[the__alchemist]

This breakdown in rule of law is unfortunate. Ideally, this would be handled by, in order of desirability:

  - Flock decision-makers and customers holding ethics as a priority, and not taking the actions they are due to sense of duty, community, morals etc
  - Peer pressure resulting in ostracization of Flock execs and decision makers until they stop the unethical behavior
  - Governments using legislation and law enforcement to prevent the cameras being used in the way they are

Below this, is citizens breaking the law to address the situation, e.g. through this destruction. It is not ideal, but it is necessary when the higher-desirability options are not working.

[Waterluvian]

> It is not ideal, but it is necessary when the higher-desirability options are not working.

What has worried me for years is that Americans would not resort to this level. That things are just too comfortable at home to take that brave step into the firing lines of being on the right side of justice but the wrong side of the law.

I'm relieved to see more and more Americans causing necessary trouble. I still think that overall, Americans are deeply underreacting to the times. But that only goes as far as to be my opinion. I can't speak for them and I'm not their current king.

[yardie]

You won't get to the kind of change you thought you would see until food runs low and the economy stalls. The American Revolution was rare in that it didn't need to happen. The Founders were just being giant assholes (j/k). While the French Revolution just a few decades later was more status quo. A lot of starvation and poverty just pushed the population over the edge.

[wrs]

What confuses me is that no revolution is required. All we had to do to avoid this was to vote. Voting would still (probably) work.

[KittenInABox]

On the contrary I think Americans are reacting about the same as any other set of people would react. There are always going to be people who, as long as their personal lives are stable, they are not going to do anything to put that stability at risk. America is also huge enough that even if one part of the country is having a crisis, millions of fellow citizens will not hear of it or have any 2nd, 3rd or 4th hand connection to the matter.

But also if a small portion of Americans disparately plan to do stuff like sabotage surveillance camera, it's still newsworthy.

[zamadatix]

I can only hope what people will decide make trouble about is also what I consider necessary. If we could all agreed what was necessary to make trouble about there wouldn't be nearly as much to be making trouble over. It's a very double edged sword which does not necessarily do a very good job at bringing any more clarity of what the moral path was to the country.

[Induane]

The other day in Kansas City some lady set fire to a warehouse that was being sought for purchase by ICE. They are on video and quite nonchalant.

[xnx]

You're fortunate if you live in a community where cameras in public spaces is in the top 20 concerns.

[mywittyname]

> What has worried me for years is that Americans would not resort to this level.

They'll stop once the police (or ICE, more likely) start dishing out horrific punishments for it.

[sanex]

Right? The French know how to riot.

[kbrisso]

I agree. The amount of cameras and tracking has gotten out of control. If America actually becomes an "authoritarian" country (seems almost likely) I imagine all these Flock pics with other data mining techniques will be used to send Communist Progressives to reeducation camp.

[freeplay]

Mass unemployment would/will be the catalyst to mass uprising. All of the fuel is in place (ICE, Epstein, rising costs of everything, unaffordable housing, general lack of hope and faith in the government, etc.) High unemployment numbers will be the spark that sets it all ablaze.

[wartywhoa23]

> I still think that overall, Americans are deeply underreacting to the times.

To put things in perspective, the whole humankind, as in 99.99% of population, is utterly underreacting.

[jeffrallen]

General strike! Close the ports, close the airports, steal dozers and park them on railroad tracks, teachers on the streets in front of their schools to protect their students, blockade the grocery distribution centers, so that the shelves go bare, just stop everything, everywhere.

When it hurts the billionaires, they will tell their politicians to invoke the 25th.

It's the only way, we've lost our democracy, but we still have economic power.

[kilohotel]

Who is the arbiter of "necessarily trouble"? You? Only people that politically agree with you?

[kingkawn]

Get out there and be the change you want to see, king

[gregcohn]

While points 1 and 2 are indeed desirable, point 3 should be moot given we have a constitutional right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable search and seizures.

The combination of ubiquitous scanners, poor data controls on commercially owned date, and law enforcement access without proper warrants compounds to a situation that for many rational people would fail the test of being fair play under the Fourth Amendment. For similar reasons, for example, it has been held by the Supreme Court that installing a GPS tracker on a vehicle and monitoring it long-term without a warrant is a 4A violation (US v Jones). Similar cases have held that warrants are needed for cellphone location tracking.

