So they will be replacing them with Axon cameras I presume?
iAMkenough 2 hours ago [-]
Looks like they’re actually listening to their community, so maybe not.
wegwerper 56 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Tostino 2 hours ago [-]
I posted this in another thread, and had my comment instantly flagged. Love this site.
Worth looking at how these cameras got approved in the first place. My county's ALPR interlocal passed on the consent agenda in December 2024, one block vote alongside forty other items, no discussion, and went through consent again in April 2025. Nothing was "hidden", it's just that "public" here means a 300 page agenda packet and a four hour YouTube video with no transcript, completely unreadable in practice.
So I spent a week and a half building a pipeline over what the county already publishes. It pulls the CivicPlus portal (agendas, minutes, item metadata, outcomes) and the YouTube channel, does ASR plus diarization, then aligns the transcript against the published agenda so the passage carries the item it happened under and whatever outcome the minutes recorded for it. Search is hybrid lexical and semantic, and the video is synced to the transcript so any claim can be checked against the recording.
The speaker attribution and the alignment was the hard part. Roughly two thirds of passages have no reliable name attached, and diarization gives you clusters rather than identities, so I mark confidence and basis rather than guessing a name. Alignment is very messy because the published agenda order and the order things actually get taken up diverge constantly, and the recorded outcome is often just "Approved the Consent Agenda" for an item that never got discussed. There is a labeling admin area to improve the dataset after initial collection
At my county meeting on Aug 25th (in a few days) I'm bringing up the fiscal side. Ours was approved under an item title that said no funding was required. No accounting has been done of what enforcement costs when someone takes a camera down. Prosecutor and court hours. Jail time, or just holding, if the state charges it. Lost future wages from otherwise upstanding citizens who now have a felony. None of that was in front of the commissioners when they approved it, and none of it is in front of them now.
Most counties run the same portal software and post to YouTube, so this should generalize. Code is at https://github.com/Tostino/civic-watch and the Pasco instance is at https://pasco.watch if anyone wants to point one at their own county. Happy to help if anyone wants.
estearum 2 hours ago [-]
You should start with the lede:
"I built a tool to help you understand how/if your community has agreed to deploy Flock cameras. You can try it out here: [ ].
The hardest part of this was..."
NegativeLatency 1 hours ago [-]
Looks neat, any chance you'd be willing to share how much this costs to run?
lokar 2 hours ago [-]
A weird take. They seem oblivious to the fact that real problem is not distrust of flock, it’s distrust of the police. They are in a situation where the public just barely trusts the local police, and a new surveillance system pushes them over the edge into hostility. They need to be working to gain much more trust.
matherial 1 hours ago [-]
Winona, MN has a population of 20k. I've never been there, but if it's like any of the small towns I lived in, most people trust the local police. If anything, the usual small-town complaint is that the police are not doing enough about <x>, where <x> are the homeless dudes in front of the library, or package theft, or whatever.
In small towns, people distrust the federal government and big tech a lot more.
jkestner 26 minutes ago [-]
The wonderful thing about Flock is that you also get to be watched over by all the outside police you don't trust.
cucumber3732842 16 minutes ago [-]
Exactly. People don't trust the government the police serve.
The whole "state/feds decree stuff that's bad for you but your city/town enforces it on you anyway because they'll lose grant bucks if they don't" regulatory paradigm has a lot to do with this because it's why so much of the government's interaction with everyone and everything is so net negative.
everdrive 60 minutes ago [-]
>They seem oblivious to the fact that real problem is not distrust of flock
I really distrust flock in and of itself.
estearum 2 hours ago [-]
Police are bounded by evidentiary laws and warrant requirements, all of which legitimately do stand up in court. Flock is not.
So no, actually Flock itself is the problem. If Flock were willing to sign some consent decree that its data can only be accessed by police with a valid judicial warrant, for example, they probably could've headed off this entire mess.
