US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

https://www.cnet.com/home/security/when-flock-comes-to-town-why-cities-are-axing-the-controversial-surveillance-technology/

by giuliomagnifico • 4 months ago

765 376 4 months ago

cnet.com

lenerdenator3• 4 months ago

It really is amazing how they managed to fit so much copper into those devices.

therobots9275• 4 months ago

Would be a shame if it became common knowledge.

JuniperMesos9• 3 months ago

People stealing copper from public infrastructure in public spaces is exactly the sort of serious quality-of-life crime that I want something like Flock cameras to deter.

Dezvous3• 4 months ago

It's quite ironic to get an amazon ring video ad while viewing this article.

therobots9275• 4 months ago

Ring is just as bad. Arguably worse because it comes with a convenience / personal security factor.

therealdrag02• 3 months ago

Why is it just as bad?

elphinstone• 4 months ago

An obnoxious, autoplay-at-full-volume ad that took the page an extra 30 seconds to load and somehow bypassed firefox adblockers...

radiorental• 4 months ago

Firefox 149 + ublock origin did not display ads for me

josefritzishere• 4 months ago

Funny that. Not everyone wants to live in an open air prison.

jmuguy• 4 months ago

I'm surprised Garrett Langley still has a job, he seems wildly out of touch. For instance he really believes that his Panopticon as a service is the reason crime is down in cities, conveniently ignoring crime rates prior to COVID.

therobots9275• 4 months ago

He won’t for long. The backlash is just getting started. Left or right, no one wants their whereabouts subject to constant surveillance.

His only advantage is that the cops are on his side and won’t let go of these cameras without a fight.

mlinhares• 4 months ago

Nah, he's just missing a good PR campaign, there's a 30% of the population that will eat whatever their supreme leaders say they should, I'm sure they can sanewash these cameras as well.

ses1984• 4 months ago

No one wants their whereabouts subject to constant surveillance, except everyone who carries a “normal” cell phone, in other words not a burner.

whimsicalism14• 4 months ago

I'm very in favor of speed & redlight cameras and don't have a particular problem with license plate trackers. I think we partisan-ize far too many things nowadays, unfortunately.

delecti• 4 months ago

no one wants their whereabouts subject to constant surveillance

But sadly lots of people want everyone else subject to it, and some are willing to submit to it themselves to get it. It's not a foregone conclusion.

anthonypasq2• 4 months ago

i think politicians have seriously underestimated how much people don't like crime, and most people would take constant surveillance if it could actually improve feelings of safety in urban environments.

thinkingtoilet• 4 months ago

Does he really believe it or is it his job to say he really believes it?

everdrive• 4 months ago

Could he tell the difference?

FireBeyond6• 4 months ago

As an ex-employee of Flock, if he doesn't really believe it he is an amazing actor. He talks of a very Minority Report-esque future, where there is literally zero crime, and it's because of Flock.

Flock's stats are very misleading too. If there was a Flock query in the course of investigating a crime, even if it leads nowhere or isn't relevant to the arrest or conviction, still, Flock was queried, so "Flock solved a crime".

It was sad. I had significant ethical questions when I joined, but all through recruitment and week one, everything was all about controls and restraints and auditing and ethics. After that, nope, a free for all. Selling our products in states that don't allow the use of certain functionality? Not our problem. We're not disabling it. That's up to you to decide whether you're using it or not.

Zigurd5• 4 months ago

"Garrett Langley" sounds like what they renamed the villain in Le Mis for an American audience.

doctorpangloss• 4 months ago

Another POV is, they didn't invent cameras or drones, they aren't philosophers / employ any great or influential thinkers, nobody at Flock has won an election, all they really have done is sell some stuff that is easily defeated by a guy with a hammer or spray paint. I'm not sure he has another chance at a big Pay Day in his life, so in such desperate circumstances it will take something really criminal (or souring with VCs) to end this appearance in public life.

jdross• 4 months ago

I realize how unpopular flock is, and I will first say that I have literally never personally looked into the privacy concerns. But one city you don’t see named here is SF, which has cited Flock as a primary driver of its 10x reduction in car break-ins, and 30% reduction in burglaries. Those were a quality of life plague while I lived there

ceejayoz17• 4 months ago

Crime's been descending from the COVID blip for a while, everywhere, Flock or otherwise. My city saw zero murders in Q1; 2021 saw ~15 by now.

In other words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw

whimsicalism14• 4 months ago

it's clearly not a covid effect https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/sf-car-breakins/

BoggleOhYeah• 4 months ago

Any evidence that the reduction is actually due to the cameras?

toephu2• 4 months ago

Don't people tend to behave if they know the are being watched?

MisterTea• 4 months ago

which has cited Flock as a primary driver of its 10x reduction in car break-ins, and 30% reduction in burglaries

Are there reports or studies released which explains how the flock system influenced these reductions?

cucumber373284211• 4 months ago

The crime did not happen because of a lack of technological capability or resources availability at a given price point. It happened because of politics and priorities. The 1984 camera dragnet vendor is no more responsible for the change in politics and priorities and subsequent crime reduction than whatever vendor sold the tires for the cop cars.

QuadmasterXLII• 4 months ago

I could believe that perma-cameraing every inch of public space is more akin to chemo than to vitamin gummies, that SF had the city equivalent of bone cancer, and that this doesn’t mean healthy midwestern towns need Flock in any way.

mixmastamyk• 4 months ago

ALPR does help with some things but stationary burglaries are largely not among them.

jeffbee3• 4 months ago

Unfortunately, Flock really has been doing some shady stuff and the alliance of 1) people with legitimate concerns about Flock operations, and 2) the much larger population of people who are accustomed to getting away with petty crimes is, together, politically successful.

