From the article, she showed up to make solid arguments and have a discussion, but:
"There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue."
How familiar are you with city council proceedings? I think we need to know before engaging with you further. It's not useful to argue with free speech absolutists.
Moderately so, and then after this thread started I spent some time checking up on the latest in city council disruptions which helped emphasize that the arrest would hold up in court.
When I asked you how familiar you were with democratic principles, you said:
> Moderately so
You also asked for my credentials and told me that it would be useless to continue speaking to me if I didn't have the experience you expected, which doesn't strike me as a good faith argument.
> Dozens of people showed up to the Springfield City Council Meeting on September 22 with plans to let city leaders know how they felt about the city’s use of automated license plate readers. There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue.
That doesn't make make it permissible to try and use the comments periods on other meetings to talk about Flock. The point remains, she was not removed for simply voicing opposition to Flock cameras. The was arrested and removed for trying to derail an unrelated meeting.
Someone going on the stand to rant about abortion during a meeting on sidewalk codes would similarly get removed.
The person saying your comment is ignorant probably doesn't care about the procedural rules. Instead, it's because you're placing disproportionate emphasis on citizens following meeting rules instead of being concerned that they're denied the ability to speak about policies that directly affect them in a democracy.
> But they're not being denied the ability to speak
From TFA: "There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue."
> Heider can go hold a protest against Flock in public
A protest isn't an equivalent substitute for a forum created for citizens to petition their democratically elected representatives. She and the others were there to discuss a specific policy that was supposed to be discussed at that time, and they were denied at the last minute. The opening salvo was the city council refusing to hear public comments, which many see as the main issue (and not that she broke a procedural rule).
You're entitled to freedom of speech. You're not entitled to an audience. She can petition her elected representatives elsewhere, just not during a public comments session on sidewalk codes.
If the community is frustrated with the city council's decisions on public comments sections they can vote for different city council members.
> She can petition her elected representatives elsewhere
Why would she need to do this outside an official channel that was created specifically for petitioning elected representatives? She shouldn't have to.
> If the community is frustrated with the city council's decisions on public comments sections they can vote for different city council members.
I'm sure they'll be doing that. In the meantime, the city council is voting on an extremely controversial technology which will be paid for, installed, and operated years before a future council can dismantle it.
You keep ignoring the point that this wasn't the channel for this purpose. This was a public comment period for changes to sidewalk codes.
Let's say the council eventually does schedule a comments section to discuss Flock. But then anti-abortion activists flood the meeting and use up all the time ranting about the evils of abortion. They monopolize the meeting so that people who want to criticize Flock don't get the opportunity to do so. Is that a good outcome?
The "channel" I'm referring to is the public comments period for the policy related to Flock, and more broadly the meeting structure and public comments periods created by the city government.
Edit for your edit:
Your hypothetical isn't equivalent. Residents weren't allowed to give comments on the Flock policy. That's the crux of the entire issue; the public comments period was circumvented by the mayor and council.
When was the last time the council held a public comments period on abortion? You seem to operating under the assumption that such a comments period on that topic has taken place recently, but I don't see any evidence of that
Let's assume they have not scheduled any such comments section on that topic. Are the anti abortion activists then justified in flooding the public comments period and depriving people of the opportunity to criticize Flock during that period?
I'm not getting into the weeds on anti-abortion activism. Your hypothetical is not equivalent because the "activists" in this case were not allowed to speak about the policy in question in the first place.
You see order/decorum as the more important issue, and I see the ability to petition government officials as more important. Residents showed up at the date and time that the officials expected them to, in order to discuss a policy during the time allotted for public comments; instead, officials didn't allow residents to speak. The violation of a procedural rule pales in comparison to the violation of the community's trust in their elected officials and the democratic process.
Activists are able to speak about Flock and criticize Flock - just not at public comments meeting on unrelated topics. They can still protest in other public spaces, they can organize anti-Flock marches, there are so, so many other opportunities to speak about the city's policy on Flock. The statement that, "the 'activists' in this case were not allowed to speak about the policy in question in the first place" is just not remotely true. Not unless you meant to narrow down this statement to public comments periods, specifically.
> Your hypothetical is not equivalent because the "activists" in this case were not allowed to speak about the policy in question in the first place.
Unless there has been a recent public comments period on abortion, then yes they are equivalent: neither anti-Flock nor anti-abortion activists have had the opportunity to voice their opinions to the city in a public comments period.
I'm aware that people can protest. However, protests happen when a system breaks down. The system in question here is the official channel (the public comments section during a Flock policy discussion) that was circumvented by elected representatives who found their community's concerns to be inconvenient. When elected representatives refuse to hear their constituency's concerns, it means the system is broken. Most people in this thread are incensed about that, regardless of if Heider broke a procedural rule.
