Rendered at 23:07:24 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
openasocket 8 hours ago [-]
For those that don't know, grand juries declining an indictment is extremely rare. A grand jury is basically a check on prosecution, that they have to have some initial evidence before charging someone with a felony. The standards are much lower than the subsequent criminal proceedings.
The grand jury only hears from the prosecution, there is no defense involved. Only a majority of the grand jury has to sign off, not unanimous like in an actual trial. The standard of evidence is just probable cause, not beyond a reasonable doubt. The rules of evidence are relaxed, meaning hearsay and other evidence can potentially be introduced that would normally be barred from a trial.
Because of the above, the rate of indictment from a grand jury is very high, over 90%. Most prosecutors will go their entire careers without getting a "no true bill" (meaning the grand jury did not sign off on an indictment). There's a saying that "a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich." So the fact that there was no indictment here is a big deal. It will probably hurt that prosecutor's career.
aqme28 8 hours ago [-]
Though sometimes a prosecutors office will use a grand jury to fail to indict intentionally, like when the accused is a police officer they work with. It's a good way to launder away a prosecution that the DA doesn't want to pursue for political reasons.
axus 5 hours ago [-]
The state could contract a criminal defense lawyer to prosecute, they probably already have antagonistic relationship with police.
Zigurd 5 hours ago [-]
This is how it should be done. But police departments strongly resist even administrative discipline by independent bodies.
pixl97 5 hours ago [-]
Why would the state do that unless forced?
BobaFloutist 3 hours ago [-]
Because it doesn't benefit the state to hav corrupt cops?
pixl97 2 hours ago [-]
This is too black and white of a take.
The state can benefit when it has particular kinds of corruption, but not all kinds of corruption.
actionfromafar 5 hours ago [-]
That's either a very shallow or deep question. :)
Analemma_ 6 hours ago [-]
I've banged on about this before, but every state needs to adopt a law where allegations of illegal behavior by cops are always handled by a Special Prosecutor, never the local DA. The incentives are too fucked for a DA to ever be trusted to handle it properly.
engineer_22 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
detourdog 8 hours ago [-]
This recent phenomenon is interesting to me because a jury of peers is standing up for individuals against corporate/government overreach.
gorgoiler 8 hours ago [-]
Do we know that to be the case? This could just as likely be an incompetent prosecutor showing up with inadequate or invalidated evidence and the jury throwing the case out on grounds of procedural incompetence rather than sympathy.
detourdog 7 hours ago [-]
I don’t know it for a fact but the prosecutors apparently had video evidence and sales receipts. I was definitely projecting my own feelings on the grand jury response.
mbrameld 6 hours ago [-]
> just as likely
If you look at the success rate of prosecutors getting grand juries to indict, it's certainly not "just as likely".
senordevnyc 3 hours ago [-]
The stat is very high, but that doesn’t tell you anything about why grand juries don’t indict in the small percentage where they don’t, nor why they elected not to here.
ludicrousdispla 6 hours ago [-]
that sounds exactly like "a jury of peers is standing up for individuals against corporate/government overreach"
LordDragonfang 3 hours ago [-]
Real life events are rarely monocausal; it's not one "rather than" the other, instead it's almost certainly a combination of both (and other factors besides). Especially with (as several other commenters who pointed out) how rare a lack of indictment is.
philistine 4 hours ago [-]
This attitude can be a strong precursor to positive change. In Canada, Dr. Morgentaler performed abortions in Montréal, and prosecutors were unable to compose a jury of enough people who would return a guilty verdict for any abortion. So it created an untenable situation for the government, who had no choice but to let doctors completely break the law until they were deemed unconstitutional against the newly penned charter.
abirch 6 hours ago [-]
This is why it's important for us to show up and do jury duty even if it's not sexy. You can make a difference.
wang_li 8 hours ago [-]
Not real recent. Nullification like this goes far back. It just requires a certain level of bias across the jury pool. After which, some people or companies will be unable to be protected by criminal law.
dreamcompiler 7 hours ago [-]
As others in this thread point out, this is not nullification. Nullification is a different thing and grand juries cannot do it.
Sohcahtoa82 6 hours ago [-]
> Nullification is a different thing and grand juries cannot do it.
It might not fit the textbook definition of jury nullification, but it would absolutely fit the spirit of the definition.
If the prosecution presents nearly irrefutable proof that the Ohio man destroyed the camera (Which from what I've heard is the case), but the grand jury declined to indict anyway because they're vehemently against Flock cameras and want to stick it to the government, then as far as I'm concerned, that's nullification.
woodruffw 6 hours ago [-]
It doesn’t fit the spirit, because it doesn’t have the legal qualities of nullification. In particular, the prosecutor can choose to empanel a new grand jury and seek a new indictment on the exact same charge.
anthonyrstevens 4 hours ago [-]
That's a technical distinction over which the original jurors have no control. I think the scenario described in GP exactly meets the spirit of nullification.
woodruffw 4 hours ago [-]
The entire point is that they have no control! That’s what makes it not nullification.
Edit: to be clear, the essential quality of nullification is that it’s the product of a contradiction between two unassailable principles in our legal system. Without that contradiction, which does not exist in a grand jury context, a juror’s decision is not nullifying. It’s just a decision.
john01dav 6 hours ago [-]
Why can't grand juries do it? I thought that it's when juries intentionally rule against what the law says, while saying otherwise, as a consequence of juries not being able to be penalized for their ruling. I don't seen any reason that the same can't happen with a grand jury.
A web search comes up with articles saying that it's more common with non-grand juries, but that's not the same as "cannot do it", while they also speak about a prosecutor's ability to re-indict, but that still doesn't guarantee them a charge.
woodruffw 6 hours ago [-]
Nullification is based on a contradiction in terms: juries cannot be punished for the judgments they render, and prosecutors may not re-try a case to obtain their preferred outcome (“double jeopardy”).
With a grand jury, the second term doesn’t apply: the grand jury’s decision doesn’t prevent a second indictment.
So in other words: grand juries can choose to render “faithless” decisions, but they can’t nullify a case in the sense that matters.
detourdog 6 hours ago [-]
It may have to do with the state of accusations. Pre-grand jury there is no evidence of a crime. Once a grand jury rules with the prosecutor a crime has been defined.
alphazard 8 hours ago [-]
Not sure why your comment is being downvote. That is in fact the best explanation for what is going on here, and the outcome has little to do with the competence of the prosecutor, as is perhaps alluded to by the original comment.
It's good to see individuals on a jury acting according to rational self-interest.
cwnyth 8 hours ago [-]
If it didn't originate with the show, Law & Order (the original run) has the line: "You could get a ham sandwich indicted" was said to Jack McCoy in one episode. I think I remember it coming up again in another episode.
dredmorbius 7 hours ago [-]
Solomon "Sol" Wachtler appears to have coined the phrase.
He is a retired New York judge, ultimately chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals.
He was a republican. He wanted to stop using grand juries to bring indictments, so he wasn’t impartial in his assessment.
Unrelatedly, he had an affair with a republican fund-raiser. When it ended, started making threats to kidnap her daughter, who was 14 at the time. He sent a sexually explicit note to the daughter, enclosing a condom.
He got a 15-month prison sentence.
This is who republicans are quoting whenever they repeat the phrase that “you can indict a ham sandwich”.
The real force behind the low no-true-bill rate for federal grand juries is that the DoJ had extraordinarily high standards for themselves before they even approached a GJ. They had to believe they could convict and sustain on appeal. They haven’t lived up to those standards for a couple years now.
dredmorbius 56 minutes ago [-]
Thanks!
I saw mention of the peccadillo, but wasn't aware of the full back-story.
hn_throwaway_99 6 hours ago [-]
I appreciated the interesting info on the originator of this quote, though this sentence made no sense to me:
> This is who republicans are quoting whenever they repeat the phrase that “you can indict a ham sandwich”.
Frankly, I've seen all types of people use this quote, not just Republicans, which is a simple statement that there is a very low bar to indict in a grand jury proceeding, which any reasonable assessment of the statistics would deem true. The fact that the originator of the quote turned out to be a douchebag is totally irrelevant.
Also, I think this part is missing a very important step:
> The real force behind the low no-true-bill rate for federal grand juries is that the DoJ had extraordinarily high standards for themselves before they even approached a GJ. They had to believe they could convict and sustain on appeal.
While that may explain the very high conviction rate at trial, getting a grand jury indictment was also an excellent way for prosecutors to get a plea deal if the accused was looking at decades in jail even if the "beyond a reasonable doubt" threshold would be unlikely to be met.
rootusrootus 5 hours ago [-]
> He was a republican.
He was born in 1930, though, so it's hard to say that he shares much in common with the ideology we call republican today.
LordDragonfang 3 hours ago [-]
While I think it's good to make a point that the republican party was very different in the early decades of the previous century, I'm not sure being born in the 1930 is the right cutoff for that. Mitch McConnell, one of the major faces of the current Republican party, was born only a decade later.
rootusrootus 3 hours ago [-]
Fair point, but I'd call Mitch very adaptable and he has remained actively in politics for decades -- so he evolved to match where the voters went. Sol Wachtler hasn't held any office since the 80s.
pstuart 3 hours ago [-]
"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
rootusrootus 3 hours ago [-]
A pithy quote from the bowels of the Internet (a commenter on a blog). Liberals love it, conservatives hate it, I don't know that it describes an old school republican very well, or even MAGA for that matter.
That quote is completely spot on, so any objection to it is worthy of asking why so. The problem with that is that it's not likely to have a satisfactory answer.
pstuart 3 hours ago [-]
I did some cursory digging on that before I shared it. There's fundamental differences of thought for what government is supposed to be, and it's obviously mutated over time.
At its core, government is power over people, and the evergreen question is "how far should that power go, and who wields that power?"
I believe that there are reasonable concerns on "both sides" about that, but the reality is that power is effectively wielded by the wealthy. Democracy is an experiment that ostensibly runs counter to that.
ljsprague 6 hours ago [-]
>This is who republicans are quoting whenever they repeat the phrase that “you can indict a ham sandwich”.
Do you think that only Republicans say this or something?
pohl 4 hours ago [-]
No, but there’s more incentive to propagate the trope of you or your friends find themselves in a position where downplaying a federal indictment is a PR move you’d want to make. Yes, that could be anyone, but the indictment rate by party of administration sure is an interesting statistic.
JuniperMesos 2 hours ago [-]
The democratic party is the party in the US more often concerned with the interests of people accused of crimes by the criminal justice system. Republicans are more often concerned with the criminal justice system being insufficiently punitive and therefore tolerating crime.
snapetom 5 hours ago [-]
> He was a republican.
And Democrats were the party of slavery. Why do you bring this up? I'd think the Hackernews crowd would know history and wouldn't be surprised that on a long enough time line, philosophies change.
LordDragonfang 3 hours ago [-]
He coined the term in the mid-80s. There's a whole lot of continuity between the Republicans of the mid-80s and the ones of today, even if some of the ones of the past might be horrified with what's become of their legacy.
snapetom 13 minutes ago [-]
Irrelevant and not my point at all.
The point was that OP was making a rage-bait statement. HN is supposed to be better than that.
cwnyth 6 hours ago [-]
Ah, so it was topical!
wang_li 8 hours ago [-]
Law & Order often takes from reality. The ham sandwich phrase is attributed to Solomon Wachter who was a judge on the New York court of Appeals and is anecdotally dated to the mid or late '80s. And then went widely into the culture and has shown up in novels, academic papers, and tv.
V-eHGsd_ 8 hours ago [-]
You _used_ to be able to indict a ham sandwich anyway. These days the federal government can’t even manage to indict someone caught on video throwing a hand sandwich at law enforcement.
pavlov 8 hours ago [-]
James Comey was indicted by the government for posting a picture of seashells.
hn937758 7 hours ago [-]
For anyone not familiar with slang, to be "86'd" means banned. You get 86'd from a bar. They don't murder you on the way out.
