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.
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.
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 leafs 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.
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."
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.
>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.
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.
HIPAA violations are not crimes and HIPAA does not give a right of private action, meaning you can't sue if someone violates your HIPAA rights. HIPAA enforcement is delegated only to the Department of Health and Human Services, under the whims of Robert F. Kennedy. If RFK doesn't want to take action about your HIPAA case, there's no other recourse.
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.
> 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...
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.
This issue is a lot more nuanced than Flock's standard contract with municipalities.
You're right that Flock explicitly -- and repeatedly -- states that agencies "own" the data. They make those statements not just in their contract but also in their marketing materials, in interviews with city councilors, and to the press.
But that could also be seen as a fig leaf for their actual control over the data, and as a disclaimer of liability. They've wanted to have it both ways: they get to own every endpoint that the data flows through, and at no time does the supposed customer have real control over the collected data, and yet they aren't responsible for the content or consequences of collecting, transporting, and storing that data.
Customers do not even control whether the devices are powered on or off. Two cities here had to ask Flock to disable the devices while the cities reconsidered their contract, and in both cases some devices got reactivated without the cities' permission. We aren't the only ones.
Flock has also been incredibly dishonest about their object detection. They repeatedly made statements that it was "just the rear corner of vehicles" or "just a license plate", but when we (legally) acquired some of their devices for analysis, we found hardcoded tags for multiple other objects, including people and bicycles. Flock's "FreeForm" product marketing further supports that they are collecting images of people, and internal training materials from our local police department also supports the belief that Flock is uploading far more than just images of vehicles and license plates.
So, my question would be: if you don't control the devices, and you don't own the network, and you don't know what's in the data, then... do you actually own that data? In what substantive way is this situation different from DRM-encumbered media with a revocable license? I mean, sure, you paid for that game or that movie, but if someone else can decide at any time to change your access to it, do you own it?
You also made a few other comments rebutting arguments about commercial use of the data. Again, you're technically correct: to date, there are no known cases of Flock directly selling access to ALPR data to a third party in direct exchange for money. But, Flock is a subscription service and cities don't own any of the hardware or the software involved. Flock is directly collecting ALPR data in each city and then selling it back to the city.
Even setting that aside, their valuation in 2025 strongly suggested a connection between the data they were collecting and the amount of capital investors were willing to provide. $7.5 billion valuation against $300 million ARR, combined with ALPRs mostly cobbled together from open source or off-the-shelf software and cheap hardware and installed by a nationwide fleet of contractors: it's really hard to look at all the numbers and not conclude that the most valuable asset Flock had was the data they were collecting. If Flock did get $275 million of additional funding largely on the value of the data they had access to, is that really substantially different from commercial sale of the data?
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.
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.
Wealth is the highest value, life doesn't even rank. Framing it that way is disingenuous, the choice isn't between saving a life or privacy, and choosing privacy doesn't sentence someone to death. On the other hand allowing sycophantic AI systems fed on mass survellience to identify "criminals" will very likely lead to death or at the very least, destroyed lives.
Answer this: If sacrificing privacy for life is a fair trade... Is money worth more than life? I would assume if life is so highly valued, you'd support the reallocation of resources to support it, right?
I don't object to Flock cameras or any other public cameras. But if I did, I would write to my congress person rather than commit a crime and destroy someone's property.
There is a juggernaut of surveillance consuming everything in its path, where laws are skirted to install surveillance instruments and due process might as well not exist. And you're talking about "protecting property" and pulling out your little pen and paper to tell your congressperson "i'd like you to try this instead, please"
I'm sorry, no. You don't necessarily have to be the one taking action in the streets, by all means write your letter, but please don't criticize others and pretend that your approach will get you any further than other peoples approach
This is a justification for any kind of vigilanteism. Is this also what you will tell armed righties who decide to round up illegal immigrants and shuttle them across the border to Mexico because the government is ignoring their concerns or is breaking the law because the government ignores you only reserved for your pet causes?
Democracy operates at multiple levels. You’ll notice that armed right wingers kidnapping people suspected of being undocumented is a problem confined to the government itself. There’s a reason for that. No-one really cares about immigrants, outside of performative politics, enough to take that personal risk. If they did, we’d find out what society’s reaction is. People are unlikely to look on that as favorably as they do on petty vandalism against an undemocratic rollout of a surveillance network.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Municipal sign installation is a decent floor approximation. Can run into the thousands if it's electrified (think: blinking lights on a warning sign). Depends on availability of electricity, engineering, weather at that time, etc. In some places, a stop sign can be close to $2,000 based on some quick googling, and that has no power supply to worry about.
