Anger over ICE connections and privacy violations is fueling the sabotage. PLUS: 10,000 drivers call on Uber to repay stolen wages, a man is arrested at a public hearing about a data center and more.
Silicon Valley is tightening its ties with Trumpworld, the surveillance state is rapidly expanding, and big tech’s AI data center buildout is booming. Civilians are pushing back.
In today’s edition of Blood in the Machine:
Across the nation, people are dismantling and destroying Flock cameras that conduct warrantless vehicle surveillance, and whose data is shared with ICE.
An Oklahoma man airing his concerns about a local data center project at a public hearing is arrested after he exceeded his allotted time by a couple seconds.
Uber and Lyft drivers deliver a petition signed by 10,000 gig workers demanding that stolen wages be returned to them.
PLUS: A climate researcher has a new report that unravels the ‘AI will solve climate change’ mythos, Tesla’s Robotaxis are crashing 4 times as often as humans, and AI-generated public comments helped kill a vote on air quality.
A brief note that this reporting, research, and writing takes a lot of time, resources, and energy. I can only do it thanks to the paid subscribers who chip in a few bucks each month; if you’re able, and you find value in this work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription so I can continue on. Many thanks, hammers up, and onwards.
Last week, in La Mesa, a small city just east of San Diego, California, observers happened upon a pair of destroyed Flock cameras. One had been smashed and left on the median, the other had key parts removed. The destruction was obviously intentional, and appears perhaps even staged to leave a message: It came just weeks after the city decided, in the face of public protest, to continue its contracts with the surveillance company.
Flock cameras are typically mounted on 8 to 12 foot poles and powered by a solar panel. The smashed remains of all of the above in La Mesa are the latest examples of a widening anti-Flock backlash. In recent months, people have been smashing and dismantling the surveillance devices, in incidents reported in at least five states, from coast to coast.
Bill Paul, who runs the local news outlet San Diego Slackers, and who first reported on the smashed Flock equipment, tells me that the sabotage comes just a month or two after San Diego held a raucous city council meeting over whether to keep operating the Flock cameras. A clear majority of public attendees present were in favor of shutting them down.
There was “a huge turnout against them,” he tells me, “but the council approved continuation of the contract.”
The tenor of the meeting reflects a growing anger and concern over the surveillance technology that’s gone nationwide: Flock, which is based in Atlanta and is currently valued at $7.5 billion, operates automatic license plate readers (ALPR) that have now been installed in some 6,000 US communities. They gather not just license plate images, but other identifying data used to ‘fingerprint’ vehicles, their owners, and their movements. This data can be collected, stored, and accessed without a warrant, making it a popular workaround for law enforcement. Perhaps most controversially, Flock’s vehicle data is routinely accessed by ICE.
If you’ve heard Flock’s name come up recently, it’s likely as a result of their now-canceled partnership with Ring, made instantly famous by a particularly dystopian Super Bowl ad that promised to turn regular neighborhoods into a surveillance dragnet.
Meanwhile, abuses have been prevalent. A Georgia police chief was arrested and charged with using Flock data to stalk and harass private citizens. Flock data has been used to track citizens who cross state lines for abortions when the procedure is illegal in their state. And municipalities have found that federal agencies have accessed local flock data without their knowledge or consent. Critics claim that this warrantless data collection is Orwellian and unconstitutional; a violation of the 4th amendment. As a result, civilians from Oregon to Virginia to California and beyond are pushing their governments to abandon Flock contracts. In some cases, they’re succeeding. Cities like Santa Cruz, CA, and Eugene, OR, have cancelled their contracts with Flock.
In Oregon’s case, the public outcry was accompanied by a campaign of destruction against the surveillance devices: Last year, at least six Flock license plate readers mounted on poles located in Eugene and Springfield were cut down and destroyed, according to the Lookout Eugene-Springfield.
A note reading “Hahaha get wrecked ya surveilling fucks” was attached to one of the destroyed poles, and somewhat incredibly, broadcast on the local news.
In Greenview, Illinois, a Flock camera pole was severed at the base and the device destroyed. In Lisbon, Connecticut, police are investigating another smashed Flock camera.
In Virginia, last December, a man was arrested for dismantling and destroying 13 Flock cameras throughout the state over the course of the year. He’s apparently already admitted to doing so, according to local news:
Jefferey S. Sovern, 41, was arrested in October after detectives say he “intentionally destroyed” 13 Flock Safety cameras between April and October of this year. He was charged with 13 counts of destruction of property, six counts of petit larceny and six counts of possession of burglary tools.
Sovern admitted to the crimes, according to a criminal complaint filed in Suffolk General District Court, going as far as to say he used vice grips to help him disassemble the tow-piece polls. He also admitted to keeping some of the wiring, batteries and solar panels taken from the cameras. Some of the items were recovered by police after they searched the property.
After his arrest, Sovern created a GoFundMe to help cover his legal costs, in which he sheds a little light on his intentions:
My name is Jeff and I appreciate my privacy. I appreciate everyone's right to privacy, enshrined in the fourth amendment. With the local news outlets finding my legal issues and creating a story that is starting to grow, there has been community support for me that I humbly welcome.
(I reached out to Sovern, who is out on bail, for comment, and will update or follow up if I hear back.)
Sovern points his GoFundMe contributors to DeFlock, a website aimed at tracking and countering the rise of Flock cameras in US communities. It counts 46 cities that have officially rejected Flock and other ALPRs since its campaign began.
In fact, it’s hard to think of a tech product or project this side of generative AI that is more roundly opposed and reviled, on a bipartisan level, than Flock, and resistance takes many forms and stripes. Here’s the YouTuber Benn Jordan, showing his viewers how to Flock-proof their license plates and render their vehicles illegible to the company’s data ingestion systems:
In response to such Flock counter-tactics, Florida passed a law last year making it illegal to cover or alter your license plate.
In his GoFundMe, Sovern also mentioned the support for him he’d seen on forums online, so I went over to Reddit to get a sense for how his actions were being received online. Here was the page that shared news of his arrest for destroying the Flock cameras:
There was, in other words, nearly universal support for Sovern’s Flock dismantling campaign. Bear in mind that this is r/Norfolk, and while it’s still reddit users we’re talking about, it’s not like this is r/anarchism here:
The San Diego reddit threads carrying news of the destroyed Flock equipment told a similar story:
There were plenty of outright endorsements of the sabotage:
Off the message boards and in real civic life, Bill Paul, the reporter with the San Diego Slacker, says anger is boiling over, too. He points again to that heated December 2025 city council meeting, in which public outrage was left unaddressed. The city, perhaps aware of the stigma Flock now carries, apparently tried to highlight that their focus was on the “smart streetlights” made by another company, while downplaying the fact that those streetlights run on Flock software.
“San Diego gets to hide behind a slight facade in that their contract is with Ubicquia,” the smart streetlight manufacturer, Paul says, “but the software layer is Flock. You can easily see Flock hardware on retail properties, looking at the same citizens, with zero oversight, and SDPD can claim they have clean hands.”
Weeks later, pieces of smashed Flock cameras littered the ground.
Across the country, in other words, municipal governments are overriding public will to make deals with a profiteering tech company to surveil their citizens and to collaborate with federal agencies like ICE. It might be taken as a sign of the times that in states and cities across the US, thousands of miles apart, those opposed to the technology are refusing to countenance what they view as violations of privacy and civil liberty, and are instead taking up vice grips and metal cutters. And in many cases, they’re getting hailed by their peers as heroes.
If you’ve heard stories of smashed Flock cameras or dismantled surveillance equipment in your neighborhood, please share—drop a link in the comments, or contact me on Signal or at briancmerchant@proton.me.
Thanks to Lilly Irani for the tip on the smashed Flock cams in San Diego.
In case you missed it, I shared my five takeaways on the most recent round of ultraheated AI discourse here:
The exchange was filmed and recorded on YouTube:
Matthew Gault at 404 Media reports the details:
Police in Claremore, Oklahoma arrested a local man after he went slightly over his time giving public remarks during a city council meeting opposing a proposed data center. Darren Blanchard showed up at a Claremore City Council meeting on Tuesday to talk about public records and the data center. When he went over his allotted 3 minutes by a few seconds, the city had him arrested and charged with trespassing.