> is just not remotely true. Not unless you meant to narrow down this statement to public comments periods, specifically.
Yes, I mean the official channel that was created specifically for the residents to discuss the policy in question with their elected representatives.
You don't need to take my word for it, here's a sympathetic councilmember:
> Jenson spoke before the vote to push the resolution to a committee. “All I’m trying to do is get people answers to some real questions that they’ve brought to us for months. And it’s a shame that it comes to this sort of, I guess, theater that I’m a part of to try to get those answers,” he said. “This isn’t how government is supposed to run. It’s just disappointing. And we’re not even allowing folks to speak who clearly came out to share their voices tonight.”
You can disapprove of the council's actions all you want - I don't really care about how much esteem or lack thereof you have in the city council. The point I'm making is: Hyder's rights are not being "trampled", as the root comment claims, any more than an anti-abortion activist that might have wanted use this comments period on sidewalk codes to voice their feelings on abortion. What happened to Hyder was completely normal: someone tries to abuse the public comments period to soapbox about an unrelated topic, and that person is removed.
The same logic you're using to justify Hyder's action here would also condone anti-abortion activists hijacking meeting after meeting to voice support their cause. But that's obviously an untenable situation. So, what then? Do you want the city council engage in selective application of procedural rules, and let Hyder and other anti-Flock activists take up time while anti-abortion activists are denied that opportunity? That would be an actual speech issue: time, place, and manner restrictions on speech are permissible but they cannot be selectively applied.
> You can disapprove of the council's actions all you want
I do. Turns out even the council itself disapproves of their own actions.
> Hyder's rights are not being "trampled"
I wasn't claiming that her rights were trampled, I was saying that your original comment was viewed as ignorant by another poster because you're focusing solely on decorum and not the fact that elected representatives were attempting to circumvent inconvenient public comments about a controversial topic. I provided you with that context the poster claimed you ignored, because we're discussing the unmitigated proliferation of mass surveillance and not procedural rules for city council meetings.
Again, your hypothetical is not equivalent because it assumes that the "activists" a. had their own public comments section, and b. they monopolized the entire meeting. Neither of those things happened here.
> Again, your hypothetical is not equivalent because it assumes that the "activists" a. had their own public comments section, and b. they monopolized the entire meeting. Neither of those things happened here.
What do you mean "it assumes that the 'activists' a. had their own public comments section"? In this scenario, neither the anti-flock nor anti-abortion activists appear to have had a public comments section on their respective topics. You're the one assuming that anti-abortion activists did have their own public comments section, which I cannot find any evidence for.
Whether or not they "monopolize" the meeting is just a question of degrees - just assume that the anti-abortion activists dominate the meeting to the same degree as the Flock critics in this scenario.
I'm not going to engage with your hypothetical nor do I think it's incumbent on me to provide you evidence of anything related to it. If you want to ground this in reality, we can go back to discussing the facts of the actual situation which occurred in the article:
> There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue.
Of course you don't want to engage with the hypothetical: it highlights that you selectively condone disregarding the rules and procedures on public comments is based on your support for the person making off-topic comments. Obviously we can't just let anyone make off-topic comments, because then it'll just be a free-for-all of people soapboxing for unrelated topics. But Hyder gets a pass because you agree with her. It's not some principled free speech position, it's just partisanship.
Disregard for procedure and rules sounds fine when it's people you agree with that engage in this behavior. But when you're the one who doesn't get a chance to speak because of people ranting about abortion in the meeting that's supposed to be your opportunity to make your voice heard to the city council I bet your views on procedure will flip 180 degrees!
Nah man, I just think you're trying to straw man this conversation and ignoring the facts of the article, which is coincidentally what someone else said at the beginning of this thread.
The facts of the article is that Hyder made off-topic comments and was removed accordingly. Just like what would happen if someone made anti-abortion comments during this meeting on sidewalk codes.
What I'm ignoring is that apparently we're supposed to see it as an injustice when the government evenly enforces its rules, instead of selectively enforcing them to permit off-topic comments when those comments express the "correct" views.
> The facts of the article is that Hyder made off-topic comments and was removed accordingly.
Once again using a hypothetical and ignoring the context of why she made "off-topic" comments, which is what people are upset about. Should we just keep going in circles? Your turn.
If the city council is frustrated with public comment, that's not an excuse to ignore their constituency. They can perfectly well deliberate sidewalks after respecting her allotted time.
By selectively shielding topics that the public feels strongly about, they are fomenting the conditions for more extreme petitions. This was not a private meeting, arresting her was wrong.
