Or their app was configured to let other LE agencies access it without their knowledge in violation of state law (1). Only linked one case but afaik it happened in a number of CA cities.
> Last May, 404 Media obtained data revealing the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office conducted a nationwide search of more than 83,000 Flock ALPR cameras, giving the reason in the search log: “had an abortion, search for female.” Both the Sheriff's Office and Flock Safety have attempted to downplay the search as akin to a search for a missing person, claiming deputies were only looking for the woman to “check on her welfare” and that officers found a large amount of blood at the scene – a claim now contradicted by the responding investigator’s affidavit. Flock Safety went so far as to assert that journalists and advocates covering the story intentionally misrepresented the facts, describing it as "misreporting" and "clickbait-driven."
> Earlier this month, there was purposefully misleading reporting that a Texas police officer with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office used LPR “to target people seeking reproductive healthcare.” This organization is actively perpetuating narratives that have been proven false, even after the record has been corrected. According to the Sheriff in Johnson County himself, this claim is unequivocally false. That sheriff has since been arrested and indicted on felony counts in an unrelated sexual harassment and whistleblower retaliation case. He has also been charged with aggravated perjury for allegedly lying to a grand jury. EFF filed public records requests with Johnson County to obtain a more definitive account of events.
There's no such thing as legal ownership of data. There's IP rights, contracts and innumerable data regulation laws, but not actual ownership. "Ownership" here just provides a vague cover that sounds like something definite but is not.
Lesbians too [0]. And people who don’t make much money [1]. And people who aren’t Asian [2]. And athletes, and people who like sports [3].
Applying group statistics to judge individual people is almost never proper, and lies at the root of an awful lot of inhumanity. I hope and imagine the women in question are capable of thinking (and judging) for themselves.
> A 2010 CDC survey compared domestic violence victimization rates between lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women. The differences between most forms of reported domestic violence rates between lesbian women and heterosexual women were found to be non-significant due to insufficient statistical power.
I'm going to assume that commenter is referring to 'black crime rates' claiming that they make up 13% of the population while claiming that 85% of crime or some segment like violent crime is committed by them.
People who use the threat of violence and actual violence to control people at work being more likely to do so at home to their own family seems self-evident to me.
Not making any moral judgements, if I used violence professionally I’d expect myself to be more violent in general.
> Flock Safety acknowledged the issue in March, stating some California agencies “had their camera networks inadvertently accessible to out-of-state law enforcement agencies for a period of time,” according to a company statement. The company said it was “impossible to determine a specific cause” for the data breach.
Flock has been known to lie and there isn't any reason to believe they are telling the truth. Why would they? There isn't some duty for them to tell the truth in an article.
Trying to parse what that sentence means is useless. It isnt designed to mean anything. Their various mouth pieces have claimed every manner of excuse.
Semantic games are for everyone else to play and lose. Corporations always win.
> I assume this means that the police department deletes one local copy?
Ben Jordan got ahold of one of them and proved that they even had footage from the f'n factory they were made in! Flock is lying to cities and/or cities are lying to us
No, Flock plays a semantic game where data on Flock's servers os "owned" by the client, so Flock is not responsible for the content or management of the data.
I'm not familiar with North Dakota in particular, but at the federal level and in some states ALL works created by the government are exempt from copyright. The public paid for it, so the public owns it.
I don't see how that relates to any of this. If I record a video of a crowd in public, under US law I have copyright to that video. The crowd isn't creating the record, I am.
The issue of which group (Flock/police/city) has the real copyright versus an expensive license is interesting to contemplate, but that list doesn't include monkey-agency either.
I’m sure flock’s agreement with the Winona Police Department makes clear that they are only purchasing a license to use these cameras, so in fact the department’s cameras have not been stolen at all, they’ve merely been prevented from enjoying licensed use.
The official YCombinator stance is that Flock was a huge success as an investment - which it seemingly was, given that they managed to sign deals with what seems like every tiny municipality/sheriff/government organization.
Because for police departments, they are a huge benefit and well worth the cost. A lot of crimes have been solved with Flock cameras. Stolen cars, or cars linked to criminal activity have been tracked and located. Missing persons have been found.
None of that justifies the massive invasion of privacy that these cameras represent. You don't have a right to not be individually surveiled in public, but that doesn't mean it's OK for the government to warrantlessly track everyone everywhere they go 24x7, or to do it by proxy with a private company such as Flock. The potential for abuse is just too high, and we've seen many cases of that too.
if you want to tackle the POV of the true believers at Y Combinator*: look, flock can't be that effective if all it takes is a guy with a ladder to defeat it, right? same thing with pervasive facial detection, you can wear a mask. you don't have to go into all this philosophical stuff to see how the promises will not be fulfilled.
*Garry Tan has been characterized as a True Believer, in that he sincerely believes Flock's vision will reduce crime and not be misused. on the flip side they don't invest in Palantir, Anduril, Applied Intuition, etc. or other defense stuff. so it's very exceptional for them.
And beyond this there are a number of defense-dependent companies like ProvenMetal (whose value proposition largely depends on a customer’s deep need to do onshore manufacturing)
It makes sense. From 2000-2015 it was pretty difficult for anyone to break into defense and really own a brand. Breakout companies like EOTech were really rare. Generally founders would be at the mercy/grace of the major defense incumbents ('primes'), getting scraps from their tables.
That’s changed lately. For a wide variety of reasons (political, technical, and on active battlefields) there’s a lot more room for startups to really own their own slice of the industry and build some moats of their own.
but. paul graham doesn't like defense stuff. there were plenty of great defense seed investments (palantir), and he runs the best seed venture firm in the world, always has, so his opinion matters. but it was out of a righteous place, it wasn't because he thought it couldn't make money.
y combinator is a much bigger fund now with lots of people in charge. the "2000-2015" era you are talking about: valuations of everything were 1/10th of what they are now. it's hard to make any definitive comparisons about venture trends.
For additional context, for first I've ever seen their rfs specifically asked for startups focused on military applications and warfare "The Future of American Defense" https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs
Disappointing to see this is the future they are trying to invest in.
