Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by Hasz » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC

johnnyanmac wrote: post #280

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.

yeah, another colossal bungle. For the price that most of these DCs are going up at, offering a rebate to the local community on their electricity bills should have been a fairly easy and cheap (relative to the re-siting and planning delays!).

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

#292

Post by k33n » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 3:01 PM UTC

johnnyanmac wrote: post #286

k33n wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m glad that that my state isn’t run that way. Your assumptions about consumption taxes across income brackets not scaling is factually inaccurate. If sales tax is fundamentally a tax on the poor, then so is an income tax. Florida is one of the lowest taxed states across all income brackets, and even provides good social programs. I’m glad that people who want to tax the rich to death for the sake of a crusade that…

>consumption taxes across income brackets not scaling is factually inaccurate I'd love to hear a proper counter-argument. Maybe Florida works different, but sales taxes tend to be constant (i.e. scaling linearly with consumption), and individual consumption does not scale linearly with income. Someone making 200k may buy more luxury food, but not necessarily 10x as much as someone making 20k. And someone making 2 mil…

A counter-argument to what? That if you take 90% of someone’s wealth that has $10,000,000 they’re still a millionaire?

Yeah, they’d still be a millionaire.

I didn’t bring up federal tax policy but since you did, I’ll point out that what you think is happening is not happening. The winds aren’t going quite where you think they’re going. The “steal other people’s money” coalition has virtually no power or relevance federally. They have no power or relevance in Florida.

No one is going to be fleeing. There isn’t even going to be a fight, because that fight already happened. Tariffs are in full swing. The left tried to stop it. Consumption taxes are the future. The good guys won.

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

#293

Post by samspot » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 8:29 PM UTC

nullocator wrote: post #238

tptacek wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy to help. 911 is the primary "call for service" channel for most police departments.

I've personally never come across a police department or sherrif in the U.S. that doesn't have a non emergency number. I'd assume thats what you should call for things that aren't an emergency? They've never told me to call back and call 911.

I've tried calling the non-emergency number for my city, and they told me to hang up and call 911.

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

#294

Post by Denzel » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 8:39 PM UTC

Tostino wrote: post #216

Denzel wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand your point. > We managed to swing a couple of the county commissioners who were in favor of it before and were not in favor of it after hearing about the constitutional issues as well as the cyber security issues that flock doesn't really care about. Do you not see the problem here? Pasco County has a $2.2B annual budget. These county commissioners have the financial resources, organizational acces…

Oh I absolutely see the issue. These people are honestly beneath contempt after talking to them and seeing their responses. Regardless, I'd rather tailor my message to people who I fundamentally disagree with, and make a little bit of progress. Edit: anyways, the point is that a group of less than 15 or 20 people can sway decisions.

Fair, we're on the same side btw. I'd encourage your group to run for office or organize around people running for office so there's at least a chance to durably change the system with legislation.

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

#295

Post by aftbit » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 9:50 PM UTC

k33n wrote: post #101

aftbit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they switch to Axon?

Nope. Florida simply led the way and calmly banned Flock cameras from the entire state. Every other state that cares about individual liberty should follow suit.

They revoked permits for all license plate readers currently placed along the state highway rights of way. They did not ban privately owned Flock Safety cameras (e.g. at a housing development or whatever), nor did they ban police from mounting ALPRs on their patrol cars. It sounds like this applies only to the "State Highway System", not to local roads - but maybe I'm misunderstanding the scope of that.

https://fdotwww.blob.core.windows.net/sitefinity/docs/defaul...

>Monday’s order did not affect cameras on private property or on local rights-of-way — which together is 98% of surveillance cameras, DeSantis said — but some localities in Florida said they were following suit.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/florida-bans-flock-and-...

Ironically it is the Republican governors of Texas and Florida who are leading this anti-surveillance push, even as the government of Texas has used Flock cameras in other jurisdictions to harass and intimidate pregnant women seeking out of state abortions.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/texas-deputy-se...

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

#296

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Sep 15, 2026, 12:09 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #283

anigbrowl wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's no indication that anything at all happened to the reporter, is there? A worker had a concern about someone following them and called it in, and that... is the end of the story?

I was just pointing out the problem with your initial premise, but I don't think this argument holds water either. Nobody enjoys being subject to a police stop, and the reporter's journalistic undertaking (which was very clearly signaled as such) was interrupted, although certainly he was free to resume it the next time he spotted a Flock installer at work.

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

#297

Post by tptacek » Tue, Sep 15, 2026, 1:07 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #296

tptacek wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no indication that anything at all happened to the reporter, is there? A worker had a concern about someone following them and called it in, and that... is the end of the story?

I was just pointing out the problem with your initial premise, but I don't think this argument holds water either. Nobody enjoys being subject to a police stop, and the reporter's journalistic undertaking (which was very clearly signaled as such) was interrupted, although certainly he was free to resume it the next time he spotted a Flock installer at work.

It's not Summer 2020 and I'm just not going to entertain the idea that calling the police when you're alarmed by something is an act of violence. This is some random working schmoe hanging things on poles. It's a nonstory.