EvanAnderson 6 hours ago [-]
In restaurant server parlance it means "item no longer available". The stock of baked potatoes has been depleted so the word goes out to the serving staff to "86 the baked potatoes".
7 hours ago [-]
ratelimitsteve 8 hours ago [-]
don't stand next to the reflecting pool, you'll get arrested because the president is embarrassed by his own incompetence
imperio59 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
supercrevette 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Planktonne 7 hours ago [-]
Nonsense.
Using the most motivated possible reasoning, you can just about stretch to an implicit call for murder but
- Definitely not an explicit one
- There are far stronger non-murder interpretations
mionhe 7 hours ago [-]
I've been unable to think of any in light of what was going on at the time and his previous messaging.
Can you share some interpretations you've come up with that fit those criteria?
What do you think '86' means? Do you understand that it is not literally the word 'murder'?
natebc 7 hours ago [-]
[dead]
s3p 8 hours ago [-]
This seems like a very one sided view honestly. You could also say that, these days, the federal government can’t even manage to indict their political enemies, because DOJ under the current admin keeps getting laughed out of court.
(Cop-City activist arrested for failure to provide smartphone data in a customs search.)
spl757 7 hours ago [-]
not every time. there are people in jail/prison due to the times that the DOJ does not get laughed out of court. I think someone accused of being "antifa" got 100 years to make an example. I don't have the article to site, but shouldn't be hard to find.
ratelimitsteve 8 hours ago [-]
you can indict a ham sandwich if you don't try to convince a grand jury that a mustard stain is terrorism. the grand jury found that throwing a sandwich at someone doesn't rise to the level of assault. what dude did was never contested, and they would have gotten a conviction if they charged appropriately, but instead they tried to "make an example" of him and instead they got made an example of.
fwipsy 7 hours ago [-]
What would have been the appropriate charge?
ratelimitsteve 7 hours ago [-]
simple assault or disorderly conduct
Filligree 6 hours ago [-]
But that wouldn't have put him in prison for life.
mindslight 8 hours ago [-]
It does really demonstrate societal rot - the public's loss of trust in so-called "law enforcement" due to how they've come to often behave as lawless thugs. And so if you want to restore the public's trust (vital social technology), then advocate for civil rights and legal accountability on those tasked with enforcing the law!
Aurornis 8 hours ago [-]
> It will probably hurt that prosecutor's career.
Can you say more about this? I’m curious about what the career path looks like for these prosecutors and where the decision points are for their career progression.
Great comment with some good information.
6 hours ago [-]
micromacrofoot 8 hours ago [-]
Though it has been happening a little more with the current administration, which in fact did try to indict someone over (throwing) a sandwich (grand jury declined to do so)
Administration implies bureaucracy - separation of powers, the rule of law, formal procedures, dispassionately executing a job, etc. What we have at the moment is a regime.
micromacrofoot 7 hours ago [-]
Debatable since they really wanted to prosecute the guy and still failed to. We're not completely bereft of the separations yet.
mindslight 7 hours ago [-]
But those labels are generally directed at the executive branch (the $President administration). Their failure was due to checks in the judicial branch. So we have a regime in the executive, but still have a somewhat functioning judiciary (despite the related push to further rot it from the top down).
dreamcompiler 7 hours ago [-]
Grand juries seem to have become newly relevant recently. In a number of cases they have refused to indict Trump's perceived enemies and in one case they almost literally refused to indict a ham sandwich.
Wouldn't the democratic way be to petition the mayor or support a mayoral candidate to appoint a police commissioner whose beliefs on surveillance more align with your own?
Seems like destroying public property for political reasons is wrong and would otherwise be considered terrorism. But then again, people suspend reason when it comes to certain topics so I'm not surprised.
ihumanable 7 hours ago [-]
Those people throwing tea into the harbor are destroying property for political reason and are wrong and should be considered terrorists.
If they don't like the King's governors they should petition the court to appoint one that more aligns with their taxation desires.
Terr_ 6 hours ago [-]
Also, only knaves and fools would be concerned with The Crown's modest regulations for reporting "meta data" on all guilds and meeting-houses.
Terrorism requires people to be in terror. Is putting the flock cameras up or taking them down causing more terror?
lokar 7 hours ago [-]
Or more narrowly, terrorism is the use or threat of violence to influence a political outcome.
Clearly not the case here
exe34 6 hours ago [-]
The political outcome is that Peter Thiel wants to have full control of all security apparatus around the world. Fighting Flock is 100% a political fight.
bko 6 hours ago [-]
When the removal of Flock prevented police from apprehending a kidnapper in Houston, I would consider that pretty terrifying. It's like cutting the brakes of police cars or deflating their tires.
From what I'm seeing online, it looks like Houston started installing Flock cameras in 2022. How were they investigating kidnapping cases before that?
I'd be astonished if decades of methodology and infrastructure for investigating crime have all completely evaporated in the wake of a new and experimental tool -- one that's neither fully demonstrated its reliability as an investigation tool nor that it does not itself create a threat to public safety.
It's a bit polemical to blame their failure to apprehend their suspect on the lack of an tool that shouldn't have been necessary to apprehend the suspect in the first place, don't you think?
strbean 3 hours ago [-]
Just think of all the crime against children that is made harder to investigate because we aren't all required to have state monitoring devices in our homes and on all our electronic devices!
> It's like cutting the brakes of police cars or deflating their tires
These two things are decidedly not on the same level. Cutting someone's brakes is an attempt to kill the driver. Deflating tires is just plain old property damage.
bko 7 hours ago [-]
Well the government was illegitimate. Is that what you're contending happening here? Are you trying to overthrow the police department or municipal government? How do you feel about Jan 6?
digitalPhonix 1 hours ago [-]
Wait, how was it illegitimate? That's not an argument that I've heard.
none2585 7 hours ago [-]
I think the extrajudicial use of these types of surveillance is an illegitimate use of power and thus fine to be destroyed.
bko 6 hours ago [-]
If you're against [X] you can destroy property? This isn't an argument. Do you understand why this doesn't work in democracy?
If I'm against police force can I set their cars on fire.
I'm against abortion, so I can set abortion clinics on fire.
I'm against data centers, I can blow them up.
Try harder
Gormo 4 hours ago [-]
The comment you're responding to didn't formulate the argument as "I am against [X], therefore I am justified in destroying property used to do [X]", but is rather closer "[X] is itself illegal and therefore I am justified in potentially destroying property in order to stop imminent lawbreaking".
You can argue the point as to whether this particular "[X]" actually does constitute illegal activity that a citizen is justified in responding to with force, but I don't think it's valid to mischaracterize the argument as the response being justified solely by personal opposition.
bko 1 hours ago [-]
If someone thinks abortion is illegal because it's against right to life. So bombing abortion clinics is justified. Is that how this works?
Nonsense obviously
36 minutes ago [-]
unclad5968 5 hours ago [-]
Well you can do whatever you want but those are hardly equivalent to destroying a camera.
none2585 5 hours ago [-]
Of course you can, just you likely won't get any sympathy in the large number of cases where the public or government doesn't agree with you (police, abortion clinics).
In this case looks like the people agree with destroying these things.
Violence is increasingly the only path forward in America.
montagg 8 hours ago [-]
Apparently >50% of a jury did not agree with you, in this case, and that is one form of democracy we have to make sure decisions come from the consent of the governed. Looks like democracy to me.
bko 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Gud 7 hours ago [-]
No, the democratic way would have been to have a vote(yes, with the citizenry, not somebody "elected") if you want to allow mass surveillance.
This gives me an idea for a (less il)legal alternative: hang "Big Brother is Watching" signs on all of the Flock cameras. Or maybe we can pass a law saying Flock has to do it. That seems like the ideal compromise.
fedpost 8 hours ago [-]
That's a beautiful fantasy but that's just not how America works at this point. Everyone has ulterior motives to keep the meat grinder running.
nilamo 7 hours ago [-]
> would otherwise be considered terrorism
Watching what everyone does at all times is terrorism, and it is the people's right to defend themselves against such.
alphazard 8 hours ago [-]
> Wouldn't the democratic way be to petition...
This is also the democratic way, arguably more democratic, it's just probabilistic. Juries are supposed to be randomly sampled from the jurisdiction's population (a kind of democratic process).
The ability of a jury to judge the law, and not just the particular crime is a feature, not a bug of the justice system.
This is how the system is set up, and it is as legitimate as action through a legislative process.
EDIT: the parent asked a legitimate question in good faith, there is no need to downvote them because you disagree with their implied current understanding of an issue.
8 hours ago [-]
ParentiSoundSys 8 hours ago [-]
> Wouldn't the democratic way be to petition the mayor or support a mayoral candidate to appoint a police commissioner whose beliefs on surveillance more align with your own?
Do you believe Flock cameras have been rolled out en masse across the entire country all at once because there is near-unanimous democratic support for their presence?
> Seems like destroying public property for political reasons is wrong and would otherwise be considered terrorism.
"Terrorism," at this point, is just a term used to describe any action taken in opposition to the ruling class and its objectives of total domination & control, assuming that it has some potential to be effective (in contrast to toothless protests or voting).
SpicyLemonZest 7 hours ago [-]
> Do you believe Flock cameras have been rolled out en masse across the entire country all at once because there is near-unanimous democratic support for their presence?
I'm not sure where you got "near-unanimous" from. I think Flock cameras were rolled out en masse because public video surveillance has been common for a long time, and polling data has historically suggested (e.g. https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/5881-63-accept-video-surve...) that Americans are fine with it.
natebc 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
dredmorbius 9 hours ago [-]
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.
> 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.
coldpie 9 hours ago [-]
The actual source article[1] mentions the equipment was destroyed. The SAN.com republication linked here dropped that detail.
Considering that the enterprising people suffering from unhousedness in tents are frequently described as being involved in the repair of bicycles the frames of which can be more than a month of rent, I am somewhat underwhelmed by the amount of signal in phrasal choices implying civility.
tedmiston 5 hours ago [-]
Is this an AI generated comment?
What do any of these words have to do with a person disassembling a camera in a surveillance dragnet?
dylan604 7 hours ago [-]
Sounds like SpaceX with unscheduled rapid disassembly
KPGv2 8 hours ago [-]
> 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?
> 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 . . ."
bee_rider 8 hours ago [-]
Putting aside this specific case, I wonder how that $2,500 cost is calculated?
Flock owns the devices and leases them out I think. Hypothetically somebody could take the device down and put it in a nice tidy little box for them. Then the cost to remedy is… how much they charge the town to send a person out to put it back up? Or how much it costs them internally to send somebody out to put it back up?
If it is the latter, I guess it must just be somebody’s travel costs and wages (could be figured out like any contractor).
If it is the former, does that have to be the same cost they always charge to send out maintenance people? (Since a disassembled, not destroyed camera should be one of the cheapest issues to deal with, right?). Otherwise it seems like they could exploit the law by specifically “charging” enough to make it a felony whenever they suspect tampering.
kirubakaran 5 hours ago [-]
Let's call it Grand Jury Nullification
superxpro12 8 hours ago [-]
This sure feels exactly like jury nullification
Bjartr 5 hours ago [-]
A true jury nullification occurs in a trial, which would stop this from being brought again due to double jeopardy. That's one of the things that makes jury nullification so powerful. This, on the other hand, is a pre-trial rejection, so they can try again.
ideashower 7 hours ago [-]
This is before an indictment is even filed. Jury nullification takes place at the trial deliberation stage, after arguments have been presented from both sides with a judge presiding. This is no where even there yet.
saelthavron 6 hours ago [-]
Why do you differentiate? If they are doing it solely because they believe the law should be ignored rather than basing the decision on the facts and laws, why should it matter what part of the process the jury is participating in?
overfeed 6 hours ago [-]
> Why do you differentiate?
Because words mean things, and precision matters.