The subject of the city council meeting was Project Mustang, a proposed data center that would be located within a local industrial park. In a mirror of fights playing out across the United States, developer Beale Infrastructure is attempting to build a large data center in a small town and the residents are concerned about water rights, spiking electricity bills, and noise.
The public hearing was a chance for the city council to address some of these concerns and all residents were given a strict three minute time limit. The entire event was livestreamed and archive of it is on YouTube. Blanchard was warned, barely, to “respect the process” by one of the council members but was clearly finishing reading from papers he had brought to read from, was not belligerent, and went over time by just a few seconds. Anyone who has ever attended or watched a city council meeting anywhere will know that people go over their time at essentially any meeting that includes public comment.
Blanchard arrived with documents in hand and questions about public records requests he’d made. During his remarks, people clapped and cheered and he asked that this not be counted against his three minutes. “There are major concerns about the public process in Claremore,” Blanchard said, referencing compliance documents and irregularities he’d uncovered in public records.
Blanchard was then arrested as the crowd jeered in disbelief. Also disconcerting was the way the local news framed the event, with a local anchor defending authorities by claiming he was “warned multiple times.” Seems like a pretty surefire way to make people hate data centers and the governments protecting them even more!
On Wednesday, I headed to Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles, where dozens of gig workers and organizers with Rideshare Drivers United had assembled to deliver a petition to the California Labor Commission signed by thousands of workers, calling on the body to deliver a settlement on their behalf. Organizers made short speeches on the steps of the square while local radio and TV stations captured the moment. “
“They’re robbing us!” A speaker yelled. “Wage theft!” the crowd replied.
The Labor Commission is suing the gig companies on drivers’ behalf, alleging that Uber and Lyft stole billions of dollars worth of wages from drivers before Prop 22 was enacted in 2020. The commission is believed to be in negotiations with the gig companies right now that will determine a settlement.
I spoke with one driver, Karen, who had traveled from San Diego to join the demonstration, and asked her why she came. “It’s important we build driver power” she said. “Without driver power, we won’t get what we need, and we just want fairness.” She said she was hoping to claim at least $20,000 in stolen wages.
“We’re fighting for wages that were stolen for us from us and continue to be stolen from us every single day by these app companies from hell,” RDU organizer Nicole Moore told me. “So we’re marching in downtown L.A. to deliver 10,000 signatures of drivers demanding that the state fight hard for us, and don’t let these companies rip us off.”
According to Tesla’s own numbers, its new RoboTaxis in Austin are crashing at a rate 4 times higher than human drivers. The EV trade publication Electrek reports:
With 14 crashes now on the books, Tesla’s “Robotaxi” crash rate in Austin continues to deteriorate. Extrapolating from Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings mileage data, which showed roughly 700,000 cumulative paid miles through November, the fleet likely reached around 800,000 miles by mid-January 2026. That works out to one crash every 57,000 miles.
The irony is that Tesla’s own numbers condemn it. Tesla’s Vehicle Safety Report claims the average American driver experiences a minor collision every 229,000 miles and a major collision every 699,000 miles. By Tesla’s own benchmark, its “Robotaxi” fleet is crashing nearly 4 times more often than what the company says is normal for a regular human driver in a minor collision, and virtually every single one of these miles was driven with a trained safety monitor in the vehicle who could intervene at any moment, which means they likely prevented more crashes that Tesla’s system wouldn’t have avoided.
Using NHTSA’s broader police-reported crash average of roughly one per 500,000 miles, the picture is even worse, Tesla’s fleet is crashing at approximately 8 times the human rate.
-“The Left Doesn’t Hate Technology, We Hate Being Exploited,” by Gita Jackson at Aftermath.
“Meta drops $65 million into super PACs to boost tech-friendly state candidates,” by Christine Mui in Politico.
-A great new report from climate researcher Ketan Joshi, “The AI Climate Hoax: Behind the Curtain of How Big Tech Greenwashes Impacts,” has been making headlines and is well worth a read. Perhaps we’ll dig deeper into it in a future issue.
-The LA Times reports that the Southern California air board rejected new pollution rules after an AI-generated flood of made-up comments. Here’s UCLA’s Evan George on how AI poses a unique threat to the civic process.
-A good profile of Nick Land, “Silicon Valley’s Favorite Doomsaying Philosopher,” by James Duesterberg.
Okay okay, that’s it for this week. Thanks as always for reading. Hammers up.
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Comments
By mullingitover 2026-02-210:4221 reply I'm surprised the flock cameras aren't being disabled in a more subtle fashion.
All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint. Drone goes 'boop' on the camera lens, and the entire system is disabled until an expensive technician drives out with a ladder and cleans the lens at non-trivial expense.
A handful of enterprising activists could blind all the flock cameras in a region in a day or two, and without destroying them, which makes it less of an overtly criminal act.
Obviously not advocating this, just pointing out that flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack from activists.
By idle_zealot 2026-02-211:174 reply The goal here by activists isn't to directly physically disarm every camera. Like with any act of protest, it's at least as much about the optics and influence of public opinion. Visibly destroying the units is more cathartic and spreads the message of displeasure better. Ultimately what needs to change is public perception and policy.
By andrewflnr 2026-02-212:111 reply If it's about sending a message, I think using a drone to defeat mass surveillance is quite evocative.
By themafia 2026-02-212:37 Yes. It will invoke the state to pass even more draconian laws surrounding useful technology.
You want to evoke the people and not the state.
There has been a pattern in the UK of destroying speed cameras for the same reasons - including in some cases throwing an old car tire around the pole and setting it on fire.
Seems to be getting more popular [https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/antiulez-campaigners-v...].
Those are not "speed" cameras, they're to enforce daily payment (or fines) for driving in "Ultra Low Emissions Zone" areas in non-compliant vehicles. The area covers all 32 London Boroughs, around 1,500 km² (580 square miles), - affecting approximately 9 Million people.
By tanjtanjtanj 2026-02-2218:191 reply Destroying speed cameras, especially the tire method, in the UK far predates ULEZ.
By mullingitover 2026-02-211:30 Sure, but por que no los dos.
One or two cameras getting bashed is basically a fart in the wind for flock, and I'd argue that it doesn't actually move the needle in any direction as far as public opinion goes. Those who dislike them don't need further convincing, those who support them are not going to have their opinion changed by property destruction (it might make them support surveillance more, in fact).
But hey, it's provocative I guess.
On the other hand flock losing their entire fleet is an existential problem for them, and for all the customers they're charging for the use of that fleet. Their BoD will want answers about why the officers of the company are harming shareholders with the way they're operating the business. Cities that have contracts with them may have grounds to terminate them, etc etc.
By reactordev 2026-02-213:231 reply That poor printer in Office Space…
By jeffrallen 2026-02-2121:33 I dream of the day they ALL get their due.
Why would I fly an expensive drone close to a camera, fumble about for a minute trying to get it painted like a renaissance artist, when I can get a paintball gun for much less?
Or use a powerful enough laser pointer. Bonus points if you use infrared since other humans can't see the beam and won't know what you're up to.
Though you either need a laser powerful enough to harm human eyes or lots of patience. Hong Kong protesters innovated a lot of these sort of resistance using lasers
> Bonus points if you use infrared since other humans can't see the beam
But how would you see it? IR goggles?
By Bender 2026-02-2319:56 IR camera but if the beam is powerful enough it could in theory use a few bursts in rapid succession from a roof mount on a generic looking vehicle with the plates covered. Not suggesting anyone try such things but the camera is not guaranteed to catch the location of the busts.
By 0x1ch 2026-02-2319:59 Any cheap camera with the IR filter removed from the lens. Some better than others.
The camera doesn't have a 360 field of vision, besides COVID masks aren't uncommon now.
