Even though it's become commonplace in the last 20 years, I'm still shocked to see how companies can pretty much ignore the law, do whatever they want, and have everyone involved shielded from any kind of significant consequences.
In situations like this, I think the person at the top of the chain that told employees to perform the illegal installations should be arrested and charged. On top of that, the company should be fined into bankruptcy. If the directors knew about it any companies they're involved with shouldn't be allowed to conduct future business in the municipality (or state).
They were co-operating/conspiring with CBP as an extension of the federal government.
Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense.
Don't think your company could just put up cameras and post the location of LEO and they'd let you get away with something like that.
> Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense.
This sounds like some sort of legal procedures adopted from the USSR.
A bunch of companies seem to be relying on similar federal cover. To me it seems dumb because whatever legal exposure they create will outlast the current administration. It’s impossible to predict who will be running the federal government 3 years from now, and liability does not evaporate much in that time frame.
The next administration could decide to side with localities, and assist prosecutions of the companies and executives involved. Or even pursue their own federal prosecutions.
As an ex-employee of Flock, I can guarantee that this most likely came from the top down. The founder has a vision that isn't just aspirational, but literal, in his eyes, "Flock should help eliminate all crime." Very much Minority Report. He sees Flock as the unsung heroes of the community, and any collateral damage is an acceptable price to pay, despite lip service being paid to ethics:
For example, their "suspicious behavior". Cameras reporting to HOAs and to LE of vehicle behavior that is suspicious or aberrant to their AI (changes in parking behavior and times, for example).
Sharing of data between entities that aren't meant to be sharing (HOAs sending data to LE, for example, when prohibited by the state. Flock's position is "not our job to stop you, even if we know that your state says not to").
A very ... opaque ... "transparency report". In my county alone, there are at least four agencies using Flock that are not listed in their "Agencies using Flock" data.
Confiscate the shares. No compensation. Effectively nationalisation as punishment.
Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke, but the work still gets done.
If you click through to the follow up article, you’ll find that the city covered the cameras with black plastic.
Sometimes low tech solutions work pretty well. And since the cameras are under contract to the city, on city poles, I doubt there’s anything the feds can do.
It is pretty clear to me that many of the things companies do get away with would land regular Joe in jail with high reliability. I think we have to start making CEOs more liable for such things, especially when done on their explicit command.
Not even just regular Joe, a lot of the things large companies get away with would lead to far harsher consequences for small or medium sized ones. Any normal company spying on people's devices at the scale of Facebook, selling dodgy goods on the level Amazon does or ignoring guidelines in general like Uber and AirBnB used to would get absolutely wrecked by the legal system.
The system needs to be way more even when it comes to dealing with individuals and companies of every size possible.
Not just CEOs, make employees liable. Going after the soft targets first will reduce the resources and influence of the harder targets at the executive level.
> On top of that, the company should be fined into bankruptcy.
Fines need to increase with subsequent offenses, otherwise they become just a number in the cost of running business. If the fine is 100k, but the profit from breaking the law is 1M, then it makes more sense to keep breaking the law and keep paying the fine.
Instead the fine should increase every time. The first time it's easy to pay the 100k, but then it rises to 200k (still worth), 400k (not so much worth it), 800k (barely profitable), 1.6M (actual loss) and so on. Of course this only works if the fine keeps increasing faster than the profitability of the crime.
It was a mistake to treat corporations as the legal person responsible for these things. The officers of the corporations should be held legally responsible for breaking the law.
I've always maintained that if a corporation breaks the law, the entire C-suite should be individually charged as if they personally committed the crime. It's their company and their responsibility.
First of all, I think that this instinct to fine-'em, screw-'em, etc. is profoundly authoritarian. It is extremely important for a civil society not only that predictable laws are put into place, but also that predictable enforcement of those laws exist. I jaywalk almost every day. I understand that if a cop sees me jaywalk, he will fine me. I also understand that if the cop wants to put me in jail for jaywalking, he cannot do that, and the law would be on my side. On my side, me, the offender.