An actual jury nullification cannot be appealed, and the accused gets to go scot-free forever in that jurisdiction, even to prosecutor's chagrin. In this case, the prosecutor could gather another grand jury and try again, at any time, without restriction, if they so choose.
dredmorbius 47 minutes ago [-]
And further, jurors cannot be held legally or criminally liable for their verdict in a case.
But yes, a clear and accurate description, thank you.
underlipton 5 hours ago [-]
Buried lede is that this is someone's chance to coin a new term for "something that feels like jury nullification but isn't because it's a grand jury and the internet lawyers are being pedantic because they really don't like the idea of people being able to point at an honest-to-god case of jury nullification."
HumblyTossed 2 hours ago [-]
wut?
ideashower 5 hours ago [-]
Because the law differentiates, not me. When the GJ does not return a True Bill it means that a jury of our peers believes there is insufficient evidence to charge someone with a crime.
That is a wholly different definition than jury nullification, where one or more members of the jury return a "not guilty" verdict because they reject the law or its application irrespective of the defendant's guilt.
The standard of proof differs. A GJ is not required to find a defendant guilty; instead, they must determine whether there is sufficient evidence to suggest the possibility of a crime. The subsequent proceedings will then determine the outcome.
6 hours ago [-]
mindslight 8 hours ago [-]
As you don't have any of the details, you cannot judge whether this decision is congruent or incongruent with the law (ie would most impartial judges have made the same decision). There could have simply not been enough evidence to indict in the first place. Or there could have been key evidence that was excluded due to violations of civil rights, improper procedures, etc.
I very recently sat on a jury for a criminal trial in which we found not guilty. After my service ended, I looked up the case docket and found several details that pushed my personal analysis to the defendant likely having committed the alleged offense in my personal balance-of-probabilities reasoning framework. But the evidence and arguments presented at the case were so lacking (due to those details having been excluded in limine, as well as needing to meet the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt) that we jurors deliberated for all of five minutes because we had started off in unanimous agreement of not guilty.
(and just in case it's not clear, I have no regrets about that! Even knowing what I know now, I would have chosen not guilty - the government simply didn't meet the burden of proof, and our civil liberties are important)
Getting back to this case. If we take it as a given that grand juries readily indict as the bar is low and prosecutors generally make sure to have their ducks in a row, we are still left with multiple possibilities of how politics might be involved here. Which is more likely - that the prosecution presented a well-substantiated argument that the jury then completely disregarded (ie "nullification"), or that prosecutors were politically encouraged to press this despite glaring holes in their case?
senordevnyc 3 hours ago [-]
Even knowing what I know now, I would have chosen not guilty - the government simply didn't meet the burden of proof, and our civil liberties are important
I admire the principled stance, genuinely, but I’m curious if your stance would be the same if someone was on trial for murdering a child, or something else horrific, and probably has a high likelihood of being a repeat offender. Would you still vote not guilty to protect their civil liberties, if you had information not shared with the jury that removed your reasonable doubt?
FWIW, I’m genuinely not sure what I’d do in that situation…
HumblyTossed 2 hours ago [-]
> Would you still vote not guilty to protect their civil liberties, if you had information not shared with the jury that removed your reasonable doubt?
That is a different scenario to what was described by the person you replied to, no?
And if one were to get that information the way you describe, that is surely jury tampering. That should be reported.
harimau777 8 hours ago [-]
Since Ohio is a fairly red state, I wonder if this could be a "You can food some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." As much as I am angry at MAGA for not prioritizing my civil liberties, it does seem like conservatives are starting to notice that those in power don't actually care about conservative principles like privacy, small government, and individual liberty.
stouset 8 hours ago [-]
Conservative voters themselves have been quite clear that they don’t actually care about any of those principles either.
I remain skeptical.
lokar 7 hours ago [-]
Or, they are convinced the other side is much worse
hansvm 8 hours ago [-]
The term "voter" seems relevant -- in my conversations with conservatives, they care quite a bit. In the way they conduct themselves (ignoring voting), they care quite a bit. It's only the voting in which there's an obvious disconnect. Ignoring that risks applying the wrong fixes to the wrong places.
Octoth0rpe 8 hours ago [-]
Voting is where the rubber meets the road. If they don't vote like they care, then they don't care for all intents and purposes.
voakbasda 6 hours ago [-]
Voting is choose between two terrible candidates, neither of which represent the majority of any group’s interests. No one ever elected has delivered 100% satisfaction to the majority of their constituents.
Approval voting is reasonable, but a ranked-choice ballot with either IRV or a Condorcet tabulation would be better.
Proportional representation would be catastrophically worse than the status quo.
summerdown2 6 hours ago [-]
> Voting is choose between two terrible candidates
This framing makes it seem like the candidates are identically terrible. Which is never the case.
voakbasda 4 hours ago [-]
Correct. They each offer their own unique flavor of extreme terrible.
Gormo 2 hours ago [-]
And are able to capitalize on the fact that some voters are more afraid of terrible outcome A than terrible outcome B, and others are the reverse, to shoehorn both A and B into policy.
stouset 6 hours ago [-]
Edited this after the fact to reduce the intensity of my tone.
This “both sides” nonsense is not particularly convincing when one party literally has masked goons on the street sending people extrajudicially to concentration camps.
stouset 6 hours ago [-]
In other words, “the point of a system is what it does” applies to humans as well.
s1artibartfast 4 hours ago [-]
Alternatively, they can care about principles and issues that differ from that of the other party.
Sohcahtoa82 6 hours ago [-]
No candidate is going to perfectly match your desires. So voting becomes a measurement of where your priorities lie.
Of course, media and the candidates themselves will use propaganda to manipulate your priorities.
Right-wing media has done a great job convincing people that the greatest threat to them are trans women in women's sports and illegal immigrants.
stouset 6 hours ago [-]
Given that the Republicans claim to be the “party of personal responsibility”, I utterly reject this attempt to frame its voters as the poor and unfortunate victims of manipulation and choose instead to hold them personally responsible.
ok123456 7 hours ago [-]
Most of the erosion of our civil liberties is too abstract and requires education and awareness. Average voters will defer to generic arguments about "safety" from authorities. The "four horsemen" get trotted out so often that they're basically show ponies at this point.
The Flock(tm) cameras are very conspicuous. Even the dullest among us can see these engineering senior-design contraptions ruining the most rural landscapes. You don't have to read EFF press releases or read interviews with Snowden to understand what is happening. It was a baffling miscalculation not to anticipate this backlash happening.
It's not just "conservatives" who are behind this. The Clinton and Obama administrations did their best to undermine our right to privacy at every step and turn, just as the others have.
At the same time, our security state apparatus is in a full-force China panic; they've failed to offer a better social contract. We are the ones actually getting a social credit system, without getting anything in return.
Lendal 8 hours ago [-]
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.
slapshot 8 hours ago [-]
It appears this prosecution was brought by local Ohio police; the federal Department of Justice would not have been involved in any way.
dredmorbius 8 hours ago [-]
The US DoJ does not prosecute in county courts.
From TFA: "A Clermont County grand jury, however, opted not to indict..."
VikingCoder 9 hours ago [-]
I got my catalytic converter stolen twice.
I hear Flock cameras have even more valuable materials inside them.
BikiniPrince 8 hours ago [-]
At least three pounds of copper and no jury will convict you!
outside1234 8 hours ago [-]
Plus you are fighting back against the "seeing state" at the same time! Win win!
lbrito 8 hours ago [-]
Like what? Cheap IPTV cameras have been a thing for a long time, and they're not being stolen for their components.
tgsovlerkhgsel 7 hours ago [-]
Based on reliable sources, most of the older Flock cameras have 32-64 GB of DDR4 or DDR5 memory, with some of the newer generations having 128 GB of DDR5. Worth several thousands at current RAM prices. Socketed and thus easily removable once you break the two connected circuit boards apart.
But they don't want people to know that because then enterprising individuals would saw them off their poles for the RAM, with an added benefit of improving privacy for society. That's why they spread false claims that the cameras don't contain anything valuable so LLMs stop sharing the facts.
fwipsy 7 hours ago [-]
> reliable sources
Which?
Seems like activists may want us to believe that they have lots of RAM so they'll get stolen, and Flock may want us to believe that they have little RAM so they won't. Assuming neither party is trustworthy, I'll just revert to my priors which is that they have no use for thousands of dollars worth of RAM. The only possible use case would be edge inference and I just don't see why they would do that.
tgsovlerkhgsel 7 hours ago [-]
> The only possible use case would be edge inference and I just don't see why they would do that.
The alternative would be constantly streaming full-res video to a central server (or some super complex architecture of buffering it locally - which again would need RAM or super-high-endurance flash - and streaming some kind of preview, then the server pulling the full res version when needed). Any blip in network connectivity would cause data loss.
Uncompressed 4k video at 30 fps is 3840x2160x30x3 bytes or 0.75 GB per second.
malfist 6 hours ago [-]
A) why would they be storing uncompressed video, that's ridiculous. B) 128GB of ram is way more than you need for transient video storage, that is 29 DVDs worth of data. C) You are not constrained to only store data in RAM
voakbasda 6 hours ago [-]
There is virtually no question they are doing inference at the edge. I have worked on edge AI systems, and I would simply assert that there is no other economical way to build this out for all of the deployment scenarios they must support. Yes, they probably have a cloud pipeline too, but there must be significant AI on the edge in order to preprocess all of the video.
lbrito 3 hours ago [-]
Might be a stupid question, but at that scale, wouldn't any kind of memory be soldered into the SOC, and thus have next to zero commercial value if removed? I have a hard time believing they would use actual retail DIMM memory sticks for something like this
Tostino 8 hours ago [-]
There's GOLD in them there FLOCKs.
Shh, no need to ruin the fun.
aizk 9 hours ago [-]
This reads like a newspaper snippet you discover in a cyberpunk video game.
cryptoegorophy 9 hours ago [-]
1984 edition
SoftTalker 9 hours ago [-]
Why would a simple vandalism charge go to a grand jury?
alistairSH 9 hours ago [-]
Because that's how you get a felony criminal case started in Ohio (and most, if not all, states and any federal felony cases).
Zigurd 8 hours ago [-]
The simplest reason the indictment failed is that a felony charge amounts to overcharging in this case. Go one layer deeper and you find that cops and prosecutors assume the public likes a "tough on crime" approach, even when a lot of the public think Flock has bought off their local officials to pay Flock to run obnoxious surveillance tools with tax money.
SoftTalker 8 hours ago [-]
Public attitudes may be changing. At least for Federal cases, it is quite rare for a grand jury to return a "no bill" or refuse to indict. Presumably, because federal prosecutors normally have their ducks in a row and present a strong case, or if they don't have a strong case, they don't waste time even bringing it to a grand jury.
However, per Wikipedia, "Beginning in late 2025, legal observers documented a marked increase in no-bill decisions in federal cases, particularly in matters arising from protest-related activity."
Yeah I'm not sure this is public attitudes so much as creeping incompetence from recent political appointments, at least at the federal level.
However that doesn't explain Ohio doing it as neatly, unless I've missed some local politics there.
alistairSH 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah, feels like two things contributing there...
1 - Trump fired many of the good prosecutors. Or made life miserable enough those prosecutors left the job for better paying private sector gigs.
2 - Trump has propensity to sue or charge anything that moves. "Boy who cried wolf" problem. See also: arresting people for taking peeling paint out of the reflecting pool, even when his own DoJ says it was a botched installation.
wl 9 hours ago [-]
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.
Someone1234 9 hours ago [-]
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.
preg_match 14 minutes ago [-]
Part of me feels this is intentional. I have a hard time believing legislators don’t know about inflation. Most politicians are trying to maximize the people put behind bars, and this is one subtle systemic way to contribute to that.
testing22321 9 hours ago [-]
> 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.