Flock threads attract a narrow slice of hotheads on HN, just like anti-social media threads. It's not really possible to say anything definitive about the popularity of Flock in the broad HN community.
What alerts are they getting so often anyway? It's a little town of 25k people.
I can understand the benefit of being able to track coming and going and criminal activity etc but there is no oversight and it is already being abused.
Keeping this data within the municipality and requiring bureaucracy to coordinate with others might be the best solution I've heard, since it prevents dragnets and builds in auditing as part of the process.
Small towns don't want people spying on them. Small towns also are prime targets for pushing over with your federal approvals to force them into giving you their tax money in the name of "safety". Someone got paid.
One can easily research if curious and/or interested with a $5 FOIA request using Muckrock if interested. FOIA request templates are available. I see no existing FOIA requests for this jurisdiction within scope of Flock as of this comment.
> Each camera is valued at approximately $3,000, putting the total loss at roughly $24,000. That cost falls directly on the Winona Police Department’s budget.
Are they contractually obligated to replace them? IIRC, some municipalities have been covering the cameras with trash bags because they cannot turn them off or remove them until their contract expires.
I think there is a difference between turning them off/removing and having them be stolen/destroyed. I would be shocked if they would be forced to repurchase them.
The city planning pyramid scheme: buy things you can't afford with bonds so that 20 years later when everyone is done raising their kids and moves out the people who move in have to debt service with crumbling infrastructure and schools.
Bonus points if you pass a bunch of laws and rules that make it nigh on impossible for the next generation to develop any commerce that could possibly pay back your debt right before cashing out all your equity and moving to Idaho or Florida.
Sure, if we're talking about total "wealth". Towns might put the cameras on their balance sheet (unless they're just leased in some way), but I strongly doubt that any towns are selling their flock cameras.
Moreover, the quote was about budget - it only hits the budget if they replace them. Likewise, if someone steals your car, it only hits your budget if you replace it or otherwise incur other expenses (taxi, etc). If you shrug because you have 4 other cars, or just walk and bike most of the time, its not really hitting your budget.
US courts have held, in multiple cases now, that creating a massive network of datapoints over time, aggregated together, can be a 4th amendment violation in a way that a single datapoint is not.
Without a physical human operating the camera, at the site, yes, it should not be allowed.
This is actually the distinction in many EU countries, i.e. it’s allowed to record a movie if the operator is present, but doing the same thing remotely requires permission from a special authority/agency (that’s not in cahoots with the police).
If those people recording on their cell phones are going to coordinate and provide mass surveillance to the government, then yes, I would hope most people are against that.
The concern is that these cameras can track all your movements in a vehicle (you can make a graph of license plate locations and times), continuously record audio, collect information from other sensors, and that is an affront to the right to privacy. For some reason despite all this surveillance the drugs still flow on the streets. A very Orwellian situation.
It's a network of nation wide cameras tracking movement, which can include foot traffic from people's phones. You're giving police and a private company a lot of power with that sort of data. There was a case of a sheriff in Texas town using a nation wide search to find a woman who had an abortion using Flock cameras after claiming it was used for a missing person case.
This because Texas has a hard on for trying to prosecute women who have abortions.
I feel like none of the replies are really cutting to the core of what the problem with your logic actually is—because your way of thinking is incredibly common in tech since it's what we do all day. The fallacy is scale invariance, that the nature of a thing doesn't change when the scale does. Anything you can do you can put in a for loop.
And the equivalence you're drawing is that the fundamental nature of someone recording a video with their phone is the same as a digital panopticon.
So you know how like, "the government" and "private citizens" aren't the same thing, right? Like there are different obligations for both? You do know and understand this, correct? The government has a constitutional requirement not to perform undue/unnecessary search or seizure.
Pretty sure "search" includes "building a panopticon from which all citizens can be viewed at all times", but explain why you disagree.
One thing I’ve learned from reading accounts of Flock camera thefts is that you shouldn’t do more than one per outing. This sounds like a group arranged to do them all at once which also works.
WINONA, Minn. (Valley News Live) - Every Flock license plate reader camera operated by the Winona Police Department has been sawed off and stolen in what investigators believe was a coordinated theft.
All eight cameras were taken Aug. 1, according to the Winona Police Department. A patrol officer first noticed the cameras had not sent any alerts in 24 hours. When officers checked the locations, they found the cameras had been cut from their poles and taken. The poles were left behind.
Two additional Flock cameras on the Mississippi River Bridge, owned by Buffalo County, were also stolen in the same manner.
Each camera is valued at approximately $3,000, putting the total loss at roughly $24,000. That cost falls directly on the Winona Police Department’s budget.
The eight WPD cameras were positioned at key highway entry and exit points throughout the city: near Highway 61 and Bundy Boulevard, Highway 43 and Homer Road, Highway 14 and Knapp Valley Drive, and Highway 61 and Highway 14. Two cameras were stationed at each location.
Flock Safety cameras are automated license plate readers that capture images of plates along with a vehicle’s make, model and color. Police use the technology to investigate crimes such as hit-and-runs and to locate missing persons. Camera data is owned by the police department and permanently deleted after 30 days.
The thefts are part of a broader national trend. Flock cameras have been vandalized and cut down in communities across the country. The technology has drawn criticism from civil liberties advocates who argue the cameras expand government surveillance and raise concerns about data being shared with third-party companies or federal agencies.
No suspects have been identified. The investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Winona Police Department.
I for one do believe that is their primary function. However good intentions don't justify violating our rights or accepting the (demonstrated) potential for abuse.
It might be their intended use (from a police department's perspective), but it's certainly not their intended function.
Flock collects these images, and uses them to train statistical models, and sells those models to police departments as a one-click crime solving solution.
That means that their primary function is to passively aggregate driver behavior into an automated judgement system, where the entire judicial system (designed to check and balance itself) is laundered away. Flock cameras exist to fundamentally replace police work, not to assist with it.
It isn't a summary. It is every word of the original article copied and pasted. I can understand doing that in something that is paywalled, but I didn't have any problems getting to the article.
Heads up though: not every camera on that map is Flock. In my town, only a couple of Flock cameras are in place, on private property (Lowes is a big user). All the others are owned by my local police department.
