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I'm curious how they could prevent taking them down if the local gov doesn't renew the contract? Presumably they're installed under some works dept land/pole/utility access permits that allow them the space and electrical, which all goes away and requires their removal.

Sorry if this is answered in the pod, don't have time for it immediately.

You can definitely take the cameras down. We did, there was zero drama.

On the other hand, it wouldn't be surprising if a single county commissioner got in trouble for just deciding by fiat to take civic infrastructure down himself. That's not a power county commissioners have. Was there a county board vote authorizing that action?

If Flock can put them up, can I/my city just decide to put signs or lasers in front of the cameras?

I don't have the answer, but I wonder if they are considered a utility and operate on utility easements. Then we have to look at the county and state, too.

On the other side, I've read they operate a considerable number of private installations, too. Even that is suspect, too, in that there is existing case law affirming that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in "the whole of their public movements."

And what's standing in the way of cleaning them up as litter?

No, the right-of-way is not anything-goes. The property is legally owned by the deed holder of the real property thru which it passes, but practically the right-of-way is managed and maintained by the jurisdiction claiming the right-of-way, i.e. municipal, county, state government agencies. Installations need to be permitted by the agency.

That’s nice you got a response from them. I did not.

IANAL, but making some assumptions to fill in gaps, it seems they are avoiding having to comply with CCPA and other privacy laws like this: they harvest camera data and retain the images probably forever, but only turn it into identifying data on demand for customers. So you really do have to go talk to the customer, because Flock never "has" any identifying data about anyone, they just have anonymous images that when mixed with a model happen to produce identifying data.

This allows them to promise that they don't keep any data and have strict retention policies etc. to jurisdictions that are on the fence or where the contract-purchasers are constrained by law in some way, but they can transfer identifying information at any point in the future to any customer, by mixing raw data and a model.

A national ban is unlikely to happen. Big companies like Flock are incredibly experienced at paying off enough of the Congress to stop legislation they don't like. You're better off trying to focus your efforts on your local municipalities and the state.

Probably? Would be easier to develop drones to rip off the solar panels.

> Is there any realistic...

SCOTUS could hand down another surprise decision:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatrie_v._United_States

Thank you for pointing this out, I would just assumed the parent commenter was correct.

reproducing the same links as above:

https://www.lakeexpo.com/news/politics/felony-charges-droppe...

https://www.wmtv15news.com/2026/06/05/dane-county-covers-flo...

https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/cities-covering-flock-surv...

https://dailynorthwestern.com/2025/09/28/top-stories/flock-c...

https://www.newsfromthestates.com/article/verona-has-waited-...

And these are just the cases where the municipality wants the cameras taken down, GP also talks about the cases where they just want to sate the public while keeping law enforcement and lobbyists happy. LA is a great example, the inaction of letting the contract expire in no way means that the cameras will be taken down, if no further action is taken, those cameras stay up, and law enforcement will continue to have access to all flock's alpr data.

And further it's unclear if the "data" governed in these contracts applies to the CCTV footage or the data produced for the customer by transforming the footage with models into identifying information. Given that flock has a profit incentive, it's reasonable to assume these contracts are written adversarially to maximize Flock's ability to persuade jurisdictions to sign the contracts and Flock's ability to use all of the data they harvest to maximize profit, we have enough examples of this in the 21st century to know this isn't paranoid, this is the basic playbook of all surveillancetech/adtech companies and they have all used language in contracts that is confusing to nonexperts that affords them maximum leverage to store all the data they harvest permanently and use it however they want.

In the UK the government put up ANPR cameras to enforce a clean air zone.

People with electric saws love pulling them down.

They're only as permanent as their protection.

I'm not a lawyer and I think this varies state by state, but I think that in general anyone is allowed to record in public spaces.

I think the general idea is that if you could (legally) go stand in that public space (sidewalks, roads, parks) and watch something happen then you're allowed to record what you see.

This is probably good - I think it's the basis of being able to record misbehavior (by private citizens and/or the police), for example.

In contrast you're generally not allowed to record stuff happening in a private space unless everyone's been informed that this will happen.

This is why you'll see signs saying "Warning - this place is under surveillance" signs on every single door going into a corporation that wants to use security cameras.

No, you don’t have an expectation of privacy on a public roadway, public parking lot, etc.

The US has below average middle class tax rates. But luckily we can just choose what our tax dollars are spent on through democracy! The main problem is nobody agrees about anything and lots of people are really dumb and can't handle the responsibility of electing competent people into government.

