If I lived there, I would be pretty ticked off my elected representatives turned off a crime-fighting system that I paid for based on nothing but feelings and theatrics.
If it was such a bad idea, they shouldn't have installed them in Redmond. Turning them off now because some people assumed things that weren't true is idiocy and sets a bad precedent.
It's my opinion that our historical ideas of expectation of privacy when in public spaces are incompatible with the current state of surveillance technology. Sure, everyone should expect that they might be recognized by an acquaintance when out in public, but I don't think it follows that our entire past history should be available at any time in the future.
Sometimes it takes an actual bad outcome for people to realize that the potential problems weren’t theoretical.
If it was a bad idea it shouldn't have been installed in the first place. Turning it off now because a few loud people assumed things that weren't true (ICE using the system) is idiotic.
This technology swings both ways and as such is too dangerous to exist. We have plenty of other means to instantly and broadly raise awareness about abductions.
If they turned it off after a lawsuit or a commission's determination that the public's privacy was at risk I wouldn't have commented. This is a case of listening to screaming toddlers and giving them anything to make them stop, even when the reason they're throwing a tantrum isn't true.
What have you heard or seen that gives you that impression?
According to the article “University of Washington researchers released a report Oct. 21 showing federal immigration agencies like ICE and Border Patrol had accessed the data of at least 18 Washington cities, often without their police departments’ knowing”
It seems plausible that the local government came to realize that unauthorized use of Flock data was happening elsewhere in the state and decided to act. These sort of privacy intrusions start off with the veneer of best intentions but when abuse is uncovered, people tend to get real.
It doesn't matter about the "support" for it when that support is predicated on a complete lie, that immigration is bad for America when it demonstrably is good for America.
And it wasn't just on-the-books immigration laws that weren't enforced, it was the actual, physical border that was left fully open.
> As I previously demonstrated, President Biden removed a higher percentage of border crossers in his first two years than Trump did during his last two years (51 percent versus 47 percent), despite Trump having to deal with many fewer total crossings (Table 1). Congress right now is in a bipartisan state of denial about these three central facts:
> 1) The reason people are being released is because of operational capacity to detain and deport them, not policy.
> 2) Biden has deported vastly greater numbers and a higher share of crossers, but it has not deterred people from crossing.
> 3) The logistics are such that once arrivals exceed the deportation machine’s capacity, people will find out and even more will come.
Feel free to click through for data!
https://www.cato.org/blog/data-show-trump-wouldve-released-m...
ICE and Trump seem to be enough deterrent now, considering how the land encounters have reduced.
> The logistics are such that once arrivals exceed the deportation machine’s capacity, people will find out and even more will come.
This explains the huge ice funding increase.
The expectation of privacy and personal freedoms of 350M people seems to be an inconvenience for the state wanting deporting a few more people per year.
When laws become impractical, they create 11 million law breakers.
This is also a choice for the people in charge of the border. Enforcing a border is a solved problem for a rich, large-population nation.
No, I don't expect that at all. However the problem with your scenario isn't that they need to wait their turn, it's that they can "just cross the border". That fact that that has been allowed was an intentional policy decision.
To be clear I am not making an argument that mass surveillance is needed to solve any problem.
[0] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/green-card-holders-a...
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024... via https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/27/u-s-immig...
[2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.TOTL.ZS?most_rec...
US vs EU vs OECD: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.TOTL.ZS?most_rec... - I'm pretty sure the values here include illegal immigration as well, so if you factor that in the US may be lower than the EU, but again still at historically very high levels.
Well yes, that's what following the law means. They can't complain about it, it's not their country, and they don't have a say on the rules.
In a similar vein by your logic, if you are in a hurry, why should you obey traffic laws when you can just run a red light or a stop sign right?
The stats for Southwest Land Border Encounters are available at https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-enc... and the HN guidelines are available at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Seems like something virtually everyone believes, and all that changes is where they draw the line of balance between intrusion and safety.
