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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, it really demonstrates the rot - the public's loss of trust in so-called "law enforcement" due to how they've come to operate as gangs of lawless thugs. If you want to restore the public's trust (vital social technology!), then advocate for civil rights and legal accountability.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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).
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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 . . ."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 fairly regularly.
The Flock(tm) cameras are very conspicuous. Even the dullest among us can see things ruining the most rural of landscapes. You don't have to read EFF press releases or read interviews with Snowden to understand what is happening.
It's not just "conservatives" who are behind this. The Clinton and Obama administrations did their best to underline our right to privacy at every step and turn, just as the others have.
... because you don't have any of the details, you cannot judge whether this decision was congruent or incongruent with the law as written (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, lack of procedure, etc.
I just sat on a criminal jury trial for 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 own probabilistic 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 deliberated for all of five minutes because all of us jurors started off in unanimous agreement.
This isn't jury nullification which occurs during a criminal trial, and for which US Constitutional double-jeopardy protections mean that no further trial for the same offence may be brought.
This is a grand jury, which has refused to bring an indictment. There is no double-jeopardy protection here. The prosecutor has several options:
- Bring the case directly to a judge.
- File charges with a new grand jury. (Grand juries typically sit for a period of time.)
In this case, however, charges have been dismissed. There are several variants here, one is "dismissed with prejudice", which means that those specific charges cannot be applied again. TFA doesn't note this (or indeed much else of substance in this case), so the presumption is that charges are dismissed without prejudice.
What is notable here is that grand juries almost always vote to indict. This isn't a verdict of "guilty", but rather, a finding of sufficient cause to bring trial. As the saying goes, "a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich",[1] that is, overwhelmingly (apparently 95%+ of the time) a prosecutor easily convinces a grand jury to file charges.
Given that grand jury proceedings are usually secret (there are exceptions), and we have no further insight as to what the basis of this decision was, there's not much inference which can be made, though I'd lean more strongly to weak evidence than any specific anti-Flock backlash, much as I'd prefer to believe the latter.[3][4]
The common refrain is "you can get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich". The standards required to indict are quite low. The fact that they failed to get an indictment here must mean they had ~nothing.
> There are several variants here, one is "dismissed with prejudice", which means that those specific charges cannot be applied again. TFA doesn't note this (or indeed much else of substance in this case), so the presumption is that charges are dismissed without prejudice.
Grand juries can't dismiss with prejudice, FWIW. That's a role for judges, but a judge wouldn't have seen the case at this stage to issue such a dismissal. "Charges were dismissed" in the article is likely reference to the actions of the grand jury. It's possibly an inartful way of saying "the charges were dropped by the prosecution."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Based on reliable sources, 32-64 GB of DDR4 or DDR5, 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.
But what I found interesting is - They aren't automatically inflation adjusted, it has to be manually adjusted by legislation. Which hasn't been done since 2011 meaning that in 2026 terms it would be $1.5K~ for a 5th-degree felony for like-for-like level of damage.
Kind of nuts how a poorly written law can increase the number of felonies just due to inflation alone. Although a lot of things aren't automatically inflation adjusted (e.g. minimum wage), and I think commonly it is on purpose rather than an accident. They WANT harsher sentences for relative low crimes.
The 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.
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."
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
>The backlash against Flock has intensified as a growing number of police officers have been accused of or charged with abusing the technology, often to stalk romantic interests. As of Aug. 12, there had been more than 100 cases of abuse by law enforcement, according to the Institute for Justice.
In response, Flock announced new safeguards designed to prevent misuse by police. Critics, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argue that the reforms are largely “cosmetic,” and that warrants should be required for searching license plate reader data.
I'll go further: the gathering of such information should only be allowable by a sworn law enforcement officer acting under a warrant or some other sort of judicial permission during an active investigation.
Flock and Axon are private companies. What's to stop them from selling this license plate data to the police or to other parties to pad their quarterly numbers? Actually, I'd be surprised if they're not already doing this. A friend of mine is in the camera business and was wondering how the hell they're making the money they're making off of local and state government contracts.
