Evanston orders Flock to remove reinstalled cameras(evanstonroundtable.com) |
Evanston orders Flock to remove reinstalled cameras(evanstonroundtable.com) |
Unfortunately, in addition to being dangerous to others, this approach pretty much always comes with increased exposure to prosecution and increased penalties.
The optimal approach seems to be vandalism - spray painting over the front of the cameras, placing other objects to block their view, or permanently blinding them with lasers. All of these things are still illegal and would likely subject you to the legal system, but they at least require on-site intervention to remedy and keep the actor out of prison (but maybe not jail).
The least risky approach I've found is also the least effective - they're often on public property, so place _yourself_ in front of them. It takes them out of commission for a while and should be legal. Coordinated action would likely get the attention of Flock, law enforcement, and the media. Unfortunately, even that could be construed as "interfering with law enforcement operations" or similar, and/or conspiracy if you're organizing or participating in mass resistance.
If the federal government decides they want to step in on Flock's behalf, they could put you under the jail. :\
"try that in a small town" in a fucking hurry.
This seems politics to me. Very important politics that a lot of people in tech have a special interest for, but politics nonetheless, and much more pressing topics seem to be absent through the on-topic rule.
One can't be intellectually curious and not think about politics. Politics is applied intellectual curiosity.
Orange site bad.
Which is different from a Gaza discussion which has no tech angle and two sides telling each other what the other side has done.
In situations like this, I think the person at the top of the chain that told employees to perform the illegal installations should be arrested and charged. On top of that, the company should be fined into bankruptcy. If the directors knew about it any companies they're involved with shouldn't be allowed to conduct future business in the municipality (or state).
Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense.
Don't think your company could just put up cameras and post the location of LEO and they'd let you get away with something like that.
This sounds like some sort of legal procedures adopted from the USSR.
The next administration could decide to side with localities, and assist prosecutions of the companies and executives involved. Or even pursue their own federal prosecutions.
The keep saying this and losing in court. I don’t have much respect left for these bootlickers who won’t fight.
For example, their "suspicious behavior". Cameras reporting to HOAs and to LE of vehicle behavior that is suspicious or aberrant to their AI (changes in parking behavior and times, for example).
Sharing of data between entities that aren't meant to be sharing (HOAs sending data to LE, for example, when prohibited by the state. Flock's position is "not our job to stop you, even if we know that your state says not to").
A very ... opaque ... "transparency report". In my county alone, there are at least four agencies using Flock that are not listed in their "Agencies using Flock" data.
Appreciate any other insider details you have to share.
Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke, but the work still gets done.
This is better than corporate death penalties but still more complicated than fines. Massive fines are the answer.
> Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke
So do fines and bankruptcy. CEO won’t go to jail, but they’ll spend the rest of their lives fighting shareholder lawsuits. Feed them to the wolves.
Sometimes low tech solutions work pretty well. And since the cameras are under contract to the city, on city poles, I doubt there’s anything the feds can do.
The system needs to be way more even when it comes to dealing with individuals and companies of every size possible.
Fines need to increase with subsequent offenses, otherwise they become just a number in the cost of running business. If the fine is 100k, but the profit from breaking the law is 1M, then it makes more sense to keep breaking the law and keep paying the fine.
Instead the fine should increase every time. The first time it's easy to pay the 100k, but then it rises to 200k (still worth), 400k (not so much worth it), 800k (barely profitable), 1.6M (actual loss) and so on. Of course this only works if the fine keeps increasing faster than the profitability of the crime.
The reason is that the law not only specifies what people should do what is allowed and isn't allowed, but also what the penalties are for breaking the law. A law stating "People are required to do X" or "People are forbidden from doing Y", without any penalties specified is not worth the paper it is written on and cannot be enforced in any way (at least that's how it works in my jurisdiction, Romania).
And that is all very well, and how it should be, in a law-based state.
Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government.
"The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order. In much simpler terms, citizens and corporations are only required to follow legal orders and are not required to follow illegal orders, given by the executive. Who decides what is legal? The judiciary.
