YouTuber Says Cops Visited Him After He Built a Flock-Style Camera to Track Cops
gizmodo.com
[98 comments hidden]
I think the best solution is to just say nobody can do this, including the government. Or that if we allow things like Flock to exist, then we'd need actual legislation that tightens considerably how available the data is to be searched, and what approvals are necessary to access it.
The obvious next step, otherwise, is for someone to start OpenALPRMap and we all get to suffer together.
[2 comments hidden]
When the people turn it around and sniff on cops, why is that then any different suddenly?
> we'd need actual legislation
Can the people do legislation? It's always some judges and politicians who form a clique at the end of the day.
[33 comments hidden]
Isn't Flock's alleged legality predicated on the principle that there is no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in public? I don't see why that would change depending on whether it's "Joe Average" or a police officer at the controls---IIUC I'm allowed to capture images, video, etc. of people in public just as much as cops are.
Agreed that these systems simply need to be banned.
[4 comments hidden]
[4 comments hidden]
[3 comments hidden]
[2 comments hidden]
Some of the cases involve sexual assault and kidnapping as well.
And obviously those are just the ones who got caught.
[6 comments hidden]
[3 comments hidden]
[hidden]
Guns are legal but murder is not, so ... yes?
It makes sense to me that recording public activity may be legal but publishing those videos would not be (for example name-and-likeness copyrights).
Or that you'd need a warrant to search those videos and issuing a warrant comes with a one-time key that decrypts the search parameters you specified in advance to get the warrant.
[10 comments hidden]
If you attach a GPS to your wife's car without her knowledge, you can (and should) be prosecuted. Flock cameras collect the same data (rough location of a vehicle) and they just do it for every single vehicle passing their sensor. Then, through analysis of that massive dataset, you can now effectively stalk anyone, in the past, for the cost of a database search.
And I have no interest in the distinction between Joe Average and LEOs. That's about 6 months of training, and we have an absolute avalanche of evidence of how LEOs are:
* Prone to unnecessary violence (google 40% cops)
* Are ALREADY abusing this system to stalk wives, girlfriends, exes of the two formers, or just people when they're fucking bored
The clear solution is to ban it, but our Government has both a financial and power stake in keeping people surveilled, which is why I'm a huge fan of how many people are just destroying these things at scale.
[2 comments hidden]
[4 comments hidden]
[hidden]
Why does that matter? If your car is in public, do you not have any right to it's privacy either?
> and can track a person to non-public locations.
... what does that even mean? All locations are public, because by definition, locations only exist in public. What location have you been to that permits no one to see you arrive and later leave?
> Also, collecting data does not restrict one’s freedom of moment.
I mean, if that data can be used to imprison you, I think it's just matters of gradation whether you consider that true or false.
> Nor is it stalking. Stalking is a pattern of conduct designed to intimidate or inflict emotional distress.
But it clearly is. It's both a way to dragnet the public from doing illicit things, and it's deployed with a common selling point of reducing crime. You can say that instilling emotional distress in criminals is good but that also means you're doing that to at least some amount of the public.
> If knowing that someone else knows you were at a particular location at a particular time causes you distress, you have issues.
I do have issues! I have issues with my country being turned into a surveillance state because dipshits already worth more money than I will ever see in my lifetime need even more money. Yes I have issues with that.
> Do you flee from every other car that sees on the road?
As a woman, I've several times in my life had the experience of being followed by a car and not going my usual direct route home for fear of my safety. So not every car certainly, but if one was, I dunno, following close enough to get my license plate? Yeah I probably would try and "flee" that car.
[3 comments hidden]
This simply isn't a reasonable position to hold. Either we maintain a restricted class of people with authority that exceeds the authority of regular people, or everyone in society has the same level of authority (be that the level of police now, the level of regular people now, or somewhere in between). But the latter scenario is obviously worse, even taking into account occasional abuses by those in the restricted class.
You might as easily say that the only difference between Joe Average and a surgeon is X years of medical school.
[7 comments hidden]
[6 comments hidden]
[2 comments hidden]
[hidden]
[hidden]
The intent of Flock in the US at least was just to use technology to get around the 4th amendment.
The police shouldn't be allowed to use automated tools like this without a warrant.
[6 comments hidden]
I feel that's like saying there's "nuance" when the police choose to pull someone over because--unlike the other car--they didn't have a "I Donated To Cops" license plate.
Yes, it's technically a difference, but if it matters then the police are abusing their power to play favorites.
[5 comments hidden]
> I feel that's like saying there's "nuance" when the police choose to pull someone over because--unlike the other car--they didn't have a "I Donated To Cops" license plate.
[hidden]
I do agree that we just shouldn't have this kind of mass-surveillance in general, and I think that's kind of the point of this particular endeavor.
[2 comments hidden]
I'd rather see surveillance first pointed towards government leaders, and then once the government is highly surveilled, then maybe we can trust the government to surveil everyone else.