Except allowing people to take up a full two minutes, or however long the allotted time is, discussing unrelated topics deprive people who want to make an on-topic comment of that opportunity.
Let's say the council eventually does schedule a public comment people to discuss Flock. Then anti-abortion activists flood the meeting, and take up all the speaking time ranting about abortion thus preventing anyone from voicing their criticisms of Flock. Is that a good outcome?
Unless there were sidewalk enthusiasts that were being denied their time, I don't see what relevance this comparison has. She was arrested for a legitimate use of her allotment.
No, she was arrested for illegitimate use of her allotment. It doesn't actually matter if there were other people concerned with the sidewalk code, a public comments period is not an opportunity to soapbox about unrelated topics.
If the city doesn't uniformly enforce these restrictions, then when the anti abortion folks try to flood the meeting and get removed they'll complain that they're being selectively targeted.
And? The point remains: freedom of speech is not a guarantee that you'll have an audience. Like it or not, the city council has no obligation to grant an audience to her. That's probably bad for their reelection campaign, though, and like I said she can campaign for a challenger next election.
1. That wasn't her, it was someone else who was arrested
2. These are the "normies":
> Mia Heider had never attended a public meeting before when she showed up to the city council meeting in Springfield, Missouri.
> Dozens of people showed up to the Springfield City Council Meeting on September 22 with plans to let city leaders know how they felt about the city’s use of automated license plate readers. There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue.
According to TFA, the "folks who just want to disrupt the process" seem to be the city council and the mayor, not their constituents who came to give public comments about something that affects them:
> The council was set to vote on Jensons’ proposed review on Monday and hear comments from the community. But when the resolution came up during the meeting, Mayor Schrag immediately pushed to send it to a committee and avoid public comment.
In a democracy, it's generally disruptive to prevent constituents from petitioning for redress of grievances.
Is saying the following (different person said this, but was also arrested) a petition for redress of grievances?
"""“Well, I said: ‘Jeff Schrag is a cuck.’ I said: ‘Fuck you Jeff.’ I said: ‘Worthless’ and then, also, the final thing I said was: ‘Jeff Schrag has a tiny, stinky, cock,’” Powell explained. “I just let myself get handcuffed and let them do whatever power trip they wanted to do. Got my ticket and left.”"""
I like democracy and I want people to have their voice heard but city council meetings are about getting business done, and they don't guarantee that every single person will be able to speak at length about their grievances.
No, insulting a person is not a petition for redress of grievances. To do so, you must actually state a grievance. In this case Powell just wanted to insult the city council.
That's Powell. Heider was also arrested and prevented from petitioning for redress of grievances, going back to my point:
> In a democracy, it's generally disruptive to prevent constituents from petitioning for redress of grievances.
The real "disruption" here is the fact that the council and the mayor refuse to listen to their constituents, not that some of those constituents are angry about it.
Right- if you read the context of our thread, I started talking about Powell.
I think Heider has a much better case, were she to try to sue the city council (which I think is a waste of time if her goal is to prevent Flock cameras), but even then, the laws and cases around people who disrupt city councils are complex, and if the city lost... it would j ust end up costing tax payers more money.
Are you sure the intent of the council was to specifically refuse to listen?
They did try to evacuate. The building was hit while they were doing so:
> Hundreds of students are believed to have been inside the building by the time teachers and administrators received the news that bombs had begun falling on Tehran around 9:40 a.m.
> Teachers and administrators thought it prudent to send the children home. They called parents on landline phones, summoning them for an early pickup, two people told the AP. A recently released report by Airwars, a London-based independent group that tracks recent conflicts, also found that parents were called to pick up their children.
> At 10:15 a.m., Iran’s state media sent out an advisory, closing schools across the country.
Genocide is usually not an efficient way to wage war. Even ancient armies usually did not slaughter entire towns, not because of ethics, but because fighting sucks and if you slaughter everybody you come across, nobody is going to surrender and every person you come across will fight you to the death.
I say usually, because there are some exceptions and nukes are one of them, they make genocide a viable war strategy. But even nuking Vietnam would not have worked, cause you will simply get nuked back.
TFA addresses this. It doesn't matter if it was a "mistake": the US acted recklessly "[amounting] to more than mere negligence," even when warned by their own commanders. Ignorance doesn't excuse crimes.
> The UN mission concluded that the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school constituted an indiscriminate attack causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure, amounting to a war crime under international law.
> According to the report, the US relied on intelligence suggesting a senior Iranian military commander was present at the site but failed to adequately verify the information before launching the strike.
> Investigators said the failure to update targeting intelligence and confirm the building was a military objective amounted to more than mere negligence.
