This will ruin lives, even if they're eventually let go. Jobs lost, evicted from homes, cars towed, pets surrendered and put down.
Lives will be completely derailed, police and judges will not be held accountable. The wrongful arrestees will still be in debt to the local jail and court for various fees they racked up. Trust in the justice system will continue to degrade and more and more violence will be used against people to maintain order.
We hold police to high standards for search/arrest because they have the monopoly on violence. Even if they're wrong, you can't shoot back. Even if they're slamming your loved ones into the pavement, breaking their teeth, you cannot kick the cop in the head or else they have permission to murder you both.
Mass surveillance is a loophole to this contract.
Link for the curious
https://www.thedrive.com/news/how-flock-cameras-wrongly-trac...
https://www.kxlf.com/news/america-in-crisis/aurora-police-de...
Depends on the situation. You'd absolutely be arrested. Get in front of a jury of 12 people and you might have a chance if you have enough evidence for a self-defense claim and the cop acting outside of the law.
Not true. There is case law that allows for self-defense against unlawful use of force, or when when you reasonably believe the force was not coming from an officer (didn't announce, were not uniformed, believed to be imposters, etc).
But - to the OP's point, if you're trying to defend yourself against what appear to be police officers illegally shooting at you, the situation is just going to escalate. One police officer firing at you will shortly become many police officers firing at you. Taking cover or running is preferable to firing back at police.
Okay, but what if they just wear masks and use unmarked vehicles?
Then do they get a pass for shooting you in the back?
I was lucky that for unrelated reasons the trial didn't happen and none of the jury selection stuff went through, but in a few states you cannot just rely on this as an easy out. This is awesome, because for true believers, you can actually do jury nullification. This was actually somewhat recently and notably used: https://www.eenews.net/articles/bundys-acquitted-in-huge-set...
The whole group felt the felony charge was too much for that series of events. Somebody said "I don't want to vote on this". I suggested that is a valid option. The vote was the weakest of all the cases we covered. Several abstentions but just enough to send the case to trial.
To me that is nullification in practice. It is "the community" deciding that they don't believe the State is right in pursuing conviction. Juries are meant to be a randomized "council of elders" type body not just cogs in the machine.
Using your belief in jury nullification as a tool to get out of your duty as a citizen rubs me the wrong way. You have to participate in the functions of civilization if you want it to reflect your beliefs.
If LE "just" shoots at you (i.e. you're not actively firing or an immediate threat - and without commenting on the "should" of that) then... you might be "fine", once you're disabled.
If you're actively firing at LE, they're going to hit you with "overwhelming force" (ever seen a news story where there's 50+ bullet holes in a car, or a suspect shot 15 times, by police? That's "overwhelming force") and any survival on your part is going to be sheer dumb luck and "not very likely".
Yes. That's exactly the point. Comply with every little thing, no matter how absurd, or else your life will unravel.
Look through a historical comment (especially from back when "big data" was the buzzword) thread on any subject where HN is pro regulation and pro government. This is EXACTLY what the useful idiots want.
They want some NYC liquor store owner to pay a hundred grand to the state because that one time he visited NH he loaded up his van with tax free henny to sell back home.
They want that exurban undeveloped lot owner to lose their house for letting their buddy with a tree service dump there and fill in a few hundred square feet over the course of half a decade.
They want some random industrial employer that makes nuts and bolts or something to be fined millions of dollars because their maintenance employees spray painted a piece of equipment in the parking lot without the PPE and pollution compliance measures befitting a commercial paint operation.
They want the jackboot on the throat of everyone who steps out of line on any axis that they care about.
They see the way the banking industry tries to stay away from weed, porn and guns because the upside isn't worth the risk of being combed over by the enforcers. And instead of seeing it as cautionary, they see it as a model that needs to be scaled down to the small businesses and the lowly individual peasants.
Of course they don't lay it out so plainly. They use words like "negative externality" and "antisocial" and "dis-incentivize" to whitewash it but that doesn't change what it is.
Instead of arguing against actual regulatory policy, you are mind-reading malicious intent into hypothetical scenarios (and people) you just invented. Or real examples that you're broadstroking against a "they" which is somehow "HN."
