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

Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

gadgetreview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 104 posts

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#81

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 »

BatFastard wrote: post #60
m4ck_ wrote: post #32

Doxxing is bad of course but does "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" apply here? Or is that only for us working folk?

Question for me is "Will something you can do free now, be suspicious in the future?" Like voting, or taking your kids to a private school, or going to an EFF meeting? As long as you feel fine having the government know absolutely everything you do, then keep supporting surveillance. I personally have nothing to fear, but I hate the idea that I am being surveilled by a private company.

Companies. The system used to be somewhat fragmented, but it is slowly starting to coalesce.

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#82

Post by [deleted] »

superxpro12 wrote: post #15
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they will absolutely be legalized on some party line vote in the middle of the night. Or they'll be legalized piecemeal and you'll get sneered at by the useful idiots for opposing each incremental step based on principal.

they'll find a particularly violent crime and use that as the strawman... "Oh you dont want this? well i guess you support violent immigrant mass murderers then!" and then before you know it the state has implemented its mass surveillance apparatus across the entire country. And we though china's social credits were bad? just IMAGINE what those predatory tech bros are cookin up.

[deleted]

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#83

Post by cucumber3732842 »

tyingq wrote: post #30
superxpro12 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they'll find a particularly violent crime and use that as the strawman... "Oh you dont want this? well i guess you support violent immigrant mass murderers then!" and then before you know it the state has implemented its mass surveillance apparatus across the entire country. And we though china's social credits were bad? just IMAGINE what those predatory tech bros are cookin up.

They could even start identifying "pre-crime" :) Not as far fetched as it sounds even. Plenty of not-quite-a-crime things they could track if desired.

It's not far fetched. They usually dress it up in dogwhistle words like "at risk individuals" to make it seem like help rather than the threat it is.

Go look at what HN was saying and upvoting during the big data era. Endless scheming about orwellian ways to identify and "dispatch enforcement resources" on the pettiest thing. We're talking like buy a spool of romex get a letter in the mail from the .gov reminding you about code compliance. Or combing through small business financial to try and identify businesses that probably aren't high margin enough to be complying with all the rules. Real "I'm watching you" crap like that. And we're all supposed to go along with it because these people have our best interests at heard and/or mean well.

You take these same evil individuals and replace database integrations with pervasive cameras and AI and they will impoverish us all by grinding us under the thumb of government and say it's for our own good.

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#84

Post by cucumber3732842 »

jquery wrote: post #23
superxpro12 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they'll find a particularly violent crime and use that as the strawman... "Oh you dont want this? well i guess you support violent immigrant mass murderers then!" and then before you know it the state has implemented its mass surveillance apparatus across the entire country. And we though china's social credits were bad? just IMAGINE what those predatory tech bros are cookin up.

I mean, is that even a strawman? You can oppose mass AI surveillance and acknowledge the price of that is more crime.

Exactly. Freedom isn't free. If I have to pay for it with locks on my doors and having to be discerning about which truck I buy $5 steaks out of the back of lest my house get burgled or I get ripped off that seems like a pretty fair deal.

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#85

Post by cindyllm »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #84
jquery wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, is that even a strawman? You can oppose mass AI surveillance and acknowledge the price of that is more crime.

Exactly. Freedom isn't free. If I have to pay for it with locks on my doors and having to be discerning about which truck I buy $5 steaks out of the back of lest my house get burgled or I get ripped off that seems like a pretty fair deal.

[dead]

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#86

Post by JKCalhoun »

nemosaltat wrote: post #36
mullingitover wrote: post #6

I worry that Flock is going to take the fall, and some other bad actor with political connections (my money would be on Palantir) will just quietly pick up where they left off while everyone's patting themselves on the back for defeating Flock. The stuff Flock is doing is going to be standard AI-driven surveillance in the future, and unless the actual practices are made into political third rails and made into crimin…

Exactly my thoughts. Flock has been brazen on so many things, that second-movers with a modicum of political savvy can come assuage all the major Flock-FUD, while in fact being significantly worse.

After watching the public flaying of Flock, they're certainly welcome to step into the spotlight next and convince the public that they're different.

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#87

Post by UncleMeat »

amazingamazing wrote: post #44
m4ck_ wrote: post #32

Doxxing is bad of course but does "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" apply here? Or is that only for us working folk?

Do you believe anyone with a surveillance camera should have the owners name and address published if in any way a “public” area is recorded? I suppose we can start with all Blink, Ring and Nest Cams. Then we will continue with dash cam owners.

Scale matters. The “well technically an army of tens of millions of cops could achieve the same thing” argument is thoroughly unconvincing.

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#88

Post by m4ck_ »

BatFastard wrote: post #60
m4ck_ wrote: post #32

Doxxing is bad of course but does "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" apply here? Or is that only for us working folk?

Question for me is "Will something you can do free now, be suspicious in the future?" Like voting, or taking your kids to a private school, or going to an EFF meeting? As long as you feel fine having the government know absolutely everything you do, then keep supporting surveillance. I personally have nothing to fear, but I hate the idea that I am being surveilled by a private company.

Flock had some prompts (/queries or something like that) leak and apparently something as innocuous as visiting multiple gas stations after hours within a short period of time could have it's system mark you as an armed robbery suspect.

I think we all have to fear police responding violently because Flock's sycophantic AI system told them with 100% confidence that we're the bad guy.

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#89

Post by roosterIllusi0n »

8note wrote: post #55
m4ck_ wrote: post #32

Doxxing is bad of course but does "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" apply here? Or is that only for us working folk?

doxxing is about pseudonymous internet accounts, not people who are very public with their real name and lobbying the government. this is whitepages reverse lookup if he was just a guy chatting on the internet about cameras, sure, it would be doxxing, but he isnt. paparazzi have existed sonce forever

Paprazzi take effort and money. It's laughable to say "because paparazzi exists, we should give up all our rights".

No one took away private detectives or paprazzi. But if you replace both with a 24/7 never resting and no additional money tracking system, everyone will be tracked. It's litterally the business model because the mass tracking of americans without a warrant is what makes these companies money, not the hardware.

Re: Flock CEO's Address Spread Online as Surveillance Backlash Explodes

#90

Post by toomuchtodo »

15155 wrote: post #72
toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legislation guardrails around surveillance technology are a necessary component to defend against future corporate surveillance apparatus establishment and operation, as this surveillance could take many forms (video, audio, geolocation, RF signatures, etc). Flock and Axon today, whatever unsavory folks come along in the future. “Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of moti…

As an exercise, write the statute: how do you legally prevent Home Depot or Wal-Mart from videotaping their parking lots and adjacent streets as they've been doing for the past 3+ decades? I'm genuinely curious how whatever you propose wouldn't be prior restraint.

I’m currently working with a representative on draft legislation, and will return once I have it and they move to introduce it. “You can just do things.”

The video capture is not the issue, but the data processing, retention, and sharing, which can trivially be regulated. CCTV for theft prevention and safety with a restricted retention period and no data sharing off the premises can remain legal. Data broker legislation adjacent.

Post reply on HN