Where I am (Sydney Australia) we have fixed speed cameras that automatically create speeding fines to drivers going too fast (well, technically the registered owner of the vehicle via ANPR).
They eventually had to equip pretty much every speed camera with a speed camera camera, usually on a much higher pole to make vandalism more difficult.
By alexpotato 2026-02-2112:122 reply Reminds me of the story about Aeroflot (Soviet National airline) and hijackings
- Aeroflot flights get hijacked and flown to West Berlin
- Soviets decided to put Spetsnaz (Soviet special forces) on the planes much like we have Air Marshals today
- Spetsnaz figures "we have guns and are on the plane already" so they start hijacking flights
- So Soviets put TWO Spetsnaz teams on the flight
- Team 1 decides to hijack flight, realize there is a Team 2 who ALSO agrees to hijack the flight
Which Aeroflot flights were hijacked and flown to West Berlin? I've never heard of this. Funny though that Windows Copilot believes this happened and says that:
"On December 12, 1978, two Soviet citizens hijacked an Aeroflot Yak‑40 on a domestic route and forced it to fly to West Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, which was under U.S. control."
But then, when asked about any reference to this event, gives this:
"1. LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 (30 August 1978) A LOT Tupolev Tu‑134 was hijacked by East German citizens seeking asylum and forced to land at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin."
Are you an AI?
By mattmanser 2026-02-2320:242 reply I once called my Dad out about Chinese nationalists setting bombs on ships in the 60s. He reckoned his ship had come to the rescue of one where they'd found a bomb and the command crew had posed with it for a photo and it had gone off, killing or wounding all the crew capable of actually navigating the ship.
No mention on Wikipedia of these terrorist activities, nothing in the history I could find online. He was a bit of a tall tale teller so I called him out on it.
He was quite upset and ended up showing me his ship log book. With the ship name and the rough date, I actually found two news articles that had been scanned by Google scholar conforming that it had really happened.
I bet there's a lot we don't know that happened behind the iron curtain, I wouldn't doubt this just because you can't easily find any references with a quick Google.
If you want the rest of how they saved the ship, they tried to get a junior officer over in a sort of swing. If they'd have succeeded they'd have actually all been entitled to a salvage payment. But it was too rough so in the end they just got the other ship to follow them back to port.
When the pilot came out to dock the ship, he found another bomb.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1734&dat=19661114&id=F...
West Berlin was a part of Germany under US/UK/French occupation, I have not heard anybody referring to it as being "behind the iron curtain" before. What would be the reason for the above countries to completely erase multiple hijackings of Aeroflot planes from history? While still popularizing other hijackings, to the point of making a Hollywood movie about the LOT flight I've mentioned [1]. And why the Soviet Union would have joined the West in this conspiracy, while being open about other hijackings (mostly attempted)?
The story is ridiculous on its face: why fly to West Berlin where you'd need to get another flight to get anywhere? The popular targets of hijackers in the USSR were Turkey, Israel and Sweden. "Spetsnaz" is not some organization, it's just an abbreviation of "special designation" similar to English "spec-op", multiple military and law enforcement organizations have their own specnaz as they had in the USSR. Aeroflot was not one of them though, its flights were protected by the "air militia" - a department of the Ministry of the Interior, which was also in charge of the airports security. And, judging by multiple hijacking attempts, there were rarely armed agents on the plane or they rarely decided to engage, which makes sense, since fights on a flying plane would put lives of all passengers into mortal danger. Putting TWO teams of armed soldiers on each plane is something only an LLM could hallucinate in my humble opinion.
By butlike 2026-02-2322:00 So pandaman is good and mattmanser is part of the same AI slop disinformation campaign as alexpotato. Got it.
By KMcCMedia 2026-02-2617:52 That sounds like a typical kind of Soviet genre of joke; Like the guy leaving the breadline in disgust to go kill Gorbachev, but he comes back when he finds that line is even longer...
By terminalshort 2026-02-214:534 reply This will never be a thing in America. Good luck putting the camera on a pole higher than a redneck can shoot a rifle.
Sounds like a new remit for the NRO. Park a billion dollar satellite over an area to keep an eye out for petty vandalism. Then the sheriffs office can team up with Space Force: papers will be served immediately by LEO MIRV deployment, which may also count as execution depending on visibility and aim on the day.
/s - but it wouldn't surprise me at the rate things are going.
By bob1029 2026-02-2110:03 We've already got this and it's maybe more capable than you'd think.
By mentalgear 2026-02-2110:03 I just have to say: this whole thread is great absurd comedy - I don't think I have laughed at something on HN that much before :).
By monksy 2026-02-217:03 By xarope 2026-02-217:11 will you stop giving these folks ideas on how to spend more tax payers money?
/s (but not really)
By ErroneousBosh 2026-02-2118:30 In the mid-2000s the company I worked for in Glasgow fitting microwave links to buildings (broadband wasn't readily available outside cable TV aerials) had a pile of ODUs that had been shot off roofs.
Mostly from one particularly benighted area, Easterhouse. If you extensively gentrified Easterhouse back then, it would look like Detroit in the 90s. It's improved a little since then.
By etrautmann 2026-02-215:361 reply We already have speed cameras Al over NYC. Often the posted speeds there are 25 leading to some absurd tickets.
By terminalshort 2026-02-2113:58 That's what you get for not having rednecks with rifles
By vkou 2026-02-2110:13 1. Shooting rifles in an urban area sounds like a great way to go to prison.
2. As of 2026, most rednecks seem to be all for the police state. Don't expect them to come save you.
Oof, I really hate this automated enforcement. Might be time to get a paintball gun.
Also here:
"In NSW, paintball is classified as a "prohibited firearm" under the Firearms Act 1996. However, it can still be legally played under strict licensing conditions. Unlike in some states where it is more loosely regulated, players and operators in NSW must comply with a range of legal requirements to ensure safety and legality."
These rules have changed, I think back before COVID they reclassified them as sporting equipment instead of firearms, but still brought in a whole bunch of licensing rules and requirements similar to gun ownership.
You can't just walk into KMart and walk out with a paintball gun here. |Or paintball markers.
By sdkfjhdsjk 2026-02-2116:521 reply I remember reading about that back in the 90s as a kid here in the USA, in Action Pursuit Games magazine. They said semi-automatic paintball guns were illegal in Australia. I was like what kind of hellhole dystopia is that? Meanwhile at the local paintball field I remember this hillbilly had a fully automatic Angel when they came out. (The first electronic paintball gun.) He walked over to the treeline and emptied a hopper full of Brass Eagle paintballs into a tree in like 5 seconds. They all hit the tree at the exact same spot and vaporized into pink mist. Freedom, baby.
> I was like what kind of hellhole dystopia is that?
Cynical answer: Not the kind of hellhole dystopia that has schoolkids shooting up schools twice a week.
By FrankBooth 2026-02-2321:39 How’s the surf at Bondi?
By sdkfjhdsjk 2026-02-224:40 So your thesis is that this hillbilly was likely to take his fully automatic paintball gun and shoot up a school with it?
Or that his possession and use of this gun might somehow serve as a sort of "gateway drug" to Harder Weapons that he would then use to the same end?
Neither one appears to have actually happened. In fact, I've never known a single person who has been involved in a school shooting, or heard of one happening here at all, ever. It just doesn't happen, regardless of whatever is supposedly happening on the glowing box in the corner of everyone's living room that's always portraying doom and danger everywhere.
Indeed, I don't recall a single one of my paintball playing friends (who all nonchalantly used illegal in Australia and super dangerous semi-automatic paintball guns against each other) who later went on to be involved in any kind of gun related incident.
I'm sure you've got some kind of excellent response prepared however, so we will now hear the details of how wrong I am and how Paintball Guns Are In Fact Really Dangerous Because Reasons And the Australian Government Nannies Are Right.
By seanmcdirmid 2026-02-212:411 reply And this is the reason I can’t wait for self driving cars that just follow the speed limit.
By KMcCMedia 2026-02-2617:54 They are said to drive like your Grandma, if she was a very good driver....