I am not sure how you can justify trying to paint so broad a stroke across an entire community, or feel justified in creating a bucket of "useful idiots" into which you just throw whole classes of unnamed people without engaging with any particular argument.
I get you're angry, my man, but maybe you should question exactly who it is you're angry with.
American police kill over 1,000 civilians and 10,000 dogs per year.
They routinely wrongly arrest people, and create life-ruining situations, especially as American workers do not enjoy as much job protection as Canadian workers.
I get that you want to be offended by his post, but maybe you should question why exactly you're offended at a post that has, at its heart, a lot of actual reality about life in America.
Read what he wrote and I wrote again. Nobody is excusing American police. I'm griping about his attempts to smear random people on this forum.
Nowhere did I tell you you're wrong to worry about American police. FFS, I worry about American police and I don't live there. Hence why I won't even go there.
I said that if you go into policy discussions where HN is pro regulation you can see all sorts of commenters cheering for the pro-jackboot takes and peddlers thereof.
It's a subtle distinction between that and "the whole place is stupid" but it's there.
> I'm griping about his attempts to smear random people on this forum.
Want me to name names? I can go right down the leader board saying who wants jackboot applied and on what policy axis. I don't think that's productive.
"This will ruin lives, even if they're eventually let go. Jobs lost, evicted from homes, cars towed, pets surrendered and put down."
No. The 'domestic violence and prohibited substances' is the part that will ruin lives directly.
Domestic violence, bad. The drugs, debatable, but that's a matter of getting 'weed' made legal, not a surveillance issue.
It's not 'destroyed lives from crime' - it's the 'destroyed civic fabric from an authoritarian surveillance state' ... that is the problem.
It's not the 'incident' that is the problem, because Flock is not helping cops be 'dirty cops' or anything.
It's the totality of it - and the pernicious grinding away of common civil liberties.
Probably we should not be able to use this 'interstate' unless for 'in pursuit of violent criminals leaving the scene of a violent crime' ... which is so rare that it wouldn't make sense.
The only place this should be tolerated is in 'acute areas of high crime, with annual review and judicial warrant' - aka where there is literally that much crime that it's a serious civic concern - and it has to be part of an overall civic plan by the municipality, in conjunction with social services, investment etc - never as a 'lone tool'.
Yes it very much is, there's plenty of evidence
Note that all the other charges against this person were dropped.
That's exactly what Flock is doing. It's just the latest variation on "power corrupts".
I guarantee there is _some_ group that finds some aspect of you, your life, or that of some of your loved ones at least as annoying as you find those things.
checks, it's "people selling untaxed marijuana"
Yeahhhh, we have radically different ideas about what constitutes "they're terrorizing my city".
Casual use of heavy-handed law enforcement makes things much, much worse, not better.
This wasn't a thing 10 years ago and we weren't in a police state
Curious then that you are arguing in favor of a police state with mass surveillance to solve these issues...
I don't think you need to arrest someone because they're selling an untaxed legal substance, no. (And: weed should be legal, if we're talking about a place where it's not).
You can manage this situation better by getting their info and issuing a ticket. On its face, it doesn't warrant an escalation of force, the extra paperwork, or choking up the jails -- all of which represent very real costs to us, the taxpayers.
> This wasn't a thing 10 years ago and we weren't in a police state
Buddy, I have some news for you about the history of the US. Ten years ago, which country/countries had the highest incarceration rate in the world?
>There was a lot less of this petty criminality 10 years ago.
No there wasn't. Or are you saying that because material reality is now encroaching on your bubble?
Oh I wonder what kind of terror he's talking about
> Illegal blocking of sidewalk selling fake handbags
Jesus Christ. If this is what brings you to a surveillance state with open arms maybe you should talk to people outside of your bubble.
I don't. I work every day to help my community and I hope you do the same.
> You don't need a surveillance state
Then don't call for one. If you'd like to change your community, again, I'd recommend you to stop being scared and just start talking to more people around you.
People selling handbags neither threatens my dignity nor makes me indignant.
When I think of "terrorize", I think of things like.. y'know, people strapped with explosives, blowing up buses full of civilians. Or something like the Rape of Nanking, where Japanese army killed and raped their way across the city. The Japanese terrorized the city, literally instilling a nightmarish-level of fear.
