stupidity, emotional regulation, or sometimes desperation. They're committing crimes at all because for whatever reason they're already not responding to all the incentives not to. Adding more incentives not to has a minor effect at most.
The conspiratorially minded might wonder if the failure to enforce and incarcerate for property crime in places like California isn't part of a plot to manufacture consent for totalitarian surveillance. But sadly, life isn't a movie plot-- it would be easier to fight against a plot rather than just collective failure and incompetence. In any case, many many people have had the experience of having video or know exactly who the criminal is only to have police, prosecutors, or the court do absolutely nothing about it. But even when they do-- it pretty much never undoes the harm of the crime.
Flock is literally funded by the people behind this site. The people behind this site are the 'most heinous reflection of the ills of our current socioeconomic structure'.
> The financing was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with backing from Greenoaks Capital, Bedrock Capital. Meritech Capital, Matrix Partners, Sands Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator also participated.
We didn't sleep walk into it, we ran into it because of poor basic civics education and a cynical media cycle that biases towards making everyone terrified of crime.
The latter is driven by two forces - a profit motive (sensational, gruesome stories sell), and a political motive (media carrying water for far-right-wing candidates loves to keep you scared on this issue).
The optimal level of crime or unsolved crime in a society is not zero, but a lot of people will look at you like you've got three eyes if you tell them that. Talk to them for another ten minutes, and most of them will see why what you say makes sense, but that's not a conversation their television will ever have with them.
>This is clear fascism, but people are too afraid to admit. We have sleep walked into it.
>With such surveillance, administration can [...]
Have you missed all the cries of "fascism" back in 2016/2017? The problem isn't "people are too afraid to admit". It's that "wolf!" was cried too many times and people tuned it out. Ironically this invocation "fascism" is arguably also crying wolf. From wikipedia:
>Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Is an ANPR network terrible for privacy? Yes, obviously. Is it authoritarian? Maybe[1]. Is everything vaguely authoritarian "fascism"? No.
[1] Consider cell phones. They're terrible for privacy, but nobody would seriously consider them "authoritarian".
>Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
These things don't just happen overnight. It's not crying wolf when you see the wolf on the horizon running towards you.
>These things don't just happen overnight. It's not crying wolf when you see the wolf on the horizon running towards you.
So were vaccine mandates and passports "fascism" as well, even though they melted away after the pandemic ended, contrary to some who thought it was going to be part of some new world order?
>Group A: "Mandatory masks in crowds during an airborne pandemic is fascism! Watch out!"
>You: "Group A was foolish, therefore Group B is foolish, because all warnings against fascism are equally un-grounded and meritless for some reason."
So it's only "fascism" if it's not for a Good Reason? Who decides whether something is a good reason? Is it us, because we're obviously the Good Guys? Doesn't this seem suspiciously close to a defense of Flock that others have referenced[1]? ie. "Doesn't vaccine passports seem pretty dystopian? You're thinking of [other group] authoritarianism. Our authoritarianism helps granny from getting sick and stops the spread of covid". This kind of attitude is exactly the reason why people tuned "fascism" out. It just became a tool for partisan in-group signaling.
Children could go missing thanks to Flock default settings. HN would tell me to never attribute to malice ... but there may be criminal negligence.
To cover their butts I strongly suggest Flock implement a default "grading system" that will show a city in a banner at the top of their management and monitoring system that based on their camera and network configuration they get an A+ to F-. If the grade is below a C then it must be impossible to get rid of the banner and it must be blinking red. The grading system must be both free, mandatory and a part of the core management code. This assumes Flock will have the willpower to say no when a city demands removal of the flashing red banner. Instead up-sell professional services to secure their mess. I would like to see the NCC Group review their security and future grading system.
I always found Hanlon's Razor a bit too optimistic in tone. I prefer it restated in the form of Clarke's third law:
"Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice."
> The financing was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with backing from Greenoaks Capital, Bedrock Capital. Meritech Capital, Matrix Partners, Sands Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator also participated.
For what? Under current jurisprudence collecting license plates images isn't illegal, because there's no expectation of privacy in public. They could post the information online if they wanted to and they'd be in the clear. It's fine to object to ANPR networks on the basis of "mass surveillance" or whatever, but screaming for people to be arrested without legal basis, just because you don't like what they're doing is childish and counterproductive to the conversation.
The main issue is that we have a different set of laws that govern businesses and that govern private citizens.
If I set up a camera in a local park and programmed it to zoom into children's faces and stream it directly to my computer, I am surely going to jail.
But if I set up 100 cameras to do just that, baby, that's just business.
It's almost paradoxical. The more evil I do, the less illegal it becomes. The greater the scale of harm I inflict, the more palatable it is. It's a get out of jail free card.
Are you a psychopath? Love to kill people? Well, don't use knives or guns silly! Instead, form an LLC and give people poison. You'll kill 100x more people with 100x less consequences!
>If I set up a camera in a local park and programmed it to zoom into children's faces and stream it directly to my computer, I am surely going to jail.
[citation needed]
You might be called a creep, and you might be asked to remove the camera (because you can't leave random cameras on public property without permission), but operating cameras in public and recording stuff isn't illegal. Paparazzis do that all the time.
You're probably being facetious, but aiding criminals isn't illegal unless you're knowingly doing it. Signal is known to be used by criminals, and on top their app is specifically designed to frustrate law enforcement, yet they stayed clear of lawsuits.
Because he attained his current position by ragebaiting everyone. He’s just a puppet of the people who are really in charge (intelligence agencies and billionaires)
Rather just see them get Flocked honestly. Seems like the type of tech a child would dream up only to realize when it's too late that it's dystopian, creepy, and a detriment to society.
By top brass do you mean the people behind this website?
> The financing was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with backing from Greenoaks Capital, Bedrock Capital. Meritech Capital, Matrix Partners, Sands Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator also participated.
I think so, but it is a loosely held opinion at this point. Fundamentally, I think it is a huge, asymmetric power grab by Flock and local police to install these systems. It only takes one officer looking up their local politician and finding them doing something that could even look like a bad deed (or to fake it in the era of AI videogen...) to enable blackmail and personal/professional gain.
If they're going to exist, it may be better for that to be spread among the public than to be left in the hands of the few.
At first I thought you were defending flock. Seems clear the cameras make it harder to commit crimes and easier to go after the offenders, despite all the side effects most people are upset about here.
