Evanston Orders Flock to Remove Reinstalled Cameras

In my county, multiple law enforcement agencies are not on Flock's transparency portal, despite posting fairly regularly on FB about "responding to a Flock hit on a vehicle".

https://www.404media.co/tag/flock/

Their response of putting 10 ALPRs in each store's parking lot and locking up everything seems rational based upon what I've seen. There's something about stealing Milwaukee tools that gets certain groups of people very excited. They even have some tool manufacturers designing activation at checkout mechanisms to discourage theft.

I have a hard time believing this stuff is making them any money or is a secret government arrangement. It seems purely about loss prevention in the case of HD. They have been an easy target up until recently.

Home Depot seems like the one compelling win I've seen so far regarding these cameras. You'd have to be pretty crazy to try and steal tools these days. The speed with which law enforcement can react to these signals is incredible. I don't necessarily like the implications for other things but it does make shopping in certain retail environments feel much safer.

So, cameras in the HD and Apple Store parking lots seem acceptable to me based upon the risk these businesses endure. Cameras in public I don't like, but without them the ones in private wouldn't be able to accomplish as much (I.e., interception of felony retail theft suspects while they still have all of the evidence on them).

Check your assumptions, the Bay Area and LA are littered with them. They're in Berkeley for fucks sake.

>The answer is going to be "the snooty inner ring suburbs and wealthy rural-ish commuter communities that already had overstaffed PDs harassing teenagers"

TFA is about Evanston, IL[0] which is in Cook County[1] and abuts the city of Chicago.

It is relatively wealthy, but is certainly not a "rural-ish commuter community," in fact it's not suburban either.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evanston%2C_Illinois

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_County%2C_Illinois

This sounds like some sort of legal procedures adopted from the USSR.

The keep saying this and losing in court. I don’t have much respect left for these bootlickers who won’t fight.

The next administration could decide to side with localities, and assist prosecutions of the companies and executives involved. Or even pursue their own federal prosecutions.

I can't seem to access the audit in question [1] and there are connected articles that seem to also be talking about forest park police using camera readers. Whatever the case, there seems to be reasonable doubt in the trust in Flock Safety. I don't understand how an illegal termination of contract would result in anything other than Evanston having to pay out the remaining fees and maybe a cancellation fee.

[0] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/28/flock-challenges-c...

[1] https://www.ilsos.gov/news/2025/august-25-2025-giannoulias-a...

At the moment, this doesn't exist either. Particularly on the low end of offenses, selective enforcement and racial profiling run rampant, and not just in the US.

Any decent developed society takes laws that have gone outdated off the books entirely - the exceptions are the US and the UK, about the only nations in the world that didn't have at least one revolution, war, putsch or peaceful regime change that was used to reboot the entire legal system from scratch and incorporate decades if not centuries of progress.

You're wrong in a number of ways, and to me it reads like an unintentionally shallow take, built up more from cliches over deeper understanding. But it's still well above average or engagement and insight of the average HN comment, thank you for writing it.

> First of all, I think that this instinct to fine-'em, screw-'em, etc. is profoundly authoritarian.

It's not authoritarian, simply because when it's the citizens angry about some group acting against their interests, who've elected to ignore a reasonable and lawful order from the operations group of their elected officials. It might be dangerous, or needlessly hostile, or the result of toxic rage. But it's not authoritarian.

> Secondly, in this case, this is an act of the executive branch. Specifically it is an executive branch attempting to terminate a contract with the company. It is not a company attempting to spy on private citizens by installing cameras against the law. It is a company attempting not to be ousted out of a contract with the government.

Except, that's exactly what they are doing. Flock is a privatized spy agency, who's been told by a city and it's population to "go away" They did, but then without explaining their actions, they reinstalled spy equipment. If it was as simple as not wanting to be ousted from a contract, there's contract law. They can collect the full amount, plus any damages without reinstalling the spy equipment they were already caught using to violate state law. Given they've already proven they're willing to violate state law, what would you say the operations branch *should* do? Roll over and say, you got us, keep spying on our citizens against their interests!

> "The law", in spite of what cop movies might have you believe, is not the executive branch, but the legislature. And private citizens and private corporations are simply not required to follow the orders of the executive, unless the executive has a piece of paper signed off by the legislature which states that the executive has a right to issue the order.