Would love to see someone vibecode an explorer for seeing how their jurisdiction spent their taxes. Denver has a decent explorer here: https://www.denvergov.org/transparency/checkbook#/home?year=...

Main article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangs_in_the_Los_Angeles_Count...

Definitely, but they represent the opposite problem. The thing about the LASD and LAPD is that they are... extrajudicial. It's not "They catch a gang member and do nothing", but rather "They arrest a gang member with no valid reason to do so, and tortured/killed them over some street shit." Sometimes it's not a gang member at all. The end of the CRASH unit started when an officer thought he'd flash gang signs and try to kill a plainclothes officer, all in a fit of road rage. Who knows how many times that happened to a random civilian and it got blamed on gangbangers (who happened to not be police)

The problem GP is describing is mostly with the courts, not the cops.

I don't believe at all this is from a lack of funds. The only thing that lacks here is the desire to put criminals in prison.

And public defenders are the main line of defense against prosecutors yet prosecution budgets are significantly higher.

Also used by repo men to track people behind on payments

Just going to leave this here as an example use-case:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-te...

The US has the highest per-capita rate of imprisonment I think we’re plenty “hard on crime”. What we lack is a principled stance that Americans deserve basic dignity and access to things that make people live less violent lives. It’s no secret that poverty is the key contributor to one’s likelihood of being in prison.

People who are “soft on crime”, practically speaking, are the people and politicians so committed to dehumanizing others that they’d rather watch their neighbors wallow in poverty or rot in jail than to actually do something to address the root causes (the foremost of which being the aforementioned societal dehumanization of the poor).

Judges are not soft, it's just liberal cities don't hire enough prosecutors. So judges never receive properly investigated charges, and can do nothing but acquit. Prosecutors defend public (us) from criminals, but for some reason are neglected.

>liberal judges are typically soft on crime.

You're going to need to back that claim up with statistics

Easily disproved. So much inaccurate malarky on this thread. I would assume it's bots AstroTurfing, if American zeitgeist wasn't already so demonstrably poisoned.

Could the government set up 80,000 cameras to spy on everyone? No, they are not aloud to create dragnets or conduct mass surveillance. They need warrants.

Thats the loophole that flock capitalized on.

Of course they can and of course they do. It gets much more complicated when you consider that each state has different laws about records sharing.

And, lol, yes the 4th amendment extends to driving on a public roadway... roads aren't international waters. Probable cause and such are still important. I recognize what you're saying but -- details matter, dammit.

they don't just sell to law enforcement, they install surveillance equipment under contract to law enforcement.

if they didn't get to have cameras everywhere, they wouldn't have as much to sell.

I wonder why we aren't addressing the real problem which seems to be cops behaving completely unethically. Their job is about enforcing the system that codifies our societies agreed up and codified rules of ethics. They should be obsessed with this the same way people here obsess over system performance, correctness, etc! If we cannot trust them with the very basics of ethical behavior they are absolutely in the wrong job and there need to be very clear consequences.

The government is not a monolith. Being owned by the city doesn't have to mean the cops are in control. The municipality can determin by law exactly who operates the infrastructure, who has access to what, what process they must follow, and how that all will be monitored and enforced. "The government didn't handle this well, therefore they can't be trusted for anything like it again" is a misunderstanding of how governments are constructed and how power can be separated between legislatively mandated structures. Find the source of the abuse, then build a structure to check that abuse.

> Why would you trust the city more than Flock

Nationally, I trust a system where the data are split up between siloes more than a single, privately-owned database.

I want local cameras that require physical connections to offload data. Camera access panels can be locked with a wireless system that publishes the access timestamp and details to the city’s website. Each access must correspond with signed warrant.

If my family gets kidnapped, I want a department to be able to check a camera. I’ll wait for the judge’s signature.

But that’s night & day from today’s reality. I simply cannot stand being recorded to the cloud by a creepy corporation everywhere I drive in California with just about no oversight.

A better designed system could be driven by warrants issued by courts, without (or at least minimal) access to individual officers.

It requires better access controls.

Even invasive ideas like automated license plate scanning city-wide can have its data only accessible to an API to eg, track a stolen car across the city to avoid a dangerous high-speed chase in populated areas.

I think to throw the baby out with the bathwater around networked security cameras is failure around designing robust and secure APIs and systems (including audit trails).