How does a camera make it harder to commit a crime? If I bash your skull in on camera, did the camera make that more difficult? Would your family be less aggrieved?
You could kinda already do this with all kinds of security cameras. There are only so many people who are computer proficient, and that number is lower than the number of camera installers.
There have been cases of people getting into baby monitors and yelling at the baby.
But as a tech company, this is extremely irresponsible
BTW, Benn Jordan is also known as The Flashbulb, an ambient legend
Interesting, but nothing new. Shodan users have known about clueless IP camera owners that leave their cameras on the public internet for years. This is a little more interesting because it's from a well-funded startup rather than independently owned Chinese IP cameras.
i guess that while it is alarming that these feeds were "unsecured" I'm just as concerned that they exist at all. Folks worry about it getting into the "wrong hands" but from my POV it was put up by the wrong hands.
While both are a problem I am far more concerned about the power this gives our, increasingly authoritarian, government than about individual stalkers/creeps.
It's 2025. The ISP gateway I got comes with more default security than these cameras. The barrier to entry on security is lower than it ever has been in history. Whoever let this past the QC phase is an idiot.
It's all a matter of perspective. I'm sure to some executive somewhere, the person/s who approved all of this is seen as heroes, as they shaved of 0.7% or whatever from the costs of the development, and therefore made shareholders more money.
Until there are laws in place that makes people actually responsible for creating these situations, it'll continue, as for a company, profits goes above all.
It probably makes close to no difference in development or production, but it does significantly cut down on the number of tech support calls from people who can't figure out how to set the password, or immediately forget the password they set. If it has no password then you can just plug it in an have it work. Sure it's totally insecure, but its also trivial to install.
Generating a password that is unique to the device and print it with a sticky label on the underside of the device isn't exactly rocket-science, and ISPs somehow figured this out at least two decades ago, which was the first time I came across that myself. Surely whoever developed this IP-camera has an engineering department who've also seen something like this in the wild before?
Yep, but if you do that you need to staff a help line with people who can say "turn the box over and look at the sticker, no the sticker with the numbers on it, it's white with black letters and says PASSWORD in a big font, no the password isn't literally PASSWORD, it's the line below that with the strange letters, yes, to type that one you need to hold the shift key and press 3..."
Remember that ISPs often have people who come to your home to hook stuff up.
Yes, which costs money, which is exactly my original point. It's not because "Oh I'm so hassled because customers are dumb", it's "No, hiring people to do support would cost us money, which we don't want".
> Remember that ISPs often have people who come to your home to hook stuff up.
I can't recall a single time a technician wasn't required to come to my flat/house to install a new router. I'm based in Spain, maybe it's different elsewhere, but I think it's pretty much a requirement, you can't setup the WAN endpoint or ISP router yourself.
Last time I moved I opted for the "self install" kit, which was fine because I'm technical and the previous owners already had the service so there was nothing that needed to be done except hooking up the pre-configured modem. Saved me $200 in truck roll fees.
Interesting stuff, I've asked if I could do the installation myself every single time I've moved to a new place, and never has the ISP (three different ones) said yes. There isn't any installation fee place(probably by law?) so that isn't an issue here, just a hassle to coordinate having to meet between 12:00 and 18:00 or some super wide range of time for them to come and install it.
In the US for the past 5+ years Xfinity/Comcast, Charter, and whatever CenturyLink is called these days have all heavily pushed the "self-install kit" option vs traditional tech install each time I've moved.
Worked 4/5 times (all with cable), only time it failed was because I had apparently subscribed to a DSL plan from CenturyLink without realizing and they needed to wire up the extra lines upstream for the "modern" version of DSL to work in my apartment. After insisting multiple times that the self-install kit was 100% plug-n-play at my new address despite my intense skepticism since I really needed reliable internet from Day 1 during COVID remote work.
I was seriously missing Comcast/cable by the time that 1 yr contract was up, the devil you know and all...
So you're trying to justify this type of rampant negligence in tech? Do you think justifying such malfeasance makes up for fact we literally have surveillance networks that bad actors can tap to do really awful things?
Anyone that cares about their perspective has missed the point.
I don't think the person you're replying to is justifying it, but saying there's no laws to prevent the abuse.
Personally I think tech CEOs should be put in stocks in the town square on the regular but they're protected from any form of repercussions besides extreme cases of fraud. Even then, they're only held accountable when the money people have their money effected, not when normal people are bulldozed by the abuse.
If I was 10 years younger, I might agree that they aren't justifying it, but I have enough experience with passive speech to just not let it pass anymore.
Regarding remedy, we really need laws on this stuff yesterday. The problem is that we have to gut first amendment freedoms for some of this stuff, which wont go anywhere because there will always be too much overreach with today's representatives.
You should probably read the comment you're replying to before replying
> Until there are laws in place that makes people actually responsible for creating these situations, it'll continue, as for a company, profits goes above all.
They obviously meant that we ought to be holding these people responsible.
> You should probably read the comment you're replying to before replying
Congrats you spotted the thing we agreed on between comments. If you fail to see the agreement through parity of the part that was echoed, idk what to tell you. Education system is failing everyone in it these days.
> So you're trying to justify this type of rampant negligence in tech?
Don't know how you reached that conclusion, I obviously isn't trying to justify anything. But maybe something I said was unclear? What exactly gave you the idea I'm trying to justify anything of this?
Why stick your neck out, swim upstream to do a good job that will not be recognised as such?
Fix the corporate incentives and engineers will be able to do the right thing without suffering. Not everyone gets the luxury of a secure career doing morally ok things.
Counterpoint: whoever let this past the QC phase got paid very generously, and everyone involved is ignoring the laws that already exist to combat this, because law enforcement, too, gets paid generously. And the laws that forbid that aren't getting enforced because the police doesn't police the police, and dad has made it perfectly clear that flagrantly ignoring the law is fine if you're in power.
What makes you think QA/QC is paid handsomely? It's a bloody cost center mate, and you can't measure "damage prevented" consistently, or at least in a way most high-risk tolerating exec types won't immediately undermine.
I would love to watch a shorter version of this video that just discussed the deltas between the status quo and Flock, rather than breathlessly reporting the implications of cameras as if they were distinctive to Flock. He'll spend 30 seconds talking about how you can see every activity and every person on the camera --- yeah, that's how cameras work. There are thousands of public IP cameras on the Internet, aimed at intersections, public streets, houses, playgrounds, schools; most of them operated that way deliberately.
