This is not a jury nullification (which is an emergent property of US Constitutional double-jeopardy protections), but a failure to indict, that is to bring criminal charges (a "bill of indictment") for potential criminal conduct.
In this instance, the case has been dismissed, but might conceivably be brought again.
Why grand juries make the decisions they do is hard to determine, as their operations are (usually) secret. This may have simply been a case of insufficient evidence of a crime, or identity of the suspect ("probable cause"), as appealing as a broader backlash theory might be.
Much of this article appears to be either speculation or unsourced information if there was in fact resistance to bringing a Flock case by this grand jury. The latter might indicate a violation of secrecy oaths by jury members or other court officers.
Specific practices vary by state, not all of which use grand juries. All federal criminal cases rely on a grand jury.
True, it does not say the reason for the decline to indict. It could have as much to do with the overall decline in quality of the DoJ and its cases as a whole over the past year. Many nonsalient crimes will also go unprosecuted under this DoJ, but they will not generate headlines like this one.
> Police in Union Township, a Cincinnati suburb, accused Cody Morelock of disassembling the camera, its support pole and solar panel on June 13.
To add to this, it stood out to me that the headline uses "destroy" but the article uses "disassemble" to describe what happened. Not that the act of calmly dissasembling something couldn't be indicted as potentially criminal (if a ham sandwich can be), but it stands out regardless. Maybe he literally just walked up and started unscrewing things. That would be the most civil form of "vandalism" I can imagine; force them to (pay someone to) come set it up again until they give up or try something else.
> A person commits an offense if, without the effective consent of the owner . . . he intentionally or knowingly tampers with the tangible property of the owner and causes . . . substantial inconvenience to the owner or a third person . . . .
My guess is the cost to remedy this disassembly is over $2,500, making this a felony. Even if not, if a government Flock camera is considered a "public service" then it's a felony no matter the cost to remedy because it falls under "causes wholly or partly impairment or interruption of property used for . . . public communications, public transportation, [] or other public service . . ."
This isn't jury nullification which occurs during a criminal trial, and for which US Constitutional double-jeopardy protections mean that no further trial for the same offence may be brought.
This is a grand jury, which has refused to bring an indictment. There is no double-jeopardy protection here. The prosecutor has several options:
- Bring the case directly to a judge.
- File charges with a new grand jury. (Grand juries typically sit for a period of time.)
In this case, however, charges have been dismissed. There are several variants here, one is "dismissed with prejudice", which means that those specific charges cannot be applied again. TFA doesn't note this (or indeed much else of substance in this case), so the presumption is that charges are dismissed without prejudice.
What is notable here is that grand juries almost always vote to indict. This isn't a verdict of "guilty", but rather, a finding of sufficient cause to bring trial. As the saying goes, "a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich",[1] that is, overwhelmingly (apparently 95%+ of the time) a prosecutor easily convinces a grand jury to file charges.
Given that grand jury proceedings are usually secret (there are exceptions), and we have no further insight as to what the basis of this decision was, there's not much inference which can be made, though I'd lean more strongly to weak evidence than any specific anti-Flock backlash, much as I'd prefer to believe the latter.[3][4]
The common refrain is "you can get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich". The standards required to indict are quite low. The fact that they failed to get an indictment here must mean they had ~nothing.
> There are several variants here, one is "dismissed with prejudice", which means that those specific charges cannot be applied again. TFA doesn't note this (or indeed much else of substance in this case), so the presumption is that charges are dismissed without prejudice.
Grand juries can't dismiss with prejudice, FWIW. That's a role for judges, but a judge wouldn't have seen the case at this stage to issue such a dismissal. "Charges were dismissed" in the article is likely reference to the actions of the grand jury. It's possibly an inartful way of saying "the charges were dropped by the prosecution."
But what I found interesting is - They aren't automatically inflation adjusted, it has to be manually adjusted by legislation. Which hasn't been done since 2011 meaning that in 2026 terms it would be $1.5K~ for a 5th-degree felony for like-for-like level of damage.
