Rendered at 14:23:01 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
angeldimitrov94 13 hours ago [-]
It sure would be interesting if suddenly all of the Flock employees coming to work were being constantly watched by a network of crowdfunded private cameras. Might drive home the point of invasion of privacy if its someone other than them watching...them. Or if all of the neighbors of the CEO of Flock suddenly joined some service like this so that everyone could track his activity at all times. I'm sure he'd wouldn't mind the entire world knowing exactly what he or his family are doing always.
It's a very important tool to figure out which people in positions of authority are coordinating for authoritarian purposes or just plain old corruption.
I'm instantly suspicious of anyone in government who is critical of this idea.
What are they hiding?
ToucanLoucan 11 hours ago [-]
I mean they don't hide much anymore. Our current admin is simply awash in corruption, and nothing happens because a majority of lawmakers are also in on it, getting rich, and just aren't required to do anything. Our police rob and murder the populace, and on the rare occasion they see any consequences at all, it's paid for by the same taxpayers they abuse. And even more broadly worldwide, corporations trade in human suffering by the ton, our planet continues to be destroyed by people who will be dead long before the consequences of their greed come to fruition, and the wealthy trade children to exploit either by way of their blood or much, much darker things.
We don't need a citizen surveillance network, we already know what they're doing, perhaps not all of it but far more than enough to justify mass civil unrest. They just figured out all they had to do was get us exhausted, overwhelmed and of course fighting each other enough to make certain we wouldn't. The globe is various kinds of prison for the majority of humanity, in degrees of horror, and a theme park for the 1%.
chaps 11 hours ago [-]
"I mean they don't hide much anymore."
heh as a foia nerd, heh.
Teever 10 hours ago [-]
All of that may be true but I think that it's moot.
The overall goal with these kinds of projects should be to maintain parity between the citizenry and people in positions of power.
Even if it's little stuff like a person calling out "Hey how come he doesn't have to wait in line?" when small town city councillor gets special treatment at a local restaurant. We want to close the gap between the every-man and people with power wherever we see it.
In the bigger picture as it pertains to this kind of sousveillance introducing as much friction in these kinds of things as possible causes the people you're opposing to need to exert more force to do what they're doing and it distracts them and throws them off guard. It's a death by a thousand cuts sort of thing.
Take the opposition to datacentres and the protests and resistance to it, if the protesters really wanted to gum up the works they'd target the finite number of anonymous professionals who are involved in the approval and development process for these megaprojects. There are a lot of paper-pushing accountants, lawyers, and civil engineers who just want to cash a fat cheque and make it to retirement who will back the fuck out the second they hear about people publishing the full org-chart and comings and goings of the professionals involved in these projects.
ToucanLoucan 10 hours ago [-]
> The overall goal with these kinds of projects should be to maintain parity between the citizenry and people in positions of power.
Oh for sure, I'm not disagreeing with the principle being discussed, I'm saying in our current social moment this feels like saying the floor trim on the bridge of the Titanic needs some paint.
The president has been convicted of 39 felonies and is (trying to?) sell advance access to his stock market manipulating tweets for a subscription.
Parity at this point feels like a joke. I'd settle for literally any consequences at all for someone in power right now.
Teever 10 hours ago [-]
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Vibecode an app that builds a list of corrupt law enforcement officials and that finds their mistresses or other unscrupulous behaviour. Have it determine when the exact most damaging moment to release this information to their families and /or the public is.
Yeah, that’s gross too and just makes the ones who don’t get caught look relatively better.
Take the mob for their money. They have no conscience to influence.
unselect5917 10 hours ago [-]
>Our current admin is simply awash in corruption
Every administration since JFK has been awash in corruption. No exceptions. America hasn't had an America-first President since JFK. The people who obsess over Trump need to read 1984 again and pay particular attention to Emmanuel Goldstein.
Our awful government includes most of Congress, 93% of which take pro-Israel bribes. If you want to find the problem, look East at our mortal enemy that brands itself as our greatest ally in their hasbara.
throw376222 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
aorloff 10 hours ago [-]
Just wait until the hearings start
dylan604 12 hours ago [-]
How would the video captured from those cameras be used? These people are already driving on the same streets you and I do, so how would they not also be in the Flock footage? If you capture TBs of video footage and nobody sees it, what's the point? Are you going to start sending harassing posts to employees with footage of the car driving by your camera?
The anti-flock movement is real, but half baked ideas don't really serve a purpose to actually doing anything. Not sure how I feel about those destroying Flock cameras, but that's action moving the needle a lot further than establishing an entirely new anti-Flock camera network.
m4ck_ 2 hours ago [-]
If it could be done, make it publicly available, maybe something similar to the billionare jet trackers. I don't necessarily think that's a great idea or really feasible though.
jspank 12 hours ago [-]
you don't store TBs of video footage... You process it and store the instances of each object/license plate detection.
dylan604 12 hours ago [-]
great, so now what? who are you giving access to that data that will mean anything? the cops aren't going to do anything with it as it does not pertain to anything within the purview. the only thing I could think that would be done with that information is not good with people showing up to their house or some such.
judge2020 12 hours ago [-]
This is irrelevant.