The reason is that the law not only specifies what people should do what is allowed and isn't allowed, but also what the penalties are for breaking the law. A law stating "People are required to do X" or "People are forbidden from doing Y", without any penalties specified is not worth the paper it is written on and cannot be enforced in any way (at least that's how it works in my jurisdiction, Romania).
And that is all very well, and how it should be, in a law-based state.
Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government.
"The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order. In much simpler terms, citizens and corporations are only required to follow legal orders and are not required to follow illegal orders, given by the executive. Who decides what is legal? The judiciary.
This is what it means to live in a society with a separation of powers.
> The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation.
A cease-and-desist by the executive is not a law. The corporation's opinion is that the contract termination is illegal. And therefore that the cease-and-desist is illegal. Perhaps they're right. Perhaps they're wrong. But they have the right to bring the thing to trail.
"Well maybe they have the right to bring the thing to trail, but until the trail is ruled in their case, they should follow the orders of the executive.", I hear the objection.
Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point.
"So the executive cannot do anything to get those cameras down until the trail is solved?"
Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter.
Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.
> “Flock unlawfully made data collected within Evanston and the State of Illinois available to federal agencies,” Ruggie wrote, referencing the findings of Giannoulias’ audit. “This is not a procedural error; it is an intentional and unauthorized disclosure of protected data… Let it be absolutely clear: this breach is material, intentional, and cannot be cured. The City will not entertain remediation efforts or renegotiation.” [0]
I can't seem to access the audit in question [1] and there are connected articles that seem to also be talking about forest park police using camera readers.
Whatever the case, there seems to be reasonable doubt in the trust in Flock Safety. I don't understand how an illegal termination of contract would result in anything other than Evanston having to pay out the remaining fees and maybe a cancellation fee.
> It is extremely important for a civil society not only that predictable laws are put into place, but also that predictable enforcement of those laws exist.
At the moment, this doesn't exist either. Particularly on the low end of offenses, selective enforcement and racial profiling run rampant, and not just in the US.
Any decent developed society takes laws that have gone outdated off the books entirely - the exceptions are the US and the UK, about the only nations in the world that didn't have at least one revolution, war, putsch or peaceful regime change that was used to reboot the entire legal system from scratch and incorporate decades if not centuries of progress.
You don't deserve the down votes you're getting for this clearly thoughtful comment.
You're wrong in a number of ways, and to me it reads like an unintentionally shallow take, built up more from cliches over deeper understanding. But it's still well above average or engagement and insight of the average HN comment, thank you for writing it.
> First of all, I think that this instinct to fine-'em, screw-'em, etc. is profoundly authoritarian.
It's not authoritarian, simply because when it's the citizens angry about some group acting against their interests, who've elected to ignore a reasonable and lawful order from the operations group of their elected officials. It might be dangerous, or needlessly hostile, or the result of toxic rage. But it's not authoritarian.
> Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government.
Except, that's exactly what they are doing. Flock is a privatized spy agency, who's been told by a city and it's population to "go away" They did, but then without explaining their actions, they reinstalled spy equipment. If it was as simple as not wanting to be ousted from a contract, there's contract law. They can collect the full amount, plus any damages without reinstalling the spy equipment they were already caught using to violate state law. Given they've already proven they're willing to violate state law, what would you say the operations branch *should* do? Roll over and say, you got us, keep spying on our citizens against their interests!
> "The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order.
This is technically true as in accurate, but it's not applicable to this story. This private company had a contract with the city, they violated the law to the detriment of the people while exercising the benefits provided by that contract. That's reason enough for the city to terminate the contract and demand the other side to comply and relinquish the previously granted contract benefits.
While originally they seemed to be complying, but then reversed course and caused more damage to the city. This is clearly (to me) bad faith behavior, and deserving of additional punishment, the other comments you are chastising, with takes that are charitably described as shallow, are only enumerating common punishments they they feel would compell pro-social behavior from CEOs and companies. Two groups that have proven to be very resistant to acting in a pro-social way.
> Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point.
You're simply wrong here. The only loss this company can show, is the contractual payments. The invasion of privacy and loss of safety felt by the citizens can't be cured by more money as easily as the losses the private spying company might incure. Thus while waiting for the court judgment, the company should be the party to bear the restraint.
