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Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

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Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#61

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #35

Flock has solved crimes in my state, including a few horrendous violent crimes. We forget US society was configured (imperfectly) to allow families to raise their children in stability and safety, with guardrails around both sides of liberty. Surveillance has a legit role in protecting communities and their families - especially the most vulnerable. Willing to be most of the Flock hate crowd doesn't have kids walking…

There is also a large difference between local surveillance (home/business/area CCTV), public surveillance (openly accessible cameras like traffic cams), and dragnet surveillance- I generally trust my local police precincts but don't like the fact that the alphabet soup of federal agencies has warrantless access to track me on the way to and from church or work or Facebook marketplace deals

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#62

Post by arionhardison »

orangeberrytea wrote: post #7

[dead]

I said this a few days ago and got down voted to hell. It amazes me how HN likes to abdicate YC of all wrong doing or negative outcomes from the companies they fund. YC/PG is also the reason that @sama is where he is.

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#64

Post by gleezard »

arionhardison wrote: post #62
orangeberrytea wrote: post #7

[dead]

I said this a few days ago and got down voted to hell. It amazes me how HN likes to abdicate YC of all wrong doing or negative outcomes from the companies they fund. YC/PG is also the reason that @sama is where he is.

Wait til you find out what money does to people.

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#65

Post by perching_aix »

LeBit wrote: post #37
kappi wrote: post #5

[flagged]

That sounds like what a flock bot would say.

literally. ran the numbers quickly, it's a ridiculous claim. they barely register even when considering thread popularity:

https://imgur.com/a/dqsFkTb

needs log scale to even see anything, really:

https://imgur.com/a/jNtbuwE

the claim having been the following, before it got flagged to nothingness:

> this site has become flocknews.com!

guy kept seeing some posts every now and then for the past few weeks == site is like, literally flock news only man!!!!

gotta love these reliable narrators

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#66

Post by topato »

tekla wrote: post #30
b112 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flock was seed round funded by YC, not "a YC company". It's not like they control it, manage it, and what was pitched may be significantly different than what happened since then. YC isn't perfect, but what words you use, and their order is important. And the way you're phrasing it, you make it sound as if they are a subsidiary of YC. Or as if YC is on the board. If any of these things are true, you should plainly st…

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety > When Demo Day was over, after we had booked meetings with investors and were well on our way to our first fundraising round, YC set the tone for scaling Flock doggedly, purposefully, and with consistent velocity, for years to come. Damn, its almost like YC really set the stage for mass AI surveillance from the founders own mouth

That’s such a damning quote, that it makes all other comments ITT obsolete lol

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#67

Post by gruez »

saghm wrote: post #39
tptacek wrote: post #21

Random people calling 911 on other people filming them is a staple of Youtube; banks, coffee store workers, hairdressers, most especially restaurant managers. I don't know why anyone would expect technicians from Flock to be different. It's worse for the technician in this case, because he really was being followed --- that's not unlawful but it's unnerving. You'd think from the response that this was like the VP/Sal…

The response is stronger because your hairdressers and baristas aren't actively providing a service for surveillance as part of their work. The bar should be higher for a company that's ostensibly being trusted to provide a law enforcement tool that's prone to misuse than for providing beverages or cosmetology.

>The response is stronger because your hairdressers and baristas aren't actively providing a service for surveillance as part of their work.

Should other law enforcement contractors also be subject to the same higher standard? For instance, should dell get extra flak if one of their contractors called 911, because they were installing PCs for a police department? If not, this just seems like a way of applying a double standard, just because you hate flock. It's fine to hate flock, but it should be actually justified reasons (eg. "they're enabling mass surveillance" or whatever), not spurious ones like "they did a bad that's vaguely common, but we're gonna admonish them extra hard for it because we hate them")

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#68

Post by stego-tech »

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #35

Flock has solved crimes in my state, including a few horrendous violent crimes. We forget US society was configured (imperfectly) to allow families to raise their children in stability and safety, with guardrails around both sides of liberty. Surveillance has a legit role in protecting communities and their families - especially the most vulnerable. Willing to be most of the Flock hate crowd doesn't have kids walking…

Except there was literally just a piece a few days back here on HN where a Mom was arrested for letting her kid walk half a mile alone in a gated community with active security patrols. The guardrails you describe aren’t for child safety so much as adult persecution. Surveillance may help solve some crimes, but its goal isn’t safety of the people surveilled as much as protecting the power of those doing the surveilling. Research continues pointing out that cameras don’t do shit to deter crime, and its actual ability to solve crimes is limited to the humans using said tools - and with a longer history of abuses than successes, it’s a fairly safe conclusion that mass surveillance does fuck all to actually protect the populace.

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#69

Post by sobellian »

b112 wrote: post #19
orangeberrytea wrote: post #7

[dead]

Flock was seed round funded by YC, not "a YC company". It's not like they control it, manage it, and what was pitched may be significantly different than what happened since then. YC isn't perfect, but what words you use, and their order is important. And the way you're phrasing it, you make it sound as if they are a subsidiary of YC. Or as if YC is on the board. If any of these things are true, you should plainly st…

I don't really have a strong opinion either way on Flock but this is a strange objection. YC is a well-known startup accelerator that makes (pre-seed!) investments. I don't know if anyone has ever sincerely taken "YC company" to mean a subsidiary of YC. That's like confusing "a Sequoia company" as a subsidiary of Sequoia.

Re: Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation

#70

Post by delichon »

If someone were following around and filming someone who was posting anti-Flock fliers, I would also feel that crosses into harassment after a certain amount of time.

A TV news crew filmed me when I was a freshman setting up my old travel trailer in a new university trailer park. I hated it, but it didn't last long. If they had continued following and filming indefinitely despite my protests, I would have wanted some kind of legal protection from them.

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