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

Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 598 posts

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#581

Post by presentation »

brookst wrote: post #118
presentation wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting aside how disproportionately noisy some activist types are, it probably has to do with Americans having practically no trust in one another, corporations in particular, and their government by extension. At the same time, Americans tend to value some positive forms of liberty - like the ability to say and do what you want in one moment - far more than other forms of liberty - like the ability for all people t…

In the US flock is routinely used by law enforcement personnel to stalk exes and for other abuses. Are police in those other countries equally untrustworthy?

To me, that’s a problem of oversight, audit trails, consequences, and the relationship of police with their communities; not of Flock itself. And based on what I’m reading, they are reacting - criminal case IDs will be required to do searches and automated monitoring of misuse will be mandatory by default soon. So the anger against Flock itself seems misplaced.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#582

Post by doc_ick »

nonethewiser wrote: post #78
furyg3 wrote: post #46

It's pretty clear to be that governments shouldn't be able to 'subcontract' their way out of the limits placed on them via the constitution. Thankfully the supreme court seems to agree here in two ways: 1) Just because a third party (Google in Chatrie case but Flock here) collects the data and the government requests it from them, doesn't mean that that isn't a 'search' which requires a warrant ("obtaining someone's…

>It's pretty clear to be that governments shouldn't be able to 'subcontract' their way out of the limits placed on them via the constitution. Primary example: U.S. government officials pressuring social-media platforms through intermediaries to suppress constitutionally protected speech.

Now was there a realistic health risk involved in that “primary example”? If only everyone just told the truth instead of buying the rights to it.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#583

Post by brookst »

presentation wrote: post #581
brookst wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US flock is routinely used by law enforcement personnel to stalk exes and for other abuses. Are police in those other countries equally untrustworthy?

To me, that’s a problem of oversight, audit trails, consequences, and the relationship of police with their communities; not of Flock itself. And based on what I’m reading, they are reacting - criminal case IDs will be required to do searches and automated monitoring of misuse will be mandatory by default soon. So the anger against Flock itself seems misplaced.

Sure, in the same way that anger against guns is misplaced, in the US, because the US is unique in the world with its social psychosis around guns.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#584

Post by exoverito »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #555
slibhb wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like an argument for anarchism. I am very unimpressed by political philosophies that take arguments to their logical conclusion. What seems to me to have worked is understanding that a government is necessary, that it has the potential to misbehave, and therefore we should carefully design laws and processes to constrain it. I would like to see opponents of mass surveillance do this, which seems more prod…

> That sounds like an argument for anarchism. Fundamentally impossible. Power structures are inherent to all human social activity. Even if we instantaneously abolished all governments and all power structures, new ones would spontaneously form immediately after. > I am very unimpressed by political philosophies that take arguments to their logical conclusion. People's inability or unwillingness to take things to the…

Good post. Keep fighting the good fight.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#585

Post by exoverito »

malfist wrote: post #151
lisper wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be missing a basic fact about how the world works: there are two classes of people, those who make the rules, and those who are expected to follow the rules. These classes are largely disjoint.

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” — Frank Wilhoit

A guy who worked for the CIA and was friends with Kissinger in college. If you accept his definition uncritically, then you have some work to do.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#586

Post by exoverito »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #321
lisper wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be missing a basic fact about how the world works: there are two classes of people, those who make the rules, and those who are expected to follow the rules. These classes are largely disjoint.

Yet still, every now and then, a king is executed.

Get to work.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#587

Post by mastermage »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #168
mastermage wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a great argument for Less Surveilance and Overreach.

Big time. The harder the feds have to work to ruin someone's life the better. The more power granted, the heavier the collar and chain should be.

100% oversight commitees should be regularly conveening over their actions. And these Oversight Comitees should not be Politicians but random people.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#588

Post by furyg3 »

gnfargbl wrote: post #95
furyg3 wrote: post #46

It's pretty clear to be that governments shouldn't be able to 'subcontract' their way out of the limits placed on them via the constitution. Thankfully the supreme court seems to agree here in two ways: 1) Just because a third party (Google in Chatrie case but Flock here) collects the data and the government requests it from them, doesn't mean that that isn't a 'search' which requires a warrant ("obtaining someone's…

> users have a private relationship with Google where they elect to let Google track them and retain their information Elect to is a bit strong here. Acquiesce to , maybe, or perhaps suffer to .

In this particular case (i believe) the user actively turned on the feature which saves your entire location history and journeys on Google's servers so that you can go back and review later. It was opt-in.

Google has since redesigned this feature so that the history lives on the phone itself, not on their servers (removing the possibility for police officers to request this information from google - search warrant or not).

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#589

Post by Ancapistani »

hippich wrote: post #308
jordanb wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other thing that's going on is that Flock is essentially an always-on "dragnet." A "dragnet" is when you set up police checkpoints everywhere and essentially put entire cities under watch to find a fugitive. This happened in Boston after the bombings. "Dragnets" are illegal except in extreme circumstances (like a bombing). Flock is a "dragnet on demand." You have a digital dragnet in place not just in one city bu…

Recently was driving in the middle of nowhere in Texas.. And I saw a few flock cameras watching both ways in highways there too. So it is not just cities, states are implicated too.

They’re all over the rural South. Public opinion seems to be increasingly changing that, but a lot of them are installed by entities with little accountability.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#590

Post by michael0church »

brk wrote: post #402
michael0church wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checks. I didn’t believe it at first, because I’ve always considered YC, in spite of its flaws, to be politically astute.

In their defense, Flock didn't start off quite this way. They were initially offering a product geared to HOAs and private entities to help with simple violations and things like that. At some point they stumbled on this loophole of allowing LEO's to sidestep restrictions on collecting and storing this kind of data, and then it took off. They were well past the YC investment at that point. (and just to be clear, at t…

I agree with your conclusion, but this is an odd defense of Flock. HOAs are objectively evil but they mostly stick to petty evil. But that is the story of technology over the past 20 years. Mark Zuckerberg was a rather ordinary ugly incel who wanted to gossip about and stalk women at Harvard (petty evil) but he had no idea, in 2004, what Facebook would become. These devices are built by petty malefactors at first, but somehow, the world ends up with another Palantir.
Post reply on HN