> A friend of mine is in the camera business and was wondering how the hell they're making the money they're making off of local and state government contracts.
The contract awards are public no? Axon et al probably make the majority of their money on service charges for storing, accessing the data rather than on the cameras themselves.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Flock sucks but I think these kind of conspiracies hurt the argument. You can go look at a number of these contracts since they are part of your local city/municipality.
A typical flock agreement is pretty firm that the data is the customers. Some of it might be used for training. There is opt-in to share with other law enforcement but I have not yet seen anything around commercial use.
I don’t think much padding is necessary. It’s a metal pole with a cheap camera and SIM card. They charge $3-5k a year per camera. The only upfront cost is a local contractor to install the camera, they typically have one that covers a very large region. Huge margins with that alone.
It's too late for that. This would have maybe worked 30 years ago, but since the Patriot Act and FISA we have literal secret courts approving >99% of the government's requests for surveillance. The existence of the data is now enough to guarantee its misuse.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Can you be more specific? Are you claiming that the winner is not actually whoever gets the most votes (e.g. voter fraud, corrupt vote counting), or that someone who would not authorize something like this would literally not be allowed to show up on the ballot? Those are the only two scenarios I can think of that would result in the conclusion you're stating.
As far as I can tell, people who claim the former are almost overwhelming the ones voting for the people who are worst about stuff like this. I've honestly never seen anyone claim the latter though, so if that's what you believe, elaborating more would be helpful.
The 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.
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.
> 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).
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
Massie is kinda interesting. Because he’s a sort of libertarian who ran as a republican when the right was a bit more united
But it was a strange election. The “establishment” candidate was a no name who refused to do any debates. Rarely ever seem to say much, and when he did, it was mostly just empty parroting of Trumps agenda. Maybe that’s truly what that district wanted.
What was interesting was how Massie seemed slated to win until the very end. Suddenly at the last minute, all sorts of smear ads and all kinds of (honestly very mild) accusations of personal impropriety were being slung left and right and days before the election, polls swap showing Gallrein in the lead, a complete reversal from the months before. A man I’ve never heard speak anything that wasn’t just party lines or something about being a SEAL.
Now I understand that polling isn’t always accurate. But I’ve seen the same exact thing play out nearly the same way in other recent primaries. Feels fishy.
I read it as technocrats Vance-Thiel successfully bought populist MAGA politicians. Those then failed in primaries, because electorate including portion of maga base rejects them. The "buying politicians" step was successful.
Now they need to buy new politicians and will definitely try.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
James Comey was indicted by the government for posting a picture of seashells.
don't stand next to the reflecting pool, you'll get arrested because the president is embarrassed by his own incompetence
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.
Yeah, it really demonstrates the rot - the public's loss of trust in so-called "law enforcement" due to how they've come to operate as gangs of lawless thugs. If you want to restore the public's trust (vital social technology!), then advocate for civil rights and legal accountability.
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.
What would have been the appropriate charge?
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.
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)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/us/politics/trump-sandwic...
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.
Debatable since they really wanted to prosecute the guy and still failed to. We're not completely bereft of the separations yet.
[delayed]
> 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.
This recent phenomenon is interesting to me because a jury of peers is standing up for individuals against corporate/government overreach.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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).
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
This is not a jury nullification (which is an emergent property of US Constitutional double-jeopardy protections), but a failure to indict, that is to bring criminal charges (a "bill of indictment") for potential criminal conduct.
In this instance, the case has been dismissed, but might conceivably be brought again.
Why grand juries make the decisions they do is hard to determine, as their operations are (usually) secret. This may have simply been a case of insufficient evidence of a crime, or identity of the suspect ("probable cause"), as appealing as a broader backlash theory might be.
Much of this article appears to be either speculation or unsourced information if there was in fact resistance to bringing a Flock case by this grand jury. The latter might indicate a violation of secrecy oaths by jury members or other court officers.
Specific practices vary by state, not all of which use grand juries. All federal criminal cases rely on a grand jury.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_juries_in_the_United_Sta...>
> Police in Union Township, a Cincinnati suburb, accused Cody Morelock of disassembling the camera, its support pole and solar panel on June 13.
