> Police use the technology to investigate crimes such as hit-and-runs and to locate missing persons. > No suspects have been identified.

Yeah, that tracks.

> Camera data is owned by the police department and permanently deleted after 30 days.

I assume this means that the police department deletes one local copy?

  > and stolen

Curious about the official YCombinator stance on this extremely unpopular YCombinator-backed startup (unpopular here at HN anyway).

What alerts are they getting so often anyway? It's a little town of 25k people.

I can understand the benefit of being able to track coming and going and criminal activity etc but there is no oversight and it is already being abused.

Keeping this data within the municipality and requiring bureaucracy to coordinate with others might be the best solution I've heard, since it prevents dragnets and builds in auditing as part of the process.

See also this article about hiding usage of flock https://www.404media.co/do-not-mention-alpr-usage-how-cops-a...

> Each camera is valued at approximately $3,000, putting the total loss at roughly $24,000. That cost falls directly on the Winona Police Department’s budget.

Only if they replace them...

WINONA, Minn. (Valley News Live) - Every Flock license plate reader camera operated by the Winona Police Department has been sawed off and stolen in what investigators believe was a coordinated theft.

All eight cameras were taken Aug. 1, according to the Winona Police Department. A patrol officer first noticed the cameras had not sent any alerts in 24 hours. When officers checked the locations, they found the cameras had been cut from their poles and taken. The poles were left behind.

Two additional Flock cameras on the Mississippi River Bridge, owned by Buffalo County, were also stolen in the same manner.

Each camera is valued at approximately $3,000, putting the total loss at roughly $24,000. That cost falls directly on the Winona Police Department’s budget.

The eight WPD cameras were positioned at key highway entry and exit points throughout the city: near Highway 61 and Bundy Boulevard, Highway 43 and Homer Road, Highway 14 and Knapp Valley Drive, and Highway 61 and Highway 14. Two cameras were stationed at each location.

Flock Safety cameras are automated license plate readers that capture images of plates along with a vehicle’s make, model and color. Police use the technology to investigate crimes such as hit-and-runs and to locate missing persons. Camera data is owned by the police department and permanently deleted after 30 days.

The thefts are part of a broader national trend. Flock cameras have been vandalized and cut down in communities across the country. The technology has drawn criticism from civil liberties advocates who argue the cameras expand government surveillance and raise concerns about data being shared with third-party companies or federal agencies.

No suspects have been identified. The investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Winona Police Department.

So one of the public-private backdoors to erode citizen's rights is being undermined. Such a shame.

One thing I’ve learned from reading accounts of Flock camera thefts is that you shouldn’t do more than one per outing. This sounds like a group arranged to do them all at once which also works.

Find flock cameras near you here! https://maps.deflock.org/

> All eight cameras were taken Aug. 1, according to the Winona Police Department. A patrol officer first noticed the cameras had not sent any alerts in 24 hours. When officers checked the locations, they found the cameras had been cut from their poles and taken. The poles were left behind.

Wow so they did all 8 in in 24 hours. That's quite impressive

https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png

;-)

Curious that an hour ago, this was the top post on hackernews, and now it has been relegated to the 3rd page.

This is good. I'm pretty sure Flock cameras have been used more often to stalk cops' exes than solving any crime.

Maybe I'm overly confident in Flock's ability to triangulate, but wouldn't government agencies be able to know exactly who is cutting down Flock cameras? Isn't that the entire purpose of these things?

Seems these days the only cross-partisan agreement is resistance to Flock and Axon.

People don't want Big Brother. Politicians unironically trying to positively refer to them as an enhanced Big Brother is completely tone deaf.

And we know that police departments were working with ICE during Metro Surge:

> But the Star Tribune found law enforcement agencies around the country searched several Twin Cities suburbs’ camera data and labeled their queries as civil immigration enforcement — a mechanism used to detain those in the country illegally who have not committed other crimes. A vast majority of the searches were run on Fridley’s Flock Safety cameras as it had looser restrictions on its data than other agencies.

https://www.startribune.com/twin-cities-suburbs-license-plat...

This dozen even get into the dozens of documented instances of officers using the system to stalk people... couple that with Stingray devices. It's not hyperbole to say we're existing under the thumb of Big Brother.

Resistance to or acceptance of Flock/Axon is going to be a big tipping point in an already over-surveilled country.