Additionally they can't violate state laws to make money. Which they did and are still doing. Their agreement with the federal government I assume is contract and payment based, and they weren't served with a warrant to reinstall the cameras.
> Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter.
The operations side of the government can also ask and make demands. And if Flock cared about their public image they would comply eagerly. If they cared about protecting what the citizens wanted, they would comply eagerly. If they didn't want to be the bad guys in the story, they would comply eagerly. Contacts can be amended through the agreements of both sides. Flock might have had a chance to pretend they were acting in good faith, but reinstalling the spy cameras they removed without a clear public explanation absolved them of any good faith.
> Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.
The system was built to serve the needs and desires of the people who live within the government and society. No matter what you or Flock feel like contract law should let them get away with, is irrelevant to if the system is working correctly. Flock is acting outside the interest of the society they're spying on. Rules lawyering doesn't mean that the system is working.
If government fails to prosecute crime then laws are pointless, and in the west we have had a significant swing, especially in high population centres, towards electing governments and officials that refuse to prosecute crimes.
That is because we are moving away from Democracy and rule of law and towards Feudalism and aristocracy. In such a system, the law is not blind but it is applied depending on the accused social status.
Feudalism is not a good goverment system to produce wealth nor well-being. It is very good at concentrating the diminishing wealth in a few hands, thou.
That's Silicon Valley and tech's whole thing: move fast and break things (the law). Uber, Spotify, OpenAI: all began by flouting laws and were rewarded. And of course now we have a convicted felon of fraud as President doing his best to remove any chance of prosecuting fraud. This whole site is built on people wanting to break laws.
Well, if we consider it fine for people to commit crimes like shoplift, rob, or assault people it seems fairly normal to permit groups of people to violate the law too.
Lots of fans of Luigi Mangione and this hasn't directly killed anyone yet.
I'd say it's just a general tolerance to the idea that the rules we have are baroque and anything goes when trying to reach your aims. This seems fairly cross politically unifying.
Those who want the law obeyed are kind of rare. Most are happy to have the law violated to hurt their political opponents. Then they feel surprisingly aggrieved to have same strategy played against them.
The difference is that people are fans of Luigi Mangione because he enforced a punishment for what people feel should be illegal. You're trying to paint vigilante justice with the same brush as lawlessness, when in fact it's the opposite.
One is breaking the law to punish someone that the law failed to, the other is breaking the law to avoid punishment.
The CEO caused vast death and suffering with the policies he enacted in the name of profit, yet the law didn't touch him. Enforcing what the people think should be enforced isn't the same as enforcing what the people think shouldn't be enforced (mass surveillance). It is, in fact, the opposite.
There is a larger issue that other commenters are missing:
> The city has paid the first two years of that extension but would still owe $145,500 for the final three years if the contract is upheld. The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation.
The city is trying to terminate a contract with Flock. Under that contract, the city agreed to pay Flock for three more years of service. Flock maintains that the city doesn't have the right to nullify the contract. The linked article says almost nothing about the contract dispute, but another article [1] has some details.
I don't know whether the city is correct about its power to terminate the contract, or whether instead Flock is correct. Either way, I wonder whether Flock is re-installing the cameras out of fear that, if it doesn't, it will be voiding its right to future payment under the contract.
> I don't know whether the city is correct about its power to terminate the contract
They were unambiguously violating state law intended to prevent this exact scenario when they were sharing the data with the federal government. Some lawyer is going to be having a bad year and a black mark on their resume if they didn't have a statutory breach clause in the contract with a city government and even if such a clause doesn't exist there is an extremely strong case for it regardless.
They have self-inflicted a business disaster upon themselves for doing that in a state like Illinois. In the event this holds up under that legal theory every municipality in the state has a case to dump them, to say nothing of getting new contracts there and in any place that has the same values.
What you're missing is they can get that money without putting the cameras back up. That's what you do when a customer doesn't want your service/product but they still have an active contract.
Yep, paying out the remaining value of the contract is generally the default-court acceptable manner to terminate a contract. And it's probably in there as a clause.
However, if Flock was really being evil, they could argue in court they are losing on the value of spying on the American populace.
"Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a 'pilot program' against state law" they are already violating state law, aren't they?