I don't know. My idea here isn't very realistic. It's not going to happen (though we should still try), so maybe just outlawing all of it would be more realistic.
[hidden]
People have no principals and no stomach for giving up a little bit of state jackboot applied on those they hate exchange for it not being applied on those they don't.
[hidden]
[18 comments hidden]
Likewise, the fourth amendement doesn't forbid a police officer from recording someone in public, because there's no expectation of privacy when out in public.
The courts have found that legally, one officer recording one person is no different from a large-scale, automated surveillance system recording everyone.
Well, that argument goes both ways. If the scale and automation don't make a difference, they don't make a difference.
[8 comments hidden]
Canada's rights are in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and they aren't absolute.
Part 1, Section 1.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Subject to that, we get Section 2.
Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.
[7 comments hidden]
If they're not absolute, they're not rights. It's a feel-good document that protects jack shit.
[4 comments hidden]
[3 comments hidden]
[2 comments hidden]
My point revolves around the unlimitedness of the other right that is being used to override the first right in question. A large part of that "insane leeway" is exactly due to the corpos' rights being taken as unlimited/absolute - note how the argument in Pruneyard was trying to use property rights to override free speech rights.
But sure, rather than tweaking the conception of rights, we could instead target reform at reigning in the "rights" of corpos - they are merely whole-cloth creations of government, after all. But I suspect we'd still hit corner cases with sufficient power imbalances between individuals (say a small-time landlord and their tenant, with the landlord attempting to curtail the tenant's speech).
[hidden]
At least with American system, they actually have to come up with an opposing right that's in conflict with the one they're limiting. In Canada, any right can be limited even without any conflicts.
[hidden]
Say one country has this type of "feel-good document," but it's consistently interpreted by powerful courts as a strong protection, and the government generally leaves people alone due to democratic norms. Another country has a strict and absolute constitution, but courts in practice don't interpret it as such, or people are more frequently harassed when criticising the government. Where would you feel more comfortable speaking your mind, and which document is more useful for protecting freedoms?
I'm not making a specific claim about any real countries, though I would say that freedoms are not strictly worse-protected in Canada than in the US. I'm only stating that a law or other document in and of itself can't protect anything - government and society need to respect it.
Democracy is about more than just elections, and freedom is about more than just laws.
[6 comments hidden]
Isn't this effectively outsourcing body cams? The frequent stated reason for lack of which is "we would but our department can't afford it :'( anyway check out this new armored vehicle we bought!"
"Tracking" on duty cops doesn't seem unusual, though I think a different argument could be made for their off duty time.
* Edit: this is Canada, so my feelings likely don't apply to their laws.
[4 comments hidden]
I think its equivalent to putting a tracker in everyone's car and giving the police access to it.
Surveillance is also firmly in pre-crime territory. People being stalked when they haven't (yet) done a crime.
[2 comments hidden]
[hidden]
I don't know why that decision, explicitly founded on "making warrantless surveillance too easy violates the intent of warrants" is being used as toilet paper.
[hidden]
I have only skimmed the paper myself, so if it contains any mistakes I'm likely to have missed them. But his argument seems good to me.
[hidden]
That is not the case. It hasn't been truly tested, and there are very strong hints in SCOTUS's previous opinions that scale dramatically changes the equation for them.
Of course SCOTUS is currently much more amenable to the idea of changing their mind, so who knows how it'd actually hit, but it's far from decided law in the US.
For one example, Sotomayer's concurrence in US v. Jones (2012)
> Awareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms. And the Government’s unrestrained power to assemble data that reveal private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse. The net result is that GPS monitoring—by making available at a relatively low cost such a substantial quantum of intimate information about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to track—may “alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.” United States v. Cuevas-Perez, 640 F. 3d 272, 285 (CA7 2011) (Flaum, J., concurring).
> I would take these attributes of GPS monitoring into account when considering the existence of a reasonable societal expectation of privacy in the sum of one’s public movements. I would ask whether people reasonably expect that their movements will be recorded and aggregated in a manner that enables the Government to ascertain, more or less at will, their political and religious beliefs, sexual habits, and so on. I do not regard as dispositive the fact that the Government might obtain the fruits of GPS monitoring through lawful conventional surveillance techniques. See Kyllo, 533 U. S., at 35, n. 2; ante, at 11 (leaving open the possibility that duplicating traditional surveillance “through electronic means, without an accompanying trespass, is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy”). I would also consider the appropriateness of entrusting to the Executive, in the absence of any oversight from a coordinate branch, a tool so amenable to misuse, especially in light of the Fourth Amendment’s goal to curb arbitrary exercises of police power to and prevent “a too permeating police surveillance,” United States v. Di Re, 332 U. S. 581, 595 (1948).*
[hidden]
If you're talking about US courts, then no. If they had, then we wouldn't see -for example- SCOTUS ruling that "geofence warrants" were searches that require Fourth Amendment analysis, rather than being equivalent to picking up a recording of events that happened in plain sight. We also wouldn't see at least one Federal judge openly noting that the judges that cite US vs. Knotts really need to read the entire opinion, rather than just the bit that agrees with what is convenient for them.