I just watched Benn Jordan's video about Flock's (numerous) vulnerabilities last night. Pretty crazy to think what people can do with these if they can get their hands on them.

Does anyone actually know how the data is stored? They seem to _imply_ they're not storing images, merely license plates. Oh, and presence of bumper stickers bike racks and other vehicle metadata to create a unique fingerprint. So are they implying they merely store a descriptive hash, and discard the images?

Of course, until the revenue knob needs a little tweak, and they start hashing the human data....

> Winona Police Department's Flock cameras

Does Winona Police Department actually own these cameras? Or is this heading technically deceptive.

I hope all the cool people doing all the cool things in current year are not doing cool vandalism just because its a cool thing-to-do that they saw on Reddit in current year. Other cool things cool people are into in current year; Cyber trucks are still on the road, and data centers are still being built.

The anti-camera things are also somewhat effective at getting rid of London's ULEZ cameras. Quite admirable that this coalition of quite disparate interests was able to form around opposition to the specific device used to manage different objectives.

You can't have nice things until you can trust the government: https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1320/12059.htm /sarcasm

Gotta vote out those who voted this in.

Good, but when do the nerds put on suits and lobby to make mass surveillance tools like Flock illegal?

>Each camera is valued at approximately $3,000

Wow. Those must be some really nice cameras...

Good. It's nice to finally see some mainstream support for privacy rights.

good

Good, keep fighting the good fight!

Keep up the good work.

I believe that the police with due dilligance will find that there has been a "behind closed doors" citizens plebisite to create a volunteer technical comittee to provide free service and down grades to varios publicy funded equipment as part of the future archiology initiativ.

Fuck Flock and any other mass surveillance company.

One of my bigger concerns with this story, given the Flock CEO's public statements, and this Administration's attitude towards such things is how easy it might be to attempt to spin, or pursue, this as "domestic terrorism" rather than "vandalism".

Lets be clear, Flock itself is is also breaking the law and refusing to remove it's camera's from city's properties. The cities, apparently, have no recourse but to cover Flock's vigalante cameras with plastic bags to block their view. This is not a one sided case of illegal property damage and trespass. Flock corporation is acting illegally too. Only no one in government is willing to hold them accountable in a court of law.

I'm not saying you should, but cheap laser pens can do fair damage to a camera CMOS sensor.

I discovered that with my Sony Ericsson k700i with a laser pointer when trying to take a picture of the laser.

...total loss at roughly $24,000. That cost falls directly on the Winona Police Department’s budget.

I thought flocked owned the hardware?

what if this was a ultra genius move to end authoritarianism by being so blatantly bad that we actually get a new amendment added for right to privacy and flock was a non profit all along

The need to double the number of cameras so that they can see from one camera who is cutting the other camera.

Coincidentally, ran into a YouTube short testing how to cut down steel poles quickly yesterday, with battery powered tools.

Sawzall, 1m 15s, circular saw 1m, circular saw like 20s.

https://youtube.com/shorts/aAc3Kq0bFPs

Yet to see anyone describe what to do once they are down. They for sure have all manners of wicked battery backed up trackers etc, I'm sure.

(This would be highly illegal to do and you should not do it, even to evil surveillance cameras that hoover up our lives to terrifying central databases, even if these are ragingly unpopular.)

sure hope whomever did that knows what they signed up for

this is not how you affect political change no matter how noble

over $1000 in damage so felony

and if they went from location to location with a smartphone pinging, all cops have to do is find out what phone was at all those locations

I suspect there is more at play here than activism.

In many 3rd World places you must conceal/hide surveillance cameras because they are a valuable asset worth stealing.

If I'm ever on the jury of somebody charged with this, the prosecution has an incredibly high burden to convince me the poles and the cameras on them didn't die of natural causes.

Maybe if police weren't using Flock cameras to stalk their ex-wives [1][2].

There's an interesting angle to the Flock issue I heard recently. Some predominantly black communities prefer Flock cameras because they're over-policed, black men in particular are more likely to be pulled over on "routine" traffic stops and those stops have a skewed chance of ending in violence of death. As a reminder, US law enforcement kills over 1000 civilians every single year. Over half of those are black men and black men are only ~6% of the population.

But that's really a lesser evil type situation because the police simply shouldn't be killing so many people.

[1]: https://www.firstalert4.com/2026/08/03/brentwood-officer-acc...

[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-pol...

it is bad to see theft of physical property as a good thing