Thread

Woman Arrested, Dragged Away After Speaking About Flock at City Council Meeting

218 points · 261 comments · latexr

Aurornis · 1790181534 · focus · HN ↗
They really buried the details in this article. The opener leads you to believe she did nothing wrong because she briefly spoke during a public comment period
> Mia Heider had never attended a public meeting before when she showed up to the city council meeting in Springfield, Missouri. After briefly speaking at a podium during a public comment period, she was arrested and dragged away in handcuffs.
The details are toward the end. The council was trying to discuss a public housing issue and she was trying to use that time slot to bring up Flock.
> Later in the evening Mia Heider tried to speak out about Flock during public comments about a housing issue.
They cut off the mic and told her it was the wrong topic, she wouldn’t leave the podium, flipped off the council (it’s the photo in the article) and the police hauled her off the podium.
There’s a real valid story in here about the city council sending the Flock thing to committee, but the article has been through the clickbait ringer so many times that they’re trying to make it sound like someone got arrested for saying “Flock cameras” during an open comments section, which isn’t true.
Given the topic I’m probably going to get downvoted for bringing up facts from the article itself, but I’m really tired of this type of journalism where you can tell they workshopped this and carefully chose which important details to bury at the bottom of the story so it gives a different impression if you only read the headline or skim the first couple paragraphs.
1. TheChaplain · 1790182119 · focus · HN ↗
  Thanks for bringing up the whole picture. No down-votes from me.
2. empath75 · 1790182226 · focus · HN ↗
  Giving someone the finger is not a crime.
  1. Aurornis · 1790182304 · focus · HN ↗
    Interrupting a city council meeting, speaking out of turn, refusing to leave, and then devolving into obvious defiance is, however.
    freejazz · 1790182510 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, she spoke about something 'off topic' during public comments - if that's the same thing as what you described, I'm not so sure.
    gruez · 1790183231 · focus · HN ↗
    >during public comments
    You're conveniently omitting the fact it was public comments for a different issue
    >Heider explained that she waited until the public comment period for a different issue, filled out a form to talk, and then got up to deliver a written statement about Flock cameras.
    Matl · 1790184150 · focus · HN ↗
    He may be omitting that because it seems like a convenient way to not hear comments about an issue by switching to a different issue.
    thereader12 · 1790184564 · focus · HN ↗
    Because the council canceled comments on the Flock issue that had been scheduled for that day.
    freejazz · 1790186844 · focus · HN ↗
    Did I omit that? I don't think so. I pointed out her comments were 'off topic.'
    > Well, she spoke about something 'off topic' during public comments
    I didn't even address what others pointed out, which was that the topic was suddenly changed because these people showed up.
    ModernMech · 1790183841 · focus · HN ↗
    Ah I see you are well versed in bureaucratic attack strategies on the first amendment! “We’re not violating your rights, there’s a special first amendment zone you can say all that where we can’t hear!”
    dekhn · 1790184031 · focus · HN ↗
    Can you instead try to see that people who disagree with you may actually not being attempting to subvert the first amendment, but instead are focusing on the necessary business city councils have to achieve? There are clearly limits on what you can say and do in a city council meeting.
    ModernMech · 1790189504 · focus · HN ↗
    I can see that, but that's also exactly the mechanism by which buraucracies attack the first amendment, so people who just reasonably disagree should explain how their disagreement doesn't serve the very agenda they say they're against.
    dekhn · 1790190365 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you truly believe the mayor and city council were trying to attack the first amendment as a core principle?
    We don't live in an free speech absolutist society. People don't get to talk about just anything, at any time during a city council meeting without restrictions. Don't attribute to malice what is more easily attribute to getting business done.
    ModernMech · 1790196754 · focus · HN ↗
    Malice isn't required to destroy the first amendment, city councils arresting people speaking out, in the name of getting business done is enough. I think the "I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it" view of free speech is very much a minority view. Most people, especially mayors and city councils, ascribe to the "free speech for me and not for thee" view.
    > We don't live in an free speech absolutist society
    I'm not sure what kind of society we live in. Is there even a social contract anymore? Is the Constitution even in effect? I'm not sure exactly what the rules are anymore, we live in a society where a mob violently attacked the US capitol, and got pardons for their trouble. So, why bother talking about anything, when violence is rewarded but speech gets you a record? What's even the point of the first amendment, it's meaningless when they can just write an executive order deeming their political opponents (or anyone) part of a vast but nebulous terrorist network, who obviously don't have a first amendment right. Because terrorists.
    empath75 · 1790351543 · focus · HN ↗
    Annoying your local city council is exactly the sort of speech protected by the first amendment.
  2. dekhn · 1790182610 · focus · HN ↗
    She was not arrested for that.
3. mandevil · 1790182631 · focus · HN ↗
