top | item 45382434

Evanston orders Flock to remove reinstalled cameras

411 points| ptk | 5 months ago |evanstonroundtable.com

264 comments

order

donmcronald|5 months ago

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).

mothballed|5 months ago

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.

FireBeyond|5 months ago

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.

hdgvhicv|5 months ago

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.

pjdesno|5 months ago

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.

atoav|5 months ago

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.

HiPhish|5 months ago

> 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.

ActionHank|5 months ago

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.

sli|5 months ago

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.

serbuvlad|5 months ago

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.

flanked-evergl|5 months ago

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.

miltonlost|5 months ago

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.

renewiltord|5 months ago

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.

jbullock35|5 months ago

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.

[1] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/28/flock-challenges-c...

terminalbraid|5 months ago

> 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.

themafia|5 months ago

> I wonder whether Flock is re-installing the cameras out of fear that

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.

burnte|5 months ago

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.

rs186|5 months ago

"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?

conartist6|5 months ago

I would think the commission of state crimes would have an impact on the contract. If the city does nothing they would be an accessory to those crimes

EasyMark|5 months ago

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.

forkerenok|5 months ago

> 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.

Play silly games, win silly prizes.

burnte|5 months ago

> these tools can quickly end up in the wrong hands.

With respect, they ALWAYS end up in the wrong hands.

ChrisMarshallNY|5 months ago

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.

potato3732842|5 months ago

Licesne plates were never intended to be recorded all the time to create a data set of who went where when.

They were so that in the non-standard case where something other than "business as usual" has happened an owner could be identified.

FireBeyond|5 months ago

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.

It is utterly Minority Report-lite.

ocdtrekkie|5 months ago

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.

qmr|5 months ago

These are a lot more than ALPRs. Look into them more / see my other comment in this thread.

sschueller|5 months ago

Bender|5 months ago

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.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoUOrTJbIu4 [live camera, town square]

nxobject|5 months ago

Thankfully, in my city, it seems to be all retail parking lots. But it’s disturbing to see other very, very adjacent cities go all-in on flock.

DoctorOW|5 months ago

One of the closest points in my area is Made/Operated by: "Unknown".

Very helpful. In my general area there are almost 100.

Animats|5 months ago

There's a Flock camera at the end of my driveway. I'm next to a city line, so it's a reasonable location.

I wonder if I can file a CCPA request and get a list of my comings and goings.

kstrauser|5 months ago

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.

r2_pilot|5 months ago

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.

boston_clone|5 months ago

…or someone could knock the damn thing offline.

givemeethekeys|5 months ago

Why sue? Why not impound and fine like they would illegally parked vehicles?

ocdtrekkie|5 months ago

The cameras are not meaningfully worth a whole lot of money.

JumpCrisscross|5 months ago

Is there a good public list of Flock Safety cities? Would be particularly interesting to see where they are in blue states.

thaumaturgy|5 months ago

The best you can get is https://deflock.me/map, which is crowd-sourced, and therefore both incomplete and inaccurate.

Cities tend to resist public records requests for camera locations.

But Flock is currently in ~5,000 communities around the country. They have managed to spread very quickly, and very quietly, and the public has only become aware of it relatively recently.

There is also a good site at https://eyesonflock.com/ that parses data from the transparency pages that some places publish.

jer0me|5 months ago

You can search for cities' transparency portals. Not sure if every Flock customer has one though.

  site:transparency.flocksafety.com

dawnerd|5 months ago

They installed some here at a Home Depot parking lot right when the ice raids started. It was weird that only the home deport owned portion of the parking lot got them which lead to some investigation into who put them up and sure enough flock has a contract with HD.

Blue city in SoCal with lots of migrant laborers.

asteroidburger|5 months ago

There's a crowdsourced collection of ALPRs in OpenStreetMap. deflock.me/map has a display of that data.

potato3732842|5 months ago

>Would be particularly interesting to see where they are in blue states

The answer is going to be "the snooty inner ring suburbs and wealthy rural-ish commuter communities that already had overstaffed PDs harassing teenagers"

sour-taste|5 months ago

Because it's relevant to many on this site, most bay area cities are users

Ancapistani|5 months ago

Community note: it is my understanding, based on teardowns that I've found online, that Flock cameras should be assumed to contain a cellular modem and at least one GPS receiver. At least some have been found to contain an addition, obfuscated GPS receiver.

debarshri|5 months ago

Yes, worked for speed camera company. It does have a cellular modem connecting over VPN or some tunneling with cloud infrastructure.

IlikeKitties|5 months ago

So they aren't even hardwired to the net and can easily be jammed with commonly available Jamming hardware?

nenenejej|5 months ago

Dog whistle!

IlikeKitties|5 months ago

So Fun facts about digital cameras like these: Strong infrared leds at night blind them completely. They sometimes even switch into daymode and become useless at night. Also, lasers are usually not enough to destroy the ccd sensor but only cause small dots to appear[0]. But a Spraycan on a stick can be very effective and of course a silenced airgun for those hard to reach places can be very effective.

