Hacker News

Flock wanted to tap dashcams in rideshare vechicles to add to surveillance data

77 points by skadamat ago | 30 comments

tptacek |next |previous [-]

Part of the backstory here I think is that ALPR cameras are a commodity technology. They're not defensible by themselves medium term; the market will go to whoever ships the cheapest most reliable cameras with the best pre-sales team, which is a tough space to compete in. For Flock to defend a growth-stage startup valuation, it needs to come up with value-adds.

For a while it looked like that was going to take the form of single-pane-of-glass fusion products (think: Grafana for public safety orgs), but post-AI that seems pretty hard to defend too; Axon doesn't need deep roots in SFBA tech culture to compete on that anymore.

So I guess expect a lot of wacky ideas.

rconti |root |parent |next [-]

Don't they have network effects? Let the locals search the next few towns over? Obviously this diminishes with distance; there's not a lot of benefit to Denver sharing with Minneapolis.

tptacek |root |parent [-]

They do, but it's unclear how defensible they are. You don't have to operate Flock cameras to get access to Flock data (or Axon date) from neighboring municipalities; Flock even operates (last I checked) a subscription product for doing queries on their sharing network without their cameras installed.

0xbadcafebee |root |parent |previous [-]

I don't think Flock is going to care that much about profit and growth. Their CEO seems to be a true believer, as opposed to the typical SVer whose god is cash. And at this point they need to win hearts and minds a lot more than they need new installs.

Data is the real product (the whole point of this is having a large network of correlated data, not just putting one security cam in an office), so at some point the Ring<->Flock combo may be proposed again, probably as Flock acquiring Ring (if they get the cash together). Ring was un-ironically marketed as "pre-crime", which is basically Flock for doorbells.

nullorempty |next |previous [-]

Hm, two questions:

- Who is paying for surveillance? - To whose benefit is it used?

bigbuppo |root |parent |next [-]

Police departments until the constitutional aspects are settled, then they'll be cut down en masse.

Eddy_Viscosity2 |root |parent |next [-]

If the constitutional aspects are settled in favor of people, but current SCOTUS suggests this be unlikely. But.. even it were, then police departments would just buy the data second hand instead via direct contracts.

bigbuppo |root |parent |next [-]

Flock has already made their billions. They'll pivot to something else, probably budget gunshot tracking cameras that also accidentally eavesdrops on all conversations near by and sends it to the cloud for analysis.

joering2 |root |parent |previous [-]

> but current SCOTUS suggests this be unlikely

Are you referring to "temporary inconvenience" or some other decision I'm not aware of?

The phrase "temporary inconvenience" refers to a statement by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in his September 2025 concurrence in [Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo]. Defending an order allowing immigration enforcement stops based partly on apparent ethnicity or workplace, Kavanaugh wrote that questioning of legal residents or U.S. citizens would be "typically brief" and a minor inconvenience.

Eddy_Viscosity2 |root |parent [-]

I'm referring to the pattern of SCOTUS making up whatever justification they want to achieve the result they want. That and the pattern of being pro-corporation.

downrightmike |root |parent |previous [-]

well, tax payers. Cops wanted millions extra to hire more cops, and they blow it on start ups instead.

bigbuppo |root |parent [-]

You're not wrong. But they' also got the extra officers, too.

ihsw |root |parent |previous [-]

[dead]

anymouse123456 |next |previous [-]

Pretty sure this is the same person who made "your flowing data" many years ago. Assuming it is, that was a really cool project!

You could follow their twitter account and DM semi-structured messages at it. He would generate personalized charts and tables from the message you sent.

Looks like it's the same account, but that service seems down at the moment.

https://x.com/yfd

Really great demonstration that created value from semi-structured data streams.

0xbadcafebee |next |previous [-]

The CEO of Flock said his mission is to "completely eliminate and eradicate crime in America". I think I saw that movie, it was called Minority Report.

hypercube33 |root |parent |next [-]

Sumaritan from Person of Interest is more like what they are aiming for I think.

flockingbird |root |parent |next |previous [-]

To eliminate only very specific types of crime, to be clear.

rc5150 |root |parent [-]

poor people crime, and of course the crime of being poor in and of itself.

JohnFen |root |parent [-]

And the crime of just living a normal life without the constant surveillance threat and constant threat of inappropriate police attention.

In my view, these systems are themselves a very large threat to the public.

downrightmike |root |parent |previous [-]

With the final movie in the series being Saving Private Ryan.

LadyCailin |next |previous [-]

I’m not convinced that there’s any solution to this besides direct government regulation and an enshrinement of privacy rights into the law. Cities stop paying for flock access? Other cities still will. Regulations preventing public property from being used for cameras? Private companies will allow it. Vigilantes destroying cameras? Start using mobile drones or something. It’s a losing battle, and everything done so far to fight it is just causes an escalation. Constitutional right to privacy (from government and private companies) is probably the only durable solution.

soco |root |parent [-]

[dead]

jsrozner |next |previous [-]

Highly anti social people (flock executives, mark zuckerberg, other surveillance capitalists, etc.) should simply be expelled from society to a separate island to fight each other for scarce resources.

tamimio |next |previous [-]

Fitting the typical stereotype of a villain company, the greed with no ethics isn’t surprising, what’s surprising that it’s backed by “hacker” news.. shouldn’t HN be backing the counter efforts against such company not the other way around?

WalterGR |root |parent |next [-]

Flock is a Y Combinator alumnus. It’s not backed by Hacker News, scare quotes or no.

flockingbird |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Why is it surprising?

YC is a billionaire led organization whose founder has written openly about the virtue of discriminating against women and parents, and more recently has written bad faith responses to criticisms of billionaires.

This site is a Safe Space to promote those investments, regardless of societal impact.

edit: to be fair, pg walked back some of his pro-bigotry-against-parents shit once he became a parent. But that's the kind of sociopathic cunt who runs this place...

s1artibartfast |root |parent |previous [-]

Are we living on the same planet? Almost i see on HN is hate and vitriol about flock.

Im genuinely perplexed how someone could come to this conclusion.

steviewonderbre |next |previous [-]

[dead]

fearmerchant |previous [-]

For an Amber Alert that could be really helpful.

edot |root |parent |next [-]

Kidnapping like how you’re thinking of it (stranger grabbing your kid from the park) is a myth. Non-family abductions are 1% of cases.

Straight from the horse’s mouth: https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/nonfamily

s1artibartfast |root |parent [-]

Still should be helpful for family abductions, right?

edot |root |parent [-]

Sure but is that worth the rest of us giving up our rights? Also, historically, dictatorial governments do the most child abductions by orders of magnitude. These cameras are a Stasi or NKVD wet dream.