  I dunno, Council announces that they are going to be talking about Flock (YC 17), that there will be public comment about Flock (YC 17), sees that a whole lot of people are very angry about Flock (YC 17) and have come to the meeting, and immediately shift the discussion to a committee so they don't have to hear those people angry about Flock (YC 17), I can see why she did what she did. That sure seems like the Council is trying to avoid all of the community anger over Flock (YC 17).
  If you are going to do something that makes so many people so angry that they are willing to come to a local government meeting, you kinda have to let them talk about it, you know? Otherwise it feels like you're trying to run out the clock on them.
  1. ToValueFunfetti · 1790185576 · focus · HN ↗
    Can you explain the need to be annoying about the YC 17 thing? What's the objective here? Is it supposed to convince potential founders to decide against taking YC's money as a way of putting financial pressure on YC not to fund projects that people don't like? Or is the intention that YC people are reading your comment directly and it's changing their minds?
    I can't imagine either of these being impactful, and the effect seems to just be to distract from people's concerns about Flock (YC 17). Eg, my eyes are bouncing off of the presumably anti-Flock statement you're making here because you've coated it in repeated parentheticals and tortured the writing so you can say "Flock" as often as possible.
    mandevil · 1790186448 · focus · HN ↗
    I am amused that much of the HN community goes out of its way to highlight YC connections for companies- I've even seen it for Stripe (YC 09) and Dropbox (YC07) within the past year or so- but has completely dropped that for Flock.
    ToValueFunfetti · 1790187341 · focus · HN ↗
    Fair enough, though I can't seem to get examples out of algolia
    Stripe: <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Stripe%20YC%2009&sort=byDate&type=comment" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
    Dropbox: <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Dropbox%20YC%2007&sort=byDate&type=comment" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
    Flock: <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Flock%20YC%2017&sort=byDate&type=all" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
    mandevil · 1790187905 · focus · HN ↗
    Huh, you seem to be right, the most recent for Dropbox was about 5 years ago. Maybe my sense of time is all screwed up? I thought I remembered it more recently than that. But I trust the data more than I trust my memory.
    I withdraw my statements about the HN community.
    paulddraper · 1790290136 · focus · HN ↗
    I've literally never seen that.
    Unless it was in a very specific investment/exit/valuation related sense.
    YC is an investor that turns money into more money, and claims to be good at that. It doesn't claim to be good at anything else.
4. sippingabonedry · 1790185022 · focus · HN ↗
  It's objectively hilarious that the useful idiots so virulently angry about Flock look like the type of people that don't drive a car, so it makes you wonder what the fuss about ALPRs is and how it affects them.
  If Flock was used to enforce congestion pricing in the cities they ride bikes in, they would all be for it.
  1. SauciestGNU · 1790185627 · focus · HN ↗
    Don't act like flock is incapable of tracking bicycles and individual humans. The product may have been sold as ALPR but scope is creeping to total persistent surveillance.
    sippingabonedry · 1790186263 · focus · HN ↗
    But Ring cameras all over the place to deter the undesirables from stealing Tenga eggs off doorsteps are ok I assume?
    tavavex · 1790192427 · focus · HN ↗
    I love how you constructed an entire alternate dimension, a playground where you can argue with endless strawmen and look so good defeating them. Yes, all the people who oppose Flock are non-drivers despite the US being a car-first country, and these non-drivers don't care about the rights of others or encroachments in their general directions, and they all want to turn isolated toll gate cameras into a surveillance movement tracking network, and they even support individual surveillance via Ring. The hypocrisy of these millions of real people that totally exist. Useful idiots indeed.
    preg_match · 1790220323 · focus · HN ↗
    What could possibly make you think they’re okay with that?
    Are you under the impression that the groups who protest flock and the groups who protest Ring and Meta are two completely mutually exclusive groups, with no overlapping members?
    Why would you think that? If anything, I would assume that venn diagram is close to a circle.
    antonvs · 1790456397 · focus · HN ↗
    Drawing an equivalence between Flock cameras and Ring cameras only proves that you haven't thought about this issue at all. You're just repeating what you think you're supposed to repeat, like a bot.
  2. [deleted] · 1790186849 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  3. giantrobot · 1790232803 · focus · HN ↗
    > so it makes you wonder what the fuss about ALPRs is and how it affects them.
    Wow. Poe's Law in full effect here. I'm not sure if you're just oblivious or trolling. If you're oblivious do yourself a huge fucking favor and read up on what Flock is doing in addition to ALPR and how even that is abused by law enforcement.
  4. AlecSchueler · 1790239547 · focus · HN ↗
    What do people who drive look like?
    > they would all be for it.
    Would they? "They" being people you imagine don't drive (with whatever that implies to you personally, it isn't made clear) based on their appearance.
    Maybe take a step back and focus on what can actually be confirmed instead of leading with multiple layers of conjecture.

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