There are Flock-specific bad things happening here, but you have to dig through the video to get to them, and they're not intuitive. The new Flock "Condor" cameras are apparently auto-PTZ, meaning that when they detect motion, they zoom in on it. That's new! I want to hear more about that, and less about "I had tears in my eyes watching this camera footage of a children's playground", which is something you could have done last week or last year or last decade, or about a mental health police wellness detention somewhere where all the cops were already wearing FOIA-able body cams.
If open Flock cameras gave you the Flock search bar, that would be the end of the world. And the possibility that could happen is a good reason to push back on Flock. But that's not what happened here.
He's pretty open in this video about how Flock is far from alone in this space, and he's just using them as an example because they're so popular and flagrantly abusive.
In my experience, people respond much more strongly to naming a specific company or person. Clearer plan of action than a resigned “This tech is old news.”
If your takeaway from that comment is that ‘tptacek thinks Flock’s tech is old news and he’s resigned about it, I think you’re going to be in for a treat.
Is the plan of action "eliminate all public IP cameras"? That's coherent, I'd get it, but that doesn't seem to be what he's saying at all. He used a Google search to find exposed Flock admin consoles (interesting! say more about that!) but he could just as easily have just searched "open IP cameras"; there's sites that do nothing but index those.
Flock is cooked. They didn’t even implement basic security features for an extremely sensitive database. More ammo for those of us trying to get our local authorities to cut ties with this disgusting excuse for a startup.
Have breaches like this had a meaningful impact on businesses before? If there has been a case where the public cared , and the business was terminated, it’s definitely been an exception to the rule.
I’m baffled by the state of law enforcement. On one hand we are spending loads on surveillance, but on the other we refuse to enforce violent, property & drugs-abuse crimes. Gross violent offenders are being allowed to walk. So what is the point of all the CCTV ?
As major investors in Flock, being aware of the long term law enforcement strategy, I’m guessing ycombinator can comment on what all of this investment is for.
The surveillance state is there to benefit the rich and wealthy whom not only wield disproportionate power but are increasingly scared of their own shadow. The rest of us get nothing but crickets if we ask the police to do anything.
It’s a nice theory but still doesn’t explain why the laws aren’t being enforced. Presumably these rich, powerful and paranoid also control the AG’s and judges. Why aren’t they locking these people up?
Because it doesn't affect them directly, it's really that simple. Look at how quickly the entire media and police apparatus mobilized when Brian Thompson was killed.
remember when people first started experiencing TSA and there were massive protests at how obscene and violating it all was, then uncovering how useless they were as fake security theater
and they were going to get it all shut down
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS NOW
so good luck getting rid of flock where people don't even know it's happening
Not sure if people realize that cellphone locations, several layers in the firmware and software, can be had without warrant by anyone YEARS LATER
Moreover, people are pissed off when someone's angry because of TSA bs. "Don't be an asshole, they're just doing their jobs". "Oh someone's first week on this planet".
Oh no. Someone can view cctv data and delete it. Always blown out of proportion. The likelihood of someone a) committing a crime or otherwise b) knowing there was this specific brand of camera software being run on a camera in that area c) knowing how to access these portals
A useful rule of thumb is that any video that is using music to convince you of something is generally bullshit in the first place.
Am I right to understand that all those cams are pointed to the street / public places? I am not aware that there is any expectation of privacy, legally or otherwise, when you walk down the street. Sure, it is lame that those camera are unprotected, and shows how amateurish most of those IoT companies are. But how is that different from the thousands of live cams over youtube or the wider internet? Or the poorly secured CCTV watching every angle of any street in most big cities.
The author then uses face search engines to find personal information on the individuals. That is the creepy part, but has little to do with Flock, and you could have pulled those faces from any social network or any random video on youtube.
Am I right to understand that all those cams are pointed to the street / public places?
- I think you would be wrong to understand that. How on earth did you reach that conclusion?
But how is that different from the thousands of live cams over youtube or the wider internet? Or the poorly secured CCTV watching every angle of any street in most big cities.
- More than one thing can be wrong at once. Requires nuanced thought I accept.
The author then uses face search engines to find personal information on the individuals. That is the creepy part.
- I think he is demonstrating the creepy opportinities. Did he share any of that information? I think anyone with bad intent probably probably not make a video explaining what they did.
> - I think you would be wrong to understand that. How on earth did you reach that conclusion?
from the video only showing cams of public places (parking lots, parks and streets). And also it seems that this is how Flock markets itself on its website.
> - I think he is demonstrating the creepy opportinities. Did he share any of that information? I think anyone with bad intent probably probably not make a video explaining what they did.
I am not saying the author is creepy, I am saying face search engines and personal information available publicly are creepy. But nothing to do with Flock.
You miss the point. This is a law enforcement tool. The average American doesn’t want a surveillance state and that’s literally what’s happening. The legal aspect of it is not in question here.
Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right. Anyone deploying or involved with this technology should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.
That's not the point the video makes. Flock didn't invent CCTV. Not that I am trying to defend mass surveillance or incompetent silicon valley companies.
Flock "invented" CCTV in the USA that doesn't requiring going to multiple locations and asking for their tapes in order to track someone across locations.
For more context here Flock Safety is a YC-backed company [1][2]
[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety
[2] https://x.com/garrytan/status/1856016868580151615
And let me share this reply by Garry Tan, CEO of YC, after someone made a comment that Flock might be _pretty dystopian_ [1][2]:
> You're thinking Chinese surveillance
> US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims
[1] https://x.com/neurajordan/status/1963303084609966288
[2] https://x.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955
> You're thinking Chinese surveillance
the big irony, of course, is that i'm much more comfortable with China surveilling me than the US, since the latter can throw me in jail, seize my assets, and ruin my family's life, while the former cannot.
The US government is a democracy and can be replaced should it exceed people’s limits. The CCP… uh, not so much.
I’m not trying to say the US government is faultless but it amazes me how often I see this kind of anti-democratic institition sentiment.
> The US government is a democracy and can be replaced
I'm not sure this is as axiomatic as many think, in 2025
I've already placed my bets that current president will be the first to serve at least three terms since the two-term limit was introduced. Judging by what's happening, seems like a safer and safer bet every day.
