Posted by bbatsell 1 hour ago
I personally blame the lack of accountability that police have in the US and the lack of public oversight into how departments operate.
Basically the entire point of the fourth Amendment (and sort of the Bill of Right as a whole) seems to be based on the assumption that we cannot trust the government to not abuse its power, so we purposefully limit its power. At least that's the impression I got, IANAL disclaimer I guess.
If we cannot safely assume that every cop is above-board, which we obviously cannot, then it's trivial to come up with cases of "if you got nothing to hide you got nothing to fear" defense. A bad cop could use Flock to stalk an ex-girlfriend. A bad cop could find some unsavory-but-not-illegal behavior from a politician (e.g. visiting a porn shop) and blackmail them. A bad cop could, as demonstrated by this article, simply use a Flock camera to harass someone they don't like.
I didn't think this was a controversial opinion, but I do see a lot of Flock/mass-surveillance defenders so I guess it is.
Abusing surveillance tools has nothing to do with legitimate policing, so "over-policing" is probably the wrong word.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but it sure sounds bad. Poor communities have frequently suffered the most from police forces, since by and large police are designed and funded by the wealthy to protect their interests.
The police have always been oriented towards protecting the wealthy from the poor.
Malfeasance is the $10 word that's probably more appropriate here for the actions of officers intentionally abusing the systems their authority grants access to.
I don't think the people recording regular police interactions and refusing police instructions when stopped ever had any doubt about being over-policed.
> NSF funding from my relatives: "yes, funding has been illegally cut,..."
How is a cut illegal? Does any additional dollar in funding have to persist for all of eternity. For reference:
| FY | NSF appropriation |
| 1952 | $4M |
| 1960 | $153M |
| 1970 | $440M |
| 1980 | $992M |
| 1990 | $2.08B |
| 2000 | $3.91B |
| 2010 | $6.87B |
| 2020 | $8.21B |
| 2024 | $9.06B |
| 2025 | $9.06B |
| 2026 | $8.75B |
If the Office of Management and Budget follows a president's order to cut NSF funds and they violate the Anti-Deficiency Act, it's literally a crime. If the president orders the violation in order to achieve some political outcome, that's also bribery and extortion.
In this mafia regime it's a case of 'throw it on the pile,' but it doesn't change the fact that this stuff is wildly illegal. The president's job is to be the dumb unthinking agent of Congress and to execute the laws they pass on behalf of the people. Budgets are laws.
Execution will never be as simple as the textual content of a bill, so I'm not sure 'mindless' is a useful term.
While the POTUS is expected to be a bureaucrat, functionally and conceptually that is only one aspect of their responsibilities. Military oversight and diplomatic coordination as head of state, comes to mind.
> The request proposes $4 billion for NSF, a 54% cut from the fiscal year 2026 enacted level. The amount echoes last year’s proposal of $3.9 billion, which Congress soundly rejected, funding the agency at $8.75 billion.
https://www.aip.org/fyi/trump-proposes-deep-research-cuts-ne...
Most people are like this. They care about "cuts" but don't know the amount. They don't even consider the amount, just the direction has to be up and to the right. And they'll even try to spin "cuts in projected growth" with "cuts".
Excuse me? You have no idea who I am or what I think here so what are you on about? I was answering the question, I didn’t say anything beyond that. Ease off the gas.
Also, based on your other comment chain it looks like Congress did not approve it. But I don’t know enough about the specific cut to say either way.
You came in here with a clear ax to grind and decided I was going to be your target. Take a beat.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
That's what's meant by a lack of accountability. Cops abusing their authority to pester people they don't like has been happening for nearly as long as there has been cops. But in modern America they have extra protections and one of the most powerful unions in the US which shield them from all real punishments.
Just being caught abusing the system is meaningless.
> Cops abusing their authority to pester people they don't like has been happening for nearly as long as there has been cops.
I think on net cops are good. We grant them power and put in reasonable guards for them to not abuse that power. And when they do there are remedies, like this guy is pursuing.
People suck. The tool shouldn't exist.
I genuinely do not understand the boot-licking. Bizarre. It show's a complete and utter lack of foresight.
