Every time law enforcement is given surveillance tools the same thing happens, the people with legal and approved access will abuse it.
Politicians are completely naive in their understand how people works, if it's abused, the system isn't locked down enough or that one person circumvented the procedure. They completely fail to understand that there exists people to whom you cannot grant access and screening people in advance probably impossible. Some cop checks all the boxes, gets access to databases, then their partner leaves them and they are now no longer safe to grant access.
I don't understand why it's hard to grasp that surveillance tools are dangerous and rather using them to protect others, law enforcement will use these tools to do bad things. It's as if that we assume that cops are better people and follow rules better. Even in countries that actually train their police force this isn't remotely true.
The US might be different, I doubt it, but society is getting increasingly SAFE, there is less and less need to these tools.
The Purge was a terrible movie in so many ways but its message is still extremely resonant. It's also about as subtle as a brick wall, yet I'm afraid that it might have been still a tad too subtle.
> Politicians are completely naive in their understand how people works
They understand exactly how people work. You are naive for thinking that they aren't aware of this. Their entire job is essentially a popularity contest in which they promise you things, that they almost never deliver on.
Myriad ways, pretty standard on most corporate networks, to restrict access to corporate devices. I cannot access any of my client's resources, including Web apps, without their laptop.
Simple method is IP whitelisting, easy in some ways painful to keep updated. Vpn is another easy option. But then you can have client side certs, hardware tokens, and endpoint security mechanisms which are probably more robust. Either way, it's not a weird unique thing, it's pretty ubiquitous :)
I have to be logged in to azure vpn to access the development environment of the web application I work on because heavens forbid if our users stumble upon a non-production version of the application on the Internet and yet these people just put everything out there for everyone to see. At least I think it should require a CAC card or a PIV card to access sensitive data like this, shutting down immediately if the card presence is not detected somehow.
Probably the department's fault for not using (presumably) Entra Conditional Access to restrict SSO to corporate devices / corporate subnets.
This is why if you're building a product, please give SSO for free (see sso.tax) - you shift responsibility, requirements and posture to the tenant's IdP.
In addition to the other things mentioned, some very sensitive applications in my organization must be run from a virtual desktop, which is itself must be run from a locked down corporate laptop.
We typically use VPC Endpoint Services or equivalent for enterprise customers, ie connect our private VPC with their private VPC. Pretty much the best way to do this, no VPNs to manage or IP whitelists to maintain and all traffic is local to the cloud provider.
I can’t run any web apps from my employer unless I’m on one of their computers. Tokens are only generated on corporate systems. IP access only allowed from corporate VPN.
In Chatrie v. United States (June 2026) the SCOTUS ruled that individuals maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in their digital location history and that geofence warrants constitute a search under the 4th Amendment. It's only a matter of time until a similar case involving Flock comes before them and they rule that a search of the Flock database constitutes a search under the 4th Amendment and that every single search requires a specific warrant.
> Interim Maj. Max Nowinsky sustained the allegation and recommended an eight-hour suspension
Lots of explanations here for wanting to go easy on her. Is the same logic applied for the many victims of a police department? If it's preferential treatment then maybe Interim Maj. Max Nowinsky should also be kicked to the curb.
> Tyler Harpe, a federal ICE agent
Federal ICE agent Tyler Harpe, may you enjoy your new found fame.
And a great big poisoned tree for anything that comes from the data. But it’s not like the Americans have been following the rules when deporting people anyways.
That rule only applies in courtrooms. As ICE doesn't really do courtrooms, the rule is moot. (Not a joke. ICE moves prisoners around so quickly specifically to avoid dealing with courtrooms.)
The regime has figured out that the people don’t like certain things, but not nearly enough to do anything uncomfortable about them. Now they’re calibrating on the best ways to do things without stirring the people up too much. Apparently if you make gas cost too much that’s where Americans draw the line. And who says capitalism doesn’t work!
Most of the federal government predates the current administration. They really do want to follow the law. It's their job, not an ideology.
ICE is the President's personal force, screened for their loyalty to him. They have no interest in the law. The rest of the government doesn't like them any better than you do.
