> deletes one local copy.

I think you’re being a little too generous here.

> 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

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...

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.

> 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.

> 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"?

Flock data can be accessed by cops nationwide who have different (or no) restrictions on data retention or privacy compared to local police.

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 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.

> And we know that police departments were working with ICE during Metro Surge:

This is why I don't think the opposition to Flock cameras is actually cross-partisan - there's one poltical party in the US that thinks that deporting illegal immigrants is immoral and worth physically attacking law enforcement over; and one party that does not. And I think a huge amount of anti-Flock sentiment is driven by the fact that it can be used to track down illegal immigrants. In my area pretty much every time Flock cameras come up, a major argument against them is that the footage can be shared with ICE - it's taken as a given that cooperating with ICE is bad and that allowing illegal immigration is good.

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...

rocks and rivers my friend :)

Flock cameras are typically mounted on aluminum alloy poles. Easier to cut than steel.

If you roll up on a bicycle with a hat and sunglasses then probably not!

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.

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-...

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

Haha I had the same thought.

Would be a shame if the public had no such information. /s

> 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.

Impressive what a community can do together if that's true .

It is good to see the public reclaiming ownership of public property, and setting conditions on its use.

It is good for liberty when tools of authoritarian control are destroyed.

it is bad to see 'good thing / bad thing' as the only available frame

PSA: third world means non-aligned in the cold war. It's use in 2026 is meaningless at best.

If you've read anything Garry Tan has said, you wouldn't be curious.

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.

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.

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.

That would make the loss $48,000 ;)

If you own a $20,000 car and I steal it, is your loss not $20k? (excluding depreciation etc)

LLM summary I suppose?

Who would include "Anyone with information is asked to contact the Winona Police Department." in a HN comment?

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?

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.

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.

Today I learned something new. Thank you

Flock data can be accessed by anyone. Literally. anyone. at anytime. Go see for yourselves.

https://measuredcollective.com/flocks-ai-surveillance-camera...

You know, unless they get a national security letter, or change their TOS, or....

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.

That right there is the FA from the acronym RTFA

...LLM summary?

If you clicked the link and read the article, you'd quickly realize that they copy/pasted the article into a comment.

I live in a small town with daily break-ins and fly-tipping, "hugger muggers" taking off jewellery from elderly, etc. - when they were introduced here it was basically a "then everyone clapped" moment. Small town people can and will want these cameras. They have been a godsend in my community.

They do not own them.

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.

Eventually, yes, if it goes as far as what Flock is doing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> or other defense stuff. so it's very exceptional for them.

9 Mothers.

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/9-mothers-corporation

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.

I am against people zip-tying themselves to traffic lights and taking 24/7 video with their cell phones, yes

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).

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.

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

Wait until you find out where they get the money from to replace them

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.

I think you are overselling it a bit. 60-some cameras were misconfigured for a relatively short period of time.

That's a bit misleading given that it's a subset. 404media cites "at least 60".

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...

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.

I thought that was interesting too. I was excited that I got a post to the top and then was like what the heck?

I’m with you. Vandalism is not the right path.

They're doing the Lord's work

seems cheap to me.

I believe Garry Tan would enlighten you if you read/listened to him

Does it matter? It's stored. If you have the data it can be misused.

lol love that he is quoting an AI that is quoting KTVU

Garry tan was enlightened by thiels Greta is the anti Christ talk.

YC has this way of always putting eccentric fibbers who tell tall tales in a leadership role. Altman before, Tan now. For the love of god, just put an HN mod in charge. But that's not going to sell a dream now is it, and that's what investors in YC are looking for. But it all tracks based on what PG has written and spoken on. I think it's unlikely YC could exist without its leadership not caring too much about laws and whatnot, because it attracts founders who shouldn't care about them either.

Classic jury nullification.