Hasn’t Trump already said he won’t do another term?
No way would he ever lie!
Like he said he didn't know anything about project 2025?
Steve Bannon is the one working on this, has said they have a plan to do it. Trump himself seems to believe that if the country is at war elections are postponed because that is how it works in Ukraine. Ergo Venezuela.
> it amazes me how often I see this kind of anti-democratic institition sentiment.
leeoniya didn't say anything about democracy. The practical reality is that regardless of what forms of government are involved, whichever government has the ability to arrest you is the government which is the greatest threat in your day-to-day life.
> government has the ability to arrest you is the government which is the greatest threat in your day-to-day life
Assuming every government is the same, which I'm not so sure about. I rather be arrested by the German government than the US government, mainly because I don't want to disappear to black site and be made to disappear for years while I'm t̶o̶r̶t̶u̶r̶e̶d̶ receiving enhanced discussion techniques. At least I know I'll be treated relatively OK by Germany, while my fear is pretty much the opposite from a lot of other governments out there.
It's not anti-democratic, it's just pragmatic.
Yes the US is a democracy, but a lot of our systems suck ass and are also close in proximity. You DO NOT want to get into legal trouble in the US. Our justice system is beyond fucked. If there's one way to permanently ruin your life in the US, it's getting into legal trouble. You're better off smoking crack cocaine, that's probably healthier for your livelihood.
I don't know about China's legal system, but even assuming it's more fucked, it's all the way over there. Not here.
The main trouble with Flock and companies like them is that they attach to our broken systems like a tumor. If the system fails, which it often does, these accelerate it and make it worse. If you get falsely accused of something or piss off the wrong PD, this shit can ruin your life. Permanently and expeditiously.
Even if you are the most Moral Orel you should be skeptical of these crime reduction claims. They don't just beat down crime, they beat down regular people, too. And if you ask them, they don't know the difference.
> I don't know about China's legal system, but even assuming it's more fucked, it's all the way over there. Not here.
You're saying that the US legal system is extremely bad, shouldn't the assumption be that other countries have it better? I don't know much about either country's legal systems, but I do know that if I feel like my country is extremely bad at something, other countries probably do it better, at least that what I'll assume until I see evidence of something else.
Maybe, I mostly gave that disclaimer to say that it actually doesn't matter much. Even if it's worse, that's still better, because it's over there.
But yes, generally, I assume virtually every developed country (and some of the kind of developed countries) have a more just and competent legal system than the US.
The US is an interesting beast, because when you compare it to the entire world on a bunch of stuff, it doesn't seem so bad. But when you compare to countries that have, like, clean running water, then it really falls flat in a lot of ways. This allows apologists to basically justify anything the US does, because somebody, somewhere, is doing it much worse. Hey guys, look at Uganda, they're genociding gay people!
why would the former bother, when all they have to do is take you to one of their secret police stations in the US and disappear you?
Still a much lower risk than Kristi Noem deciding you represent a national security risk because you tweeted “Fk ICE”
America probably invented extraordinary rendition.
s/is take you to/is convince you to willing go to/g
The CCP can hijack your accounts and absolutely do all of those things, using your own government.
could you provide an example of that happening?
You don't understand, when software has support for Chinese characters it is automatically 150% more dystopian.
Another sign of Chinese ideological dominance is that nobody can conceive of a future that does not mimic China's solutions to social problems. Trump says frequently that he's jealous of Xi's position as dictator, tech firms envy 996 culture, public safety advocates are pivoting to restricting internet speech and constant surveillance.. etc. etc.
jesus fuck the gloves really came off in the past few years. noone even cares to hide it anymore.
i could almost admire the transparency of these people, the way they're apparently okay accepting collateral damage of their schemes, up to the complete destruction of the fabric of society... as long as there's money to be made.
American venture capitalism ironically creates all of the same authoritarian issues as Chinese state capitalism, but without any of the lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty part.
Lack of rule of law by various states, counties, cities, fraud by their councils, and violent offenders are the direct cause of Flocks adoption.
Blues create the chaos to justify the surveillance so they can selectively enforce who gets charged. They revoke self protection laws and tell people to wait for the police they defunded. They rarely target criminals, overwhelmingly political dissidents.
Why did my low-crime red town in a red state buy into flock?
If the police protected and served as they're asked they could get some funding. Not for tanks and spy cameras, but for trained officers.
The police are usually pretty good at their jobs, within reason. It's almost always going to take them several minutes at least to respond to your call, but when they do manage to arrive on the scene they are usually pretty good about eliminating the threat and rendering first aid/etc. There are some infamous cases where this severely broke down, instances of cops not entering an active crime scene and instead seeing fit to stop the public from taking matters into their own hands, but these instances are so notorious because of how unusual and counter to American values they were.
It's usually prosecutors and judges who drop the ball.
That is, unless you're black of course.
https://naacp.org/resources/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
We’re pretending our upper middle class SV bubble is reality. Poor and historically disadvantaged people don’t exist for the purposes of this conversation. /s
I've never heard about this Tan guy before, I don't keep up with politics/corporatism anymore, but is that possibly sarcasm? It sure feels like it to me. But again, I don't know this person, but if I came across that by itself I feel like it's pretty clearly sarcastic, as Twitter tends to be. Maybe I'm just tone deaf myself to how tone deaf others could be?
He probably being sincere. If you're logged in (or use something like xcancel), you can see the full thread, where he starts off with
> Flock Safety currently solves 700,000 reported cases of crime per year, which is about 10% of reported crime nationwide
> And they're just getting started
His profile also says:
>President & CEO @ycombinator —Founder @Initialized—designer/engineer who helps founders—SF Dem accelerating the boom loop—haters not allowed in my sauna
Gary has some unhinged politics with regards to "public safety" even excepting the Flock boosterism.
If it benefits Surveillance Valley, Garry Tan is all over it like Trump on a 13 year old
He’s being sincerely greedy and nihilistic, if that’s what you mean by “sincere”
It's really interesting the different cultures "YCombinator the startup incubator" and "Ycombinator/HN the internet forum has". A comment being so oblivious about surveillance would probably be flagged here, at least heavily downvoted, while this guy is actively the president and CEO of Ycombinator today?
pg, what happened? Ycombinator used to be a beacon of sense in a sea of uselessness, but now uselessness is running Ycombinator?
> pg, what happened?