But instead they called people "terroristic" for pushing back. Completely braindead move from the CEO.
matherial 1 hours ago [-]
The police have SWAT teams, guns, and jails, Flock does not. So I think the state security apparatus is a part of the problem, because if they don't like you and have access to surveillance technology, the outcomes can be far more severe than if Facebook doesn't like you, or the CEO of Flock doesn't like you.
estearum 1 hours ago [-]
People, broadly speaking, are totally fine with police having guns and jails.
Flock in absence of police is not that bad except for the whole "now we have no police" problem. Having police in the absence of Flock is totally fine, we've done it since forever.
treis 21 minutes ago [-]
I don't know. Since the advent of cameras we've caught a lot of cops beating the hell out of citizens. It probably happened a lot more before cameras. And then you'd catch a charge for resisting instead of the payout today.
estearum 11 minutes ago [-]
Let's play this out: Cops don't exist. On video, you catch a person beating the hell out of a citizen.
...
...
...
Welp, sucks to get the shit beaten out of you, better luck next time.
treis 2 minutes ago [-]
I don't understand your point
lokar 1 hours ago [-]
I’m not sure people think that way, or even understand the details. But they see lots of stories about police officers misusing the system.
estearum 1 hours ago [-]
I think people understand "rich tech CEO putting cameras everywhere offers no assurances of people's privacy and legal rights, instead opts to call them terrorists" perfectly well
The fundamental issue is that Flock doesn't care about people's privacy or rights. That washes out in a variety of ways including CEOs' statements, product-level security controls (thus creating the horror stories), and lack of legal commitments to protections.
I would personally be in favor of a fairly widespread camera network that had significant legal protections built in. Flock has demonstrated – in every possible way – they cannot possibly be the providers of such a system.
48 minutes ago [-]
pj_mukh 1 hours ago [-]
But also, I dont understand all this hand-wringing. EFF has a clear easy solution [1]: Put all the data behind a Warrant. Problem solved. No trust required.
Wanna look up where a murderer drove? Go get a warrant
Wanna look up where a robbery suspect drove to? Go get a Warrant.
Divorce case hinging on one party's whereabouts on a certain date? Warrant.
There are plenty of exceptions police can get to bypass warrant requirements. Think for example of stingers and other cell spoofing systems or the license plate readers they have on the front of their cruisers. Even if they do have to get a warrant judges are far more likely to simply grant any warrant request if it has to do with digital surveillance. Carpenter v. United States and Chatrie v. United States have outlined this behaviour, and in the wake of their rulings created the bias towards what are basically automatically approved warrants for such data.
ethin 29 minutes ago [-]
The problem is that the fourth amendment at least for the US has been filled with so many exceptions it might as well not exist. And even if an officer does violate your fourth amendment rights, good luck getting them punished for it, because qualified immunity.
morkalork 45 minutes ago [-]
What happens when say FBI gets a warrant for "foreign actors" and sends it to a FISA court in secret?
colechristensen 1 hours ago [-]
The EFF is wrong. The clear solution is NOT COLLECTING THE DATA.
There is no reason or justification for us to live in a surveillance state, "protecting" the data with a warrant doesn't cut it.
Cutting down and destroying mass surveillance equipment is a patriotic action and should be applauded.
redwall_hp 1 hours ago [-]
It should be a criminal act to attempt to build a mass surveillance apparatus, whether it's for law enforcement or private use.
bdamm 41 minutes ago [-]
Would Ring be considered a mass surveillance apparatus? Accuweather? Facebook? Google? The Internet?
pj_mukh 1 hours ago [-]
I mean ALPR's have worked wonders in my town [1]. So I'll keep supporting them until we restructure all our cities to drastically reduce car speeds. Plus post 2020 police backlash, detective work has basically disappeared and clearing rates have cratered [2]. Police are now no longer able to (or are refusing to) solve crime "the old fashioned way", and the public has no real leverage to "make them do it".
So I get it, we're in the middle of a populist uprising against it, and it's nice to ride that wave of support. But behind the scenes, these two factors are driving adoption, and we'll keep coming back to it when the backlash eventually fizzles.
I say we should just use this backlash to put in the protections EFF suggests or fix the two underlying causes. Those are the options.