US v. Knotts is the forty-year-old case that is the source of the "You've no right to privacy when you're on public roads" idea that both people and judges have been parroting for quite a while now. In addition to establishing that principle, it also considered a possible future where the electronic surveillance that -at the time-
* had to be manually installed into cargo destined for the target's vehicle
* was only capable of tracking a single target vehicle
would become sufficiently advanced as to permit 24/7 dragnet surveillance... at which time, courts would need to reconsider what was just and right in light of such dreadfully advanced mass surveillance capabilities.
Pages 28 (starting at section C.) through 38 of this judge's opinion and order [0] are good reading... it can be hard to tell, but the judge really takes other judges who rely on Knotts but clearly haven't actually read it to task. If you have a half hour free, you should really read the whole thing.
[0] <https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.oknd.76...>
[hidden]
You have to assume it’s not just used by sworn law enforcement officers, especially when Flock’s own civilian employees have abused it.
[hidden]
It's safer to give your info to average joe population than cops.
I would feel better if only cops didn't have access to see me on flock cameras and cops had to request footage through a public reddit or something.
This is all a bit of a joke sure, but less than police access to flock cams is.
[2 comments hidden]
Then why can Lowes and Home Depot buy their own units, place them across properties that aren't theirs and search them nationwide?
[hidden]
Filming cops in public is a legitimate activity protected by the Constitution, according to the Supreme Court. Using a nationwide surveillance network to track people not suspected of any crime and without a warrant is not.
[4 comments hidden]
However, they are simply commissioned by law enforcement and law enforcement are just one of any number of customers. There is either an expectation of privacy or there isn't. This case highlights this exactly.
[hidden]
We should be able to subpoena the GPS records of the car’s location as well - or potentially FOIA that information. Sunlight is good. The opposite should only be done by going through a metric ton of hoops. Otherwise you end up… where we are now.
[hidden]
Let’s pretend that police will only use the footage for good. No one else has access? That seems unlikely.
The IT department? Flock employees? Contractors? Managers?
[hidden]
[hidden]
[hidden]
> I can see some nuance to this one. Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average. Tracking cops and then publishing that information is not exactly the same as turning Flock back on the Flockers.
[hidden]
[hidden]
[3 comments hidden]
Oh - this had me in stitches.
Juxtaposing "law enforcement" and "Joe Average" in that way is entertaining for Australians, as "Joe Average" is literally one of the entry requirements for law enforcement.
From https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/recruitment/application_proces... :
"Academic Eligibility Year 12 HSC (minimum ATAR 50 or equivalent)"
"ATAR 50" is Australian for "of your high school cohort, half of them did better than you."
[2 comments hidden]
[hidden]
> Applicants must meet minimum academic eligibility and satisfy English language proficiency requirements for entry into the ADAP program. Academic Eligibility
Year 12 HSC (minimum ATAR 50 or equivalent); or other equivalent qualifications such as:
AQF Certificate III
Certificate IV
Diploma
Advanced Diploma
Bachelor or higher degree
vocational experience
bridging/preparatory courses (UPPAP)
para-professional, and
other post-secondary qualifications[hidden]
[hidden]
[hidden]
Joe Average would be charged by Flock per search, and could only afford to stalk his ex wife a couple of times via Flock, because it would get expensive soon.
Police officers can stalk their exes over 2000 times: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/26/us/flock-kentucky-police-...
[hidden]
[2 comments hidden]
[hidden]
Think this through, please. Municipal police work is not "national security" level, but it still requires discretion. Leaking activity information to adversaries on the ground would be detrimental to their operations. At the very least, police run into emergencies, intimate partner issues, lots of violence, and generally see all the bad stuff. If someone like me were looking over their shoulder, that would be profoundly unjust to victims and a betrayal of public trust in the discretion and privacy that police offer to us on a regular basis. I have no reason. You've got no reason. Nearly nobody has any reason, except champing at the bit to catch them out at some transgression, so they can post it to social media and foment outrage and rebellion.
I don't want to see through their eyes nor hear through their ears. I believe that this propensity to DV and other crime is precisely because cops and their families are legitimately, profoundly, traumatized by the hazards of vocation, and when everyone's mental health is fragile, who's going to bear the brunt of the trauma, and how are they going to cope with that in a reasonable, even superhuman fashion?