It would be easy to create a camera network that is locally owned and operated by public agencies, and if any place in America could so that it should be SF.

phendrenad2• 4 months ago

It's funny, if the company had just sold cameras to cities, they probably could have avoided this whole mess. But they just had to hit some keywords for Wall Street (like "AI" "cloud" and "SaaS"), which had the side-effect of making it appear (true or not) that they were part of a Palantir-style surveillance panopticon that tracks you everywhere.

alex435782• 4 months ago

A big part of the value is the network: track a stolen a car or a suspect in the next town over or across the country.

cucumber373284211• 4 months ago

And they will either quietly rebrand and build it or someone else will.

Government loves the product. What it doesn't like about Flock is that the peasants are aware about it and complaining.

e2le• 4 months ago

For those unfamiliar, you can read more about the flock safety cameras themselves here:

https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Flock_license_plate_readers

And more about the company behind the cameras:

https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Flock_Safety

gosub1002• 4 months ago

Someone in my hometown was arrested for vandalizing them. The media chose to say "city owned security camera". It's amazing how they will rush to defend private enterprise.

Zigurd5• 4 months ago

Legacy local news is highly dependent on the police for content and access. No surprise.

knowaveragejoe• 4 months ago

More likely: the local news reporter doesn't know the difference, or didn't think there was a difference.

anthonypasq2• 4 months ago

the alternative is to not punish vandalism? what are you even saying?

hackable_sand2• 4 months ago

It's unfortunate they got caught. It is nice to be reminded that every community has people willing to fight for freedom though.

gorgonical• 4 months ago

Musician-turning-tech anarchist (?) Benn Jordan is making a very interesting series of videos about Flock cameras, their poor safety, and their gray-area interfacing with local governments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMIwNiwQewQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ

I recommend them.

boriskourt• 4 months ago

Super worth a watch. Lots of technical tidbits also.

waNpyt-menrew• 4 months ago

Someone complaining about local governments having data while directing them to YouTube, whose owner does surveillance at a scale far exceeding all local governments of all countries combined, is ironic.

Why don’t these people use Peertube at least. Fact of the matter is they’d like to personally profit off the same nonsense they complain about. This person has a million subscribers, they aren’t some random whistleblower. It’s a job, like all media, generating outrage.

If all of them used peertube maybe we’d have a solid competitor.

ceejayoz17• 4 months ago

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

puppykito• 4 months ago

???

It is very clearly because YouTube has a higher reach than any other platform in that space.

komali22• 4 months ago

During the KMT military dictatorship in Taiwan, the KMT used the radio to spread its anti-democratic propaganda and disparage pro-democracy activists. Activists meanwhile spread their messages via pirate radio.

mmcnickle• 4 months ago

Fact of the matter is they’d like to personally profit off the same nonsense they complain about.

Benn Jordan's YouTube channel is a registered Nonprofit https://www.patreon.com/posts/nonprofit-has-82858569

platevoltage3• 4 months ago

Hasan Piker owns a house. Lets all complain about that too!

AndrewKemendo• 4 months ago

Wow thank you for sharing this I had no idea this guy existed!

There’s more of us techno anarchists out there apparently!

platevoltage3• 4 months ago

Yeah I discovered this guy because a video about Aphex Twin appeared on my feed.

seemaze• 4 months ago

Those were great to watch, thanks!

Also, I can't help but feel like I'm watching a young Dr. Emmett Brown.. Great Scott!!

devin• 4 months ago

Benn is the best. His most recent video is about Ring cameras.

kgwxd• 4 months ago

And Data center noise pollution before that. It's the only channel I subscribe to knowing full well every video is going to infuriate me.

jkestner3• 4 months ago

Benn's videos along with this one from a very chill middle-aged engineer/state rep made the difference in swaying our town to discontinue its Flock contract: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwbE5ks7dFg

amanaplanacanal2• 3 months ago

Yep business reform has tons of videos on privacy related stuff. I like him quite a bit.

stronglikedan3• 4 months ago

I'd also recommend Louis Rossman's videos on the topic, including how to get involved.

amanaplanacanal2• 3 months ago

Louis is big on right to repair too.

boc• 4 months ago

Love the Flashbulb!

xracy2• 4 months ago

I think his comment about "why dogs might provide actual neighborhood safety" is a good reminder that the thing that makes communities safe is "knowing your neighbors." You don't get safety by building a castle with a moat and a million cameras. You get safety by building a community with context that can respond without having to just "react" to the 6s version of "what happened".

snerbles• 4 months ago

I'm reminded of prepper forum discussions. Where some do little more than hoard supplies, weapons and gadgets yet don't network and build communities. In an actual societal breakdown scenario these isolated individuals will become loot drops for others who actually band together.

Sharlin• 4 months ago

Many may find it unintuitive, but one of the best things you can do for the actual security of a neighborhood is to design it for pedestrian and "loitering" friendliness.

caycep• 4 months ago

this reminds me of this article https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-end-of-gangs-los-angele...

I feel like nowadays with all the political FUD about "crime and safety" here in LA, this should be required reading

fakedang• 4 months ago

Carries over to countries too :)

blindriver• 4 months ago

Don't tell this to Trayvon Martin, who was gunned down by a neighborhood watch zealot, because he looked "suspicious" because he was wearing a hoodie.

yowayb• 3 months ago

Vietnam is extremely safe because there are communities everywhere. There are old folks watching young folks. One viet friend said there's an expression "rice-powered cameras" which refers to people that start filming when something is happening.

duxup• 3 months ago

I put a dog dish and some chewed up tennis balls in my back yard by my back door.

When some folks came by checking for unlocked back doors years ago… they skipped my house.

Don’t even need the dog sometimes.

themafia3• 3 months ago

Safety is best achieved by layering several systems on top of one another.