I can't place "they're terrorizing me by selling handbags" anywhere in the same universe. If you're genuinely frightened by this, I would like to gently suggest you talk this through with a therapist.
If you consider that terrorizing, you need help.
All of Winona Police Department's Flock cameras cut down and stolen
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171656
241 comments
How Cops Are Trying to Hide Their Use of Flock
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49172076
9 comments
Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156650
118 comments
Flock – Chilling Effects: Long Island's Emerging Open-Air Prison
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49148541
38 comments
Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158837
17 comments
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1v78ihu/...
If it is Flock, interagency communications, license plate readers or just "enhanced stops" for things like a crack in the windshield.
People seem to forget that while buying in one state is legal it actually can become a much larger crime than just possession as soon as you cross state lines. It "can" become a federal matter...
This person in the article attracted the gaze of Sauron.
Locally there was a recent pushback on them and the sheriff basically said "They've been there forever" and "Don't worry...it's just us with the footage"
2. the article address that specifically:
> The case is an example of Flock cameras being used to arrest a wanted alleged criminal suspected of committing a violent crime. But it is also an example of police surveillance overreach *in that the cameras were specifically used to create a pretext to tack on additional petty crimes* based primarily on where a person’s vehicle had traveled.
Regardless, even if the technology was used currently purely for good, when you’re “pro surveillance” you’re actually arguing it will always be used for good, even in some hypothetical future with hypothetical politics. That’s a very hard sell.
I watched them happily train officers from Agencies on doing things they were not allowed to do by law, that Flock knew they weren't.
That "Chinese wall" of separation is nowhere near as concrete as you like to act.
Flock might not set the laws, but when the Flock CEO says he would prefer you to be collateral damage on his company's mission for "a world without crime, thanks to Flock" than dare risk someone not get caught for a crime or alleged crime, via Flock, then sorry, they absolutely are participating in things, and complaints against them are entirely appropriately targeted.
Yes, we need laws to help stop this. Ideally, those laws should entirely destroy Flock's business model and lead to its bankruptcy.
The issue is not whether cameras are useful for law enforcement. The issue is how that camera information is managed and overseen. What Flock is doing would fit right in in a cartoon authoritarian state, but it doesn't belong in the real world.
Apparently the bail jumping charge was weak? That seems like a black-and-white situation to me so no idea what the details were, but there was clearly something wrong with that charge.
If the charge was so weak then they probably couldn't get a warrant to arrest him outright? Therefore they needed the marijuana probable cause to stop and search him.
Regardless the disturbing part is that they're using surveillance state footage of a person traveling to a state where something is legal as "probable cause" for a crime.
> The vehicle was registered to Edward 12-01-1993. Edward had an active Brown County felony warrant with nationwide extradition.
so he wasn't just wanted but also had an active warrant.
> Multiple Deputies checked the area but were unable to locate the vehicle at that time
Police tried arresting him before, but couldn't find him. The police then used flock to find a pattern of coming/going over the state line. I'm guessing they stationed someone nearby to wait for a flock alert and arrest him.
The following is total speculation on my part: The police are including the "Based on prior flock hits, the vehicle travels to Michigan frequently which is a known source State for Marijuana as it is legal there." to build probable cause for searching the car and finding the marijuana.
Otherwise the only PC is: "He declined consent to search his vehicle. However, DeputyKowalski informed him he would be conducting a search of his vehicle due to the odor of marijuana".
Maybe the olfactory skills of officers are so dubious that courts need more facts than just an odor? That'd be my guess.
direct link to the complaint (it's also embedded in the article) https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/28537132/2025cf000671...
Incorrect. Warrants have to be specific. An arrest warrant is not a general search warrant (in fact, general search warrants aren't legal). You don't lose your rights because a cop is arresting you.
Now, what can happen (and probably would happen) is the cops can take a drug sniffing dog to the car when it goes to impound and while the owner isn't there and claim "Oh, the dog signaled on the car so we searched it".
For example, in the 3rd district in New Jersey the odor is not enough because MJ is legal in NJ.
Looks like for this specific case odor is enough. [1]
[1] https://www.wisbar.org/NewsPublications/InsideTrack/Pages/Ar...
Article also states bail jumping charge was dismissed but the weed charge is the only charge that remains.
