In Leaked Audio, Flock CEO Tells Cops Backlash to the Company Isn't Real | Hacker News Reader

In Leaked Audio, Flock CEO Tells Cops Backlash to the Company Isn't Real

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323 pointsFrieren209 comments

> “I give my wife a lot of credit. She was, like, you should never apologize,” Langley said. “Sure, people make mistakes. I've made a lot of mistakes in the last nine years. I made a lot of mistakes this summer. But we do good work.”

So this guy admits he did things that he shouldn't have then contends that he shouldn't have to say sorry for them? Am I reading this right? Isn't the point of an apology to acknowledge the bad outcome and signal to aggrieved parties that the offender will try avoid repeating the negative behavior? If yes and this guy is refusing to do it then what does that say about his world view?

I mean, it works for the president of the US. I think this attitude is a lot more common than people would like to admit.

The president is unlikely to feel consequences for the attitude, but Langley likely will as Flock enterprise value trends towards zero.

Flock Offers Employees Buyouts as Customers Flee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835 - September 2026 (45 comments)

Cities terminate Flock contracts at record pace in August - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/cities-terminate... - August 28th, 2026

If there is something the president has truly shown me is that just because consequences look inevitable, does not make them so. He exemplifies the ability to avoid consequences and responsibility.

I only trust that consequences will arrive when they actually arrive.

He isn’t avoiding consequences. Only delaying them.

If he can delay them long enough that he dies of old age first, he will have avoided them.

No, he is avoiding them. He was found guilty of 34 felonies related to election interference in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. Judge Juan Merchan declined to sentence him to any punishment whatsoever. He was then re-elected president. He will never face any consequences for those crimes.

The Supreme Court has ruled that (Republican) presidents are above the law. Official actions can't be prosecuted, but you have to ask the court what official means on a case-by-case basis, making the ruling implicitly partisan. Trump will thus never face consequences for his crimes in office.

Trump is an admitted (Access Hollywood) and convicted (E Jean Carroll) sexual predator. He has paid several million dollars to E Jean Carroll for raping her but that is the extent of any consequence he has suffered. He continues to be president.

Wish I could have that hope. I don't believe he will ever experience consequences for the vast majority of things he's done. Even if he does finally receive some justice for one thing, it's a practical impossibility that he will experience justice for everything he's done.

And I honestly see no reason to believe he's simply delaying consequences. He was out of the presidency for four years during which time he was convicted of multiple felonies. Is that a consequence? Was that justice? It didn't end up meaning anything.

Let’s hope so

I highly doubt apologizing would’ve had any effect on the outcome. He never had any intention of changing the direction of the company.

Only due to the cultural shift over the past 10 years, I would say. You also see it coming out of “streamer” culture, as well as evangelical “prosperity gospel” culture, where any means justify the ends of acquiring wealth - and no shame need be felt.

Tea party of the early 2010s also played by this rule. Lots of "I cannot recall"s which translates to "I won't even acknowledge wrong doing so why would I apologize?"

It seems to me that corporate entities will also pay any amount of money rather than admit wrongdoing.

MAGA is the cultural descendent of the Tea Party so yeah this tracks. The birth of vice signaling.

Everyone debating a maga person now must be trained to deal effectively with the "I haven't heard about that" defense that will inevitably come up

IMO there's an ongoing battle between two very different concepts of what speech means.

1. I speak "X" because I believe X to be true. I am virtuous because I am correct, and honest.

2. I speak "X" because that is is the current signal for demonstrating loyalty in the in-group. I am virtuous because I demonstrate allegiance and membership.

_____

In the first case, you apologize for an error because it's how you get back to a state of being correct. (Or if you don't apologize, it's because you double-down and insist it isn't an error.)

In the second case, you don't apologize because the "error" was merely a strategic misstep of over-triggering the dirty out-group, and anyway caring about them too much is suspicious.

I think this is almost at the truth. My view is that everyone values two frequently opposing things: truth and social reward. Whether you behave like (1) or (2) depends on which you value more, and how much pressure is being applied from either direction. I like to think that most people usually value being correct over social reward but this is not always the case, and frequently this difference in values results in totally unproductive arguments. There is no persuading someone who defends a position for social reward. The best thing you can do is try to make their position seem absurd and silly as a social punishment, and hopefully witnesses will think agreeing with you will result in higher social reward. I believe this is also why high profile debates are frequently just two people slinging insults back and forth. This is actually what a significant number of people find persuasive, since it determines whether their social circle will reward them or punish them for their beliefs.