It is not an uncommon tactic to lure or bait police (and/or Fire, EMT, Paramedics) into traps or mere distractions, so that some organized group can carry out something much worse without the heat breathing down their necks. Now all the local gangs are "tracking cops" and they know how effective those moves are. They all have heads-up just before the cops arrive to bust them. This is how you want to "track cops" constantly? Why have protest groups become so small and far-flung in recent years? Why aren't they turning up en masse in a single location to march and picket? Because a distributed protest also distributes first-responders, and dilutes response times and strengths. And "tracking the cops" becomes easier.
They are mostly not secret agents. They are not slipping through the streets under cloaks of invisibility or cones of silence. Even unmarked cars are fairly noticeable if you're experienced. The insignia, the lights and sirens, the uniforms are meant to get noticed and stand out. But are you going to "track cops" right into their precinct offices and cars? Their radio channels and comms were not always encrypted or private, but eventually they had the tech, and they had it up-to-here with all the prying ears and busybodies trying to second-guess them.
Police just sitting in their squad car looking at a computer display is not for public consumption. Police inventory of weapons and ammunition, and tallying of shots fired, and who fired them when: that is not public information. Police offering a towel or a garment to a nude woman who's just been raped: why do you want to "track cops", again?
[hidden]
[hidden]
Start a company that does ALPR and facial recognition, but narrowly targeting politicians.
[hidden]
If cops may neither too smart (legally [1]) nor too dumb hopefully (they presumably dress themselves) then who exactly is left but Joe average?
[1] https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story...
[21 comments hidden]
[5 comments hidden]
>> tracking locations of flock cameras (https://deflock.org/)
>> destroying/removing them (https://flockstats.org/)
>> litigating their use (https://www.aclu.org/campaigns-initiatives/get-the-flock-out)
What specific response from the general public would you like that it's arguably already happening?
[hidden]
Destroying 450 out of 130,000, ie 0.3%, is not sufficient to resist the imposition of a surveillance state. Americans pretty clearly do not care for freedom as much as they yap about.
[hidden]
Yes you missed something big. A little too excited to get in the America dig, didn’t even bother reading the article to realize it happened in Canada.
[5 comments hidden]
(For what it's worth I haven't read ~half of the books on my shelf. "Simulacra and Simulation" is mocking me from across the room)
[hidden]
[4 comments hidden]
It was a beautiful thing.
The state ordered the cameras removed but they left the posts, someone stuck a flag inside the old post.
[3 comments hidden]
[hidden]
[2 comments hidden]
[hidden]
> “a personal Flock surveillance camera to Flock the Flockers.”
Take this to the extreme limit: Thousands of volunteers put anti-Flock cameras on their property and their vehicles. Real time data on police cars is uploaded to the cloud. You can virtually track any cruiser on a Google Maps-like app. Next, high resolution photos are snapped of the drivers and try to ID the officer from public photos published by the very same police department. Again: As real time as possible. For full reverse police state effect: Monitor police radios using LLMs. All police stops/action immediately triggers a drone flight with 4K video of the scene. Auto request body cam footage from the stop using FOIA data requests. This would be terrifying for the police and potentially perfectly legal in the US.
[hidden]
> Balance of power. Not only can the cops watch you - you can watch them.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995885
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995811
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995932
[2] As did many others, of course.
[hidden]
[3 comments hidden]
[6 comments hidden]
[4 comments hidden]
Flock, at the core, isn't a public entity. They aren't a government. So they're a private entity, just like an individual, tracking who they want, when they want.
This person is doing the exact same thing as Flock, and suddenly it is a problem? Seems like a double-standard.
[2 comments hidden]
[2 comments hidden]
[2 comments hidden]
[8 comments hidden]
[5 comments hidden]
[2 comments hidden]
Morbid thought: what if there was a company that sold cameras that people could attach inside their windshield that uploaded license plates and their location as they drove around, and if you participated in uploading, you get access to the database to look up license plates?
[3 comments hidden]
>The St. Charles County Police Department said the incident began when a car was stolen in Kirkwood at around 7:30 a.m. Cpl. Barry Bayles with St. Charles County police, said a license plate reader in the county identified the car at around 9:50, and a second reader spotted it at around 9:30.
https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/crime/6-minors-arrested-ca...
[hidden]
This is why you have to codify in law accountability and oversight.
[hidden]
[hidden]
[6 comments hidden]
[hidden]
In a functioning state, anyway.
So yeah, of course rules are different for normal people compared with people that have a special role as assigned by the democratically legitimized system.
[4 comments hidden]
I'm not saying flock is good or anything like that, but arguing against it because the public can't do what the police can isn't a good argument.
[3 comments hidden]
[2 comments hidden]
[hidden]
Tldr: Don't talk to the police. Another reminder - familiarize yourself with your 4th, 5th and 6th amendment rights and remember to invoke them audibly (for an example of the risk of failing to do so - see Salinas v. Texas [1]) and then shut your mouth. When possible, record every interaction. Cops will lie. Do not argue or be belligerent. Invoke your rights, record, comply with any legal orders, and never physically resist. But do not agree to talk or consent to doing so. A cop on the street is neither judge nor jury. Do not surrender your rights under the pretense of a "voluntary" or "consensual" visit.