So far, however, courts have not held Flock to the same standard -- or have at least held that Flock's data does not rise to the same standard.

I personally think this is a mistake and is a first-order reason we have this problem, and would prefer the matter to stop there rather than rely on ethics. (Relying on ethics brought us pollution in rivers, PFAS and Perc in the ground, and so on.)

Given the state of politics and the recent behavior of the Supreme Court, however, I would not hold my breath for this to change soon.

[lm28469]

> This breakdown in rule of law is unfortunate.

Yearly reminder to read:

https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/kurz-the-discourse-of-vol...

[ok_dad]

This is excellent, I second your suggestion for everyone to read this.

[chasd00]

i'm not a fan of lawlessness but on the other hand, i'm 100% ok with the government living in fear of the governed.

[mothballed]

Lawlessness is superior to the law of the tyrant.

Having lived or spent time in a lot of 3rd world shitholes, including a civil war, I've only really felt freedom in places with lawless lack of government, never places with 'rule of law' -- that always gets twisted for the elite.

Of course the same happens in lawless regions, but power is fractured enough, there is a limit on power they can wield against the populace, as the opposing factions ultimately are a check on any one side oppressing the population to leave. They can't man machine guns at all the 'borders' and ultimately corruption becomes cheap enough that it is accessible to the common person which arguably provides more power to the common man than representative democracy does.

I think this element of factions in competition was part of the original genius of the '50' states with the very minimal federal government. But the consolidation of federal power and loss of the teeth of the 10th amendment and expansion of various clauses in the constitution means there is now no escape and very few remaining checks.

[arjie]

In a country like the US with a fairly democratic process at various levels of government, this just means that people with some strong opinions can subject the rest of the citizens to their desires. This is the universal veto on societal order. We can see that the desire for governments to "live in fear of the governed" usually rapidly disappears when people start destroying water lines and power lines. After all, 'the governed' and 'the government' are the same people just with different factions distributed in power.

A government that can't do anything to police unions is also the government living in fear of the governed. A government that can't rein in (say) PG&E is also a government living in fear of the governed. When political representatives are shot by a right-wing anti-abortion terrorist that is also (and perhaps even more viscerally so) a government living in fear of the governed. And I'm certainly not 100% okay with this.

[cogogo]

The thing about that is the governments who most fear the governed are often extremely draconian. I actually do not think that it is constructive and it is precisely that fear that is driving things like voter suppression in the US.

[roysting]

You are unfortunately, for whatever your reasons you have, barking up the wrong tree. The people already made a law, the supreme law in fact, called the Constitution.

In fact the capital criminals in this matter are the people violating and betraying that supreme law; the politicians, sheriffs, city councils, and even the YC funders behind Flock, etc.

It is in fact not even just violating the supreme law, but though that betrayal, it is in fact also treason.

[bezier-curve]

Where in the Constitution does it require us to give up our privacy to private companies with little oversight? Seems like there's contention here.

https://journals.law.unc.edu/ncjolt/blogs/under-surveillance...

[tptacek]

All of this presumes that residents in municipalities with ALPRs don't want them used the way they are. That's not true! These things are broadly pretty popular among a broad set of residents.

[toephu2]

I am in favor of them. There is no expectation of privacy in the public setting. I can record anyone on a public street w/o their permission. If these license plate cameras are making the streets safer and helping to reduce crime, why not? Sure there may be some mis-uses here and there, but for the most part they seem to be working and in places where they are deployed, crime is being reduced.

[array_key_first]

They're only popular because people are routinely lied to. We see this same issue time and time again in "free markets".

If you tell people this will help stop crime and that's it, everyone and their mama is gonna say yes.

If you tell people the truth, that police don't really care to look at the data and this surveillance is going to be used to target innocent people for unrelated "crimes" on the taxpayers dollar, then everyone would say no.

This is also why 99% of surveys are broken. You can get people to agree to literally anything if you just lie a little. After all, Adolf Hitler got elected by promising to fix the German economy and, in a way, he did.