This is what it means to live in a society with a separation of powers.
> The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation.
A cease-and-desist by the executive is not a law. The corporation's opinion is that the contract termination is illegal. And therefore that the cease-and-desist is illegal. Perhaps they're right. Perhaps they're wrong. But they have the right to bring the thing to trail.
"Well maybe they have the right to bring the thing to trail, but until the trail is ruled in their case, they should follow the orders of the executive.", I hear the objection.
Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point.
"So the executive cannot do anything to get those cameras down until the trail is solved?"
Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter.
Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.
I can't seem to access the audit in question [1] and there are connected articles that seem to also be talking about forest park police using camera readers. Whatever the case, there seems to be reasonable doubt in the trust in Flock Safety. I don't understand how an illegal termination of contract would result in anything other than Evanston having to pay out the remaining fees and maybe a cancellation fee.
[0] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/28/flock-challenges-c...
[1] https://www.ilsos.gov/news/2025/august-25-2025-giannoulias-a...
At the moment, this doesn't exist either. Particularly on the low end of offenses, selective enforcement and racial profiling run rampant, and not just in the US.
Any decent developed society takes laws that have gone outdated off the books entirely - the exceptions are the US and the UK, about the only nations in the world that didn't have at least one revolution, war, putsch or peaceful regime change that was used to reboot the entire legal system from scratch and incorporate decades if not centuries of progress.
You're wrong in a number of ways, and to me it reads like an unintentionally shallow take, built up more from cliches over deeper understanding. But it's still well above average or engagement and insight of the average HN comment, thank you for writing it.
> First of all, I think that this instinct to fine-'em, screw-'em, etc. is profoundly authoritarian.
It's not authoritarian, simply because when it's the citizens angry about some group acting against their interests, who've elected to ignore a reasonable and lawful order from the operations group of their elected officials. It might be dangerous, or needlessly hostile, or the result of toxic rage. But it's not authoritarian.
> Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government.
Except, that's exactly what they are doing. Flock is a privatized spy agency, who's been told by a city and it's population to "go away" They did, but then without explaining their actions, they reinstalled spy equipment. If it was as simple as not wanting to be ousted from a contract, there's contract law. They can collect the full amount, plus any damages without reinstalling the spy equipment they were already caught using to violate state law. Given they've already proven they're willing to violate state law, what would you say the operations branch *should* do? Roll over and say, you got us, keep spying on our citizens against their interests!
> "The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order.
This is technically true as in accurate, but it's not applicable to this story. This private company had a contract with the city, they violated the law to the detriment of the people while exercising the benefits provided by that contract. That's reason enough for the city to terminate the contract and demand the other side to comply and relinquish the previously granted contract benefits.
While originally they seemed to be complying, but then reversed course and caused more damage to the city. This is clearly (to me) bad faith behavior, and deserving of additional punishment, the other comments you are chastising, with takes that are charitably described as shallow, are only enumerating common punishments they they feel would compell pro-social behavior from CEOs and companies. Two groups that have proven to be very resistant to acting in a pro-social way.
> Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point.
You're simply wrong here. The only loss this company can show, is the contractual payments. The invasion of privacy and loss of safety felt by the citizens can't be cured by more money as easily as the losses the private spying company might incure. Thus while waiting for the court judgment, the company should be the party to bear the restraint.
Additionally they can't violate state laws to make money. Which they did and are still doing. Their agreement with the federal government I assume is contract and payment based, and they weren't served with a warrant to reinstall the cameras.
> Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter.
The operations side of the government can also ask and make demands. And if Flock cared about their public image they would comply eagerly. If they cared about protecting what the citizens wanted, they would comply eagerly. If they didn't want to be the bad guys in the story, they would comply eagerly. Contacts can be amended through the agreements of both sides. Flock might have had a chance to pretend they were acting in good faith, but reinstalling the spy cameras they removed without a clear public explanation absolved them of any good faith.
> Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.