To add to this, it stood out to me that the headline uses "destroy" but the article uses "disassemble" to describe what happened. Not that the act of calmly dissasembling something couldn't be indicted as potentially criminal (if a ham sandwich can be), but it stands out regardless. Maybe he literally just walked up and started unscrewing things. That would be the most civil form of "vandalism" I can imagine; force them to (pay someone to) come set it up again until they give up or try something else.
The actual source article[1] mentions the equipment was destroyed. The SAN.com republication linked here dropped that detail.
[1] "Investigators alleged Morelock removed bolts securing the camera system, bringing down the camera, solar panel and support pole before destroying the equipment." https://local12.com/news/local/felony-charges-dismissed-agai...
> Not that the act of calmly dissasembling something couldn't be indicted as potentially criminal (if a ham sandwich can be)
Why do you doubt this? If I calmly disassemble your car in the middle of the night, haven't I committed a crime?
Where I live, calmly disassembling property that is't yours is, at minimum, vandalism: https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/penal-code/penal-sect-28-03/
> A person commits an offense if, without the effective consent of the owner . . . he intentionally or knowingly tampers with the tangible property of the owner and causes . . . substantial inconvenience to the owner or a third person . . . .
My guess is the cost to remedy this disassembly is over $2,500, making this a felony. Even if not, if a government Flock camera is considered a "public service" then it's a felony no matter the cost to remedy because it falls under "causes wholly or partly impairment or interruption of property used for . . . public communications, public transportation, [] or other public service . . ."
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.
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.
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.
The US DoJ does not prosecute in county courts.
From TFA: "A Clermont County grand jury, however, opted not to indict..."
It appears this prosecution was brought by local Ohio police; the federal Department of Justice would not have been involved in any way.
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.
Conservative voters themselves have been quite clear that they don’t actually care about any of those principles either.
I remain skeptical.
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.
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.
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 fairly regularly.
The Flock(tm) cameras are very conspicuous. Even the dullest among us can see things ruining the most rural of landscapes. You don't have to read EFF press releases or read interviews with Snowden to understand what is happening.
It's not just "conservatives" who are behind this. The Clinton and Obama administrations did their best to underline our right to privacy at every step and turn, just as the others have.
This sure feels exactly like jury nullification
... because you don't have any of the details, you cannot judge whether this decision was congruent or incongruent with the law as written (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, lack of procedure, etc.
I just sat on a criminal jury trial for 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 own probabilistic 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 deliberated for all of five minutes because all of us jurors started off in unanimous agreement.
Jury nullification ain't sounding so bad anymore, is it?
This isn't jury nullification which occurs during a criminal trial, and for which US Constitutional double-jeopardy protections mean that no further trial for the same offence may be brought.
This is a grand jury, which has refused to bring an indictment. There is no double-jeopardy protection here. The prosecutor has several options:
- Bring the case directly to a judge.
- File charges with a new grand jury. (Grand juries typically sit for a period of time.)
In this case, however, charges have been dismissed. There are several variants here, one is "dismissed with prejudice", which means that those specific charges cannot be applied again. TFA doesn't note this (or indeed much else of substance in this case), so the presumption is that charges are dismissed without prejudice.
What is notable here is that grand juries almost always vote to indict. This isn't a verdict of "guilty", but rather, a finding of sufficient cause to bring trial. As the saying goes, "a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich",[1] that is, overwhelmingly (apparently 95%+ of the time) a prosecutor easily convinces a grand jury to file charges.
Given that grand jury proceedings are usually secret (there are exceptions), and we have no further insight as to what the basis of this decision was, there's not much inference which can be made, though I'd lean more strongly to weak evidence than any specific anti-Flock backlash, much as I'd prefer to believe the latter.[3][4]
________________________________
Notes:
1. Sol Wachtler: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Wachtler>
2. On grand juries, generally: <https://legalknowledgebase.com/what-does-it-mean-when-a-gran...>
3. On dismissal of charges: <https://andrewalpert.com/blog/what-does-dismissed-with-preju...>
The common refrain is "you can get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich". The standards required to indict are quite low. The fact that they failed to get an indictment here must mean they had ~nothing.