Would we have such a problem with cameras if the videos were stored locally and not in the cloud?

alsetmusic• 3 months ago

Guest on most recent Better Offline podcast had a good analogy (this one was actually about AI companies, but fits here):

Dog barking at mail delivery person. Delivery person goes away. Dog thinks barking saved the home.

What a great analogy.

baggachipz6• 4 months ago

I drove into a very affluent subdivision this weekend, and like most others around here it had a flock camera recording every car on the way in. This camera, however, had the gall to advertise its presence as a neighborhood security measure. "Flock Safety watches this neighborhood" read the sign on the post, or some such. Of course the residents there had no choice but to accept its installation, as the local police support it. Nefarious framing and marketing in the name of "safety".

bradleyankrom• 4 months ago

I saw the same thing in a Home Depot parking lot yesterday. I guess I'm glad there's some sort of notice about it, even if its intent is more, I dunno, branding? It took me a while to figure out what all the solar panel + camera on a post installations were as they popped up around my town. I even pulled over to inspect the hardware for signs of ownership and didn't find anything.

whimsicalism14• 4 months ago

we enforce laws presumably in the name of safety, is this really nefarious framing or marketing? seems pretty straightforward to me.

baggachipz6• 4 months ago

It is very clearly advertising on their part. They have been paid to put that thing there and added the sign to announce the presence. It's like when you get your roof replaced by a business and they ask if they can put a sign in your yard. They're not doing it to make everybody know that you're getting your roof replaced, they're advertising.

bob1029• 4 months ago

no choice but to accept its installation

You might be shocked to discover there are subdivisions so affluent they can afford physical armed security and access control structures with far more invasive identification and logging procedures.

baggachipz6• 4 months ago

I am not shocked to know that, but there are Flock cameras all over the town. None of the other ones have this advertisement on them. This neighborhood is not gated. However, Flock decided to do announce its presence only here.

burnt-resistor• 4 months ago

A few? / some? of the very richest and most exclusive have armed quick reaction forces of essentially off-duty/retired police and PMCs. I know of one by a fancy hotel where presidents, celebs, and other heads of states stay beside very rich residential neighborhood abutting fancy condos/apartments.

Interestingly, a lot of ordinary "gated" communities aren't as exclusive as their misleading signage suggests. For example, there are a number of areas where the sidewalks are indeed public and right-of-ways but display says the area is "private" when it is not as evidenced by county GIS data. Jeff Gray runs into this often in Florida. It's similar to the bogus "no parking" signs and hiding of public right of way access that routinely happens in Malibu.

HoldOnAMinute2• 4 months ago

Monte Sereno or Saratoga?

SoftTalker4• 4 months ago

Most of the houses probably have little yard signs advertising some security service, and stickers on the doors advertising an alarm company too.

baggachipz6• 4 months ago

Ok? They paid for those.

ggreer• 4 months ago

It's probably the neighborhood HOA that pays for it. My HOA got Flock cameras after a string of thefts, and has similar signs up. The HOA encourages homeowners to submit their car license plate info so that if a crime is reported, it's easier to identify cars that don't belong to homeowners.

Soon after the cameras were installed, some thieves stole a gift my brother had sent me. Thanks to license plate data and images of their faces, Vancouver PD had little trouble catching the perpetrators. It turned out that in addition to stealing Amazon/UPS/Fedex packages, they were stealing USPS mail and using it to commit identity theft. IIRC they ended up getting a decade in federal prison.

It seems like only a few people are responsible for the majority of thefts, so catching them and locking them up drastically improves quality of life for everyone else. Obviously this technology could be abused, but that's also true for things like fingerprinting, DNA evidence, and ID requirements. Similarly to those technologies, we could have laws restricting certain uses, allowing us to reduce crime while preventing abuses. But if a private community wants to install cameras and allow law enforcement to access the data they record, I don't see any constitutional issues.

baggachipz6• 4 months ago

Fair point and I hadn't considered that. I just assumed that no place would voluntarily use Flock. Thanks for the info and perspective.

AlBugdy2• 4 months ago

Non-US citizens - what's the situation with cameras in public spaces where you live? In my town every 2nd hour or building entrance has a private camera pointed at the street. It's very depressing because the cops don't care - I've asked 2 in a patrol car when there was a mild case of vandalism I witnessed. Technically it's illegal, but nothing happens. The public cameras are on intersection and some bus stops. Too much, if you ask me, but the private cameras are everywhere.

buzer• 4 months ago

Private cameras pointing to street can be lawful under GDPR, but in that case they are GDPR controller. That then requires them fulfill bunch of obligations which they probably aren't, e.g. giving proper Article 13 notice.

I don't know if it's criminal in any EU country, but it would be something that you could complain to DPA about. Or initiate civil lawsuit against the controller.

Worth noting is that in some cases the camera vendor might also be (joint) controller as they can determine means & purposes of the processing. If they are simply storing the video then it's unlikely, but if they for example use it for AI training that would likely bring them controller territory.

boelboel• 4 months ago

In London cameras are everywhere, mostly private and they have been for years. Don't think I've seen anything like it in any European city I've visited.

alephnerd2• 4 months ago

Japan is exporting it's AI-enhanced crime prediction platform across LatAm after successfully deploying it in Tokyo [0]. Japan is doing similar work to analyze financial transactions [1]. South Korea has also deployed a similar surveillance platform called Dejaview [2]. Even Finland has been deploying surveillance camera fusion centers [3]

The brutal reality is everyone is doing this and there's nothing you can do about it. National Security trumps all other concerns (even the GDPR exempts governments who argue their data collection is done for National Security reasons), especially in a world as unstable as today.

[0] https://www.japan.go.jp/kizuna/2024/06/japans_ai-based_crime...

