The article is very one sided, implying without evidence that Flock is for recreational tracking of individuals. With San Francisco SFPD’s ALPR cameras at least, this would be an abuse of the cameras according to the policy linked from https://transparency.flocksafety.com/san-francisco-ca-pd. Here are the Authorized purposes:
Locate stolen, wanted, and or other vehicles that are the subject of investigation
To apprehend wanted persons subject to arrest warrants or who are otherwise lawfully sought by law enforcement.
To locate victims, witnesses, suspects, missing children, adults, and/or elderly individuals, including in response to Amber Alerts and Silver Alerts and others associated with a law enforcement investigation.
To assist with criminal investigations initiated by local, state and regional public safety departments by identifying
vehicles associated with targets of criminal investigations.
Counter-terrorism: Identify potential threats to critical infrastructure sites.
For other law enforcement purposes as authorized by law: Investigations of major crimes.
Which of these uses do people not like? Or which other policies are people concerned with in other jurisdictions?
The Dunwoody MJCC monitoring seems the worst incident in that Flock never issued a postmortem on how the terms of the sharing were violated.
Abuses in violation of policy are a problem like in any organization that can be reduced through auditing, discipline, etc. And it seems that the ones that have been caught (Jarmarus Brown of Orange City, FL; Asad Zahir of Shively, KY; Emily Pacheco of New Bedford, MA) have been disciplined and/or charged.
Insufficient security of devices is a problem but does not have to do with my comment about the intended uses.
Officers have to be trained about OCR errors, just like we have to know when to trust an LLM. The SFPD policy I linked says officers shall “Visually verify the alphanumeric characters on the plate” before stopping a car identified by ALPR. And like LLM hallucinations OCR errors will go down over time.
The unwarranted mass surveillance and dragnet part. We have a thing called the fourth Constitutional amendment here in the United States. We also have the first amendment, which the Supreme Court has ruled in the past must not be subject to a "chilling effect".
The Flock camera system, and any dragnet surveillance system, is a direct chilling effect to the rights to freedom of speech, freedom from religious persecution and freedom of assembly.
The inalienable aspect of these rights means that literally no example or rationalization you can provide would justify impacting those rights for even a single individual or group.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I have dealt with multiple incidents of police harassment and gross misconduct and I don't trust them with my location data any more than I do a national camera network that pervades neighborhoods and intimate spaces.
161 people in LA were stopped for bad data using flock cameras. The contract with them is canceled but the damn things are still up giving data to DHS probably.
Comments
The article is very one sided, implying without evidence that Flock is for recreational tracking of individuals. With San Francisco SFPD’s ALPR cameras at least, this would be an abuse of the cameras according to the policy linked from https://transparency.flocksafety.com/san-francisco-ca-pd. Here are the Authorized purposes:
Locate stolen, wanted, and or other vehicles that are the subject of investigation
To apprehend wanted persons subject to arrest warrants or who are otherwise lawfully sought by law enforcement.
To locate victims, witnesses, suspects, missing children, adults, and/or elderly individuals, including in response to Amber Alerts and Silver Alerts and others associated with a law enforcement investigation.
To assist with criminal investigations initiated by local, state and regional public safety departments by identifying vehicles associated with targets of criminal investigations.
Counter-terrorism: Identify potential threats to critical infrastructure sites.
For other law enforcement purposes as authorized by law: Investigations of major crimes.
Which of these uses do people not like? Or which other policies are people concerned with in other jurisdictions?
Not on the list, but documented:
* Live monitoring of teenagers in gyms for sales purposes,
* Multiple counts of stalking by LEOs,
* Instances of unsecured access,
* Multiple erroneous plate matching directly leading to "swatting" of women and children on day to day shopping trips.
The Dunwoody MJCC monitoring seems the worst incident in that Flock never issued a postmortem on how the terms of the sharing were violated.
Abuses in violation of policy are a problem like in any organization that can be reduced through auditing, discipline, etc. And it seems that the ones that have been caught (Jarmarus Brown of Orange City, FL; Asad Zahir of Shively, KY; Emily Pacheco of New Bedford, MA) have been disciplined and/or charged.
Insufficient security of devices is a problem but does not have to do with my comment about the intended uses.
Officers have to be trained about OCR errors, just like we have to know when to trust an LLM. The SFPD policy I linked says officers shall “Visually verify the alphanumeric characters on the plate” before stopping a car identified by ALPR. And like LLM hallucinations OCR errors will go down over time.
The unwarranted mass surveillance and dragnet part. We have a thing called the fourth Constitutional amendment here in the United States. We also have the first amendment, which the Supreme Court has ruled in the past must not be subject to a "chilling effect".
The Flock camera system, and any dragnet surveillance system, is a direct chilling effect to the rights to freedom of speech, freedom from religious persecution and freedom of assembly.
The inalienable aspect of these rights means that literally no example or rationalization you can provide would justify impacting those rights for even a single individual or group.
You carry a phone with you broadcasting constantly. Not sure why police just don’t buy your location data from data brokers. Maybe they do…
Two wrongs don't make a right. I have dealt with multiple incidents of police harassment and gross misconduct and I don't trust them with my location data any more than I do a national camera network that pervades neighborhoods and intimate spaces.
Cast off your demoralization and join the resistance.
You know them personally?
I can't speak for them but I, for one, don't.
You don’t carry a phone with you?
I aim to get there some day…
161 people in LA were stopped for bad data using flock cameras. The contract with them is canceled but the damn things are still up giving data to DHS probably.
Of course it is. If we want a Flock press release we can just read one.
Plenty of things have lots of great upsides, and it’s the downsides that stop wider adoption and cause regulation and limits.