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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

#271

Post by ryandrake »

tptacek wrote: post #185
DrewADesign wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, when you’re on the clock, you’re an agent of that company. And when you’re installing an indiscriminate mass-surveillance camera, calling the police on someone that’s video recording you is kind of bananas. Perhaps you don’t find that to be an interesting event, but a lot of people who are rightfully angry at the non-consensual deployment of a mass surveillance network disagree.

It's not bananas. It happens all the time. The police show up, check things out, and inform the caller that the person recording has a right to do so. In this case, it's even less bananas, because the people recording him were literally following him around, which is not what generally happens in these "audit" scenarios where someone parks themselves on the street outside a restaurant or bank. There's pretty clearly…

When the police come, they bring with them a nonzero chance of violent, deadly force. Especially if the caller says one of a few magic phrases like “I fear for my life” and “I’m not sure if he has a gun but he might” and (in some areas) “Black male, six foot two.”

Calling the police on someone is like mailing them a bomb with a 0.1% chance of exploding. You have no idea if you are summoning a calm, experienced officer or a power tripping monster with an ego.

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

#272

Post by tptacek »

ryandrake wrote: post #271
tptacek wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not bananas. It happens all the time. The police show up, check things out, and inform the caller that the person recording has a right to do so. In this case, it's even less bananas, because the people recording him were literally following him around, which is not what generally happens in these "audit" scenarios where someone parks themselves on the street outside a restaurant or bank. There's pretty clearly…

When the police come, they bring with them a nonzero chance of violent, deadly force. Especially if the caller says one of a few magic phrases like “I fear for my life” and “I’m not sure if he has a gun but he might” and (in some areas) “Black male, six foot two.” Calling the police on someone is like mailing them a bomb with a 0.1% chance of exploding. You have no idea if you are summoning a calm, experienced office…

When people feel threatened, it is almost always better than they call the police than that they engage and try to resolve the threat themselves.

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

#273

Post by ryandrake »

ndriscoll wrote: post #202
chii wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one should be held to a different standard than the other. harassing a worker is not the way to fix the problem. The worker has no agency to affect the changes desired by the harasser. It's an issue with the gov't, and needs civic procedures to change. This behaviour is the same as harassing hospitality staff for bad prices. Harassers would be considered borderline committing terrorism if they go further.

The worker does have agency. They did not have to take a job installing mass surveillance systems. They're directly doing the bad thing, and the "harassers" are literally doing the same thing the worker is doing, but back to the worker.

Contractors On The Death Star. You know you are working for the bad guys and are willingly doing the job.

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

#274

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

banks, coffee store workers, hairdressers, most especially restaurant managers.

Those people are all working in private premises, and have the right to eject customers for being belligerent or just annoying. The Flock technicians are in public, and as we're always reminded by Flock advocates, have no expectation of privacy. There's no indication that the reporter was harassing him in any way.

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

#275

Post by weird-eye-issue »

b112 wrote: post #106
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YC funds companies and we are all aware of that so by saying it's a YC company because they gave them seed money is already exactly the correct wording

No, no it isn't.

Yes, yes it is.

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

#276

Post by ozgrakkurt »

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…

Sure, people working on german army in ww2 were also probably just some guy getting 10k/year salary or something like that. Person doesn’t matter if they are in uniform.

I had a situation like this against airlines recently where I am getting so obviosly screwed but unfortunately the guy that is doing the screwing is “just a guy” so I can’t go off on them.

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

#277

Post by johnnyanmac »

whimsicalism wrote: post #199
Hizonner wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they should be different. In almost all cases, they should be less. But what I really wanted to mention is that flock is not the government , and flock's services are not exclusively available to governments . Same goes for their competitors.

The government represents the public will of the people and has democratic legitimacy. The notion that it should be more constrained than private actors seems absurd. I'm okay with taxation, pulling people over for speeding, automated speeding enforcement, fining parents who don't send their kids to school, garnishing wages, etc. that would be unacceptable from a private actor who is not imbued with the public's will…

>The notion that it should be more constrained than private actors seems absurd.

That is precisely the notion of the US constitution. If some random person chose to take down a flier criticizing the president, that is fair game (legally, or at least it defers to private policy). If a government agent did that, it verges on breaking the first amendment because we know that is a form of government suppression of speech. The first 10 amendments to the constitution pretty much all work to some extent of this logic.

> I'm okay with taxation, pulling people over for speeding, automated speeding enforcement, fining parents who don't send their kids to school, garnishing wages, etc. that would be unacceptable from a private actor who is not imbued with the public's will.

Those are all pretty much state laws outside of taxation, not part of the Constitution. We could setup campaigns to restrict those powers anytime we want to, or to grant them to private citizens in some cases.

Speech and surveillance fall under the constitution. Restricting/granting such power requires a much higher standard of process.

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

#278

Post by johnnyanmac »

Simulacra wrote: post #188
Tostino wrote: post #42

I've gotta mention it because everyone seems to have a learned helplessness with this type of thing. I went and spoke at my county commissioners meeting a couple times after the initial flock roll out (voted on with no discussion a couple years prior) started becoming apparent. The first meeting, the group of me and two other people were half of the people making public comment. Every single person was against it unl…

The real trick, is to stop going to these meetings, and start running against these politicians. Get the forms, stand out in front of your local post office, collect the signatures, and primary them. Run against them. That's the only thing they listen to

Not everyone has the drive, talent, connections, time, nor resources to run a political campaign. Showing up to your townhall every 2 weeks can already be an overly high barrier given some townhall times, but is much more feasible.

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

#279

Post by johnnyanmac »

rwj wrote: post #206
k33n wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it really is. Florida is a cultural punching bag, and we take that in stride too. We have a balanced budget, no state income tax, and no flock cameras. We are close to abolishing property taxes as well. Our natural disaster response is some of the most robust anywhere in the world as well.

This is misleading. I'm not sure replacing income tax with sales tax is a positive change. The state is still collecting taxes, but the tools are pretty regressive.

Sales taxes are fundamentally a tax on the poor. Someone making 20x the median income is not spending 20x more on groceries and other goods. It doesn't scale well at all, especially when a lot of net worth goes into housing. And the GP was arguing about ending property tax...

I don't think we're in a good enough economic situation as of now to eliminate sales tax. But an ideal model is a strong progressive income tax model (I'm talking "0% tax under 40k" levels of progressive) with sales tax only employed in bad economic states. In general, taxes should be heavier in good economic times to allow bad economic situations to relax them.

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

#280

Post by johnnyanmac »

Hasz wrote: post #31

man, these guys bungled their PR so, so hard. What they should have done is pre-seeded a ton of stories about flock catching some notorious criminal, helping solve xyz serious crimes, helping solve abc minor nuisance issue crimes, and maybe some lines about reducing direct law enforcement interactions. On the flip side, let Axon, Motorola take some of the heat, paint your enemies as "defund the police", and stop bein…

Data centers in a nutshell too. It's an absolute clown show of a PR event. Pretty clear who they laid off and got advice from to have bipartisan rejection from such a politically polarized population.

I suppose it's like the Cabinet today. The one shimmering light of hope in this darkness is the utter stupidity in execution. This situation should have been a slam dunk for any semi-competent organization.

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