The system was built to serve the needs and desires of the people who live within the government and society. No matter what you or Flock feel like contract law should let them get away with, is irrelevant to if the system is working correctly. Flock is acting outside the interest of the society they're spying on. Rules lawyering doesn't mean that the system is working.
Feudalism is not a good goverment system to produce wealth nor well-being. It is very good at concentrating the diminishing wealth in a few hands, thou.
Lots of fans of Luigi Mangione and this hasn't directly killed anyone yet.
I'd say it's just a general tolerance to the idea that the rules we have are baroque and anything goes when trying to reach your aims. This seems fairly cross politically unifying.
Those who want the law obeyed are kind of rare. Most are happy to have the law violated to hurt their political opponents. Then they feel surprisingly aggrieved to have same strategy played against them.
One is breaking the law to punish someone that the law failed to, the other is breaking the law to avoid punishment.
The CEO caused vast death and suffering with the policies he enacted in the name of profit, yet the law didn't touch him. Enforcing what the people think should be enforced isn't the same as enforcing what the people think shouldn't be enforced (mass surveillance). It is, in fact, the opposite.
Way to make me feel like an outcast.
There are also fans of Charles Manson, that doesn't mean we should automatically excuse any bad behavior that falls short of his.
> The city has paid the first two years of that extension but would still owe $145,500 for the final three years if the contract is upheld. The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation.
The city is trying to terminate a contract with Flock. Under that contract, the city agreed to pay Flock for three more years of service. Flock maintains that the city doesn't have the right to nullify the contract. The linked article says almost nothing about the contract dispute, but another article [1] has some details.
I don't know whether the city is correct about its power to terminate the contract, or whether instead Flock is correct. Either way, I wonder whether Flock is re-installing the cameras out of fear that, if it doesn't, it will be voiding its right to future payment under the contract.
[1] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/28/flock-challenges-c...
This illustrates the textbook argument for why mass surveillance is bad: these tools can quickly end up in the wrong hands.
Play silly games, win silly prizes.
With respect, they ALWAYS end up in the wrong hands.
The most disturbing thing, is the behavior of the company. It’s pretty clear that they have a separate contract with the feds, and that contract is the one they care about more.
It’s also an illustration of the faustian bargain that customers make, when establishing these types of contracts. That goes for regular customers, like consumers of social media, SaaS, or data storage apps; not just municipalities, running ALPRs and redlight cameras. It’s like a roach motel; your data checks in, but doesn’t check out. Camel’s nose, and all that.
Basically, all of SV’s business, is about gathering data. That’s why my solitaire apps keep trying to get me to sign onto public challenges and leaderboards.
As lots of folks here have indicated, this behavior will only be changed, by truly holding corporations and corporate directors (and maybe also shareholders) accountable. That’s pretty difficult, in practice. I guess it shouldn’t be easy, as we’d have endless frivolous litigation, but it shouldn’t be impossible, either.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoUOrTJbIu4 [live camera, town square]
Very helpful. In my general area there are almost 100.
I wonder if I can file a CCPA request and get a list of my comings and goings.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/virginia-police-used-f...
Thanks, senior autism, whatever would we have done without you.
Oh, and that's sarcasm, by the way.
I’m curious - what dog whistle do you see?
It is really amazing how much power and impact private company can have on public.
[0] Lab Test here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNWNQb2AvQM
spray-chalk on a stick.
They can and do identify vehicles based on a myriad of other factors. Paint wear, dents, roof racks, bumper stickers, and more.
There's currently a suit filed against them for 4A violations, with supporting case law. I'm also investigating possibility of a federal suit or suit against my municipality for the same. Previous case law has ruled cell phone searches with historical data are a 4A violation and illegal without a warrant.
https://youtu.be/vWj26RIlN_I [18:56]
Well it's obvious then that if it's helping to deport illegals, then keep going!
What are they gonna do other than wring their hands and say "oh no, anyway" if they go missing?
- install these cameras everywhere
- make the data available for everyone via an API
- make content about how we're all being spied on
- form sponsorship deals from Incogni & DeleteMe
- profit
The problem is that the system doesn't only work on criminals, there's rarely enough oversight to prevent abuse, and it's only going to get more invasive. There's been case after case where cops use it to stalk their ex-girlfriends/ex-wives or similar, for example: https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article29105...