The city doesn't run around accusing private citizens of being terrorists like Flock's CEO does.

flock shares the data with other cities and jurisdictions a little more easily, and also flock workers can see your videos. That's some amount of extra abuse potential?

I'd trust a municipality I have a vote in more than a private company.

The difference is that the government has rules and limitations on the data they collection. Meanwhile for-profit corporations operate under an obligation to make as much money as possible for the shareholders.

> The problem with Flock is not who owns the data

The one who owns the data is the one who should be responsible to provide proper guardrails in certain cases if not all, specially like these ones. It comes down to the fine line around business, rules and regulations. The motivation of business is to make most profit with least cost and implementing regulatory mechanisms are cost. Abuses are natural to happen in the absence of guardrails and audits.

And another common claimed abuse of Flock data is cops using it to stalk people in other cities, other states, and across the country.

The potential for abuse rises with the number of people who have access to that data, regardless of who they work for. Restricting access strictly to users in the municipality under contract reduces the number of people with access and thereby mitigates some abuse vectors.

Have you seen Flock's CEO?

Also, there's plenty of past incidents of cops abusing their access to state and federal databases for the same kinds of purposes.

The profession attracts individuals who are willing to abuse power for their own purposes. That's not to say that every cop is in the job to abuse power, but many are, and we have to build our law enforcement structures in a way that directly acknowledges and addresses this fact.

The problem with Flock is its continued existence as part of the surveillance state. Like guns or bombs, these are things with one intent, and that intent is always ALWAYS bad as the resource is inevitably concentrated in the hands of a few to control the many.

You don't need to trust them. You can request information as allowed under FOIA and vote the mayor out in the next election if there is any sign of misuse.

With Flock? Good luck.

Because there's a more robust legal framework for curtailing the inevitable abuse when the government does it than when it's done via the "oops our contractor who's a private company" slight of hand.

Same basic reason I'd rather have the cops after me than have the environmental/zoning/whatever civil enforcement jerks after me. There's just sooooo much more scrutiny (which really says a lot considering how bad the cops are).

I think Flock is probably the worst solution besides all the rest. They seem to be the most auditable and accountable. The fact that anyone even knows the service and founder is a testament to accountability.

It's because their actual motto is "Don't tread on me, tread on them"

It's not "don't tread on us"

A lot of the "don't tread on me" is window dressing.

Peter Thiel and his ilk absolutely adore what China has done. You have an elite - in this case, the CCP - that is entitled to their position by law. It bills itself as the "best and brightest" of society and has ideological constraints that it gets to impose on its members through the cadre system. The rest of the population labors for the benefit of this elite with little-to-no input on the operation of the ruling class.

That's what Thiel wants, just with his kind in the positions of power. It'd eliminate any opposition to what they imagine as the "right" way of doing things and reduce the friction to the creation of economic value for their holdings.

Note that "friction" in this case means things like human rights, democracy, competition, workers rights, etc.

"The system does not utilize facial recognition and does not have automated functions, such as automatically running license plates through the state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) or Law Enforcement Data System (LEDS) databases. All license plates must still be verified by an investigator and then individually queried through the appropriate database."

This sounds like a lot more than your average flock installation at a local PD

https://salem.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=7375982...

OpenALPR is not open source despite the open name, sigh

> Invest in developing a camera system that is sovereignly owned by the city.

you unrealistic expectations of a city government's ability to do anything different than it has always done.

Isn't it obvious? There's way more profit in building a Torment Nexus.

  do not have the money to invest in developing a camera system that is sovereignly owned by the city

I've seen videos of flock cameras installed improperly (missing a breakaway device) right next to roads. The city must be able to remove unsafe devices!

https://highways.dot.gov/safety/local-rural/maintenance-sign...

I think the problem is that people are allowed to set up cameras of public spaces without requiring any “license to surveil”.

It could also mean "we get the cameras for free now ..."

I do know.

I do not want to live in a society that is under 24/7 surveillance. Of course, if the cops can watch everything you do all the time, there will be less crime. But that is not a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

Cameras don't prevent crime, they just increase the cost of doing so (or the cost of preparing for it).

Most crime is spontaneous. Plenty of examples from across the world that installing cameras or other checks at best shifts crime to other areas.

What is a dragnet? Why are dragnets illegal?

Flock is essentially a private loophole that creates a nationwide dragnet.

> I'm cool with zero privacy if it means cops can arrest people more easily since they have perfect judgement

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Ben Franklin

while cops are impossible to hold accountable, id prefer to give them fewer capabilities rather than more