Quoted, and sourced, in the comment you're replying to.
Yes, I'm aware.
Heh, my bad
Judges have a lot of freedom to decide sentences. They might get one willing to throw the book on him. The risk is still there.
Judges can’t throw the book at someone who wasn’t indicted.
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.
How is a judge going to do that when this man wasn't even indicted?
> 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."
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.
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.
If words have meanings, no. Jury Nullification arises out of double-jeopardy protections specifically, which requires a trial and not-guilty verdict.
This is a failure-to-indict only.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification>
Yes
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.
Never did
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.
I got my catalytic converter stolen twice.
I hear Flock cameras have even more valuable materials inside them.
Plus you are fighting back against the "seeing state" at the same time! Win win!
Like what? Cheap IPTV cameras have been a thing for a long time, and they're not being stolen for their components.
There's GOLD in them there FLOCKs.
Shh, no need to ruin the fun.
Based on reliable sources, 32-64 GB of DDR4 or DDR5, 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.
At least three pounds of copper and no jury will convict you!
Sad to see how quickly the narrative has been pushed from "you should not collect this data" to a bunch of "we need common sense guardrails" comments.
This reads like a newspaper snippet you discover in a cyberpunk video game.
1984 edition
Why would a simple vandalism charge go to a grand jury?
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.
What makes an ALPR cost more than $1000 per unit?
The markup I assume
Probably the pole, footing, and wages for the installation crew.
The starting value of felony
A quick google reveals a Flock camera costs about $2500 and there's a few hundred dollars in install fees.
High quality cameras are expensive.
Equivalent quality cameras can be had for 100-200. Not that expensive.
All the reasons in the other repliues, and it's also not just an ALPR.
Looks like in Ohio the thresholds are:
- 0 to $999: misdemeanor
- 1K: 5th-degree felony
- 7.5K-150K: 4th-degree felony
- 150K+: 3th-degree felony
But what I found interesting is - They aren't automatically inflation adjusted, it has to be manually adjusted by legislation. Which hasn't been done since 2011 meaning that in 2026 terms it would be $1.5K~ for a 5th-degree felony for like-for-like level of damage.
Kind of nuts how a poorly written law can increase the number of felonies just due to inflation alone. Although a lot of things aren't automatically inflation adjusted (e.g. minimum wage), and I think commonly it is on purpose rather than an accident. They WANT harsher sentences for relative low crimes.
> Although a lot of things aren't automatically inflation adjusted (e.g. minimum wage)
You know what is, though?
The annual budget a senator is allocated for furniture in their office. This year it’s $40,000.
Priorities.
Because that's how you get a felony criminal case started in Ohio (and most, if not all, states and any federal felony cases).
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.
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."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_jury#cite_note-37
> 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?
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.
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
Flock should be killed. Axon should be killed. Neither are useful to society in any way.
To which shock gloves says "hold my beer." And then "stop resisting!" And "You dropped my beer! That's interference with law-enforcement!"
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.
Then the camera isn’t destroyed? What’s the point?
Then someone would take it off. Spray paint is probably more effective, but still recoverable.
I hear truck liner spray paint works wonders.
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.
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.
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?
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.
I see you haven’t heard of parallel construction.
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.
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).
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.
Proton (of Proton Mail fame) have a youtube channel and yesterday they interviewed the CEO of Flock. Frankly, double dutch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8npTivf23y8
I want to buy Cody Morelock a fancy ham sandwich.
>The backlash against Flock has intensified as a growing number of police officers have been accused of or charged with abusing the technology, often to stalk romantic interests. As of Aug. 12, there had been more than 100 cases of abuse by law enforcement, according to the Institute for Justice.
In response, Flock announced new safeguards designed to prevent misuse by police. Critics, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argue that the reforms are largely “cosmetic,” and that warrants should be required for searching license plate reader data.
I'll go further: the gathering of such information should only be allowable by a sworn law enforcement officer acting under a warrant or some other sort of judicial permission during an active investigation.