• the federal government cannot be trusted when the president belongs to the other “team” regardless of whether the election was fair
• all decision makers in such a government are seeking a fascist and racist agenda that is a threat to all of us, and they are also seeking to harm anyone who even uses their First Amendment right to speak against them.
• therefore, they cannot be allowed to enforce immigration laws at all because we cannot trust them to not make any mistakes/break any rules
• the dangers of those rules being broken outweighs any dangers posed by criminals who happen to be undocumented immigrants.
• also as a result they cannot be trusted with any data that could aid in enforcement of laws or aid them in pursuing their political enemies.
Back when DOGE was making headlines and a certain car salesman was using the Oval Office as daycare for his kid, there were a people on HN and elsewhere noting that every Tesla could easily be turned into a roving real-time government surveillance unit.
Same thing with fingerprint capture - they've now just got mobile apps to take a picture of your hands and submit for print processing.
If you want a new car, I imagine disabling the modem should be trivial.
I agree with your comment though.
They were unambiguously violating state law intended to prevent this exact scenario when they were sharing the data with the federal government. Some lawyer is going to be having a bad year and a black mark on their resume if they didn't have a statutory breach clause in the contract with a city government and even if such a clause doesn't exist there is an extremely strong case for it regardless.
They have self-inflicted a business disaster upon themselves for doing that in a state like Illinois. In the event this holds up under that legal theory every municipality in the state has a case to dump them, to say nothing of getting new contracts there and in any place that has the same values.
They are already being accused of breach and the city ordered them to remove them. Reinstalling devices out of "fear" is not a reasonable response.
However, if Flock was really being evil, they could argue in court they are losing on the value of spying on the American populace.
They were so that in the non-standard case where something other than "business as usual" has happened an owner could be identified.
Case in point: notice how fast this discussion will dive off the front page. Happens quite frequently, when the topic is one that makes certain folks uncomfortable.
Having these keep data for a very short amount of time is a reasonable idea. I don’t think most reasonable people, including law-enforcement really thinks it would be ideal to build a permanent database of everywhere everybody goes. If anyone is convinced that is what they want, I encourage you to try speaking to someone outside your own political party instead of only operating in a social media echo chamber because I think you’ll be surprised how much real people don’t have cartoon villain ambitions.
And then they'll happily run their AI over that knowledge and based on their prompt, if the vehicle is "behaving suspiciously", then they'll ping law enforcement directly and proactively.
It is utterly Minority Report-lite.
From being a previous employee of Flock I know that each of those captures has some location and timestamp data.
Cities tend to resist public records requests for camera locations.
But Flock is currently in ~5,000 communities around the country. They have managed to spread very quickly, and very quietly, and the public has only become aware of it relatively recently.
There is also a good site at https://eyesonflock.com/ that parses data from the transparency pages that some places publish.
site:transparency.flocksafety.comIn my county, multiple law enforcement agencies are not on Flock's transparency portal, despite posting fairly regularly on FB about "responding to a Flock hit on a vehicle".
Blue city in SoCal with lots of migrant laborers.
Their response of putting 10 ALPRs in each store's parking lot and locking up everything seems rational based upon what I've seen. There's something about stealing Milwaukee tools that gets certain groups of people very excited. They even have some tool manufacturers designing activation at checkout mechanisms to discourage theft.
I have a hard time believing this stuff is making them any money or is a secret government arrangement. It seems purely about loss prevention in the case of HD. They have been an easy target up until recently.
Home Depot seems like the one compelling win I've seen so far regarding these cameras. You'd have to be pretty crazy to try and steal tools these days. The speed with which law enforcement can react to these signals is incredible. I don't necessarily like the implications for other things but it does make shopping in certain retail environments feel much safer.
So, cameras in the HD and Apple Store parking lots seem acceptable to me based upon the risk these businesses endure. Cameras in public I don't like, but without them the ones in private wouldn't be able to accomplish as much (I.e., interception of felony retail theft suspects while they still have all of the evidence on them).