> All eight cameras were taken Aug. 1, according to the Winona Police Department. A patrol officer first noticed the cameras had not sent any alerts in 24 hours. When officers checked the locations, they found the cameras had been cut from their poles and taken. The poles were left behind.
Wow so they did all 8 in in 24 hours. That's quite impressive
Maybe I'm overly confident in Flock's ability to triangulate, but wouldn't government agencies be able to know exactly who is cutting down Flock cameras? Isn't that the entire purpose of these things?
Seems these days the only cross-partisan agreement is resistance to Flock and Axon.
People don't want Big Brother. Politicians unironically trying to positively refer to them as an enhanced Big Brother is completely tone deaf.
And we know that police departments were working with ICE during Metro Surge:
> But the Star Tribune found law enforcement agencies around the country searched several Twin Cities suburbs’ camera data and labeled their queries as civil immigration enforcement — a mechanism used to detain those in the country illegally who have not committed other crimes. A vast majority of the searches were run on Fridley’s Flock Safety cameras as it had looser restrictions on its data than other agencies.
This dozen even get into the dozens of documented instances of officers using the system to stalk people... couple that with Stingray devices. It's not hyperbole to say we're existing under the thumb of Big Brother.
Resistance to or acceptance of Flock/Axon is going to be a big tipping point in an already over-surveilled country.
I just watched Benn Jordan's video about Flock's (numerous) vulnerabilities last night. Pretty crazy to think what people can do with these if they can get their hands on them.
Does anyone actually know how the data is stored? They seem to _imply_ they're not storing images, merely license plates. Oh, and presence of bumper stickers bike racks and other vehicle metadata to create a unique fingerprint. So are they implying they merely store a descriptive hash, and discard the images?
Of course, until the revenue knob needs a little tweak, and they start hashing the human data....
I hope all the cool people doing all the cool things in current year are not doing cool vandalism just because its a cool thing-to-do that they saw on Reddit in current year. Other cool things cool people are into in current year; Cyber trucks are still on the road, and data centers are still being built.
The anti-camera things are also somewhat effective at getting rid of London's ULEZ cameras. Quite admirable that this coalition of quite disparate interests was able to form around opposition to the specific device used to manage different objectives.
Yet to see anyone describe what to do once they are down. They for sure have all manners of wicked battery backed up trackers etc, I'm sure.
(This would be highly illegal to do and you should not do it, even to evil surveillance cameras that hoover up our lives to terrifying central databases, even if these are ragingly unpopular.)
an into a YouTube short testing how to cut down steel poles quickly yesterday, with battery powered tools.
Sawzall, 1m 15s, circular saw 1m, circular saw like 20s.
Manual pole cutters have existed for at least 100 years. No batteries. Almost zero noise.
You put one on the pole, walk around the pole once, and it's cut. They were used a lot in the 1970's when people were rebelling against parking meters.
I believe it's part of the opening scene of the film Cool Hand Luke.
not exactly right. the first is an abrasive disc. that's the right guy for steel, but doesn't work great in aluminum because its very sticky and melty. the third is a metal skill saw blade. I really wouldn't use this with steel at all, but you definitely want to cut aluminum and not grind it. the tool I would normally use for this is a portable bandsaw, with speed control that you would set high for Al and low for steel, probably pretty close to the skill saw.
One of my bigger concerns with this story, given the Flock CEO's public statements, and this Administration's attitude towards such things is how easy it might be to attempt to spin, or pursue, this as "domestic terrorism" rather than "vandalism".
Lets be clear, Flock itself is is also breaking the law and refusing to remove it's camera's from city's properties. The cities, apparently, have no recourse but to cover Flock's vigalante cameras with plastic bags to block their view. This is not a one sided case of illegal property damage and trespass. Flock corporation is acting illegally too. Only no one in government is willing to hold them accountable in a court of law.
what if this was a ultra genius move to end authoritarianism by being so blatantly bad that we actually get a new amendment added for right to privacy and flock was a non profit all along
If I'm ever on the jury of somebody charged with this, the prosecution has an incredibly high burden to convince me the poles and the cameras on them didn't die of natural causes.
Maybe if police weren't using Flock cameras to stalk their ex-wives [1][2].
There's an interesting angle to the Flock issue I heard recently. Some predominantly black communities prefer Flock cameras because they're over-policed, black men in particular are more likely to be pulled over on "routine" traffic stops and those stops have a skewed chance of ending in violence of death. As a reminder, US law enforcement kills over 1000 civilians every single year. Over half of those are black men and black men are only ~6% of the population.
But that's really a lesser evil type situation because the police simply shouldn't be killing so many people.
Wikipedia and dictionaries are wrong. It has a different usage than "underdeveloped" and that usage at best doesn't have a clear meaning, and at worst does have a clear derogatory meaning
sorry, but no one is taking some random HN user's definition over established dictionaries on what a word means.
perhaps you can convince enough people that the word will evolve into whatever you imagine it to mean, and then the dictionaries will be updated to match.
The dictionary is an attempt at systematically defining the semantic meaning of language subject to cultural constraints in the same way that a writing system is an attempt at visually rendering a spoken language subject to technological constraints. I know from personal experience that the people who work on dictionaries have a less authoritative view about them than you do.
It wasn't private property. It belonged to the people and the people decided they didn't want it. It's bad to see people being forced to break the law to retain their freedom, but it's a good thing that folks are still willing to fight for it.
"but it's a good thing that folks are still willing to fight for it"
This is at least as likely to be theft as much as civic action. There are far easier ways one might permanently inhibit these cameras than cutting them down and taking them away.
A handful of thieves/activists are not "the people". A town hall, vote etc... would have the backing of "the people". If that happens and theyre still not removed, then perhaps actions like these might be justified.
Perhaps the activists were representing the people, but were unfortunately under a Makita/DeWalt NDA, and cannot make public their deliberations and actions just yet. Rest assured they are acting in your best interests.
> Police use the technology to investigate crimes such as hit-and-runs and to locate missing persons. > No suspects have been identified.
Yeah, that tracks.
> Camera data is owned by the police department and permanently deleted after 30 days.