Don't look to pg for anything that can be seen as "woke" - he wants that mind-virus eliminated forever[0]. Many billionaires revealed their true colors after November 2024, remember this when they adjust their public posture to follow the political winds.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42780223
This is the CEO of the startup incubator handwaving away concerns in the name of money.
It is not sarcastic.
Generally speaking, today, surveillance capitalism is the foundation of both our political culture, economy, and the tech industry that backs them.
In polite circles we call surveillance "user telemetry" and the like. It's not just Palantir and FLock; where does Meta's money come from...? Google's for that matter...?
Is this dystopian enough yet?
Flock does ai enabled mass surveillance.
Palantir uses such information, feds and local governments are already customers.
The CEO of ycombinator is part of the same weird church as Peter Thiel, acts 17.
Then look up the other SV tech billionaires that are on board with network states and other Curtis Yarvin nonsense.
Really valuable research. A benefit to public safety, and drawing attention to a sloppy vendor in the security space, claiming to secure the public, but instead putting the public at risk. However I'm deeply concerned for the researcher and all involved because this may be a criminal violation under the CFAA - accessing these systems without authorization, even if they don't have authentication.
In Brazil there is a similar problem, but it's not as widely discussed. Here, police investigations revealed that a website sold access for less than $4 to the nation-wide surveillance system, which included live feed of public safety cameras and person search by tax identifier. It was also shown that criminal organizations used it to locate their targets. Access was through the open internet, with leaked credentials, the federal government's system requires no VPN for access.
Source (Portuguese): https://mpmt.mp.br/portalcao/news/1217/164630/pf-expoe-invas...
This was posted to HN a week ago but didn't get enough attention due to the weird title.
It's a map of all city council meetings in the US whose agenda mentions Flock
https://alpr.watch/
The CEO of Flock, Garrett Langley, called Deflock a terrorist group. It's unhinged. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-kZGrDz7PU
Expect more of this. The masks are coming off.
“Are the fires of Hell a-glowing? Is the grisly reaper mowing? Yes! The danger must be growing For the rowers keep on rowing And they're certainly not showing Any signs that they are slowing!” - Willie Wonka
flock is the most heinous reflection of the ills of our current socioeconomic structure. absolutely nobody should be okay with mass surveillance, much less mass surveillance enabled by a private company.
It's what happens when we rank private property over human lives. We deserve this.
Agree.
If you find yourself sympathetic to Flock, you should ask yourself: do we have a right to any kind of privacy in a public space or is public space by definition a denial of any sort of privacy? This is the inherent premise in this technology that's problematic.
In Japan, for instance, there are very strict laws about broadcasting people's faces in public because there is a cultural assumption that one deserves anonymity as a form of privacy, regardless of the public visibility of their person.
I think I'd prefer to live in a place where I have some sort of recourse over when and how I'm recorded. Something more than "avoid that public intersection if you don't like it."
You can both have a desire to defend your peace, while also being against mass surveillance.
Gp specifically mentioned how we rank those 2, and didn't say they are mutually exclusive
I think you have it backwards. This is what happens when we rank human lives over human freedom.
The argument for these cameras is that they save lives. The argument against them is that they destroy freedom.
I don’t know that I’ve heard the “saves lives” argument for this type of camera. How would that play out?
Surveillance technology doesn't stop property crime, so it isn't a tradeoff question.
The necessary and sufficient steps to stop property crime are:
1. Secure the stuff.
2. Take repeat criminals off the street.
Against random 'crime of opportunity' with new parties nothing but proactive security is particularly effective because even if you catch the person after the fact the damage is already done. The incentive to commit a crime comes from the combination of the opportunity and the deterrence-- and not everyone is responsive to deterrence so controlling the opportunity is critical.
Against repeated or organized criminals nothing but taking them out of society is very effective. Because they are repeated extensive surveillance is not required-- eventually they'll be caught even if not in the first instance. If you fail to take them off the streets no amount of surveillance will ever help, as they'll keep doing it again and again.
Many repeat criminals are driven by mental illness, stupidity, emotional regulation, or sometimes desperation. They're committing crimes at all because for whatever reason they're already not responding to all the incentives not to. Adding more incentives not to has a minor effect at most.
The conspiratorially minded might wonder if the failure to enforce and incarcerate for property crime in places like California isn't part of a plot to manufacture consent for totalitarian surveillance. But sadly, life isn't a movie plot-- it would be easier to fight against a plot rather than just collective failure and incompetence. In any case, many many people have had the experience of having video or know exactly who the criminal is only to have police, prosecutors, or the court do absolutely nothing about it. But even when they do-- it pretty much never undoes the harm of the crime.
No, we do not "deserve this". The universe has no concept of "deserve".
People are part of the universe, and they have a concept of deserving.
Flock is literally funded by the people behind this site. The people behind this site are the 'most heinous reflection of the ills of our current socioeconomic structure'.
> The financing was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with backing from Greenoaks Capital, Bedrock Capital. Meritech Capital, Matrix Partners, Sands Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator also participated.
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-secures-major-...
This is clear fascism, but people are too afraid to admit. We have sleep walked into it.
With such surveillance, administration can slice and dice population and entertain disappearance of "undesirables" on an industrial scale.
This is actually nothing new, but people think there is some magic invisible hand that will prevent atrocities of WWII from never happening again.
FFS you have your own president favouring a war criminal and protecting nonces.
> We have sleep walked into it.
We didn't sleep walk into it, we ran into it because of poor basic civics education and a cynical media cycle that biases towards making everyone terrified of crime.
The latter is driven by two forces - a profit motive (sensational, gruesome stories sell), and a political motive (media carrying water for far-right-wing candidates loves to keep you scared on this issue).
The optimal level of crime or unsolved crime in a society is not zero, but a lot of people will look at you like you've got three eyes if you tell them that. Talk to them for another ten minutes, and most of them will see why what you say makes sense, but that's not a conversation their television will ever have with them.
>This is clear fascism, but people are too afraid to admit. We have sleep walked into it.
>With such surveillance, administration can [...]
Have you missed all the cries of "fascism" back in 2016/2017? The problem isn't "people are too afraid to admit". It's that "wolf!" was cried too many times and people tuned it out. Ironically this invocation "fascism" is arguably also crying wolf. From wikipedia:
>Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Is an ANPR network terrible for privacy? Yes, obviously. Is it authoritarian? Maybe[1]. Is everything vaguely authoritarian "fascism"? No.