Kind of nuts how a poorly written law can increase the number of felonies just due to inflation alone. Although a lot of things aren't automatically inflation adjusted (e.g. minimum wage), and I think commonly it is on purpose rather than an accident. They WANT harsher sentences for relative low crimes.
>The backlash against Flock has intensified as a growing number of police officers have been accused of or charged with abusing the technology, often to stalk romantic interests. As of Aug. 12, there had been more than 100 cases of abuse by law enforcement, according to the Institute for Justice.
In response, Flock announced new safeguards designed to prevent misuse by police. Critics, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argue that the reforms are largely “cosmetic,” and that warrants should be required for searching license plate reader data.
I'll go further: the gathering of such information should only be allowable by a sworn law enforcement officer acting under a warrant or some other sort of judicial permission during an active investigation.
Flock and Axon are private companies. What's to stop them from selling this license plate data to the police or to other parties to pad their quarterly numbers? Actually, I'd be surprised if they're not already doing this. A friend of mine is in the camera business and was wondering how the hell they're making the money they're making off of local and state government contracts.
> A friend of mine is in the camera business and was wondering how the hell they're making the money they're making off of local and state government contracts.
The contract awards are public no? Axon et al probably make the majority of their money on service charges for storing, accessing the data rather than on the cameras themselves.
Get rid of the what if hyperbole and focus on the core reason why it’s bad. These contracts do not allow commercial use. Could they in the future but so what, focus on the here and now. We should continue to focus on what is true today and simply put Flock has never enforced strict security around their platform and it’s proven consistently that people in power abuse it.
> A friend of mine is in the camera business and was wondering how the hell they're making the money they're making off of local and state government contracts.
The Los Angeles Police Department annual budget is over $2 billion. A couple million a year to flock is a drop in the bucket.
Flock sucks but I think these kind of conspiracies hurt the argument. You can go look at a number of these contracts since they are part of your local city/municipality.
A typical flock agreement is pretty firm that the data is the customers. Some of it might be used for training. There is opt-in to share with other law enforcement but I have not yet seen anything around commercial use.
I don’t think much padding is necessary. It’s a metal pole with a cheap camera and SIM card. They charge $3-5k a year per camera. The only upfront cost is a local contractor to install the camera, they typically have one that covers a very large region. Huge margins with that alone.
It's too late for that. This would have maybe worked 30 years ago, but since the Patriot Act and FISA we have literal secret courts approving >99% of the government's requests for surveillance. The existence of the data is now enough to guarantee its misuse.
Anyone accessing data from this system should have an active case they are assigned to, anything else should be subject to disciplinary action just as with HIPAA. It should have tamper evident audit trails. It should not be on a whim. If emergency access is needed they have to retroactively get reviewed and approved and if it was not in line with any active investigation or assist in an active investigation again it should come under serious scrutiny with actionable consequences.
I'm more pro surveillance and think a lot of people missbehaving in public need it nowadays. But even I think this Flock Quasistasi mass sutveillance stuff is going way to far. It's hard to say I love security but also privacy and the abuse potential or risks are huge as well. I'm torn.
However the agent here with the power is the state and local and federal government. They're just going to do drones next if they can't do sensor masts.
Everyone who authorized this funding needs to be voted out. If we really care the signal is to take away the power of people who decided to use this.
> Everyone who authorized this funding needs to be voted out. If we really care the signal is to take away the power of people who decided to use this.
Yes, and we should continue to nullify convictions for activists fighting this technology on the streets. If they use drones lets shoot them down and nullify those charges too. The court is the final stand and juries are where we the citizens have actual power.
Can you be more specific? Are you claiming that the winner is not actually whoever gets the most votes (e.g. voter fraud, corrupt vote counting), or that someone who would not authorize something like this would literally not be allowed to show up on the ballot? Those are the only two scenarios I can think of that would result in the conclusion you're stating.
As far as I can tell, people who claim the former are almost overwhelming the ones voting for the people who are worst about stuff like this. I've honestly never seen anyone claim the latter though, so if that's what you believe, elaborating more would be helpful.
The candidate would literally not be allowed to show up on the ballot, and it happens regularly. For an example, look what happened to Butch Ware in the California election recently.
The last person to stand for president who managed to get political momentum and wanted real change in the system was Eugene Debs, and they arrested him.