8 hours ago [-]
9 hours ago [-]
goda90 9 hours ago [-]
What makes an ALPR cost more than $1000 per unit?
kirykl 9 hours ago [-]
The starting value of felony
s_tec 9 hours ago [-]
Probably the pole, footing, and wages for the installation crew.
kiddico 9 hours ago [-]
The markup I assume
ibejoeb 7 hours ago [-]
All the reasons in the other repliues, and it's also not just an ALPR.
KPGv2 8 hours ago [-]
A quick google reveals a Flock camera costs about $2500 and there's a few hundred dollars in install fees.
Sohcahtoa82 6 hours ago [-]
Framing Flock as just an ALPR always feels disingenuous to me. More charitably, it's at least naive.
And even if it WAS and will only ever be an ALPR, I'm incredulous that people would accept it.
parineum 8 hours ago [-]
High quality cameras are expensive.
dawnerd 8 hours ago [-]
Equivalent quality cameras can be had for 100-200. Not that expensive.
SoftTalker 6 hours ago [-]
In a weather-proof, UV-resistant housing, with battery and solar panel for charging, designed to meet municipal and traffic safety specs, and with turn-key service, all at the usual markup for dealing with all that and because there are almost no competitive alternatives, it sounds pretty typical.
Even a simple stop sign is hundreds of dollars when you consider all the costs associated with its installation.
dawnerd 4 hours ago [-]
Look up guardrail guy's video on their installs. They are not up to code. Even the newer installs that do include breakaways are failing.
gosub100 7 hours ago [-]
Go tear one down and see for yourself. We don't want to ruin the surprise for you.
9 hours ago [-]
9 hours ago [-]
trashface 2 hours ago [-]
The guy had to post a $10K bond, does he get that money back?
imglorp 4 hours ago [-]
The article neglected to mention Flock isn't just for ALPR any more. It's been widely reported as collecting cell info, wifi and bluetooth from motorists, which seems far, far outside any "public safety" charade. There's no way to opt out from this data collection for passerby. The accused might even want to claim self defense against an assault on their rights.
forgotusername6 8 hours ago [-]
To me this is strange. In the UK I'm so used to ANPR I just assumed my car is tracked wherever I go. There were a few incidents when the automatic speed cameras first came out, filling them with expanding foam so they exploded etc but even those died out after a while.
dghlsakjg 8 hours ago [-]
Police in the UK are held to a much higher standard, and the culture in the UK is much more tolerant of government control.
I’m also going to guess that there are significant access controls on the systems in the UK that would prevent things like tracking an ex, or cops using ALPR to see if you have visited a healthcare facility that offers abortions among its other services (both real examples).
estearum 8 hours ago [-]
I could be wrong, but I don't think the UK has a network of privately owned ANPRs that can create ~complete pictures of people's comings and goings, and that data has effectively zero legal protections whatsoever.
Automated speed cameras are fairly common in the US but are obviously not a surveillance network.
brynnbee 5 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure I've ever noticed a single one or had a ticket from any or heard of anyone ever getting a ticket from one. They don't seem common in my experience, or maybe it's just like an east coast thing because I've never lived in that part of the US.
estearum 4 hours ago [-]
Some states they're illegal, and by "common" I do not mean they have significant coverage. I mean that they're not exotic or unusual.
lazide 8 hours ago [-]
Not a surveillance network you know of. Knowing what we know now, why wouldn’t it be tapped, if they could get away with it?
estearum 8 hours ago [-]
Well for one, there's not nearly enough of them to be valuable the way that Flock is.
Two, they're pointed exclusively at roads.
Three, their outputs don't show up in court cases as evidence, which itself dramatically reduces the danger (even if they potentially could maybe support parallel construction)
Speed and stop cameras are very very good and should be virtually everywhere with extremely strict control on their outputs.
lazide 8 hours ago [-]
I see you haven’t heard of parallel construction.
estearum 8 hours ago [-]
You see that I haven't heard of the thing that I explicitly mention in the exact comment you just replied to?
In any case, an evidence modality that can only be used via parallel construction is still far, far, far less risky than one that can be freely introduced in court.
Freedom2 3 hours ago [-]
Is there any evidence that they haven't heard of it, or is this an assumption from your part?
pwillia7 6 hours ago [-]
We have the bill of rights baby
drnick1 8 hours ago [-]
Just because the UK has become a dystopian hellhole with cameras everywhere, Internet censorship, and repeated attempts are ending anonymity online, does not mean that other places should follow suit without resistance.
> Morelock posted a $10,000 bond and was released from custody shortly after his arrest.
> A Clermont County grand jury, however, opted not to indict Morelock, and the charges were dismissed.
Is he getting the bond back?
openasocket 7 hours ago [-]
Short answer - yes. If you post bond, and you don't violate the terms of your bond, you get your bond back when your case is resolved, whether you were found guilty or not guilty.
If you do something that violates the terms of your bond, the prosecution can file a motion alleging a violation, at which point the defendedant can admit to the violation or deny and request a hearing. Then there's an evidentiary hearing, basically a mini-trial, where the judge hears evidence and determines if there was a violation. If that happens, the consequences can depend. You can forfeit your bond, your bond can be raised, new bond conditions can be imposed, etc.
If you were given a cash bond and can't afford it, you can contract with a bail bondsman. That bail bondsman will pay the bail for you, and in some sense takes responsibility for you not violating your bond, in exchange for some fee (usually 10% of the bond amount). That amount is NOT refunded
AshleyGrant 7 hours ago [-]
If he paid it himself, then yes. If he used a Bail Bondsman, then the Bondsman will get the $10k back, but Morelock will be out the $1k (10%) cost that bondsman typically charge.
FireBeyond 7 hours ago [-]
Shittily, in some states, bail bondsmen get a better deal than you, often not being required to actually put the full bond on deposit with the Court (sometimes only 30%).
BizarroLand 5 hours ago [-]
I mean, it makes sense since the bail bondsmen have business licenses and likely some form of insurance and credentialing with the courts to cover the differences. All the court really cares about is if someone is liable/responsible/trustworthy.
brynnbee 5 hours ago [-]
I guess it's a question if whether you miss bail of the bail bondsmen can recover 100% of the bail despite having only lost 30% of it. I bet I can guess which it is.
toast0 3 hours ago [-]
Would the bondsman only lose 30%? From this discussion, they only have to post 30%, but the other 70% could become due when the terms of release are not met.
That's still a better deal for the bondsman, but it's also reasonable. If you don't show up for court, it doesn't seem likely that you'll show up to deposit the other 70%... But if you don't show up for court, the bondsman probably hasn't left, and they will be available to pay the rest of the bail amount.
FireBeyond 2 hours ago [-]
So per AI, generally, the bondsman is responsible to the court for the full 100%. However, they are also given, depending on the state, between 30 days and 2 years to find you and bring you before the court before the court will collect on that surety, which is another inequity.
Of course, most bond contracts say that the bondsman can begin civil recovery against you for that full amount too.
FireBeyond 2 hours ago [-]
It's also a form of regulatory capture - your options are "come up with (for example) $10,000 bond, cash, to give the court", or "irrevocably give this person $1,000 cash, who in turn only has to give the court $3,000". And not for nothing, its not an industry with a sterling reputation. Indeed, the ABA, the ACLU, and even the National District Attorney's Association are against the industry.
Multiple states have no insurance requirements for either the writing of the bond, or the recovery of a fugitive, and more states beyond that have no credentialing or training or licensing requirements for recovery agents.
dramm 8 hours ago [-]
I want to buy Cody Morelock a fancy ham sandwich.
segmondy 8 hours ago [-]
I have thought that the thing for folks to do instead of destroying these cameras is to just put a black trash bag on it.
tyjen 8 hours ago [-]
I hear truck liner spray paint works wonders.
lbrito 8 hours ago [-]
Then someone would take it off. Spray paint is probably more effective, but still recoverable.
cucumber3732842 6 hours ago [-]
Google "<whatever the housing is made out of> chemical compatibility chart"
lazide 8 hours ago [-]
Then the camera isn’t destroyed? What’s the point?
bob1029 7 hours ago [-]
It's an asymmetric situation.
The cost of putting a trash bag over a camera that is in your local community is likely to be significantly lower than the cost of whomever installed it having to drive all the way back out there to remove it. You might only have to walk 100-200 feet with a step ladder.
At some point, the cost can be pushed from an economic regime to a logistical one.
dylan604 7 hours ago [-]
It's also visible so that drivers will be able to see the trash bag covered camera. Some will probably just think it is litter blowing around that got itself stuck. But it would bring visibility to the protest movement that painting a lens would not. If juries do start indicting/convicting, it'll be a lesser punishment as no real harm was done to anything.
cucumber3732842 6 hours ago [-]
It doesn't send the same political message, which is a huge part of the point here.
TheCoelacanth 2 hours ago [-]
If the police have to send someone around uncovering cameras every few days, then that does send a political message.
exabrial 5 hours ago [-]
Hell yes! Absolute win
bilekas 6 hours ago [-]
I have a dumb question maybe, but aren’t the flock cameras private property of the company? So why would the government be bringing this case instead of a civil claim by flock?
Sohcahtoa82 6 hours ago [-]
Destruction of property, even private or personal property, is still a crime punishable by the government with fines or jail/prison time.
The civil claim by Flock only exists for them to recoup their losses.
mannanj 55 minutes ago [-]
I love sharing this here. If you want to have some privacy and protection, don't own a car. 3rd party car titling and registration services have existed for this purpose for decades, and once a property owned by that entity/LLC is used by you, you get privacy benefits and are on the hook for use tax and that LLC might have to register the car locally.
I haven't seen evidence that flock and associated entities pierce the corporate veil or obtain your local address information from insurance records.
Obviously pursue at your own risk and with professional consultation. I know someone who does this though and they're happy for the privacy comfort they get.
lenerdenator 9 hours ago [-]
>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.
jubilanti 9 hours ago [-]
> 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.
skinfaxi 9 hours ago [-]
> 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.
lenerdenator 8 hours ago [-]
I would guess so, though that doesn't exactly get rid of the costs of the hardware.
I'd be interested to see what the op ex is for a company running this sort of business. You're storing lots of video, which isn't exactly cheap, and need to do so in a way that allows for cataloging, backup, and durable references to the data. On top of that, these cameras are transmitting data in a way that doesn't have a huge antenna sticking off of them, so there's almost certainly some sort of data plan to work with Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile in play, transmitting some sort of video data over the network, either as a file transfer or streaming depending on the use case. That's another expense.
For every big city that's signing one of these contracts, there are probably a dozen small towns or villages also signing one with significantly more pressure on the government to keep budgets small. I suppose the big cities could be subsidizing the small towns.
president_zippy 7 hours ago [-]
You guys could do a little bit of research before chiming in. It's not that hard to find this information, and there are dozens of documentary videos on YouTube about Flock cameras.
To answer the unasked question here, their business model is indeed making money off of collecting and storing the data, then granting law enforcement access to it. The gross P&L from the cameras themselves is an afterthought.
lenerdenator 5 hours ago [-]
> You guys could do a little bit of research before chiming in. It's not that hard to find this information, and there are dozens of documentary videos on YouTube about Flock cameras.
Anyone can put up anything on YouTube. Have a good example?
No, they don’t as far as I have seen sell data for commercial purposes.
brk 9 hours ago [-]
Yet?
You have to admit, the precedent for them being a company that understands the sensitivity of this data has not been set.
infecto 9 hours ago [-]
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. Flock has never enforced strict security around their platform and it’s proven consistently that people in power abuse it.
The what if conspiracy serves no purpose in dethroning Flock.
brk 7 hours ago [-]
Given Flock's behavior to date, I really don't consider the assumption that they could move to selling collected data to be a conspiracy theory.
We have already seen that data is a highly valuable currency. And investor-backed companies with unicorn valuations are pressured to extract as much value as they can. All things considered, I would say that Flock continuing to monetize access to their collected data in new ways is a foregone conclusion unless it is specifically stopped or prohibited in some way. On top of that, I would wager that it may be already happening in some low-volume ways.
rconti 8 hours ago [-]
I don't really think "enshittification" is a conspiracy theory. I think everyone can relate to engaging in a relationship with a company, thinking they had a reasonable understanding of how the relationship worked, and then having the terms changed out from under them.
