Just as much as voting for a narcissistic pathological liar and sex offender is Christian. Turns out people are not very consequent with their supposed values when it gets in the way of their personal interests.
The data set IJ is providing here is situations where stalking was reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted. Other stalking cases could fail any one of those stages and be invisible to the public.
> Other stalking cases could fail any one of those stages and be invisible to the public.
"could" is doing a lot of work here...
> where stalking was reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted.
No, that's not what IJ said. From the article: "Nearly all of these officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs, either by resigning or getting fired."
So not all 14 of these were "reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted".
If you're trying to make significant social change, make the strongest argument that you are capable of.
I don't think "could" is doing a lot of work here at all. It seems logical that if cases where the misuse of flock systems were discovered only when the same officers misbehaved in other, more visible situations then there are officers that avoid the more visible situations and continue to use the system that does not expose their bad behavior (flock).
Logical as in fits your world view or as in can be backed up by observable evidence?
The IJ (which I financially support) is a very serious organization that understands datasets, rules-based evidence and also public relations. If there was a stronger case that they could have made with the data that they had available, they would have.
I've already stated that I agree with the premise suggested, but I'm making the point that if you actually want to do anything about it, you need the evidence to back it up.
I can't go to my boss with a proposal to do something significant without measurable evidence to back up my reasoning and neither can you.
I have personally had a traffic ticket thrown out because the officer had a DV case brought by his spouse, who worked in the court. This caused the officer to be fired. I'm VERY aware of problems with LEO, but if you want to do something with a high administrative or human resources cost like any change to the status quo would obviously have -- you need real hard proof. Not "oh isn't it obvious"?
In my town, we have Flock. I request the audit logs that show how police are searching the Flock system.
In November 2025 and prior, the logs were listed by USERID and I could independently correlate quantity of searches by USERID to detect unusual search behavior. This same methodology has been used to catch police stalking in at least one other city.
In December 2025, Flock decided to "improve" its system. All searches on the audit log are now completely serialized, anonymized. This "improvement" came after 2025 turned out several cases of police stalking using Flock.
I would guess the only way to make this data available long term is by regulation. Then again, I would hope Flock is subject to FOIA already if they are collaborating with state or local law enforcement...
YC CEO funded Flock and is involved in politics to remove police regulations
To quote him responding to criticism against Flock: "You're thinking Chinese surveillance. US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims."
Cameras are free speech and are a shield against property crimes and assault.
Our building complex has rampant break-ins. We've needed more cameras for years and we're only now starting to add them.
Worse, someone recently someone set fire to the roof which caused a 12-hour long debacle. Not sure what the "#-of-alarms fire" ranking it was, but several people lost their homes to months of remediation and they tore apart the roof.
Cameras would have implicated the contractor responsible (we know it was a contractor, but there were no cameras or access logs).
One theory as to why the number of violent crimes is going down in this country isn't that we just de-leaded the water and taught better conflict de-escalation, but that there are cameras and smartphones everywhere.
All of that said - camera networks in the hands of an all-powerful state are bad.
The state does not need access to these systems outside of a rigorously documented system with proper judicial oversight. We need regulations and even civil liberties that limit the scope of state access and state dragnets to these camera networks.
But individuals, companies, and communities should be at liberty to hire surveillance tech to protect their persons and their property.
> Cameras are free speech... individuals, companies, and communities should be at liberty to hire surveillance tech to protect their persons and their property.
At scale, corporate surveillance can effectively intermingle with, and/or become indistinguishable from, state surveillance. We see that happening today: why wiretap when Palantir exists?
Cameras may be speech, but surveillance has a chilling effect against it.
I think this is a false dichotomy. You can feel and be more protected against crime while also being exploited for your data by a shadowy camera company. We should let the state step in to regulate Flock et al, assuming we can do something about the corruption they're already involved in.
The same one that I make when I stand somewhere and describe what I see. So I hold a camera to do it more accurately. And then I get tired so I mount the camera on a trip setup instead.
ACLU of IL v. Alvarez (2012): "The act of making an audio or audiovisual recording is necessarily included within the First Amendment’s guarantee of speech and press rights as a corollary of the right to disseminate the resulting recording."
Which is one of many reasons why privatizing government services probably isn't a good idea.
You could also make different laws but that's probably not going to happen. Think about just about any of the important laws that we rely on for a stable and just society in the USA, and consider that most or all of them would be politically unviable if they didn't already exist. Including FOIA itself. Not a good situation.
On the subject of those Flock cameras, it really is amazing how much high-purity copper they manage to put in one of those. They might as well be putting ingots of copper on those poles.
What would you do with stolen copper, anyways? Drive down to the junkyard off Manchester Trafficway in South KCMO and tell the guy working there that you "collected it from a demolition site at the behest of the foreman" and get paid $3.23 a pound for it?