"At least you got your bag" is the saying these days.

This will fade. People are tired of it and will start to ostracize this antisocial behavior.

Gosh I hope you’re right.

not as long as sociopaths own social media

Or people get sick of it and opt out. There is lots of evidence that trend is accelerating

Well, at least he won't have to apologize to his wife for throwing her under the bus.

I think his point is that the people that are against the technology will never change their mind, regardless of what you do to assuage them. It's a lost cause.

Everyone and every business makes mistakes. We don't go on an apology tour every time we make a mistake. On the net he believes he's doing good in this world.

For instance, a mistake he spoke about was not providing strict enough guards on operators, allowing them to conduct unlawful searches. He's since corrected that and looks for new ways to restrict and audit platform access. What's the point of dwelling on this? Is the anti-flock lunatic cutting down cameras going to read the press release and think "gee, Flock is turning a new leaf", obviously not. It just adds more fuel to the fire taking away from the good work they do.

Flock does not do good work.

Flock enables mass surveillance of a type that destroys liberty, and is opposed by sensible people who understand freedom, history, and who respect the brave men and women who have fought for our rights.

Flock is defended exclusively by pathetic, weak little men who are afraid of their own shadows, and who (wrongly) believe that unchecked government power is a good thing.

If allowing unlawful searches to be done is just a little whoopsie, then all the actions by those "lunatics" you're complaining about are even less than a little whoopsie.

Flock's value proposition is essentially Uber's, except instead of evading taxi regs Flock lets your LEOs evade the need to get warrants.

Correct, flock is broken at a conceptual level and that means really no amount of implementation details will fix it.

That doesn’t mean that flock should just keep doing what they’re doing. Quite the contrary - flock should not exist. It is anti-American to its core, and there’s no salvaging it. Flock can only exist if it changes in every way possible.

Providing private mass-surveillance as a product for our government is, fundamentally, broken. It’s not a good idea, and no amount of twiddling will make it good. Similar to how running a hit-man business is fundamentally bad. Doesn’t matter how many background checks I do on the hitmen. Doesn’t matter if I extra triple check they’re only murdering bad people. The concept itself is immoral and deplorable.

hear hear. imo the constitution should be read as eyes open tradeoffs. the 4th amendment is an clear one and this is a great case for it: its not that flock couldnt theoretically reduce crime. it that the reduction isnt worth giving up the power to the government to do so.

this. and note that while it is likely true that bots were driving awareness of the anti-flock campaign, that does not mean that the anti-flock campaign is wrong - in his cognitive dissonance, he is affirming the consequent.

> looks for new ways to restrict and audit platform access. What's the point of dwelling on this?

Well, for one, seeing if anything changes. "Auditing tools" could be the loud part and "that are completely unused" is the soft part.

This is definitely not the person to be afforded the benefit of doubt.

Have you ever lived in a red state? In a rural area? "Never apologize, especially when you know you're wrong" is a foundational principle in many cultures and households.

I live in a rural area in a red state and it's quite the opposite. People are perhaps maybe a bit too apologetic. I think the unwillingness to apologize or acknowledge oneself as wrong is a symptom of emotional immaturity rather than political persuasion.

It is more contextual than a simple binary, especially the emotional context. If the event triggers their shame more than their identity, you get the larger than required apologies. If their identity is the primary thing that is triggered, they will get defensive and double down. It's not just a rural thing.

Yeah that's just human nature I fear. Nothing to do with politics or geography

Crazy to be self aware of it and blatantly not give af

It can be both. Never admitting fault is very much core to MAGA but it's somewhat neutral with other major political ideologies. Being emotionally immature may also make people remorse-averse.

As is throwing your wife under the bus when you get challenged.

This attitude is also very common for law enforcement or prosecutors.

In some careers, admitting fault can open you up to lawsuits or additional consequences.

Yes, but in the case of prosecutors it can be very messed up. When someone is wrongfully convicted and there is very unambiguous exonerating evidence, prosecutors will fight overturning convictions.

It's bad enough to wrongfully send someone to prison, but to keep fighting for wrongful imprisonment when it's shown they made a mistake is downright evil.

I live in a very rural area, and most people are sort of overly apologetic about their mistakes. The ones that refuse to acknowledge their mistakes or apologize are what we call "assholes".