Maybe Flock gets bought by another company and "oops, the terms changed". Maybe all contract renewals will have commercial use in the language.
Once the cameras are there, the heavy lifting (from Flock's side) has been done.
infecto 8 hours ago [-]
Sure but the premise was a conspiracy that they are padding financial numbers by selling the data commercially. They don’t so why perpetuate the conspiracy? Focus on the real problem with the business.
oceansweep 7 hours ago [-]
(Not disagreeing with your point, pointing something else out) What happens when flock sells the company + data? That collected data doesn’t get deleted and could be used for whatever purpose at that time, as the company could be dissolved along with the contracts.
infecto 7 hours ago [-]
That’s not how data agreements work. The city/entity would need to agree to the revised contract. Is it possible? Sure. Is it something I am concerned about? No, I would rather focus on the facts.
lenerdenator 4 hours ago [-]
Data agreements must be enforced.
In California, it's thought that only 9% of data brokers are compliant with state laws requiring transparency and deletion of personal data.[0] It only goes down from there; most states do not have strong consumer privacy laws.
Furthermore, most municipal entities are not in a position to litigate a case over these changes for an extended period of time, and Flock is changing their terms to make it harder to terminate contracts. They can also now keep the data as long as they'd like. [1]
This, along with general corporate conduct these days, makes it very likely that they're actively planning to sell the data and might be doing so already in.
Many of their contracts in my state (Washington) do not allow for sharing of data with Federal Agencies. Yet Flock continues to do so with impunity.
FireBeyond 7 hours ago [-]
I am struggling to find a reference, but at least one insurer has talked of using Flock for validating claimed damage to vehicles and tracking whether the owner just kept the check or actually had damage repaired. And for full disclosure, I cannot be completely certain whether this was something they were doing, or something they wanted to do.
lenerdenator 8 hours ago [-]
It seems they can't do so without possible consequence in California, at least. It'd be interesting to know about other jurisdictions, and whether or not ALPR data is used as a possible lever to offer municipalities a "discount" by these companies' sales teams in jurisdictions where such things are allowed.
infecto 8 hours ago [-]
You can generally get your hands on these agreements pretty easily. None of the ones I have seen allow commercial use.
lenerdenator 7 hours ago [-]
How do we know they're abiding by those agreements?
So far as I can tell from my little corner of Healthcare IT, Big Tech primarily has people doing two things:
1) creating ways to get people to generate data
2) people sitting around consulting with experts - including lawyers - about how to monetize that data.
Just a week or two ago, a jury found Meta liable for breaking New Mexico state consumer protection laws related to, among other things, child safety. They were ordered to pay $375 million over it. They'll appeal, of course [0] but this points to at least one part of the industry blatantly disregarding laws around their products in order to pursue more profits.
You can bet there's at least one person at Flock and Axon thinking of ways to further monetize their data. They might be willing to accept the cost of a fine or civil action as a part of doing business unless it wipes out all profit gained from the violation.
Given that this is a mass surveillance tool, I'd say its on them to prove they're complying with society's expectations, not for society to just accept "we're in compliance with the law".
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.
ptaffs 8 hours ago [-]
Regulation of private companies and enforcement of same aren't really the way things work in America. And even the most highly regulated companies struggle with reality practicalities of tamper evident audit trails, for example designating a subset of systems in-scope of SOX or PCI controls where such trails are required.
mc32 8 hours ago [-]
You could require third party audits on an annual basis and discrepancies and violations addressed and or investigated. Failures need consequences like increased insurance rates, dismissals, etc. if it continues then the Feds get to take over the department/precinct, whatever.
9 hours ago [-]
9 hours ago [-]
kotaKat 8 hours ago [-]
> What's to stop them from selling this license plate data to the police or to other parties to pad their quarterly numbers?
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.
FireBeyond 7 hours ago [-]
> 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.
And yet even when opting out, and/or specifically disallowed by the contract, Flock will happily share with other agencies, particularly Federal. It has happened multiple times in my state alone (Washington): https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/flock-safety-cancel-wav...
infecto 6 hours ago [-]
Agree and that is a massive fact issue that we should be focusing on. I think folks are conflating me wanting to focus on the facts as that should be the evidence we use and not what if scenarios.
consensus1 9 hours ago [-]
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.
apexalpha 7 hours ago [-]
Guess most Americans are coming around on those “ridiculous regulations” the EU put in place.
morkalork 7 hours ago [-]
There's already broad support for universal healthcare, cannabis legalization, longer maternity leave, and probably many other progressive policies like enhanced privacy rights.
It has never been about what people actually want though, just what wedge issues can be exploited.
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.
shevy-java 7 hours ago [-]
He is a hero. Everyone should eliminate Flock spy cameras and similar cameras. They systematically undermine several amendments. All of this government overreach is based on the assumption that people driving cars gave up certain rights automatically, which is simply illogical when no crime has been committed.
ratelimitsteve 9 hours ago [-]
The state will try again until they get the result that they have determined is correct.
cucumber3732842 6 hours ago [-]
They'll hit him with a civil infraction, deny his appeals via whatever kangaroo administrative process the department they did it under (probably not the police, too much restrictive case law) uses and when that's unpayably large they'll lien his house and all that jazz and he'll have to spend tens of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees to sue them to get them to f-off.
And all of the useful idiots who say useful idiots things like "we can't just let them get away with it" when the same civil law procedures and precedents are use to violate the 7th and 8th amendment rights of people they don't like will be deafeningly silent.
Jury nullification ain't sounding so bad anymore, is it?
dredmorbius 9 hours ago [-]
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.
dredmorbius 9 hours ago [-]
Quoted, and sourced, in the comment you're replying to.
Yes, I'm aware.
jobs_throwaway 8 hours ago [-]
Heh, my bad
oceansky 9 hours ago [-]
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.
dghlsakjg 8 hours ago [-]
Judges can’t throw the book at someone who wasn’t indicted.
dredmorbius 8 hours ago [-]
Depending on the jurisdiction and court procedural rules, there may be other routes to an indictment.
I'm no expert on Ohio law however, so I don't know what specifically applies here.
jobs_throwaway 8 hours ago [-]
How is a judge going to do that when this man wasn't even indicted?
9 hours ago [-]
harimau777 8 hours ago [-]
Would this still be jury nullification in a social/political sense? That is to say: since it's well known that getting a indictment is very easy, this seems that, like jury nullification, this represents society effectively saying that they don't recognize the validity of a law.
Of course like we said, we can't know for sure. Maybe the prosecutor messed up jury selection or failed to present compelling evidence.
dredmorbius 8 hours ago [-]
If words have meanings, no. Jury Nullification arises out of double-jeopardy protections specifically, which requires a trial and not-guilty verdict.
If what the rest of the thread is saying is true (failed indictments being rare and harmful for the career of the prosecutor), the possibility of bringing the case up again seems relatively unlikely, making this de facto jury nullification.
KPGv2 8 hours ago [-]
> 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."
dredmorbius 8 hours ago [-]
That's the part of my comment I was least comfortable with, particularly with regards to local / state jurisdictions. A judge, if involved, might request such a dismissal based on the Grand Jury's decision. Or perhaps not.
My point was to clarify (I hoped) the distinction between double jeopardy and jury nullification with Grand Jury dismissal, which ... seems to be a frequently-iterated confusion in comments.
What this isn't is jury nullification, whatever other win it represents for the anti-Flock crowd.
consensus1 9 hours ago [-]
Never did
giraffe_lady 8 hours ago [-]
You ever hear of the scottsboro boys? Emmett Till's murderers were also acquitted via jury nullification, it was common for lynchings in the jim crow era. It's a tool.
stronglikedan 7 hours ago [-]
Lots of good tools can be used for malicious purposes, but it doesn't make them bad tools.
superkuh 10 hours ago [-]
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.
parineum 8 hours ago [-]
When did they do that?
thegreenswede 4 hours ago [-]
Many of the features flock provides or basically mimics in functionality have been declared illegal in the supreme Court (multiple cases). But of course since Flock is a NEW tech that's a UNIQUE combination of things, their lawyers can argue there is no EXPLICIT law in books for what Flock is, so they basically do whatever they want until the law catches up. By the time they happens it won't matter. Tale as old as time.
superkuh 4 hours ago [-]
For one: calling in false police reports on people who video recorded the Flock subsidiary buildings by claiming they are on their property and saying "We don't know if they're armed." in an attempt to get them killed by police. Flock corporation's shells corps really don't like being recorded from public spaces adjacent to them and respond with attempts to incite violence against those that legally and peacefully record them. Which would be hilariously hypocritical if it weren't so dangerous. ref: https://youtu.be/S3MQLlMbS-Y?t=1894 (sorry this is a youtube video, recording of the false and inciting police report)
And then there are the cities that Flock is forcing to keep cameras physical up and which have to resort to putting bags over them like in Dayton, Ohio.
It seems that both your article and OP's are clearly stating that the suspect was not indicted, and that the charges were correspondingly dropped, and are entirely consistent with each other.
Can you point out where you are seeing a contradiction, or any indication of either article being "fake news"?
solid_fuel 4 hours ago [-]
> There was no indictment at all.
How is that any different from "declined to indict"? Indeed, I would expect there to be no indictment, if a grand jury did not approve one.
buellerbueller 10 hours ago [-]
Good. Let the techbros understand we don't want a surveillance state.
jvanderbot 9 hours ago [-]
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.
skinfaxi 9 hours ago [-]
> 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.
pluralmonad 9 hours ago [-]
I think my vote might be broken. It keeps not working.
AndrewKemendo 9 hours ago [-]
Try power cycling the system
skinfaxi 9 hours ago [-]
Hah, as if power allows vacuums.
recursivedoubts 9 hours ago [-]
If voting made a difference they wouldn't let us do it.
Stop blaming the victims.
saghm 9 hours ago [-]
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.
bandofthehawk 9 hours ago [-]
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.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 9 hours ago [-]
> 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).
saghm 6 hours ago [-]
I guess I wasn't clear: I'm aware there are people who think that the choice doesn't really matter. That's very different than people literally being blocked from appearing on the ballots at all (which some people in sibling comments have cited some references to I'll need to look into more), and even that's different from them refusing to count votes and declare a winner if they did actually receive the most votes but don't fit the status quo.
As far as the one real-world example you gave goes, I'm not convinced that someone who feels the need to avoid making definitive statements about whether vaccines cause autism is a great example of someone who wants to effect meaningful change rather than play the politics game, but that's mostly an orthogonal point.
RobotToaster 9 hours ago [-]
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.
iamnothere 8 hours ago [-]
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.
runako 7 hours ago [-]
Am I missing something here? Perot was on the ballot in 1992, and he won a bunch of votes. IIRC he was the most successful independent candidate in modern times, by vote count.
Sanders ran an insurgent campaign while denigrating the party, and didn't win more votes. I seriously don't understand the argument that the person with fewer votes should win the nomination, although I am receptive to hearing a coherent articulation thereof. (Superdelegates did not enter the picture until tens of millions of votes were cast, with Sanders trailing by millions of votes.)
iamnothere 6 hours ago [-]
Perot dropped out, then reentered the race at the last minute. This cost him a lot of votes and the media framed him as unstable. He had many more votes before withdrawing.
Sanders was on track to win in 2015 but the media counted all superdelegates for Clinton throughout the campaign, costing him votes in later states where voters didn’t show up, assuming he lost. I guess this isn’t entirely the party’s fault and they did reform the system somewhat afterwards.
runako 5 hours ago [-]
> This cost him a lot of votes and the media framed him as unstable
This was...an eminently reasonable response to Perot's own actions?