I guess the way I'd put it is that we've been increasingly allowing and not punishing privacy breaches and government/authorities overstepping and after 20+ years of boiling the frog the latest, most extreme variant has pretty much pushed it over the edge of dystopian.
So it's not all Trump, but his administration has definitely pushed the lack of accountability to new heights and combining it with the new wave of surveillance tech with limited oversight or legislation it's all just become ingrained with nobody to fight it.
Wonder how many low level Lowes or Home Depot asset protection employees would also happily hand their credentials over for nationwide search access, too.
I have Home Depot employees using Flock announcements to shadow me now.
Last two visits, some guy named "Victor" shadowed me, and made it a point to call me by my first name twice.
I spend as little money at Home Depot as possible now.
The flock system is being abused by every organization across the entire country, because thats where peoples heads are at today.
2 out of 3 adults in the US are not considered "psychologically mature" by psychologists.
Nation of adult children + spying and tracking technology ... of course its being abused. The only question is how much, and Flock isn't going to tell us the truth of it, ever, because they dont track abuse, they track victims.
Home Depot and Lowes are the 2 largest US home store ( construction materials, appliances, etc ) retail chains in the US.
They have Flock cameras installed on mobile trailers, parked in their parking lots. The cameras track your vehicle as you are parking, and issue alerts for anyone that has been flagged in the database.
In my case, I have classmates from school, who have friends at the local county EMS operations center, who are using the system to stalk me.
Just 3 days ago, I tried to have a quiet conversation with my girlfriend at a little park, in a small neighborhood. Less than 10 minutes after arriving, a car with 4 or 5 people showed up, positioned themselves within ear shot, and then began making fun of us in order to prevent us from thinking and discussing issues clearly. This event by itself seems innocent and random, except, it happens like clockwork, in multiple locations, and its an established pattern in my life, making it decidedly non-random. The "actors" think of it as street theatre, the police think of it as "policing", and what you get as the target is pure psychological hell.
When a victim begins to try and explain verbally what is happening to them, they relive the trauma of the events that have been "staged" and people assume the victim is mentally unstable. It is the same strategy as kicking a dog in the head repeatedly, until it becomes an agry mad dog, and then putting it down because it was dangerous. Create the problem, then appear to solve it.
What may have started out as a joke now has them guilty of human trafficking, so they have adopted a strategy of "running me out of town" via harrassment.
They know if they emotionally destablise people, they will voluntarily leave or self destruct via drugs, stress, acting out, etc.
This is what "community policing" now means.
There are any number of videos on youtube of people having meltdowns, claiming they are being 'gangstalked', etc. and they seem very disturbed. This is why this works. They disturb you, then dismiss any allegations as you being disturbed.
Watch the movie "Closetland" for how psychological abuse works.
That is fucking insane. I'm also separately sorry your friends are being stalked. I'd like to give a perspective here without sounding holy. Yes we have ANPR (what you'd call ALPR). There are national police databases and I am sure the cameras are very effective, but every search would require a justification of proportionality and access is not sold to the highest bidders. I think the furthest stretch of users would be the tax authorities' investigations departments. That a private company can profile citizens' movements like this is insane.
At it's basics, it's a camera software suite like any other security software like Genetec or the open source Frigate that companies can buy. Obviously the access allowed for a private company like home depot would be limited to only their cameras but home depot could then make those cameras available to law enforcement sort of like how Fusus allows private businesses to set up their local Police department with access to their camera system through a Fusus access box just that with Flock it's built into the software and isn't a third party add-on.
Lowes and Home Depot, two retailers of tools and home repair supplies, got Flock cameras for all their parking lots after a wave of organized thefts in multiple states. By tracking license plates, they were able to end several rings of thieves who had been stealing millions of dollars worth of goods.
Correct. Lowes and Home Depot pay for "private" Flock cameras for asset protection purposes.
They use the licence plate hotlist internally to track when "organized retail crime(tm)" shows up and get pings when "thieves" come back to the store.
Thus, any Lowes/HD asset protection employee/manager can log into Flock, and see all of the ones "owned" by their corporation (which is nationwide, and installed well beyond the confines of the store property, often covering entire shopping plazas or parks where they're located). They won't be able to see outside of those bounds, but that's still a SUPER powerful tool if you consider ~1700 Lowes and 2000 Home Depots in the US alone.