They actually wanted to add another charge. The cameras helped them find the right opportunity to do that.
If they just picked him up driving around, they would only be able to charge those existing crimes.
By waiting for him to cross state lines, they have a chance to add on another charge.
They already had enough PC for the stop, and they could have searched the car as incident to the arrest at any time.
Unless this jurisdiction is an outlier, the pretext wasn't needed for the search. As the parent comment says, the cops used the interstate travel as a timing strategy to increase the charges.
A warrant requirement makes sense for something like the locations of customers on cellular networks, because it's built into the tech.
When you make the optional choice to create mass spying, safeguards do not make it acceptable.
Experienced this about 15 years ago, was lucky to have my friend along for the ride, who was a photographer. The pictures of those cops are the only evidence we have that it even happened. They wrote a whole pile of tickets that didn't exist when I went to try and pay them.
Another time I had a state trooper say I was doing 140 in a 130hp car. He claimed that because I was wearing cutoff sweatpant shorts that I was growing weed? These dudes are useless.
Forget about all of this, though. If you want to be mad, check out the solve rate for hit and runs over the past 20 years. Damage only cases are something like 1 in 10. Fatalities 2 in 5. With all these fucking cameras. What percentage of those 9 in 10 or 3 in 5 are cops, do you think?
If I asked a random person about this, they'd probably just say - "but they found weed, right?"
This is a very dangerous game, especially if you're not white.
I'm afraid that the way things currently stand, vast majority of people are only gonna see the cases where "it made sense to have that" for years and years, until they feel it one day on their own skin - and then their own story is not going to be heard, just like everyone else's before them. Frog boiling sometimes intentionally takes a lot of time
suddenly EVERYONE was getting tased
it's like that
give them a new "toy" to combat violent crime and instead it's used on everything else because zero repercussions
I am starting to see Flock on the side of the road at every major shopping center
unfortunately like "kavanaugh stops" I suspect the supreme court is going to put their permission into concrete regardless how they are abused
Indeed. Like, no shit strapping a camera and microphone and sending it to an all knowing AI to analyze it all is going to reduce crime. But it's a violation of our human rights.
It's clear these people do not understand the importance of privacy or rights. Crime is already decreasing. The bigger improvements would come from improving society, not restricting people's rights for more "safety".
The officer continued yelling at him to comply, all the while the man was ablaze, shocked, and bruised.
Cops should have tasers taken away. They believe they are "make people do what I say" devices rather than the rare "make this extremely violent person who is an imminent threat to life and person stop being violent temporarily so other officers can continue to use non-lethal force to de-escalate the situation".
Police are actively using flock to identify people traveling over state borders to buy marijuana and search their cars.
What actually happened:
Police used flock to locate someone with an active warrant for their arrest related to domestic violence. They noticed a pattern of crossing state lines at certain times, and used that to nab him. It turns out it was to buy marijuana and his car reeked of it, so he was charged with that, too.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/or-court-of-appeals/212471...
As usual, homie was in the wrong state.
If you don't like some aspect of this, should you be campaigning for removal of flock cameras? Or campaigning for cannabis rights and Controlled Substances reform?
It isn't just cannabis.
what if the law categorizes abortion as felony/murder?
what if the law categorized certain types of sexual behavior as felony?
- Montana LLC ownership of vehicles. Don't own your vehicles ya'll, and at least those license plates won't be traced to you.
- Speak to a lawyer for how to meet any lawful use-tax obligations. Don't use this to avoid paying legitimate sales tax.
- Maybe the insurance company tied to you and your driving of this vehicle, has a partnership with the flock network. Someone argued they could give away your vin-tied identity, though I haven't seen proof this is happening. Plus, if the market shows a need for insurance companies to offer privacy protection, maybe that will emerge.
I trust we can figure out a way to normalize privacy to stand up against crimes and abusive behavior by state officials, the bad police, and an elected class of corrupted leaders who do not care about everyones rights to protect their own safety over yours. I would love if more people would send a powerful message to their officials of how this unconstitutional violation and compromise of basic decency, dignity and safety for most people for the benefit of a few has consequences.
Wisconsin police used Flock travel history to locate an already wanted man and develop marijuana suspicion. An officer’s claimed marijuana odor led to a vehicle search.