Black communities are underpoliced, not overpoliced. Black men commit a hugely disproportionate amount of violent crime compared to their percentage of the current American population - "13 commit 50" is a meme for a reason. We should expect that legitimate killings of dangerous criminals by cops who are in the process of investigating immediate criminal activity will skew towards black men; and that attempts to correct this racial discrepency will result in a greater risk to the public at large and also to cops themselves.

That's not to say that putting up Flock cameras in communities with large numbers of black people isn't a good idea - black people themselves are very often the victims of crimes committed by black men, and all the benefits Flock cameras have for making it easier for the police to arrest street criminals apply to predominantly black communities as much as anywhere else. I think that black people are as capable of complaining about being disproportionately captured committing crimes on Flock cameras as they are about being disproportionately pulled over by the cops; but there's still good reasons to like policing methodologies which reduce the need for car stops in general.

Half the country already considers that label a joke.

Yes, it matters to me, because I'm curious.

The those in power that are the system are what matter. It doesn't matter most people believe or want because the corrupt, self-serving system and regime does whatever the hell it wants without a care. And because so many are passive and silent, they give consent to it.

1350 is a neo-Nazi dog whistle.

Think about it this way, let's say that black men committed more crimes per capita than men overall. That means one of two things:

1. There is an intrinsic reason. That's just racism. Black people are no different to any other people. What you're suggesting is that they're inherently violent, basically; or

2. There is an extrinsic reason. Put another way, there's a confounding variable. This part is true. The confounding variable is poverty. The link between poverty and crime has been known about for thousands of years.

It's ridiculous and unfounded to claim black people are "under-policied". They're 20% more likely to be stopped for a "routine" traffic stop ("driving while black" is a thing for a reason) [1]. This evidence is solid enough for this that when it's dark this number drops when the police can no longer see the driver in the car. The empirical evidence for over-policing is overwhelming (eg [2]). They tend to get longer sentences for the same crime and are found guilty more often, particularly when there's a racial disparity in the jury, which there often is.

[1]: https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2020/may/bl...

[2]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10242413/

It seems likely they retain the whole video for a bit, but that is a huge amount of data, so then it's better to finger print and timestamp and toss the video after x days.

>It's ridiculous and unfounded to claim black people are "under-policied".

You should try reading the book "Ghettocide." From heavily right-leaning </s> The New Republic:

"In this non-fiction murder mystery, Leovy’s central message is simple, contrarian, and extremely convincing: The plague of “black-on-black” homicide is the result of under policing. What’s troubling our criminal justice system, she argues, is not preventive policing techniques (e.g., stop and frisk), but rather an abominably low solve rate for black homicides. When the son of a black detective is murdered senselessly in South L.A., a relentless white detective is brought in to solve the case, and Leovy gets a riveting story in which to package her theme."

>The empirical evidence for over-policing is overwhelming

The study specifically agrees with the thesis of Ghettocide: "The second theme was Black youth’s experiences with the police cultivates mistrust and unsafety, with subthemes including police seen as more likely to harm than help, police not resolving injustices against Black people".

I think probably what I'm getting at with my curiosity is, who and what defines the metadata that is kept?

They describe it as a "motion activated camera" but I think it's pretty clear they're just recording 24x7 (but probably not uploading! most of the time!)

I'm guessing some on-device logic does the "motion capture" logic. What software then decides an "object of interest" and decides how to hash it? Are the still frame(s)/video sent to a server for analysis, or is that done on-device?

We know they store and catalog vehicles based on license plates and other bits of metadata. But what is uploaded, where does the processing happen, what is actually stored, etc?

Obviously it's a camera so it's trivial to turn it into a facial recognition camera, but does the on-camera software need to be updated for this to happen, or can it just be done server-side? Are they already retaining stills and videos of people on purpose (rather than just incidentally), but not _yet_ cataloging it (officially?)

Anyway. I'm curious what the public answer to all of these questions is, and then, obviously, I'm curious what's _actually_ happening behind the scenes. We know what can happen, but there are a lot of things we don't know for sure.