The core of the debate is that Flock has "fixed the issue", and hence doesn't think the contract should be escapable, the services provided today are ostensibly legal. Definitely a question for lawyers on how the exact terms shake out, if the city has an out or if Flock met their obligations by fixing the access issue.
If what they did was illegal and against city law then the contract with flock is not binding anyway. A bookie can't force you via "the legal system" to pay him back for a bet you made since gambling is illegal. However, he has the option to hit your knee cap with a ball peen hammer until you pay up, also not legal, but effective. Not sure if Flock has similar remedies.
> This decision came after Illinois Secretary of State [...] discovered that Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois cameras in a “pilot program” against state law, and after the RoundTable reported in June that out-of-state law enforcement agencies were able to search Flock’s data for assistance in immigration cases.
This illustrates the textbook argument for why mass surveillance is bad: these tools can quickly end up in the wrong hands.
The people pitching for said surveillance are always the wrong hands if they're from the government. "We here from the government, we're here to help" are very scary words, and be careful if you take them up on the offer
I feel as if ALPRs are already a fact of life. Not thrilled about it, but that’s sort of what license plates are for (ALPRs are really just automated cop eyeballs).
The most disturbing thing, is the behavior of the company. It’s pretty clear that they have a separate contract with the feds, and that contract is the one they care about more.
It’s also an illustration of the faustian bargain that customers make, when establishing these types of contracts. That goes for regular customers, like consumers of social media, SaaS, or data storage apps; not just municipalities, running ALPRs and redlight cameras. It’s like a roach motel; your data checks in, but doesn’t check out. Camel’s nose, and all that.
Basically, all of SV’s business, is about gathering data. That’s why my solitaire apps keep trying to get me to sign onto public challenges and leaderboards.
As lots of folks here have indicated, this behavior will only be changed, by truly holding corporations and corporate directors (and maybe also shareholders) accountable. That’s pretty difficult, in practice. I guess it shouldn’t be easy, as we’d have endless frivolous litigation, but it shouldn’t be impossible, either.
You're right, of course, but the real issue is the lack of corporate accountability, and data stewardship. Since HN has a lot of folks that really don't want people talking about corporate accountability, the discussions are pretty much guaranteed to devolve into macguffins.
Case in point: notice how fast this discussion will dive off the front page. Happens quite frequently, when the topic is one that makes certain folks uncomfortable.
I don’t think that’s the current desired use either. (What they were intended for 120 years ago, doesn’t seem super important though). Setting aside the concerns that dominate all political discussion today on this topic amongst the 31% of voters who voted for Harris (that’s turnout * popular vote), these things are used every day to solve actual crimes. For instance, recently in my state, some dude murdered a woman and then hopped in his car and was caught because of an ALPR about an hour and a half away from the scene of the crime. When the police cornered him, he fired on them repeatedly. If it was not for ALPRs that guy would probably still be on the loose.
Having these keep data for a very short amount of time is a reasonable idea. I don’t think most reasonable people, including law-enforcement really thinks it would be ideal to build a permanent database of everywhere everybody goes. If anyone is convinced that is what they want, I encourage you to try speaking to someone outside your own political party instead of only operating in a social media echo chamber because I think you’ll be surprised how much real people don’t have cartoon villain ambitions.
Flock is so much more than an ALPR, that'd be one thing. They recognize vehicles based on all the metadata you'd expect, color, etc. But they also look at vehicle panels that are a different color, collision damage, bumper stickers and window decals, roof racks, tow hitches, wheels and rims to identify a vehicle.
And then they'll happily run their AI over that knowledge and based on their prompt, if the vehicle is "behaving suspiciously", then they'll ping law enforcement directly and proactively.
I think there is probably a core difference between recording the position of any plate which is wanted pertaining to a crime and recording the position of every plate. I have zero issue with Flock finding suspect plates, but the fact some journalists were able to get logs of where their cars were indicates it is far more overbroad of collection than an automated cop's eyeballs.
Neat. There's only one city in my state that has these cameras. Its the wealthy blue city of Jackson Hole [1] that can't manage to fix potholes. I only pass through that place when taking someone to the airport. Curious if they were able to read my previous military plate which changes number every 5 years. Now I want to get one of these things to play with to see how it interprets my plate. I think I can see a flock on a pole in the live stream.
