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

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

#271

Post by dang »

ribosometronome wrote: post #236
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

I wonder if that's why this post, with more upvotes than a number of the other ones on the front page, has seemingly vanished from it.

No, it's the other way around. This post is ranked higher on the frontpage than it would be if it weren't YC-related. (In fact, it probably wouldn't be on the frontpage at all in that case.)

A core principle is that we moderate less, not more, when YC or a YC-funded startup is part of the story. Many past explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

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

#272

Post by dang »

culi wrote: post #120

This was posted to HN a week ago but didn't get enough attention due to the weird title. It's a map of all city council meetings in the US whose agenda mentions Flock https://alpr.watch/

alpr.watch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46290916 - Dec 2025 (444 comments)

That post was literally the #1 story on HN for the entire day: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2025-12-16.

It was on the frontpage for 25 hours. That's about as much attention as any thread gets - well above the 99th percentile.

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

#273

Post by dang »

neogodless wrote: post #73

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46356182 Benn Jordan – This Flock Camera Leak Is Like Netflix for Stalkers [video] (youtube.com)

We merged that thread into this one.

(Edit: and put that video's link in the toptext above.)

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

#274

Post by dang »

tptacek wrote: post #33

I would love to watch a shorter version of this video that just discussed the deltas between the status quo and Flock, rather than breathlessly reporting the implications of cameras as if they were distinctive to Flock. He'll spend 30 seconds talking about how you can see every activity and every person on the camera --- yeah, that's how cameras work. There are thousands of public IP cameras on the Internet, aimed at…

(This was originally posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46356182 but we've since merged the threads.

The video in question is linked from the toptext above.)

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

#275

Post by snazz »

fooqux wrote: post #192
fusslo wrote: post #131

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 agains…

> From what I understand these systems are legal because there is no expectation of privacy in public. Not quite. There's been precedent set that seems to imply flock and other mass surveillance drag net operations such as this do violate the forth.

Defendants trying to exclude ALPR evidence often invoke Carpenter v. U.S. (or U.S. v. Jones, but that’s questionable because the majority decision is based on the trespass interpretation of the 4th Amendment rather than the Katz test). Judges have not generally agreed with defendants that ALPR (either the license plate capture itself or the database lookup) resembles the CSLI in Carpenter or the GPS tracker in Jones. A high enough density of Flock cameras may make the Carpenter-like arguments more compelling, though.

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

#276

Post by docjay »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #201
docjay wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know that I’ve heard the “saves lives” argument for this type of camera. How would that play out?

That's easy. Person gets kidnapped, government surveillance camera helps police find the car before the kidnapper kills them. Or, probably more common: murder happens, government surveillance camera helps police find murderer and jail them before they kill someone else. That's why these cameras are so prevalent, the case for them is extremely obvious and easy to make (give police more tools to stop bad guys), while t…

I don’t mean that I can’t imagine a scenario in which an imagined world has cameras covering every square inch, a 911 operator with their fingers hovering over the keyboard and ready to enter a license plate into the InstaLocate system, which then automatically triggers SWAT to be quick-released from a drone directly onto the current location of what is still called a “getaway car”, rather than “evidence.” But I can also imagine a situation with less steps wherein a spoon takes down an F-16, but I equally haven’t heard an argument for using spoons as air defense. ;)

Helping to solve a crime after the fact is certainly a thing, and that discussion has merit, but I think you’re taking creative license again with stopping a serial killer or spree killer “before they kill again.” That’s not really how murders play out, which is why there are special names for them.

It would be helpful for discourse, and for making your own argument, if the discussion was grounded in the reality of the sour world we live in now.

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

#277

Post by SamInTheShell »

embedding-shape wrote: post #37
SamInTheShell wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're trying to justify this type of rampant negligence in tech? Do you think justifying such malfeasance makes up for fact we literally have surveillance networks that bad actors can tap to do really awful things? Anyone that cares about their perspective has missed the point.

> So you're trying to justify this type of rampant negligence in tech? Don't know how you reached that conclusion, I obviously isn't trying to justify anything. But maybe something I said was unclear? What exactly gave you the idea I'm trying to justify anything of this?

Nothing against you personally, just so you know. But I have to point out that anyone caring about the reason for the short coming of flock on stuff like this are just crafting soft reasons they can use to justify things later. Being up front here I care not for their reason because the entire business model is frankly disgusting and an affront to a functioning society. This is the type of tech that evolves into social credit scores and precog crime units, stoping crime before it happens.

At the end of the day your rationalization only affords comfort to those that have a vested interest in this stuff being successful and it needs to be clear to those people driving this that they’re not doing something popular or even good.

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

#278

Post by aucisson_masque »

afarah1 wrote: post #175

In Brazil there is a similar problem, but it's not as widely discussed. Here, police investigations revealed that a website sold access for less than $4 to the nation-wide surveillance system, which included live feed of public safety cameras and person search by tax identifier. It was also shown that criminal organizations used it to locate their targets. Access was through the open internet, with leaked credentials…

That definitely wouldn't happen in the states. Corruption only happens in poor countries.

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

#279

Post by gruez »

goda90 wrote: post #256
gruez wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These things don't just happen overnight. It's not crying wolf when you see the wolf on the horizon running towards you. So were vaccine mandates and passports "fascism" as well, even though they melted away after the pandemic ended, contrary to some who thought it was going to be part of some new world order?

This Whataboutism[0] is quite silly, because the vaccine mandates "melted away" due to the checks and balances of the government operating to make them go away. Meanwhile we're seeing checks and balances themselves melting away. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

>This Whataboutism[0]

Not every counterexample you don't like is "Whataboutism".

>because the vaccine mandates "melted away" due to the checks and balances of the government operating to make them go away.

No, it would be "checks and balances" if there was actually some conflict between the branches of government. If like in most jurisdictions, the restrictions were imposed by the executive, and then lifted by the executive, it's just the executive changing its mind. The Trump administration starting a trade war against china, and then backing down isn't "checks and balance", for instance. The supreme court telling the executive to stop, would be "checks and balance".

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

#280

Post by LexiMax »

dang wrote: post #271
ribosometronome wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if that's why this post, with more upvotes than a number of the other ones on the front page, has seemingly vanished from it.

No, it's the other way around. This post is ranked higher on the frontpage than it would be if it weren't YC-related. (In fact, it probably wouldn't be on the frontpage at all in that case.) A core principle is that we moderate less, not more, when YC or a YC-funded startup is part of the story. Many past explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

I believe you when you say that nobody at YC put their thumb on the scale for this story in particular.

However, YC very much has control over the algorithm used to rank stories on the Hacker News front page, and this algorithm very commonly downranks threads which are detected as being "controversial."

If the algorithm "working as intended" consistently downranks stories that cast a bad light on YCombinator, the sorts of people y'all mingle with, or the tech industry in general...is that any better than putting your thumb on the scale?

This is kind of why I feel obligated to use https://news.ycombinator.com/active - after all, it's a very good indication of what Hacker News' algorithm and certain cohorts of its readership wants to hide from the casual viewer. And given the sorts of stories it tends to hide, it doesn't reflect well on this site or its users.

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