And of course, combined with "small town" mentality and "backing the blue", of course someone with a modicum of power (the mall cop AP employee) will LARP up and want to whack out with ICE/the local PD and be happy to help them if it means getting a challenge coin!
I’m less surprised that such things are happening (much worse has been happening for over 20 years) than by the fact that many people seem to genuinely believe that voting, protesting, or calling some representative is going to get us out of this.
A rollback here and there only delays the inevitable. There has been no meaningful progress in individual rights in a Western country in at least 30 years.
They're taking the more nihilistic stance that progress now is just a delay, and the outcome is treated as inevitable. Honestly, it's hard to see it going any other way: plenty of towns, cities, and counties are just waiting out the storm of public opinion and will move on once people get tired of protesting the same thing over and over.
Doesn't mean I don't think that protest and outrage over surveillance aren't good things, just that these things require constant vigilance or else we're stuck with them. Personally, what I see happening is a further bifurcation of American life, where we see communities opposed to constant surveillance contrasted with those that embrace the panopticon.
I'd assume that the Plutocrats, their loyal politicians, and the Creep State have worked very hard to convince people to "fight back" with ineffectual tactics.
Which is not to say that voting can't be extremely effective, if organized at suitable scales over time. Trump wasn't re-elected because all the swing voters who'd replaced him with Biden in '20 were overjoyed with how Joe and his Dem's had handled things.
Trump and his predecessors have all been advancing mass surveillance on an unimaginable scale. This particular topic is probably the strongest argument against the power of voting.
Against the power of n=1 voting, or the against the power of "we got 53%" voting?
I was pointing out that the former is virtually meaningless, but the latter tends to be decisive.
Yes, mass surveillance is a huge problem. But most of the time, most of the voters do not behave as if they meaningfully care about most of the aspects of mass surveillance. That's pretty much the same rule as for the Pentagon buying $5,000 screwdrivers, and bizarre loopholes appearing in the tax code to benefit a few billionaires who are extremely "generous" to their good friends in Congress.
Is this any different, legally, than sharing your Netflix login etc?
Because the data is purchased, most jurisdictions don't require a warrant. The only legal issue I can see currently is that Flock lost revenue from having another subscriber.
What if sharing of Netflix passwords could lead to bodily harm or an “illegal” activity that wouldn’t hold up in court? Probably the one sharing Netflix password wouldn’t remain unscathed, legally speaking?
Your employer probably would, and Anthropic as well.
—
In any case, these Netflix and LLM subscription comparisons are utterly beside the point, the equation is hilariously different when it’s a surveillance tool used by
the state violence monopoly that we’re talking about. The standard should be absurdly higher than "no big deal, everyone shares their Netflix".
Every time law enforcement is given surveillance tools the same thing happens, the people with legal and approved access will abuse it.
Politicians are completely naive in their understand how people works, if it's abused, the system isn't locked down enough or that one person circumvented the procedure. They completely fail to understand that there exists people to whom you cannot grant access and screening people in advance probably impossible. Some cop checks all the boxes, gets access to databases, then their partner leaves them and they are now no longer safe to grant access.
I don't understand why it's hard to grasp that surveillance tools are dangerous and rather using them to protect others, law enforcement will use these tools to do bad things. It's as if that we assume that cops are better people and follow rules better. Even in countries that actually train their police force this isn't remotely true.
The US might be different, I doubt it, but society is getting increasingly SAFE, there is less and less need to these tools.
> Politicians are completely naive in their understand how people works
Some are, others aren't. They just accept it willingly.
Just as in the Purge movies politicians are exempt ;-)
The Purge was a terrible movie in so many ways but its message is still extremely resonant. It's also about as subtle as a brick wall, yet I'm afraid that it might have been still a tad too subtle.
> Politicians are completely naive in their understand how people works
They understand exactly how people work. You are naive for thinking that they aren't aware of this. Their entire job is essentially a popularity contest in which they promise you things, that they almost never deliver on.
Wait, this system is standard SaaS and they can sign in from anywhere, not locked to department devices? That's crazy.
Honestly I’m not even surprised.
The future is a dystopian mundanity. We expect the protagonists to roleplay their part.