In a rural community, being labeled as an asshole has real repercussions. A neighbor down the road is moving away because of this. He called the cops on a guy who was trying to catch some horses that got out of their pen when the man looking for his horses pulled into his driveway to then back out and turn around. The place he bought was my neighbor's grandpa's farm. There was an old barn with a wooden door inside that my neighbor asked to buy from him (his grandpa had carved his and the grandma's initials on it when they were dating). So the asshole said sure, for $25k. When my neighbor said no, the asshole burned the door. He's an asshole, and because of that nobody would help him when he needed help with his crops because his combine died.

Now he's leaving. Community is important when there's not much of it around.

But I digress. I'm not sure geography or politics has anything to do with emotional maturity.

This is the mantra of blue cities too.

"I may not be right but I am never wrong" -- a quote from a conversation I had w/ someone in Austin, TX

It's a certain personality type, and nothing new. I've met people like this my whole life. For them, apologizing runs the risk of signaling weakness (and for sure, there's the other personality type that will take that message from an apology). So you can introspect and acknowledge mistakes you made to yourself, and maybe to some confidantes, but never to others.

Actually, introspection is out as well

https://www.businessinsider.com/marc-andreessen-zero-introsp...

> Great men of history had little to no introspection.

These people are completely detached from reality. How do they think we know the thoughts of these so called great men?

> How do they think we know the thoughts of these so called great men?

Many have biographies and autobiographies. Is not hard to spot.

Yes, exactly. In other words, they were introspective.

Introspection isn't a requirement to write an autobiography, and certainly not a biography. Just because someone can't stop talking about themselves and their accomplishments doesn't necessarily mean they analyze their inner thoughts and feelings for deeper meaning.

I would wager that a great many of those people had the introspection to eventually understand where they stood in the world and played the role and probably eventually believed it themselves (because often you must to be successful).

"A great king would not self doubt so I will not self doubt".

He'll say whatever will sell or raise his profile.

His blog in 2007, which people loved:

https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_productivity.html

Search for "Anti-Todo" and read that section. Then tell me he doesn't believe in some introspection.

> It's a certain personality type, and nothing new. I've met people like this my whole life. For them, apologizing runs the risk of signaling weakness (and for sure, there's the other personality type that will take that message from an apology). So you can introspect and acknowledge mistakes you made to yourself, and maybe to some confidantes, but never to others.

Is that type narcissism?

I don't think we need a diagnosis for "asshole"

We do. Asshole is more subjective and narcissism is an attempt at describing some specific type of assholeness that you know exist in various individuals and that you can spot by checking if it matches a few characteristics. You can now better spot them and avoid them if you want or look for knowledge about how to handle this type of person if you have to.

> “I've met people like this my whole life.”

Yeah. Marines

Did you miss the part about "But we do good work" ?

In his twisted mind, he did nothing wrong, therefore no apology needed. It's a classic case of delusion mixed with relative morals and pretty much it's the best case of "Rules for thee, but not for me". Because, he blurred his house on Google maps, because, privacy is fundamental...just for him. Fuck everyone else.

this is honestly why i don't trust guys who are "wife guys" (also extends to "family guys")

aka the guys who bring up their wife all the time regardless of the situation.

its really not masculine and makes me trust that "man" less

billions of people have spouses. it isn't a big deal. stop bringing them in as a deflection mechanism to soften whatever shit they're gonna say next lol

Apologizing is admitting guilt and that's just never a good time in the vicinity of lawyers. It's their job to prove guilt, not yours.

Depends on whose lawyers we're talking about. Honesty is generally a reasonable policy when speaking to your own (which has nothing to do with apologies, of course).

That highly depends on the receiver. Currently in any public setting there is more or less no instance where "being sorry" will help you.

Utilitarian view, sure. Outrage sells, some people are addicted to outrage. They don't want an apology, they want to see people burn. Under no circumstances ever apologise to them (or lawyers).

Wisdom and self-reflection has no value in current political climate. It requires the correct audience.

Better not prosecute people who cut down the cameras then, since that's part of the non-real backlash.

True. Such people clearly don’t exist and it’s obviously a company product failure and the company should be paying fines and penalties.

> Langley suggested during the session with Rausch that eventually the opposition to Flock will die down: “Whenever this industry finds a highly effective tool, it has to go through this period of intense debate. But then you get on the other side. I think right now we’re not at the bottom, but we’re real, dang, near close to it and about to come back up on the other side.”