I assume this means that the police department deletes one local copy?
> Camera data is owned by the police department and permanently deleted after 30 days
There's so much going on in that sentence! What a thing of pure PR beauty.
What does "owned" mean in this sentence? Probably fairly little.
What data does it even refer to? Just the actual video footage? Does the statement include derived data like license plate reads or ML models?
And surely if data is flagged as relevant to an investigation it is not deleted, so is there an implicit "*unless retained"?
You know, unless they get a national security letter, or change their TOS, or....
Or their app was configured to let other LE agencies access it without their knowledge in violation of state law (1). Only linked one case but afaik it happened in a number of CA cities.
(1) https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-came...
https://www.ilsos.gov/news/2025/august-25-2025-giannoulias-a...
> Giannoulias’ Audit Finds License Plate Reader Company in Violation of Illinois State Law
> Flock Safety Shared Illinois Data with U.S. Customs and Border Protection Secretary, Orders Flock to Shut off Data Access
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flock-safety-and-texas...
> Last May, 404 Media obtained data revealing the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office conducted a nationwide search of more than 83,000 Flock ALPR cameras, giving the reason in the search log: “had an abortion, search for female.” Both the Sheriff's Office and Flock Safety have attempted to downplay the search as akin to a search for a missing person, claiming deputies were only looking for the woman to “check on her welfare” and that officers found a large amount of blood at the scene – a claim now contradicted by the responding investigator’s affidavit. Flock Safety went so far as to assert that journalists and advocates covering the story intentionally misrepresented the facts, describing it as "misreporting" and "clickbait-driven."
> Earlier this month, there was purposefully misleading reporting that a Texas police officer with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office used LPR “to target people seeking reproductive healthcare.” This organization is actively perpetuating narratives that have been proven false, even after the record has been corrected. According to the Sheriff in Johnson County himself, this claim is unequivocally false. That sheriff has since been arrested and indicted on felony counts in an unrelated sexual harassment and whistleblower retaliation case. He has also been charged with aggravated perjury for allegedly lying to a grand jury. EFF filed public records requests with Johnson County to obtain a more definitive account of events.
What if "owning" here means the same as "owning" any movie online.
If questioned, I can already imagine someone defending that sort of agreement as a standard consumer, contractual terms and practices of the time.
Yes, the police own the videos they take of you? Like LLM companies own the models they digest from the texts they don't own?
There's no such thing as legal ownership of data. There's IP rights, contracts and innumerable data regulation laws, but not actual ownership. "Ownership" here just provides a vague cover that sounds like something definite but is not.
I believe they're implying that Flock still has access to it even if the police technically retain legal ownership.
most likely the videos are deleted because it'd be a ginormous expense to keep it around; everything else, yeah, it's not being deleted.
It might be deleted at the PD, does not mean it wasn't uploaded to Flock DCs for metadata analysis and retained there.
Police used Flock's license plate network to stalk women in at least 50 cases
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/police-used-flocks-lice...
Police officers are also statistically more likely to abuse their spouses. Don't let the women you care about get involved with cops.
Lesbians too [0]. And people who don’t make much money [1]. And people who aren’t Asian [2]. And athletes, and people who like sports [3].
Applying group statistics to judge individual people is almost never proper, and lies at the root of an awful lot of inhumanity. I hope and imagine the women in question are capable of thinking (and judging) for themselves.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_in_lesbian_r...
[1] https://www.cawc.org/news/socioeconomic-risk-factors-for-dom...
[2] https://bjs.ojp.gov/violent-victimization-race-or-hispanic-o...
[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10087409/#hsc14028-...
> Lesbians too [0]
> A 2010 CDC survey compared domestic violence victimization rates between lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women. The differences between most forms of reported domestic violence rates between lesbian women and heterosexual women were found to be non-significant due to insufficient statistical power.
??
> Don't let the women you care about get involved with cops.
I don't see any difference between what you just said and "13-85".
>and "13-85".
what does this specific lingo mean? normal searches and ai are both as confused as i am
I'm going to assume that commenter is referring to 'black crime rates' claiming that they make up 13% of the population while claiming that 85% of crime or some segment like violent crime is committed by them.
Being a cop is a choice. Being black is not.
People who use the threat of violence and actual violence to control people at work being more likely to do so at home to their own family seems self-evident to me.
Not making any moral judgements, if I used violence professionally I’d expect myself to be more violent in general.
Since people seem to be disagreeing with a fact:
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/1862/
https://academic.oup.com/policing/article-abstract/6/4/418/1...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13591...
60% of the spouses of police officers report being victims of domestic violence. The other 40% are too scared to answer honestly.
Seems like that might be indicative of a problem?
Not necessarily. One can accept that violent people do a violent job and commit violence in their home life.
Anyways, that study that everyone loves to cite is like 30 or 40 years old and unreplicated.
Flock data can be accessed by cops nationwide who have different (or no) restrictions on data retention or privacy compared to local police.
Flock data can be accessed by anyone. Literally. anyone. at anytime. Go see for yourselves.
https://measuredcollective.com/flocks-ai-surveillance-camera...
I think you are overselling it a bit. 60-some cameras were misconfigured for a relatively short period of time.
This is false. They cannot be accessed by anyone.
> For an unknown period, at least 60 AI-powered surveillance cameras manufactured by Flock Safety were accessible to anyone on the internet.
Past tense.
Glad someone trusts these clowns.
Where I work, this wouldn't fly.
> Flock Safety acknowledged the issue in March, stating some California agencies “had their camera networks inadvertently accessible to out-of-state law enforcement agencies for a period of time,” according to a company statement. The company said it was “impossible to determine a specific cause” for the data breach.
That's a bit misleading given that it's a subset. 404media cites "at least 60".
https://www.kcrg.com/2025/12/24/cedar-rapids-police-cameras-...
https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/colorado-news/dougl...
https://www.wabe.org/cobb-county-youtuber-documents-flock-ca...
https://www.wflx.com/2026/01/09/flock-safety-exposed-live-po...
https://www.thegazette.com/news/vendor-error-exposed-some-ce...
https://www.404media.co/flock-leaked-cops-license-plate-sear...