[Grimblewald]

People who rape, murder, and eat children run the country and face no hint of repurcussion. There never was rule of law. Only the appearance of it.

[Larrikin]

Rape is clearly in the Epstein files.

Murder is implied in the Epstein files with an email about burying girls on the property.

Eating sounds like an unhelpful exaggeration, unless I missed a major news story.

[ocdtrekkie]

My guess is the vast majority of the 80,000 or whatever cameras are uncontested politically. Local board meetings for most towns are boring and quiet affairs, and those are also the most effective venue for these concerns.

If you are a taxpayer in a local jurisdiction with Flock cameras and you want them removed, show up to every single meeting and maximize use of public comment time.

Local government is a place individuals can actually be extremely effective but also almost nobody ever actually does.

[majorchord]

How is flock cameras existing, a breakdown in the rule of law? As far as I know they are not technically breaking any laws, even though I disagree with their use in principle.

Some might think it is somehow a Fourth Amendment violation, but I'm pretty sure it has already been ruled on enough times now that there is no expectation of privacy on government-owned roads, except for what's inside your car.

[greycol]

If the law "if you shoot an arrow with no mind to it's direction or destination existed you are guilty of negligence and liability of any damages" existed and then guns where invented you can argue either that the law needs to be updated or that case law will follow the spirit of the law and establish that it also applies to guns. If you are prescriptive and do not believe in the spirit of the law then a new law would have to cover the case of guns. Many would say there is a breakdown in the rule of law if it turned out people could just fire those guns willy nilly and the arrow law did not apply to them.

Similarly if there is a law that says the government can't build cameras everywhere to track you 24/7 without a warrant then post facto get a warrant to justify the prior tracking. Many people believe there is a breakdown in the rule of law when The government can pay someone else who has built cameras everywhere to track you 24/7 without a warrant then post facto get a warrant to justify the prior tracking.

[Avshalom]

Flock would not exist if they held ethics as a priority. It's The Panopticon from the well known book The Panopticon is Unethical

[psadauskas]

Dan Carlin, on his Common Sense podcast several years ago, said something that really stuck with me (and he probably was paraphrasing it from someone else).

Society is like a pressure cooker, with built-in safety release valves to prevent the pressure from getting too high. If your solution to the safety release is to block off the valves, with authoritarian surveillance, draconian laws, and lack of justice for the elites committing crimes, it just moves it somewhere else. Block off too many, and it explodes.

[dlev_pika]

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.”

- JFK

[basilikum]

One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

[brandensilva]

When laws no longer serve the people and you have a lawless government doing whatever it wants, they are merely strongly worded suggestions. We give laws their power so I don't think this government realizes just how poorly things look with the DOJ now and how little trust there is for anything coming out of the federal government.

[JCattheATM]

The higher-desirability options are practically only theoretical in many contexts. See also the United Healthcare CEO killing.

[wolvoleo]

If I were American I don't think the above mechanism would have any chance of still working to be honest.

And I don't think respecting the law still matters when the lawmakers are so evil.

I applaud the people destroying these cameras. It's not violence against people, it's just property.

[nceqs3]

> It is not ideal, but it is necessary when the higher-desirability options are not working.

You are simply imposing your own views on others. Just because you disagree with Flock doesn't give you the right to destroy license plate readers that my tax dollars paid for. Who appointed you king?

[array_key_first]

Nobody said he had the right, he explicitly does not have the right, that's what makes it civil disobedience.

And civil disobedience is basically necessary to have a functioning society long term.

[lm28469]

Who appointed anyone king? Neither Trump nor Flock are kings, both should be challenged, violently if necessary.

[dyauspitr]

I view this breakdown in law similar to the marijuana situation. It’s kind of a villainous administration, green lighting villainous things. The law doesn’t hold water in this case. The people have to do something drastic to get that across.

[user3939382]

We either have out of control govt or civil unrest and only people who don’t know what the latter looks like cheer it on. We’re screwed unless someone unlocks the economy. Right now it’s not happening.

[stego-tech]

I mean, that's excellent wishcasting, but the reality is that current economic incentives combined with a lack of social ("cancel culture" got cancelled because "uwu too mean"), regulatory ("uwu can't hurt Capital or the rich people won't make jobs no more"), and criminal ("uwu can't hold Capital accountable for their actions when they do crimes or people will lose jobs") accountability means that this was always going to be the outcome.