Same in mine very large suburb. Pretty obvious why they are putting them in Home Depot parking lots too given the amount of shoplifting we've gone through the last few years.
I think you can file a CCPA request to demand that they never store your data at all. Yes, that would be an utter pain in the ass for them, if so. And yet, that's their problem, not yours.
I'm basically in the same boat. There is no practical way for me to avoid having my picture taken 6 or more times every single day. I flip the camera off each and every time I drive/walk by it. It's infuriating.
No that’s vandalism, what you do is get a nice printout of the exact view the camera has and just plop it in front of the thing, like a for sale sign or something. Tape if you have to.
Yes. Absolutely. We incrementally pushed society to this point by incrementally approving more and more surveillance and government intervention across a myriad of issue until it ultimately built up the institutions and precedents and honed the workflows that we're now seeing used for stuff that even the stupid are at least kinda uneasy about.
Readit News
In situations like this, I think the person at the top of the chain that told employees to perform the illegal installations should be arrested and charged. On top of that, the company should be fined into bankruptcy. If the directors knew about it any companies they're involved with shouldn't be allowed to conduct future business in the municipality (or state).
Most likely the feds said they will tie up whoever challenges them in federal court. They can play jurisdiction fuck fuck games and then flip between it being a search, it being necessary for safety, that the city/county was obstruction a federal investigation, and all other nonsense.
Don't think your company could just put up cameras and post the location of LEO and they'd let you get away with something like that.
This sounds like some sort of legal procedures adopted from the USSR.
The next administration could decide to side with localities, and assist prosecutions of the companies and executives involved. Or even pursue their own federal prosecutions.
The keep saying this and losing in court. I don’t have much respect left for these bootlickers who won’t fight.
For example, their "suspicious behavior". Cameras reporting to HOAs and to LE of vehicle behavior that is suspicious or aberrant to their AI (changes in parking behavior and times, for example).
Sharing of data between entities that aren't meant to be sharing (HOAs sending data to LE, for example, when prohibited by the state. Flock's position is "not our job to stop you, even if we know that your state says not to").
A very ... opaque ... "transparency report". In my county alone, there are at least four agencies using Flock that are not listed in their "Agencies using Flock" data.
Appreciate any other insider details you have to share.
Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke, but the work still gets done.
This is better than corporate death penalties but still more complicated than fines. Massive fines are the answer.
> Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke
So do fines and bankruptcy. CEO won’t go to jail, but they’ll spend the rest of their lives fighting shareholder lawsuits. Feed them to the wolves.
Sometimes low tech solutions work pretty well. And since the cameras are under contract to the city, on city poles, I doubt there’s anything the feds can do.
The system needs to be way more even when it comes to dealing with individuals and companies of every size possible.
Fines need to increase with subsequent offenses, otherwise they become just a number in the cost of running business. If the fine is 100k, but the profit from breaking the law is 1M, then it makes more sense to keep breaking the law and keep paying the fine.
Instead the fine should increase every time. The first time it's easy to pay the 100k, but then it rises to 200k (still worth), 400k (not so much worth it), 800k (barely profitable), 1.6M (actual loss) and so on. Of course this only works if the fine keeps increasing faster than the profitability of the crime.
Deleted Comment
The reason is that the law not only specifies what people should do what is allowed and isn't allowed, but also what the penalties are for breaking the law. A law stating "People are required to do X" or "People are forbidden from doing Y", without any penalties specified is not worth the paper it is written on and cannot be enforced in any way (at least that's how it works in my jurisdiction, Romania).
And that is all very well, and how it should be, in a law-based state.
Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government.
"The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order. In much simpler terms, citizens and corporations are only required to follow legal orders and are not required to follow illegal orders, given by the executive. Who decides what is legal? The judiciary.
This is what it means to live in a society with a separation of powers.
> The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation.
A cease-and-desist by the executive is not a law. The corporation's opinion is that the contract termination is illegal. And therefore that the cease-and-desist is illegal. Perhaps they're right. Perhaps they're wrong. But they have the right to bring the thing to trail.
