This is not a new startup. It predates the AI era. This is the company that installs cameras in public places and wires them all together with data sharing arrangements that circumvent those pesky jurisdictional separations of power. And guess which neighborhoods have the most cameras?
It’s a pre-crime company and data broker that sells to police forces and corporations (while sharing all the data between them). It’s one of the most regressive and heinous business models someone could spend their time building.
lacker · 33m ago
Of course a crime-fighting company "sells to police forces and corporations". Who else would you sell crime-fighting tools to?
Flock reminds me of Replit: they both predate the modern era of AI, and in some sense they were lucky to be well-positioned when advances in AI enabled their core product to become much more powerful. Of course, the harder you work, the luckier you get....
chatmasta · 21m ago
They’re a surveillance company, not a crime-fighting company.
cactusplant7374 · 2h ago
I once read an article about a company that was using low flying planes and cameras. The goal was to be able to record and rewind video and then follow robbers back to their homes. Robberies are a big problem in LATAM. It could be very useful.
Basically, get around those pesky amendments by third-partying evidence collection, then manufacture (parallel construction) cases.
It's also entirely unnecessary. It's essentially a conduit to feed "criminals" into the prison system to support whats basically the oldest form of disaster capitalism.
It's all so neat and tidy, it's almost like theres' no difference between government and business operatives.
polartx · 2h ago
The weakest link of the proposed technology like this is guaranteed fallibility of the folks using it, ie the judicial system and the asymmetric power dynamic against those it supposedly serves.
This is a very common scenario: a sheriffs deputy holds a biased belief against an individual. Said deputy selects and overfits data from systems like this to obtain a warrant against said individual. Individual is arrested and enters the meat grinder that is the justice system where hundreds of experienced indifferent agents and millions of dollars are put to work to support that deputies biased accusation. That original bad actor can now disengage and go about their life. Meanwhile, our Individual must spend a fortune on legal defense to prove their innocence. Individual loses time, money, peace, and reputation pursuing the best case realistic scenario—having charges dismissed (though indefinitely tainting their record). The more realistic scenario is individual is unjustly punished to some degree through plea agreements or trial (if they can afford it) which could easily ruin the rest of their life.
I’m not on the ACAB extreme, I just personally know many law enforcement officers and work in the industry adjacent to the justice system.
CurtHagenlocher · 2h ago
Even if true, it would only be for one of the narrowest possible definitions of "crime". What can Flock do about mail fraud? About domestic violence? About wage theft? About falsified studies that lead to substances being misclassified as harmless? About price fixing? Does the majority of criminal activity even take place in "public" spaces?
SpicyLemonZest · 40m ago
It's common for people to talk about "crime" when what they really mean is something like "street crime" or "stranger crime" - some random person I don't know hurting me or taking my stuff. It's true that other kinds of crime are common, but the solutions to them probably look pretty different than the solutions to let me safely walk around anywhere in my city after dark.
for_col_in_cols · 2h ago
Flock is driving the following future:
"It’s a paradigm shift where we go from having an expectation of privacy even in public spaces to its inverse. Not only do we not have a right to privacy in public; we don’t even have a right to see ourselves as the government and police might see us — a set of still moments in place and time from which they, not us, can decide what our story is."
Should be titled, "AI Startup Flock Thinks It Can Eliminate All Privacy In America"
techpineapple · 2h ago
Our politics has gotten bizarre, I know Republicans are taking an anti-crime stance, but like isn’t also Republicans advocating for like diminished state capacity and a sovereign citizen type status?
January 6th, proud boys, the Malheur National Wildlife refuge occupation.
Time for a multitude of Ruby Ridges I guess.
xg15 · 4m ago
Well, the cameras are operated by a private enterprise, so no problem!
patagurbon · 1h ago
Only in the abstract / around election time, much in the same way they run on cutting taxes for the poor and middle class. There are Republican run states that do better on certain diminished state capacity things like zoning (Texas) or 2nd amendment rights, but surveillance, rights of the accused, free speech rights, right to repair, etc are largely worse under Republican governments.