Nothing can be more patriotic in a country that fought off a King and passed the Bill of Rights than telling an armed agent of the state without a warrant who "just wants to talk" to get off your property.
[hidden]
[2 comments hidden]
Build plugins for common doorbell or surveillance systems consumers use - Ring, Ubiquiti, Frigate, whatever - and have it look for official vehicles (cops, diplomat plates, government plates, etc). When detected, publish the data to an open database searchable by the general public that includes location, time, date, direction of travel, make, model, and occupants of vehicle.
After all, if this data is really not protected by privacy laws as the cops/Flock/Axon/etc claim, then obviously it’s in our best interest to keep such a database ourselves to track those who track us. We may not have the right of way or easements or budgets to build out a network like these corporate spooks, but an open community database could cover a wide swath pretty quickly.
Surely someone out there has the time and expertise willing to take the heat for such a project.
[hidden]
https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/physical-security-nvr/pr...
https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/uvc-ai-lpr
https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360058867233-UniFi-Pro...
[2 comments hidden]
[hidden]
A city member coming to your house to ask you about your intentions for something is different from you going to city council meeting. Police, city official, elected officials etc are public servants, they work for the public. The public does not work for public servants and public servants are expected only to ask members of the public their intentions under specific circumstances (common circumstances but specific circumstances - the cops can pull you over for a number of things but they, officially cannot pull you over at random or based on you exercising your 1st amendment rights, etc).
[hidden]
[hidden]
Keep up the good work!
[hidden]
[2 comments hidden]
[hidden]
[18 comments hidden]
Do I like Flock cameras? No. Do I like mass surveillance? No. Do I see a difference between an agent of the state doing something involving law enforcement or surveillance activities, and a private individual doing the same? Yes. You can't run around in uniform handcuffing people either.
I don't want HN'ers setting up surveillance networks anymore than I want them strapping a pistol to their hip and fighting crime. It's an asymmetry by design because the alternative is an unworkable nightmare, whereas the sad reality is that if people keep voting for people who openly spy on us, they're going to keep doing it.
[7 comments hidden]
"Officer, do you have any expectation of privacy in public?"
"That's different."
[6 comments hidden]
You're an unregulated, unsupervised, and frankly unknown factor with no real accountability through any realistic chain of command to the results of the democratic process. However far from your imagined ideal, cops are.
[2 comments hidden]
[hidden]
The same is at least less true for private citizens that are not being accused of a crime.
[2 comments hidden]
Then the cops then decide to stop by his house to talk about it... that's intimidation and bullying by someone with a gun and the force of the government behind them.
[hidden]
Stalking, harrassment, and intimidation are illegal for you. Police can carry out these activities legally, by other names, in a controlled fashion, according to their duties and orders.
But if your tracking and recording of cops begins to verge into those categories, woe betide you going up against a judge who will find that you're interfering with law enforcement activities. Exercising your right to swing fists? That ends at the tip of the other guy's nose, remember?
They will let you, and you'll get away with plenty of it; but there's a line in the sand for you, and you stay behind it.
[2 comments hidden]
What if I wanted to record the cops to schedule my lemonade stand?
Basically, the answer to “Who gets to surveil?” is: Everyone but you
[hidden]
You have to ask if you want more of that until we reach parity with Google and THE POLICE, or if you're reacting out of a sense of fairness that's taught to children.
[4 comments hidden]
In exactly equal measure: I don't want cops setting up surveillance networks any more than I want HN'ers doing it (less so, actually). So this post, bringing attention to that issue, is good, imo.
As long as random joe dropout with a badge from boss hogg can do it, and vc-backed visionary mr misanthrope can do it, so can the rest of the people. Cops and corps are only special to the degree that We The People want them to be. And speaking for the plurality of We The People [0]: we do not want them to be special in this way.
0 – https://www.reuters.com/world/us/who-likes-flock-ai-cameras-...
[3 comments hidden]
Stunts for attention so that libertarians on HN can get a smugrection? Nah.
[2 comments hidden]
> no a serious idea
> a simplistic model
> how children see the world
> stunts for attention
Your reply is mostly insults and shallow dismissals, so I don't see any reason to meaningfully respond to those parts. I'll check back later to see if you've edited insults out and substance in.
As for your separate ideas of community organization: good on you for spearheading that. The world could use more yous doing that, too. If there are any specific asks you have of the community to help you there, HN is full of capable folks.
[hidden]
Of course the worst of those are still doing something, perhaps not something maximally effective, but something nonetheless. Tragically on the internet people don't even attempt that, they skip straight to the scolding, posturing, ideological competition and recruitment phases of a movement. The result is what we see here, individuals sharing their often ill-informed opinion (still valid of course, although not worth much) based on an ideological leaning they've never meaningfully interrogated.