How do you implement that with web apps?
Myriad ways, pretty standard on most corporate networks, to restrict access to corporate devices. I cannot access any of my client's resources, including Web apps, without their laptop.
Simple method is IP whitelisting, easy in some ways painful to keep updated. Vpn is another easy option. But then you can have client side certs, hardware tokens, and endpoint security mechanisms which are probably more robust. Either way, it's not a weird unique thing, it's pretty ubiquitous :)
I have to be logged in to azure vpn to access the development environment of the web application I work on because heavens forbid if our users stumble upon a non-production version of the application on the Internet and yet these people just put everything out there for everyone to see. At least I think it should require a CAC card or a PIV card to access sensitive data like this, shutting down immediately if the card presence is not detected somehow.
IP range allowlists, mTLS, any number of conditions on your auth provider, take your choice.
Probably the department's fault for not using (presumably) Entra Conditional Access to restrict SSO to corporate devices / corporate subnets.
This is why if you're building a product, please give SSO for free (see sso.tax) - you shift responsibility, requirements and posture to the tenant's IdP.
In addition to the other things mentioned, some very sensitive applications in my organization must be run from a virtual desktop, which is itself must be run from a locked down corporate laptop.
We typically use VPC Endpoint Services or equivalent for enterprise customers, ie connect our private VPC with their private VPC. Pretty much the best way to do this, no VPNs to manage or IP whitelists to maintain and all traffic is local to the cloud provider.
That assumes the customers have cloud computing in use, which many do not.
IDP + MDM, Client certificates, VPNs, tokens/cookies, etc.
IP Whitelist, this is standard stuff.
IP whitelists or VPNs
I can’t run any web apps from my employer unless I’m on one of their computers. Tokens are only generated on corporate systems. IP access only allowed from corporate VPN.
With a VPN for instance
mTLS with cert in TPM.
[movies] Big Brother is an evil AI, that controls all our lives.
[reality] It's just the police, beating us with better batons, same as it ever was.
Oh, I suppose the baton upgrades are something to celebrate!
Also, baton manufacturing company started via HN
> He said every search was related to his federal law enforcement work and denied using the system for personal reasons.
Assuming that’s true, why wouldn’t he have his own flock account to do his searches?
Because for all their faults Flock dose not give ICE access to state owned cameras.
In Chatrie v. United States (June 2026) the SCOTUS ruled that individuals maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in their digital location history and that geofence warrants constitute a search under the 4th Amendment. It's only a matter of time until a similar case involving Flock comes before them and they rule that a search of the Flock database constitutes a search under the 4th Amendment and that every single search requires a specific warrant.
> Interim Maj. Max Nowinsky sustained the allegation and recommended an eight-hour suspension
Lots of explanations here for wanting to go easy on her. Is the same logic applied for the many victims of a police department? If it's preferential treatment then maybe Interim Maj. Max Nowinsky should also be kicked to the curb.
> Tyler Harpe, a federal ICE agent
Federal ICE agent Tyler Harpe, may you enjoy your new found fame.
Is this not cybercrime and illegal surveillance?
ICE are basically above the law. They're routinely ignoring court orders: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
But what about the woman? Sure, she was fired for it, but surely it has to also be illegal?
And while federal crimes are legal now, couldn't it be against state law too?
police rarely face serious consequences for misconduct.
[delayed]
Fuhrer Brownshirts, just waiting for a competent dictator to take over from Trump.
And a great big poisoned tree for anything that comes from the data. But it’s not like the Americans have been following the rules when deporting people anyways.
That rule only applies in courtrooms. As ICE doesn't really do courtrooms, the rule is moot. (Not a joke. ICE moves prisoners around so quickly specifically to avoid dealing with courtrooms.)
The regime has figured out that the people don’t like certain things, but not nearly enough to do anything uncomfortable about them. Now they’re calibrating on the best ways to do things without stirring the people up too much. Apparently if you make gas cost too much that’s where Americans draw the line. And who says capitalism doesn’t work!
I don't want to automatically blame Trump, but if the leader of the country ignores laws, why would anyone else think they are that important?
Most of the federal government predates the current administration. They really do want to follow the law. It's their job, not an ideology.