> Sanders was on track to win in 2015
Yes, like Clinton was "on track" to win in 2007. "On track to win" is necessarily filtered through a set of lenses that don't mean anything compared to actual votes. He didn't earn the votes, so he lost. There's nothing unfair about that.
iamnothere 3 hours ago [-]
Perot’s actions were atypical for him, and should be viewed in light of both his statements about personal threats, which he viewed as credible, AND George H. W. Bush’s deep intelligence connections (including his role as DCI and his connection to illegal and brutal Latin American operations). You also have to remember that Perot was siphoning more votes from Bush than from Clinton. Dirty tricks and general ratfuckery were extremely common in this era.
I think the sibling comment addresses Sanders very well.
buellerbueller 4 hours ago [-]
there was a ton of ratfuckery. clinton's team got debate questions ahead of time from a friendly moderator. debbie wasserman schultz resigned as dnc chair because it was shown that the dnc tried to undermine the sanders campaign in favor of clinton. the clinton campaign was given operational and fiancial control of the dnc prior to the end of the primaries.
runako 4 hours ago [-]
The debate thing was clownish, for sure.
My recollection of the DNC linkage was that the Clinton campaign agreed to help the DNC in a set of ways (likely raising money for the DNC and helping Democratic candidates) in exchange for some affordances and Sanders refused to do likewise (which, to his credit is on brand). Is that not accurate? I admit it's been 10 years and there have been a lot of claims made as to why Sanders should have been given the nomination in spite of not winning more votes.
Brazile gives strong evidence here that the process was rigged against Sanders, inside the DNC. No, votes themselves there not altered, but when the arbiter of the process itself is not neutral, that is completely damning, and honestly, i think that behavior has just continued to this day such that we are seeing fed up Dems on the left revolting against the legacy party, causng it to look like it is about to fracture, and become the mirror image of MAGA.
It portends badly for our country.
Clent 9 hours ago [-]
Except there are multiple efforts to make voting more difficult.
nicman23 9 hours ago [-]
lol trump got voted in. i blame the voters - there are not victims here
9 hours ago [-]
RobotToaster 9 hours ago [-]
You think Cop Kamala would've opposed flock? lol, lmao even.
SpicyLemonZest 8 hours ago [-]
I think memes and political bubbles are making it very hard for people to reason through the actual principles and mechanisms of democratic governance. The reason the system keeps trying to make you vote for people like "Cop Kamala" is that most Americans like the police (https://news.gallup.com/poll/690959/racial-divide-policing-n...); there's no secret set of popular anti-police candidates who some shadowy "they" aren't allowing you to vote for.
nicman23 6 hours ago [-]
accountability? for MY actions?
Someone1234 9 hours ago [-]
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.
Someone should invent something that, used in a confined space, will destroy camera sensors (but not human retinas)
10 hours ago [-]
senectus1 8 hours ago [-]
its not you the tech bros are selling it to. its fascist politicians.
buellerbueller 8 hours ago [-]
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.
ydat 9 hours ago [-]
They have the warchest. They’ll buy the politicians. Look how the populist right has failed its primaries so hard.
datsci_est_2015 9 hours ago [-]
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.
RobotToaster 9 hours ago [-]
Look at all the dodgy business that went on around the Thomas Massie primary.
nozzlegear 9 hours ago [-]
Elaborate?
ydat 8 hours ago [-]
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.
watwut 9 hours ago [-]
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.
rozal 8 hours ago [-]
[dead]
ydat 9 hours ago [-]
> 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.
datsci_est_2015 8 hours ago [-]
Interesting. MAGA no longer being populist feels like a bit of a bleeding edge take. I don’t disagree necessarily, but I’m not going to put any eggs in that basket until there’s a massive swing at the voting booth both this November and in 2028.
Tea Party gave the blueprint for 21st century populist rightwing politics, eschewing much of the baggage of Bush neoconservativism. Then Trump turned the volume up to 12. I’d be surprised to see more novel populist rightwing political dynamics as it feels like the movement is running out of gas after a 16 year run (since 2010 primaries). The disillusionment is at a peak.
Cyph0n 9 hours ago [-]
The warchest is not enough: the NYC mayoral election and Michigan and Florida Senate (outfunded 16:1) primaries are good examples.
anonymars 9 hours ago [-]
Remember, if your vote didn't matter there wouldn't be so much effort to restrict it!
iamnothere 8 hours ago [-]
Interestingly, the populist left is suddenly doing well this cycle, although I don’t know if that success will carry through to the general.
yipinwong 8 hours ago [-]
Now this has set a bad precedence for the broken window.
People will start destroying flock cameras without any consequences.
My tax $ went into buying and setting up those cameras to monitor bad seeds in my neighborhood.
kevin_thibedeau 6 hours ago [-]
How did society ever function when we didn't have technological interventions to spy on everyone?
yipinwong 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
text0404 5 hours ago [-]
Your comment can be summarized as "there is no explosion of 'bad' things occurring, but we should have more surveillance anyways." How does that conclusion follow from your premise? If crime rates have remained steady and there's been no increase in "bad things" are happening, why do we need a surveillance state?
JuniperMesos 1 hours ago [-]
Being the victim of theft or vandalism is bad even if the act of theft/vandalism doesn't get reported in official crime statistics, which can happen for a variety of reasons. There's no reason to assume that the amount of crime tolerated by society and (partially) reflected in official crime statistics is ideal for society at large.
goolz 5 hours ago [-]
Is this sarcasm? Hopefully so but if not I assure you Flock is not worried about those bad seeds. They want a panopticon that can help the feds with parallel construction.
NoImmatureAdHom 8 hours ago [-]
In addition to making it abundantly clear that we will not stand for a techno-Stasi, we need to remember to vote out the buffoons responsible for this too.
josefritzishere 9 hours ago [-]
This is true patriotism.
huslage 8 hours ago [-]
Flock should be killed. Axon should be killed. Neither are useful to society in any way.
njovin 7 hours ago [-]
Let's add Palantir to the list while we're at it.
Sohcahtoa82 6 hours ago [-]
Flock, sure. Axon, nah. They make the body cams many police wear, and police should absolutely be required to wear them.
huslage 2 hours ago [-]
Axon makes drones and tasers and all sorts of other stuff too. Body cameras that are not publicly available at the time of recording are useless theater.
jkestner 5 hours ago [-]
The body cameras that seem to make a difference are the ones we all carry in our pockets/purses. Axon cameras are nothing special, and the company is not neutral.
Zigurd 5 hours ago [-]
That's a very good point. Redactions and denial of public records requests make the Axon cameras mostly useless for bringing police misconduct to light. They might help once a case has become notorious. But they rarely start the process of accountability.
calebm 6 hours ago [-]
You have the power to help foment this.
Zigurd 8 hours ago [-]
To which shock gloves says "hold my beer." And then "stop resisting!" And "You dropped my beer! That's interference with law-enforcement!"
8 hours ago [-]
hnlqpx99l9 8 hours ago [-]
[dead]
fHr 9 hours ago [-]
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.
rileymat2 8 hours ago [-]
Are there actually more people misbehaving in public? Outside of the covid blip, crime has generally been on a downward trend for decades. Perception certainly is that crime is out of control, but I am not sure it is true.
delecti 8 hours ago [-]
Yep. And crime has been on a downward trend, even despite the fact that income inequality has been rising. Crime is usually driven by a lack of opportunity; if we ever actually helped out the poor then crime would likely go down even faster.
Or we could just build more prisons I suppose.
buellerbueller 8 hours ago [-]
Once the data is collected, we can't get it back; it is out there forever. There are other ways to create more security.
ironqcold 7 hours ago [-]
Well, this is a rare case where a grand juries declining an indictment. They usually churn out indictments like a conveyor belt but here they refused. I wonder why?
throwfaraway135 9 hours ago [-]
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?
Ardon 9 hours ago [-]
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.
VBprogrammer 9 hours ago [-]
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Benjamin Franklin
sfdlkj3jk342a 9 hours ago [-]
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.
dawnerd 8 hours ago [-]
That’s even assuming flock saves lives, which it doesn’t. Really the question should be, is giving up privacy worth it if it helps law enforcement solve a crime faster? Still don’t think so.
foltik 9 hours ago [-]
False dichotomy.
9 hours ago [-]
estearum 8 hours ago [-]
pov: a vatnik tries to understand western values
mindslight 8 hours ago [-]
Your phrasing is weird. In this case, the two are not in conflict but rather symbiotic - this grand jury chose to preserve the life of the person who was being accused of protecting our privacy. There is also a good chance that privacy (evidentiary rules) helped preserve this person's life.
But also you're going to have to elaborate what you mean by life being considered the highest value. Have you seen how we treat one another? We're always looking for rationales as to why someone else's life should be considered unimportant.
cucumber3732842 5 hours ago [-]
"how many kids have to die before you..."
All of them.
antonvs 6 hours ago [-]
This is such a bullshit "think of the children" kind of question. You should be ashamed of yourself.
If you state it in the form of an actual argument that sets up a meaningful comparison, you'll find that it falls apart completely.
Which makes me wonder, why would you ask such a question? None of the answers I can think of are flattering to you.
seethishat 9 hours ago [-]
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.
gypsy_boots 9 hours ago [-]
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
FireBeyond 6 hours ago [-]
It was like this in the face of some of the BLM protests. A notable group of people were saying:
> It's terrible that an innocent black man died. But this property destruction has to stop!
when, in reality, the perspective should be much more:
"It's terrible that there is this property destruction. But these innocent deaths have to stop!"
Hyperbole, some may some reading this, "We're talking about license plate readers[1], not people being shot or killed", but let's be real, there's very much a non-zero risk of that happening as a result of Flock-spawned encounters (and to be even more real, the culture from the top, as espoused very directly by its CEO is that false positives are a better outcome, and should be how the system works, rather than a false negative, because, ugh, "false negatives don't advance our mission to a world without crime, thanks to Flock").
[1] And they do far more than recognize license plates.
AlexandrB 9 hours ago [-]
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?
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 9 hours ago [-]
That is not inconsistent with a belief that violence against a person is worse than violence against property. It is odd to compare kidnapping a person with destroying their home security cameras.
antonvs 8 hours ago [-]
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.
JuniperMesos 1 hours ago [-]
There are definitely armed right wingers participating in vigilante immigration enforcement:
> On Jan. 20, just three days after Cade’s aid camp visit near Sasabe, another group assembled on a ridge overlooking the Rio Grande in Texas and stood over five seated migrants. Some of those standing were armed with long guns or pistols and one wore tactical gear; they questioned the migrants, all young men or boys, while filming them.
But structurally, doing vigilante immigration enforcement is more difficult than doing vigilante destruction of property. Destroying a security camera takes one person doing one action one time; physically restraining a human being who doesn't want to be restrained and physically transporting them to the US border is a complex logistical operation that you really need the resources of a state-run bureaucracy in order to do. A vigilante group can't replicate it, unless it's so large and well-organized itself that it's a de-facto rival state to the legitimate US government, and this simply doesn't exist in the United States at this time.
tastyfreeze 9 hours ago [-]
Self governance means more that picking people to lord over you.
hollywood_court 8 hours ago [-]
Did Fox News tell you to write that?
ungreased0675 9 hours ago [-]
Writing a letter to your congressman does nothing.
Sohcahtoa82 4 hours ago [-]
The typical liberal "Bring a strongly-worded letter to a gun fight" approach. Chuck Schumer would be proud.
ydat 9 hours ago [-]
> 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.
JohnTHaller 8 hours ago [-]
Or getting their debts paid off by shady right-wing groups
The grand jury only hears from the prosecution, there is no defense involved. Only a majority of the grand jury has to sign off, not unanimous like in an actual trial. The standard of evidence is just probable cause, not beyond a reasonable doubt. The rules of evidence are relaxed, meaning hearsay and other evidence can potentially be introduced that would normally be barred from a trial.