Flock operates on the foundational constitutional model of "Our cameras are in public, there is not an expectation of privacy in public, therefore we can capture anything/everything our camera sees in any way possible" (including LPR logging and even video recording).
And thus, so does any other system of recording public activity and processing/storing data collected from it.
It quite literally does not matter what people do or don't do with the information. If someone does use the information for something illegal (like stalking) them the police aught to take a police report filed by said Flock employee seriously and perform an investigation within the bounds of the law and constitution.
AuthAuth 11 hours ago [-]
So then flock employees are unlikely to care at all since they are already being tracked by flock. The it will concern them once some crazy person is driven to the point of enacting real world violence. The entire point of this project is to collect that data in hopes that someone acts on it.
bloqs 10 hours ago [-]
I think the presumption of harassment is a little telling, but if your post was in good faith, merely advertising people's cars (as in the group pays for ad space etc) freely and legally very much like the musk plane tracking app would have the desired effect
dylan604 4 minutes ago [-]
The Musk plane thing is different because a) it's Musk, b) it's a plane
Nobody will care that Stan from Flock drove his sedan to pick up his kid from soccer practice, stopped at the store to pick up milk, and then drove home.
That's not how people are using Flock data, and it's not the same. The people abusing Flock access are the people abusing people. So the equivalent would be for people using the anti-Flock employee data would be harassing those employees. Not sure what that is "telling".
12 hours ago [-]
chaps 14 hours ago [-]
Fun fact: in some municipalities you can FOIA for the GPS records of police vehicles. Here's Chicago Police's. They removed 0-15mph for, erm, privacy reasons.... but it's not the worst.
The speed limit in neighborhoods is usually 25, so... 0-15mph limiting seems useless? I imagine some level of police <-> home address / general home area is in that data.
darksim905 11 hours ago [-]
What? Removing 0-15 mph is to remove places where they camp or loiter with the engine on either for tickets, naps, or other purposes.
chaps 11 hours ago [-]
Right there's another gotcha with the data. They gave 15-60mph data in :30 minute increments.
"This would still identify officers blocks or get within a couple blocks of their home for those with take home cars. Would speeds of 15 miles per hour or more but only pings on the :30 minute mark, so one ping per hour from 2019 until the end of April work for you?"
Even gave them this SQL to run to get around that problem but they never got back to me, heh:
WITH immobile_pings as (
select count(*), vehicleid, round(xcoord::numeric, 3) as xcoord_rounded,
round(ycoord::numeric,3) as ycoord_rounded,date_trunc('day', datetime) as day
FROM gps_table
WHERE speed = 0
GROUP BY
vehicleid,
xcoord_rounded,
ycoord_rounded,
day
having count(*) > 1440), --4 hours
day_counts as (
select count(*), vehicleid, xcoord_rounded, ycoord_rounded
from immobile_pings
group by vehicleid, xcoord_rounded, ycoord_rounded having count(*) > 15 -- 15 days
)
select gps_table.* from gps_table s inner join day_counts i
ON i.vehicleid = s.vehicleid
AND array[round(s.xcoord::numeric, 3), round(s.ycoord::numeric, 3)] != array[i.xcoord_rounded,i.ycoord_rounded]
AND speed > 15; -- 15mph
protocolture 11 hours ago [-]
>other purposes.
Just say "Stalking their ex partners" its fine we all know about it in 2026.
arm32 13 hours ago [-]
That's indeed a very fun fact!
10 hours ago [-]
12 hours ago [-]
lellow 13 hours ago [-]
{"error": "internal error"}, when trying to open the live map.
VoidWhisperer 13 hours ago [-]
Seconding this. I wonder if the server got hugged to death by the HN front page
CR1337 12 hours ago [-]
same here
nickandbro 11 hours ago [-]
Are the .exe to install a always on computer as part of a open source repo I can verify with a hash? Otherwise I am not going to trust it.
cure_42 10 hours ago [-]
If you don't know how to answer this question yourself, you certainly aren't able to read the source code to determine whether it's trust worthy in the first place, so what does it matter to you?
nickandbro 10 hours ago [-]
Nvm, just clicked on the link and took me to the GitHub. I guess that’s what I get from skimming the website.
I sing because I’m happy,
I sing because I’m free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.
inigyou 13 hours ago [-]
I keep saying if it's legal for Flock to make Flock it's legal for anyone else to make Flock.
Onplana 12 hours ago [-]
Most of the cameras are showing offline.
ImPostingOnHN 10 hours ago [-]
Link says they send data for non-LEO vehicles, just less data. Why send any at all?
tamimio 11 hours ago [-]
All public servants should have all their info publicly available, some safety measures can be put like some delays or similar, but as the name implies, public servant! Police for example should be watched and they should feel they are actively being watched by the public, also their badge numbers should be available on these maps so you just click and you can report them if needed.
bbor 12 hours ago [-]
To the wonderful creators, who will presumably find this thread: did you know that sparrows had at least two full millenia of being associated with lust and depravity, rather than the connotation used here and in the final book of ISOIAF (Game Of Thrones)? Well... now you do! I beg of you to fit an easter egg to this effect somwhere in this site, for us followers of the old ways out there.
