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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

#381

Post by tomhow »

culi wrote: post #295
LexiMax wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sor…

dang won't like me sharing this repo ( sorry !) but hn-undocumented has a relevant section on this: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented?tab=re... > Currently, there is no evidence that non-job submissions about a YC startup receive preferential treatment on the front page, or kill submissions critical of a YC startup. In fact, the moderators have stated that they explicitly avoid killing controversi…

We’re fine with people sharing that doc. It’s been on the front page multiple times and Dan has provided information/corrections to Max.

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

#382

Post by pornel »

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…

The problem is that these laws were written before automated mass surveillance was feasible.

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

#383

Post by class3shock »

chzblck wrote: post #219

[flagged]

People who demand others sacrifice their privacy to allow a private company to collect unlimited data on public spaces, to be used, sold, and profited off of as they see fit, with no oversight or constraints, should not be taken seriously.

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

#384

Post by 15155 »

goda90 wrote: post #97
cm2187 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point the video makes. Flock didn't invent CCTV. Not that I am trying to defend mass surveillance or incompetent silicon valley companies.

Flock "invented" CCTV in the USA that doesn't requiring going to multiple locations and asking for their tapes in order to track someone across locations.

I mean - no, they didn't, Ring existed long before Flock (but has since removed the police "request everything in the area" feature.)

Flock just brought this to the public right-of-way.

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

#385

Post by jofla_net »

godelski wrote: post #361
throwway120385 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you give access to any system that collects the personal information including location data for people in the US to the police, a percentage of the police will always use those systems for stalking their exes.

Don't forget we even saw that in the Snowden leaks. Those were people with much higher scrutiny and background checking than your average cop. Those were people that themselves were more closely monitored. And yet... we want to give that to an average cop? People who have a higher than average rate of domestic abuse?

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

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

#386

Post by tomhow »

LexiMax wrote: post #280
dang wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sor…

> If the algorithm "working as intended" consistently downranks stories that cast a bad light on YCombinator

We manually intervene to reduce or remove the penalties that downrank YC-related stories. Thus, stories like this one get more front page exposure and discussion than they would if they were not YC-related. And anyone can audit this via /active, HNRankings and any other tools they may want to build by pulling data from the API.

> the sorts of people y'all mingle with, or the tech industry in general

That phrase reflects an assumption that YC is synonymous with the tech industry and that everyone at YC and in the tech industry “mingles” and agrees with one another. That’s far from true. Even among the YC partners there are differences in opinion about these things, and there have been huge public disputes in recent years between prominent YC-aligned figures and other major tech industry identities.

It’s natural that people come to HN to discuss and scrutinize the activities of the tech industry, given that we’re a major public discussion forum focused on the tech industry. We accept that and make allowances for it. It doesn’t mean we need to apply the same lower-moderation philosophy to every tech industry controversy that we do when YC is a part of the story.

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

#387

Post by heavyset_go »

djtango wrote: post #373
kcatskcolbdi wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cops do have some unique tendencies but I think the real issue is the cops are able to leverage the power of the government in ways other large groups cannot.

The problem with police is a) that police have to deal with bad people and it is very hard to stay untainted when you constantly deal with bad people, and b) being a cop is no longer a desirable or rewarding job which not only causes applicant pool issues but also polarises the job and police force itself. Then the nature of polarisation is that it is self reinforcing. So if your job isn't rewarding financially or so…

> So if your job isn't rewarding financially

I don't know where you are, but some of the highest paid public employees in my state are police. In fact, median salaries for cops are higher than those of software engineers.

Add the fact that they get generous pensions + benefits, and can retire at 45 and draw from that pension until they die, they have it better than most of the people they police.

It's one of the only professions where you can make north of $250k+ a year doing overtime by sitting in your car playing Candy Crush all night.

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

#388

Post by appreciatorBus »

autoexec wrote: post #371
appreciatorBus wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison to private ships doesn't quite land, IMO. Ships - ships big enough to do material damage would be very small in # - ships big enough to do material damage would have a (somewhat?) professional crew - whatever damage they could do would always be limited to tiny areas - only where water & land meet, only where substantial public or private investment had been made in docks/etc - operators have strong fi…

> I don't love flock but IMO the only realistic way to get rid of license plates would be mandatory speed governors that keep vehicles from going more than like 15mph. I don't understand this reasoning. License plates don't stop speeding from happening. Removing license plates wouldn't prevent enforcement of speed limits either. A cop can pull over and ticket someone without a license plate just as easily as they do…

I’m not arguing that license plates solve the problem of the danger of cars, simply that as long as cars are dangerous to people not inside the car, there will be political pressure to have some way, however imperfect, of identifying them and their owners/operators.

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

#389

Post by bigiain »

quitit wrote: post #317
dvtkrlbs wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and the biggest problem with this kind of ALPRs are they bypass the due process. Most of the time police can just pull up data without any warrant and there has been instances where this was abused (I think some cops used this for stalking their exes [1]) and also the most worrying Flock seems to really okay with giving ICE unlimited access to this data [2] [3] (which I speculate for loose regulations). [1]: http…

I keep an unofficial record of instances where police and similar authorities have abused their access to these types of systems. The list is long. It's almost exclusively men stalking ex-partners or attractive women they don't know, but have seen in public. What's frightening is it's not rare, it actually happens constantly, and this is just within the systems which have a high level of internal logging/user-trackin…

And my guess is we only ever find out about some probably very small percentage of the abuses by police, at least in theory having rules and oversight of their use of these systems.

What are the chances that nobody at Flock has ever abused their access?

Cynical-me assumes that if you're the sort of person who'd take a job at a company like Flock, which I and evidently a lot of other people consider morally bankrupt, then you are at least as likely as a typical cop to think that stalking your exes or random attractive people you see - is just a perk of your job, not something that should come with jail time.

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

#390

Post by tejtm »

fleshmonad wrote: post #341
tejtm wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

flock is a YC startup We have met the enemy and he is us -Pogo

I am the "Y-combinator". Do you have any questions?

  no questions asked  
  go eat yourself now   
  or at least your own dog food
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