By staringforward 2026-02-213:231 reply > Might be time to get a paintball gun
Just wait until you find out that paintball guns are considered firearms are require licensing in the aforementioned region.
By zoklet-enjoyer 2026-02-213:592 reply I played paintball in Australia and I just had to sign a normal waiver about them not being responsible for injuries
Ownership of paintball guns is regulated under the state-level firearms act in most (all?) states and territories.
You can use them under the direct supervision of the licensed owner, but it's still quite restrictive. If you were to take one and shoot at cameras on the street it would vandalism plus firearms offences, most of which start at inversion of innocence, massive fines and move pretty quickly into prison time.
By zoklet-enjoyer 2026-02-2214:31 That's crazy
By bigfatkitten 2026-02-219:58 If you actually purchased one yourself in Queensland, you would need a Cat A firearms license, genuine reason, permit to acquire, safe storage etc as for a firearm.
NSW used to be similar, but a few years ago the state government had a rare moment of common sense and did away with most of that pointless bullshit.
By lotsofpulp 2026-02-212:362 reply What else could make life safer at a realistic cost for people outside of vehicles?
By redwall_hp 2026-02-213:201 reply Urban planning that separates pedestrians and vehicles.
Roads that are narrow in places where a lower speed is desirable.
Heavy taxation on vehicles with more mass and lower visibility.
Actual licensing standards other than driving down a couple of city streets and parking.
More crossings, with lights or bridges, instead of long four-lane arterial roads with nowhere to safely cross.
By Symbiote 2026-02-219:49 We have most of that in <pick some European city/country>, and the statistics show it makes a big difference compared to the USA, but drivers still exceed the speed limit, run through red lights etc and cause injuries and death to pedestrians and cyclists.
Removing automatic enforcement of speed limits would not improve the situation.
Where I live, the speed limit keeps getting reduced so the city can make money off of fines, especially because nobody follows speed limits that are ridiculously low for wide, straight roads where following the limit would make traffic ground to a halt.
By c22 2026-02-219:17 This happened in my hometown. Arterial roads that were 40mph when I was a kid are posted at 25 today and they just passed legislation to make the automated speed cameras near school zones active 24/7.
By appplication 2026-02-214:301 reply Tbh an overpowered laser off alibaba probably works a lot better at longer range
By altairprime 2026-02-217:041 reply A paintball gun might not invoke the federal government to hunt you down; an over-powered laser absolutely will. The FAA has a very low tolerance for that sort of thing. Do not ever, ever, ever use lasers in open air that are capable of damaging the human retina without the appropriate licenses. The last thing cities need right now is another federal agency going on a witchhunt. Firing eye-damaging lasers into the air would just serve them that excuse on a silvered platter.
By NoMoreNicksLeft 2026-02-218:041 reply The CCDs in cameras can be damaged with low-power lasers, or so I thought. No need for anything crazy. And the FAA won't become involved unless you're pointing them skyward. Pointing them across the street, or anywhere not visible from the air isn't going to sic federal agencies on you.
By drysart 2026-02-2110:32 > And the FAA won't become involved unless you're pointing them skyward.
The point here is that 'skyward' is where the laser's beam goes when you're trying to aim it at a camera up on a pole. It's practically impossible to point a non-fixed position laser at something a non-trivial distance higher than you without spilling a large amount of laser beam into whatever happens to be behind your intended target; which is very often the sky.
By dsl 2026-02-216:13 When Flock helps you lay out camera placements they make sure camera pairs are facing each other.
By nozzlegear 2026-02-213:592 reply If you want to hit the lens with the paintball gun, wouldn't you need to be in its field of vision?
By stavros 2026-02-214:01 It depends if its field of vision is 180° or 10°.
By maplethorpe 2026-02-216:42 The wind could curve the ball around slightly.
Drones with a paintball gun attached?
Realistically that’s going to attract a lot of negative attention.
By BuyMyBitcoins 2026-02-212:402 reply The use of a drone also ups the ante from a prosecutor’s perspective. Charging a vandal caught with a paintbrush and a ladder is nothing out of the ordinary. A routine misdemeanor.
Someone who has the wherewithal to jerry rig a paintball gun to a drone is someone scary. Plus, any officer who witnesses such a drone is almost certainly going to misidentify the paintball gun as an actual gun. I can imagine the operator would be charged with several felonies.
By AngryData 2026-02-216:51 Yeah like we gotta be serious here, US cops and courts are out to screw people over because that is how they increase their budget, pay, and bonuses. If they think they can twist some law into giving you a felony, they will, regardless of the spirit of the law.
Attaching any kind of potential weapon on a drone has no real precedent so they can dig through 19th century law and combine it with some 21st century law and punishment and screw your life over with bull crap unless you got $100K+ sitting around to throw on a good lawyer. The risk of being caught may be a bit lower, but the potential punishment if caught could be absolutely enormous.
Plus now you're technically arming an aircraft with something, and that might piss off the feds a little bit.
By rationalist 2026-02-2115:28 Also, you are dropping something from the aircraft which is a different violation (even if it is moving at 100m/s horizontally while falling at 9.8m/s²).
By cucumber3732842 2026-02-2112:431 reply Just use the drone to spray something on the camera that will etch the glass or destroy the plastic beyond repair.
By ErroneousBosh 2026-02-2118:36 About ten years ago a company started fitting CCTV cameras to the illuminated advertising hoardings in bus stops, initially to discourage vandalism and then using frankly fucking creepy targetted advertising that used fairly crude machine vision stuff to guess the demographic of people at the stop.
The advertiser's operators could actually look through the camera and shout through hidden speakers at people vandalising their adverts, usually by writing on the specially-coated toughened vandal-resistant glass that ink or paint didn't stick to.
The local wee wannabe gangsters took to filling bingo markers with the stuff they use to etch frosted glass, and tagging the displays with that.
I don’t think they make commercial paintballs with hard to remove enamel or tempura paints.
By KMcCMedia 2026-02-2617:55 Sounds like a business opportunity... Permanent marking paintballs...
Filling paintballs is very hard and specialized and would probably be limiting to 99 out of 100 people if not more.
Gluing two fragile gelatin halves (designed to dissolve and break easily) once you’ve filled them perfectly full of paint and then making sure they’re almost perfectly round takes specialized equipment.
By butlike 2026-02-2322:03 Syringe out the old paint, syringe in the new paint.
By DonHopkins 2026-02-2119:361 reply Mitch Altman should make a "Flock-B-Gone".
By cmxch 2026-02-2321:00 Palantir makes a nice Vandal-B-Gone product too. Works a treat for linking vandals to Flock camera crime incidents.
Why get an expensive paintball gun when you can get a mask and a can of paint and a mask for much less?
By estimator7292 2026-02-2115:491 reply Humans are just evolved monkeys. Climb the thing. Go ape.
By doubled112 2026-02-2117:48 Sorry to let you down but my arms have forgotten their ape lineage.
Last I heard, putting a glock on a quadcopter was creating an "illegal weapon system" or similar fancy sounding BS but I wonder what the accusation would be for a paintball gun on a drone?
Must less recoil too.
By Arainach 2026-02-212:03 I don't think there's a drone in this proposal.
On the list of "laws you don't want to screw with", National Firearms Act violations are high on my list. Regardless of whether something is or isn't a violation, I'm certainly not interested in paying expensive lawyers to argue they're not.
You want to fly a multi-hundred dollar device loaded with radios that constantly broadcasts out a unique ID and possibly your FAA ID and use it for crime?
Or even better yet, get arrested halfway to trying to dip your drone into paint on a sidewalk?
Just throw a rock at the stupid thing.
In 1950s UK every country kid had a catapult in their pocket. Maybe that is what we should do. Give the kids catapults and tell them not to use them on Flock cameras. That is usually effective at making kids so stuff
By beAbU 2026-02-2210:15 I was thinking the same thing, much cheaper than a paintball gun, and less conspicuous.
A well made catapult in the right hands with a good aim is deadly.
By mock-possum 2026-02-2119:381 reply You mean a slingshot?