[0] Lab Test here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNWNQb2AvQM

privatelypublic|5 months ago

Firing projectiles to destroy cameras (it doesn't matter how the slug is thrown) is... oh why bother, people won't change.

spray-chalk on a stick.

qmr|5 months ago

These are not "license plate readers".

They can and do identify vehicles based on a myriad of other factors. Paint wear, dents, roof racks, bumper stickers, and more.

There's currently a suit filed against them for 4A violations, with supporting case law. I'm also investigating possibility of a federal suit or suit against my municipality for the same. Previous case law has ruled cell phone searches with historical data are a 4A violation and illegal without a warrant.

jmward01|5 months ago

Documenting the downfall isn't enough. What are people going to do about it? Get involved with your local government. Go to city counsel meetings. Join local boards. This is one city that is doing the right thing but more cities could do the right thing if people showed up and demanded this type of invasive blanket search is blocked. We slipped slowly into this but we can claw it back by just showing up.

throwmeaway222|5 months ago

> This decision came after Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias 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.

Well it's obvious then that if it's helping to deport illegals, then keep going!

motbus3|5 months ago

It would be a shame if people starting to break it

exabrial|5 months ago

Legal questions aside, thats another thread, hypothetically speaking, would a burning laser pointer be effective on these?

boston_clone|5 months ago

sounds like it’s your civic responsibility to take these devices offline.

potato3732842|5 months ago

I mean, your local enforcers have publicly stated they're annoyed about them there.

What are they gonna do other than wring their hands and say "oh no, anyway" if they go missing?

camillomiller|5 months ago

Would destroying the cameras be a legitimate act of social disobedience, considering that the company shows a total defiance and lack of respect for the law and society? I would argue it is.

stavros|5 months ago

I would agree.

devoutsalsa|5 months ago

If I were a corrupt government official I would:

- install these cameras everywhere

- make the data available for everyone via an API

- make content about how we're all being spied on

- form sponsorship deals from Incogni & DeleteMe

- profit

daft_pink|5 months ago

Wow. License plate readers are everywhere.

toephu2|5 months ago

Is that a bad thing? I would imagine the only people who don't like this are criminals. But why are so many seemingly law-abiding citizens here up in arms about it?

qmr|5 months ago

Please do not call these "license plate readers". They are far more sinister and have far more advanced capabilities.

tamimio|5 months ago

That city should just make it legal that the citizens can paintball or spray those cameras anytime and anywhere.

mbf1|5 months ago

This will escalate - every new car on the road comes with a bevy of cheap cameras integrated - I get 360 degree views when backing up from my 2018 Chevy Bolt. It's really only a matter of time before license plate scanning computers get integrated - there's already a cellular modem integrated into the vehicle - I don't use or pay for that feature, but it's an opportunity.

drnick1|5 months ago

Nothing a big, heavy mallet can't solve.

qmr|5 months ago

I was thinking more super soaker paint?

They are mounted quite high.

etchalon|5 months ago

If these were installed without authorization, I assume citizens can rip them down without the same.

dawnerd|5 months ago

Black trash bags would be a cheap, non damaging way to cost them money removing them.

userbinator|5 months ago

Or more likely, make use of the 2nd Amendment on them.

AfterHIA|5 months ago

My family is from Evanston and I'm 100% behind this. Evanston isn't a town where the people want mass tech surveillance and I guarantee you knowing my cousins and shit that if you fuck around the wrong way you'll learn the meaning of,

"try that in a small town" in a fucking hurry.

sschueller|5 months ago

"Move fast, break things" seems to me that is also the Trump admin's MO at the sacrifice of democracy. The SV mantra has moved up into politics and is causing permanent damage. If rules aren't enforced why would anyone follow them?

asmor|5 months ago

Aside the topic, but I wonder how HN, as a community, and as a moderation team, weighs this on the intellectual curiosity vs primarily politics scale.

This seems politics to me. Very important politics that a lot of people in tech have a special interest for, but politics nonetheless, and much more pressing topics seem to be absent through the on-topic rule.

iamnothere|5 months ago

I tend to dislike it when purely political posts show up here, but I appreciate the ones that intersect with technology, particularly ones that relate to privacy issues.

rsynnott|5 months ago

This site has always been fairly interested in mass surveillance stuff (which is, naturally, inherently political).

phyzome|5 months ago

It's whatever the mods feel like. For example, posts about Charlie Kirk being assassinated were allowed to stay, and that was basically pure politics.

SoftTalker|5 months ago

HN is 90% AI and politics these days, or so it seems.

saubeidl|5 months ago

That rule is ... kind of nonsense anyways.

One can't be intellectually curious and not think about politics. Politics is applied intellectual curiosity.