Fortunately this site is full of serious people willing to engage with a topic beyond the performative, and don't feel the need to engage in condescension and lofty dismissals. Lets never talk again.
[2 comments hidden]
[hidden]
[2 comments hidden]
You don't actually have to worry about "HN'ers setting up surveillance networks".
[hidden]
Who do you think does all of this if not a bunch of people in the world of tech who mostly act as mercenaries?
[5 comments hidden]
At which point is this called slavery?
[2 comments hidden]
[hidden]
They're just most probable tokens. Either most probable to exist after the previous set of tokens, or most probable to get a specific outcome.
I am being sarcastic of course, as HN has still to some degree managed to avoid this, but even HN is struggling. The rest of "social media" operates exactly like that.
[2 comments hidden]
[hidden]
Cops coming to your door to ask, in a disapproving manner, why you're doing something... well, that's not a friendly visit from the people with guns who are allowed to deprive you of your freedom.
[8 comments hidden]
[hidden]
[hidden]
You gain those at iirc 10 million or so? Even comes with a decorative plate for your wall.
[hidden]
What I saw was cops making up laws and trying to intimidate people into following them. Wouldn't be the first time.
[hidden]
[hidden]
Why deal with annoying oversight and restrictive governance and audits and usage monitoring when you can just offload it to a private company and stalk women without restraint?
[hidden]
Technically, it is home users volunteering data to a cloud provider, that then mines the disclosed data as a service for any creep.
It would be a constitutional matter, and the city would lose in court given precedent lawsuits... if police used direct surveillance to follow people around even on public property where there was no expectation of privacy. Sue, and remember to vote. =3
[44 comments hidden]
>“One of [the officers] took the time to specifically mention how scary it would be for them, because people would be able to find out where they lived, when they got on their shift and what they were doing throughout the day, and that that type of powerful information could put them personally at risk [from] any bad apples that might want to track them down.”
I know we're supposed to distill everything down to a "them vs us" mentality. But cops have been tracked down and killed by people using apps like Waze so it's not a completely unwarranted fear.
This also isn't an apples and oranges situation. A Flock database isn't public - police have access but at least ostensibly have oversight from the legal system. That's a much different set of concerns than the "UNO reverse card" the TikToker is trying to make it to be.
[5 comments hidden]
Do you have a source for that? I can only find 2 examples vaguely similar but neither are really what that statement claims. Specifically one of them was just cops making stuff up about wayze which was factually incorrect.
> police have access but at least ostensibly have oversight from the legal system
We've already seen plenty of examples of cops tracking ex-wives and such similar abuses with no real accountability - nobody's lost their job over it
Cops know exactly what they do when they show up like this, it's meant to intimidate, there are also plenty of cases where cops have repeatedly crossed the line harassing citizens breaking no laws, it's disgusting
[4 comments hidden]
[9 comments hidden]
Sure, but you haven't made the case for why the fear is anyone else's problem. If a person is too scared to be a cop there's an easy fix: stop being a cop. Unfortunately, regular citizens who can't afford to up and move to a country that has civil rights (that is, most of them) don't have the same recourse.
[7 comments hidden]
Imagine the danger and legitimate fear a stalking victim would face if there was a public real-time tracker for any license plate query you can imagine.
[11 comments hidden]
Police visiting a home is form of intimidation. That's not something to brush off.
[3 comments hidden]
[2 comments hidden]
Gemini tells me it's 100% legal everywhere in the USA, to swap, modify, or conceal vehicle branding on privately-owned vehicles.
This is paired with a rather alarming but "more harmless than it appears" fad where people modify their "exhaust tune" to sound like backfire/gunshots. And they drive past all night long. I hear them everywhere. I had an LLM chat about it, and it's really something people deliberately do. I feel it is mostly to spam people with these percussive noises so that we get fatigued with them, so that "Shotspotter" is spammed with false positives, and so that boomer Karens fatigue the cops in turn with calling in "gunshots heard" when there were no gunshots at all. If you get so fatigued with hearing car exhaust backfires all night, you'll probably be duly surprised, and unlikely/unable to promptly react, when a real drive-by shooting goes down.
[hidden]
I like it even more when you put it like that, lol
I live where we both have the kind of people with the machine gun tune on their car and we have real gunshots. It's actually pretty obvious which is which. The cars aren't that bad. You don't notice them unless they're "novel" like misfiring or a grossly out of round semi trailer tire or something.
[7 comments hidden]
Is it though?
I live in a weird location, but it's not uncommon to get a couple of police visits for random things in a year.
[5 comments hidden]
Why would police visit people periodically?
