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

Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

404media.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 507 posts

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#131

Post by fusslo »

I wonder what our founders would think about tools like Flock.

From what I understand these systems are legal because there is no expectation of privacy in public. Therefore any time you go in public you cannot expect NOT to be tracked, photographed, and entered into a database (which may now outlive us).

I think the argument comes from the 1st amendment.

Weaponizing the Bill of Rights (BoR) for the government against the people does not seem to align with my understanding of why the Bill of Rights was cemented into our constitution in the first place.

I wonder what Adams or Madison would make of it. I wonder if Benjamin Franklin would be appalled.

I wonder if they'd consider every license plate reading a violation of the 4th amendment.

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#132

Post by 542354234235 »

eddyg wrote: post #47

Yes, they should be secured so they can only be accessed by law enforcement. But if your spouse/SO/sister/mother/girlfriend/whatever was assaulted while jogging in a park that had Flock cameras, and it allowed law enforcement to quickly identify, track, apprehend and charge the criminal, you'd absolutely be grateful for the technology. There's nothing worse than being told "we don't have any leads" when someone you c…

Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t want laws to be written to the level of my emotional individual reaction to a singular crime. I want laws to reflect the ideals and values of society, and to work at scale when balancing individual freedom, societal safety, and protection from government abuse.

“It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.” - Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#133

Post by mikkupikku »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #114
devwastaken wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If the police protected and served as they're asked they could get some funding. Not for tanks and spy cameras, but for trained officers.

The police are usually pretty good at their jobs, within reason. It's almost always going to take them several minutes at least to respond to your call, but when they do manage to arrive on the scene they are usually pretty good about eliminating the threat and rendering first aid/etc. There are some infamous cases where this severely broke down, instances of cops not entering an active crime scene and instead seeing fit to stop the public from taking matters into their own hands, but these instances are so notorious because of how unusual and counter to American values they were.

It's usually prosecutors and judges who drop the ball.

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#134

Post by saubeidl »

kklisura wrote: post #58
kklisura wrote: post #46

For more context here Flock Safety is a YC-backed company [1][2] [1] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety [2] https://x.com/garrytan/status/1856016868580151615

And let me share this reply by Garry Tan, CEO of YC, after someone made a comment that Flock might be _pretty dystopian_ [1][2]: > You're thinking Chinese surveillance > US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims [1] https://x.com/neurajordan/status/1963303084609966288 [2] https://x.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955

American venture capitalism ironically creates all of the same authoritarian issues as Chinese state capitalism, but without any of the lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty part.

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#136

Post by Ajedi32 »

simlevesque wrote: post #34
j3s wrote: post #28

flock is the most heinous reflection of the ills of our current socioeconomic structure. absolutely nobody should be okay with mass surveillance, much less mass surveillance enabled by a private company.

It's what happens when we rank private property over human lives. We deserve this.

I think you have it backwards. This is what happens when we rank human lives over human freedom.

The argument for these cameras is that they save lives. The argument against them is that they destroy freedom.

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#137

Post by plorg »

gruez wrote: post #87
embedding-shape wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard about this Tan guy before, I don't keep up with politics/corporatism anymore, but is that possibly sarcasm? It sure feels like it to me. But again, I don't know this person, but if I came across that by itself I feel like it's pretty clearly sarcastic, as Twitter tends to be. Maybe I'm just tone deaf myself to how tone deaf others could be?

He probably being sincere. If you're logged in (or use something like xcancel), you can see the full thread, where he starts off with > Flock Safety currently solves 700,000 reported cases of crime per year, which is about 10% of reported crime nationwide > And they're just getting started His profile also says: >President & CEO @ycombinator —Founder @Initialized—designer/engineer who helps founders—SF Dem accelerati…

Gary has some unhinged politics with regards to "public safety" even excepting the Flock boosterism.

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#138

Post by saubeidl »

mikkupikku wrote: post #133
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the police protected and served as they're asked they could get some funding. Not for tanks and spy cameras, but for trained officers.

The police are usually pretty good at their jobs, within reason. It's almost always going to take them several minutes at least to respond to your call, but when they do manage to arrive on the scene they are usually pretty good about eliminating the threat and rendering first aid/etc. There are some infamous cases where this severely broke down, instances of cops not entering an active crime scene and instead seeing…

That is, unless you're black of course.

https://naacp.org/resources/criminal-justice-fact-sheet

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#139

Post by [deleted] »

simlevesque wrote: post #34
j3s wrote: post #28

flock is the most heinous reflection of the ills of our current socioeconomic structure. absolutely nobody should be okay with mass surveillance, much less mass surveillance enabled by a private company.

It's what happens when we rank private property over human lives. We deserve this.

[deleted]

Re: Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves

#140

Post by gs17 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #100
eddyg wrote: post #47

Yes, they should be secured so they can only be accessed by law enforcement. But if your spouse/SO/sister/mother/girlfriend/whatever was assaulted while jogging in a park that had Flock cameras, and it allowed law enforcement to quickly identify, track, apprehend and charge the criminal, you'd absolutely be grateful for the technology. There's nothing worse than being told "we don't have any leads" when someone you c…

What if your spouse/SO/whatever was wrongfully arrested because they were on a Flock camera and conveniently matched what the police were looking for? Or if they ran whatever dogshit AI algorithm over it looking for suspects? We can make up situations all day where it can or can not be validated but the reality is that this is a defacto surveillance state. If every move you make can be monitored, you should assume th…

Or if they were simply being harassed because their ex was a cop who decided to use the cameras to stalk them, where there's not even an excuse.
Post reply on HN