Judging by the places they advertise, it’s mostly smaller cities/towns. I think the larger cities in the US tend to run their own cameras.
The answer is going to be "the snooty inner ring suburbs and wealthy rural-ish commuter communities that already had overstaffed PDs harassing teenagers"
>The answer is going to be "the snooty inner ring suburbs and wealthy rural-ish commuter communities that already had overstaffed PDs harassing teenagers"
TFA is about Evanston, IL[0] which is in Cook County[1] and abuts the city of Chicago.
It is relatively wealthy, but is certainly not a "rural-ish commuter community," in fact it's not suburban either.
Check your assumptions, the Bay Area and LA are littered with them. They're in Berkeley for fucks sake.
For me the important thing is that the buck needs to stop somewhere human in certain cases. And in doubt that should be the CEO, potentially even multiple people at once.
If we want a free market where new players can enter and compete, big corporations needs to fear harsher punishment not lighter ones.
So yes, I'm in agreement that neither is good. I'm accusing people of supporting a bad thing and opposing a crime less than that bad thing.
We don't know they won't say this! All the surveillance they do absolutely has value in being able to sell it to other government agencies and private security. Later on, once they've been around a while each customer is less important, but right now every single one is key so I would not be surprised if they fight to keep the cameras up so they can gather metrics for internal use and marketing/sales. They very well may say, "the contract calls for the surveillance to be active. Removing the cameras reduces our ability to further improve the system, so we're financially harmed by that." They won't win, but they very well may try it.
I agree that this is more reasonable than the status quo (although I’d still prefer no cameras at all). Now show me the politicians who are willing to limit ALPR data retention by law on the federal level. As far as I know it hasn’t even been proposed, nor will it be, until some kind of major public scandal emerges. I’d rather not wait until major harm is done.
The federal government has an unfortunate habit of illegally harassing the disfavored group du jour (which rotates about once a decade). State and local governments are often worse, with personal grudges getting into the mix. I’d rather not provide tools to make the harassment even more effective! At some point you begin to enable new “official” crime with the tools you use to stop typical criminals. And the impact of state-level crimes can be much larger and more widespread.
> I think you’ll be surprised how much real people don’t have cartoon villain ambitions.
Most don’t, but some do, and unfortunately they are attracted to power like moths to a flame. Not that everyone in government is a bad guy, but many are when given means and motive.
Edit: edited to specify data retention at the federal level, actually I was surprised to see that a few states do limit data retention.
This decision came after Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias discovered that Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a “pilot program” against state law,Reminds me when I build health insurance claims management software (pre-ACA). "We want to mine the database for familial history of conditions, based on familial claims and ICD codes".
"We can't do that."
"Why not? It's all in the database."
"It is. And we are legally forbidden from running such queries."
"..."
The problem isn't that "evil capitalists are doing the thing" it's that anyone is doing the thing.
Better use of one’s efforts could be to support legal challenges of this clearly unconstitutional mass surveillance by the government through its corporate, or in this case, YC cutouts.
I never understood how someone can ask such a question. It's not like you can just change jobs like you can change clothes. Some people have a family to feed so they can't just decide to be jobless for a few months. Finding a new job takes time you might not have if you still have to show up to your existing job and keep up the mask as if you have no intention of quitting. Sometimes the shittiest jobs pay the most and you cannot afford the pay cut. And sometimes all options are equally bad, e.g. if you don't want to participate in planned obsolescence, but every company out there is making products designed to break. What's the alternative? Make your own company?
> What's the alternative? Make your own company?
Check address bar? :)
Strong office space vibes in this one [1].
Hack the planet. But yeah, don't do this.
Big enough to have enough "real city" problems to get people who have no real existential problems worried, but not enough to keep the police/security busy with "real crime", small enough these people can think that there's serious accountability preventing mundane abuse/misuse (whereas almost nobody in NYC would think that there's accountability for any misuse that isn't regional news worthy) and rich enough to not have to seriously care about resource allocation toward unnecessary security apparatus.