[1] https://www.tc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ai1ec_event/10769/

[2] https://m.blog.naver.com/mtnews_net/223775186368

[3] https://poliisi.fi/en/camera-surveillance-system

turtlesdown11• 4 months ago

world as unstable as today

The world is the most stable and peaceful it's been in decades if not longer. What is your evidence that the world is unstable?

AlBugdy2• 4 months ago

The brutal reality is everyone is doing this and there's nothing you can do about it.

Maybe not me personally, but society can.

pocksuppet3• 3 months ago

Public cameras in Germany are widely assumed to be illegal, although in reality, they aren't.

mothballed6• 4 months ago

Our city voted them out for awhile. So the feds just put them on every bit of federal property near roads, which ended up doing the exact same thing.

loteck• 4 months ago

Where is this?

jcstryker• 4 months ago

And moving to the next vendor that hopefully does a better job of staying out of the public eye...

maerF0x02• 4 months ago

And switches to Axon - https://denverite.com/2026/02/24/denver-ends-flock-contract-...

I have not done any research if that's out of the frying pan and into the fire or an improvement

dfxm12• 4 months ago

Practically, axon cameras aren't nearly as ubiquitous as flock's, thus reducing the leo's dragnet capability. I'm sure the feds will successfully try to get access to this footage as well.

chaps6• 4 months ago

Kind of. Motorola (axon) effectively acts as an integration system for flock and about 20 other services. Motorola's stuff is IMO the bigger problem because it includes access to flock.

citruscomputing3• 4 months ago

In Denver, they'll be expanding once they have budget. Also as soon as Axon finishes developing their integrations with civilian cameras into their Fusus product. They've also got natural-language queries in the pipeline ("find red trucks near here"), and they already have integration with the hundreds of existing non-ALPR LEO cameras. It's not better.

gosub1002• 4 months ago

I don't know if axon does it, but the future is going to be mobile ALPRs. Uber drivers going around scanning every plate, selling to police, and helping predatory auto lenders repo cars. The latter is already being done, so it's just a matter of time.

maerF0x02• 4 months ago

Interesting point. Autonomous cars themselves could sell all the data they collect (like license plates, but also street maps, live traffic data, pot hole counts and locations etc)

citruscomputing3• 4 months ago

It's different. The primary harms of flock come from their horizontal integration into a nationwide surveillance network, working with ICE etc. Axon (formerly Taser) has strong vertical integration, which is new and we haven't thought through as much yet. (This is the position of city councilmember Sarah Parady, who's been part of a working group to research+draft ordinances about surveillance technology, and whose speech at the meeting voting on the contract I really respected. I think it's available online.)

The Axon contract is smaller than the Flock one, 50 cameras instead of >100, but that's because it's all they could get budget for, and they want to expand. DPD owns the data and is theoretically not supposed to share it with federal agencies, but there are lots of legal ways to make them comply. They're setting a 21-day retention period for data that's not part of an ongoing investigation, but I think that's missing the point, and it's not codified into law. The Axon cameras can be switched into a mode where DPD can view live feeds. Most of the contract provisions that the mayor's office added because of significant public outcry I would call "token." They're not addressing the real issues, and it's still contributing heavily to the development of the surveillance state.

Overall, it's an improvement, in the sense that breaking your leg is better than breaking both your legs. But don't get me wrong, they're coming for the other one as soon as they can.

gegtik• 4 months ago

Funny they are just trying to get this started in Toronto

HoldOnAMinute2• 4 months ago

Perhaps this venture would have been more successful as a Public Benefit Corporation.

In the USA in 2026, "capitalism", "politics", and "evil" have all become synonymous.

Maybe I am naive, and the corruption is too deep and pervasive.

diogenes_atx• 4 months ago

It seems like this article buried the best lede of the story on paragraph ten, which explains Flock's new business of surveillance drones launched in response to 911 calls (and also presumably triggered by other alerts configured by police and private businesses).

Flock has recently expanded into other technologies... Most concerning are the latest Flock drones equipped with high-powered cameras. Flock's "Drone as First Responder" platform automates drone operations, including launching them in response to 911 calls or gunfire. Flock's drones, which reach speeds up to 60 mph, can follow vehicles or people and provide information to law enforcement.

SoftTalker4• 4 months ago

Hunter-Killers not far behind.

mystraline2• 4 months ago

Nor is the Butlerian Jihad.

Forgeties79• 4 months ago

Code 8-style cop drone drops incoming

jonas21• 4 months ago

This is much less concerning to me than mass surveillance. If someone calls 911 and you need to send a first responder, why not send a drone to get there faster while a person is on their way?

sheiyei• 4 months ago

As a concept, first responder drones are a good idea. But I wouldn't want public services having anything to do with that company.

jeffbee3• 4 months ago

Yeah this doesn't bother me in any way, shape, or form. We already have manned aircraft that respond to such things, unmanned aircraft are a strictly better solution. It makes sense for police and it makes even more sense for fire. An aircraft can arrive at the site of a reported fire while firemen are still buckling their pants.

zoklet-enjoyer3• 4 months ago

And then what? Hover over me as I'm dying?

wiether• 4 months ago

At least their current cameras are fixed to a single point.

With their drones they now have cameras roaming freely everywhere.

pesus• 4 months ago

If the drones are "providing information" to the police, it's only a matter of time before their AI hallucinates something that gets someone killed. We've already seen AI gun detection services that report things like Doritos bags as guns.

chaps6• 4 months ago

I'm sorry but, in what way is a swarm of surveillance drones NOT a mass surveillance system?

dmbche2• 4 months ago

What's the drone gonna do?

rudhdb773b• 4 months ago

Because today it will be used as a first responder.