> or that someone who would not authorize something like this would literally not be allowed to show up on the ballot?
I'm surprised that you've never encountered this persepective before, it seems a very common one to me.
The first thing I think about is the South Park episode in which the elementary school had to vote for a school mascot and they were given the choice of either "a giant douche" or "a turd sandwich".
The second thing is another South Park episode (circa 2009), for which they actually produced two episodes (and aired one) for the Presidential election between McCain and Obama. Regardless of who would win, the plot was the same: the winner colludes with the loser in a National Treasure-style heist, with the election just being part of the setup.
In the latter example, the message seems to be that it doesn't matter who wins because the same outcomes occur. The former example probably doesn't need explaining.
Anyway, yeah, it would be nice to choose something better than a turd sandwich but when the other option is a giant douche, what is there to do? The way I see it, you either vote for someone who you know stands no chance (Jill Stein, btw), don't vote at all, or vote for the turd sandwich (or the giant douche, if that's your persuasion).
Apple is rumored to be integrating cameras into AirPods[0] that are cloud connected for "AI." They supposedly won't be able to take "pictures" and "video" but will transmit essentially the same information for AI/Siri.
Between the reaction to Flock and also the Meta Glasses; I'm legitimately surprised that companies aren't reading the Tea leaves here. But, no, I guess everything needs a camera and a cloud feed of that camera's vision now.
PS - And before you say "that is just a rumor" the video file was extracted from Apple's macOS 26.7 RC that showcases how it may work.
> Look how the populist right has failed its primaries so hard.
From my bubble (we’re all in bubbles), it seems that the populist right are in bed with the technocrat authoritarians, e.g. the Vance-Thiel connection. Losses in primaries would indicate to me that the technocrat authoritarians are not succeeding in purchasing politicians.
Massie is kinda interesting. Because he’s a sort of libertarian who ran as a republican when the right was a bit more united
But it was a strange election. The “establishment” candidate was a no name who refused to do any debates. Rarely ever seem to say much, and when he did, it was mostly just empty parroting of Trumps agenda. Maybe that’s truly what that district wanted.
What was interesting was how Massie seemed slated to win until the very end. Suddenly at the last minute, all sorts of smear ads and all kinds of (honestly very mild) accusations of personal impropriety were being slung left and right and days before the election, polls swap showing Gallrein in the lead, a complete reversal from the months before. A man I’ve never heard speak anything that wasn’t just party lines or something about being a SEAL.
Now I understand that polling isn’t always accurate. But I’ve seen the same exact thing play out nearly the same way in other recent primaries. Feels fishy.
I read it as technocrats Vance-Thiel successfully bought populist MAGA politicians. Those then failed in primaries, because electorate including portion of maga base rejects them. The "buying politicians" step was successful.
Now they need to buy new politicians and will definitely try.
> From my bubble (we’re all in bubbles), it seems that the populist right are in bed with the technocrat authoritarians, e.g. the Vance-Thiel connection.
Interesting, in my bubble “populist” right refers more younger more paleo conservative types who feel betrayed by MAGA. Many of these people hate Thiel and Technocrats as much as my Marxist friends.
I’m gonna guess (and tell me if I’m wrong) the disconnect is that you may be referring to the Trump admin itself which is indeed in bed with Thiel types. Personally I don’t really bother considering them populist anymore. They seem to mostly be interested in enriching their little circle.
Hence, the destruction, the calls for more destruction, and the lack of indictment. Seems like the people feel left, unjustifiably, out of the loop on this one.
It's obviously a balance. But if you're asking if say 1,000 lost lives per year is worth it to save the privacy of 350 million people, I would say yes.
Just look at the 10's of thousands of people who die every year so that we have the convenience of driving cars. Not to mention the millions whose health are affected by the air pollution.
Wealth is the highest value, life doesn't even rank. Framing it that way is disingenuous, the choice isn't between saving a life or privacy, and choosing privacy doesn't sentence someone to death. On the other hand allowing sycophantic AI systems fed on mass survellience to identify "criminals" will very likely lead to death or at the very least, destroyed lives.