[4 comments hidden]
- Altercation at a neighbor's house and they come inform us what was going on
- A neighbor called the police and they're looking for the address
- Coordinating parking for a medical incident down the road
- Welfare check on the kids because the neighbors heard screaming
Just a bunch of little stuff over the years.
[3 comments hidden]
>One of [the officers] took the time to specifically mention how scary it would be for them, because people would be able to find out where they lived, when they got on their shift and what they were doing throughout the day, and that that type of powerful information could put them personally at risk [from] any bad apples that might want to track them down.
This is the exact reason Flock cameras shouldn't exist. Hell even you know how there is no oversight otherwise you wouldn't have used the word "ostensibly" with italics.
BTW did you just gloss over how they came to his home to intimidate him? Cops SHOULD be tracked because American cops are simply the worst bullies on the planet.
[2 comments hidden]
We know about them because they were caught.
> Cops SHOULD be tracked because American cops are simply the worst bullies on the planet.
Cops are tracked. Part of the reason the above were caught because their searches were logged in Flock and used against them in criminal proceedings.
But I'm not sure where you got that I am against police being tracked?
[8 comments hidden]
On average over 1000 people are killed by police each year. A police officer is by far the most dangerous person you'll likely interact with on a day to day basis.
[3 comments hidden]
[hidden]
Citation needed.
[3 comments hidden]
This is not a real datapoint. We quite a few cases of wrongful stops or arrests, but there is only one case where it escalated to physical damage (Brandon Upchurch).
Only about 10% of officer involved shootings come from traffic stops, which is what we're talking about when we're talking about Flock license plate readers.
[hidden]
In Texas, a sheriff's deputy utilized Flock ALPRs to locate a woman at the behest of her abusive partner.
Marin County Sheriff’s Office was sharing the sensitive location data of millions of drivers with out-of-state agencies and federal authorities, explicitly including ICE and CBP, circumventing California law.
So, yes, it's messed up that cops' fears are warranted, in your eyes, but not private citizens'.
> He was free to pursue his project
No, being intimidated by uniformed officers is not being "free".
[2 comments hidden]
Has this actually happened, or is it something you made up? Because I found articles with police spokesmen saying it _could_ happen, but nothing suggesting it has.
[hidden]
Police are heavily indoctrinated as part of their training to be very paranoid, and are usually required to read up on (or watch) footage of every officer who dies in duty. So it should be no surprise that they are incredibly reactionary on this stuff.
Regardless of whether app assisted or not, actual ambush or unprovoked attack is actually very rare (only 5 cases last year).
[hidden]
Is there a specific (confirmed) case you're referencing?
[3 comments hidden]
Cops are (supposed to be) public servants. Risk is part of the job. If they don’t like it, they are free to pursue a different career.
[2 comments hidden]
And that risk is heavily overblown. Cop isn't even in the top 10 most dangerous jobs: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/and-the-...
petcat[59 comments hidden]
* Illegal to collect every plate for later analysis
* Must delete "non hit" plate images within 3 minutes
* Strict forbidden to upload "non hit" camera imagery off the device
I would add that it should also require a warrant to access the ALPR data, but it's a great start.
https://gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXI/261/261-75-b.htm?utm_source=c...
VWWHFSfQ[11 comments hidden]
spacephysics[5 comments hidden]
dymk[4 comments hidden]
rcstank[hidden]
ekianjo[2 comments hidden]
what[hidden]
happyopossum[hidden]
FIFY
doublepg23[2 comments hidden]
Spooky23[hidden]
lisp2240[2 comments hidden]
avadodin[hidden]
dfxm12[7 comments hidden]
gentooflux[3 comments hidden]
queenkjuul[2 comments hidden]
what[hidden]
Retric[2 comments hidden]
LorenPechtel[hidden]
bluegatty[hidden]
beambot[2 comments hidden]
dghlsakjg[hidden]
nofunsir[7 comments hidden]
* Illegal to collect every plate for later analysis
* Must delete "non hit" plate images within 3 MILLISECONDS
* Strict forbidden to upload "non hit" camera imagery to NON-VOLATILE STORAGE.
* "HIT" LIST MUST BE CRYPTOGRAPHICALLY SIGNED & ENCRYPTED BY WARRANT KEY ONLY JUDGE HAS ACCESS TO.
monksy[5 comments hidden]
sojournerc[4 comments hidden]
Spooky23[3 comments hidden]
Listen to Marc Andreessen, he’s a funder of Flock and a passionate advocate of that position.
fc417fc802[2 comments hidden]
mschuster91[hidden]
Well... Flock only has themselves to blame for it getting politically charged.
HWR_14[hidden]
kevin_thibedeau[hidden]
redwall_hp[hidden]
And ALPR is only one method that Flock uses. Their pan-tilt-zoom offerings are specifically meant to target pedestrians. They have facial recognition (and I've heard gait as well) and sniff for Bluetooth and other things to try to fingerprint devices.