Because of the above, the rate of indictment from a grand jury is very high, over 90%. Most prosecutors will go their entire careers without getting a "no true bill" (meaning the grand jury did not sign off on an indictment). There's a saying that "a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich." So the fact that there was no indictment here is a big deal. It will probably hurt that prosecutor's career.
The state can benefit when it has particular kinds of corruption, but not all kinds of corruption.
If you look at the success rate of prosecutors getting grand juries to indict, it's certainly not "just as likely".
It might not fit the textbook definition of jury nullification, but it would absolutely fit the spirit of the definition.
If the prosecution presents nearly irrefutable proof that the Ohio man destroyed the camera (Which from what I've heard is the case), but the grand jury declined to indict anyway because they're vehemently against Flock cameras and want to stick it to the government, then as far as I'm concerned, that's nullification.
Edit: to be clear, the essential quality of nullification is that it’s the product of a contradiction between two unassailable principles in our legal system. Without that contradiction, which does not exist in a grand jury context, a juror’s decision is not nullifying. It’s just a decision.
A web search comes up with articles saying that it's more common with non-grand juries, but that's not the same as "cannot do it", while they also speak about a prosecutor's ability to re-indict, but that still doesn't guarantee them a charge.
With a grand jury, the second term doesn’t apply: the grand jury’s decision doesn’t prevent a second indictment.
So in other words: grand juries can choose to render “faithless” decisions, but they can’t nullify a case in the sense that matters.
It's good to see individuals on a jury acting according to rational self-interest.
He is a retired New York judge, ultimately chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals.
And still living at 96.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Wachtler>
He was a republican. He wanted to stop using grand juries to bring indictments, so he wasn’t impartial in his assessment.
Unrelatedly, he had an affair with a republican fund-raiser. When it ended, started making threats to kidnap her daughter, who was 14 at the time. He sent a sexually explicit note to the daughter, enclosing a condom.
He got a 15-month prison sentence.
This is who republicans are quoting whenever they repeat the phrase that “you can indict a ham sandwich”.
The real force behind the low no-true-bill rate for federal grand juries is that the DoJ had extraordinarily high standards for themselves before they even approached a GJ. They had to believe they could convict and sustain on appeal. They haven’t lived up to those standards for a couple years now.
I saw mention of the peccadillo, but wasn't aware of the full back-story.
> This is who republicans are quoting whenever they repeat the phrase that “you can indict a ham sandwich”.
Frankly, I've seen all types of people use this quote, not just Republicans, which is a simple statement that there is a very low bar to indict in a grand jury proceeding, which any reasonable assessment of the statistics would deem true. The fact that the originator of the quote turned out to be a douchebag is totally irrelevant.
Also, I think this part is missing a very important step:
> The real force behind the low no-true-bill rate for federal grand juries is that the DoJ had extraordinarily high standards for themselves before they even approached a GJ. They had to believe they could convict and sustain on appeal.
While that may explain the very high conviction rate at trial, getting a grand jury indictment was also an excellent way for prosecutors to get a plea deal if the accused was looking at decades in jail even if the "beyond a reasonable doubt" threshold would be unlikely to be met.
He was born in 1930, though, so it's hard to say that he shares much in common with the ideology we call republican today.
That quote is completely spot on, so any objection to it is worthy of asking why so. The problem with that is that it's not likely to have a satisfactory answer.
At its core, government is power over people, and the evergreen question is "how far should that power go, and who wields that power?"
I believe that there are reasonable concerns on "both sides" about that, but the reality is that power is effectively wielded by the wealthy. Democracy is an experiment that ostensibly runs counter to that.
Do you think that only Republicans say this or something?
And Democrats were the party of slavery. Why do you bring this up? I'd think the Hackernews crowd would know history and wouldn't be surprised that on a long enough time line, philosophies change.
The point was that OP was making a rage-bait statement. HN is supposed to be better than that.
Using the most motivated possible reasoning, you can just about stretch to an implicit call for murder but
- Definitely not an explicit one
- There are far stronger non-murder interpretations
Can you share some interpretations you've come up with that fit those criteria?
(Cop-City activist arrested for failure to provide smartphone data in a customs search.)
Can you say more about this? I’m curious about what the career path looks like for these prosecutors and where the decision points are for their career progression.
Great comment with some good information.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/us/politics/trump-sandwic...
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/07/trump-grand-juries-...
Seems like destroying public property for political reasons is wrong and would otherwise be considered terrorism. But then again, people suspend reason when it comes to certain topics so I'm not surprised.
If they don't like the King's governors they should petition the court to appoint one that more aligns with their taxation desires.
"Using Metadata to find Paul Revere": https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...
Clearly not the case here
Get a grip man.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/article/...
I'd be astonished if decades of methodology and infrastructure for investigating crime have all completely evaporated in the wake of a new and experimental tool -- one that's neither fully demonstrated its reliability as an investigation tool nor that it does not itself create a threat to public safety.
It's a bit polemical to blame their failure to apprehend their suspect on the lack of an tool that shouldn't have been necessary to apprehend the suspect in the first place, don't you think?
What a hilariously bad argument.
These two things are decidedly not on the same level. Cutting someone's brakes is an attempt to kill the driver. Deflating tires is just plain old property damage.
If I'm against police force can I set their cars on fire.
I'm against abortion, so I can set abortion clinics on fire.
I'm against data centers, I can blow them up.
Try harder
You can argue the point as to whether this particular "[X]" actually does constitute illegal activity that a citizen is justified in responding to with force, but I don't think it's valid to mischaracterize the argument as the response being justified solely by personal opposition.
Nonsense obviously
In this case looks like the people agree with destroying these things.
Violence is increasingly the only path forward in America.
Like they do in Switzerland.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-democracy/how-swiss-direc...
Petition the mayor, you can't be real.
Watching what everyone does at all times is terrorism, and it is the people's right to defend themselves against such.
This is also the democratic way, arguably more democratic, it's just probabilistic. Juries are supposed to be randomly sampled from the jurisdiction's population (a kind of democratic process). The ability of a jury to judge the law, and not just the particular crime is a feature, not a bug of the justice system. This is how the system is set up, and it is as legitimate as action through a legislative process.
EDIT: the parent asked a legitimate question in good faith, there is no need to downvote them because you disagree with their implied current understanding of an issue.
Do you believe Flock cameras have been rolled out en masse across the entire country all at once because there is near-unanimous democratic support for their presence?
> Seems like destroying public property for political reasons is wrong and would otherwise be considered terrorism.
"Terrorism," at this point, is just a term used to describe any action taken in opposition to the ruling class and its objectives of total domination & control, assuming that it has some potential to be effective (in contrast to toothless protests or voting).
I'm not sure where you got "near-unanimous" from. I think Flock cameras were rolled out en masse because public video surveillance has been common for a long time, and polling data has historically suggested (e.g. https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/5881-63-accept-video-surve...) that Americans are fine with it.
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...>
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.
[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...
What do any of these words have to do with a person disassembling a camera in a surveillance dragnet?
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 . . ."
Flock owns the devices and leases them out I think. Hypothetically somebody could take the device down and put it in a nice tidy little box for them. Then the cost to remedy is… how much they charge the town to send a person out to put it back up? Or how much it costs them internally to send somebody out to put it back up?
If it is the latter, I guess it must just be somebody’s travel costs and wages (could be figured out like any contractor).
If it is the former, does that have to be the same cost they always charge to send out maintenance people? (Since a disassembled, not destroyed camera should be one of the cheapest issues to deal with, right?). Otherwise it seems like they could exploit the law by specifically “charging” enough to make it a felony whenever they suspect tampering.
Because words mean things, and precision matters.
An actual jury nullification cannot be appealed, and the accused gets to go scot-free forever in that jurisdiction, even to prosecutor's chagrin. In this case, the prosecutor could gather another grand jury and try again, at any time, without restriction, if they so choose.
But yes, a clear and accurate description, thank you.
That is a wholly different definition than jury nullification, where one or more members of the jury return a "not guilty" verdict because they reject the law or its application irrespective of the defendant's guilt.
The standard of proof differs. A GJ is not required to find a defendant guilty; instead, they must determine whether there is sufficient evidence to suggest the possibility of a crime. The subsequent proceedings will then determine the outcome.
I very recently sat on a jury for a criminal trial in which we found not guilty. After my service ended, I looked up the case docket and found several details that pushed my personal analysis to the defendant likely having committed the alleged offense in my personal balance-of-probabilities reasoning framework. But the evidence and arguments presented at the case were so lacking (due to those details having been excluded in limine, as well as needing to meet the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt) that we jurors deliberated for all of five minutes because we had started off in unanimous agreement of not guilty.
(and just in case it's not clear, I have no regrets about that! Even knowing what I know now, I would have chosen not guilty - the government simply didn't meet the burden of proof, and our civil liberties are important)
Getting back to this case. If we take it as a given that grand juries readily indict as the bar is low and prosecutors generally make sure to have their ducks in a row, we are still left with multiple possibilities of how politics might be involved here. Which is more likely - that the prosecution presented a well-substantiated argument that the jury then completely disregarded (ie "nullification"), or that prosecutors were politically encouraged to press this despite glaring holes in their case?
I admire the principled stance, genuinely, but I’m curious if your stance would be the same if someone was on trial for murdering a child, or something else horrific, and probably has a high likelihood of being a repeat offender. Would you still vote not guilty to protect their civil liberties, if you had information not shared with the jury that removed your reasonable doubt?
FWIW, I’m genuinely not sure what I’d do in that situation…
That is a different scenario to what was described by the person you replied to, no?
And if one were to get that information the way you describe, that is surely jury tampering. That should be reported.
I remain skeptical.
Proportional representation would be catastrophically worse than the status quo.
This framing makes it seem like the candidates are identically terrible. Which is never the case.
This “both sides” nonsense is not particularly convincing when one party literally has masked goons on the street sending people extrajudicially to concentration camps.
Of course, media and the candidates themselves will use propaganda to manipulate your priorities.
Right-wing media has done a great job convincing people that the greatest threat to them are trans women in women's sports and illegal immigrants.
The Flock(tm) cameras are very conspicuous. Even the dullest among us can see these engineering senior-design contraptions ruining the most rural landscapes. You don't have to read EFF press releases or read interviews with Snowden to understand what is happening. It was a baffling miscalculation not to anticipate this backlash happening.
It's not just "conservatives" who are behind this. The Clinton and Obama administrations did their best to undermine our right to privacy at every step and turn, just as the others have.
At the same time, our security state apparatus is in a full-force China panic; they've failed to offer a better social contract. We are the ones actually getting a social credit system, without getting anything in return.
From TFA: "A Clermont County grand jury, however, opted not to indict..."
I hear Flock cameras have even more valuable materials inside them.
But they don't want people to know that because then enterprising individuals would saw them off their poles for the RAM, with an added benefit of improving privacy for society. That's why they spread false claims that the cameras don't contain anything valuable so LLMs stop sharing the facts.
Which?
Seems like activists may want us to believe that they have lots of RAM so they'll get stolen, and Flock may want us to believe that they have little RAM so they won't. Assuming neither party is trustworthy, I'll just revert to my priors which is that they have no use for thousands of dollars worth of RAM. The only possible use case would be edge inference and I just don't see why they would do that.
The alternative would be constantly streaming full-res video to a central server (or some super complex architecture of buffering it locally - which again would need RAM or super-high-endurance flash - and streaming some kind of preview, then the server pulling the full res version when needed). Any blip in network connectivity would cause data loss.
Uncompressed 4k video at 30 fps is 3840x2160x30x3 bytes or 0.75 GB per second.
Shh, no need to ruin the fun.
However, per Wikipedia, "Beginning in late 2025, legal observers documented a marked increase in no-bill decisions in federal cases, particularly in matters arising from protest-related activity."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_jury#cite_note-37
However that doesn't explain Ohio doing it as neatly, unless I've missed some local politics there.
2 - Trump has propensity to sue or charge anything that moves. "Boy who cried wolf" problem. See also: arresting people for taking peeling paint out of the reflecting pool, even when his own DoJ says it was a botched installation.