Unfortunately, my comment was simply not a defense of the company, since I know little about the situation, nor was it an attack on the city's actions. It was a reply to the comment I was responding too, which voiced a call to "lock 'em up" and punish them more, which I see all too often.
I certainly do not support government surveillance for any reason.
My comment was a defense of the legal proceedings as-we-have-them, in which the city issues a cease-and-desist, the company ignores it, the problem persists for a while, litigation start, the city demand a court order etc. And in the end the company is massively screwed, if they were wrong.
The alternative is simply that city decides, and the company is forced to follow.
The problem is procedural and structural, not consequentialist.
The comment you replied to was quite banal. Fines are the remedy for a company invading the privacy of citizens. Then when you assume the company executives or agents knew the contract was terminated because of the violation of state law, reinstalling them demonstrates the intent to continue violating the law. The remedy for that is being arrested.
The comment seems to me to be slightly hyperbolic, and expressing frustration about how individuals make clearly malign decisions, and then get away with that asshattery because they hide behind documents of incorporation. But even if you think it was literal, arrested and charged is still operating within the bounds of the law, is it not?
To a dog the whistle is explicit. (Not using dog as a derogatory or complimentary term here... more the fact the dog can hear the high frequency)
Thanks :)
> There are a few ways this lands: > • Benign interpretation: it’s a factual note from teardown reports, relevant to understanding capabilities and privacy implications. > • Critical interpretation: in context of posts about jamming or blinding cameras, component details function as implicit guidance for defeating them, which some view as incitement. > • Political reading: emphasizing hidden/“obfuscated” tracking signals an anti‑surveillance stance and rallies opponents of privatized policing
That seems fair to me, but to be clear - I didn't mean to hide that. I wanted to give people who might be considering action a warning of a hidden anti-theft measure that could get them in trouble while stopping short of encouraging it.
I can see the justification to act, and I generally agree. The risk/reward just isn't right for me.
One important lesson to be learned from the past 20 years: if you're sued, don't go to court. If you're dragged to court, say "fuck you, I'm not going and I'm not paying." If you have enough money, they literally will not do anything. They'll just have endless sham court cases that you're free to ignore and there will never be any consequences.
Alex Jones is up to a few billion dollars in settlements against him. He's had court cases against him for, what, over 10 years now? He's still running his show, still getting money, and he's openly mocking the courts. Judges don't care. Whatever people work in the frameworks that allegedly exist to enforce judgments don't care. They're getting their salary either way.
A better lesson is that you can be "on the radar" but far enough from the central hotspot that you are not a priority. Alternatively you need someone to have your back and be your heatshield while you keep trudging along.
A fine is low stakes because the company more likely than not will have a way to recoup that loss. There is an obvious calculus to that which is practically a cliché to mention. A lawsuit just puts it on the people to succeed in civil proceedings at their own expense, over a potentially lengthy period of time.
Western countries like the UK and US tend to be quite soft on businesses engaging in practices that would land an unremarkable working class person in prison if they were caught doing the same.
I think most people will agree to this. When they do, some will be thinking of disparate enforcement of traffic regulations and others lax enforcement of shoplifting/retail theft.
If anything dealing with the police is actually way better than any of the civil enforcement agencies because accused criminals have "real rights" whereas all the other agencies have the same sort of kangaroo administrative sort of processes that ICE drew ire for.
Furthermore, it's beyond naive to care about whether it's technically vandalism. You can't beat the establishment within the law because the establishment makes the law.
To add to your point, it’s naive to believe that those protections are effective for anyone who isn’t incredibly wealthy at this point. The issue is most people can’t afford to take a case all the way, let alone start one.
Was slavery moral because slavery was legal?
Apart from that,the device's raison d’etre is committing federal crimes, namely violating the 4th amendment rights of private citizens. Previous case law has found mining historical cell phone location data to be a 4A violation requiring a warrant.