2. It's lack of public oversight because an attorney filing a complaint about an unlawful arrest noticing a suspicious photograph from a month after the incident and then compelling the police to turn over evidence isn't oversight.
Accountability would have started with the officer, who knew very shortly after arresting the victim that the arrest was unlawful, being placed on leave almost immediately. But since it progressed to this point, accountability would look like literally any administrative action being taken whatsoever once the improper use was discovered.
Public oversight would have looked like that audit trail actually being read internally to determine whether there was a legitimate use for the searches in the first place. An audit trail that never gets looked at unless you're getting subpoenaed isn't "oversight".
> Record a cop doing something blatantly illegal and try finding a willing prosecutor.
The cop wasn't doing anything illegal, from the article: While standing in a private parking lot in Sussex, Wisconsin, on May 4, 2025, Napoleon Jones witnessed a traffic stop made by an out-of-county police officer. "It just didn't sit right with me,"
Yeah dog, "just didn't sit right" doesn't really hold up.
Can you cite the law that requires more than “it doesn’t sit right” to record police officers in public?
Strawman. I have never heard of one single ingenuous person that believed these would only be used appropriately.
The main issue is that our government has too much power as to be unstoppable.
For example - I don’t have links to substantiate this yet - but I’d bet the same playbook that’s always used was used here as well. Flock cameras were provided to cash strapped police departments at a very low cost - unsustainably low for any other non vc funded company to compete with - in order to juice growth and build the scale/network effect to make the system valuable.
They are just shameless because making money has been canonized as a greater moral good than being a decent human being. We need to bring back name and shame.
You could argue that YC has more of a conscience than other investors like A16Z. But I'm not sure how much I believe that seeing Gary Tan's moral indifference towards startups that are the incarnate equivalent of the Torment Nexus.
This is a vastly smaller set of situations compared to what a health society would consider acceptable.
There is a huge gulf between what the law allows, and what being a decent person requires, and that gulf is called "being a scumbag."
We should not alter the law to prohibit everything in that gulf, because it would create an authoritarian society ripe for abuse, relying on controls like mass surveillance and the erasure of civil liberties.
However, we can and should name, shame, and socially/commercially outcast people who gleefully engage in the art of being a scumbag.
> trying to make money
It is indeed possible to make money without funding evil things.
There have been 1m “cases supported” and helping to locate approximately 10k missing persons. If you don't believe that look at a few real cases. Every example of a bad case is basically cops keeping tabs on ex-girlfiends or wives. Yes, that's bad but I prefer to save kids from kidnapping.
Saying its "anti-American" isn't an argument. I think it's very pro-American in that it protects law abiding Americans from criminals.
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/how-effective-is-flock
https://www.wbrc.com/2026/09/04/moody-police-woman-charged-w...
https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/galt-flock-kidnappin...
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/mitchell-weber-arrest-...
I always think of that scene in Minority Report where 3 judges are conferenced in live when a “vision” arrived.
Because if used properly and lawfully these cameras can be useful to keep people safe. Including from the cops.
These are police-owned cameras filming public areas. A better solution would be to require court approval to buy and vote these cameras, or where they can be pointed.
But that would be OK as long as a warrant was required to access it, right?
* - All people unable to pay the government to disable the device.
That people defend this is shocking. Absolutely zero foresight.
They can live in gated communities, travel by chauffeured cars owned by contracted businesses multiple LLCs deep, fly in private airports on private jets, or just go live on a yacht in international waters.
He’s kept in jail for 5 hrs before being released for it not being a legal stop just like the vet said. Then that officer tracked him thru flock over 100 times for some personal vendetta.
That's not quite accurate according to the article. It was actually worse: There were over 100 searches and some of them were done by officer in question, but some were done by other officers. This was due to lieutenant's order in connection with Jones' citizen complaint. So it wasn't just one officer abusing the system.
But the far worse problem IMO is that this cop is dirty, corrupt, untrustworthy, and should be punished for stalking this man, and yet he surely will not be. Worst case, he might catch some administrative sanction or maybe be fired - he won't go to jail like he should for this misbehavior.