"Well maybe they have the right to bring the thing to trail, but until the trail is ruled in their case, they should follow the orders of the executive.", I hear the objection.
Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point.
"So the executive cannot do anything to get those cameras down until the trail is solved?"
Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter.
Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.
I can't seem to access the audit in question [1] and there are connected articles that seem to also be talking about forest park police using camera readers. Whatever the case, there seems to be reasonable doubt in the trust in Flock Safety. I don't understand how an illegal termination of contract would result in anything other than Evanston having to pay out the remaining fees and maybe a cancellation fee.
[0] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/28/flock-challenges-c...
[1] https://www.ilsos.gov/news/2025/august-25-2025-giannoulias-a...
At the moment, this doesn't exist either. Particularly on the low end of offenses, selective enforcement and racial profiling run rampant, and not just in the US.
Any decent developed society takes laws that have gone outdated off the books entirely - the exceptions are the US and the UK, about the only nations in the world that didn't have at least one revolution, war, putsch or peaceful regime change that was used to reboot the entire legal system from scratch and incorporate decades if not centuries of progress.
You're wrong in a number of ways, and to me it reads like an unintentionally shallow take, built up more from cliches over deeper understanding. But it's still well above average or engagement and insight of the average HN comment, thank you for writing it.
> First of all, I think that this instinct to fine-'em, screw-'em, etc. is profoundly authoritarian.
It's not authoritarian, simply because when it's the citizens angry about some group acting against their interests, who've elected to ignore a reasonable and lawful order from the operations group of their elected officials. It might be dangerous, or needlessly hostile, or the result of toxic rage. But it's not authoritarian.
> Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government.
Except, that's exactly what they are doing. Flock is a privatized spy agency, who's been told by a city and it's population to "go away" They did, but then without explaining their actions, they reinstalled spy equipment. If it was as simple as not wanting to be ousted from a contract, there's contract law. They can collect the full amount, plus any damages without reinstalling the spy equipment they were already caught using to violate state law. Given they've already proven they're willing to violate state law, what would you say the operations branch *should* do? Roll over and say, you got us, keep spying on our citizens against their interests!
> "The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order.
This is technically true as in accurate, but it's not applicable to this story. This private company had a contract with the city, they violated the law to the detriment of the people while exercising the benefits provided by that contract. That's reason enough for the city to terminate the contract and demand the other side to comply and relinquish the previously granted contract benefits.
While originally they seemed to be complying, but then reversed course and caused more damage to the city. This is clearly (to me) bad faith behavior, and deserving of additional punishment, the other comments you are chastising, with takes that are charitably described as shallow, are only enumerating common punishments they they feel would compell pro-social behavior from CEOs and companies. Two groups that have proven to be very resistant to acting in a pro-social way.
> Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point.
You're simply wrong here. The only loss this company can show, is the contractual payments. The invasion of privacy and loss of safety felt by the citizens can't be cured by more money as easily as the losses the private spying company might incure. Thus while waiting for the court judgment, the company should be the party to bear the restraint.
Additionally they can't violate state laws to make money. Which they did and are still doing. Their agreement with the federal government I assume is contract and payment based, and they weren't served with a warrant to reinstall the cameras.
> Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter.
The operations side of the government can also ask and make demands. And if Flock cared about their public image they would comply eagerly. If they cared about protecting what the citizens wanted, they would comply eagerly. If they didn't want to be the bad guys in the story, they would comply eagerly. Contacts can be amended through the agreements of both sides. Flock might have had a chance to pretend they were acting in good faith, but reinstalling the spy cameras they removed without a clear public explanation absolved them of any good faith.
> Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.
The system was built to serve the needs and desires of the people who live within the government and society. No matter what you or Flock feel like contract law should let them get away with, is irrelevant to if the system is working correctly. Flock is acting outside the interest of the society they're spying on. Rules lawyering doesn't mean that the system is working.
Dead Comment
Feudalism is not a good goverment system to produce wealth nor well-being. It is very good at concentrating the diminishing wealth in a few hands, thou.
Deleted Comment
Lots of fans of Luigi Mangione and this hasn't directly killed anyone yet.