(Or a trebuchet?)
By logankeenan 2026-02-212:343 reply Do all drones do this now? Is this required by law for manufacturers to implement?
By eichin 2026-02-214:07 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_ID in the US (FAA) at least.
By pixelmelt 2026-02-2210:42 Had a friend who worked on designing systems to pick these signals up around airports
By tastyfreeze 2026-02-214:461 reply Drones over 250 grams or for any drone operated commercially under part 107 registration is required. But, its easy to just build your own or desolder the id chip if you dont want it.
By 05 2026-02-2115:02 It’s easy to build your own, but it’s impossible to build one to be as stable as a DJI one, or as cheaply. E.g. with an FPV drone hitting the lens would be much harder (but you could use spray instead of a stick to make it easier). Removing remote id ‘chip’ is plain impossible since it’s implemented by the same radio that does video link.
By kybernetyk 2026-02-217:32 >All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint.
This must be the most hi-tech solution to a low tech problem I've seen this week ;)
By robotnikman 2026-02-211:27 Somewhat related, I'm pretty sure there was a guy in China who did exactly this as protest against their surveillance. Seems effective.
By tamimio 2026-02-218:18 I wouldn’t suggest doing that, it will result in more regulation restricting drones. I joined before few workshops that included the government too, and there were discussions about requiring a whole license every time you modify the drone, not limited to the airframe, but the flight purpose and payload. So you can imagine in the future, modding or repurposing your drone could be a “federal crime” if you don’t go and re-license the drone every time you change the payload.
By soulofmischief 2026-02-212:23 > A handful of enterprising activists could blind all the flock cameras in a region in a day or two, and without destroying them, which makes it less of an overtly criminal act
No, that would likely end in a RICO or terrorism case if it continued. Just because the cameras aren't destroyed doesn't mean CorpGov won't want to teach a lesson.
Why wouldn’t you advocate it? A much easier way of doing this is using paintballs with the appropriate paint.
> Why wouldn’t you advocate it?
Because advocating things which are moral/ethical but illegal is often against the TOS :(
We need laws which are explicitly based on moral principles. Barring that, we should at least have laws which treat sufficiently large platforms as utilities and forbid them from performing censorship without due process.
By michaelmrose 2026-02-216:261 reply You think we should give people being moderated on a forum due process? How would we ever run forums if every contentious and necessary moderation action could lead to a 5k-50k legal bill.
By salawat 2026-02-219:58 ...How can we run a government when every contentious and necessary moderation leads to a 5k-50k legal bill?
Oh wait... Maybe that's the problem.
By uoaei 2026-02-215:08 That would be detectable by the FAA and they would send the FBI after you, unless you used a junk toy drone but that would not cover much distance between charges.
In Minecraft it’s well known that lasers of even moderate power can ruin camera sensors. Only in Minecraft though.
By michaelmrose 2026-02-216:201 reply What is the threshold for eye vs sensor damage and am I correct in assuming that duration is a factor. Basically less juice for a longer duration ruins a sensor but humans blink? For science.
By kotaKat 2026-02-2110:46 I picked up an Axis security camera rated for ALPR use (the Q1700 series) and it has a safety warning telling me I shouldn't look at the built in IR LEDs for more than a minute...
By dsl 2026-02-216:24 LIDAR has been screwing up traffic cameras.
By toomuchtodo 2026-02-212:011 reply You can put a garbage bag over them if you don’t want to sawzall the pole and dispose of the hardware.
By jimnotgym 2026-02-2111:16 What you want is for this to become a Tiktok craze.
By petre 2026-02-215:49 Because destroying them sends a different message. People want them gone, not merely disabled. They're not joking or messing around with drones and tempera about it. Using a firearm to wreck the camera lens before tearing the whole thing down would be nice though.
By wolvoleo 2026-02-218:42 Shooting them with a paintball gun might be a lot simpler and has the same effect. Just needs paint that's a bit harder to remove
By Rapzid 2026-02-216:59 The should disable them all in an area and pile them on a platter in a public space. Like a CiCi's takeover.
Silly string is fast, cheap, easy, and fun when it freezes onto the camera in colder environments.
Maybe some spray foam?
By rationalist 2026-02-2115:31 Seems like it would produce a lot of litter on the ground before covering up the lens adequately.
By tiagod 2026-02-211:19 Goring them is about sending a message.
By mzi 2026-02-218:14 > soaked with tempera paint Or even etching liquid, then you need to replace the lens.
By mock-possum 2026-02-2119:39 “All it takes is a tiny drone”
Alright you buy one for me and I’ll consider it
By SoftTalker 2026-02-214:071 reply The point of civil disobedience is to get arrested. That's what calls attention to the injustice of the thing being protested against.
By michaelmrose 2026-02-216:111 reply The point of resistance is commonly to harm the counterparty in a fashion that the perpetrator finds morally acceptable such as to disincentivize them not convince them.
Vietnamese vs US Grunts not cute useless protestors holding signs that threaten to hold different signs longer.
By Starman_Jones 2026-02-225:40 You're both partially right, and that highlights the difference between nonviolent and violent resistance. You are incorrect in saying that a resistance is always trying to disincentivize the counterparty. Even in your example, the NVA didn't overrun their counterparty (the US military); they convinced enough of the US voting public (which is very much a separate entity from the US military) that "Peace with honor" was a viable, preferable option.
By cheonn638 2026-02-211:28 >All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint. Drone goes 'boop' on the camera lens, and the entire system is disabled until an expensive technician drives out with a ladder and cleans the lens at non-trivial expense
Americans don’t care enough
Too busy enjoying S&P500 near 7,000 and US$84,000/year median household income
By JumpCrisscross 2026-02-213:393 reply > All it takes is a tiny drone with a stick attached, and at the end of that stick is a tiny sponge soaked with tempera paint
I (EDIT: hate) Flock Safety cameras. If someone did this in my town, I’d want them arrested.
They’re muddying the moral clarity of the anti-Flock messaging, the ultimate goal in any protest. And if they’re willing to damage that property, I’m not convinced they understand why they shouldn’t damage other property. (More confidently, I’m not convinced others believe they can tell the difference.)
Flock Safety messages on security. Undermining that pitch is helpful. Underwriting it with random acts of performative chaos plays into their appeal.
> flock is very vulnerable to this very simple attack
We live in a free society, i.e. one with significant individual autonomy. We’re all always very vulnerable. That’s the social contract. (The fact that folks actually contemplating violent attacks tend to be idiots helps, too.)
By jbxntuehineoh 2026-02-214:471 reply Oh no! Not property damage! We can't possibly go that far!
By JumpCrisscross 2026-02-215:27 > Not property damage! We can't possibly go that far!
Anyone can go that far. The question is if it’s smart. The answer is it’s not. Acting out one’s need for machismo on a good cause is just selfish.
If I were a Flock PR person, I’d be waiting for someone to pull a stunt like this. (Better: they shoot it.)
By encrypted_bird 2026-02-213:441 reply > I haste Flock Safety cameras.
Was this a typo? If not, what does "haste" mean in this context? (I'm not messing with you; I'm genuinely wondering.)
By JumpCrisscross 2026-02-214:02 It was a typo. Fixed.
Oh please. Its tempera paint. It'll probably wash off in the next rain.
By JumpCrisscross 2026-02-214:031 reply > Its tempera paint. It'll probably wash off in the next rain
If they do it right. If they don’t, it doesn’t. And between the action and the next rain, Flock Safety gets to message about vandalism.
By Hizonner 2026-02-2115:48 You're assuming that that "message" would persuade anybody.
It'd be more likely to make more people do it.
Flock cameras are assisted suicide for dying neighborhoods. They don't prevent crime, they record crime. Cleaning up vacant lots, planting trees, street lighting, trash removal, and traffic calming like adding planters and crosswalks reduce crime.
By drumttocs8 2026-02-221:551 reply You are hitting on the fundamental difference in political views.
Half of this country believes problems are systemic and can be fixed. The other half believes they are a natural consequence of culture, race, and invisible flying creatures that tempt you to do bad things.