Answer this: If sacrificing privacy for life is a fair trade... Is money worth more than life? I would assume if life is so highly valued, you'd support the reallocation of resources to support it, right?
I don't object to Flock cameras or any other public cameras. But if I did, I would write to my congress person rather than commit a crime and destroy someone's property.
> I would write to my congress person rather than commit a crime and destroy someone's property.
Your congressman is having a nice steak dinner with representatives of the company while some poor staffer pastes the generic response in the letter sent back to you.
There is a juggernaut of surveillance consuming everything in its path, where laws are skirted to install surveillance instruments and due process might as well not exist. And you're talking about "protecting property" and pulling out your little pen and paper to tell your congressperson "i'd like you to try this instead, please"
I'm sorry, no. You don't necessarily have to be the one taking action in the streets, by all means write your letter, but please don't criticize others and pretend that your approach will get you any further than other peoples approach
This is a justification for any kind of vigilanteism. Is this also what you will tell armed righties who decide to round up illegal immigrants and shuttle them across the border to Mexico because the government is ignoring their concerns or is breaking the law because the government ignores you only reserved for your pet causes?
Democracy operates at multiple levels. You’ll notice that armed right wingers kidnapping people suspected of being undocumented is a problem confined to the government itself. There’s a reason for that. No-one really cares about immigrants, outside of performative politics, enough to take that personal risk. If they did, we’d find out what society’s reaction is. People are unlikely to look on that as favorably as they do on petty vandalism against an undemocratic rollout of a surveillance network.
That is not inconsistent with a belief that violence against a person is a worse than violence against property. It is odd to compare kidnapping a person with destroying their home security cameras.
This is not a jury nullification (which is an emergent property of US Constitutional double-jeopardy protections), but a failure to indict, that is to bring criminal charges (a "bill of indictment") for potential criminal conduct.
In this instance, the case has been dismissed, but might conceivably be brought again.
Why grand juries make the decisions they do is hard to determine, as their operations are (usually) secret. This may have simply been a case of insufficient evidence of a crime, or identity of the suspect ("probable cause"), as appealing as a broader backlash theory might be.
Much of this article appears to be either speculation or unsourced information if there was in fact resistance to bringing a Flock case by this grand jury. The latter might indicate a violation of secrecy oaths by jury members or other court officers.
Specific practices vary by state, not all of which use grand juries. All federal criminal cases rely on a grand jury.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_juries_in_the_United_Sta...>
True, it does not say the reason for the decline to indict. It could have as much to do with the overall decline in quality of the DoJ and its cases as a whole over the past year. Many nonsalient crimes will also go unprosecuted under this DoJ, but they will not generate headlines like this one.
It appears this prosecution was brought by local Ohio police; the federal Department of Justice would not have been involved in any way.
[delayed]
> Police in Union Township, a Cincinnati suburb, accused Cody Morelock of disassembling the camera, its support pole and solar panel on June 13.
To add to this, it stood out to me that the headline uses "destroy" but the article uses "disassemble" to describe what happened. Not that the act of calmly dissasembling something couldn't be indicted as potentially criminal (if a ham sandwich can be), but it stands out regardless. Maybe he literally just walked up and started unscrewing things. That would be the most civil form of "vandalism" I can imagine; force them to (pay someone to) come set it up again until they give up or try something else.
The actual source article[1] mentions the equipment was destroyed. The SAN.com republication linked here dropped that detail.
[1] "Investigators alleged Morelock removed bolts securing the camera system, bringing down the camera, solar panel and support pole before destroying the equipment." https://local12.com/news/local/felony-charges-dismissed-agai...
> Not that the act of calmly dissasembling something couldn't be indicted as potentially criminal (if a ham sandwich can be)
Why do you doubt this? If I calmly disassemble your car in the middle of the night, haven't I committed a crime?
Where I live, calmly disassembling property that is't yours is, at minimum, vandalism: https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/penal-code/penal-sect-28-03/
> A person commits an offense if, without the effective consent of the owner . . . he intentionally or knowingly tampers with the tangible property of the owner and causes . . . substantial inconvenience to the owner or a third person . . . .
