Yet another Hacker News

YouTuber builds 'Flock-like' camera to track police vehicles, gets police visit

69 points ljf 2 hours ago 27 comments

bjorn_identity 2 hours ago | parent

Citizens sometime commit crime. The Police justify indiscriminate gathering of evidence preemptively against all citizens using Flock based on the rationale that when a crime does end up being committed, the evidence will already be gathered.

Well, guess what? Police also commit crime. The same justification applies. If Flock is justified, this is justified.

yolp5 2 hours ago | parent

> Well, guess what? Police also commit crime. The same justification applies. If Flock is justified, this is justified.

In fantasy land maybe, in reality power determines justification.

Razengan 1 hour ago | parent

Even taking the imbalance of guns and armor into account, citizens have more power, if they just realize it.

Millions against, what, a couple hundred thousands?

It's just that nobody wants to be the cannon fodder at the front that gets mowed down before the millions trample the thousands.. :')

AngryData 57 minutes ago | parent

It isn't that people wouldn't be willing to go on the front line, it's that any organization of people that could lead to a frontline forming gets immediate repression or violent response. People don't want to die on a frontline for those in the back if there is nobody in back, which requires organization. Organization that will by default be considered an authority challenge to all current governments, politicians, and wealthy and powerful.

It is why everyone goes so hardline on socialist ideals and labor unions. Organization is required for people to accuratly project their power. And any organization of common people puts the powerful people at risk of being usurped from their position.

uoaei 1 hour ago | parent

Well, no. Your statement is isomorphic to "might makes right".

Power determines rationalization. Justification is a moral question.

ahf8Aithaex7Nai 1 hour ago | parent

> in reality power determines justification

In fantasy land maybe, reality is more complex than can be summed up in a barroom cliché.

plagiarist 1 hour ago | parent

No justification is required. Police visiting this person over completely legal public photography is an egregious violation of First Amendment rights.

NDlurker 57 minutes ago | parent

This was in Canada

devin 47 minutes ago | parent

A bit pedantic, don't you think? Canada has protections for speech, even if they aren't the "first amendment".

NDlurker 24 minutes ago | parent

cdrnsf 30 minutes ago | parent

Why police would never abuse their power. /sarc

Razengan 1 hour ago | parent

Every law that lets police and politicians spy on citizens should have a corollary that lets citizens spy on police and politicians.

ljf 1 hour ago | parent

I've often thought about a number plate reading dashcam app for citizens that would warn you of dangerous drivers around you, let people flag the cars they want to call out. Moderation would be a nightmare though, but I thought you could have to submit some sort of proof (recorded from. The dashcam) but that just increases the moderation overhead... Of course AI could be help and hinder.

razster 1 hour ago | parent

You could allow the user to flag it and keep the alerts to only them. They would get the alert, they could add notes of what happened so when that plate shows again they will know. Maybe build it so that you can add friends to a group and share plate details. It's GOLD Jerry!

But yeah moderation would be a nightmare still - I could see a ton of ways to abuse this. Criminals will figure it out as a source to track individuals, placing themselves in their known travel path, setup satellite spots to alert, that way for example if they're casing the joint they could have alerts when then individual is coming back.

Great, now ppl are going to make this app and use it for bad, see what you did.

ssl-3 1 hour ago | parent

But I trust my friends. When my group tags an obnoxious driver's car and I'm alerted to it being nearby, then: That makes me feel safer.

All I had to do was log in on Autora and make a little friends group for everyone to join, and they handle the rest. It doesn't cost us anything! It's so nice of them to provide this service for everyday people like us.

I also signed up for some other groups I found on Facebook and those are pretty neat, too! I just do my regular driving like I always have, and every week they each drop a few dollars into my PayPal account. It feels great to make the world a little safer, and I haven't had to worry about paying for Disney+ for months now!

#blessed #couponing #sidegigs

andy_ppp 1 hour ago | parent

Yeah you can’t even trust video any more, I’m not sure if there’s anything you can do with people who want to game the system.

cs02rm0 1 hour ago | parent

I really detest the way surveillance seems to just increase without any democratic mandate.

ihuman 1 hour ago | parent

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50026555

HelloUsername 1 hour ago | parent

Discussed yesterday: "YouTuber Says Cops Visited Him After He Built a Flock-Style Camera to Track Cops (gizmodo.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50026555 356 comments

ChrisArchitect 1 hour ago | parent

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50026555

ErroneousBosh 32 minutes ago | parent

> “One of them [the officers] took the time to specifically mention how scary it would be for them, because people would be able to find out where they lived, when they got on their shift and what they were doing throughout the day, and that that type of powerful information could put them personally at risk for any bad apples that might want to track them down,”

Yeah well, if you're not doing anything wrong you've nothing to worry about, eh?