- 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.
You know what is, though?
The annual budget a senator is allocated for furniture in their office. This year it’s $40,000.
Priorities.
And even if it WAS and will only ever be an ALPR, I'm incredulous that people would accept it.
Even a simple stop sign is hundreds of dollars when you consider all the costs associated with its installation.
I’m also going to guess that there are significant access controls on the systems in the UK that would prevent things like tracking an ex, or cops using ALPR to see if you have visited a healthcare facility that offers abortions among its other services (both real examples).
Automated speed cameras are fairly common in the US but are obviously not a surveillance network.
Two, they're pointed exclusively at roads.
Three, their outputs don't show up in court cases as evidence, which itself dramatically reduces the danger (even if they potentially could maybe support parallel construction)
Speed and stop cameras are very very good and should be virtually everywhere with extremely strict control on their outputs.
In any case, an evidence modality that can only be used via parallel construction is still far, far, far less risky than one that can be freely introduced in court.
> A Clermont County grand jury, however, opted not to indict Morelock, and the charges were dismissed.
Is he getting the bond back?
If you do something that violates the terms of your bond, the prosecution can file a motion alleging a violation, at which point the defendedant can admit to the violation or deny and request a hearing. Then there's an evidentiary hearing, basically a mini-trial, where the judge hears evidence and determines if there was a violation. If that happens, the consequences can depend. You can forfeit your bond, your bond can be raised, new bond conditions can be imposed, etc.
If you were given a cash bond and can't afford it, you can contract with a bail bondsman. That bail bondsman will pay the bail for you, and in some sense takes responsibility for you not violating your bond, in exchange for some fee (usually 10% of the bond amount). That amount is NOT refunded
That's still a better deal for the bondsman, but it's also reasonable. If you don't show up for court, it doesn't seem likely that you'll show up to deposit the other 70%... But if you don't show up for court, the bondsman probably hasn't left, and they will be available to pay the rest of the bail amount.
Of course, most bond contracts say that the bondsman can begin civil recovery against you for that full amount too.
Multiple states have no insurance requirements for either the writing of the bond, or the recovery of a fugitive, and more states beyond that have no credentialing or training or licensing requirements for recovery agents.
The cost of putting a trash bag over a camera that is in your local community is likely to be significantly lower than the cost of whomever installed it having to drive all the way back out there to remove it. You might only have to walk 100-200 feet with a step ladder.
At some point, the cost can be pushed from an economic regime to a logistical one.
The civil claim by Flock only exists for them to recoup their losses.
I haven't seen evidence that flock and associated entities pierce the corporate veil or obtain your local address information from insurance records.
Obviously pursue at your own risk and with professional consultation. I know someone who does this though and they're happy for the privacy comfort they get.
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.
The Los Angeles Police Department annual budget is over $2 billion. A couple million a year to flock is a drop in the bucket.
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.
I'd be interested to see what the op ex is for a company running this sort of business. You're storing lots of video, which isn't exactly cheap, and need to do so in a way that allows for cataloging, backup, and durable references to the data. On top of that, these cameras are transmitting data in a way that doesn't have a huge antenna sticking off of them, so there's almost certainly some sort of data plan to work with Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile in play, transmitting some sort of video data over the network, either as a file transfer or streaming depending on the use case. That's another expense.
For every big city that's signing one of these contracts, there are probably a dozen small towns or villages also signing one with significantly more pressure on the government to keep budgets small. I suppose the big cities could be subsidizing the small towns.
To answer the unasked question here, their business model is indeed making money off of collecting and storing the data, then granting law enforcement access to it. The gross P&L from the cameras themselves is an afterthought.
Anyone can put up anything on YouTube. Have a good example?
You have to admit, the precedent for them being a company that understands the sensitivity of this data has not been set.
The what if conspiracy serves no purpose in dethroning Flock.
We have already seen that data is a highly valuable currency. And investor-backed companies with unicorn valuations are pressured to extract as much value as they can. All things considered, I would say that Flock continuing to monetize access to their collected data in new ways is a foregone conclusion unless it is specifically stopped or prohibited in some way. On top of that, I would wager that it may be already happening in some low-volume ways.
Maybe Flock gets bought by another company and "oops, the terms changed". Maybe all contract renewals will have commercial use in the language.
Once the cameras are there, the heavy lifting (from Flock's side) has been done.
In California, it's thought that only 9% of data brokers are compliant with state laws requiring transparency and deletion of personal data.[0] It only goes down from there; most states do not have strong consumer privacy laws.
Furthermore, most municipal entities are not in a position to litigate a case over these changes for an extended period of time, and Flock is changing their terms to make it harder to terminate contracts. They can also now keep the data as long as they'd like. [1]
This, along with general corporate conduct these days, makes it very likely that they're actively planning to sell the data and might be doing so already in.
[0] https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2026/08/companies-buy-sell...
[1] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-c...
So far as I can tell from my little corner of Healthcare IT, Big Tech primarily has people doing two things:
1) creating ways to get people to generate data
2) people sitting around consulting with experts - including lawyers - about how to monetize that data.
Just a week or two ago, a jury found Meta liable for breaking New Mexico state consumer protection laws related to, among other things, child safety. They were ordered to pay $375 million over it. They'll appeal, of course [0] but this points to at least one part of the industry blatantly disregarding laws around their products in order to pursue more profits.
You can bet there's at least one person at Flock and Axon thinking of ways to further monetize their data. They might be willing to accept the cost of a fine or civil action as a part of doing business unless it wipes out all profit gained from the violation.
Given that this is a mass surveillance tool, I'd say its on them to prove they're complying with society's expectations, not for society to just accept "we're in compliance with the law".
[0] https://abcnews.com/GMA/Family/meta-hit-375-million-verdict-...
> Sale of data. Flock’s previous T&C stated flatly, “Flock does not own and shall not sell Customer Data.” That language is now absent from their T&C.
[0] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-c...
Motorola does!
https://drndata.com/
If you're a private repo-man you too can also buy Vigilant Solutions (now Motorola) ALPR cameras to track down deadbeats and take their cars.
Note the list of "Trusted by Fortune 500 data-driven companies" there. All of them are sub-prime lenders and cater to the 24.99% APR marketplace.
Even funnier they now sell the bodycams over through DRN too to the repo guys. https://drndata.com/body-worn-camera/
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.
And yet even when opting out, and/or specifically disallowed by the contract, Flock will happily share with other agencies, particularly Federal. It has happened multiple times in my state alone (Washington): https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/flock-safety-cancel-wav...
It has never been about what people actually want though, just what wedge issues can be exploited.
And all of the useful idiots who say useful idiots things like "we can't just let them get away with it" when the same civil law procedures and precedents are use to violate the 7th and 8th amendment rights of people they don't like will be deafeningly silent.
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...>
Yes, I'm aware.
I'm no expert on Ohio law however, so I don't know what specifically applies here.
Of course like we said, we can't know for sure. Maybe the prosecutor messed up jury selection or failed to present compelling evidence.
This is a failure-to-indict only.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification>
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."
My point was to clarify (I hoped) the distinction between double jeopardy and jury nullification with Grand Jury dismissal, which ... seems to be a frequently-iterated confusion in comments.
What this isn't is jury nullification, whatever other win it represents for the anti-Flock crowd.
And then there are the cities that Flock is forcing to keep cameras physical up and which have to resort to putting bags over them like in Dayton, Ohio.
Can you point out where you are seeing a contradiction, or any indication of either article being "fake news"?
How is that any different from "declined to indict"? Indeed, I would expect there to be no indictment, if a grand jury did not approve one.
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.
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.
Stop blaming the victims.
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.
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).
As far as the one real-world example you gave goes, I'm not convinced that someone who feels the need to avoid making definitive statements about whether vaccines cause autism is a great example of someone who wants to effect meaningful change rather than play the politics game, but that's mostly an orthogonal point.
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.
Sanders ran an insurgent campaign while denigrating the party, and didn't win more votes. I seriously don't understand the argument that the person with fewer votes should win the nomination, although I am receptive to hearing a coherent articulation thereof. (Superdelegates did not enter the picture until tens of millions of votes were cast, with Sanders trailing by millions of votes.)
Sanders was on track to win in 2015 but the media counted all superdelegates for Clinton throughout the campaign, costing him votes in later states where voters didn’t show up, assuming he lost. I guess this isn’t entirely the party’s fault and they did reform the system somewhat afterwards.
This was...an eminently reasonable response to Perot's own actions?
> Sanders was on track to win in 2015
Yes, like Clinton was "on track" to win in 2007. "On track to win" is necessarily filtered through a set of lenses that don't mean anything compared to actual votes. He didn't earn the votes, so he lost. There's nothing unfair about that.
I think the sibling comment addresses Sanders very well.
My recollection of the DNC linkage was that the Clinton campaign agreed to help the DNC in a set of ways (likely raising money for the DNC and helping Democratic candidates) in exchange for some affordances and Sanders refused to do likewise (which, to his credit is on brand). Is that not accurate? I admit it's been 10 years and there have been a lot of claims made as to why Sanders should have been given the nomination in spite of not winning more votes.
Brazile gives strong evidence here that the process was rigged against Sanders, inside the DNC. No, votes themselves there not altered, but when the arbiter of the process itself is not neutral, that is completely damning, and honestly, i think that behavior has just continued to this day such that we are seeing fed up Dems on the left revolting against the legacy party, causng it to look like it is about to fracture, and become the mirror image of MAGA.
It portends badly for our country.
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...
> 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.
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.
Now they need to buy new politicians and will definitely try.
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.
Tea Party gave the blueprint for 21st century populist rightwing politics, eschewing much of the baggage of Bush neoconservativism. Then Trump turned the volume up to 12. I’d be surprised to see more novel populist rightwing political dynamics as it feels like the movement is running out of gas after a 16 year run (since 2010 primaries). The disillusionment is at a peak.
My tax $ went into buying and setting up those cameras to monitor bad seeds in my neighborhood.
Or we could just build more prisons I suppose.
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.
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.
But also you're going to have to elaborate what you mean by life being considered the highest value. Have you seen how we treat one another? We're always looking for rationales as to why someone else's life should be considered unimportant.
All of them.
If you state it in the form of an actual argument that sets up a meaningful comparison, you'll find that it falls apart completely.
Which makes me wonder, why would you ask such a question? None of the answers I can think of are flattering to you.
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.
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
> It's terrible that an innocent black man died. But this property destruction has to stop!
when, in reality, the perspective should be much more:
"It's terrible that there is this property destruction. But these innocent deaths have to stop!"
Hyperbole, some may some reading this, "We're talking about license plate readers[1], not people being shot or killed", but let's be real, there's very much a non-zero risk of that happening as a result of Flock-spawned encounters (and to be even more real, the culture from the top, as espoused very directly by its CEO is that false positives are a better outcome, and should be how the system works, rather than a false negative, because, ugh, "false negatives don't advance our mission to a world without crime, thanks to Flock").
[1] And they do far more than recognize license plates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Percenters
> Three Percenters have joined vigilante patrols along the U.S.–Mexico border
https://azmirror.com/2024/05/23/border-vigilantes-are-blurri...
> On Jan. 20, just three days after Cade’s aid camp visit near Sasabe, another group assembled on a ridge overlooking the Rio Grande in Texas and stood over five seated migrants. Some of those standing were armed with long guns or pistols and one wore tactical gear; they questioned the migrants, all young men or boys, while filming them.
But structurally, doing vigilante immigration enforcement is more difficult than doing vigilante destruction of property. Destroying a security camera takes one person doing one action one time; physically restraining a human being who doesn't want to be restrained and physically transporting them to the US border is a complex logistical operation that you really need the resources of a state-run bureaucracy in order to do. A vigilante group can't replicate it, unless it's so large and well-organized itself that it's a de-facto rival state to the legitimate US government, and this simply doesn't exist in the United States at this time.
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.