[1] Consider cell phones. They're terrible for privacy, but nobody would seriously consider them "authoritarian".
>Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
These things don't just happen overnight. It's not crying wolf when you see the wolf on the horizon running towards you.
>These things don't just happen overnight. It's not crying wolf when you see the wolf on the horizon running towards you.
So were vaccine mandates and passports "fascism" as well, even though they melted away after the pandemic ended, contrary to some who thought it was going to be part of some new world order?
Group A: "Mandatory masks in crowds during an airborne pandemic is fascism! Watch out!"
Group B: "Throwing non-citizens into concentration camps using 'wartime' laws without trial is fascism! Watch out!"
You: "Group A was foolish, therefore Group B is foolish, because all warnings against fascism are equally un-grounded and meritless for some reason."
>Group A: "Mandatory masks in crowds during an airborne pandemic is fascism! Watch out!"
>You: "Group A was foolish, therefore Group B is foolish, because all warnings against fascism are equally un-grounded and meritless for some reason."
So it's only "fascism" if it's not for a Good Reason? Who decides whether something is a good reason? Is it us, because we're obviously the Good Guys? Doesn't this seem suspiciously close to a defense of Flock that others have referenced[1]? ie. "Doesn't vaccine passports seem pretty dystopian? You're thinking of [other group] authoritarianism. Our authoritarianism helps granny from getting sick and stops the spread of covid". This kind of attitude is exactly the reason why people tuned "fascism" out. It just became a tool for partisan in-group signaling.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46357042
[delayed]
Children could go missing thanks to Flock default settings. HN would tell me to never attribute to malice ... but there may be criminal negligence.
To cover their butts I strongly suggest Flock implement a default "grading system" that will show a city in a banner at the top of their management and monitoring system that based on their camera and network configuration they get an A+ to F-. If the grade is below a C then it must be impossible to get rid of the banner and it must be blinking red. The grading system must be both free, mandatory and a part of the core management code. This assumes Flock will have the willpower to say no when a city demands removal of the flashing red banner. Instead up-sell professional services to secure their mess. I would like to see the NCC Group review their security and future grading system.
I always found Hanlon's Razor a bit too optimistic in tone. I prefer it restated in the form of Clarke's third law: "Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice."
HN is the malice in this instance.
> The financing was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with backing from Greenoaks Capital, Bedrock Capital. Meritech Capital, Matrix Partners, Sands Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator also participated.
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-secures-major-...
Him reading the Flock statement on a Flock camera open on the internet was just so good. I love and support Benn Jordan.
At what point does the top brass at Flock get arrested?
For what? Under current jurisprudence collecting license plates images isn't illegal, because there's no expectation of privacy in public. They could post the information online if they wanted to and they'd be in the clear. It's fine to object to ANPR networks on the basis of "mass surveillance" or whatever, but screaming for people to be arrested without legal basis, just because you don't like what they're doing is childish and counterproductive to the conversation.
I mean, stalking is very clearly illegal.
The main issue is that we have a different set of laws that govern businesses and that govern private citizens.
If I set up a camera in a local park and programmed it to zoom into children's faces and stream it directly to my computer, I am surely going to jail.
But if I set up 100 cameras to do just that, baby, that's just business.
It's almost paradoxical. The more evil I do, the less illegal it becomes. The greater the scale of harm I inflict, the more palatable it is. It's a get out of jail free card.
Are you a psychopath? Love to kill people? Well, don't use knives or guns silly! Instead, form an LLC and give people poison. You'll kill 100x more people with 100x less consequences!
>If I set up a camera in a local park and programmed it to zoom into children's faces and stream it directly to my computer, I am surely going to jail.
[citation needed]
You might be called a creep, and you might be asked to remove the camera (because you can't leave random cameras on public property without permission), but operating cameras in public and recording stuff isn't illegal. Paparazzis do that all the time.
They're aiding the terrorists to stalk celebrities and public figures!
You're probably being facetious, but aiding criminals isn't illegal unless you're knowingly doing it. Signal is known to be used by criminals, and on top their app is specifically designed to frustrate law enforcement, yet they stayed clear of lawsuits.
Not the same at all because Signal helps celebrities and very important public figures communicate securely and privately.
Flock is helping the rapists stalk their ex-wives.
"Not the same at all because Flock helps companies and public safety agencies detect and monitor crime.
Signal is helping cartels organize hits."
Oh they’re buddies with all the departments. Fat chance.
They won’t under this administration. It’s owned and operated by Surveillance Valley Vulture Capitalists
Why do people avoid saying President Trump like he’s Voldemort?
Because he attained his current position by ragebaiting everyone. He’s just a puppet of the people who are really in charge (intelligence agencies and billionaires)
Rather just see them get Flocked honestly. Seems like the type of tech a child would dream up only to realize when it's too late that it's dystopian, creepy, and a detriment to society.
Building the torment nexus...
By top brass do you mean the people behind this website?
> The financing was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with backing from Greenoaks Capital, Bedrock Capital. Meritech Capital, Matrix Partners, Sands Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator also participated.
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-secures-major-...
In your dreams maybe
Should we also arrest computer co execs because computers are used to hack into things?
If the cameras are recoding public areas, isn’t it better the recorded footage stays public
I think so, but it is a loosely held opinion at this point. Fundamentally, I think it is a huge, asymmetric power grab by Flock and local police to install these systems. It only takes one officer looking up their local politician and finding them doing something that could even look like a bad deed (or to fake it in the era of AI videogen...) to enable blackmail and personal/professional gain.
If they're going to exist, it may be better for that to be spread among the public than to be left in the hands of the few.
They shouldn't be recording at all is the point.
Would you want your partner or child stalked, raped, and murdered?
You don't even need to drop an air tag now, you can use the license plate reader to track them everywhere they go. There is no hiding.
At first I thought you were defending flock. Seems clear the cameras make it harder to commit crimes and easier to go after the offenders, despite all the side effects most people are upset about here.
How does a camera make it harder to commit a crime? If I bash your skull in on camera, did the camera make that more difficult? Would your family be less aggrieved?
It makes it easy for a random person to track anyone, regardless of which states they go to.
It also makes it easy to say, track a person's movements to an abortion clinic if your state would like to prosecute that (this is happening).