See for example the Patriot Act
TheCleric · 1h ago
Oh I'm VERY interested in seeing how this will eliminate white collar crimes like wage theft, embezzlement, ponzi schemes and the like. Or do they mean the kind of crimes THOSE OTHER PEOPLE do?
johnisgood · 2h ago
You can eliminate many crimes by decriminalizing them, too. Let people be productive junkies as long as they pose no threat or harm to society, for one.
Gotta love these grandiose, attention-grabbing pie-in-the-sky mission statements. "Eliminate all crime!"
Reminds me of when I worked in the same building as Mark Zuckerberg's and his wife's health startup, whose mission statement plastered all over the building is to "eliminate all disease within our lifetimes." All disease? Really? All of them?? Every single one? Why not pick 1 disease and work on that, maybe start from there, and once you eliminate that one move on and try a few more.
lm28469 · 2h ago
> In less than 10 years, Flock’s cameras, airborne and fixed, will eradicate almost all crime in the U.S.
It'll fit right in with the fully self driving cars we'll get in "two years" since 2012, and the manned flights to mars we'll get in "five years" since 2015
American version of capitalism and Chinese versions of socialisme seem to slowly converge, the future will be fun!
fakedang · 2h ago
The difference being that you won't get self-driving cars any time soon (at least a decade away), while countries and cities such as China, Singapore, Dubai and London already have mass surveillance at an unprecedented scale. Personal freedoms are already being infringed upon in these countries, and saying the wrong thing publicly will land you behind bars.
lm28469 · 2h ago
Oh yeah sure they have the mass surveillance, did they "eradicate crime" though?
The US can already be defined as a surveillance state in many aspects, and it could be made muche worse for sure, what I doubt is that it'll solve criminality
johnisgood · 2h ago
No, mass surveillance will never eradicate crimes.
UK (or London) has about 99% coverage. It means jack shit without enforcement, and let me tell you, there are many streets out there with junkies smoking crack without any issues.
My girlfriend in LA is scared to go to the bus stop. There used to be two drunks around noon, and now they even set up a camp and there are more people. Cops are doing fuck all about it.
CCTVs mean nothing.
ChrisMarshallNY · 1h ago
Nazi Germany, with the most repressive police state in history, couldn’t. The criminals just learned to work within the shadow of the Gestapo.
Stalin’s USSR couldn’t, but they made it illegal to admit crime existed, so maybe that “worked”?
nemothekid · 2h ago
I don't understand how this startup would eliminate embezzlement?
user94wjwuid · 1h ago
Cities should have a little bit of crime
more_corn · 2h ago
Through conversion to a total surveillance state.
This does not account for any crime committed outside of public spaces:
White collar crime and embezzlement
Murder in private places
Sexual assault in private places
Domestic abuse
Illegal drug use
Insurance fraud
Wage theft
Off the top of my head
nullc · 1h ago
> This does not account for any crime committed outside of public space
Do you have any reason to believe that the next steps won't be surveillance in unambiguously private spaces under the cover of "AI eliminates the privacy problem with surveillance"?
nullc · 1h ago
The 'crypto industry' was supposed to collect and contain the manic megalomaniacs before they could build the torment nexus.
I guess instead we get Machines of Loving Grace's boot stamping on a human face-- forever.
bdangubic · 2h ago
more crime happens at the WH every minute than in the entire country in a year :)
novia · 2h ago
My housemate's car was stolen in Atlanta, and because of Flock the police were able to get it and return it the same day he reported it missing. He was even able to get to work on time.
UncleEntity · 1h ago
My step-dad's truck was stolen and the police we able to recover it in minutes as the thieves pushed it around the corner and couldn't get it started so just left it there.
Sometimes the police just get lucky...
novia · 25m ago
This wasn't luck. They specifically used Flock's cameras which are all over town recording which license plates pass. They sent Flock a request, and Flock sent them the data, and then the police recovered the car.
More information: the car was stolen at night, and my housemate only saw it was gone in the morning. The police were able to return it that same morning and he was able to go to work.
We had a ring camera pointed right at the car which was parked on the street. Ring didn't record its theft as an "event" so there was no footage to work with.