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-c...
The list is pretty endless.
>The list is pretty endless.
Did you check your own sources? The first three articles you linked cites the same youtuber as in the gp. I'm not going to check any more.
Flock has been known to lie and there isn't any reason to believe they are telling the truth. Why would they? There isn't some duty for them to tell the truth in an article.
Trying to parse what that sentence means is useless. It isnt designed to mean anything. Their various mouth pieces have claimed every manner of excuse.
Semantic games are for everyone else to play and lose. Corporations always win.
> deletes one local copy.
I think you’re being a little too generous here.
> raise concerns about data being shared with third-party companies or federal agencies.
What, you don’t like “sharing”? It would be selfish not to “share”!
Truly the move from “send copies to” to “share” is one of the great linguistic dirty tricks the social-media-era firms have pulled.
Especially here, where what’s being “shared” is, in a meaningful sense, operational control and enforcement prerogative.
And don’t get me started on the minimizing formulation “third-party companies and federal agencies”…
That whole paragraph is like a paid placement.
> Flock Safety cameras are automated license plate readers
Like Ring is a door chime.
Eventually the copy in the officer's browser's cache expires...I figure that's what they mean.
> I assume this means that the police department deletes one local copy?
Ben Jordan got ahold of one of them and proved that they even had footage from the f'n factory they were made in! Flock is lying to cities and/or cities are lying to us
No, Flock plays a semantic game where data on Flock's servers os "owned" by the client, so Flock is not responsible for the content or management of the data.
Isn't that what you'd expect from a camera service provider? I'd certainly want any videos taken by my own cameras to be owned by me.
I'm not familiar with North Dakota in particular, but at the federal level and in some states ALL works created by the government are exempt from copyright. The public paid for it, so the public owns it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
I don't see how that relates to any of this. If I record a video of a crowd in public, under US law I have copyright to that video. The crowd isn't creating the record, I am.
The issue of which group (Flock/police/city) has the real copyright versus an expensive license is interesting to contemplate, but that list doesn't include monkey-agency either.
> I’m sure flock’s agreement with the Winona Police Department makes clear that they are only purchasing a license to use these cameras
License to use but responsible for loss
Why would you think that and be so confident?
> That cost falls directly on the Winona Police Department’s budget.
Nope, Flock bills out the ass for replacement cost right to the taxpayer. The grift continues!
Alternatively, "defunding the police" by way of smashing Flocks is another view point, from what I've heard.
They bill out the ass to lease them
Curious about the official YCombinator stance on this extremely unpopular YCombinator-backed startup (unpopular here at HN anyway).
I believe "money good" is YC's only guiding principle. HN is a nice resource, but let's not have any illusions about the morals of the owners.
The official YCombinator stance is that Flock was a huge success as an investment - which it seemingly was, given that they managed to sign deals with what seems like every tiny municipality/sheriff/government organization.
https://www.ycombinator.com/library/N0-unpopular-ideas-that-...
Because for police departments, they are a huge benefit and well worth the cost. A lot of crimes have been solved with Flock cameras. Stolen cars, or cars linked to criminal activity have been tracked and located. Missing persons have been found.
None of that justifies the massive invasion of privacy that these cameras represent. You don't have a right to not be individually surveiled in public, but that doesn't mean it's OK for the government to warrantlessly track everyone everywhere they go 24x7, or to do it by proxy with a private company such as Flock. The potential for abuse is just too high, and we've seen many cases of that too.
If you've read anything Garry Tan has said, you wouldn't be curious.
Care to enlighten us?
https://xcancel.com/garrytan/status/2019867421029667158
lol love that he is quoting an AI that is quoting KTVU
Garry is basically a fascist who thinks that democratic governance ruins society and that instead society should be run by tech elite.
I believe Garry Tan would enlighten you if you read/listened to him
edit: to be clear, I dont think Tan is capable of "enlightening" anyone. I was responding to the lazy comment above...
Garry tan was enlightened by thiels Greta is the anti Christ talk.
if you want to tackle the POV of the true believers at Y Combinator*: look, flock can't be that effective if all it takes is a guy with a ladder to defeat it, right? same thing with pervasive facial detection, you can wear a mask. you don't have to go into all this philosophical stuff to see how the promises will not be fulfilled.
*Garry Tan has been characterized as a True Believer, in that he sincerely believes Flock's vision will reduce crime and not be misused. on the flip side they don't invest in Palantir, Anduril, Applied Intuition, etc. or other defense stuff. so it's very exceptional for them.
YC is definitely pivoting into Defense. Besides 9mothers, there’s a list of 22 defense startups accepted into YC just this year so far:
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/industry/defense
And beyond this there are a number of defense-dependent companies like ProvenMetal (whose value proposition largely depends on a customer’s deep need to do onshore manufacturing)
It makes sense. From 2000-2015 it was pretty difficult for anyone to break into defense and really own a brand. Breakout companies like EOTech were really rare. Generally founders would be at the mercy/grace of the major defense incumbents ('primes'), getting scraps from their tables.
That’s changed lately. For a wide variety of reasons (political, technical, and on active battlefields) there’s a lot more room for startups to really own their own slice of the industry and build some moats of their own.
they invest in defense stuff now, that's new!
but. paul graham doesn't like defense stuff. there were plenty of great defense seed investments (palantir), and he runs the best seed venture firm in the world, always has, so his opinion matters. but it was out of a righteous place, it wasn't because he thought it couldn't make money.
y combinator is a much bigger fund now with lots of people in charge. the "2000-2015" era you are talking about: valuations of everything were 1/10th of what they are now. it's hard to make any definitive comparisons about venture trends.
> or other defense stuff. so it's very exceptional for them.
9 Mothers.
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/9-mothers-corporation
the Thiel Anti Christ Chats at Garry Tan's house is run by Anduril founders.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/08/michelle-stephens-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trae_Stephens
It's hard for me to understand how any of this is very Christian.
For additional context, for first I've ever seen their rfs specifically asked for startups focused on military applications and warfare "The Future of American Defense" https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs
Disappointing to see this is the future they are trying to invest in.
Palantir and Terminator enter the chat.