> “Rather, the US directed the strikes at the building of the school while being aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object and acting recklessly as regards the possibility that this would happen.”
That article from March doesn't refute what the UN stated in its report today:
> The UN mission concluded that the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school constituted an indiscriminate attack causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure, amounting to a war crime under international law.
Again, because this was preventable and the US acted recklessly and without regard for civilians ("indiscriminate"), going so far as to ignore the warnings of its own commanders.
Right, your position is defensible. I just think mine is too. I think that "indiscriminate" requires
Unless otherwise provided, a person shall be criminally responsible and liable for punishment for a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court only if the material elements are committed with intent and knowledge.
A mistake of fact shall be a ground for excluding criminal responsibility only if it negates the mental element required by the crime.
... (rome statute on it), meaning that they had to know that civilians were there or that their actions would cause undue risk of civilian deaths. That's more than just "maybe".
It's something worth arguing about, but I dont think it's open-and-shut.
Because the human rights chief has a lifetime of experience and credentials to be able to make these determinations [1], whereas Hegseth and Trump do not. Furthermore, Hegseth has stated repeatedly that the US military should ignore rules of engagement (and has worked to strip legal oversight from the military), which lends credence to the findings of the UN investigation that the US acted recklessly and without regard to civilians in violation of international humanitarian law [2][3].
[2] US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth commented at a news conference on March 2, 2026, about “stupid rules of engagement,” suggesting that they may interfere with “fight[ing] to win.” These remarks are concerning in light of Hegseth’s actions in the past year that have weakened US military posts and mechanisms intended to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war. - https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/03/02/us-defense-secretarys-me...
[3] "We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters." - https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4318...
burden of proof is on one making statement, especially if he is passively-aggressively toxic.
Productive discussion would be if you go read that report before bringing it here, and tell what material evidence they have for that specific incident?
US picked some target through some classified protocol, what evidence states that there was some reckless in process?
We're discussing the article that summarizes the report's findings, but sure.
Please refer to the report [1] and read the following sections (they are too long to paste here):
- II (full section)
- IV.B.1 (full section)
- IV.B.2.88-89
- IV.B.2.95-96
- V.B (full section)
The report itself attributes its sources. If that's not enough, the DoD's own preliminary investigation produced the outdated-targeting finding. Pre-strike imagery of the school is public.
This has to be a troll. You're literally replying in a comment thread where I've already summarized the material findings that you're asking for (it's from the article we're discussing). I then pasted links to the raw text of the report that support the summary but you refuse to read it, asking me again for a summary which I already posted? I've provided everything you've asked for; do you actually have a point or are you just trying to start a flamewar?
That evidence is once again in the report which I linked and the statements of the DoD and Hegseth himself. If you want aerial imagery or the full text of the interviews, you'll have to obtain it yourself because it wasn't included in the advance version of the report.
I have a question for you: how do you know the moon is not made of cheese? What evidence do you have?
those interviews are opinions not evidence, to my knowledge there was no public statements of anyone directly involved into the target selection process in that case
There doesn't need to be an admission of guilt to determine that the US acted in violation of international law. If you'd like to learn more about the methodology, feel free to read the article or the report.
You seem to be confusing everyone's stances (incompetence vs malice). Some people in this thread believe it was incompetence and therefore not a war crime, and others believe it was malicious and therefore a war crime. I personally don't think stupidity is a good legal defense but what do I know.
Law enforcement is using a third party (Flock) to get around constitutional requirements.
A camera pointed at a public street isn't the same constitutional question as LE searching a persistent database to reconstruct someone's movements. The latter falls into fourth amendment search territory.
Jesus, how many times are you just going to parrot the same replies over and over? No, the putting public facing camera video into a database does not make it a search. The case you cited, Chatrie vs. United States, involved the government demanding that Google hand over private cellphone location data on everyone inside of a geofence boundary. The court decided that forcing Google to hand over geolocation data was akin to forcing Google to hand over email contents, which requires a warrant. You're trying to turn around and interpret this to saying that the plain view doctrine doesn't apply to ALPRs, which record public spaces.
This isn't the case of law enforcement using a third party to get around constitutional requirements. The government could set up their own cameras doing exactly what Flock does, and it would still not violate anyone's constitutional requirements. Because people don't have a right to not be recorded in public, no matter how much you want that to be the case.
> Jesus, how many times are you just going to parrot the same replies over and over
The same amount that you do, dude. You're in every single one of these threads, and despite being proven wrong over and over again you keep being "confused" about how people are against this technology. Even in this thread, you keep responding with the same points based on your equivocation of an individual taking a picture in public and a state law enforcement organization aggregating and tracking individuals who haven't committed crimes.