ICE is the President's personal force, screened for their loyalty to him. They have no interest in the law. The rest of the government doesn't like them any better than you do.
I guess the way I'd put it is that we've been increasingly allowing and not punishing privacy breaches and government/authorities overstepping and after 20+ years of boiling the frog the latest, most extreme variant has pretty much pushed it over the edge of dystopian.
So it's not all Trump, but his administration has definitely pushed the lack of accountability to new heights and combining it with the new wave of surveillance tech with limited oversight or legislation it's all just become ingrained with nobody to fight it.
No, because of the Führerprinzip [0], oh, um, sorry, I meant "unitary executive theory".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip
Apparently the system was not protected by 2FA.
Wonder how many low level Lowes or Home Depot asset protection employees would also happily hand their credentials over for nationwide search access, too.
I have Home Depot employees using Flock announcements to shadow me now.
Last two visits, some guy named "Victor" shadowed me, and made it a point to call me by my first name twice.
I spend as little money at Home Depot as possible now.
The flock system is being abused by every organization across the entire country, because thats where peoples heads are at today.
2 out of 3 adults in the US are not considered "psychologically mature" by psychologists.
Nation of adult children + spying and tracking technology ... of course its being abused. The only question is how much, and Flock isn't going to tell us the truth of it, ever, because they dont track abuse, they track victims.
We are the victims of Flock.
Sorry, ignorant European here. WDYM a Home Depot employee can access Flock? This thing is not restricted to LEO?
No, its not.
Home Depot and Lowes are the 2 largest US home store ( construction materials, appliances, etc ) retail chains in the US.
They have Flock cameras installed on mobile trailers, parked in their parking lots. The cameras track your vehicle as you are parking, and issue alerts for anyone that has been flagged in the database.
In my case, I have classmates from school, who have friends at the local county EMS operations center, who are using the system to stalk me.
Just 3 days ago, I tried to have a quiet conversation with my girlfriend at a little park, in a small neighborhood. Less than 10 minutes after arriving, a car with 4 or 5 people showed up, positioned themselves within ear shot, and then began making fun of us in order to prevent us from thinking and discussing issues clearly. This event by itself seems innocent and random, except, it happens like clockwork, in multiple locations, and its an established pattern in my life, making it decidedly non-random. The "actors" think of it as street theatre, the police think of it as "policing", and what you get as the target is pure psychological hell.
When a victim begins to try and explain verbally what is happening to them, they relive the trauma of the events that have been "staged" and people assume the victim is mentally unstable. It is the same strategy as kicking a dog in the head repeatedly, until it becomes an agry mad dog, and then putting it down because it was dangerous. Create the problem, then appear to solve it.
What may have started out as a joke now has them guilty of human trafficking, so they have adopted a strategy of "running me out of town" via harrassment.
They know if they emotionally destablise people, they will voluntarily leave or self destruct via drugs, stress, acting out, etc.
This is what "community policing" now means.
There are any number of videos on youtube of people having meltdowns, claiming they are being 'gangstalked', etc. and they seem very disturbed. This is why this works. They disturb you, then dismiss any allegations as you being disturbed.
Watch the movie "Closetland" for how psychological abuse works.
That is fucking insane. I'm also separately sorry your friends are being stalked. I'd like to give a perspective here without sounding holy. Yes we have ANPR (what you'd call ALPR). There are national police databases and I am sure the cameras are very effective, but every search would require a justification of proportionality and access is not sold to the highest bidders. I think the furthest stretch of users would be the tax authorities' investigations departments. That a private company can profile citizens' movements like this is insane.
...this seems overtly paranoid and is really hard to believe. Who are you to be constantly stalked by 4-5 people?
And you blame the "adults of America" that supposedly are "psychologically inmature", which to me looks like an absurd and unsubstantiated claim
At it's basics, it's a camera software suite like any other security software like Genetec or the open source Frigate that companies can buy. Obviously the access allowed for a private company like home depot would be limited to only their cameras but home depot could then make those cameras available to law enforcement sort of like how Fusus allows private businesses to set up their local Police department with access to their camera system through a Fusus access box just that with Flock it's built into the software and isn't a third party add-on.