Have you driven 7th St. between Adeline St. and Linden St? I wonder if maybe the speed limit is too low. One good thing about not having automated systems like this is it allows natural breaking of rules that are poor rules to begin with, and there is effort in manually enforcing, eventually leading to change
pj_mukh 13 minutes ago [-]
“I wonder if maybe the speed limit is too low”
Super curious how anyone could think this. It’s not a highway, and there's pedestrians crossing. The buildings aren’t dense and the setbacks are large so maybe it “feels” like you should go faster but doesn’t mean it’s safe to.
And Oakland especially has really bad driving culture so I’m glad for this automatic enforcement.
michaelt 51 minutes ago [-]
> I mean ALPR's have worked wonders in my town [1]. So I'll keep supporting them
With flock, citizens are concerned by the privacy implications of the state keeping a dossier of each citizen’s movements.
But once we assure citizens the flock cameras have already issued 500,000 speeding fines in a single town this year, no doubt they’ll come to support the cameras.
Perhaps the cameras could also automatically issue parking fines, to garner even more popular support!
pj_mukh 43 minutes ago [-]
Yes we should just always give in to populism’s demands and it’ll have no negative consequences ever /s
Issuing tickets doesn't require retaining any data on vehicles you aren't ticketing, you're conflating issues.
pj_mukh 1 hours ago [-]
I'm not. There are two issues in my comment.
colechristensen 3 minutes ago [-]
"I mean ALPR's have worked wonders in my town"
Among those wonders being nearly 200,000 tickets.
There are claims of safety improvements but strangely zero actual statistics about improved safety, measured speed is a proxy for safety but it has to be matched with actual casualty numbers and it is quite suspicious that these don't exist. Did the accident rate go down? Number of deaths or serious injuries?
>Police are now no longer able to (or are refusing to) solve crime "the old fashioned way"
This is pathetic, and I don't want to be controlled by robot overlords because local governments can't get their ducks in a row.
izacus 21 minutes ago [-]
Did clearing rate crater because there was a change or because the police is throwing a toddler tantrum strike and refuses to work?
Since outright refusal to do their jobs is more common than any real difficulty.
outside1234 2 hours ago [-]
Oh no, we distrust both.
SpicyLemonZest 1 hours ago [-]
They’re oblivious to this fact because it’s not true. Most people by a substantial margin trust their local police.
veec_cas_tant 54 minutes ago [-]
Obviously an unpopular opinion on this site, but I wish we had speed cameras, red-light cameras, and ALPRs everywhere. Cars are incredibly dangerous and large numbers of people drive them like absolute lunatics. There should be absolutely no expectation of privacy when using public streets. That position doesn't even account for the footage helping immensely with other investigations.
basch 42 minutes ago [-]
Part of the problem is the people reacting to the data. Cops coming at an innocent someone, guns drawn, because of database and human error. If that person weren't so calm and level headed in the moment, when they were attacked by confused and mistaken aggressors, would they still be alive?
> There should be absolutely no expectation of privacy when using public streets.
Strong disagree. Life in public areas is often still part of private life. And we should treat it with the respect and privacy that it deserves. You going to the doctor? That's part of your private life. You meeting with an old friend to catch up? Also private, even though you do it in a public cafe.
moritonal 49 minutes ago [-]
You managed to say everything but the difficult bit. People don't generally have a problem with cameras, all our computers and phones have one. The problem is who can use them and when.
barbazoo 36 minutes ago [-]
Personally I have nothing against municipally operated red light/speed camera system because those are triggered by a sensor rather than continuous so privacy is less of an issue.
arjie 28 minutes ago [-]
I agree. I was able to talk to my local SF supervisor the other day and congratulate him on his work with speed cameras and red-light cameras. He shares the same position as you: there is no constitutional right to drive one's car on public streets without enforcement of the rules.
We recently got permission to expand red-light cameras and I'm hoping that this kind of neutral machine-based enforcement of laws helps move us to a more law-abiding society. Civil liberties require civilization. Abdicating public space to the anti-social only allows for a de-facto rule by the uncivilized.
bdamm 47 minutes ago [-]
Personally I agree with the desire for more traffic enforcement, even if it means I personally would suffer because frankly I like driving fast. But as a cyclist who also likes riding fast, and a parent to likes giving freedom to children, safer roads would be great.