Tomorrow a police officer will suggest that these drones (that we are already using successfully) could be very useful for checking up on that "dangerous" neighborhood.

roughly• 4 months ago

They do more than that - our local PD gave a presentation on what Flock’s pitching - ALPRs, fixed pan/tilt cameras, “citizen cameras,” drones, and a whole “sensor fusion” software suite that lets you stitch in everything along with data from surrounding precincts which also have Flock (think Palantir for local cops). We were pretty shocked at the scale.

mullingitover• 4 months ago

In Southern California we have eye-wateringly expensive (and loud) police aircraft flying 24x7.

I’m not a fan of Flock but I would welcome anything that knocks out some of the ghetto birds’ budget.

jm4• 4 months ago

That’s actually really cool and I don’t feel like it’s invasive. It’s surveillance in a specific location for a specific purpose and in response to certain emergencies. Active shooter is probably the first thing that comes to mind, but accidents, fires, unexpected disasters, etc. could all be situations where this technology helps assess the situation and inform response.

_DeadFred_2• 4 months ago

"CITIZEN there has been a report of a shooting in the area, please remain motionless as we scan your face for biometrics.

Scan complete. Please do not move or attempt to leave the area until you have been notified via the 'GovernmentForYou' app that you are cleared to leave the area.

Because you have been identified in the active area police have been granted legal probable cause to search your home. Please unlock your homes doors via any smart home app you have to prevent the authorities from forcibly removing your door onsite

Notification. Citizen because of your scan you have been identified as committing a bank fraud case in North Dakota and will be detained and transported (the move process takes 2-4 weeks). Once in North Dakota your right to a speedy trial will start if you are held more than the reasonable 60 day administration period.

Have a good day citizen and thank you for your cooperation."

iwontberude2• 4 months ago

Thank you for finding this nugget, I really only read HN comments and rarely the source material. You all have been my LLM summary for a decade at least.

ramraj072• 4 months ago

I can anticipate this starting to happen: shoot into the sky, wait for flock drone to start coming in, then shoot it! Free target practice!

gnerd00• 4 months ago

this kind of headline might have some scholarly name, because, no... actually the number of cameras and feeds in the San Francisco Bay Area is multiplying rapidly, along with the entirety of California with few exceptions.. long ago, San Diego county, a military-led area, was the exception and to many pariah on the constant increase in tracking of vehicles, people and "events".. now, what used to be thought of as harsh and creepy, is not only matched in hardware, but exceeded in backend capacity, across almost every populated area

iwontberude2• 4 months ago

Congratulations EFF I know for a fact you’ve been working hard to get these removed.

schlap• 4 months ago

These companies build this tech in SF and Seattle, cities with some of the gnarliest public safety problems in the country, then turn around and sell it to smaller towns where it does more harm than good.

Most places in America don't have problems that surveillance solves. They have problems they already know about and won't act on. Cameras don't fix homelessness or addiction or underfunded services. They just make life harder for regular people.

But that's the whole appeal for bureaucrats. Buying a product looks like doing something without having to do any of the actual work.

noodlesUK• 4 months ago

I think this echoes very true in a lot of places, not just in the US. Here in the UK I'm pretty sure the police/the state more broadly know perfectly well who is doing a lot of the low level quality-of-life crime in most areas, but for structural reasons either can't or won't bother acting in many instances. Investigative work has never been easier: oftentimes there's multiple cctv angles of offences being committed, endless digital records, etc., but unless something can be done with this information in the real world, it's useless and actually takes resources away from other areas of public services.

Increasing the quality of the panopticon has all the downsides we talk about regularly on HN, and if you can't do anything useful for society with the data, it only ends up hurting people.

FireBeyond6• 4 months ago

These companies build this tech in SF and Seattle, cities with some of the gnarliest public safety problems in the country

I live just outside Seattle. I worked for Flock.

Flock is a company based in Atlanta GA.

superfrank• 4 months ago

Axon, on the other hand, does have a decent sized Seattle presence.

dghlsakjg3• 4 months ago

Also worth pointing out that Seattle and SF - despite their portrayal in the media - aren’t particularly violent places. Their violent crime rates are less than half the leading cities.

Both Seattle and SF have lower violent crime rates than Salt Lake City.

N.b. property crime is different and is a much less reliable metric. Both cities are ranked higher for property crime, but still below the famously dangerous Salt Lake City.

52-6F-62• 4 months ago

But that's the whole appeal for bureaucrats.

I don't think it's the bureaucrats. You should hear the Flock CEO talk. They have made it very public that their direct intent is to influence government policy in sweeping and total fashion to enable their service to be the mass surveillance tool of the near future. They sincerely believe that people will look back on them as the saviours of mankind.

ryandrake2• 4 months ago

They just make life harder for regular people.

"Making life harder for people [in the other tribe]" has become a core platform for a great many politicians. There's growing movement advocating that one of the major purposes of government is to grief people you don't like. Looked at through that lens, blanketing small towns with these things, with a plan to use them against "Those People," makes complete sense.

vel0city• 4 months ago

These companies build this tech in SF and Seattle

Flock's headquarters and largest offices are in Atlanta. They also have an office in Boston.

Ring's headquarters were in Santa Monica until post-acquisition they moved to Hawthorne, CA.

Arlo's offices are in Carlsbad and San Jose. Ok, finally an office in the Bay Area (one of two main offices), but still not San Francisco.

cucumber373284211• 4 months ago

They also have an office in Boston.

That would be one of my seconnd pick for talent pool if I wanted to get at people who'd be exited to build 1984. Behind DC, of course.

jamiequint2• 4 months ago

"Cameras don't fix homelessness or addiction or underfunded services. They just make life harder for regular people."