So every other law enforcement tool has also been subjected to russian troll farms and eventually the fake furor dies down?

Or is he admitting that those of us who don't stand to make billions off of a private surveillance network are actually the real humans here?

Historically it was an easy step going from "these people are not real" to "these people are now dead".

What does this mean? Flock CEO will start... killing people?

More like another reason for cops to mow down protesters. True Citizens would never protest something so obviously beneficial to everyone /s

>What does this mean? Flock CEO will start... killing people?

No, he'll merely facilitate that, at scale.

IBM technically didn't kill any Jews too in WW2[1].

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/mar/29/humanities.hig...

Many of the Nazis didn't kill people themselves, they just helped in the process.

The typical citizen soldier wasn't capable of atrocities, which is why they had the special selected einsatzgruppen. ICE rhymes with that word.

If it generates profit, yes.

Do you think he will shut down LEO access to its systems if the government decides to have a purge of the undesirables, or two?

In yesterday's video from Benn Jordan [0] there was a Flock employee that told 911 multiple times "I'm not sure if they are armed." when reporting that a few people were filming from the perimeter of a Flock office building in Georgia.

He also said several times that "we're under lockdown here."

/shrug Seems like he was certainly trying to cause some form of harm.

Flock sucks.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP5GDiLZ1Nw

https://youtu.be/OP5GDiLZ1Nw?t=1130 if you want a timestamp.

He already has been. Flock cameras routinely draw the police into situations where they're not need and cause shootings/high speed chases that end in dead bodies.

SWATting, but with a lot more resources

they'll sure be on board when it happens. helping make it happen.

It's everywhere though. Not to detract from the massive problem of mass surveillance, but just recently when that data center in Russia got, and those derpy images of "stats about Russian" bots were circulated, I saw a lot of "the right-wing support is not organic" stuff.

Something is driving people into bubbles so they only talk about the other, never with. And both agree that "centrists", "normies", etc. are the most despicable of all. Seems like a recipe for something.

Idk seems like a lot of cross-aisle discussion happens in this forum. The tech world in general is somewhat a clash of cultures across the spectrum from anarchists to neofeudalists.

In fact, just look at this thread…

My experience has been more talking past each other and being downvoted. Which is why I rarely engage anymore.

Most of the comments here are focusing on crimes in urban areas. The town I live in has a population of about 6,000. It also has low crime. But the municipal government has installed several flock cameras. I struggle to understand how these benefit me, as a citizen of the town. They definitely make me feel uncomfortable whenever I drive past, knowing that someone, somewhere is likely tracking and cataloguing my movements.

Apparently you are paid to feel that way. Or you aren't real. (According to Flock CEO.)

Maybe Flock isn't real? I mean, if birds aren't real, flocks can't be either.

Clearly a company denying that the public comprises real people with real autonomy should be entrusted with privacy issues.

It seems to be a typical case of unscrupulous people getting ahead. The more ruthless, the fewer obstacles, the easier they can beat competition. The more they grow, the more they get affirmation of "doing well", which only reinforces their corruption.

Yep, Florida ordering you to remove every one of your cameras from state highways didn't happen. Entire states moving to ban your product isn't a thing. And of course there are no tanks in Baghdad.

"Paid protesters"

Every accusation is a confession. Flock pays for support. They have a marketing department and they tell cops what to tell elected officials to think.

It would be funnier if it was paid protesters that they had paid so that they could say that.

Those are FBI agents, not Flock contractors

Can you remind me where I can submit my invoices to get paid for my protests? I must have misplaced my memo

The anti-Americanness Langley exhibits boggles my mind.

I would say that his views are very in line with modern American values. At least the values of those who actually have power.

More like South Africa. American values are very much against concentration of power. Something those concentrating power will be reminded of.

Authoritarianism is as American as sliced bread. It's in the country's bones, starting from its founding, and continuing forward through segregation, the red scares, and into today.

Two years ago, half the voters were explicitly asked if they wanted more of it, and they said 'absolutely'!

I won't say America is founded on authoritarianism. I will say it's founded in the practice of letting businesses run how they see fit, though, with minimal oversight from the government. . . So flock is doing what we value as a nation, just not for the reasons you claim.

If businesses ran as they saw fit with minimal oversight from the government, the government wouldn't be called in so frequently to use incredible amounts of violence against its subjects.