The problem is that these systems, always and without fail, come with government and police overreach and then the "guilty unless proven innocent" paradigm creeps in, which we have already seen happen with flock. You have police using the technology to spy on their lovers and friends of their wives and husbands, and you have political campaigns finding ways to spy on their opponents, and activists getting special attention from prosecutors, etc. Which always happs, but with totalitarianism is an absolute train wreck for an open, fair, and power-balanced government.
steviehicks78 50 minutes ago [-]
I would totally agree with you if I trusted the government
Groxx 43 minutes ago [-]
Yeah - this is the important part. With a truly benevolent government I think this may in fact be the best option...
But not only do you have to trust the government now (and you likely should not), you also need to trust the government far into the future (which you absolutely cannot do) because the tools will still exist.
Don't accept tools that are also strong weapons for oppression.
barbazoo 34 minutes ago [-]
OP made the mistake and included ALPRs in their list IMO. Because I'm having a hard time imagining how a sensor triggered red light camera could be used for oppression.
Groxx 26 minutes ago [-]
Have them take pictures of every car, now you've got half of what flock offers.
It's the widespread remote camera installs that are the main problem there. If they kept data locally and had to be collected by hand, it might be fine - that's difficult enough to grow to monitor everyone all the time. Aside from using film though, I'm not sure how that would be achieved.
Also: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/
Worth looking at how these cameras got approved in the first place. My county's ALPR interlocal passed on the consent agenda in December 2024, one block vote alongside forty other items, no discussion, and went through consent again in April 2025. Nothing was "hidden", it's just that "public" here means a 300 page agenda packet and a four hour YouTube video with no transcript, completely unreadable in practice.
So I spent a week and a half building a pipeline over what the county already publishes. It pulls the CivicPlus portal (agendas, minutes, item metadata, outcomes) and the YouTube channel, does ASR plus diarization, then aligns the transcript against the published agenda so the passage carries the item it happened under and whatever outcome the minutes recorded for it. Search is hybrid lexical and semantic, and the video is synced to the transcript so any claim can be checked against the recording.
The speaker attribution and the alignment was the hard part. Roughly two thirds of passages have no reliable name attached, and diarization gives you clusters rather than identities, so I mark confidence and basis rather than guessing a name. Alignment is very messy because the published agenda order and the order things actually get taken up diverge constantly, and the recorded outcome is often just "Approved the Consent Agenda" for an item that never got discussed. There is a labeling admin area to improve the dataset after initial collection
At my county meeting on Aug 25th (in a few days) I'm bringing up the fiscal side. Ours was approved under an item title that said no funding was required. No accounting has been done of what enforcement costs when someone takes a camera down. Prosecutor and court hours. Jail time, or just holding, if the state charges it. Lost future wages from otherwise upstanding citizens who now have a felony. None of that was in front of the commissioners when they approved it, and none of it is in front of them now.
Most counties run the same portal software and post to YouTube, so this should generalize. Code is at https://github.com/Tostino/civic-watch and the Pasco instance is at https://pasco.watch if anyone wants to point one at their own county. Happy to help if anyone wants.
"I built a tool to help you understand how/if your community has agreed to deploy Flock cameras. You can try it out here: [ ].
The hardest part of this was..."
In small towns, people distrust the federal government and big tech a lot more.
The whole "state/feds decree stuff that's bad for you but your city/town enforces it on you anyway because they'll lose grant bucks if they don't" regulatory paradigm has a lot to do with this because it's why so much of the government's interaction with everyone and everything is so net negative.
I really distrust flock in and of itself.
So no, actually Flock itself is the problem. If Flock were willing to sign some consent decree that its data can only be accessed by police with a valid judicial warrant, for example, they probably could've headed off this entire mess.
But instead they called people "terroristic" for pushing back. Completely braindead move from the CEO.
