Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 179 posts

Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras

#161

Post by cucumber3732842 »

Verdex wrote: post #104
lordnacho wrote: post #35

I think I may have a minority view about surveillance. At least I need someone to explain something to me. Is the backlash really about privacy, or is the real problem a complete lack of trust in government? Because if I thought someone would actually use the cameras to enforce the law, that's not actually such a bad outcome. You aren't supposed to speed, you aren't supposed to let your dog poop without cleaning up a…

At least for me, the technical chops to be able to program a computer was always just table stakes for software engineering. The majority of my job more or less reduces to mitigating the consequences of having all the stakeholders dreams come true. Most normal people consider rules as run by people. They expect them to ignore rules that don't make sense, apply rule of thumb, get the gist, and do what it takes to achi…

>When you take these sorts of rules and try to put them into silicon, the end result is often an undesirable result despite all the rules being successful implemented. The law are these sorts of rules. They're designed to be "executed" by people using judgement.

And yet, HN is filled with examples of people who work in this exact capacity yet advocate for laws to be enforced in silicone. Ignorance beyond a point becomes malice IMO.

Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras

#163

Post by altcognito »

dredmorbius wrote: post #80
altcognito wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NO! Even if your voice is heard, the state doesn't need to track your every move.

"This" presumably refers to vigilante action against Flock and other surveillance equipment, not the surveillance itself.

Ah, yeah, I think you got at the heart of it.

I think I glossed over the fact that he was referring specifically to not listening to the people about surveillance.

Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras

#164

Post by dare944 »

RickJWagner wrote: post #155
dare944 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social contract also includes the expectation that, over all, businesses work for the benefit of society, not its detriment.

No, it does not. Social contract allows cigarettes, alcohol, pornography, etc. These are not overall beneficial to society, yet we allow them, by law. When individuals decide they alone get to decide what’s allowable and what’s not they are proving themselves anti social. The civilised way to make that decision is with the help of the rest of the citizens at the voting booth.

There's no question that, in general, people expect businesses to provide a valuable service that does not harm society in the process. Of course, the consensus as to what things are valuable and what things cause harm changes over time (as is clearly the case for cigarettes). As well, when people sense a violation of their expectations, they should certainly take their outrage with them to the ballot box.

But when people sense that the ballot box isn't listening; that the government is both in bed, and emboldened, by the very thing that violates their sensibilities, they often step outside their part in the social contract and do things that speak louder than simply voting, like destroying property. If you are a US citizen like I am, you will know very well that this method of "discourse" is a foundational and often celebrated act in American history.

These people destroying a few cameras here and there aren't solving the problem of invasive and unaccountable government surveillance. But they are speaking their passion about it, not just to the company or the government but to their fellow citizens. And it looks like some people are starting to listen.

Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras

#165

Post by RickJWagner »

dare944 wrote: post #164
RickJWagner wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it does not. Social contract allows cigarettes, alcohol, pornography, etc. These are not overall beneficial to society, yet we allow them, by law. When individuals decide they alone get to decide what’s allowable and what’s not they are proving themselves anti social. The civilised way to make that decision is with the help of the rest of the citizens at the voting booth.

There's no question that, in general, people expect businesses to provide a valuable service that does not harm society in the process. Of course, the consensus as to what things are valuable and what things cause harm changes over time (as is clearly the case for cigarettes). As well, when people sense a violation of their expectations, they should certainly take their outrage with them to the ballot box. But when p…

No, I don’t think so.

Just because you think the government isn’t to your liking you shouldn’t declare yourself the implementir of justice and start vandalizing things.

Study American political history, the pendulum goes back and forth. After one sides in power for a while, the other side wins. It happens every time. You shouldn’t act like an impatient child and start breaking things because you imagine the system is broken. It isn’t.

Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras

#166

Post by dare944 »

RickJWagner wrote: post #165
dare944 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no question that, in general, people expect businesses to provide a valuable service that does not harm society in the process. Of course, the consensus as to what things are valuable and what things cause harm changes over time (as is clearly the case for cigarettes). As well, when people sense a violation of their expectations, they should certainly take their outrage with them to the ballot box. But when p…

No, I don’t think so. Just because you think the government isn’t to your liking you shouldn’t declare yourself the implementir of justice and start vandalizing things. Study American political history, the pendulum goes back and forth. After one sides in power for a while, the other side wins. It happens every time. You shouldn’t act like an impatient child and start breaking things because you imagine the system is…

You can insist otherwise, but I suspect that so long as the government continues to ignore people's basic need for privacy, things will continue to get broken.

Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras

#167

Post by inigyou »

inigyou wrote: post #113
matheusmoreira wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a nice idea. Everything is backwards right now. It should to be the other way around: random citizens should be essentially anonymous while all members of the government are surveilled 24/7. Surveillance should scale with power.

It's legal for anyone to do what Flock did

Why downvote? It is. If you want your own personal Flock network to track Congresscritters, you can have one.

Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras

#168

Post by antonvs »

eth0up wrote: post #107
jjav wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ubiquitous surveillance will end most crime It doesn't even do that, is the worst part. So the trade is to give up all privacy, but low-level crime continues unchanged. Anyone who has tried to get the police interested in a theft where you have clear HD video of the action and a clear view of their faces and/or license plate, has lived this experience.

Yeah, and notice all the critical surveillance footage that happens to conveniently disappear? I could start a list, but anyone who knows it won't need one.

Even the Secret Service - once considered a fairly reputable organization - deleted text messages related to the Jan 6 insurrection, after they had received a preservation request.

And the video gap for the Epstein suicide is just too ridiculous.

Someone should start an investigation into why records gaps so often occur right around the time they're most needed. Maybe it's aliens.

Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras

#169

Post by antonvs »

dyauspitr wrote: post #47
EA-3167 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a HUGE assumption about the ability of surveillance to succeed, and it goes against the evidence of the most surveillance-heavy states in the present and history. There are flaws in systems that go beyond collecting evidence, for example corruption can undermine any technical approach as we see in places like China where surveillance is omnipresent. Hell if "total surveillance" was the secret to ending crime,…

Total surveillance would be watching people all the time, indoors too aka Fahrenheit. It would absolutely end 95% of crime.

You're describing a (dystopian) fantasy. We're taking about the reality of such systems when deployed in the real world and operated by real people.

Re: The growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras

#170

Post by matheusmoreira »

culi wrote: post #137
matheusmoreira wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a nice idea. Everything is backwards right now. It should to be the other way around: random citizens should be essentially anonymous while all members of the government are surveilled 24/7. Surveillance should scale with power.

Funnily enough, the whole "social credit" thing that Westerners like to meme about was supposed to work like that. Although it never really got implemented, it was meant to be a score applied exclusively to business leaders, politicians, etc. And it was actually mostly meant to track corporations rather than individuals. That's why the full name of it was Corporate Social Credit System. It was supposed to increase tr…

We meme about it because it's virtually guaranteed that corporations and government figures will be immune while the rest of us will be oppressed.
Post reply on HN