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At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

stateofsurveillance.org

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Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#161

Post by SilverElfin »

sevenzero wrote: post #9
SilverElfin wrote: post #8

Speed cameras and other surveillance state Trojan horses next please. Not just flock.

Speed cameras? I dont know, as long as people kill people with their vehicles, speed cameras are a tiny evil.

They aren’t a tiny evil. It’s safetyism, and safetyism gets regularly abused to violate our rights. See age verification laws or online censorship for other examples. By promoting safety they get a way to conduct surveillance. And flock isn’t the only company in the surveillance game. How long before cameras and ALPRs for speeding end up being used by ICE to unconstitutionally round up people?

Regarding road safety: Many roads have artificially low speed limits to either generate revenue or appease anti car activists. But the benefit of cars, getting us quickly to our destinations, is very clear. Vehicle deaths are very rare, and getting to places quickly matters. I see this a lot on highways especially, where a low speed limit like 55-60 should really be 80.

We should be designing for faster, not slower, roads. Safety is always improving due to cars having all kinds of driver assistance features now anyways, but we also could just make roads support the speeds people want to drive at. And then the value of surveillance cameras for safety will also go away.

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#162

Post by prepend »

amazingamazing wrote: post #64
zug_zug wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda like saying "Throwing the British's tea into Boston harbor will only make us subject to harsher terms." The reality is the vast majority of social progress in the last millenium was achieved with force and threat of force. I find this weird revisionist "violence is never the answer" trope recited as a fact that needs no justification to be incredibly weird and unreliable.

So what are you advocating for?

I think its better to lodge displeasure by placing sticky notes instead of destroying. It decreases camera usefulness and I’m not quite sure it’s a crime.

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#163

Post by cortesoft »

grensley wrote: post #149
cortesoft wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the same people smashing the cameras have the skills to legislate? Or even to organize and lead a movement? They are very different skill sets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Adams

Not saying NONE of them have both skill sets, but I many don't

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#165

Post by NDlurker »

petre wrote: post #115
zug_zug wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda like saying "Throwing the British's tea into Boston harbor will only make us subject to harsher terms." The reality is the vast majority of social progress in the last millenium was achieved with force and threat of force. I find this weird revisionist "violence is never the answer" trope recited as a fact that needs no justification to be incredibly weird and unreliable.

It's not violence, it's vandalism. Quite diferrent. But why smash'em when you have the right to bear arms? I'd do target practice instead. Improve your shootong skills while getting rid of surveillance. Win-win.

Extra charge for using a gun. Slingshot maybe? Or as I said before, just put a bag over the camera. Is that even illegal?

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#166

Post by AtlasBarfed »

DevKoala wrote: post #76

[flagged]

"What is a better solution"

I can think of dozens. But this is the solution that allows the state to close the noose on freedom and democracy, and that's the one that you are defending with false choice argumentation.

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#167

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

new_account_100 wrote: post #109
ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where you're coming from here- I also don't see justice as an inherent good. If somebody kills somebody else, the death penalty will only increase the number of victims by one. It does nothing to undo the crime. Karma isn't real. But you have to think about second order effects. The knowledge that you may be punished afterwards serves as a disincentive for doing the wrong thing now. It may be preferable to conv…

Justice is distinct from punishment. Someone who is wronged should be made whole, but I don't think society benefits from violating the violator.

Right, I just responded to that claim. Do you have any thoughts on the disincentivizing effects of punishment?

Or, if not, we can be more specific. Imprisonment means that an individual is separated from society, making it much harder for them to commit crimes. Most crime is done by young men, and time spent in prison contributes to age. Issuing a 10-year sentence means directly reducing the number of crimes that occur. Is that not beneficial to society?

Or if a CFO embezzles $10M, should society be indifferent to whether taxpayers make the company whole or the CFO does it?

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#168

Post by sevenzero »

SilverElfin wrote: post #161
sevenzero wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed cameras? I dont know, as long as people kill people with their vehicles, speed cameras are a tiny evil.

They aren’t a tiny evil. It’s safetyism, and safetyism gets regularly abused to violate our rights. See age verification laws or online censorship for other examples. By promoting safety they get a way to conduct surveillance. And flock isn’t the only company in the surveillance game. How long before cameras and ALPRs for speeding end up being used by ICE to unconstitutionally round up people? Regarding road safety:…

>Vehicle deaths are very rare, and getting to places quickly matters.

People not having any sort of empathy on HN shouldn't surprise me not gonna lie.

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#169

Post by jweir »

tolerance wrote: post #48

I've warmed to LLM-generated/assisted writing in general but this kind of stuff is just lazy and is basically "I got Claude to say something I agree with and then made it pretty".

generate a story where there is not much of a story. What is unfortunate is this has gotten upvoted and is now part of the noise.

Re: At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025

#170

Post by peyton »

timcobb wrote: post #114
ohyoutravel wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article was written with a premise into a prompt for Claude, which then wrote the whole thing.

What do you think about the contents?

It’s interesting this AI-generated article references “Reddit threads” being “full of support” two or three times, yet I can’t find Reddit threads in the references.

I wonder if we are seeing what may be the result of a Reddit bot campaign to sway generative output.

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