Yet evidently we don't care about an actual massive public safety issue in the form of these cameras cataloging each person's habits and frequented locations and freely handing them out like candy to any organizations willing to fork out the cash.
Go figure, at least people can't jam the cameras, imagine how bad that would be...?
If the CEO caused someone to die indirectly, how much more did the doctors involved cause people to die by refusing to schedule and perform procedures for free? They didn't.
You have to apply some Theory of Mind. Just like you think you're doing the right thing so do they.
I am not taking the side of the company, I am taking the side of rule of law and due process.
Realistically if Flock didn't cooperate, the Federal government would just show up with a warrant, subpoena, or other document. Given that Flock themselves is not being investigated, there isn't really any incentive for them to go that route.
Now the state may be abundantly pissed that the Feds are in their backyard, but they have the right to regulate interstate commerce. They are entirely within their rights to also terminate the contract of course.
Authotrized agents from government show up and demand that I turn over video they call evidence. Then then suggest that I should continue to record video and that I should also enable audio recording too. I comply with all 3 requests.
Later the court rules that original request was an illegal search and seizure, and that no reasonable agent would suggest that I should continue to record video with audio, and in this case/example, elects to reject a qualified immunity claim from the agency.
I just participated in an illegal act by cooperating with the federal government.
> Realistically if Flock didn't cooperate, the Federal government would just show up with a warrant, subpoena, or other document. Given that Flock themselves is not being investigated, there isn't really any incentive for them to go that route.
It's a weird take to suggest that the federal governnment themselves shouldn't need to be bothered by following the law they are expected to enforce... If they want data a state law says is private.... they should get a warrant.
There's a word for the belief that you should do what the executive branch says without demanding they follow the the law... wanna guess what that word is?
Joseph Nacchio certainly would not agree with your opinion here that "they should get a warrant"
Even if I have sympathy for the person/company caught between competing jurisdictions, "they have reputation and I like money" simply isn't a credible defense against the state-crime charges.
> Realistically if Flock didn't cooperate, the Federal government would just show up with a warrant, subpoena, or other document.
Not necessarily, their ability to get a warrant/ subpoena is not a foregone conclusion... If it were, we wouldn't even have the test/authorization system in the first place!
A prediction is not a substitute for the process. Imagine the same equivalence being used to kill a suspected murderer: "Well I was really sure sure the guy would get the death penalty in a trial anyway, so... No problem, right?"
> Cooperating with the Federal government cannot plausibly be a crime in the United States.
Quibble: I'm pretty sure you intended to include it, but this is missing an important "legal under federal law" piece. If a real government agent shows up at your door telling you to do something heinous like strangle a baby, there is no plausible way that's legal just because you "cooperated with" the agent.
The “Feds asked nicely” doesn’t change the law. I worked for a company that processed state income tax data. Improper disclosure was a felony punishable by 5 years in prison.
Regulating interstate commerce doesn’t give the content the power to renegotiate state contracts or dismiss state law.
If it didn't give the federal government this power then every state would just pass a "nuh uh!" law every time the federal added a tax or whatever to stuff.
It’s yet another constitutional crisis. There is nothing hilarious in that. On what ground should random federal agents be able to coerce companies to ignore state laws? Or federal law in a bunch of well-known, high profile cases?
Things are going downhill at an impressive pace... Not going to lie watching the Trainwreck in slow motion is entertaining in a sort of morbid way. Though I wished that it wouldn't go that way...
I think that most cases of seemingly unwarranted depression and apathy in people today in fact stem from their subconscious acknowledgement of this trainwreck in progress, and failure of consciousness to accept that and/or do anything about it.
In other words, mass cognitive dissonance.
I only wish the train-wreck were in "slow motion" so there'd be a bit more time to take some meaningful actions as opposed to piling manufactured crises atop one another (and another, and another) in rapid succession as is currently happening.
“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.” — Oscar R. Benavides, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Óscar_R._Benavides
That is ... a surprisingly honest name for a force that'll terrorize any domestic opposition, gotta give them that at least.
Designate Venezuelan boats as "likely terrorists" (drug dealers). Authorize use of extrajudicial military lethal force (blow up boats with dealers aboard).