The America i believe is the one that gave me 1st, 2nd, and 4th amendment. I will vote to keep it that way. Even if that means voting for a different party every time, including libertarian. Sucks that there's no good option, and there's only 1 guy in the congress i believe in his honesty.

Time for American 2.0 update/patch/modification/changeset/???

Why you shouldn't hang out in echo chambers, at least not exclusively. I'm sure in this guy's echo chambers it's all great.

This guy knows he is full of shit.

Flock (YC S17)

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety

HN yet again finding ways to help hype people who ruin the world.

The Flock CEO is another example of investor blindness to founder weirdness. It used to be a positive signal if a founder was a bit odd. But compared to current tech industry leaders, what's odd?

Garrett Langley scares the normies. That's fine if your audience is just cops. But it doesn't go over well with the public at large. By many accounts Steve Jobs could be a raging asshole, but he never showed that face to the public. But if the people advising you are accelerationists with a thing for the antichrist, you're going to be clueless about what normal people think of you.

Is this "unreal backlash" in the room with us right now?

I'm attending in-person local political organizing meetings and we're all just locals concerned about, among other things, Flock.

I would like to personally register my own homegrown, organic, hard-working American backlash.

If they installed flock at county board meetings and gov rep town halls, they would know what real people think about their company

As with most antistate issues today, there is a mix of bots/institutional interference (both foreign and domestic), and real people. Both can be true.

The concern with this is that it gives any company/government/etc. latitude to plant paid protestors or bot traffic in order to undermine opposition with greater efficacy in the AI era. Intelligence agencies have understood this tactic for many years.

Yeah, I don't think so. The backlash is 100% real people. I don't know a single pro-Flock person but I know 100s that want to go take them down.

I am a pro-flock real person. I'll get down-voted and likely flagged for saying this so you may believe I don't exist but I do.

Crime has gone down considerably in the last two years.

> The declines were reflected in several of the FBI’s long-term measures. The 2025 robbery rate of 49.4 per 100,000 was the lowest in 20 years, while the rape rate of 36.1 was the lowest since 2012. The murder rate was the lowest in the past 20 years.

I imagine giving police the ability to apprehend violent criminals through technology is driving this reduction in crime. Not a stretch. You can think that this is not worth the tradeoff, but if you think giving police a tool like Flock will not have an impact of apprehension of criminals you have your head in the sand.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/violent-crime-falls-at-hist...

https://www.richardhanania.com/p/flock-mass-surveillance-and...

Supervisor Matt Dorsey in San Francisco is pro-camera-enforcement and I was glad to be able to meet him and thank him for his efforts both for speed cameras and for ALPR in San Francisco. For my part, I'm not wedded to Flock so if people get upset about the brand name, I'm happy if the government uses Axon instead to provide the same outcome. The use of drone policing, ALPR, and speed cameras has substantially improved safety in San Francisco.

Yeah, I am generally pro-surveillance of public spaces and public property, but I think Flock has taken a particularly careless approach to the project. I would much rather have another vendor simply sell the cameras to the municipality and have the government administer the network, rather than have a company like Flock retain the data themselves and make it available to unknown third parties. You can maintain public oversight much more directly that way.

Have you tried zooming out on the stats at all, or analyzing any other variables? You realize there was a crazy spike in crime in the wake of the pandemic, right? Certainly a reversion to the mean might happen alongside the implementation of cameras.

My own city's police (Redwood City, CA) credited Flock cameras with an increase in the clearance rate from 12% to 13%. Pardon me if I don't go out and celebrate.

You can imagine that, but at least in my city, no, crime was going down before Flock, and continued its trajectory; Flock did not cause that. Same for, e.g., SF.

SF has (had?) a lot of car thefts.

Suppose there was a technology where, when you report your car as stolen, police would be able to track exactly where this car is currently and it's history over the last 2 weeks.

You don't think this would have ANY impact of police being able to apprehend the thief?

This is a myopic view of the situation. Suppose you had $100M to spend. What would lower crime more:

1. Helping to shelter the homeless, deal with mental health issues and make sure people are properly fed.

2. Build a mass surveillance network at the expense of all of the above.

Regardless, mass surveillance is far worse than any amount of car theft.

> You don't think this would have ANY impact of police being able to apprehend the thief?

Speaking as a San Francisco resident: No. SF cops give nearly zero shits about recovering stolen property.