This is technically true as in accurate, but it's not applicable to this story. This private company had a contract with the city, they violated the law to the detriment of the people while exercising the benefits provided by that contract. That's reason enough for the city to terminate the contract and demand the other side to comply and relinquish the previously granted contract benefits.

While originally they seemed to be complying, but then reversed course and caused more damage to the city. This is clearly (to me) bad faith behavior, and deserving of additional punishment, the other comments you are chastising, with takes that are charitably described as shallow, are only enumerating common punishments they they feel would compell pro-social behavior from CEOs and companies. Two groups that have proven to be very resistant to acting in a pro-social way.

> Not at all. If they are wrong, they will be punished for not following the orders, including every extra day that the cameras stay up. But if they are right, they cannot be made to follow an illegal order, at any point.

You're simply wrong here. The only loss this company can show, is the contractual payments. The invasion of privacy and loss of safety felt by the citizens can't be cured by more money as easily as the losses the private spying company might incure. Thus while waiting for the court judgment, the company should be the party to bear the restraint.

Additionally they can't violate state laws to make money. Which they did and are still doing. Their agreement with the federal government I assume is contract and payment based, and they weren't served with a warrant to reinstall the cameras.

> Not at all. They can get, either as part of the trail, or outside of it, a court order, to get those cameras down. Not following a court order is actually something that can get you arrested, etc. and I doubt any business would risk that. But that means the judge must decide that it is in the community's best interest for those cameras to be down, instead of up, during the trail proceedings. And he may not decide that. He may decide the opposite, or that it doesn't matter.

The operations side of the government can also ask and make demands. And if Flock cared about their public image they would comply eagerly. If they cared about protecting what the citizens wanted, they would comply eagerly. If they didn't want to be the bad guys in the story, they would comply eagerly. Contacts can be amended through the agreements of both sides. Flock might have had a chance to pretend they were acting in good faith, but reinstalling the spy cameras they removed without a clear public explanation absolved them of any good faith.

> Again, the system being fair and working as intended. Not the executive doing whatever it wants.

The system was built to serve the needs and desires of the people who live within the government and society. No matter what you or Flock feel like contract law should let them get away with, is irrelevant to if the system is working correctly. Flock is acting outside the interest of the society they're spying on. Rules lawyering doesn't mean that the system is working.

This is better than corporate death penalties but still more complicated than fines. Massive fines are the answer.

> Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke

So do fines and bankruptcy. CEO won’t go to jail, but they’ll spend the rest of their lives fighting shareholder lawsuits. Feed them to the wolves.

One is breaking the law to punish someone that the law failed to, the other is breaking the law to avoid punishment.

The CEO caused vast death and suffering with the policies he enacted in the name of profit, yet the law didn't touch him. Enforcing what the people think should be enforced isn't the same as enforcing what the people think shouldn't be enforced (mass surveillance). It is, in fact, the opposite.

There are also fans of Charles Manson, that doesn't mean we should automatically excuse any bad behavior that falls short of his.

Way to make me feel like an outcast.

The system needs to be way more even when it comes to dealing with individuals and companies of every size possible.

Feudalism is not a good goverment system to produce wealth nor well-being. It is very good at concentrating the diminishing wealth in a few hands, thou.

Appreciate any other insider details you have to share.

Unfortunately, in addition to being dangerous to others, this approach pretty much always comes with increased exposure to prosecution and increased penalties.

The optimal approach seems to be vandalism - spray painting over the front of the cameras, placing other objects to block their view, or permanently blinding them with lasers. All of these things are still illegal and would likely subject you to the legal system, but they at least require on-site intervention to remedy and keep the actor out of prison (but maybe not jail).

The least risky approach I've found is also the least effective - they're often on public property, so place _yourself_ in front of them. It takes them out of commission for a while and should be legal. Coordinated action would likely get the attention of Flock, law enforcement, and the media. Unfortunately, even that could be construed as "interfering with law enforcement operations" or similar, and/or conspiracy if you're organizing or participating in mass resistance.

If the federal government decides they want to step in on Flock's behalf, they could put you under the jail. :\

However, if Flock was really being evil, they could argue in court they are losing on the value of spying on the American populace.