More people need to understand that the system is working as designed, and the elimination of peaceful, incremental reform based on popular demand, along with mass manipulation of human emotions through media and advertising, means that this sort of resistance is the sole outcome left before devolving into naked sectarian violence.

Say what you will, but the anti-Flock camera smashers are at least doing something beyond wishcasting from a philosophical armchair in comment sections or social media threads.

[cyanydeez]

I think you already jumped to far. You can't break the law when the law is broken by every other tier of society.

Sorry, try again!

[closewith]

All those behaviours are consequences of direct civil disobedience, unrest and rebellion - not alternatives.

[thatguy0900]

Peer pressure is apparently not even effective in getting billionaires who could easily hire whatever variety of escort they want from having sex with trafficked children, so I'm not sure in what world it's supposed to stop the billionaires from installing cameras.

[strangattractor]

Guess Flock cameras don't solve quite as many crimes as they claim. Surveillance heal they self.

[meindnoch]

Would someone please think of the rule of law?! :'((((

[scotty79]

> This breakdown in rule of law is unfortunate.

Doesn't breakdown in rule of law happened when a corporation (surely) bribed local officials to install insecure surveillance devices with zero concern for the community living near them?

[AlexandrB]

How many homeowners install mystery-meat Chinese cameras on their houses that feed the data God knows where? Should their homes be vandalized too for their lack of concern for the community?

[ryandvm]

The real breakdown in the rule of law occurred when the US Supreme Court made the specious decision that amoral business entities (corporations) had the same rights in a democracy as citizens.

All this shit flows downhill from Citizens United.

[toss1]

Yes unfortunate, but sometimes necessary

Wait until the governance fails to the point data centers start getting burned down

[some_random]

Rule of law is long gone, neither party has any interest in it, it's more of a guideline of law now.

[skybrian]

Doomer vibes are common, but meanwhile, state and local justice systems continue to prosecute many crimes and crime is on a downward trend [1].

[1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/record-low-crime-rates-are-...

[fullstop]

Are you really both-sides-ing this?

[dyauspitr]

Don’t both sides this. Explicitly point out that the GOP is many orders of magnitude worse.

[AlexandrB]

What other social issues should be solved with vigilante justice?

I don't like all this surveillance stuff, but Flock is just the tip of the iceberg and "direct action" against Flock is just as likely to backfire as it is to lead to changes. More importantly, once you give folks moral license to do this stuff it's hard to contain the scope of their activity.

[GolfPopper]

>What other social issues should be solved with vigilante justice?

Everything you said is true, but I suspect, also irrelevant, because options short of vigilante justice aren't going to be seen by the public as viable for much longer (if they're even seen so now). America's social contract is breaking, and existing institutions make it clear, daily, that they will strengthen that trend rather than reverse it. And as JFK said, 'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.' That doesn't make the violence laudable, or even desirable. It is simply inevitable without seemingly impossible positive change from an establishment that is hostile to such.

[the__alchemist]

This is a nice description (i.e "where is the limit on this type of action?") of a reason why this approach is low on the list, and why ideally we would solve it with one of the other options.

You don't want to give people "moral license" to do this broadly, but we've hit a point where there are no options available that don't have downsides. Stated another way: Taking no action can also be unethical.

[caditinpiscinam]

For me, Flock installing these cameras and other people taking them down are two sides of the same coin. One group puts cameras up in public without people's knowledge or permission, the other group takes cameras down without people's knowledge or permission. I find it kind of beautiful, like the ebb and flow of the tide.

[wonnage]

Consider the converse of your statement

I believe in surveillance, but Flock is just the tip of the iceberg and rolling out mass public surveillance is just as likely to backfire as it is to lead to changes. More importantly, once you give folks moral license to do this stuff it’s hard to contain the scope of their activity.

[8note]

the threat of vigilante mob justice is required for the law to work. its the tension that makes sure the rich and powerful want to stay involved, and be held accountable by it, rather than skipping over it and making it irrelevant.

the threat has to be credible, which is where things like this, and luigi are quite valuable