It's always more expensive than residential bc it's publicly reachable by a million morons, and is meant to stand much longer than residential work.
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.
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 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 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 an impartial judge 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 own analysis to likely having committed the alleged offense in my own probabilistic reasoning framework. But the evidence and arguments presented at the case were so lacking that we deliberated for all of five minutes because all of us jurors started off in unanimous agreement.
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…
> 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.
> I’m curious if your stance would be the same if someone was on trial for murdering a child
I don't know, and I hope to never have to find out - whether after or during a trial! There are obviously limits to how logical/rational/detached any given person can be.
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.
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?
An actual nullification cannot be appealed, amd the accused gets to go scot-free forever in that jurisdiction, even to prosecutor's chagrin. In this case, the prosecutors could gather another grand jury and try again, at any time, without restriction, if they so choose.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
You're right. I didn't think that through. However, I'm skeptical that 32GB RAM is necessary for license plate recognition. Claude seems to back this up, quoting 2-4gb depending on resolution and framerate, but I'm open to correction there.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't think prosecutors generally are very motivated to pursue tiny misdemeanor fines unless they have slam dunk evidence.
As far as I can tell, the most likely charges for the garbage bag strategy where I'm located would be a maximum $500 fine, which is too low for most people to even bother with a lawyer.
If they wanted any jail time, they would have to try to frame it as obstruction of justice, which is a stretch and would be difficult to get to stick with a jury.
It's to be a persistent thorn in their side and make the cameras more trouble than they're worth.
There are a lot more of us than them. If 1% of Americans cover up 1 camera every six months and it takes 24 hours to notice and uncover the camera, then there would be approximately 0 functioning cameras at any given time.
Think of it like the sit-ins or bus boycotts during the Civil Rights movement. That wasn't causing real damage, it was just a lot of people being very persistent about causing minor inconveniences. That wasn't the only tactic they used, but it was an important part of the movement's success.
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.
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.
Flock doesn't just sell ALPRs. They bundle it with CCTV, audio sensors, sells to private parties, analyze visual data. That's why they're everywhere. Pointed at pools, walking paths, indoors. In countries where ALPRs are widespread, they're exclusively on roads, because.. they read license plates.
well hopefully this snowballs and most public facing cameras other than private ones by people and businesses go extinct (state run cameras). We don't need to be recording every citizen's movement "just in case" . Society got along for thousands of years without it, and the potential for ever increasing tendency toward authoritarian regimes points to such surveillance as a terrible mistake in any society striving for a democracy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
I get what you mean, but using a word with a very specific meaning in a legal context to mean something else that's similar and likewise in a legal context, but with a more vague definition, will just create confusion. This kind of confusion in a legal context can cause major problems for people when they're trying to understand the law as it applies to their case.
I don't think calling this nullification even adds any "spirit" meaning that isn't already present in "the grand jury declined to indict".
These two things can be similar, but the details matter here.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
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!
Sometimes the only way is civil disobedience to get the point across to paid off politicians and ones that overly friendly to sacrificing our rights to may the cops happy.
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.
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.
DA's are elected - if it's in the People's interest to have a prosecution, they rely on the elected DA to do that. A special prosecutor, not being elected, cannot be assumed to carry the People's interests at heart. If the DA is not doing the job to your liking, it's because the majority of your voting peers have different priorities than you. Welcome to democracy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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%).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 7.5 ms ] threadAnd 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.
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 leafs 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...
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...>
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."
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>
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 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...
You're right that Flock explicitly -- and repeatedly -- states that agencies "own" the data. They make those statements not just in their contract but also in their marketing materials, in interviews with city councilors, and to the press.
But that could also be seen as a fig leaf for their actual control over the data, and as a disclaimer of liability. They've wanted to have it both ways: they get to own every endpoint that the data flows through, and at no time does the supposed customer have real control over the collected data, and yet they aren't responsible for the content or consequences of collecting, transporting, and storing that data.
Customers do not even control whether the devices are powered on or off. Two cities here had to ask Flock to disable the devices while the cities reconsidered their contract, and in both cases some devices got reactivated without the cities' permission. We aren't the only ones.
Flock has also been incredibly dishonest about their object detection. They repeatedly made statements that it was "just the rear corner of vehicles" or "just a license plate", but when we (legally) acquired some of their devices for analysis, we found hardcoded tags for multiple other objects, including people and bicycles. Flock's "FreeForm" product marketing further supports that they are collecting images of people, and internal training materials from our local police department also supports the belief that Flock is uploading far more than just images of vehicles and license plates.