Flock threads attract a narrow slice of hotheads on HN, just like anti-social media threads. It's not really possible to say anything definitive about the popularity of Flock in the broad HN community.
Flock seems to be pretty unpopular, internet-wide, in bipartisan tech/very online worlds; feels like 90% to me.
Where things start coming into balance a bit more is among the Nextdoor paranoia crowd.
Flock is popular with 1) local police departments and 2) local city councils who don't want to upset the police
It's pretty unpopular with mainly everyone else.
What alerts are they getting so often anyway? It's a little town of 25k people.
I can understand the benefit of being able to track coming and going and criminal activity etc but there is no oversight and it is already being abused.
Keeping this data within the municipality and requiring bureaucracy to coordinate with others might be the best solution I've heard, since it prevents dragnets and builds in auditing as part of the process.
See also this article about hiding usage of flock https://www.404media.co/do-not-mention-alpr-usage-how-cops-a...
Small towns don't want people spying on them. Small towns also are prime targets for pushing over with your federal approvals to force them into giving you their tax money in the name of "safety". Someone got paid.
One can easily research if curious and/or interested with a $5 FOIA request using Muckrock if interested. FOIA request templates are available. I see no existing FOIA requests for this jurisdiction within scope of Flock as of this comment.
https://deflock.org/foia
https://www.muckrock.com/search/?q=Winona+Flock
> Each camera is valued at approximately $3,000, putting the total loss at roughly $24,000. That cost falls directly on the Winona Police Department’s budget.
Only if they replace them...
Are they contractually obligated to replace them? IIRC, some municipalities have been covering the cameras with trash bags because they cannot turn them off or remove them until their contract expires.
I think there is a difference between turning them off/removing and having them be stolen/destroyed. I would be shocked if they would be forced to repurchase them.
They're usually leased. So yeah they probably owe Flock new ones.
That would make the loss $48,000 ;)
Wait until you find out where they get the money from to replace them
The city planning pyramid scheme: buy things you can't afford with bonds so that 20 years later when everyone is done raising their kids and moves out the people who move in have to debt service with crumbling infrastructure and schools.
Bonus points if you pass a bunch of laws and rules that make it nigh on impossible for the next generation to develop any commerce that could possibly pay back your debt right before cashing out all your equity and moving to Idaho or Florida.
If you own a $20,000 car and I steal it, is your loss not $20k? (excluding depreciation etc)
Sure, if we're talking about total "wealth". Towns might put the cameras on their balance sheet (unless they're just leased in some way), but I strongly doubt that any towns are selling their flock cameras.
Moreover, the quote was about budget - it only hits the budget if they replace them. Likewise, if someone steals your car, it only hits your budget if you replace it or otherwise incur other expenses (taxi, etc). If you shrug because you have 4 other cars, or just walk and bike most of the time, its not really hitting your budget.
If you are leasing your car, you are absolutely on the hook to the dealership.
The city is basically leasing the cameras, and responsible for their cost.
They do not own them.
Haha I had the same thought.
So one of the public-private backdoors to erode citizen's rights is being undermined. Such a shame.
Can you explain how it's eroding rights? It's taking video in public places. Are you against people taking videos in public on their cell phones?
I would be against people standing on every single corner taking video of other citizens 24/7 and handing it over to a private company, yes.
don't forget the taxpayer funds being spent on it!
US courts have held, in multiple cases now, that creating a massive network of datapoints over time, aggregated together, can be a 4th amendment violation in a way that a single datapoint is not.
Without a physical human operating the camera, at the site, yes, it should not be allowed.
This is actually the distinction in many EU countries, i.e. it’s allowed to record a movie if the operator is present, but doing the same thing remotely requires permission from a special authority/agency (that’s not in cahoots with the police).
If those people recording on their cell phones are going to coordinate and provide mass surveillance to the government, then yes, I would hope most people are against that.
The concern is that these cameras can track all your movements in a vehicle (you can make a graph of license plate locations and times), continuously record audio, collect information from other sensors, and that is an affront to the right to privacy. For some reason despite all this surveillance the drugs still flow on the streets. A very Orwellian situation.
It's a network of nation wide cameras tracking movement, which can include foot traffic from people's phones. You're giving police and a private company a lot of power with that sort of data. There was a case of a sheriff in Texas town using a nation wide search to find a woman who had an abortion using Flock cameras after claiming it was used for a missing person case.
This because Texas has a hard on for trying to prosecute women who have abortions.
The same way we can't have a database of gun owners.
> Are you against people taking videos in public on their cell phones?
That's literally not what's happening, though. And any suggestion that it is comes from either ignorance or lies.
I'll let you in on a little secret: there are things you and I can do that the government cannot do, and the police are the government.
I'll forgive you for thinking that the police are just private citizens.
Eventually, yes, if it goes as far as what Flock is doing.
I feel like none of the replies are really cutting to the core of what the problem with your logic actually is—because your way of thinking is incredibly common in tech since it's what we do all day. The fallacy is scale invariance, that the nature of a thing doesn't change when the scale does. Anything you can do you can put in a for loop.
And the equivalence you're drawing is that the fundamental nature of someone recording a video with their phone is the same as a digital panopticon.
Criminals are people too.
So you know how like, "the government" and "private citizens" aren't the same thing, right? Like there are different obligations for both? You do know and understand this, correct? The government has a constitutional requirement not to perform undue/unnecessary search or seizure.
Pretty sure "search" includes "building a panopticon from which all citizens can be viewed at all times", but explain why you disagree.
One thing I’ve learned from reading accounts of Flock camera thefts is that you shouldn’t do more than one per outing. This sounds like a group arranged to do them all at once which also works.
Impressive what a community can do together if that's true .
WINONA, Minn. (Valley News Live) - Every Flock license plate reader camera operated by the Winona Police Department has been sawed off and stolen in what investigators believe was a coordinated theft.
All eight cameras were taken Aug. 1, according to the Winona Police Department. A patrol officer first noticed the cameras had not sent any alerts in 24 hours. When officers checked the locations, they found the cameras had been cut from their poles and taken. The poles were left behind.