> Half of this country believes problems are systemic and can be fixed.
So then why don't they vote for the party that offers systemic solutions? Oh, right, because neither corporate party offers such.
We can't elect systemic solutions when the election and education processes are systemically hijacked by capital interests.
By drumttocs8 2026-02-252:40 100% agree. Interestingly, the only politicians who talk about removing Citizens United or even just strengthening consumer protections are considered "far-left" in this country.
By NoMoreNicksLeft 2026-02-218:262 reply What is a felony anymore when the felony is "submitted bad paperwork"?
I love how we in Africa can finally see open corruption in US. You guys can't be high and mighty anymore. You are one of us now.
By KaiserPro 2026-02-219:06 Fuck me, that is a deeply depressing sick burn.
By dirasieb 2026-02-2110:55 [flagged]
By sdkfjhdsjk 2026-02-2117:431 reply As a Southern American I love it too.
Every single one of my ancestors who were in the war--except one--fought for the Confederacy in the War Between the States. (Or the War of Lincoln's Aggression, according to some. Yankees call it the "Civil War.")
Going further back, my Cherokee forefathers (the Chickamauga) were equally unimpressed by what they saw and experienced of this entity (they viewed it as a malignant tumor) that calls itself the "United" States of America.
I believe my ancestors are envious that I get to see the day when the truth of the Empire of Lies is finally exposed in front of all the world.
By cindyllm 2026-02-2118:01 [dead]
By NoMoreNicksLeft 2026-02-2217:101 reply What was it about? By the time the Democrats were crowing that he was a felon, no one eve remembered. Did Trump see or sign this paperwork? Didn't much matter to anyone. If he saw it or signed it, would he have known what it was? Did he read it first? Probably not.
With a tiny little wall of text, you might even manage to tell me why you think the paperwork was so horrible that he should be in prison for it, I suppose. But no one would read your wall of text, because if it takes you a wall of text to explain it, they figure it's all bullshit anyway. And this is why he won in 2024, and why his successor will win in 2028, and likely in 2032. It's why this November is going to shock you even though there's virtually no room left for surprises. Just remember, it's like 96% certain Hillary's going to beat him if you need to fantasize about a better time...
By asacrowflies 2026-02-2223:161 reply To answer the question you avoided. The "paperwork" was classified materials that make the Hillary's emails outrage of magats look like nothing at all in comparison.
By NoMoreNicksLeft 2026-02-2313:562 reply No. The so-called 34 felonies were about "falsifying business records". So you don't even know, that figures. You should've left room for being able to claim I'm wrong with a snarky non-answer.
By asacrowflies 2026-02-2316:29 You lie thru your teeth. Trump is far more guilty of mishandling classified material than let's say Hillary Clinton .... And in his own words. She belongs in prison. What does trump deserve then?
By asacrowflies 2026-02-2316:30 In June 2023, a federal grand jury indicted Trump on 37 counts, including violating the Espionage Act, false statements, and obstruction, regarding documents kept at Mar-a-Lago.
By monero-xmr 2026-02-213:067 reply The vast majority of crimes are committed by a small percentage of people. The real issue is prosecutors who refuse to incarcerate repeat offenders. But having video evidence is a powerful tool for a motivated prosecutor to actually take criminals off the streets
We spend $80 billion a year on incarceration in the US, and have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Your plan increases both. Do you honestly think that if we spend $160 billion or $240 billion a year and double or triple our incarcerated population that we'd solve crime?
Look at places and countries with low crime. They don't have the most Flock cameras, the most prisoners, or the most powerful surveillance evidence because while those may solve a crime, they don't solve crime as a whole.
I was at work the other day and we were talking about my mouse problem in my basement. My coworker asked how many mouse traps I had.
I said 74.
74?! That's way to many mouse traps. No one would ever need that many mouse traps.
But sir, I haven't told you how many mice I have.
The number of incarcerated individuals is not a relevant statistic if you're also not including the number of criminals there are.
By impendia 2026-02-2320:23 Are they working?
If your 74 traps solve your problem and in a month you have no more mice, then congratulations.
But it sounds like rather than buying more and more mouse traps, you should find and fix the underlying cause.
By sagarm 2026-02-233:47 But why is criminality higher in the US?
By foxglacier 2026-02-217:132 reply [flagged]
Iceland is one of the most peaceful countries in the world (murder rate 0.54), 36 incarcerations per 100k, police don't carry guns, and it's not known for its widespread mass surveillance system.
Portugal is one of the most peaceful in the world (murder rate 0.7), 118 incarcerations per 100k, and doesn't have license plate readers or mass surveillance.
USA murder rate is 6.3, 541 incarcerations per 100k, extremely high recidivism, and an amazing array of surveillance systems.
Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001. Guess they should have bought Flock cameras instead?
By foxglacier 2026-02-2222:52 Sorry, I mean high black population, not low. For low, examples like you gave are easy to find.
> Can you name such a place with low crime, low incarceration rate, low surveillance, and importantly, low black population?
Andorra and Finland both meet your four criteria.
By eudamoniac 2026-02-2117:231 reply He meant to say high black population
Ghana has a murder rate of 1.84 and incarceration rate of 133 per 100k. It didn't get this stable by buying Flock cameras. They have nowhere near the surveillance of the U.S. And they have far fewer murders, far less violent crime, and far fewer incarcerations. If only the prosecutors had more evidence then it could be more like the U.S.!?
Woodmore, Maryland is 82% black. Chance of being a victim of a violent crime is 1 in 904. That's three times safer than the national average. It's an extremely safe community with an overwhelming majority of residents being black.
By foxglacier 2026-02-2223:022 reply OK to Ghana.
Woodmore is a gated community so obviously it has an unrepresentative population.
By odie5533 2026-02-230:19 I would think hard on Ghana. It has no shortage of black people living in poverty. Yet it's extremely safe compared to the US as a whole. You're far less likely to be the victim of a violent crime walking down a street in Ghana surrounded by impoverished black people than you are in many streets in the U.S. Not all of Africa is like that. Many countries are more dangerous than the U.S. But Ghana shows pretty clearly that it's not a racial or even strictly a poverty issue. And that increasing our incarceration rate is quite possibly the opposite of what needs to be done. We need to consider other solutions.
It feels good and easy to say lock the bad people up. But the numbers don't show that as a solution if the real issue you're trying to solve is decrease violent crime.
Also Sierra Leone in Africa with a homicide rate a third that of the USofA.
Both Ghana and Sierra Leone are gated communities, just as the USofA, the UK, and Australia are.
I'd suggest that Woodmore fails to meet you particular bias, hence you rule it out.
Woodmore likely meets your four intended criteria depending upon the level of internal surveillance .. I suspect it's not surveillance that prevents Woodmore occupants from killing each other.
By foxglacier 2026-02-2420:25 Gated communities don't count because residents have to be wealthy enough to buy their way in, so they're populated by a non-violent-criminally-biased sample of the general population. Some countries might count as gated communities if they're heavily populated by 1st generation immigrants who had to be wealthy to get in, otherwise no, they're just full of whatever random people were born there or moved there without any selection pressure against crime.
By eudamoniac 2026-02-2120:46 Respond to him, not me. It's culture related if you ask me, not race.
It's wild that you think the problem with the US is too low of an incarceration rate. 25% of all prisoners in the world are in the US
It can be true (and likely is) that both:
a) much more time and effort should be focused on catching and stopping the most persistent repeat offenders (sometimes by locking them up); and
b) orders of magnitude too many Americans are currently in prison.
By polski-g 2026-02-230:09 If the only crime--at all--in America was rape and murder, America would still have a higher incarceration rate than Germany.
America has a lot of criminals and therefore America needs a lot of incarceration.
From the outside, it looks like the US's society and culture fosters an unusually large criminal class compared to other western countries? If people had access to education, healthcare, jobs that aren't shipped overseas, minimum wage that wasn't laughable, etc, there wouldn't be so much problems? Arguing over severity of punishment while ignoring systemic issues is silly.