If you have 1 dirty cop and 100 who ignore his bad behavior, you actually have 101 dirty cops. We need a way to deal with this in our society without resorting to the absolutes of "defund the police" or "back the blue".
there needs to be more separation from prosecutors and cops. I know a lot of places now have prosecutors who are actively against cops, that is not what I mean.
the prosecutors are supposed to be unbiased and make decisions on evidence. we know they don't regardless of their political leaning. but that is the standard we (citizens) should hold them accountable. unfortunately there are too may bootlicking voters who just want to feel "safe" and have zero courage of their own even in the voting booth.
we need to stop giving agencies money based on stats. that is one cause to a lot of these problems. then the cops and agencies get all twisted and in a tissy when a tool that made stat pumping easier like right now the flock cameras.
I think you just need to stop giving agencies money based on bad stats. Goodhart's Law is an extremely well-established effect. At the very least, crime rate should be monitored by a separate department.
what systems could be changed or created to prevent abuse of power?
321 down, Dallas: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/6065838-dallas-police-...
150 down, El Paso: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/public-safe...
ALL on state roadways, Florida: https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/state/2026/09/01/whic...
A dozen agencies cancelling Flock in Wisconsin https://www.fox6now.com/news/flock-camera-pushback-fond-du-l...
A. there is nothing a good person needs to hide (including cops, at least good ones), therefore it should be openly public to everyone and all usage logged and public (to catch abuse), or
B. privacy is important so it should be protected, and while data is collectible, nonetheless cannot be shared without consent or a court order. And none of this fake content that companies claim you gave by walking outside, setting up your phone/account/etc after buying it and being forced to sign so you didn't just buy an expensive brick, etc.
Somehow we went from:
1. People can see and hear your in public
2. Therefore public places are not private
3. Therefore people can record you
4. Therefore it's okay to build a network of cameras that can track and query every place you have ever been
The problem has always been on step 2. The assumption that "public places are not private" anymore just because everyone can record you and post it on TikTok. In reality before smartphones public places were extremely private compared to being broadcast to the entire planet.
Police wearing body cameras has nothing to do with universal mass surveillance devices.
Flock is just an iteration, and getting rid of that brand won't fix it. And camera tracking of normal citizens is just an iteration -- not the underlying systemic issue that isn't being addressed.
The EU has GDPR. At this point, I want something stronger than that.
1. Policing is yet another example of Baumol’s effect[1]; sectors where automation lags become expensive
2. Policing can be automated effectively, including via Flock:
> Hunters Point rapper Dreamllife Rizzy described how police tech has made it more difficult to get away with bipping and other crimes. “Crime in San Francisco, period, that shit over with, brother,” the rapper said. “They got drones, hella shit.” He described how Flock cameras clock the plates on a stolen car and send an alert to police stations, which send drones to follow the vehicle.[2]
3. Policing, like major surgery, ambitious construction, military invasions, and other high-consequence endeavors, is not immune to perfidy, incompetence, or other human weaknesses.
4. Argument by implicit synecdoche (here is an example of an abuse, therefore the general behavior is abusive) is ubiquitous and invalid; you need to actually collect wide evidence and weigh major tradeoffs. How does Flock affect total crime rates? Total abuse rates? That only matters if you think that we should be open to the possibility that widespread use of Flock cameras might be good.
5. WRT privacy and policing-the-police in particular, there is a small but highly vocal community of libertarians whose perspective is sharp, detailed, and not reflective of broader society’s perspective except in motte-and-bailey form, and who will never be persuaded by evidence because for them what matters are the principles (n.b.: this observation is not per se a criticism — sometimes principles should trump evidence around tradeoffs).
6. HN’s 10^5 (?) active commenters include 10^4(?) members of that libertarian vanguard
7. Everyone has heard all the libertarian and contra-libertarian arguments going back decades; no one is learning from yet another go-round
[1] https://acjsissons.medium.com/the-baumol-effect-not-a-diseas...
[2] https://sfstandard.com/2026/08/13/rest-peace-bip-city/?utm_s...
