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

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

#151

Post by thaumaturgy »

janalsncm wrote: post #108
thaumaturgy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a glaring lie of omission when Singapore is cited as a "safe society" in a surveillance context without also mentioning that those same surveillance systems are used to aggressively suppress political dissent ( https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/sou... ). Super safe society, unless you happen to express disagreement with any part of it. Then, not so safe for you. So I guess the question…

There are two separate types of events with associated probabilities: 1) the probability of being harmed by criminals, and 2) the probability of being harmed by the government. For most people in most places, police are ineffective and therefore the first is orders of magnitude more of a problem. For example in the Bay Area, car break-ins are incredibly common and police are incapable of solving it. This would be unt…

> A majority eligible of voters chose to re-elect the incumbent.

I wish you could have seen the meme-able face I made when I read this.

Putin is similarly popular in Russia, China's government is also incredibly popular with its citizens, and Nicaragua's government is so popular with its people that they just decided not to have elections anymore! There is a remarkable correlation between authoritarian governments and popularity with their citizens, don't you think?

> For example in the Bay Area, car break-ins are incredibly common and police are incapable of solving it. This would be unthinkable in Singapore.

Invasive state surveillance and authoritarianism are not the only answers to crime, San Francisco is not the only city in the US, and crime rates in San Francisco have been overall flat or declining for the last few years (https://sfstandard.com/2026/01/02/san-francisco-2025-crime-s...). That's a false dichotomy, cherry-picking, and a false premise ... gotta be some kind of bingo card for this somewhere.

I suspect the true nature of this disagreement is that you feel more threatened by a free society than an authoritarian one. I wonder, how does someone reconcile the ideas of a free market and a non-free society?

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

#152

Post by thebiglebrewski »

It always makes me so sad to see companies like this where the founders don't think twice about what they're building and just go straight for the cash grab! Can't we use technology for good and not to build a dystopian surveillance state?

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

#153

Post by pclowes »

LtWorf wrote: post #109
DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that surveillance undermines high trust societies seems insane to me. Widespread petty crime, lack of shared cultural norms and traditions, lacking of missing social reinforcement of expectations of a society - those are what prevent high trust societies from forming. I consider those things a much worse problem then Flock cameras.

I don't think surveillance prevents crime. Not having so many poor people prevents crime. Some people will always be antisocial due to tendencies and possibly mental illness, but having a society that is so rich and yet has so many poor people as the USA will of course create criminals. No amount of cameras will solve that.

I would agree with that, but we probably have different definitions of poor. Destitute? Absolutely. I don’t think anybody is shocked that starving people commit crimes to not die.

However, I have been in plenty of low income high trust areas. In some ways, those were even more high trust.

Economics play a role, but there is a moral and cultural fabric that gets built through repeated interactions overtime. Unfortunately, that fabric is very susceptible to damage.

Eg: there are plenty of towns where you wouldn’t have to lock your car or even your bike, but it only takes a couple thefts for the entire culture to change…

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

#155

Post by pandaman »

pclowes wrote: post #147
pandaman wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am fine without a "high trust" society (which, apparently, cannot exist with people seeing each other in public), the society where people don't commit crime without any fear of the repercussions would be a great start.

There are high trust communities all over America. Fewer every year.

Figures. If observation destroys this "high trust" of yours then it is only a matter of time till it's all gone. Someone forgot to turn off the action camera on the bike and rode with it in the car rack home - no high trust between the trail and his home. A spy satellite is repositioned and swipes over your town - no high trust there. Can't even imagine how many high trust communities fell to the Chinese spy balloon in 2023...

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

#156

Post by moate »

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?

We created an extrajudicial prison outside of our borders to house "prisoners too dangerous for the normal court system", created an entirely new surveillance police force, and expanded FISA in response to 9/11.

So if that's not asking authoritarianism if they'd like to go out for drinks, we have very VERY different views on freedom.

Also, I really don't care about other "advanced democracies", we're talking about America and it's not really relevant to my points.

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

#157

Post by fodkodrasz »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #81
fodkodrasz wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, they don't reject it. The realize they hate it, but make a compromise.. and use the free gmail, the ad ridden internet, etc., because they have no real alternatives. Rejecting surveillance capitalism is only realistic for the poorest and the richest. The average people must accept it.

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

#159

Post by mmooss »

moate wrote: post #156
mmooss wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

We created an extrajudicial prison outside of our borders to house "prisoners too dangerous for the normal court system", created an entirely new surveillance police force, and expanded FISA in response to 9/11. So if that's not asking authoritarianism if they'd like to go out for drinks, we have very VERY different views on freedom. Also, I really don't care about other "advanced democracies", we're talking about Am…

I'm not talking about now. You said "every few decades" - when has it happened before?

I think "every few decades" normalizes what is a unique situation in US history.

> I really don't care about other "advanced democracies", we're talking about America

You probably need to specify that on HN; you could be writing from anywhere about anywhere.

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

#160

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

daymanstep wrote: post #67
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.

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…

> My counter argument is that you only need 1% of the population to be bad apples in order to destroy a high trust society.

Counter-counter argument, it doesn’t actually matter what the proportion is, rather the perception of it. The likelihood of non-white collar crime affecting your life has dropped dramatically in all of our lifetimes. The chance of being affected by white collar crime has skyrocketed - who hasn’t been solicited for a class action lawsuit?

Which leads me to my hotter take: America isn’t turning into a low trust society because of crime and brown people (white replacement theory), it’s turning into a low trust society because of white collar crime, grifting, private equity takeovers, naked corruption, prosperity gospel, fuck-you got-mine, exurban development, oversized car culture, etc etc etc.

Edit: furthermore, it’s in these psychopathic fuckrats best interest that people believe that there is a “1% bad apple” phenomenon to justify their domestic security panopticon, and they would be laughing all the way to the bank that there are so many suckers who buy into their propaganda if they weren’t so high from huffing their own ketamine, cocaine, adderall, and HGH-laced farts that they believe their own bull shit.

It’s like blockchain but for racism, and it’s genius.

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