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46355548
A bit more detail:
Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves (404media.co)
Kirlian Selections rocks
Wild to see the Flashbulb on top of HN
You could kinda already do this with all kinds of security cameras. There are only so many people who are computer proficient, and that number is lower than the number of camera installers.
There have been cases of people getting into baby monitors and yelling at the baby.
But as a tech company, this is extremely irresponsible
BTW, Benn Jordan is also known as The Flashbulb, an ambient legend
Interesting, but nothing new. Shodan users have known about clueless IP camera owners that leave their cameras on the public internet for years. This is a little more interesting because it's from a well-funded startup rather than independently owned Chinese IP cameras.
i guess that while it is alarming that these feeds were "unsecured" I'm just as concerned that they exist at all. Folks worry about it getting into the "wrong hands" but from my POV it was put up by the wrong hands.
While both are a problem I am far more concerned about the power this gives our, increasingly authoritarian, government than about individual stalkers/creeps.
It's 2025. The ISP gateway I got comes with more default security than these cameras. The barrier to entry on security is lower than it ever has been in history. Whoever let this past the QC phase is an idiot.
> Whoever let this past the QC phase is an idiot.
It's all a matter of perspective. I'm sure to some executive somewhere, the person/s who approved all of this is seen as heroes, as they shaved of 0.7% or whatever from the costs of the development, and therefore made shareholders more money.
Until there are laws in place that makes people actually responsible for creating these situations, it'll continue, as for a company, profits goes above all.
It probably makes close to no difference in development or production, but it does significantly cut down on the number of tech support calls from people who can't figure out how to set the password, or immediately forget the password they set. If it has no password then you can just plug it in an have it work. Sure it's totally insecure, but its also trivial to install.
Generating a password that is unique to the device and print it with a sticky label on the underside of the device isn't exactly rocket-science, and ISPs somehow figured this out at least two decades ago, which was the first time I came across that myself. Surely whoever developed this IP-camera has an engineering department who've also seen something like this in the wild before?
Yep, but if you do that you need to staff a help line with people who can say "turn the box over and look at the sticker, no the sticker with the numbers on it, it's white with black letters and says PASSWORD in a big font, no the password isn't literally PASSWORD, it's the line below that with the strange letters, yes, to type that one you need to hold the shift key and press 3..."
Remember that ISPs often have people who come to your home to hook stuff up.
Yes, which costs money, which is exactly my original point. It's not because "Oh I'm so hassled because customers are dumb", it's "No, hiring people to do support would cost us money, which we don't want".
> Remember that ISPs often have people who come to your home to hook stuff up.
I can't recall a single time a technician wasn't required to come to my flat/house to install a new router. I'm based in Spain, maybe it's different elsewhere, but I think it's pretty much a requirement, you can't setup the WAN endpoint or ISP router yourself.
Last time I moved I opted for the "self install" kit, which was fine because I'm technical and the previous owners already had the service so there was nothing that needed to be done except hooking up the pre-configured modem. Saved me $200 in truck roll fees.
Interesting stuff, I've asked if I could do the installation myself every single time I've moved to a new place, and never has the ISP (three different ones) said yes. There isn't any installation fee place(probably by law?) so that isn't an issue here, just a hassle to coordinate having to meet between 12:00 and 18:00 or some super wide range of time for them to come and install it.
In the US for the past 5+ years Xfinity/Comcast, Charter, and whatever CenturyLink is called these days have all heavily pushed the "self-install kit" option vs traditional tech install each time I've moved.
Worked 4/5 times (all with cable), only time it failed was because I had apparently subscribed to a DSL plan from CenturyLink without realizing and they needed to wire up the extra lines upstream for the "modern" version of DSL to work in my apartment. After insisting multiple times that the self-install kit was 100% plug-n-play at my new address despite my intense skepticism since I really needed reliable internet from Day 1 during COVID remote work.
I was seriously missing Comcast/cable by the time that 1 yr contract was up, the devil you know and all...
Yep. Until we start holding decision makers responsible for the consequences of their decisions, they will always choose the selfish option.
So you're trying to justify this type of rampant negligence in tech? Do you think justifying such malfeasance makes up for fact we literally have surveillance networks that bad actors can tap to do really awful things?
Anyone that cares about their perspective has missed the point.
I don't think the person you're replying to is justifying it, but saying there's no laws to prevent the abuse.
Personally I think tech CEOs should be put in stocks in the town square on the regular but they're protected from any form of repercussions besides extreme cases of fraud. Even then, they're only held accountable when the money people have their money effected, not when normal people are bulldozed by the abuse.
If I was 10 years younger, I might agree that they aren't justifying it, but I have enough experience with passive speech to just not let it pass anymore.
Regarding remedy, we really need laws on this stuff yesterday. The problem is that we have to gut first amendment freedoms for some of this stuff, which wont go anywhere because there will always be too much overreach with today's representatives.
You should probably read the comment you're replying to before replying
> Until there are laws in place that makes people actually responsible for creating these situations, it'll continue, as for a company, profits goes above all.
They obviously meant that we ought to be holding these people responsible.
> You should probably read the comment you're replying to before replying
Congrats you spotted the thing we agreed on between comments. If you fail to see the agreement through parity of the part that was echoed, idk what to tell you. Education system is failing everyone in it these days.
> So you're trying to justify this type of rampant negligence in tech?
Don't know how you reached that conclusion, I obviously isn't trying to justify anything. But maybe something I said was unclear? What exactly gave you the idea I'm trying to justify anything of this?
An explanation is not a justification.
Why stick your neck out, swim upstream to do a good job that will not be recognised as such?
Fix the corporate incentives and engineers will be able to do the right thing without suffering. Not everyone gets the luxury of a secure career doing morally ok things.
Counterpoint: whoever let this past the QC phase got paid very generously, and everyone involved is ignoring the laws that already exist to combat this, because law enforcement, too, gets paid generously. And the laws that forbid that aren't getting enforced because the police doesn't police the police, and dad has made it perfectly clear that flagrantly ignoring the law is fine if you're in power.