I'd say it's just a general tolerance to the idea that the rules we have are baroque and anything goes when trying to reach your aims. This seems fairly cross politically unifying.
Those who want the law obeyed are kind of rare. Most are happy to have the law violated to hurt their political opponents. Then they feel surprisingly aggrieved to have same strategy played against them.
One is breaking the law to punish someone that the law failed to, the other is breaking the law to avoid punishment.
The CEO caused vast death and suffering with the policies he enacted in the name of profit, yet the law didn't touch him. Enforcing what the people think should be enforced isn't the same as enforcing what the people think shouldn't be enforced (mass surveillance). It is, in fact, the opposite.
Way to make me feel like an outcast.
There are also fans of Charles Manson, that doesn't mean we should automatically excuse any bad behavior that falls short of his.
> The city has paid the first two years of that extension but would still owe $145,500 for the final three years if the contract is upheld. The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation.
The city is trying to terminate a contract with Flock. Under that contract, the city agreed to pay Flock for three more years of service. Flock maintains that the city doesn't have the right to nullify the contract. The linked article says almost nothing about the contract dispute, but another article [1] has some details.
I don't know whether the city is correct about its power to terminate the contract, or whether instead Flock is correct. Either way, I wonder whether Flock is re-installing the cameras out of fear that, if it doesn't, it will be voiding its right to future payment under the contract.
[1] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/28/flock-challenges-c...
They were unambiguously violating state law intended to prevent this exact scenario when they were sharing the data with the federal government. Some lawyer is going to be having a bad year and a black mark on their resume if they didn't have a statutory breach clause in the contract with a city government and even if such a clause doesn't exist there is an extremely strong case for it regardless.
They have self-inflicted a business disaster upon themselves for doing that in a state like Illinois. In the event this holds up under that legal theory every municipality in the state has a case to dump them, to say nothing of getting new contracts there and in any place that has the same values.
They are already being accused of breach and the city ordered them to remove them. Reinstalling devices out of "fear" is not a reasonable response.
However, if Flock was really being evil, they could argue in court they are losing on the value of spying on the American populace.
This illustrates the textbook argument for why mass surveillance is bad: these tools can quickly end up in the wrong hands.
Play silly games, win silly prizes.
With respect, they ALWAYS end up in the wrong hands.
The most disturbing thing, is the behavior of the company. It’s pretty clear that they have a separate contract with the feds, and that contract is the one they care about more.
It’s also an illustration of the faustian bargain that customers make, when establishing these types of contracts. That goes for regular customers, like consumers of social media, SaaS, or data storage apps; not just municipalities, running ALPRs and redlight cameras. It’s like a roach motel; your data checks in, but doesn’t check out. Camel’s nose, and all that.
Basically, all of SV’s business, is about gathering data. That’s why my solitaire apps keep trying to get me to sign onto public challenges and leaderboards.
As lots of folks here have indicated, this behavior will only be changed, by truly holding corporations and corporate directors (and maybe also shareholders) accountable. That’s pretty difficult, in practice. I guess it shouldn’t be easy, as we’d have endless frivolous litigation, but it shouldn’t be impossible, either.
They were so that in the non-standard case where something other than "business as usual" has happened an owner could be identified.
Case in point: notice how fast this discussion will dive off the front page. Happens quite frequently, when the topic is one that makes certain folks uncomfortable.
Having these keep data for a very short amount of time is a reasonable idea. I don’t think most reasonable people, including law-enforcement really thinks it would be ideal to build a permanent database of everywhere everybody goes. If anyone is convinced that is what they want, I encourage you to try speaking to someone outside your own political party instead of only operating in a social media echo chamber because I think you’ll be surprised how much real people don’t have cartoon villain ambitions.
And then they'll happily run their AI over that knowledge and based on their prompt, if the vehicle is "behaving suspiciously", then they'll ping law enforcement directly and proactively.
It is utterly Minority Report-lite.
From being a previous employee of Flock I know that each of those captures has some location and timestamp data.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoUOrTJbIu4 [live camera, town square]
Very helpful. In my general area there are almost 100.
I wonder if I can file a CCPA request and get a list of my comings and goings.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/virginia-police-used-f...