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

Deflock Casa Grande

deflockcg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 115 posts

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#51

Post by jubilanti »

collabs wrote: post #22

I know this is preaching to the choir but from the article on the person holding the skimmer > Police can also use the cameras to surveil protestors and stalk ex-lovers—or strangers they find attractive. I didn't believe police actually did this until a roommate's new classmate told me her story. She has recently moved in to the neighborhood (an HOA at that). She was walking her dog one evening when a police officer…

This is 10 years old, but in 2016 the Associated Press did a massive public records request for police departments across the country. Between 2013-2015, they found over 600 cases where the police department actually did an internal investigation, found this kind of misuse, didn't cover it up, and handed over the records. About half of those cases resulted in a firing, suspension, or resignation.

This is clearly an undercount, and I'm sure it's only gotten worse since 2016.

https://apnews.com/general-news-699236946e3140659fff8a2362e1...

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#52

Post by quickthrowman »

EA-3167 wrote: post #41
collabs wrote: post #22

I know this is preaching to the choir but from the article on the person holding the skimmer > Police can also use the cameras to surveil protestors and stalk ex-lovers—or strangers they find attractive. I didn't believe police actually did this until a roommate's new classmate told me her story. She has recently moved in to the neighborhood (an HOA at that). She was walking her dog one evening when a police officer…

I was with you up until the very last line. Why do people imagine that the police are in the business of property retrieval? Once your stuff is stolen in almost all cases it's long LONG gone! Cars are sent to be broken down for parts, tools are sold to fences and so on. The typical thief isn't some mastermind who carefully holds on to what they stole, they rush to their nearest fence or dealer to trade it for what th…

This scene from The Big Lebowski is how all cops treat personal property theft cases (They got us working in shifts!): https://youtu.be/N0rOe59wKAc

Save your time and don’t get laughed at behind your back. By all means, report your stolen car but anything smaller than that is a waste of your time and the cops time since they do not care at all.

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#53

Post by ceejayoz »

vlod wrote: post #49
moshun wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only question is why you didn’t believe police could/would do this in the first place? My default perspective is that this is exactly what law-enforcement and other government officials would use this technology to do, especially if there are no guardrails or laws preventing them from abusing it.

I kinda expect the s/w engineer who wrote this would create an audit log. i.e. police-id, licence-place-id. Well that's the way I would write it.

https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-c...

> While Flock’s audit logs have been successful in bringing to light certain abuses, that very fact is likely to deter many officers from honestly describing the purposes of their searches moving forward. Take the controversial Texas abortion search. If the officer who logged, "had an abortion, search for female" had just left out the word "abortion” that story never would have seen the light of day. And there’s no doubt that the department — and police around the nation — realize that.

https://footnote4a.org/news/secret-searches-part2

> Our ability to identify officers was clearly effective. In a direct attempt to stop us from providing transparency, Flock and police departments have dropped the unique IDs (UUIDs) in the transparency portals entirely. They now simply replace them with the word “redacted” in the public audit logs, effectively preventing oversight and individual accountability.

> Flock Safety updated the system on 12/11/2025 to protect officer safety and active investigations, Network Audit Logs no longer include officer names, license plate, or vehicle fingerprint information.

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#54

Post by alwa »

I’m familiar with cities that conduct time-bounded surges of policing in reaction to specific outbreaks of criminality.

When inter-faction violence in a neighborhood escalates to the level of a murder, for example, they surge for a couple weeks. Massively increased visible patrol presence—cops on every corner—portable light towers attached to generators, to provide near-daylight-level illumination on the sidewalks and streets... a conspicuous level of “eyes on the street” that discourages retaliation and responds to residents’ heightened fear in the immediate aftermath. While at the same time being obviously temporary—not permanent measures that signal the neighborhood as structurally crime-ridden.

It’s a “fly the flag at half mast for a bit” kind of signal, not “this neighborhood is full of criminals and deserves the corresponding built environment.”