By monero-xmr 2026-02-2116:032 reply Non-developed countries do not have functional law enforcement and they are highly corrupt, so any statistics outside of developed countries should be ignored.
For developed countries, none but America have such high levels of immigration nor the racial diversity America has. It is much easier to convince society to promote high-trust empathetic solutions when society is racially homogenous and shares cultural background. It’s impossible to compare America to any European country, although soon it may be possible if immigration continues
By lhopki01 2026-02-2215:31 How are you measuring that? There are plenty of developed countries with a higher immigrant share like Switzerland and Australia. If you're taking about visible minorities then Canada has a higher proportion of the population.
By KMcCMedia 2026-02-2618:05 I don't think you can make a facile pronouncement that European countries and ethnically and culturally homogenous any longer. We can't have a High-trust society in the USA when politicians scapegoat immigrants, in spite of their being more law-abiding on the whole. We can't avoid having a demoralized populace when corporate funded politicians of both parties drag their feet instead of giving citizens of the most productive and wealthy country in the history of the world parity with less wealthy countries, in terms of healthcare, education, housing, retirement and lack of life precariousness, like going into bankruptcy over medical debt...
By phendrenad2 2026-02-2220:36 Or maybe repeat offenders can be put in jail, and other people could be let out. Just a random thought that occurred to me.
Who do you think those people are that are incarcerated in the USA?
I come across this rather frequently among people from sheltered backgrounds like those who graduated from mom and dad taking care of them, all the way through to Mega Corp/university taking care of them, and absolutely cannot fathom why everyone doesn’t just eat cake.
I have a working theory that this effect, whatever one wants to call it, of people being too abstracted from reality, is ultimately the source of collapse of all kinds of organizations of humans… including civilizations.
It is, for example also why America can have so many vile warmongering people, because not only do they not have to lead troops into battle, have their children drafted into the front lines, or pay for the invariable disaster and murder they perpetrated and orchestrated; but in the most grotesque way, they profit from it and immensely; usually also combining it with other types of fraud like “money printing”, i.e., counterfeiting, which they use to plunder the wealth they accumulated through murder, mayhem, and fraud.
By cucumber3732842 2026-02-2112:59 This isn't a new complaint. People have been identifying this group as the source of a lot of bad stuff at least as far back as Marx. The petty or petite bourgeoisie, the professional managerial class, Karens, the name changes with the times. But the constant derision for these groups is rooted in people observing that these groups are disposed to the sort of "driving society off a cliff" behavior you are listing examples of.
The real problem is people who don't want to be victims of crime, not the people doing the crime?
By sdkfjhdsjk 2026-02-2117:18 Now you're getting it. You have exactly identified the problem.
Instead of identifying and addressing the real problems--mass unemployment, homelessness, hopelessness--your dystopic "solution" is simply more and bigger jails, more and better armed cops with surveillance cameras attached, more laws, more weapons, more bondage and discipline, more "you will do what I say or else."
Doesn't work. Never works.
Read the essay "Fate of Empires" by Sir John Glubb to see how things this time are not in fact any different than what came before.
By culi 2026-02-221:57 > Who do you think those people are that are incarcerated in the USA?
Say it then cowardly racist. Stop hiding behind rhetorical devices to justify an institution that has its historical origins in slave patrols
By al_borland 2026-02-2114:553 reply If there is no real penalty for being a career criminal, people will continue to be career criminals.
If someone knows they can rob people and get away with it, why would they do honest work for a living?
What is your solution to prevent crime without incarceration as a possible outcome for people breaking the law… especially those who do it repeatedly? It’s easy to talk down to solutions being used today, but without offering up a realistic alternative, this provides no value.
> If there is no real penalty for being a career criminal, people will continue to be career criminals.
I know this is a wild idea, but what if they had better options than career criminal for a living?
Americans are so invested in the penalties they can’t imagine the incentives approach.
By al_borland 2026-02-2117:22 I asked for a realistic alternative solution and you offered none, just more criticisms for the status quo.
There are already incentives for honest work… a paycheck, benefits, etc. Not to mention being a net positive to society. There is also the option to start a business, which has unlimited upside.
Some people put a lot of effort into breaking the law and making life worse for other people. If that effort was directed in a positive direction, they could be successful, without being a criminal.
This also goes for the white collar criminals that get a pass while running large companies or governments. If those efforts were directed in a better direction, life would also get better for everyone.
I wish there was as much sympathy for the victims as the criminals.
The average drug dealer makes less than minimum wage. People commit crimes because they enjoy doing it, not because they need to. We know this because we have survey data on convicted criminals.
By ceejayoz 2026-02-231:02 > The average drug dealer makes less than minimum wage.
The average drug dealer struggles to keep a minimum wage job.
> We know this because we have survey data on convicted criminals.
We know otherwise because the US isn't the only country in the world, and places that focus on rehabilitation and job training have dramatically lower recidivism rates.
By co_king_5 2026-02-2117:44 [dead]
By monero-xmr 2026-02-2115:553 reply This may be hard to accept - but there are some people who can’t help themselves. They are career criminals and even when presented with honest work they still choose to commit crimes. There exist sociopaths who don’t feel empathy or remorse, and are driven by their own desires and needs regardless of the cost to other people and society. They cannot be rehabilitated. They need to be locked in a cage forever. Society has known about these people since civilization began
Yeah there are people who can't help themselves, but they are a fraction of a fraction of the population. When presented with an honest and decent alternative the vast majority will choose it.
By monero-xmr 2026-02-2116:521 reply https://x.com/arthurmacwaters/status/2015533344914878923?s=4...
Maybe we just incarcerate you permanently once you have 31 arrests
By ceejayoz 2026-02-2118:48 Maybe we shouldn’t incarcerate anyone who hasn’t been convicted.
By ceejayoz 2026-02-2116:48 It’s not hard to accept.
They’re just a lot rarer than you imagine.
By sdkfjhdsjk 2026-02-2117:10 Tell me more about the US government.
By culi 2026-02-2118:12 Those people are getting locked up more in the US than in any other country. Yet the crimes rates are not lower. In fact they're higher
By al_borland 2026-02-2117:361 reply You said incarceration is “neo slavery”. The base assumption is slavery is wrong.
So what should the penalty be?
By al_borland 2026-02-2118:481 reply Obviously slavery is wrong, that’s why I said it.
You continue to dodge my question about the alternative to incarceration, when we continue to have significant numbers of repeat offenders. You know what I’m asking, yet continue to try and distract from it by nitpicking semantics. I don’t think you have an answer.
By scarecrowbob 2026-02-2121:141 reply Hoss, if you cared you'd know about all the many, many efforts at things like "Restorative Justice". Hell, you'd know what the statistics are around recidivism in the US versus other countries and be able to tell us why other places in the world have such different outcomes.
There are plenty of reasons. Mass incarcertaion is a strategy, and it's unique to the US.
If you're really curious, a good entry point is the film "13th".
As a third person observing this conversation, you seem neither curious nor interested in learning why someone might think of US mass incarceration in such strong terms.
The answers are out there, if you actually cared to find them.
By al_borland 2026-02-2121:55 Looking for opinions on the open internet doesn’t tell me what the person I asked actually thinks about the topic. The strong term they used is precisely the reason I asked.
By monero-xmr 2026-02-2112:273 reply Why would you want someone who commits a violent crime to avoid prison?
By nullocator 2026-02-2114:471 reply Most offenders in the U.S. prison system that U.S. citizens tax dollars are paying for are not violent offenders, at least not until they've been in and out of the prison system at least once, then their chances of committing additional crimes sky rocket.
So to answer your sneakily worded question (throwing in the word violent like some kind of gotcha for the first time): I personally don't want more people in prison because I think it is wasteful both in terms of capital and in terms of human experience, there are proven better alternatives like rehabilitation that work for most people and have significantly better outcomes, and finally because the united states prison system is effectively captured by corporate interests which is antithetical to a society that should be against cruel punishments.