To get a bit more on-topic: this is a perfect example of the missing scale in HN's "no politics" rule. There are facets of politics that you simply cannot ignore while still being an individually-minded technologist (closest thing this community has to a shared ethos).
remopulcini 8 hours ago [-]
[dead]
NDlurker 12 hours ago [-]
This is what I like to see AI used for. Thank you Claude Opus 5
It's a very important tool to figure out which people in positions of authority are coordinating for authoritarian purposes or just plain old corruption.
I'm instantly suspicious of anyone in government who is critical of this idea.
What are they hiding?
We don't need a citizen surveillance network, we already know what they're doing, perhaps not all of it but far more than enough to justify mass civil unrest. They just figured out all they had to do was get us exhausted, overwhelmed and of course fighting each other enough to make certain we wouldn't. The globe is various kinds of prison for the majority of humanity, in degrees of horror, and a theme park for the 1%.
heh as a foia nerd, heh.
The overall goal with these kinds of projects should be to maintain parity between the citizenry and people in positions of power.
Even if it's little stuff like a person calling out "Hey how come he doesn't have to wait in line?" when small town city councillor gets special treatment at a local restaurant. We want to close the gap between the every-man and people with power wherever we see it.
In the bigger picture as it pertains to this kind of sousveillance introducing as much friction in these kinds of things as possible causes the people you're opposing to need to exert more force to do what they're doing and it distracts them and throws them off guard. It's a death by a thousand cuts sort of thing.
Take the opposition to datacentres and the protests and resistance to it, if the protesters really wanted to gum up the works they'd target the finite number of anonymous professionals who are involved in the approval and development process for these megaprojects. There are a lot of paper-pushing accountants, lawyers, and civil engineers who just want to cash a fat cheque and make it to retirement who will back the fuck out the second they hear about people publishing the full org-chart and comings and goings of the professionals involved in these projects.
Oh for sure, I'm not disagreeing with the principle being discussed, I'm saying in our current social moment this feels like saying the floor trim on the bridge of the Titanic needs some paint.
The president has been convicted of 39 felonies and is (trying to?) sell advance access to his stock market manipulating tweets for a subscription.
Parity at this point feels like a joke. I'd settle for literally any consequences at all for someone in power right now.
Vibecode an app that builds a list of corrupt law enforcement officials and that finds their mistresses or other unscrupulous behaviour. Have it determine when the exact most damaging moment to release this information to their families and /or the public is.
Agentic muckraking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmetropolitan
Take the mob for their money. They have no conscience to influence.
Every administration since JFK has been awash in corruption. No exceptions. America hasn't had an America-first President since JFK. The people who obsess over Trump need to read 1984 again and pay particular attention to Emmanuel Goldstein.
Our awful government includes most of Congress, 93% of which take pro-Israel bribes. If you want to find the problem, look East at our mortal enemy that brands itself as our greatest ally in their hasbara.
The anti-flock movement is real, but half baked ideas don't really serve a purpose to actually doing anything. Not sure how I feel about those destroying Flock cameras, but that's action moving the needle a lot further than establishing an entirely new anti-Flock camera network.
Flock operates on the foundational constitutional model of "Our cameras are in public, there is not an expectation of privacy in public, therefore we can capture anything/everything our camera sees in any way possible" (including LPR logging and even video recording).
And thus, so does any other system of recording public activity and processing/storing data collected from it.
It quite literally does not matter what people do or don't do with the information. If someone does use the information for something illegal (like stalking) them the police aught to take a police report filed by said Flock employee seriously and perform an investigation within the bounds of the law and constitution.
Nobody will care that Stan from Flock drove his sedan to pick up his kid from soccer practice, stopped at the store to pick up milk, and then drove home.
That's not how people are using Flock data, and it's not the same. The people abusing Flock access are the people abusing people. So the equivalent would be for people using the anti-Flock employee data would be harassing those employees. Not sure what that is "telling".
Have a glance:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/hj4jtcag2i9qvl4sj6mg2/AF6c9r7...
"This would still identify officers blocks or get within a couple blocks of their home for those with take home cars. Would speeds of 15 miles per hour or more but only pings on the :30 minute mark, so one ping per hour from 2019 until the end of April work for you?"
Even gave them this SQL to run to get around that problem but they never got back to me, heh:
select gps_table.* from gps_table s inner join day_counts i ON i.vehicleid = s.vehicleid AND array[round(s.xcoord::numeric, 3), round(s.ycoord::numeric, 3)] != array[i.xcoord_rounded,i.ycoord_rounded] AND speed > 15; -- 15mphJust say "Stalking their ex partners" its fine we all know about it in 2026.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/His_Eye_Is_on_the_Sparrow
To get a bit more on-topic: this is a perfect example of the missing scale in HN's "no politics" rule. There are facets of politics that you simply cannot ignore while still being an individually-minded technologist (closest thing this community has to a shared ethos).