So, my question would be: if you don't control the devices, and you don't own the network, and you don't know what's in the data, then... do you actually own that data? In what substantive way is this situation different from DRM-encumbered media with a revocable license? I mean, sure, you paid for that game or that movie, but if someone else can decide at any time to change your access to it, do you own it?
You also made a few other comments rebutting arguments about commercial use of the data. Again, you're technically correct: to date, there are no known cases of Flock directly selling access to ALPR data to a third party in direct exchange for money. But, Flock is a subscription service and cities don't own any of the hardware or the software involved. Flock is directly collecting ALPR data in each city and then selling it back to the city.
Even setting that aside, their valuation in 2025 strongly suggested a connection between the data they were collecting and the amount of capital investors were willing to provide. $7.5 billion valuation against $300 million ARR, combined with ALPRs mostly cobbled together from open source or off-the-shelf software and cheap hardware and installed by a nationwide fleet of contractors: it's really hard to look at all the numbers and not conclude that the most valuable asset Flock had was the data they were collecting. If Flock did get $275 million of additional funding largely on the value of the data they had access to, is that really substantially different from commercial sale of the data?
The Los Angeles Police Department annual budget is over $2 billion. A couple million a year to flock is a drop in the bucket.
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/
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.
Answer this: If sacrificing privacy for life is a fair trade... Is money worth more than life? I would assume if life is so highly valued, you'd support the reallocation of resources to support it, right?
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.
All of them.
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
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
It's always more expensive than residential bc it's publicly reachable by a million morons, and is meant to stand much longer than residential work.
What do any of these words have to do with a person disassembling a camera in a surveillance dragnet?
From TFA: "A Clermont County grand jury, however, opted not to indict..."
I remain skeptical.
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 underline our right to privacy at every step and turn, just as the others have.
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 own analysis to likely having committed the alleged offense in my own probabilistic reasoning framework. But the evidence and arguments presented at the case were so lacking that we deliberated for all of five minutes because all of us jurors started off in unanimous agreement.
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 don't know, and I hope to never have to find out - whether after or during a trial! There are obviously limits to how logical/rational/detached any given person can be.
Because words mean things, and precision matters.
An actual nullification cannot be appealed, amd the accused gets to go scot-free forever in that jurisdiction, even to prosecutor's chagrin. In this case, the prosecutors 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 hear Flock cameras have even more valuable materials inside them.
Shh, no need to ruin the fun.
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.
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.
Or we could just build more prisons I suppose.
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.
Lawyer costs the same per hour either way.
Sounds like someone who's never had to hire a lawyer before. They vary in cost and quality, though there's not a 1:1 correlation between the two.
As far as I can tell, the most likely charges for the garbage bag strategy where I'm located would be a maximum $500 fine, which is too low for most people to even bother with a lawyer.
If they wanted any jail time, they would have to try to frame it as obstruction of justice, which is a stretch and would be difficult to get to stick with a jury.
It's to be a persistent thorn in their side and make the cameras more trouble than they're worth.
There are a lot more of us than them. If 1% of Americans cover up 1 camera every six months and it takes 24 hours to notice and uncover the camera, then there would be approximately 0 functioning cameras at any given time.
Think of it like the sit-ins or bus boycotts during the Civil Rights movement. That wasn't causing real damage, it was just a lot of people being very persistent about causing minor inconveniences. That wasn't the only tactic they used, but it was an important part of the movement's success.
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).
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.
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.
It's good to see individuals on a jury acting according to rational self-interest.
If you look at the success rate of prosecutors getting grand juries to indict, it's certainly not "just as likely".
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 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.
I don't think calling this nullification even adds any "spirit" meaning that isn't already present in "the grand jury declined to indict".
These two things can be similar, but the details matter here.
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.
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).
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.
If they don't like the King's governors they should petition the court to appoint one that more aligns with their taxation desires.
Clearly not the case here
Get a grip man.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/article/...
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.
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.
"Using Metadata to find Paul Revere": https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...
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.
The state can benefit when it has particular kinds of corruption, but not all kinds of corruption.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/07/trump-grand-juries-...
My tax $ went into buying and setting up those cameras to monitor bad seeds in my neighborhood.
Did the number of bad things increase? No. you just see more because we have more eyes and channels to share those news.
Flock cam is what let people monitor what is going on and provide us metrics and evidences.
If you are an engineer you should know better on HN.
There is only so much man-power that police or the govt can do.
> A Clermont County grand jury, however, opted not to indict Morelock, and the charges were dismissed.
Is he getting the bond back?
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.
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.
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