Flock in absence of police is not that bad except for the whole "now we have no police" problem. Having police in the absence of Flock is totally fine, we've done it since forever.
...
...
...
Welp, sucks to get the shit beaten out of you, better luck next time.
The fundamental issue is that Flock doesn't care about people's privacy or rights. That washes out in a variety of ways including CEOs' statements, product-level security controls (thus creating the horror stories), and lack of legal commitments to protections.
I would personally be in favor of a fairly widespread camera network that had significant legal protections built in. Flock has demonstrated – in every possible way – they cannot possibly be the providers of such a system.
Wanna look up where a murderer drove? Go get a warrant
Wanna look up where a robbery suspect drove to? Go get a Warrant.
Divorce case hinging on one party's whereabouts on a certain date? Warrant.
Speeding tickets are automatically filed anyways.
[1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/08/too-little-too-late-fl...
There is no reason or justification for us to live in a surveillance state, "protecting" the data with a warrant doesn't cut it.
Cutting down and destroying mass surveillance equipment is a patriotic action and should be applauded.
So I get it, we're in the middle of a populist uprising against it, and it's nice to ride that wave of support. But behind the scenes, these two factors are driving adoption, and we'll keep coming back to it when the backlash eventually fizzles.
I say we should just use this backlash to put in the protections EFF suggests or fix the two underlying causes. Those are the options.
[1]: https://www.oaklandca.gov/Public-Safety-Streets/Traffic-Safe...
[2]: https://stateline.org/2025/11/24/why-clearance-rates-dont-te...
Super curious how anyone could think this. It’s not a highway, and there's pedestrians crossing. The buildings aren’t dense and the setbacks are large so maybe it “feels” like you should go faster but doesn’t mean it’s safe to.
And Oakland especially has really bad driving culture so I’m glad for this automatic enforcement.
With flock, citizens are concerned by the privacy implications of the state keeping a dossier of each citizen’s movements.
But once we assure citizens the flock cameras have already issued 500,000 speeding fines in a single town this year, no doubt they’ll come to support the cameras.
Perhaps the cameras could also automatically issue parking fines, to garner even more popular support!
…oops [1]
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/headway/motor-vehicles-fa...
Among those wonders being nearly 200,000 tickets.
There are claims of safety improvements but strangely zero actual statistics about improved safety, measured speed is a proxy for safety but it has to be matched with actual casualty numbers and it is quite suspicious that these don't exist. Did the accident rate go down? Number of deaths or serious injuries?
>Police are now no longer able to (or are refusing to) solve crime "the old fashioned way"
This is pathetic, and I don't want to be controlled by robot overlords because local governments can't get their ducks in a row.
Since outright refusal to do their jobs is more common than any real difficulty.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/how-flock-cameras-wrongly-trac...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flock-safety-and-texas...
Strong disagree. Life in public areas is often still part of private life. And we should treat it with the respect and privacy that it deserves. You going to the doctor? That's part of your private life. You meeting with an old friend to catch up? Also private, even though you do it in a public cafe.
We recently got permission to expand red-light cameras and I'm hoping that this kind of neutral machine-based enforcement of laws helps move us to a more law-abiding society. Civil liberties require civilization. Abdicating public space to the anti-social only allows for a de-facto rule by the uncivilized.
The problem is that these systems, always and without fail, come with government and police overreach and then the "guilty unless proven innocent" paradigm creeps in, which we have already seen happen with flock. You have police using the technology to spy on their lovers and friends of their wives and husbands, and you have political campaigns finding ways to spy on their opponents, and activists getting special attention from prosecutors, etc. Which always happs, but with totalitarianism is an absolute train wreck for an open, fair, and power-balanced government.
But not only do you have to trust the government now (and you likely should not), you also need to trust the government far into the future (which you absolutely cannot do) because the tools will still exist.
Don't accept tools that are also strong weapons for oppression.
It's the widespread remote camera installs that are the main problem there. If they kept data locally and had to be collected by hand, it might be fine - that's difficult enough to grow to monitor everyone all the time. Aside from using film though, I'm not sure how that would be achieved.