My guess is the cost to remedy this disassembly is over $2,500, making this a felony. Even if not, if a government Flock camera is considered a "public service" then it's a felony no matter the cost to remedy because it falls under "causes wholly or partly impairment or interruption of property used for . . . public communications, public transportation, [] or other public service . . ."
I got my catalytic converter stolen twice.
I hear Flock cameras have even more valuable materials inside them.
Plus you are fighting back against the "seeing state" at the same time! Win win!
Jury nullification ain't sounding so bad anymore, is it?
This isn't jury nullification which occurs during a criminal trial, and for which US Constitutional double-jeopardy protections mean that no further trial for the same offence may be brought.
This is a grand jury, which has refused to bring an indictment. There is no double-jeopardy protection here. The prosecutor has several options:
- Bring the case directly to a judge.
- File charges with a new grand jury. (Grand juries typically sit for a period of time.)
In this case, however, charges have been dismissed. There are several variants here, one is "dismissed with prejudice", which means that those specific charges cannot be applied again. TFA doesn't note this (or indeed much else of substance in this case), so the presumption is that charges are dismissed without prejudice.
What is notable here is that grand juries almost always vote to indict. This isn't a verdict of "guilty", but rather, a finding of sufficient cause to bring trial. As the saying goes, "a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich",[1] that is, overwhelmingly (apparently 95%+ of the time) a prosecutor easily convinces a grand jury to file charges.
Given that grand jury proceedings are usually secret (there are exceptions), and we have no further insight as to what the basis of this decision was, there's not much inference which can be made, though I'd lean more strongly to weak evidence than any specific anti-Flock backlash, much as I'd prefer to believe the latter.[3][4]
________________________________
Notes:
1. Sol Wachtler: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Wachtler>
2. On grand juries, generally: <https://legalknowledgebase.com/what-does-it-mean-when-a-gran...>
3. On dismissal of charges: <https://andrewalpert.com/blog/what-does-dismissed-with-preju...>
The common refrain is "you can get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich". The standards required to indict are quite low. The fact that they failed to get an indictment here must mean they had ~nothing.
Judges have a lot of freedom to decide sentences. They might get one willing to throw the book on him. The risk is still there.
Judges can choose sentence upon a guilty verdict. Judges cannot override a Not Guilty verdict.
Quoted, and sourced, in the comment you're replying to.
Yes, I'm aware.
> There are several variants here, one is "dismissed with prejudice", which means that those specific charges cannot be applied again. TFA doesn't note this (or indeed much else of substance in this case), so the presumption is that charges are dismissed without prejudice.
Grand juries can't dismiss with prejudice, FWIW. That's a role for judges, but a judge wouldn't have seen the case at this stage to issue such a dismissal. "Charges were dismissed" in the article is likely reference to the actions of the grand jury. It's possibly an inartful way of saying "the charges were dropped by the prosecution."
Never did
Sad to see how quickly the narrative has been pushed from "you should not collect this data" to a bunch of "we need common sense guardrails" comments.
This reads like a newspaper snippet you discover in a cyberpunk video game.
1984 edition
Why would a simple vandalism charge go to a grand jury?
Because that's how you get a felony criminal case started in Ohio (and most, if not all, states and any federal felony cases).
Felonies go before a grand jury in Ohio. The article talks about damages in excess of $1,000, which probably means it's a felony charge on that basis.
Looks like in Ohio the thresholds are:
- 0 to $999: misdemeanor
- 1K: 5th-degree felony
- 7.5K-150K: 4th-degree felony
- 150K+: 3th-degree felony
But what I found interesting is - They aren't automatically inflation adjusted, it has to be manually adjusted by legislation. Which hasn't been done since 2011 meaning that in 2026 terms it would be $1.5K~ for a 5th-degree felony for like-for-like level of damage.
Kind of nuts how a poorly written law can increase the number of felonies just due to inflation alone. Although a lot of things aren't automatically inflation adjusted (e.g. minimum wage), and I think commonly it is on purpose rather than an accident. They WANT harsher sentences for relative low crimes.
> Although a lot of things aren't automatically inflation adjusted (e.g. minimum wage)
You know what is, though?