It needs to be illegal to collect video for later facial recognition analysis as well.
asveikau[3 comments hidden]
I believe I've seen claims the are recording Bluetooth MACs of passing devices, and I've definitely seen that they're also detecting people on the camera feed.
dylan604[hidden]
bigiain[hidden]
Also, 10 or 15 years back, I wrote an Android app to do ALPR on the live camera view with the phone in a holder that let it see out he windscreen. I collected licence plates by spending an hour or so every few days over a few weeks sitting at cafes that had a good view of the marked and unmarked cars arriving and leaving the three major police stations nearby. It did work, but the camera in the Galaxy S3 and S4s I had to try it on couldn't get images good enough for OCR until the cop car was so close it wasn't useful... I contemplated experimenting with a drone camera gimbal when I was building and flying camera drones around 2014/2015, possibly using one of those clip on telephoto lens's that were common back then - but by then I'd ditched the car and I didn't figure I;d be able to build that to work on any of my motorcycles.
anon84873628[5 comments hidden]
It's not the imagery that's really important, it's tracking the who+when+where.
horsawlarway[4 comments hidden]
Longest plates are 8 chars. It seems exceedingly unlikely that the target list is longer than 1,000,000 plates. They all use characters that fit in a single UTF-8 code point. So 8mb initial download, and very small incremental updates.
Likely much more power efficient than sending every plate over the network, and would use considerably less bandwidth over a couple months.
---
Is that how they do it? No freaking clue.
But it seems like a very solvable problem, with correctly aligned incentives (ex - it's both cheaper and more private to NOT send the plate over the net, vs sending the list to the device).
Spooky23[2 comments hidden]
firesteelrain[hidden]
lelanthran[hidden]
dylan604[4 comments hidden]
flamedoge[3 comments hidden]
dylan604[hidden]
Any camera system that can be used to track people even if that's not the sole purpose is problematic, but when the entire purpose of the camera is tracking people then it is especially egregious. It's not a problem now, but they've turned the knob to an 11.
PowerElectronix[hidden]
The power the flock infrastructure has to target people is unprecedented in the US. And the kind of power I would never want anyone to wield.
MarkMarine[hidden]
The govt has been steadily eroding privacy and our rights (carnivore reading email, bulk collection of phone metadata, all internet traffic with x-keyscore, stingrays, etc etc etc) and using terrorism as the boogeyman when often it’s just wrong think that will put you in the sights. None of this needed warrants, all of it illegal by a plain reading of the 4th amendment. If a constitutional amendment won’t protect you, a state law is basically toilet paper.
Gustomaximus[hidden]
I am different in that I would be fine with these BUT only if there is super strict guardrails with real consequences for misuse:
- Super strict rules around information storage and access. - Ensuring access can only be for an active investigation where there is direct reason to look for a name, face, number plate etc.
- Ensure there is reasonable crime threshold for use so cops don't have the right to track someone because they jay walked or something frivolous to justify use.
- Add a requirement any person looked up then they must be informed within ~6 months with reasons why (or a judge warranted delay every 6 months).
- Legal use only and the data can never be sold for general commercialisation.
- Require human verification of hit if police are going to take action on data so there is clear ownership of incorrect actions.
- Some level of data deletion, after a year type thing.
With something down that route, and naturally more than my quick comment, I feel it could balance benefit vs cost. Without real guardrails and consequences it's openeing a risky path for totalitarianism misuse.
soulofmischief[hidden]
BatchJob[13 comments hidden]
Why would anyone believe that these "forbidden things" are actually prevented? There is no evidence besides occasional anecdotal outings of police doing searches that the only get caught doing after way long after.
So they can use words like "strict" all they want. The system doesnt work that way and neither do the people operating it. Just lipservice.
teaearlgraycold[2 comments hidden]
StanislavPetrov[hidden]
throwawayk7h[hidden]
jameson[hidden]
ksymph[6 comments hidden]
Making something illegal is the prerequisite to enforcement. These are separate parts of the government. You can't build enforcement infrastructure around something that isn't yet illegal! You don't even know what that would look like until you know what the laws you're enforcing are. Enforcement is the goal of these processes, the laws are the foundation from which enforcement stems.
It is true that simply putting a law down doesn't mean the problem is solved. But solving these problems doesn't happen all at once, so there's no reason to criticize the first step for not being a leap to the finish line.
abustamam[hidden]
I think what people want is just tearing all of the cameras down. Law enforcement had their chance to prove flock cameras were good. They proved to be poor stewards for the technology. Now get them the fuck off our streets.
pstuart[hidden]
okasaki[3 comments hidden]
fc417fc802[2 comments hidden]
mschuster91[hidden]
gspr[hidden]
That being said: how about the New Hampshire law plus a provision for independent audits?
verisimi[hidden]
deaux[hidden]