Since the crux of this seems to be about replacing middle managers, what do people think prevents AI from successfully managing 140 direct reports on day to day operations on behalf of a lone CEO? I'm reading "it doesn't work," but that sounds like more of a potential opportunity to me than a truism.
My take: a HUGE part of the day-to-day job is human aspects and social interaction; if you could get AI to cover this off (and IMO you can't and don't want to) why even have employees? There are way more efficient and cost-effective ways to get technical work executed.
I actually wish non-sports people would care less about sports, too.
Because the decisions should be left to those of us playing the sports. Not bystanders trying to impose their own agendas on to activities they don't even participate in.
Strongly agreed. I think there was ever a good reason for this to be a topic outside those with a direct interest in various sports governing bodies. Those should be making these decisions. It's deeply stupid that this has become a major point of contention up to the federal level of government.
>Because the decisions should be left to those of us playing the sports.
You can make the decisions, but you can't make the audience (a much larger body of people, who overwhelmingly do not participate in the sport, at least not competitively) agree with (or care about) your decisions or reasoning.
This is, in general, a good idea. Nostalgia etc. and some kind of misguided paternalism causes us to “fund” sports when really all of this stuff should have to just pay for what it is. The market economy is a good way to allocate things so that you don’t end up with a $40k/yr income person paying taxes so that rich people get tennis courts in Russian Hill. We should probably just have market functions for most things.
The government doesn’t have to leave the sphere. It just has to manage the market. For instance, a specific amount of space in a park could be allocated to dynamically priced programming. This could be auctioned on an annual basis with teardown costs pre-allocated. Then you don’t have the argument over whether tennis or pickleball. It could be cricket or sepak takraw for all we know.
Proponents of various sports could group together to share the space. This is obviously far superior to the communist style committee allocation.
And obviously the government should not fund sports. Creating the environment where sports funding can occur by ensuring a framework for contracts and so on, yes. But actually deciding that baseball or football or basketball need to be played is patently ridiculous.
Yes, putting out cones. Bending over, laying down a cone, taking five steps, laying another. Hard work. Meanwhile Malcolm Gladwell changes his mind about it. Put out some cones, Malcolm!
I always sort of speculated that sports existed to channel what would otherwise be human tendencies toward violence; an outlet enablining more stable civilization. Even though I largely ignore sports, I appreciate it over possible alternatives.
Imagine this energy put into labor reform, minumum wage, universal Healthcare, Imagine this fervor when your representatives are actively harboring sex assailants.
But alas. It's easier to spread hate than enact positive change.
Where are the stories about all the other mail providers who routinely cough up everything about your email account, including full content, metadata, and full payment details, on a daily basis?
Proton is one of the few services who accepts anonymous payment, and cannot themselves provide encrypted content in cleartext. They cannot save you from yourself, though.
i can’t speak for the journalists who wrote the story, but i assume it’s due to how prominently proton markets their email as safe/private/encrypted and then it turns out they may be sharing data with the swiss government who then gives it to the us government.
it absolutely should be news when the company who heavily promoted themselves to normies as safe, encrypted, and private is sharing customers data which is ending up in the hands of authoritarian foreign governments who are hunting for protesters.
This is a highly deceptive title. As if Proton proactively helped FBI, which is not even close to truth. Proton is not even in direct contact with FBI. It's Swiss government that forwarded the info to FBI.
A much better title would be:
Proton Mail Payment Info Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous 'Stop Cop City' Protester
Or
FBI Unmasked Anonymous 'Stop Cop City' Protester
via Proton Mail Payment Info
The point is informing the normies that your payment info is linked to your identity and a potential risk to your anonymity.
That clickbaity title makes me want to unsubscribe from their RSS feed.
> then it turns out they may be sharing data with the swiss government who then gives it to the us government.
Literally every legal business complies to law enforcement. They have to.
You can literally mail an envelope of cash to them and they'll credit your account. Probably the best way to remain anonymous. At worst, they'll have the zip code from where it was mailed from and potential fingerprints. But since an envelope isn't really a financial record, I doubt they would hold onto it.
Okay I think I just misunderstood. I guess I was assuming "paying for the service anonymously" meant "paying such that the person using the service is anonymous", not "anonymously paying for the service". Haha. Syntax is fun!
I'd like a service like yours that allows private signups and that works continuously to prove ongoing private operations. I don't need huge data plans, I'm fine with WiFi mostly. It needs to cost way less per month than your current pricing. It would be cool if you could find a way to serve people like me.
Appreciate the feedback, we’ll likely experiment with different plans down the road, but for now we’re focused on rolling out as much additional privacy/security value as we can to justify the premium price point.
I on the other hand am fine with the premium price... but it looks like I'd need to install a proprietary app to use the service. That's a 'hell naw' from me.
Can you please respond with a full throated opinion of what Palantir is today? This seems to be what everyone is thirsting for and what you are perhaps inadvertently dancing around.
I'm 4 years removed from the company at this point, so any opinion I could offer would not be much more than any rando on the internet reacting to news stories.
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