Flock and Axon are private companies. What's to stop them from selling this license plate data to the police or to other parties to pad their quarterly numbers? Actually, I'd be surprised if they're not already doing this. A friend of mine is in the camera business and was wondering how the hell they're making the money they're making off of local and state government contracts.
> A friend of mine is in the camera business and was wondering how the hell they're making the money they're making off of local and state government contracts.
The contract awards are public no? Axon et al probably make the majority of their money on service charges for storing, accessing the data rather than on the cameras themselves.
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.
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-came...
No, they don’t as far as I have seen sell data for commercial purposes.
Yet?
You have to admit, the precedent for them being a company that understands the sensitivity of this data has not been set.
Get rid of the what if hyperbole and focus on the core reason why it’s bad. These contracts do not allow commercial use. Could they in the future but so what, focus on the here and now. We should continue to focus on what is true today. 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.
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.
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.
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.
You can generally get your hands on these agreements pretty easily. None of the ones I have seen allow commercial use.
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.
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.
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.
Flock sucks but I think these kind of conspiracies hurt the argument. You can go look at a number of these contracts since they are part of your local city/municipality.
A typical flock agreement is pretty firm that the data is the customers. Some of it might be used for training. There is opt-in to share with other law enforcement but I have not yet seen anything around commercial use.
I don’t think much padding is necessary. It’s a metal pole with a cheap camera and SIM card. They charge $3-5k a year per camera. The only upfront cost is a local contractor to install the camera, they typically have one that covers a very large region. Huge margins with that alone.
It's too late for that. This would have maybe worked 30 years ago, but since the Patriot Act and FISA we have literal secret courts approving >99% of the government's requests for surveillance. The existence of the data is now enough to guarantee its misuse.
> 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.
> What's to stop them from selling this license plate data to the police or to other parties to pad their quarterly numbers?
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/
The state will try again until they get the result that they have determined is correct.
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.
This is true patriotism.
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.
When did they do that?
Good. Let the techbros understand we don't want a surveillance state.
I agree.
However the agent here with the power is the state and local and federal government. They're just going to do drones next if they can't do sensor masts.
Everyone who authorized this funding needs to be voted out. If we really care the signal is to take away the power of people who decided to use this.
If voting made a difference they wouldn't let us do it.
Stop blaming the victims.
lol trump got voted in. i blame the voters - there are not victims here
You think Cop Kamala would've opposed flock? lol, lmao even.
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.
Can you be more specific? Are you claiming that the winner is not actually whoever gets the most votes (e.g. voter fraud, corrupt vote counting), or that someone who would not authorize something like this would literally not be allowed to show up on the ballot? Those are the only two scenarios I can think of that would result in the conclusion you're stating.
As far as I can tell, people who claim the former are almost overwhelming the ones voting for the people who are worst about stuff like this. I've honestly never seen anyone claim the latter though, so if that's what you believe, elaborating more would be helpful.
The last person to stand for president who managed to get political momentum and wanted real change in the system was Eugene Debs, and they arrested him.
Two others:
Bernie Sanders (prevented from winning the primary via unelected superdelegates)
Ross Perot (suddenly withdrew under murky circumstances and later claimed his family was threatened)
Both wanted significant change, although they were reformists rather than revolutionaries.
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.
> or that someone who would not authorize something like this would literally not be allowed to show up on the ballot?
I'm surprised that you've never encountered this persepective before, it seems a very common one to me.
The first thing I think about is the South Park episode in which the elementary school had to vote for a school mascot and they were given the choice of either "a giant douche" or "a turd sandwich".
The second thing is another South Park episode (circa 2009), for which they actually produced two episodes (and aired one) for the Presidential election between McCain and Obama. Regardless of who would win, the plot was the same: the winner colludes with the loser in a National Treasure-style heist, with the election just being part of the setup.
In the latter example, the message seems to be that it doesn't matter who wins because the same outcomes occur. The former example probably doesn't need explaining.
Anyway, yeah, it would be nice to choose something better than a turd sandwich but when the other option is a giant douche, what is there to do? The way I see it, you either vote for someone who you know stands no chance (Jill Stein, btw), don't vote at all, or vote for the turd sandwich (or the giant douche, if that's your persuasion).