By monero-xmr 2026-02-2115:56 Sure but as long as we are on the same page about aggressively pursuing and incarcerating violent criminals
Why is your focus so narrow on ensuring people get punished for crimes rather than ensuring there is no crime? We have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Increasing that isn't going to turn us into Iceland.
By polski-g 2026-02-230:08 Incarceration isn't for punishment. It's not for justice. It's not for rehabilitation. It's too protect society from the evil doer.
By monero-xmr 2026-02-2115:531 reply I’m glad you agree we need to aggressively prosecute violent crime, which is something that is not aggressively pursued in my large blue American city
By co_king_5 2026-02-2117:43 [dead]
>"The real issue is prosecutors who refuse to incarcerate repeat offenders"
Sure. US prosecutors are so lenient that the US is the capital of incarceration
By bpodgursky 2026-02-213:432 reply This is literally true and you think you are being snarky but just look ignorant.
By laksjhdlka 2026-02-213:54 I can't tell which element(s) of the previous post you are criticizing.
By tovlier 2026-02-214:42 [dead]
Depends a lot on the city/state. Check super blue cities like Seattle or San Francisco, and the people there complain that the justice system doesn't work as repeat offenders are let go, for one reason or another.
The big incarceration states are most likely deep red states.
By Mordisquitos 2026-02-219:28 The incarceration rate of every single US state is higher than that of every country in the European continent except Belarus, Russia and Turkey. Each state's incarceration rate is also higher than that of every country in the OECD (a club of mostly rich countries) except Chile, Costa Rica and Turkey.
Of the exceptions I have listed, Turkey has the highest incarceration rate of 366 per 100k. Even so, it is still lower than that of 41 states, falling between Hawaii (367) and Connecticut (326).
By FpUser 2026-02-216:04 I live in Canada, to me the US is a whole. I am pretty sure one can find close to crimeless areas there along with something totally opposite. does not matter from the outside.
By tencentshill 2026-02-2320:13 You can get video evidence without sending it to a massive, opaque national database of non-suspects.
> The real issue is prosecutors who refuse to incarcerate repeat offenders.
Sometimes judges contribute as well.
By NoMoreNicksLeft 2026-02-218:22 The real problem with prosecutors is that they don't want to prosecute. When I was on the grand jury in my city a couple of years ago, there was a slow morning and the assistant DA said that there were about 4000 cases per year and that they brought 30 of those to trial. He didn't think anything of it, for him it was a story about how they loved trials because "they were so much fun". But if they were so much fun, why are less than 1% of cases going to trial?
Plea deals.
Plea deals subvert justice for both those innocent who are bullied into pleading out, and for those who are wickedly guilty and get a big discount on the penalty exacted. Plea deals give the system extra capacity for prosecution, encouraging the justice system to fill the excess capacity, while simultaneously giving an underfunded system that doesn't have enough capacity the appearance of being able to handle the load. Bad all around.
Any evidence of what you're saying about prosecutors and video surveillance?
there exists evidence proving that a fraction of individuals commit the majority of violent crime. thus, incarcerating those particular individuals would inherently reduce the majority of violent crime. is something missing from this equation?
By tbrownaw 2026-02-215:50 I read that as questioning whether better evidence would actually help. Which I assume is a reference to some prosecutors ignoring certain crimes as a matter of policy, for example there was news a bit ago about CA choosing to ignore shoplifting under some amount.
By datsci_est_2015 2026-02-215:362 reply > is something missing from this equation?
Decades of historical evidence to the contrary.
If you’d like to have an informed opinion, at least engage with the academic material. Otherwise you come off sounding naïve, insisting that complex problems have simple solutions.
Edit: maybe my ears are a bit sensitive, but I can’t help but hear a faint whistle in the wind, maybe only at a frequency a dog could hear. But no, surely not here in gentlemanly company.
What evidence to the contrary? 1% of the US population does commit over 60% of violent crime: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3969807/
By datsci_est_2015 2026-02-216:082 reply That’s not what I’m disputing, of course. I’m disputing that the grandparent’s assertion that if we (by your stats) simply lock up 1% of the population that violent crime would drop by 60%.
I mean, trivially, using our brains for a nanosecond, what if that 1% of the population is almost always 16-18 year olds when they commit those violent crimes. The 16-18 demographic is roughly 4% of the US population (Google). That would mean locking up 1 in 4 high school students for 6-20 of their most formative years, and thrusting them back into society with a “Mission Accomplished” banner hanging behind you.
Play with the numbers a bit (maybe it’s 1 in 20), but the point stands. Using imprisonment to try to quarantine a demographic that is perceived as irreparably violent is a barbaric, sophomoric idea that has very little evidence of success in the modern era.
By foxglacier 2026-02-217:11 There are two ideas here - locking up actual criminals and locking up people who happen to fit the pattern of a criminal even without committing any crime. You're arguing against the latter, but I don't think anybody was proposing that.
Don't jail criminals because maybe they're young, that's your argument? Sounds like a something that's already part of the sentencing policy, leniency of first time offenders.
By datsci_est_2015 2026-02-2223:011 reply I was tipsy when I typed that out, tbh. But yeah, there’s a strong case to be made that jailing youth while simultaneously divesting in their communities causes a pretty significant hollowing out and sense of hopelessness.
The reason I brought up youth is because, unsurprisingly, most violent crime is performed by people who don’t have a fully-formed prefrontal cortex. Feelings of invincibility and a sense of not having much to lose.
By Aeglaecia 2026-02-236:31 oh so you did have a point , why didn't you just say so ! do you have any hard evidence to back you assertion that the majority of recidivism occurs in minors ? coz that would definitely make for a better discussion than calling each other names
you are accusing me of virtue signalling without discussing the evidence. this in itself is a virtue signal. I'm not trying to insult you by saying this ... you are behaving hypocritically. lots of people don't treat that gently, I genuinely suggest you be careful towards whom you act that way. if you have an actual point I'm happy to chat about it, however my tolerance of snippy snappy rhetoric is running low
By datsci_est_2015 2026-02-216:141 reply Nah man I’m going to continue to proudly call out people who skirt the line of racism by advocating for the same policies that racists have championed since the fall of the Confederacy. Say it with your chest next time, there’s a reason that it’s not tolerated in polite company. I guess maybe some of YCombinator would enjoy it though, judging by their investments and the rhetoric of those they are associated with.
By Aeglaecia 2026-02-216:29 it sounds to me like you would prefer moral grandstanding about north american politics instead of sharing discussion. not interested, thanks for the opportunity to practice my patience
I agree. There needs to be a non racist president that just sweeps in and does a El Salvador type cleanup of the streets. I bet the 80%+ of normal black people in crime ridden cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, Memphis, Detroit, New Orleans would be in full support. Let’s be honest, young black gangsters are the main criminal element in these places. Trump can’t do this because he is a piece of shit with no integrity.
By gamblor956 2026-02-2120:41 El Salvador doesn't have the type of Constitutional rights that America has. That type of sweep would not be legal.
And that doesn't even get into jurisdictional issues. The federal government doesn't have jurisdiction over local crimes that do not cross interstate boundaries.
> There needs to be a non racist president that just sweeps in and does a El Salvador type cleanup of the streets.
Sounds like a certain, controversial federal law enforcement agency in the US
By dyauspitr 2026-02-2120:44 Except ICE has hired poorly trained far right good for nothings.
If you're in the bay area, on Monday at 6:30 there's a mountain view city council meeting where flock is on the agenda. If this surveillance bothers you, show up!!
By tencentshill 2026-02-2320:18 Always trust anonymous accounts to tell you how to organize!
Do you have a link to the agenda? The only Monday meeting I see on the mountain view site is a Board of Library Trustees meeting
By shadowfacts 2026-02-218:32 It’s listed on the agenda here as “Automated License Plate Reader Contract.” https://mountainview.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1352...
By c22 2026-02-219:37 What bothered you to make this comment?
By soulofmischief 2026-02-212:251 reply Political apathy is not an aspiration. It's the reason we're in this mess.
By burnt-resistor 2026-02-214:43 Learned helplessness is contagious. So is hope.
