alt Hacker NewsI personally know 3 victims of brutally violent crime. Flock would have detected, but maybe not prevented, two of these cases, where violence occurred in broad, open daylight near main roads and highways. Crimes occurred in left-leaning, anti-police small midwest city. All of the victims were women.
I would encourage anti-Flockers and anti-authority individuals out here to question their motives and make sure that their voices and actions are best aligned with protecting vulnerable individuals (this also includes trafficked illegal immigrants).
Seems like many folks here might be more concerned with preventing hypothetical/theoretical harm, instead of REAL harm (violent crime, trafficking, vehicle theft)
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> Flock would have detected, but maybe not prevented, two of these cases
I'm glad you acknowledge this, because it highlights what has irritated me about the discussion of crime in the last ~6 years. People seem to expect that crime can be prevented. Our criminal justice system and system of civil rights can only intervene after the crime has occurred, which means it won't prevent anything. Maybe I've misread you personally, and I don't mean to put it all on you, but I think people with your position tend to vastly overstate the deterrent factor of proposed interventions.
Further, only reacting to crime and not seeking to "punish" people before a crime has occurred is exactly how our system should work. When reasoning about crime prevention, a large number of people seem to want police to intervene preemptively. Or they want to punish offenders out of proportion to actual crimes, to prevent recidivism that hasn't happened yet. This type of thinking seems to slide pretty quickly into the "pre-crime" concept of dystopian scifi. We called that stuff dystopian for a reason.
In my opinion what we should do instead to prevent crime is to promote social cohesion, in the form of preventing income and wealth disparity, funding a strong social safety net, help for drug addicts and the mentally ill, etc. People who live happier, more stable lives will have less reason to turn to crime.
(I will also note, crime is lower everywhere in America vs. a few decades ago. Violent crime peaked in the mid 1990s. So it is in some sense a misguided endeavor completely, focusing on problems that are relatively unlikely.)
It sounds like your point is that people should be willing to give up their privacy in return for the chance of detecting (not preventing) violent crimes.
I think it's also disingenuous (or at best, completely naive) to pretend like harm from Flock and other surveillance is hypothetical/theoretical. Here are just 2 recent examples of REAL harm:
https://www.postcrescent.com/story/news/crime/2026/01/12/men...
https://kenoshacountyeye.com/2025/12/12/deputy-on-leave-accu...
You can guarantee that there are many more that haven't been caught.
My vehicle was stolen in an area with Flock cams. It did not help at all.
This sounds like the usual talking points.
> left-leaning, anti-police
As if there is any correlation, or crimes don't occur in right-leaning locales.
> hypothetical/theoretical harm
Freedom is very real, and includes security from the state. The latter risks are hardly theoretical in history and very present today.
This implies that the harm caused by this broad surveillance technology is "hypothetical/theoretical", when there is long history in this country's government using private companies to launder otherwise illegal surveillance of political activists[1].
And even if you ignore the historical parallels, there are already cases of: officers using Flock systems to stalk dating partners[2][3], immigration enforcement using Flock data to track targets[4], and ICE/CBP bypassing the systems in place that let local jurisdictions choose not to share with federal agencies[5].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Goals_Foundation
[2]: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2026/01/12/menasha...
[3]: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2026/02/24/mpd-off...
[4]: https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-...
[5]: https://jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/2025/10/21/leaving-t...