My housemate also had a camera in his car which records while driving. There was footage of the thief just taking the car for a joyride. My housemate did not press charges.
nullc · 1h ago
85% of stolen cars have been recovered historically, 34% same day. So anecdata about a single recovery really don't tell us much of about the benefit of living in a panopticon.
It’s a pre-crime company and data broker that sells to police forces and corporations (while sharing all the data between them). It’s one of the most regressive and heinous business models someone could spend their time building.
Flock reminds me of Replit: they both predate the modern era of AI, and in some sense they were lucky to be well-positioned when advances in AI enabled their core product to become much more powerful. Of course, the harder you work, the luckier you get....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare
It's also entirely unnecessary. It's essentially a conduit to feed "criminals" into the prison system to support whats basically the oldest form of disaster capitalism.
It's all so neat and tidy, it's almost like theres' no difference between government and business operatives.
This is a very common scenario: a sheriffs deputy holds a biased belief against an individual. Said deputy selects and overfits data from systems like this to obtain a warrant against said individual. Individual is arrested and enters the meat grinder that is the justice system where hundreds of experienced indifferent agents and millions of dollars are put to work to support that deputies biased accusation. That original bad actor can now disengage and go about their life. Meanwhile, our Individual must spend a fortune on legal defense to prove their innocence. Individual loses time, money, peace, and reputation pursuing the best case realistic scenario—having charges dismissed (though indefinitely tainting their record). The more realistic scenario is individual is unjustly punished to some degree through plea agreements or trial (if they can afford it) which could easily ruin the rest of their life.
I’m not on the ACAB extreme, I just personally know many law enforcement officers and work in the industry adjacent to the justice system.
"It’s a paradigm shift where we go from having an expectation of privacy even in public spaces to its inverse. Not only do we not have a right to privacy in public; we don’t even have a right to see ourselves as the government and police might see us — a set of still moments in place and time from which they, not us, can decide what our story is."
https://cardinalnews.org/2025/03/28/i-drove-300-miles-in-rur...
January 6th, proud boys, the Malheur National Wildlife refuge occupation. Time for a multitude of Ruby Ridges I guess.
See for example the Patriot Act
Reminds me of when I worked in the same building as Mark Zuckerberg's and his wife's health startup, whose mission statement plastered all over the building is to "eliminate all disease within our lifetimes." All disease? Really? All of them?? Every single one? Why not pick 1 disease and work on that, maybe start from there, and once you eliminate that one move on and try a few more.
It'll fit right in with the fully self driving cars we'll get in "two years" since 2012, and the manned flights to mars we'll get in "five years" since 2015
American version of capitalism and Chinese versions of socialisme seem to slowly converge, the future will be fun!
The US can already be defined as a surveillance state in many aspects, and it could be made muche worse for sure, what I doubt is that it'll solve criminality
UK (or London) has about 99% coverage. It means jack shit without enforcement, and let me tell you, there are many streets out there with junkies smoking crack without any issues.
My girlfriend in LA is scared to go to the bus stop. There used to be two drunks around noon, and now they even set up a camp and there are more people. Cops are doing fuck all about it.
CCTVs mean nothing.
Stalin’s USSR couldn’t, but they made it illegal to admit crime existed, so maybe that “worked”?
This does not account for any crime committed outside of public spaces: White collar crime and embezzlement Murder in private places Sexual assault in private places Domestic abuse Illegal drug use Insurance fraud Wage theft
Off the top of my head
Do you have any reason to believe that the next steps won't be surveillance in unambiguously private spaces under the cover of "AI eliminates the privacy problem with surveillance"?
I guess instead we get Machines of Loving Grace's boot stamping on a human face-- forever.
Sometimes the police just get lucky...
More information: the car was stolen at night, and my housemate only saw it was gone in the morning. The police were able to return it that same morning and he was able to go to work.
We had a ring camera pointed right at the car which was parked on the street. Ring didn't record its theft as an "event" so there was no footage to work with.
My housemate also had a camera in his car which records while driving. There was footage of the thief just taking the car for a joyride. My housemate did not press charges.