Speaking as a USian: Even if it did lead the cops right to the car and provided unimpeachable evidence that what the footage showed was a theft, rather than something legal, I still don't want these electronic mass-surveillance systems to be deployed. Dragnet surveillance is plainly unacceptable.

If -somehow- we can magically build such surveillance systems to be completely unable to provide data that's unrelated to a search warrant or other such court order, I'd reconsider my stance. However, building such a system is simply impossible.

You hold such a ridiculous position I don't know how to argue with it. Cops don't care about crime or stolen property? Why have cops at all? It's like arguing w a third grader

> Cops don't care about crime or stolen property?

Cops have limited resources, so they must prioritize. Even the Supreme Court acknowledges this.

Because of this truth, SF cops give nearly zero shits about recovering stolen property. It has been decided that they spend their limited resources elsewhere.

> Why have cops at all?

Yeah, that's a really good question that folks who are poorly-served by their federal, state, and local police forces often find themselves asking. Folks who are well-served generally ask themselves that question far less often.

This would only work for a few months until car thieves start having a habit of mounting different plates.

Obviously the perfect crime is harder to do in an orwellian society. But happiness and freedom too so nothing good is gained from that.

Or they move to a neighborhood not patrolled by flock?

Is there a reason you say "patrolled by" and not "surveilled by" ?

Suppose there was a pre-pardoned, unaccountable, masked band of brownshirts in Temu youtuber military wannabe gear, stalking the streets with impunity, terrorizing people who aren't white, holding down American citizens and emptying guns into their backs. Suppose they have been given access to every database that the US has at its disposal, as well as sweeping powers to demand data from anyone they choose.

Suppose Flock's license agreement additionally said that they could give data to anyone they wanted to, as it does.

Suppose the leader of these brownshirts frequently talks about his opponents, protestors, etc., as enemies of the state and domestic terrorists.

How great do you feel about this nonexistent mystery technology of yours now?

Congrats! You just hit the clever hypothetical on my anti flock bingo card!

Step one: find two things that differ in nearly every relevant respect

Step two: identify the broad category they share.

Step three: ask, “If you accept one, why don’t you accept the other?”

https://mleverything.substack.com/p/anti-flock-activist-bing...

Unlike your hypothetical, mine is actual.

So your position is that if you can predict someone's arguments (valid or otherwise) before they make them that those arguments are less valid? Maybe if you had pre-countered them but looking at your comments here and the linked blurb that doesn't seem to be the case.

It wasn't a hypothetical, the op was listing things that both literally are happening and that ALPR's (and flock specifically) are enabling. "Hypothetically" was a bit of rhetorical flourish.

Take flock out of some cities and see if their crime trend continues. I expect you'll find the cameras really don't move the needle much.

In Houston, three cameras near an attempted child abduction had been cut down. Police Chief Noe Diaz said investigators consequently could not use them to identify and track the suspect's red sedan.

Why do anti-flock activists insist that it doesn't help police apprehend criminals. It obviously does. It only makes sense that a police officer having access to cameras that track license plates in real time would help apprehend criminals escaping capture. Come on, you don't seriously believe this. What would have to be true about the world, police, criminals etc of this not to be true.

https://www.police1.com/alprs-in-focus/why-cities-are-rethin...

The issue, of course, isn't how cameras can be used to help apprehend criminals. It's that they can be abused by people who have access to them, in ways we haven't even imagined yet. People don't trust that appropriate safeguards are in place, and it's not clear how to defend against abuses, or that it's even possible. In a society that supposedly prioritizes liberty, privacy, and innocence until proven guilty, such technology should be treated with maximum suspicion.

> Houston Police Chief Noe Diaz said three cameras near the reported attempted kidnapping of a third-grade student had been cut down before investigators could use them to identify the suspect’s vehicle.

That's such a weird way to phrase it. The cameras were, presumably, cut down before the incident?

I'm sure they can help individual cases. It's less clear to me that surveillance societies have less crime. Criminals adjust.

Maybe if you can point to the crime-free paradises that have been enabled by pervasive surveillance, you'd have more people on your side. If you're just selectively pointing out individual cases where they helped, you're not really proving the overall point.

> Why do anti-flock activists insist that it doesn't help police apprehend criminals.

Seems like a strawman, i dont know anyone saying the cameras dont help police solve crimes at all. The issue is you have to balance crime benefits against civil rights, and the benefit right now seems pretty small, but the privacy implications are enormous.