The annual budget a senator is allocated for furniture in their office. This year it’s $40,000.
Priorities.
What makes an ALPR cost more than $1000 per unit?
The starting value of felony
Probably the pole, footing, and wages for the installation crew.
The markup I assume
This is true patriotism.
>The backlash against Flock has intensified as a growing number of police officers have been accused of or charged with abusing the technology, often to stalk romantic interests. As of Aug. 12, there had been more than 100 cases of abuse by law enforcement, according to the Institute for Justice.
In response, Flock announced new safeguards designed to prevent misuse by police. Critics, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argue that the reforms are largely “cosmetic,” and that warrants should be required for searching license plate reader data.
I'll go further: the gathering of such information should only be allowable by a sworn law enforcement officer acting under a warrant or some other sort of judicial permission during an active investigation.
Flock and Axon are private companies. What's to stop them from selling this license plate data to the police or to other parties to pad their quarterly numbers? Actually, I'd be surprised if they're not already doing this. A friend of mine is in the camera business and was wondering how the hell they're making the money they're making off of local and state government contracts.
> A friend of mine is in the camera business and was wondering how the hell they're making the money they're making off of local and state government contracts.
The contract awards are public no? Axon et al probably make the majority of their money on service charges for storing, accessing the data rather than on the cameras themselves.
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-came...
No, they don’t as far as I have seen sell data for commercial purposes.
Yet?
You have to admit, the precedent for them being a company that understands the sensitivity of this data has not been set.
Get rid of the what if hyperbole and focus on the core reason why it’s bad. These contracts do not allow commercial use. Could they in the future but so what, focus on the here and now. We should continue to focus on what is true today and simply put Flock has never enforced strict security around their platform and it’s proven consistently that people in power abuse it.
> A friend of mine is in the camera business and was wondering how the hell they're making the money they're making off of local and state government contracts.
The Los Angeles Police Department annual budget is over $2 billion. A couple million a year to flock is a drop in the bucket.
Flock sucks but I think these kind of conspiracies hurt the argument. You can go look at a number of these contracts since they are part of your local city/municipality.
A typical flock agreement is pretty firm that the data is the customers. Some of it might be used for training. There is opt-in to share with other law enforcement but I have not yet seen anything around commercial use.
I don’t think much padding is necessary. It’s a metal pole with a cheap camera and SIM card. They charge $3-5k a year per camera. The only upfront cost is a local contractor to install the camera, they typically have one that covers a very large region. Huge margins with that alone.
It's too late for that. This would have maybe worked 30 years ago, but since the Patriot Act and FISA we have literal secret courts approving >99% of the government's requests for surveillance. The existence of the data is now enough to guarantee its misuse.
Anyone accessing data from this system should have an active case they are assigned to, anything else should be subject to disciplinary action just as with HIPAA. It should have tamper evident audit trails. It should not be on a whim. If emergency access is needed they have to retroactively get reviewed and approved and if it was not in line with any active investigation or assist in an active investigation again it should come under serious scrutiny with actionable consequences.
The state will try again until they get the result that they have determined is correct.
I'm more pro surveillance and think a lot of people missbehaving in public need it nowadays. But even I think this Flock Quasistasi mass sutveillance stuff is going way to far. It's hard to say I love security but also privacy and the abuse potential or risks are huge as well. I'm torn.
Once the data is collected, we can't get it back; it is out there forever. There are other ways to create more security.
This is only fair play given the cities and DAs around the country have refused to indict or prosecute Flock surveillance when they break the law.
Good. Let the techbros understand we don't want a surveillance state.
I agree.
However the agent here with the power is the state and local and federal government. They're just going to do drones next if they can't do sensor masts.
Everyone who authorized this funding needs to be voted out. If we really care the signal is to take away the power of people who decided to use this.
> Everyone who authorized this funding needs to be voted out. If we really care the signal is to take away the power of people who decided to use this.
Yes, and we should continue to nullify convictions for activists fighting this technology on the streets. If they use drones lets shoot them down and nullify those charges too. The court is the final stand and juries are where we the citizens have actual power.
I think my vote might be broken. It keeps not working.
Try power cycling the system
Hah, as if power allows vacuums.