Two additional Flock cameras on the Mississippi River Bridge, owned by Buffalo County, were also stolen in the same manner.
Each camera is valued at approximately $3,000, putting the total loss at roughly $24,000. That cost falls directly on the Winona Police Department’s budget.
The eight WPD cameras were positioned at key highway entry and exit points throughout the city: near Highway 61 and Bundy Boulevard, Highway 43 and Homer Road, Highway 14 and Knapp Valley Drive, and Highway 61 and Highway 14. Two cameras were stationed at each location.
Flock Safety cameras are automated license plate readers that capture images of plates along with a vehicle’s make, model and color. Police use the technology to investigate crimes such as hit-and-runs and to locate missing persons. Camera data is owned by the police department and permanently deleted after 30 days.
The thefts are part of a broader national trend. Flock cameras have been vandalized and cut down in communities across the country. The technology has drawn criticism from civil liberties advocates who argue the cameras expand government surveillance and raise concerns about data being shared with third-party companies or federal agencies.
No suspects have been identified. The investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Winona Police Department.
> Police use the technology to investigate crimes such as hit-and-runs and to locate missing persons.
Disgusting copy. We all know that's not their primary function.
I for one do believe that is their primary function. However good intentions don't justify violating our rights or accepting the (demonstrated) potential for abuse.
It might be their intended use (from a police department's perspective), but it's certainly not their intended function.
Flock collects these images, and uses them to train statistical models, and sells those models to police departments as a one-click crime solving solution.
That means that their primary function is to passively aggregate driver behavior into an automated judgement system, where the entire judicial system (designed to check and balance itself) is laundered away. Flock cameras exist to fundamentally replace police work, not to assist with it.
You may be right but that's too conspiracy-theory for me. Most things are as they appear. Either way, I don't support it.
Would be a shame if the public had no such information. /s
LLM summary I suppose?
Who would include "Anyone with information is asked to contact the Winona Police Department." in a HN comment?
That right there is the FA from the acronym RTFA
Looks like a direct copy from the news site.
It isn't a summary. It is every word of the original article copied and pasted. I can understand doing that in something that is paywalled, but I didn't have any problems getting to the article.
...LLM summary?
If you clicked the link and read the article, you'd quickly realize that they copy/pasted the article into a comment.
Find flock cameras near you here! https://maps.deflock.org/
And contribute additional ones on iOS or Android.
https://deflock.org/app
Heads up though: not every camera on that map is Flock. In my town, only a couple of Flock cameras are in place, on private property (Lowes is a big user). All the others are owned by my local police department.
Hopefully they had the wits to put a sticker on them saying as much!
Curious that an hour ago, this was the top post on hackernews, and now it has been relegated to the 3rd page.
I thought that was interesting too. I was excited that I got a post to the top and then was like what the heck?
https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png
;-)
It's been pretty interesting to see the proliferation of zines like these around cities
https://www.anarchistfederation.net/new-zine-birds-of-a-feat...
> All eight cameras were taken Aug. 1, according to the Winona Police Department. A patrol officer first noticed the cameras had not sent any alerts in 24 hours. When officers checked the locations, they found the cameras had been cut from their poles and taken. The poles were left behind.
Wow so they did all 8 in in 24 hours. That's quite impressive
Maybe I'm overly confident in Flock's ability to triangulate, but wouldn't government agencies be able to know exactly who is cutting down Flock cameras? Isn't that the entire purpose of these things?
If you roll up on a bicycle with a hat and sunglasses then probably not!
You're so close.
Seems these days the only cross-partisan agreement is resistance to Flock and Axon.
People don't want Big Brother. Politicians unironically trying to positively refer to them as an enhanced Big Brother is completely tone deaf.
And we know that police departments were working with ICE during Metro Surge:
> But the Star Tribune found law enforcement agencies around the country searched several Twin Cities suburbs’ camera data and labeled their queries as civil immigration enforcement — a mechanism used to detain those in the country illegally who have not committed other crimes. A vast majority of the searches were run on Fridley’s Flock Safety cameras as it had looser restrictions on its data than other agencies.
https://www.startribune.com/twin-cities-suburbs-license-plat...
This dozen even get into the dozens of documented instances of officers using the system to stalk people... couple that with Stingray devices. It's not hyperbole to say we're existing under the thumb of Big Brother.
Resistance to or acceptance of Flock/Axon is going to be a big tipping point in an already over-surveilled country.
>Seems these days the only cross-partisan agreement is resistance to Flock and Axon.
Also: Don't sell the World Cup to Private Equity.
I just watched Benn Jordan's video about Flock's (numerous) vulnerabilities last night. Pretty crazy to think what people can do with these if they can get their hands on them.
Does anyone actually know how the data is stored? They seem to _imply_ they're not storing images, merely license plates. Oh, and presence of bumper stickers bike racks and other vehicle metadata to create a unique fingerprint. So are they implying they merely store a descriptive hash, and discard the images?
Of course, until the revenue knob needs a little tweak, and they start hashing the human data....
Does it matter? It's stored. If you have the data it can be misused.
Yes, it matters to me, because I'm curious.
This is good. I'm pretty sure Flock cameras have been used more often to stalk cops' exes than solving any crime.
I hope all the cool people doing all the cool things in current year are not doing cool vandalism just because its a cool thing-to-do that they saw on Reddit in current year. Other cool things cool people are into in current year; Cyber trucks are still on the road, and data centers are still being built.
I’m with you. Vandalism is not the right path.
The anti-camera things are also somewhat effective at getting rid of London's ULEZ cameras. Quite admirable that this coalition of quite disparate interests was able to form around opposition to the specific device used to manage different objectives.
> Winona Police Department's Flock cameras
Does Winona Police Department actually own these cameras? Or is this heading technically deceptive.
You can't have nice things until you can trust the government: https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1320/12059.htm /sarcasm
Gotta vote out those who voted this in.
Good, but when do the nerds put on suits and lobby to make mass surveillance tools like Flock illegal?
>Each camera is valued at approximately $3,000
Wow. Those must be some really nice cameras...
seems cheap to me.
Good. It's nice to finally see some mainstream support for privacy rights.
good
Good, keep fighting the good fight!