Lowes and Home Depot, two retailers of tools and home repair supplies, got Flock cameras for all their parking lots after a wave of organized thefts in multiple states. By tracking license plates, they were able to end several rings of thieves who had been stealing millions of dollars worth of goods.
Correct. Lowes and Home Depot pay for "private" Flock cameras for asset protection purposes.
They use the licence plate hotlist internally to track when "organized retail crime(tm)" shows up and get pings when "thieves" come back to the store.
Thus, any Lowes/HD asset protection employee/manager can log into Flock, and see all of the ones "owned" by their corporation (which is nationwide, and installed well beyond the confines of the store property, often covering entire shopping plazas or parks where they're located). They won't be able to see outside of those bounds, but that's still a SUPER powerful tool if you consider ~1700 Lowes and 2000 Home Depots in the US alone.
And of course, combined with "small town" mentality and "backing the blue", of course someone with a modicum of power (the mall cop AP employee) will LARP up and want to whack out with ICE/the local PD and be happy to help them if it means getting a challenge coin!
"Sorry, this content is not available in your region."
https://archive.is/5cKk4
I’m less surprised that such things are happening (much worse has been happening for over 20 years) than by the fact that many people seem to genuinely believe that voting, protesting, or calling some representative is going to get us out of this.
Because… it is? Numerous states have banned flock style cameras as a result of the protests.
A rollback here and there only delays the inevitable. There has been no meaningful progress in individual rights in a Western country in at least 30 years.
I mean, the Flock cameras coming down is meaningful progress?
They're taking the more nihilistic stance that progress now is just a delay, and the outcome is treated as inevitable. Honestly, it's hard to see it going any other way: plenty of towns, cities, and counties are just waiting out the storm of public opinion and will move on once people get tired of protesting the same thing over and over.
Doesn't mean I don't think that protest and outrage over surveillance aren't good things, just that these things require constant vigilance or else we're stuck with them. Personally, what I see happening is a further bifurcation of American life, where we see communities opposed to constant surveillance contrasted with those that embrace the panopticon.
On Flock very precisely, it had an impact in the last year.
Town canceled their contracts, the stock went down.
Two measurable metrics
I'd assume that the Plutocrats, their loyal politicians, and the Creep State have worked very hard to convince people to "fight back" with ineffectual tactics.
Which is not to say that voting can't be extremely effective, if organized at suitable scales over time. Trump wasn't re-elected because all the swing voters who'd replaced him with Biden in '20 were overjoyed with how Joe and his Dem's had handled things.
Trump and his predecessors have all been advancing mass surveillance on an unimaginable scale. This particular topic is probably the strongest argument against the power of voting.
Against the power of n=1 voting, or the against the power of "we got 53%" voting?
I was pointing out that the former is virtually meaningless, but the latter tends to be decisive.
Yes, mass surveillance is a huge problem. But most of the time, most of the voters do not behave as if they meaningfully care about most of the aspects of mass surveillance. That's pretty much the same rule as for the Pentagon buying $5,000 screwdrivers, and bizarre loopholes appearing in the tax code to benefit a few billionaires who are extremely "generous" to their good friends in Congress.
Is this any different, legally, than sharing your Netflix login etc?
Because the data is purchased, most jurisdictions don't require a warrant. The only legal issue I can see currently is that Flock lost revenue from having another subscriber.
What if sharing of Netflix passwords could lead to bodily harm or an “illegal” activity that wouldn’t hold up in court? Probably the one sharing Netflix password wouldn’t remain unscathed, legally speaking?
I am not a lawyer, just curious.
It is different, because the access is tied to your contract/job.
But even if it were legal, this only shows the core problem:
That data should not be available to anyone at all.
If your work gives you access to an Anthropic account, can you give it to your spouse just because they also happen to be a programmer?
Sure why not? Anthropic may be unhappy about potential lost customer, but if I had extra inference, I don't see anything wrong with this.
Your employer probably would, and Anthropic as well.
—
In any case, these Netflix and LLM subscription comparisons are utterly beside the point, the equation is hilariously different when it’s a surveillance tool used by the state violence monopoly that we’re talking about. The standard should be absurdly higher than "no big deal, everyone shares their Netflix".