In what way do cameras make life harder for regular people? If anything rampant crime (and progressive legal systems' unwillingness to lock up repeat offenders for a long time or at all) makes life much harder for regular people than a camera just sitting there.

ggoo• 4 months ago

Surveillance tech can alter peoples behavior. I know I'm personally more stressed when I know I'm being filmed, even if I'm doing nothing wrong.

https://academic.oup.com/nc/article/2024/1/niae039/7920510?l...

tadfisher2• 4 months ago

"Police used AI facial recognition to arrest a Tennessee woman for crimes committed in a state she says she’s never visited": https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/29/us/angela-lipps-ai-facial-rec...

array_key_first2• 4 months ago

There's zero proof anywhere that these devices do anything about crimes. How could they? A camera can't lock someone up.

MSFT_Edging• 4 months ago

A few months ago a woman was harassed over a crime she did not commit, by a police officer using her vehicle driving in a large general area as proof she committed the crime. Officer demanded she admit to a crime she did not commit.

Additionally, the surveillance apparatus enables parallel reconstruction. When law enforcement gathers evidence via illegal means, they can then use the drag net to find cause to detain/search unrelated to the original crime, in order to have cover to gather evidence they illegally gathered prior, aka a loophole for civil rights.

ikrenji• 4 months ago

feels somewhat dystopian, no? the big brother is watching everywhere you go. no way this can go tits up

m3047• 4 months ago

1) Surveillance needs to be reviewed. Even if reviewed by AI, eventually that reviewed work needs to be reviewed by a human if we're going to maintain the fiction / friction of "human in the loop". The "hits" will include false positives, unless the system is overtuned so that it rarely kicks an event.

1a) Review will take time / resources which could be spent on human policing, harming the community.

1b) Some jurisdictions may prefer "broken windows as policy", the notion that they can construct a "reasonable suspicion", given enough garbage (some of it outright garbage, the point being there is so much of it nobody cares; don't need to do an accurate drug test until trial, right?).

2) False surveillance hits will make it through human review and result in injury to innocent humans.

3) Police forces already lack the money / manpower to investigate potential crimes.

4) Police forces already "prioritize" other matters than the mentally ill setting their houses on fire or releasing plagues of rabbits into their neighborhoods (actual things that have happened to me!).

Vrondi• 4 months ago

By mis-identifying them, leading to 5 months of jail time for a person who has done nothing other than be in public. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/us/north-dakota-facial-re...

text04043• 4 months ago

Biased policing means these systems are used to target minorities, activists, and people with "controversial" beliefs: https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/discriminatory...

JuniperMesos9• 4 months ago

One of the services that is most underfunded is the service of arresting, trying, and incarcerating homeless people who commit petty thefts, vandalism, and in some extreme cases physical assault or even murder. Insofar as cameras drive down the cost to the legal system of gathering enough evidence to convict and incarcerate people who do these things, this would make life better for regular people.

teaearlgraycold2• 3 months ago

Police officers have on many occasion used these cameras to track people outside of the scope of their jobs. Usually it's a man tracking a woman (like an ex-wife, ex-girlfriend, or just a random stalking target).

pocksuppet3• 3 months ago

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, right?

kylehotchkiss2• 4 months ago

Agreed. I live in a city that's top 5% of safest cities in CA and these cameras have sprouted up everywhere. I reached out to my cities representative about it and he ignored my outreach (nice thing about instagram - that "read" indicator!). The most blatant is one that just points into the Home Depot parking lot. I don't see them at target.

It's gross but I think the cohort of America that watches Fox News all day probably loves these things because they've been brainwashed with crime reports that are disproportionate from reality.

clickclackk• 4 months ago

I believe home depot themselves put up these cameras.

teaearlgraycold2• 3 months ago

SF and Seattle, cities with some of the gnarliest public safety problems in the country

As someone that lives in SF and has spent a decent amount of time in Seattle... this isn't accurate. I lived for a few years in Philadelphia and would actually hear gunshots frequently. Friends of friends got shot. Many a friend got mugged. Thankfully I never got attacked.

Don't fall for the bait that because we have homelessness we're a hellscape (and the homeless population is nothing like what is in Los Angeles from what I've seen with my own eyes).

chermi2• 4 months ago

If you want to hear from the man himself, see link below. It was a fairly soft interview. I listened mainly because it was Noah and wasn't expecting him to be so pro-surveillance. So, even though I don't agree with them, it might be worth listening to their reasoning.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2V5m4J0tjYg1shWXWrOG8k?si=k...

stronglikedan3• 4 months ago

I'm glad Flock made it as far as they did before the ass-handing commences. Even some my normie friends and family are aware of the scourge because of their initial success, where they would otherwise think we're talking about a group of birds.

Cipater2• 4 months ago

Y Combinator CEO Gary Tan evangelises this company every chance he gets and YC was an early stage seed funder (Summer 2017)

Cipater2• 4 months ago

Y Combinator CEO Gary Tan evangelises this company and YC was an early stage seed funder (Summer 2017)

_slih• 4 months ago

flock says customers own their data and control access. but their national lookup tool means 5,000+ agencies can search your city's cameras without your city's permission. 'customer-owned data' that anyone in the network can query isn't customer-owned in any meaningful sense.

Cider9986• 4 months ago

[1] Would crime go up, down or stay the same if all surveillance cameras were removed? The answer to that is the only one that matters.

At least 40,990 [2] innocent people died in the US in 2023, without significant outcry - that is, on the road, in car accidents. People in the US clearly value the freedom of driving over the deaths of innocent people. In 2023, there were an estimated 19,800 [3] homicides in the US. But even if you assume surveillance like Flock could prevent a meaningful fraction of those homicides - and there's little evidence it does [4] - that's still asking people to give up their most sensitive freedom, the right to move without being tracked, for speculative gains. People are not willing to sacrifice their freedom to save 40,990 people from cars, why should our constant locations be monitored?

The abuse isn't speculative. Police have been caught stalking exes, tracking abortions, and innocent people [5] have been held at gunpoint due to a flock misread. The "safety" these cameras provide comes with a surveillance that's already being turned against ordinary people.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47690237

[2] https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2022-traffic-deaths-202...

