Here is a direct news link to the actual incident: https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/springdale-girls-cou...

That link is an activist YouTube channel. Closest I could find to a news organization reporting on this:

https://www.wtae.com/article/springdale-playground-swing-cou...

When I was a kid twisting a swing so you could ride it as it untwisted was something that happend dozens of times every recess. This was something every kid did. If your playground equipment falls apart as a result of the standard way kids use a swing then I think that is a manufacture issue not criminal behavior by a 10 year old

I don't think we understand yet the kind of world we are building.

All the small decisions we are making will shape our future: algorithmic decision making, social network broadcasting and "self-reporting", light-speed meme transmission, always-on audio and video surveillance... the list goes on and on. One day we'll wake up to see we've build a jail around us we can't escape.

If the chain broke from twisting it up and letting it go, it was in disrepair before the kids started using it. Maybe the city admin should be charged with negligence for letting the infrastructure crumble.

There are plenty of people here working on surveillance tech. Is this the world you want to be building?

How much money did they waste in police and court resources over a swing obviously in disrepair if it broke so easily? How much resources/money did they waste having someone create invoices for numerous children/families? How much resources/money did they waste on harassing/tormenting children and their families instead of just fixing the damn thing?

So nice to see such enormous time and resources being spent on catching actual criminals

Bulk of these cameras are actually installed at the behest of the control freaks sitting on HOAs. They are the real target audience for these cameras because they love the power trip over other people. It seems if you don't get enough attention as a child, you will just grow up to become a control freak.

Three questions:

1. Why is the city creeping on children with surveillance cameras? I'd be tempted to run for city council and beat that drum until the head broke (but then I'd have to serve on the city council).

2. How did they identify the children enough to come to their home? Might have read the license plate, but reporting is unclear.

3. Why is our municipality buying such crappy equipment that it fails when kids do what kids have done with swings for 100 years or more?

> They tell me in a lengthy statement in part that the department would never issue an ultimatum of pay for the damage or your children will be charged. They tell me quote, "We simply don't operate that way." Rather, the department's approach was consistent among the five juveniles involved in the incident. The damage was divided equally and an opportunity was provided to address the matter through restitution rather than unnecessarily continuing juvenile proceeding.

Lol. The same thing, but obfuscated. It's not "pay for the damage"; it's "an opportunity was provided to address the matter through restitution". It's not "or your children will be charged"; it's "rather than unnecessarily continuing juvenile proceeding". Add extra fluff at the start to bury the lede, then avoid the trigger words and pretend it's something different.

Is it weird for me that i think this helps pedophiles so much in finding victims?

We know that the leader flock is having security problems where literally anyone could access the livestreams, the others are probably not better.

My worst fear would be that pedophiles would use the streams to find and abduct victims in broad daylight by posing as cops.

As much as I dislike flock, this only seems like an indictment on the police.

https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/325_PublicPlaygroundSafetyH...

'Children tend to swing on their stomach. This behavior should be discouraged.'

Not banned, discouraged.

I recommend reading the whole thing, it is surprisingly well done and covers a lot of things that should be obvious but are easy to forget.

OK, big surveillance fans: please explain why this is OK because "it's not the government", and this keeps us safe, and we don't have any expectation of privacy. It's inevitable that someone is going to claim it's a great idea. Let's get it out of the way.

So the kids were playing on equipment that fell apart and now they owe money? The city is lucky they didn't get injured.

I thought these cameras were only used to read license plates. What happened to that discussion?

Ugh. Parkrose Permaculture.

I actually like her videos, and watch them to learn about some of the issues. I generally agree with her. Hear me out.

I had an "AHA" moment recently, where she posted a video about data centers. There's real issues there. I don't disagree with most of the issues, but I do disagree about the prioritization of the issues. Being a techie, I am directly involved in hosting workloads in data centers for my company. I know more than a lay person about what data centers are about.

So the very first time I watched a video on a topic I am a SME on, I saw her weigh in with the hot take of "All these data centers are basically surveillance centers!" She's not wrong, but what she is is just repeating what everyone on Facebook is saying without actually trying to understand the issue. Charitably this is word-for-word what people who are waking up to the issue are screaming all over social media, or less charitably people consuming a lot of astroturfed content.

TL;DR, I realized she's not really educating herself on the issues via deep dives before forming an opinion, she's just repeating what everyone else is saying on social media. She's no better than all my neighbors on Nextdoor, just a much better public speaker. If you're screaming about "surveillance centers", you are uninformed if you're not talking about data brokers. Nobody screaming on social media about data centers is. This very forum has people who have worked for data brokers saying things like, "It's 1000x worse than you think it is."

So, unfortunately, I can't use her content to form opinions. Even though I agree with her on most things. I can't trust that she's actually got her facts straight - she's running a confidence game. It's like finding a PR from your trusted coworker with a really, really stupid nasty bug - "what else is out there that they've touched...?"

Now that I've got that put out there...

This new privately owned surveillance network in a sane version of this country should be found unconstitutional, and this story about preteens being brought up on charges is only surprising for the reasons she highlighted.

How nice of HN to delete this topic of general interest from the front page

Government and industry enter the Epstein zone. Creep-shooting little kids.

Not surprised at all.

Is everyone going to ignore that those are not Flock cameras?

Why is the quality of discussion on this topic on HN so poor? I'm not even pro-Flock, but a blatantly false post like this is just pathetic discourse.

True disruption! In 1933 the Nazis needed a human, called Blockwart, to surveil the immediate neighborhood block. This has been automated. Shall we call the cameras Flockwart?

How did they ID the children from photos?