I wonder if something in that spirit might be a reasonable long-term equilibrium for things like Flock. Garbage bags over the camera poles for ordinary times, almost as a point of civic pride that the place we’ve built and maintained is safe enough not to need to use them. Pull the garbage bags off if there’s a problem—spate of auto thefts, high-profile crime, fugitive on the loose—but we demand an explanation when that happens and a concrete end point where they go back on.

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#55

Post by atourgates »

user102030 wrote: post #16
extr wrote: post #9

Well made website IMO. Gets to the point with plenty of easy-to-understand evidence and calls to action.

Feels like every other site that AI generates. Hard to tell what the creators believe and what is just probabilistically generated.

I wouldn't be surprised if AI was used to generate it. But it mostly feels that way becuase it uses Astro. There's no other obvious AI tells.

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#56

Post by rsoto2 »

collabs wrote: post #22

I know this is preaching to the choir but from the article on the person holding the skimmer > Police can also use the cameras to surveil protestors and stalk ex-lovers—or strangers they find attractive. I didn't believe police actually did this until a roommate's new classmate told me her story. She has recently moved in to the neighborhood (an HOA at that). She was walking her dog one evening when a police officer…

The Flock CEO Garret Langley called people that didn't want his unsecure surveillance state in their own communities "terrorists". A term that has a very loose meaning but is always used to invoke state violence. So he wants to create a strong police state and violence against regular people for money aka he's a fascist.

(but HN will flag me for "name-calling" a person promoting and creating violent state oppression)

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#57

Post by user102030 »

atourgates wrote: post #55
user102030 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like every other site that AI generates. Hard to tell what the creators believe and what is just probabilistically generated.

I wouldn't be surprised if AI was used to generate it. But it mostly feels that way becuase it uses Astro. There's no other obvious AI tells.

Yeah, I suppose I was just responding to the Astro aesthetics. Copy seems human-written when taking a deeper look.

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#58

Post by tclancy »

Our city doesn’t have them. Except there’s one in the main hospital parking lot. This reminds me to finish up that letter I meant to send to them asking how they square that with the fact any cop in Texas can peek at people coming in and out of the maternity ward in New Hampshire, given Ken Paxton a call and try to jam up someone for looking like they terminated a pregnancy.

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#59

Post by rsoto2 »

charcircuit wrote: post #36
collabs wrote: post #22

I know this is preaching to the choir but from the article on the person holding the skimmer > Police can also use the cameras to surveil protestors and stalk ex-lovers—or strangers they find attractive. I didn't believe police actually did this until a roommate's new classmate told me her story. She has recently moved in to the neighborhood (an HOA at that). She was walking her dog one evening when a police officer…

Why don't they instead push for making abuses of law enforcement access illegal? That way we can both catch criminals and missing people along with avoiding abuse.

They will investigate themselves?

Police do not prevent crime and rarely catch criminals, in fact they are often _involved_ in crime. There are scientific approaches to solving crime and larger budgets for more cameras and police tanks is not it.

Re: Deflock Casa Grande

#60

Post by 9x39 »

collabs wrote: post #22

I know this is preaching to the choir but from the article on the person holding the skimmer > Police can also use the cameras to surveil protestors and stalk ex-lovers—or strangers they find attractive. I didn't believe police actually did this until a roommate's new classmate told me her story. She has recently moved in to the neighborhood (an HOA at that). She was walking her dog one evening when a police officer…

We were hearing during the Snowden era about the abuse of NSA systems like XKeyscore and others through what was termed jokingly LOVEINT. Anything that's built will get abused in some way - sometimes its even best not to build such databases at all.

Here's CNN discussing NSA analyst abuse from 13 years ago:

https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/27/politics/nsa-snooping/

Here's an article from 10 years ago discussing the police doing it:

https://apnews.com/general-news-699236946e3140659fff8a2362e1...

Post reply on HN