Reducto ad absurdum: mandatory ankle monitors on everyone would help police apprehend criminals. Is that worth it? No? Ok, then where is the line in the sand? Flock's system is effectively tantamount to a gps tracker on every vehicle that uses surface roads.

The police (and larger state apparatus) turning antagonistic toward the public will certainly increase crime, not decrease it. When cops go to war with literally everyone, the "law" will cease to apply in any meaningful way. A small sample of this is people cutting down Flock cameras. That's a "crime" that wouldn't even exist had these mass surveillance networks not been constructed in the first place.

> A small sample of this is people cutting down Flock cameras. That's a "crime" that wouldn't even exist had these mass surveillance networks not been constructed in the first place.

You can't destroy public property because you disagree with a policy. Let me give you an example.

Suppose I am against abortion. Firebombing an abortion clinic is a "crime" that wouldn't exist had these places that kill unborn children not been constructed in the first place.

Do you get it now?

Abortion is not a 90/10 issue. Jaywalking is a more accurate analogy. When you turn normal people into "criminals", the law ceases to have meaning.

Correlation is not causation. Do you actually have any data or research to support your claim from an unbiased source? A far right blogger is far from unbiased.

FWIW Benn Jordan, who has his own biases, analyzed this data in his latest video and found it had no impact on most crimes but did have a small improvement in clearance rates for one category.

Crime has been going down since they took the lead out of gasoline. The world and the US especially has been getting safer every year since before the 24 hour news cycle. Seriously, you are safe and have been safe for decades from random crime. It wasn't some busybody's cameras.

Because the rest of the people just don't care about it and understand the technology has been a thing for a long time. You know 100 people that want to take them down but you probably also know 1000 people who don't care and aren't even speaking about it. People just became obsessed with one company, then some agitators sprinkled in a healthy dose of antisemitism plus conspiracies, now you got the public lynching of a company. It's unfortunate.

Don't get me wrong, Flock did have and still has some issues, just like any other company. They've been trying to fix the issues. But, as far as I'm concerned, the positives heavily outweigh the negatives, even though there are rare cases of abuse.

I think its more likely that people don't know about Flock, not that they don't care.

Antisemitism? Public lynching? We're talking about a fascist spy company not a human being.

> healthy dose of antisemitism

Uh, what?

Its the new "terrorism", "fascism", and "communism" but all rolled up in one for brain dead propagandists.

You can kinda just apply it to anything you dont like to paint it as inherently bad.

I ran an in depth study of Flock for my city. It's been deployed here for several years. What I found is that there is no statistically significant correlation between Flock being installed and any reduction in any kind of crime. I suspect my city is not unique in this regard.

Flock rode a post-COVID wave of general crime reduction and claimed responsibility for it, but it appears that the only meaningfully effective use of Flock is for stalking, terrorizing immigrants, assembling opposition dossiers, and parallel construction.

It doesn't seem to me like Flock would reduce crime but increase the rate at which crime's are solved. Maybe a better stat would be median age of a criminal case involving a vehicle before and after Flock was deployed.

edit: i dont know if any stat would work at the city level, the advantage of Flock is the network works across state/county lines. So someone committing a crime in one state and then driving all night can still be located two states away without police departments having to coordinate a search.

There is one independent national study ( https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/independent-study-vehicle-t... ) which indicates vehicle thefts fell 11% following a flock installation.

However, the vast majority of vehicle thefts self-resolve ( 85% of passenger vehicle thefts are recovered, a third within one day ). Flock's apparent impact was that vehicles came back on average 1/4 day sooner; it did not appear to impact the rate at which they were recovered, so your instinct would be incorrect.

Additionally, vehicle theft has been steadily decreasing year-over-year since COVID, and it's possible/likely that the effects seen in the study were continuations of that trend rather than anything attributable to flock. The paper even says as much -- that the effect began in the months preceding flock installation.

Intuitively, you'd think that flock cameras would help a lot. I would think so too! But at least in my small-to-mid-sized city, they don't noticeably help at all with any kind of crime.

https://ij.org/how-flock-is-trying-to-take-credit-for-the-po...

Unless you've been very careful to only surround yourself with people who share your exact views, you probably do know some. They just don't speak up, because: what's the point debating it with you?

The vast majority of people are not pro-techno fascism and mass surveillance. I think you'd have to work very hard to find that kind of person. People on the left and the right are very united in their hatred of spy cams.