Coincidentally, ran into a YouTube short testing how to cut down steel poles quickly yesterday, with battery powered tools.
Sawzall, 1m 15s, circular saw 1m, circular saw like 20s.
https://youtube.com/shorts/aAc3Kq0bFPs
Yet to see anyone describe what to do once they are down. They for sure have all manners of wicked battery backed up trackers etc, I'm sure.
(This would be highly illegal to do and you should not do it, even to evil surveillance cameras that hoover up our lives to terrifying central databases, even if these are ragingly unpopular.)
Flock cameras are typically mounted on aluminum alloy poles. Easier to cut than steel.
an into a YouTube short testing how to cut down steel poles quickly yesterday, with battery powered tools. Sawzall, 1m 15s, circular saw 1m, circular saw like 20s.
Manual pole cutters have existed for at least 100 years. No batteries. Almost zero noise.
You put one on the pole, walk around the pole once, and it's cut. They were used a lot in the 1970's when people were rebelling against parking meters.
I believe it's part of the opening scene of the film Cool Hand Luke.
rocks and rivers my friend :)
not exactly right. the first is an abrasive disc. that's the right guy for steel, but doesn't work great in aluminum because its very sticky and melty. the third is a metal skill saw blade. I really wouldn't use this with steel at all, but you definitely want to cut aluminum and not grind it. the tool I would normally use for this is a portable bandsaw, with speed control that you would set high for Al and low for steel, probably pretty close to the skill saw.
One of my bigger concerns with this story, given the Flock CEO's public statements, and this Administration's attitude towards such things is how easy it might be to attempt to spin, or pursue, this as "domestic terrorism" rather than "vandalism".
Half the country already considers that label a joke.
Lets be clear, Flock itself is is also breaking the law and refusing to remove it's camera's from city's properties. The cities, apparently, have no recourse but to cover Flock's vigalante cameras with plastic bags to block their view. This is not a one sided case of illegal property damage and trespass. Flock corporation is acting illegally too. Only no one in government is willing to hold them accountable in a court of law.
I'm not saying you should, but cheap laser pens can do fair damage to a camera CMOS sensor.
I discovered that with my Sony Ericsson k700i with a laser pointer when trying to take a picture of the laser.
what if this was a ultra genius move to end authoritarianism by being so blatantly bad that we actually get a new amendment added for right to privacy and flock was a non profit all along
Fuck Flock and any other mass surveillance company.
...total loss at roughly $24,000. That cost falls directly on the Winona Police Department’s budget.
I thought flocked owned the hardware?
The need to double the number of cameras so that they can see from one camera who is cutting the other camera.
sure hope whomever did that knows what they signed up for
this is not how you affect political change no matter how noble
over $1000 in damage so felony
and if they went from location to location with a smartphone pinging, all cops have to do is find out what phone was at all those locations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
If I'm ever on the jury of somebody charged with this, the prosecution has an incredibly high burden to convince me the poles and the cameras on them didn't die of natural causes.
Maybe if police weren't using Flock cameras to stalk their ex-wives [1][2].
There's an interesting angle to the Flock issue I heard recently. Some predominantly black communities prefer Flock cameras because they're over-policed, black men in particular are more likely to be pulled over on "routine" traffic stops and those stops have a skewed chance of ending in violence of death. As a reminder, US law enforcement kills over 1000 civilians every single year. Over half of those are black men and black men are only ~6% of the population.
But that's really a lesser evil type situation because the police simply shouldn't be killing so many people.
[1]: https://www.firstalert4.com/2026/08/03/brentwood-officer-acc...
[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-pol...
Classic jury nullification.
I suspect there is more at play here than activism.
In many 3rd World places you must conceal/hide surveillance cameras because they are a valuable asset worth stealing.
PSA: third world means non-aligned in the cold war. It's use in 2026 is meaningless at best.
The use and meaning of words shift over time. Today, third world just means less developed.
In 1995 it meant that. Today it is meaningless
>It's use in 2026 is meaningless at best.
not really. the word has evolved enough that dictionaries and wikipedia acknowledge the common-day usage of "underdeveloped"
Wikipedia and dictionaries are wrong. It has a different usage than "underdeveloped" and that usage at best doesn't have a clear meaning, and at worst does have a clear derogatory meaning
>Wikipedia and dictionaries are wrong.
sorry, but no one is taking some random HN user's definition over established dictionaries on what a word means.
perhaps you can convince enough people that the word will evolve into whatever you imagine it to mean, and then the dictionaries will be updated to match.
The dictionary is an attempt at systematically defining the semantic meaning of language subject to cultural constraints in the same way that a writing system is an attempt at visually rendering a spoken language subject to technological constraints. I know from personal experience that the people who work on dictionaries have a less authoritative view about them than you do.
Today I learned something new. Thank you
it is bad to see theft of physical property as a good thing
It wasn't private property. It belonged to the people and the people decided they didn't want it. It's bad to see people being forced to break the law to retain their freedom, but it's a good thing that folks are still willing to fight for it.
Good point. It's public money that funded it. Just like drug research. We should be demanding ownership over the fruits of our tax dollars
"but it's a good thing that folks are still willing to fight for it"
This is at least as likely to be theft as much as civic action. There are far easier ways one might permanently inhibit these cameras than cutting them down and taking them away.
> There are far easier ways one might permanently inhibit these cameras than cutting them down and taking them away.
Like what? Setting them on fire or shooting them might be easier, but it's more dangerous.
Assuming the enclosure isn't armored (I wouldn't know...) a ladder and a power drill with a long bit would make very short work of these.
A handful of thieves/activists are not "the people". A town hall, vote etc... would have the backing of "the people". If that happens and theyre still not removed, then perhaps actions like these might be justified.
Perhaps the activists were representing the people, but were unfortunately under a Makita/DeWalt NDA, and cannot make public their deliberations and actions just yet. Rest assured they are acting in your best interests.
It is good to see the public reclaiming ownership of public property, and setting conditions on its use.
it is bad to see 'good thing / bad thing' as the only available frame
It is good for liberty when tools of authoritarian control are destroyed.