Justify the above due to "terrorism".
Designate "Antifa" as a "domestic terrorism group".
Not hard to see the next step of "deploy military force against individuals suspected of being Antifa". No need for pesky trials. They're terrorists. This is a war...
In Dutch society it doesn't really matter who the current ruling party is the big machine keeps rolling on. The names change frequently- governments keep tumbling down- but every day like clockwork people get up in the morning, go to work and follow their programming. Prime minister A is replaced by prime minister B.
In some ways having a personality cult is less scary. You can kill a man but how do you destroy a collective?
In some ways it's far more terrifying, because of the operative word "cult" there. Sometimes the object of such a "personality cult" can attract the mindset of an actual cult to form around them and create a highly destructive and dangerous "collective". It's happened many times already throughout recorded history, and it never really seems to go all that well for anyone involved.
1. A collective where there is a belief (however slow or stodgy) in the consistent application of known rules.
2. A collective where the only real rule is to make the cult leader happy even if it means a forest of contradictions and rewriting history.
While (2) can easily change on a whim... it's not your whim.
Which leads us to the practical question: Which collective do you think you and your community could best fight against when it starts hurting you? I think a majority of the time I'd rather be opposed to (1).
But this type of thing (surveillance cameras) would actually fall under state security and be ordered by the Central Committee and done top down without any comments anywhere along the line (because everyone understood what was good for them).
You're probably thinking of the "we're making the wrong type of tractor ball bearings"/"we're making broken consumer radios" type of issue where yeah, they'd give you the runaround.
If you condone violation of the law, it will become commonplace. Acting like your violations of the law are fine but others' violations of the law aren't fine is a position you can take but considering that you're in the minority on both, I don't think it's going to result in anything. Sleep with the dogs, wake up with fleas.
EDIT: And I'll add some facts here and an example to my last statement here:
Luigi Mangione's act is a minority approved act actually https://archive.is/hXNhj
So about 18% approve of his act.
And no, in the US the will of the majority is not sufficient. There are damping influences on time-localized desires by design. A typical example might be that California's Proposition 8 banned gay marriage but was nonetheless struck down by the California Supreme Court. The will of the majority is not irrelevant but it is not paramount.
The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.
I think many sense this, want to get off the train, and away from the tracks but can't figure out how to do it. To pull off it seems overwhelming.
Edited the original comment, hope that's better?
Citing Wikipedia
> He claimed in court, with documentation, that his was the only company to demand legal authority for surreptitious mass surveillance demanded by the NSA
Sounds like he would agree with me? Or do you mean how he was convicted of insider trading which appears to be unethical retaliation for resisting an illegal request?
I refuse to advocate that anyone should act unethically because they fear retaliation. whether or not it's the prudent decision, I'm too much of a pedant with low self-preservation instincts to behave in such a despicable way.
There are parallels here with other civil rights: It would be a [4th/1st] Amendment rights violation to use the threat of a future [warrant/gag-order] to coerce someone into [disclosing/censoring] something in advance.
Well, in this case, you know because "you" happen to be a ~$3.5b company with a legal department that already works regularly on negotiations and compliance to state/local rules, and likely months to calmly investigate and decide on a policy.
Has Flock Security made any statements claiming they were tricked or rushed by the feds?
But if some federal agents show up & ask for some data then you respond with "sure, let me just run this by legal" they might just follow up with "OK, take a few days if you need to. The DoJ has really been breathing down our backs to go over these mortgage documents you signed last year. We can use this time to do that"
Replace your mortage with your daughter, brother-in-law, cousin, or whatever family member you prefer.
This sounds terrible. Any political system can be good or bad, but some of them are much more prone to autocratic drift than others. There should be absolutely no hesitation: rule of law is much better than personal dictatorship. It is not sufficient because the law can be oppressive, but it is absolutely necessary.
If someone says: "Between catching Tuberculosis or AIDS, I'd rather be fighting Tuberculosis", that does not mean they have a favorable opinion towards AIDS.