At least 25 Flock cameras have been destroyed in five states since April 2025 (stateofsurveillance.org)

"At least 25 cameras have been destroyed". Sounds like a mere drop in the bucket.

Flock cameras and the surveillance state generally speaking make me feel like a slave.

Why smash them when you can harvest them. I’m sure they have components that can be sold.

Speed cameras and other surveillance state Trojan horses next please. Not just flock.

I've always said we should build an open-source flock that makes all data available for free to anyone, in a ploy to get proper regulations passed. But they'd probably just make it illegal to track police/government cars then break down your door and arrest you for tracking unmarked ICE agent vehicles

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This website and article promote the destruction of property. If you disagree with something, you can engage civily, encourage people to vote with you, run for elections. Violence is not the answer.

Eventually toll cameras and a consortium of private businesses will have this tech and then game over. Better to use this energy and legislate the behavior you want. Never let the enemy decide the terms.

not sure why people are bothering with destruction, just drive around and shut them down wirelessly.

some newer models require a button to be pressed for them to start the AP, but still leaves them vulnerable to attacks with a long stick and doesn't draw any attention while hundreds of cameras suddenly stop working, making the city government think they're unreliable.

Ben Jordan has some great videos on Flock in general, would highly recommend if your not aware of this beyond knowing they're some form of security camera

Just sharing my regular reminder that Flock is a YC company.

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety

This organization that built itself on top of the “hacker ethos” is now happy to profit from building the surveillance state

I've warmed to LLM-generated/assisted writing in general but this kind of stuff is just lazy and is basically "I got Claude to say something I agree with and then made it pretty".

Disgusting, and it's quietly happening worldwide.

In Italy two different agencies are buying spying tools they cannot even legally use.

Laws don't matter.

Let’s add Meta Glassholes to the list

Good

Good. I generally believe in following the law within limits, and a surveillance state is outside of those limits. I don't care about the "good" these cameras provide, because they're neglecting the very real dangers of living in a surveillance state.

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Counter point - I live in a major-ish city in which our police force isn't as strong as the surrounding suburbs so I don't mind a few extra eyes on the streets. My kids like to explore the neighborhood and I like a little extra peace of mind.

I heard someone making the point that these go up but then do not deter street degradation. So basically just targeting regular people.

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Awful AI slop. Title should be some people vandalized something that I can co-op for my political agenda.

Great! Now oppose the vehicle kill switch that just got passed by the people that “represent” you

25 cameras destroyed over the course of a year, and more than half were destroyed by a single person. This doesn't appear to be a widespread concern the headline makes it out to be.

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