Except there are multiple efforts to make voting more difficult.
I think my vote might be broken. It keeps not working.
Try power cycling the system
Hah, as if power allows vacuums.
> 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.
They have the warchest. They’ll buy the politicians. Look how the populist right has failed its primaries so hard.
The warchest is not enough: the NYC mayoral election and Michigan and Florida Senate (outfunded 16:1) primaries are good examples.
Remember, if your vote didn't matter there wouldn't be so much effort to restrict it!
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.
> 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.
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.
Look at all the dodgy business that went on around the Thomas Massie primary.
Elaborate?
Massie is kinda interesting. Because he’s a sort of libertarian who ran as a republican when the right was a bit more united
But it was a strange election. The “establishment” candidate was a no name who refused to do any debates. Rarely ever seem to say much, and when he did, it was mostly just empty parroting of Trumps agenda. Maybe that’s truly what that district wanted.
What was interesting was how Massie seemed slated to win until the very end. Suddenly at the last minute, all sorts of smear ads and all kinds of (honestly very mild) accusations of personal impropriety were being slung left and right and days before the election, polls swap showing Gallrein in the lead, a complete reversal from the months before. A man I’ve never heard speak anything that wasn’t just party lines or something about being a SEAL.
Now I understand that polling isn’t always accurate. But I’ve seen the same exact thing play out nearly the same way in other recent primaries. Feels fishy.
I read it as technocrats Vance-Thiel successfully bought populist MAGA politicians. Those then failed in primaries, because electorate including portion of maga base rejects them. The "buying politicians" step was successful.
Now they need to buy new politicians and will definitely try.
Interestingly, the populist left is suddenly doing well this cycle, although I don’t know if that success will carry through to the general.
Unfortunately they may be doubling down.
Apple is rumored to be integrating cameras into AirPods[0] that are cloud connected for "AI." They supposedly won't be able to take "pictures" and "video" but will transmit essentially the same information for AI/Siri.
Between the reaction to Flock and also the Meta Glasses; I'm legitimately surprised that companies aren't reading the Tea leaves here. But, no, I guess everything needs a camera and a cloud feed of that camera's vision now.
PS - And before you say "that is just a rumor" the video file was extracted from Apple's macOS 26.7 RC that showcases how it may work.
[0] https://www.macrumors.com/2026/08/17/camera-equipped-airpods...
Someone should invent something that, used in a confined space, will destroy camera sensors (but not human retinas)
its not you the tech bros are selling it to. its fascist politicians.
Hence, the destruction, the calls for more destruction, and the lack of indictment. Seems like the people feel left, unjustifiably, out of the loop on this one.
I'm more pro surveillance and think a lot of people missbehaving in public need it nowadays. But even I think this Flock Quasistasi mass sutveillance stuff is going way to far. It's hard to say I love security but also privacy and the abuse potential or risks are huge as well. I'm torn.
Once the data is collected, we can't get it back; it is out there forever. There are other ways to create more security.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Benjamin Franklin
False dichotomy.
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.
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.
pov: a vatnik tries to understand western values
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.
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.
Self governance means more that picking people to lord over you.
Writing a letter to your congressman does nothing.
weak.
There is a juggernaut of surveillance consuming everything in its path, where laws are skirted to install surveillance instruments and due process might as well not exist. And you're talking about "protecting property" and pulling out your little pen and paper to tell your congressperson "i'd like you to try this instead, please"
I'm sorry, no. You don't necessarily have to be the one taking action in the streets, by all means write your letter, but please don't criticize others and pretend that your approach will get you any further than other peoples approach
This is a justification for any kind of vigilanteism. Is this also what you will tell armed righties who decide to round up illegal immigrants and shuttle them across the border to Mexico because the government is ignoring their concerns or is breaking the law because the government ignores you only reserved for your pet causes?
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.
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.
> I would write to my congress person rather than commit a crime and destroy someone's property.
Your congressman is having a nice steak dinner with representatives of the company while some poor staffer pastes the generic response in the letter sent back to you.
Or getting their debts paid off by shady right-wing groups
Did Fox News tell you to write that?