I find it very easy to find people who support systems marketed as empowering police to better catch criminals.

Data centers and Flock are the two things uniting left and right protesters.

Also food safety.

For example, community supported agriculture programs cross traditional political boundaries.

Raw milk, tho?

Raw milk, anti-vaccine, homeschooling etc used to be solidly the purview of the West Coast liberal. Somewhere along the line it flipped polarity entirely.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/who-likes-flock-ai-cameras-...

35% of Democrats are pro-Flock.

54% of Republicans.

If someone doesn't know a pro-Flock person, he/she is living in a bubble. Agreed with the first responder: You likely know multiple people, but they're scared to reveal themselves.

I think this point is most accurate. I know a few pro-Flock people - most are either working for a YC company or are in the process of their application.

I've got no opinion on Flock, but I certainly agree that it is a lot easier to affirm the world view of fundamentalists than to debate them in real life. Especially since they tend to get aggressive and are vindictive long-term.

No matter what it is, if the other party holds the strict belief that they can't be wrong, I avoid to debate them privately.

> I've got no opinion on Flock

And this attitude is exactly why they get away with it.

>Yeah, I don't think so. The backlash is 100% real people. I don't know a single pro-Flock person but I know 100s that want to go take them down.

That's not a sound refutation. For example, 100% of published opinion can be 100% anti-Floc, while still being composed of 50% real people and 50% astroturf.

Perhaps you misunderstood my comment.

You made the claim that it's bots, so you're going to need to provide some sort of proof of astroturfing. It's wholly unnecessary since the vast majority of real people despise Flock.

What do people despise about them? I never quite understood what is special about their cameras compared to all the other cameras in public. All camera footage can be fed to and analyzed by AI.

"The broad-spectrum surveillance and social-credit state predicated on technofascists working hand-in-glove with repressive government" is a bit of a mouthful. "Flock" is an elision.

I despise all mass surveillance.

As soon as you make vague and unsubstantiated claims that people physically gathering to protest against you (or your company) are paid protestors you immediately lose whatever credibility you had in the first place (though you likely had very little already if this is where you are) in the eyes of anyone with a functional brain.

He seems oblivious that midterms are next week + he will be in a lot of trouble past that point.

Ah yes, the "all criticism is fake news" strategy.

You can't blame Flock. They're making the very safe bet that cops are very, very stupid and have a lot of xenophobic, conspiratorial theories about crime.

Meanwhile, Flock is in and of itself a conspiracy. The only way to fight (imagined, arbitrary) conspiracies is (of course) to conspire. They won't fight fair, so you can't either.

It's important to mention that mainstream liberals and European radical NATO centrists believe exactly the same thing, just aimed at the people who they're afraid of. Neither side, the social liberal centrists or the anti-social liberal centrists, is going to slow the adoption of Flock at all. Eventually somebody is going to drag out Obama (at significant cost) to defend it in some commencement speech, and he will also blame the Russian Chinese anti-Semitic mullahs, and youthful idealism. To "No Kings" liberals, this will be completely different.

It's a false equivalence, they'll say. Somebody taught them that a few years ago. Then they'll say something about "whataboutism," and finish up by explaining how two things can be true at the same time.

At least come up with conspiracy theories that cannot be disproved by one of the first 3 links on a simple google search.

https://apnews.com/article/flock-cameras-campaigns-midterms-...

If Josh Shapiro is in favor of a ban in his state it’s pretty clear centrists are not the issue.

> If Josh Shapiro is in favor of a ban in his state it’s pretty clear centrists are not the issue.

Yes, but will he actually ban them if elected? It's easy to say, let's see some action.

I have to ask.. what in the world is a "radical centrist" ?

Someone so terrified of having their beliefs challenged that they choose to have none.

They'll be the ones saying that "both sides are equally bad" and think it gives them a moral high ground.

GP specifically mentioned "European radical NATO centrists". They likely think that it's up to Zelensky to stop the war and legitimately can't understand why you don't try to appease people like Putin.

Those sound like reasonable positions, not a moral high ground. Unless you believe Putin will stop the war, it's up to Ukraine to end it.

Or keep it going and send more and more bodies into the meat grinder. Which I wouldn't mind as much if all the bodies walked into it of their own free will, but it looks like everyone voluntarily fighting Russia is already dead. If it wasn't like this Ukraine's "recruiters" wouldn't need to snatch people off the street, which I first saw videos of a long time ago.

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