If voting made a difference they wouldn't let us do it.
Stop blaming the victims.
Can you be more specific? Are you claiming that the winner is not actually whoever gets the most votes (e.g. voter fraud, corrupt vote counting), or that someone who would not authorize something like this would literally not be allowed to show up on the ballot? Those are the only two scenarios I can think of that would result in the conclusion you're stating.
As far as I can tell, people who claim the former are almost overwhelming the ones voting for the people who are worst about stuff like this. I've honestly never seen anyone claim the latter though, so if that's what you believe, elaborating more would be helpful.
The candidate would literally not be allowed to show up on the ballot, and it happens regularly. For an example, look what happened to Butch Ware in the California election recently.
The last person to stand for president who managed to get political momentum and wanted real change in the system was Eugene Debs, and they arrested him.
Two others:
Bernie Sanders (prevented from winning the primary via unelected superdelegates)
Ross Perot (suddenly withdrew under murky circumstances and later claimed his family was threatened)
Both wanted significant change, although they were reformists rather than revolutionaries.
> or that someone who would not authorize something like this would literally not be allowed to show up on the ballot?
I'm surprised that you've never encountered this persepective before, it seems a very common one to me.
The first thing I think about is the South Park episode in which the elementary school had to vote for a school mascot and they were given the choice of either "a giant douche" or "a turd sandwich".
The second thing is another South Park episode (circa 2009), for which they actually produced two episodes (and aired one) for the Presidential election between McCain and Obama. Regardless of who would win, the plot was the same: the winner colludes with the loser in a National Treasure-style heist, with the election just being part of the setup.
In the latter example, the message seems to be that it doesn't matter who wins because the same outcomes occur. The former example probably doesn't need explaining.
Anyway, yeah, it would be nice to choose something better than a turd sandwich but when the other option is a giant douche, what is there to do? The way I see it, you either vote for someone who you know stands no chance (Jill Stein, btw), don't vote at all, or vote for the turd sandwich (or the giant douche, if that's your persuasion).
Except there are multiple efforts to make voting more difficult.
lol trump got voted in. i blame the voters - there are not victims here
You think Cop Kamala would've opposed flock? lol, lmao even.
Unfortunately they may be doubling down.
Apple is rumored to be integrating cameras into AirPods[0] that are cloud connected for "AI." They supposedly won't be able to take "pictures" and "video" but will transmit essentially the same information for AI/Siri.
Between the reaction to Flock and also the Meta Glasses; I'm legitimately surprised that companies aren't reading the Tea leaves here. But, no, I guess everything needs a camera and a cloud feed of that camera's vision now.
PS - And before you say "that is just a rumor" the video file was extracted from Apple's macOS 26.7 RC that showcases how it may work.
[0] https://www.macrumors.com/2026/08/17/camera-equipped-airpods...
Someone should invent something that, used in a confined space, will destroy camera sensors (but not human retinas)
They have the warchest. They’ll buy the politicians. Look how the populist right has failed its primaries so hard.
Could you elaborate? Specifically:
> Look how the populist right has failed its primaries so hard.
From my bubble (we’re all in bubbles), it seems that the populist right are in bed with the technocrat authoritarians, e.g. the Vance-Thiel connection. Losses in primaries would indicate to me that the technocrat authoritarians are not succeeding in purchasing politicians.
Look at all the dodgy business that went on around the Thomas Massie primary.
Elaborate?
Massie is kinda interesting. Because he’s a sort of libertarian who ran as a republican when the right was a bit more united
But it was a strange election. The “establishment” candidate was a no name who refused to do any debates. Rarely ever seem to say much, and when he did, it was mostly just empty parroting of Trumps agenda. Maybe that’s truly what that district wanted.
What was interesting was how Massie seemed slated to win until the very end. Suddenly at the last minute, all sorts of smear ads and all kinds of (honestly very mild) accusations of personal impropriety were being slung left and right and days before the election, polls swap showing Gallrein in the lead, a complete reversal from the months before. A man I’ve never heard speak anything that wasn’t just party lines or something about being a SEAL.