Then the data can be used for other purposes--no line prevents this.
So clearly we're allowed more nuanced takes than you think.
It's like saying I'm hypocritical for loving to write with pencils but being offended when someone else stabs me with one.
> Bro, you said you liked pencils, make up your mind!
> The city suspended its Flock system because city officials could not guarantee they wouldn’t be forced to release data collected by those devices someday, she said.
Key part is "someday". Seems like the article is implying that flock may have shared this data with ICE which led to the arrests... but there is no proof supporting this...
> On Thursday, a Skagit County Superior Court judge ruled that pictures taken by Flock cameras in the cities of Sedro-Woolley and Stanwood qualify as public records, and therefore must be released as required by the state’s Public Records Act, court records show.
This is the more likely reason. What do folks here think about this ruling?
IMO it seems obvious that this should be public records/data, but would love to hear alternative positions to this.
At the very least I think any kind of face recognition should require probable cause.
The line here is a little different. I could point a camera out my window and record every license plate that drives by my house, and that would be allowed because its recording public activities, and the data I collect would be private—its mine from my camera.
The question here is if a public/government agency pays a private company to setup cameras in public, for the benefit of the public, then should that data collected by those cameras not also be public?
The courts seem to agree that it should be public, and I fail to see why it shouldn't be. Maybe I should read the opposition briefs on it.
This is how NASA operates with the data/images collected from the tax payer funded operations it runs. There is a period of exclusivity allowed for some projects to allow the people to work with the data, but anybody can go down load high res imagery once it has been released.
I assume it is/was similar with other data collected, like weather data/radar, oceanic current/buoy data, etc?
> Redmond’s Police Department was not among those listed in the report, and has never allowed external agencies to access their Flock data without requesting and receiving permission from the police chief first, according to an Oct. 24 statement by Lowe.
So because the arrests were near a Flock Camera the "journalist" is connecting the two? Even with the statements an information to the contrary?
:(
Maybe I need to write a news filter/browser extension that rewrites rage-bait articles to have titles and content based only on the meaningful content/facts, and less the speculation/insinuations.
No matter what, the whole ICE acting like the SS thing will only result in more illegal migration in the long term, like a lot more. Same with europe's far right teasing.
If the "infrastructure" can't support more people, we can build more here in the US. Borders shouldn't be open, but more health and able-bodied or skilled people wanting to migrate, so long as their criminal history is clear, should be let in, infrastructure should be scaled. It's more economic activity and wealth for the rest of us. More jobs, more workers. We need to do that for the housing crisis anyways.
We need more cities, more development, less NIMBY-thinking and less "beat them until they comply" thinking. Too many people who don't know or are unwilling to solve real problems but are eager to see cruelty and violence cause these untenable and regrettable situations.
How so? What mechanism do you see that goes from "ICE acting like the SS" to "a lot more illegal migration in the long term"? What's the cause and effect here?
Not saying you're wrong, necessarily, just... I don't see the causality at all.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/21/key-findi...
There was a really interesting open ended survey some years ago, in the leadup to the trump/clinton election but I can't find it now sorry.
When republicans voters were asked to describe their preferred immigration policies, they outline a stance significantly more permissive and flexible, and less burdensome, than the one we currently have. More liberal than the reality, in other words.
People don't know what the immigration policies are and so they can't know what they should be either. The anti-immigration sentiment is a stunning propaganda victory decades in the making, no more.
I was resistant to this argument for a long time, but the ICE thing makes it clear that really the core of all of this is racism.
Why? Wouldn't it disincentivize illegal immigration by making it much more riskier?
Agreed that the legal immigration system needs an overhaul, these are a lot of people living in limbo, paying taxes and not causing crimes with very few rights. The term no taxation without representation was the reason the USA got founded.
This video by Tom Lehto talks more about that court case that illustrates citizens can legally do FOIA requests for traffic cameras (e.g. Flock): https://youtu.be/1vQn4MWBln0
dredmorbius•1h ago