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| ▲ | toomuchtodo 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Flock cameras are different, they take advantage of laws that have not kept pace with technology while being colocated and operated in public spaces, to where you are forced to live in a corporate surveillance state for Flock Group's enterprise value and potential shareholder returns. And so, destruction of the devices is all that is left available to them (if their jurisdiction opts to not remove them, as many have done [1]). Somewhat silly to blame humans who want privacy (arguably a human right [2]) just so the CEO of Flock can get wealthy (and YC can get liquidity) at IPO, no? The human is doing what you would expect the human to do when faced with limited options in an operating environment that is not favorable to them. Crime has been trending down for some time [3], Flock cameras are a business driven on fear like Shotspotter, where the results are questionable at best and you're selling to the unsophisticated. [1] https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy [3] https://time.com/7357500/crime-homicide-rate-violent-propert... | https://archive.today/vMACL | | |
| ▲ | dirasieb 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | i've never found this type of "humans were left with no alternative" argument in defense of destruction of property convincing, some of the things that separates humans from other animals is the concept of private/public property, rule of law, etc, you know? there are alternatives, contrary to the alarmism found online the US is very far from actual dictatorships where people have close to 0 way of achieving change through the legal system, immediately jumping to violence without an imminent threat is something i'd expect from lower primates, not from homo sapiens. | | |
| ▲ | anigbrowl 16 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | How are they 'immediately jumping to violence'? This surveillance debate has been going on for years. | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're free to your opinion. Property is just property, it is nothing special. Rule of law is highly dynamic and a shared delusion. Damaging or destruction of property is not violence, it is a property crime at best. In the scope of Flock, it is well documented as having been misused, illegally in many cases, by law enforcement and those with access to its systems [1] [2] [3]. > there are alternatives This does not consistently appear to be the case in the US unfortunately. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/effs-investigations-ex... [2] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-roundup [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=flock+misuse | | |
| ▲ | dirasieb 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Damaging or destruction of property is not violence. you wouldn't consider someone vandalizing your home or the infrastructure in your neighborhood to be violence? of course it is violence, an attack on the place i live (whether that's limited to just my home or to the larger community i live in) is an attack on me is it not violence to, for example, burn down a business where people work in if you do it at a time where no one is around to get immediately hurt as a consequence? can i not call the financial damage caused both to the workers and the owners of that place violence? | | |
| ▲ | fc417fc802 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > you wouldn't consider someone vandalizing your home or the infrastructure in your neighborhood to be violence? Very obviously not. Words have meaning. You are misusing words to garner emotional support for your preferred political position. Burning down anything (including a business) is arson. Not violence. It only becomes violence if people are present and at imminent risk of physical harm. Financial damage is not violence. Speech is not violence. Please take your doublespeak back to reddit; it doesn't belong on HN. | | |
| ▲ | dirasieb 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | how did you jump from property damage and arson to speech? non sequitur much? financial damage absolutely can be violence, you can ruin someone's life if you take away their job by burning down the place they work at and it could lead to something horrific like them taking their own lives or not being able to pay for their medication or not be able to pay for their child's education, etc as a direct consequence of your act of destroying that place. destroying infrastructure people rely on to stay healthy/safe/economically stable/etc should be considered by civilized people as a violent attack on them, you cannot pretend that disrupting someone's livelihood is not at all related to attacking their liberty and/or life a case where you can argue speech can be violence would be a verbal threat to hurt or kill someone, but that has nothing to do with what we're talking about, i don't know why you're bringing up speech, are you trying to say that destroying these cameras is a form of expressing freedom of speech? (not accusing you of this btw, just genuinely curious what you meant by that) | | |
| ▲ | fc417fc802 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > how did you jump from property damage and arson to speech? I included speech as an example, the same as your bringing up property damage, arson, and financial damage. It seemed relevant given the general shape of what you were expressing. Someone being driven to suicide or unable to pay for medication is not an example of violence. It might be many things but violence is most certainly not one of them. > you cannot pretend that disrupting someone's livelihood is not at all related to attacking their liberty and/or life Indeed it is _related_ but that does not magically make it "violence". Violence is direct physical harm. Not indirect and not anything other than physical. > a case where you can argue speech can be violence Speech is _never_ violence. That's about as close to definitionally impossible as you can get. (Here's a fun related observation: violent rhetoric is not itself violent.) Respectfully, you seem to be having extreme difficulty comprehending the fact that words have meaning. It's impossible to engage in meaningful discussion with someone who either can't or won't conduct themselves in accordance with that fact. | | |
| ▲ | dirasieb 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Speech is _never_ violence. coming up to you on the street and telling you i'm going to stab you to death is not violence as long as i don't go through with the stabbing? someone needs to better secure the mental asylum wifi, you shouldn't have access to it shouting "BOMB!" at an airport for fun is not violence even though you're causing people to trample each other and might result in serious physical harm that's resulting directly from your action? | | |
| ▲ | fc417fc802 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Your first example, no. That is a threat of violence and is illegal literally everywhere (even in the US). However it does not become "violence" until you commit a physical act. Your second example is inciting public panic. Again, not violence. And again, illegal literally everywhere (at least AFAIK). > serious physical harm that's resulting directly from your action That's the thing, the panic was the direct result. The physical harm was indirect. Once again, words have meanings. Perhaps you should seek to learn more about the law. You might find that, in addition to words having meaning, society has been dealing with "problematic" behaviors for as long as it has existed and is honestly pretty well equipped for it in general. These things have been catalogued extensively. Referring to everything as "violence" is no better than labeling every other crime "terrorism". | | |
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| ▲ | sophacles 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I agree with your basic position, but most definitions of the word violence that I could find included the notion of: destroying things with intent to intimidate through fear of harm, threats such as brandishing weapons, and so on. It's not as simple as 'you didn't touch me so you didn't do violence' - and it makes sense when you consider the case of robbery at gunpoint. That being said - the destruction of flock cameras is in no way violence. No one sees that and takes it as a threat of harm - at least no one acting in an honest way. | | |
| ▲ | fc417fc802 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Isn't that the difference between a threat of violence as opposed to violence? Which is directly adjacent and thus treated similarly by the law. Brandishing a gun at someone is a threat that you'll shoot them but, importantly, is not the same thing as actually making good on the threat. (From the victim's perspective the distinction is rather important.) |
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| ▲ | jacquesm 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I fail to see the equivalence between taking out a surveillance camera that is violating people's privacy with the other things that you list. Arguing like that is simply not going to work. | | |
| ▲ | dirasieb 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | the person i replied to made a broad "destroying property is not violence" claim, the scope of the conversation is more than just that also, i consider a security camera in a place i live to be security infrastructure, you should not be able to come into a place and do act like a vigilante imposing your view on what should and should not be recorded through force, if you have a problem with the way things work you should try to work within the law again, this is what separates civilization from chaos | | |
| ▲ | jacquesm 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | It is clear that they were in no way making that claim in the context that you put it in, that's on you, not on them. | | |
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| ▲ | toomuchtodo 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > you wouldn't consider someone vandalizing your home or the infrastructure in your neighborhood to be violence? of course it is violence, an attack on the place i live (whether that's limited to just my home or to the larger community i live in) is an attack on me No, I file an insurance claim and move on with my life. It is just property, and almost all property can be trivially replaced. Your property is not you. It is just property. We simply see the world differently, that's all. Good luck to you. | | |
| ▲ | dirasieb 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | oh of course, because insurance claim payments are instantaneous (just like the reconstruction work they'll have to do) and the people who work there can just go work somewhere else by just finding another job, right? life is very simple when you live in fairy land |
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