What makes you think QA/QC is paid handsomely? It's a bloody cost center mate, and you can't measure "damage prevented" consistently, or at least in a way most high-risk tolerating exec types won't immediately undermine.
t. Former QA veteran
I would love to watch a shorter version of this video that just discussed the deltas between the status quo and Flock, rather than breathlessly reporting the implications of cameras as if they were distinctive to Flock. He'll spend 30 seconds talking about how you can see every activity and every person on the camera --- yeah, that's how cameras work. There are thousands of public IP cameras on the Internet, aimed at intersections, public streets, houses, playgrounds, schools; most of them operated that way deliberately.
There are Flock-specific bad things happening here, but you have to dig through the video to get to them, and they're not intuitive. The new Flock "Condor" cameras are apparently auto-PTZ, meaning that when they detect motion, they zoom in on it. That's new! I want to hear more about that, and less about "I had tears in my eyes watching this camera footage of a children's playground", which is something you could have done last week or last year or last decade, or about a mental health police wellness detention somewhere where all the cops were already wearing FOIA-able body cams.
If open Flock cameras gave you the Flock search bar, that would be the end of the world. And the possibility that could happen is a good reason to push back on Flock. But that's not what happened here.
He's pretty open in this video about how Flock is far from alone in this space, and he's just using them as an example because they're so popular and flagrantly abusive.
In my experience, people respond much more strongly to naming a specific company or person. Clearer plan of action than a resigned “This tech is old news.”
If your takeaway from that comment is that ‘tptacek thinks Flock’s tech is old news and he’s resigned about it, I think you’re going to be in for a treat.
Is the plan of action "eliminate all public IP cameras"? That's coherent, I'd get it, but that doesn't seem to be what he's saying at all. He used a Google search to find exposed Flock admin consoles (interesting! say more about that!) but he could just as easily have just searched "open IP cameras"; there's sites that do nothing but index those.
Easy solution for Flock problem: get rid of visible license plates. Make them 2x1" of size and RFID-readable, give readers to police, problem solved.
Not-that-easy solution is legal ban for such surveillance.
None of these both will happen though.
You accepted TSA and PRISM, you will get used to Flock too.
Next is Flock but for people, with face recognition.
Fantastic, now I can't report a hit-and-run.
Flock is cooked. They didn’t even implement basic security features for an extremely sensitive database. More ammo for those of us trying to get our local authorities to cut ties with this disgusting excuse for a startup.
Have breaches like this had a meaningful impact on businesses before? If there has been a case where the public cared , and the business was terminated, it’s definitely been an exception to the rule.
We’ll see. Benn Jordan is doing the Lords work and providing a lot of evidence peopl can bring along to their local council meetings.
This is the unfortunate consequence of political decisions surrounding de-policing and border control. Everyone's a libertarian until they get robbed.
[dupe] Earlier article source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46355548
I’m baffled by the state of law enforcement. On one hand we are spending loads on surveillance, but on the other we refuse to enforce violent, property & drugs-abuse crimes. Gross violent offenders are being allowed to walk. So what is the point of all the CCTV ?
As major investors in Flock, being aware of the long term law enforcement strategy, I’m guessing ycombinator can comment on what all of this investment is for.
The surveillance state is there to benefit the rich and wealthy whom not only wield disproportionate power but are increasingly scared of their own shadow. The rest of us get nothing but crickets if we ask the police to do anything.
It’s a nice theory but still doesn’t explain why the laws aren’t being enforced. Presumably these rich, powerful and paranoid also control the AG’s and judges. Why aren’t they locking these people up?
Because it doesn't affect them directly, it's really that simple. Look at how quickly the entire media and police apparatus mobilized when Brian Thompson was killed.
remember when people first started experiencing TSA and there were massive protests at how obscene and violating it all was, then uncovering how useless they were as fake security theater
and they were going to get it all shut down
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS NOW
so good luck getting rid of flock where people don't even know it's happening
Not sure if people realize that cellphone locations, several layers in the firmware and software, can be had without warrant by anyone YEARS LATER
That's why it's good to use GraphiteOS. In the future, hopefully the pinebook project succeeds
How does using GrapheneOS prevent license plate readers from tracking where you are, or from you being groped at the airport?
You mean GrapheneOS?
Moreover, people are pissed off when someone's angry because of TSA bs. "Don't be an asshole, they're just doing their jobs". "Oh someone's first week on this planet".
Oh no. Someone can view cctv data and delete it. Always blown out of proportion. The likelihood of someone a) committing a crime or otherwise b) knowing there was this specific brand of camera software being run on a camera in that area c) knowing how to access these portals
Is basically zero.
A useful rule of thumb is that any video that is using music to convince you of something is generally bullshit in the first place.
Am I right to understand that all those cams are pointed to the street / public places? I am not aware that there is any expectation of privacy, legally or otherwise, when you walk down the street. Sure, it is lame that those camera are unprotected, and shows how amateurish most of those IoT companies are. But how is that different from the thousands of live cams over youtube or the wider internet? Or the poorly secured CCTV watching every angle of any street in most big cities.
The author then uses face search engines to find personal information on the individuals. That is the creepy part, but has little to do with Flock, and you could have pulled those faces from any social network or any random video on youtube.
Am I right to understand that all those cams are pointed to the street / public places?
- I think you would be wrong to understand that. How on earth did you reach that conclusion?
But how is that different from the thousands of live cams over youtube or the wider internet? Or the poorly secured CCTV watching every angle of any street in most big cities.
- More than one thing can be wrong at once. Requires nuanced thought I accept.
The author then uses face search engines to find personal information on the individuals. That is the creepy part.
- I think he is demonstrating the creepy opportinities. Did he share any of that information? I think anyone with bad intent probably probably not make a video explaining what they did.
> - I think you would be wrong to understand that. How on earth did you reach that conclusion?
from the video only showing cams of public places (parking lots, parks and streets). And also it seems that this is how Flock markets itself on its website.
> - I think he is demonstrating the creepy opportinities. Did he share any of that information? I think anyone with bad intent probably probably not make a video explaining what they did.
I am not saying the author is creepy, I am saying face search engines and personal information available publicly are creepy. But nothing to do with Flock.
You miss the point. This is a law enforcement tool. The average American doesn’t want a surveillance state and that’s literally what’s happening. The legal aspect of it is not in question here.
Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right. Anyone deploying or involved with this technology should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.
That's not the point the video makes. Flock didn't invent CCTV. Not that I am trying to defend mass surveillance or incompetent silicon valley companies.
Flock "invented" CCTV in the USA that doesn't requiring going to multiple locations and asking for their tapes in order to track someone across locations.