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Federal judge calls Flock 'indiscriminate mass surveillance'

483 points · 267 comments · sbulaev

  1. sippingabonedry · · focus · HN ↗
    "Flock is mass surveillance", say people who are posting Ring doorbell footage on Reddit for the 50th time, trying to gangstalk the guy who stole the mail order coffee beans off their porch.
    1. PorciiVorbesc · · focus · HN ↗
      "It's mass surveillance when law enforcement catches me breaking the law. When I catch and doxx other people breaking the law, it's justice being served."
      1. qmr · · focus · HN ↗
        Comedy is when you break your leg, tragedy is when I stub my toe?
      2. marc_abonce · · focus · HN ↗
        Yes, there's a massive difference between a government's power and a common citizen's power, both in scope and in the responsibility that this difference in power conveys.

        Using your example, a homeowner with a camera is indeed surveying but it's not mass surveillance. (Unless they actually hacked into other people's cameras, but that would be a completely different example and would in fact lead us back to the conversation about government or corporate responsibility over those other cameras.)

        There's nothing hypocritical in pointing out this difference and expecting more restraint on a democratic government that's supposed to serve the common people.

        Don't get me wrong, I hate internet mobs too but it's incorrect to assume that they are equivalent to actual governments. They're a separate problem that needs to be handled in its own terms.

    2. qmr · · focus · HN ↗
      "Yet you participate in society. Interesting!"
    3. softwaredoug · · focus · HN ↗
      “Some people exist in this intersection of arbitrary groups I just made! Therefore the whole group is a fraud!”
    4. anigbrowl · · focus · HN ↗
      Well poisoning fallacy
    5. ProllyInfamous · · focus · HN ↗
      I also don't use email nor own a cell phone.

      Did you have a point?

    6. oxygen_crisis · · focus · HN ↗
      The Constitution pertains to limiting the power of the state, limiting abuses by the people and systems entrusted with enforcing the law, not limiting your neighbors.
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