[3] https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/hvus23.pdf

[4] Flock can't even demonstrably reduce car break-ins. The drop in San Francisco started months before cameras were installed (https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/sf-car-breakins/). If it can't prevent car beak-ins, how can we expect it to make a dent in homicides.

[5] https://www.businessinsider.com/flock-safety-alpr-cameras-mi...

misreads by Flock's automated license plate readers... resulted in people who hadn't committed crimes being stopped at gunpoint, sent to jail, or mauled by a police dog, among other outcomes.

ramraj072• 4 months ago

To rich people, the privacy attack isn't an issue. We already track their private jets, how is this any different?

ssl-3• 4 months ago

There are rich people who charter private jets instead of own them. Their personal whereabouts aren't being tracked in the air. (They get to skip the entirety of TSA screening for these charters, too.)

But Flock tracks them on the ground when they get in their big S Mercedes after arriving at their third vacation home in Aspen.

Flock also tracks the wealthy who can't afford charter a jet, but who can afford to buy seats on the fanciest side of the curtain.

Flock tracks the doing-alright folks in business class.

Flock tracks those aspires to reach these levels: It even tracks the temporarily-disadvantaged billionaires who work soulless factory jobs and stuggle to keep up on the lease for their Black Express RAM 1500 Quad Cab, who rail against taxing the people who actually do have money as if that would ruin their own lives.

Flock tracks Joey who manages the sandwich shop down the way.

Flock tracks everyone.

By the time we get down to the point of mentioning that "everyone" includes the subset of people who are criminals, that part almost seems like a bug instead of a feature.

mellow-lake-day• 4 months ago

We already track their private jets

After the Elon Musk and Taylor Swift outcry rich people can now exempt themselves from being tracked

https://gizmodo.com/congress-just-made-it-way-harder-to-trac...

thebigman4332• 4 months ago

If it can't prevent car beak-ins, how can we expect it to make a dent in homicides.

Im not advocating for these cameras at all, but I dont think this is a very good line of thinking. The drop started before Flock, but that doesnt mean that they arent beneficial and currently helping lower the rate even further.

ribosometronome• 4 months ago

People are not willing to sacrifice their freedom

Given that we (societally, rather than like, you, I or I imagine most of the people reading this here) seem perfectly willing to sacrifice personal freedoms elsewhere (that flock was ever deployed, the past few years rollout of age gates on websites, etc), how can you conclude that with cars its unwillingness to sacrifice personal freedom rather than entrenched economic interests driving (lol) the lack of change with cars?

burningChrome2• 4 months ago

FYI when cops arrive at a homicide scene, they don't go looking for the FLOCK camera's, they go looking for people who have RING cameras and businesses that have security cameras. Anything that is within sight of the crime scene is where they start.

If you think FLOCK is an issue, you're barking up the wrong tree. You can remove all the FLOCK camera's you want and it won't change the already overwhelming passive surveillance that's already in place.

We crossed the Rubicon decades ago when people gave up their ability to move without being tracked for speculative gains when they started using smartphones religiously.

Also, the passive surveillance has resulted in several high profile killers like LISK and Bryan Kohberger being caught. So as much bad as you think it does, there are clear cases where its helped crack decades old serial killings and put horrifically violent people in jail. I think we can both agree we don't want those people out walking freely in our society.

Krasnol2• 4 months ago

So as much bad as you think it does, there are clear cases where its helped

You can "justify" so much with that sentence, that it becomes meaningless.

Also, it won't hide the fact that this surveillance infrastructure can cause much much more harm then it prevents. We've seen what it might do in repressive states and we see today that even those states which represented the idea of individual freedom on this planet, you are only one election away from madness.

bnjms• 4 months ago

I’m for looking for the existing cameras. I’m against a panopticon where any “trusted” LEO with an account can query and have ring + flock + OnStar + Tesla etc all aggregated to follow anyone. Ring has this now. I would guess some cities have it for traffic cameras. What I’m really against is having it privately owned as an end run around laws restricting government surveillance.

michaelt• 4 months ago

Also, the passive surveillance has resulted in several high profile killers like LISK and Bryan Kohberger being caught. So as much bad as you think it does, there are clear cases where its helped crack decades old serial killings and put horrifically violent people in jail.

Isn't that true of almost every restraint on the state's power?

A lot of less intelligent people get very emotional about the state quartering soldiers in homes against the wishes of the homeowner. But if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. We may not know who the Zodiac Killer is but I can tell you one thing for sure - he didn't have four to ten infantrymen in his house, keeping track of his comings and goings. Given the obvious security benefits of having soldiers in your home, no rational person would object - unless they've got a meth lab in their basement. /s

sleepybrett• 4 months ago

they absolutely positively do both.

whyenot• 4 months ago

People are not willing to sacrifice their freedom to save 40,990 people from cars, why should our constant locations be monitored?

We are all different, and I think where we each land on the security <--> privacy continuum will depend on who we are.

This is also true of constitutional rights. The US constitution was written by a small group of wealthy white men. At the time of its drafting, some people were considered property and had no freedom. Women didn't have the same rights as men and were not allowed to vote. Where the framers landed on the security <--> privacy continuum may have been a very different place than many US residents would land today. Rape, murder, property crimes, etc... even today some groups are much more often victims than others. Safety is a much larger concern for some groups than others.

I just feel like you are painting with a very broad brush when it comes to "people."

cucumber373284211• 3 months ago

We are all different, and I think where we each land on the security <--> privacy continuum will depend on who we are.

I feel very comfortable saying that it has less to do with who you are and more to do with how much you've and/or the people around you have been on the business end of any sort of enforcement system or you've seen how the sausage is made.