Try reading some SC cases and actually paying attention to the responses you're getting.
And yet you still start yet another thread insisting that a database makes public facing video cameras a privacy violation.
When have I been "proven wrong over and over again"? The court cases you've cited are all about governments demanding private cell phone location information. You're trying to take decisions that amount to, "the police need a warrant to demand private cellphone location data from telecoms" and make the enormous leap to your imaginary decision, "the police cannot record people in public and search those recordings".
Just because the specific ALPR technology was not being litigated doesn't mean that the law doesn't apply to similar technologies. At issue here is the government being able to monitor and track people in public, not that photographs are ok because individuals can take them at will.
> A person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere. To the contrary, “what [one] seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.” Katz, 389 U. S., at 351–352. A majority of this Court has already recognized that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements. Jones, 565 U. S., at 430 (Alito, J., concurring in judgment); id., at 415 (Sotomayor, J., concurring). Prior to the digital age, law enforcement might have pursued a suspect for a brief stretch, but doing so “for any extended period of time was difficult and costly and therefore rarely undertaken.” Id., at 429 (opinion of Alito, J.). For that reason, “society’s expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not—and indeed, in the main, simply could not—secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual’s car for a very long period.” Id., at 430.
Edit for your edit: you haven't refuted anything man, you keep trotting out the same arguments in those linked threads:
- The data includes "private movements" which is why it's unconstitutional (the SC said aggregation of public data can impel privacy concerns)
- An individual or LE can take a photograph of you or your house, therefore collecting photographs from geolocated cameras and tracking you over time is not constitutionally distinct (but it is)
- The specific technology at the center of these cases are not ALPRs, therefore the rulings have no bearing on Flock (despite the fact that courts are not litigating the specific technology, but rather the constitutional principles of their use)
> The data includes "private movements" which is why it's unconstitutional (the SC said aggregation of public data can impel privacy concerns)
But does it? You keep insisting this is the case, but your attempts to back up this claim are cases with totally different scenarios. Namely demanding that telecoms hand over location information.
> - An individual or LE can take a photograph of you or your house, therefore collecting photographs from geolocated cameras and tracking you over time is not constitutionally distinct (but it is)
The point is to emphasize that the information collected by Flock is in plain view. The plain view doctrine is well established. The police don't need a warrant to observe publicly visible things.
> The specific technology at the center of these cases are not ALPRs, therefore the rulings have no bearing on Flock (despite the fact that courts are not litigating the specific technology, but rather the constitutional principles of their use)
The cases you've cited all involved private information being obtained without a warrant. You can't just ignore the fact that a GPS tracker or cell phone location information also reveals private movements, as opposed to public facing camera which only record public activity.
Again, you keep citing decisions without bothering to understand the context behind the. For instance,
"To the contrary, “what [one] seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.” Katz, 389 U. S., at 351–352. A majority of this Court has already recognized that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements. Jones, 565 U. S., at 430 (Alito, J., concurring in judgment);"
This is about the police planting a GPS tracker on someone's car - that's that "Jones" is referring to here. That case involved the police tracking someone in public and in private.
You're confusing the technology used in Jones with the principle Carpenter cited it for: a person can have a 4A privacy interest in the whole of their physical movements, including movements in public.
And for the second time, you're trying to dodge the distinguishing factor between Jones and Flock. The former tracked movements in public and in private. The latter, only in public. That, and the Jones case involved the police accessing someone's vehicle without a warrant.
You seem to be under the impression that the opinion of the court in the Jones was that everyone's public movements are private and the police need a warrant to track your public movements through and any all means. But that was not the decision of the court. The police and still just follow you, Jones notwithstanding.
You can desire your public movements to be protected by the Fourth amendment all you want, but that does not make it so.
I'm not claiming Jones held that cops need a warrant to visually follow someone on a public street. The point you're avoiding is that Carpenter expressly cited Jones for the proposition that people have a fourth amendment interest in the "whole of" their physical movements, and distinguished ordinary observation from technologically enabled, comprehensive tracking. Just because the camera is in public doesn't make it permissible.
And maybe it wasn't the decision in Jones, but Carpenter specifically cites Alito's concurrence for the proposition that a person has a 4A privacy interest in aggregation of movement data and describes GPS tracking in Jones as raising those privacy concerns.
As I've repeatedly explained, the Carpenter decision was narrowly scoped to cell phone location data. The decision did not do anything to restrict other forms of monitoring. The idea that Carpenter restricts governments' ability to video record public spaces is entirely your own invention.
From the article, she showed up to make solid arguments and have a discussion, but:
"There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue."
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