Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public • Hacker News Board

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#81

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:15 AM UTC

fodkodrasz wrote: post #74

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is I think if you give people the choice between a 0.001% chance of getting murdered on the street or a 100% chance of being surveilled 24/7 you will find that people will take their chances with the murderers

Reality shows otherwise. Take a look at Google and free-for-ads-and-surveillance everything. People are willing to make compromises on privacy for less important things than the change of them or their loved ones getting murdered, as mentioned as an example. But back to Flock: public cameras are not 24/7 surveillance, as those don't surveil people at home. ps: I'm not for a panopticon, enforcement needs to come with…

So the argument here is that people are too stupid to realize that they are being manipulated into being controlled, therefore it’s ok?

Sit someone down, a normal average person, and explain to them the actual implications and then do you think they will agree? Reality shows that when people actually understand what surveillance means they reject it wholeheartedly

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#82

Post by nearlyepic » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:18 AM UTC

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #32

wrs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just sounds like the standard playbook for this crowd (by which wide brush I mean authoritarians and their enablers). They really hate being called on their lies, and their immediate response is to attack with whatever comes to hand (press release, xeet, the DoJ…depends on the person).

[flagged]

Yeah dude, Covid vaccinations were what started us on the slide to authoritarianism. Not 9/11. lol give me a break

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#83

Post by vuurmot » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:19 AM UTC

urams wrote: post #73

vuurmot wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Singapore, policing does not have the dystopian surveillance thing attached to it, because a large number of police are civilian conscripts. It takes the edge off, when you know that your neighbor's 18 year old kid is working in the police force, rather than some mercenary force On top of that, the majority of the military consists of civilian conscripts, which arguably holds more power if the system ever goes bad…

> In Singapore, policing does not have the dystopian surveillance thing attached to it, because a large number of police are civilian conscripts. I would not have guessed in a million years that someone would argue that country's surveillance doesn't have a dystopian vibe because the country conscripts people into service.

fyi Finland has the same conscription rates, I don't see them being criticized for conscription? Maybe they are too white, or maybe people who injected too much rugged individualism into their veins have rotted views of society

A system that has brought security and cohesion, and thus wealth, is accused of being dystopic

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#84

Post by kakacik » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:20 AM UTC

urams wrote: post #59

pclowes wrote: post #45

People always want high trust societies. They are incredibly hard to create and incredibly easy to destroy. However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. High trust requires, well, actual trust. You can’t build real trust in a panopticon just a sickly police state facsimile of it. Society and progress moves at the speed of trust. Without it many uniquely human and beautiful things disappear.

> However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. This is directly refuted by Singapore, Japan, arguably the UK, and others. Singapore is very interesting to visit. Externally there's somewhat of a narrative of a harsh police state but when I visited I almost never saw a single police officer and they don't have particularly many police officers on a per capita basis (170/100k vs 440/100k in NY…

Read up a bit on it. You have numerous signs over the town that state explicitly canning in case of participating in any form of protest that government will consider violent. How that is defined is of course on... government. Read up on how they treat immigrants, its basically serfdom pyramid of massive exploitation on all levels of poor from neighboring countries - confirmed by colleagues living there long term.

Its great little bubble, but not of democracy, or freedom, far from it, rather some moebius-esque utopia of few elites above everybody else. They are also openly racist & xenophobic in their laws, ie in immigration they have to maintain exactly same racial/ethnic split as in the past, so people are granted citizenship on quotas of their ethnicity / skin color (so of course white people are not that welcome, just temporarily tolerated). If this is required to keep everybody in check and behaving nicely, I can easily skip that and raise my children away from such twisted panopticon.

You want an actual long term stable utmost free society for past 800 years and counting? Switzerland. People are nice and tolerant because they are nice and not from the fear of repressions on every step. 30% of residents are foreigners yet society doesn't boil in internal conflicts, I'd say by far the best managed immigration I ever saw. One has to experience it personally to understand the massive difference compared to most of the world. Tons of guns yet very little gun violence (compared to US non-existent). All aspects of society work at least as good or more often better than rest of Europe/world.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#85

Post by SXX » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:20 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #77

moate wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, many people just want to be highly trusted in society (whilst themselves fearing most of the rest of it). It's why we flirt with/fall face first into authoritarianism every few decades.

Authoritarian are not high trust. And people who call for authoritarian societies are not calling for high trust. They call for control and subjugation.

Rules for thee, not for me.

Whoever call for it usually thinks they are rich or influencial enough to never ever be affected. They really do believe in it right until they take a flight out of some office window.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#86

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:26 AM UTC

nikkwong wrote: post #50

Even with all this said, surveillance like this is certainly going to be one of the best ways to catch criminals and reduce crime over the long term. I hope the misgivings that we have around Flock won't close the door to us ever using this type of technology, in some way, in the future.

You will never find anyone who is against these cameras saying that they don’t reduce crime. Of course they do. The problem is what you give up to have that is far, far more valuable and we can point to the “Ben Franklin” quote here about those who would give up freedom for safety deserve neither.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#87

Post by SXX » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:27 AM UTC

nikkwong wrote: post #50

Even with all this said, surveillance like this is certainly going to be one of the best ways to catch criminals and reduce crime over the long term. I hope the misgivings that we have around Flock won't close the door to us ever using this type of technology, in some way, in the future.

Do you also want to install some surveillance software on your phone and laptop so it can watch what you do 100% of time?

You know in future it will really help to catch some criminals stealing copyrighted IP, watching some illegal types of porn or using some sanctioned Chinese LLM.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#88

Post by derektank » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:31 AM UTC

vasco wrote: post #63

urams wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. This is directly refuted by Singapore, Japan, arguably the UK, and others. Singapore is very interesting to visit. Externally there's somewhat of a narrative of a harsh police state but when I visited I almost never saw a single police officer and they don't have particularly many police officers on a per capita basis (170/100k vs 440/100k in NY…

What they were saying is they prefer people to behave because they want to be good people which are part of a good society than to be good people simply as a byproduct of fear of jail.

When did we start making good people? I thought we were still using the base model.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#89

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:34 AM UTC

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #72

daymanstep wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My counter argument is that you only need 1% of the population to be bad apples in order to destroy a high trust society. Hell, even a single serial killer on the loose will make a lot of people too afraid to walk alone at night. One or two burglars can be responsible for 50% of the burglaries in a town. And so in and so forth. The other problem you have is that a lot of crime tends to be financially rewarding, so if…

The thing is I think if you give people the choice between a 0.001% chance of getting murdered on the street or a 100% chance of being surveilled 24/7 you will find that people will take their chances with the murderers

Unfortunately evidence suggests that people want the opposite, or at least surveillance for everyone else. And not just over murder, over petty crime. Nextdoor is full of people who want to be a surveillance network of humans.

Re: Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

#90

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:36 AM UTC

mmooss wrote: post #60

moate wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, many people just want to be highly trusted in society (whilst themselves fearing most of the rest of it). It's why we flirt with/fall face first into authoritarianism every few decades.

> It's why we flirt with/fall face first into authoritarianism every few decades. Did the US or any advanced democracy "flirt with/fall face first into authoritarianism" a few decades ago?

9/11 was an incredible shift in attitude.