There's demographic correlations to an extend of course but I feel very comfortable saying that Popeyes employees and fine gun collectors (i.e. two groups that are probably pretty far apart on just about everything) both land a heck of a lot closer to "the framers" than HN, Reddit and the "western white collar internet" generally does.

timoth3y• 4 months ago

People are not willing to sacrifice their freedom to save 40,990 people from cars, why should our constant locations be monitored?

It's not binary.

People are absolutely willing to sacrifice some of their freedoms to save lives. That's why we have speed limits, seat-belt and helmet laws, automobile safety regulations, DWI laws, etc.

ausbah2• 4 months ago

have you seen how anyone online reacts when speeding or red light cameras are installed? or when parking becomes discouraged for sake of pedestrians or residents?

i am somewhat convinced that Americans views on cars is like that of guns, a absolute right that can and will not be infringed no matter how many must die

cars are more of a necessary “evil” than guns so the comparison is a little extreme so i don’t think the infringement of movement to cars is entirely irrational or unmetered, esp when in 99% of this country a car is absolutely required to live

fsckboy• 3 months ago

At least 40,990 [2] innocent people died in the US in 2023, without significant outcry - that is, on the road, in car accidents.

in 2025 in NYC 235 people died in auto accidents. in 1900 in NYC, 200 people died in horse related accidents. As the population has quadrupled in that time, the death rate has dropped substantially. Automobiles claim all those saved lives, "innocent" & criminal alike.

tzs• 3 months ago

Medical advances have a lot to do with saving those lives. Many injuries that would have been fatal in 1900 are survivable now.

Sebguer• 3 months ago

this is ice cream = shark bites levels of critical thinking

themafia3• 3 months ago

40,990 [2] innocent people died in the US in 2023, without significant outcry - that is, on the road, in car accidents.

1/6 of those were pedestrians. 1/6 of those were motorcyclists. 1/2 of those were people driving drunk. 1/2 of those were single vehicle accidents. Young men with high horsepower cars are a significant factor in many of these.

You shouldn't use the statistic to infer "innocence." The picture of what type of accidents lead to fatalities of often more complicated than people would like to assume.

If you die of a heart attack while driving; then yep, you're in that statistic as well. It's _every_ fatality on the road.

A better statistic might be 222,000 people in 2023 died due to "unintentional accidents." We could save 20% of those people by simply outlawing ladders or being more than 6' off the ground without appropriate safety equipment.

mlrtime• 3 months ago

Thank you for providing some logic in an otherwise disruptive and manipulating post. Not to mention the incredible utility that cars give.

Not to say we shouldn't be bringing these numbers down, however that doesn't seem like's OPs goal which sounds like propaganda.

Manuel_D• 3 months ago

that's still asking people to give up their most sensitive freedom, the right to move without being tracked, for speculative gains.

It might come as a shock, but there's nothing guaranteeing private movement in public in the US. It is totally legal for people to whip out their phone and start filming you in public. People can set up cameras on their property and film the road outside their house.

In fact, many of the municipalities that have "ditched" still have loads of flock cameras that they cant remove because they're on private property owned by the property owners.

bob8490• 3 months ago

There is this, which isn't enough but makes it clear the door is not shut on this argument.

https://law.stanford.edu/2018/06/22/supreme-court-defends-pr...

The Court decided that a person has a “legitimate expectation of privacy in the record of his physical movements.”

and

"A person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere."

In my view, the individual right to document anything one may observe in public is significantly different from tax dollars being spent to record everything that's visible in public, analyze it with AI, and then cross-reference it across an extended period to track the movements of law abiding Americans.

It's unreasonable to think you won't appear in someone's camera lens at any given moment while out in public. It's not at all unreasonable to assume your patterns of life won't be tagged and cataloged for weeks on end, for whatever reason, by a private or public entity.

You're right there's not enough precedent here yet, but we shouldn't let the current precedent of there being almost no regulation on this stuff remain.

text04043• 3 months ago

Doubt that anyone is concerned with a random person catching a portion of your face while they're taking a picture in public. Instead, it's opposition to being tracked over time by a centralized entity like a private company or government agencies.

tamimio• 4 months ago

means the installation of ALPR cameras

That’s a big misconception, flock is a car identification system not a license plate one. I have seen many videos of some crime documentaries where flock was used to ID cars with no license plates, and weeks later they still have them in the system to track, coupled with phone tracking, they know exactly all the details needed.

ourmandave• 4 months ago

According to DeFlock.org, my local Lowe's store has 4 of them covering every entrance point.

https://deflock.org/map#map=17/41.468996/-90.483817

taobility• 4 months ago

Should we remove logs from service running?

a4564632• 4 months ago

Axon has similar spyware surveillance tech too

throwaway85825• 4 months ago

Washington just exempted flock data from freedom of information requests. Yay democracy.

a4564632• 4 months ago

Couple that with age verification at the OS levels.

Devices tracked on the internet Car tracked outside the house Wifi 7 to track you in the house

Think of the children, the few deaths. Instead we need better policy enforcement. Expire licenses sooner, stricter driving tests, penalties on big tech, breaking up of monopolies, better social care programs, police that are trained in descalating and have empathy towards the community being policed, law makers listening to people and not lobbyists.

All of the right solutions require work. So we are left with an authoritarian fear driven state

JumpCrisscross• 4 months ago

Is the number of Flock Safety cameras in America going up or down?

rationalist• 3 months ago

Is the number of cancer cells in America going up or down?

Dezvous3• 3 months ago

It's going up and not even close to the tipping point of going down

ozlikethewizard• 4 months ago

Getting involved in local decision making is great, but theres always wire cutters and spray paint for those more inclined on a direct approach. Resisting an the rule of unjust law is always acceptable.

dlev_pika• 4 months ago

A little direct action a day, keeps the surveillance state away

thangalin• 3 months ago

https://i.ibb.co/rKgkrVy7/flock-future.png

US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

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