Now I understand that polling isn’t always accurate. But I’ve seen the same exact thing play out nearly the same way in other recent primaries. Feels fishy.
I read it as technocrats Vance-Thiel successfully bought populist MAGA politicians. Those then failed in primaries, because electorate including portion of maga base rejects them. The "buying politicians" step was successful.
Now they need to buy new politicians and will definitely try.
> From my bubble (we’re all in bubbles), it seems that the populist right are in bed with the technocrat authoritarians, e.g. the Vance-Thiel connection.
Interesting, in my bubble “populist” right refers more younger more paleo conservative types who feel betrayed by MAGA. Many of these people hate Thiel and Technocrats as much as my Marxist friends.
I’m gonna guess (and tell me if I’m wrong) the disconnect is that you may be referring to the Trump admin itself which is indeed in bed with Thiel types. Personally I don’t really bother considering them populist anymore. They seem to mostly be interested in enriching their little circle.
Interestingly, the populist left is suddenly doing well this cycle, although I don’t know if that success will carry through to the general.
The warchest is not enough: the NYC mayoral election and Michigan and Florida Senate (outfunded 16:1) primaries are good examples.
Remember, if your vote didn't matter there wouldn't be so much effort to restrict it!
its not you the tech bros are selling it to. its fascist politicians.
Hence, the destruction, the calls for more destruction, and the lack of indictment. Seems like the people feel left, unjustifiably, out of the loop on this one.
Life is considered the highest value in the west. So let me ask you this. Is the life of a person less worth than your privacy?
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Benjamin Franklin
People don't think the invasion of their privacy will 1. save lives, and 2. not take lives.
Faith in governments is not only low, people are pretty sure any power governments have will be abused.
The equation is a little bigger than that, basically.
It's obviously a balance. But if you're asking if say 1,000 lost lives per year is worth it to save the privacy of 350 million people, I would say yes.
Just look at the 10's of thousands of people who die every year so that we have the convenience of driving cars. Not to mention the millions whose health are affected by the air pollution.
Wealth is the highest value, life doesn't even rank. Framing it that way is disingenuous, the choice isn't between saving a life or privacy, and choosing privacy doesn't sentence someone to death. On the other hand allowing sycophantic AI systems fed on mass survellience to identify "criminals" will very likely lead to death or at the very least, destroyed lives.
Answer this: If sacrificing privacy for life is a fair trade... Is money worth more than life? I would assume if life is so highly valued, you'd support the reallocation of resources to support it, right?
False dichotomy.
Property damage is a crime.
I don't object to Flock cameras or any other public cameras. But if I did, I would write to my congress person rather than commit a crime and destroy someone's property.
> I would write to my congress person rather than commit a crime and destroy someone's property.
Your congressman is having a nice steak dinner with representatives of the company while some poor staffer pastes the generic response in the letter sent back to you.
Or getting their debts paid off by shady right-wing groups
Did Fox News tell you to write that?
weak.
There is a juggernaut of surveillance consuming everything in its path, where laws are skirted to install surveillance instruments and due process might as well not exist. And you're talking about "protecting property" and pulling out your little pen and paper to tell your congressperson "i'd like you to try this instead, please"
I'm sorry, no. You don't necessarily have to be the one taking action in the streets, by all means write your letter, but please don't criticize others and pretend that your approach will get you any further than other peoples approach
This is a justification for any kind of vigilanteism. Is this also what you will tell armed righties who decide to round up illegal immigrants and shuttle them across the border to Mexico because the government is ignoring their concerns or is breaking the law because the government ignores you only reserved for your pet causes?
Democracy operates at multiple levels. You’ll notice that armed right wingers kidnapping people suspected of being undocumented is a problem confined to the government itself. There’s a reason for that. No-one really cares about immigrants, outside of performative politics, enough to take that personal risk. If they did, we’d find out what society’s reaction is. People are unlikely to look on that as favorably as they do on petty vandalism against an undemocratic rollout of a surveillance network.
That is not inconsistent with a belief that violence against a person is a worse than violence against property. It is odd to compare kidnapping a person with destroying their home security cameras.
Self governance means more that picking people to lord over you.
Writing a letter to your congressman does nothing.