> “As much as Flock tries to be good stewards of the powerful tech we sell, this shows it really is up to users to serve their communities in good faith. Selling to law-enforcement is tricky because we assume they will use our tech to do good and then just have to hope we're right.”
> The Flock source added “Even if Flock took a stance on permitted use-cases, a motivated user could simply lie about why they're performing a search. We can never 100% know how or why our tools are being used.” A second Flock source said they believe Flock should develop a better idea of what its clients are using the company’s technology for.
In other words, why bother with safeguards when they'll just lie to us anyways?
Flock really does have a huge amount of potential for abuse. It's a fair point that private companies (e.g. Google, etc) have way more surveillance on us than the government does, but the US and local governments having this level of surveillance should also worry folks. There's massive potential for abuse. And frankly, I don't trust most local police departments to not have someone that would use this to stalk their ex or use it in other abusive ways. I weirdly actually trust Google's interests in surveillance (i.e. marketing) more than I trust the government's legitimate need to monitor in some cases to track crimes. Things get scary quick when mass surveillance is combined with (often selective) prosecution.
I think bored cops are a much bigger threat to Democracy than most crime. It's ironic that the less crime and the more efficient policing the less free we become.
When you put tools like databases or surveillance cameras into the hands of people, two things are guaranteed: a certain number of those people will use the tools for the wrong purpose, and a certain number of those bad users will lie about it.
I would speak on this topic, but its political and Dang will have a moment, so I guess we'll just keep talking around the topic and never touching the cause.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 37.9 ms ] threadPosting this because of the recent discussion about Flock technology.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45473698
It's amazing to me that people will still trust police narratives.
> The Flock source added “Even if Flock took a stance on permitted use-cases, a motivated user could simply lie about why they're performing a search. We can never 100% know how or why our tools are being used.” A second Flock source said they believe Flock should develop a better idea of what its clients are using the company’s technology for.
In other words, why bother with safeguards when they'll just lie to us anyways?
> It’s bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state.
0: https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2009/07/technology_...
- Crime is out of control, requiring deployment of active duty military to multiple cities.
- Police are so bored they are sifting through security cameras on fishing expeditions to maybe find someone accessing medical care.
1. Create an open network of off-the-shelf cameras watching public roadways
2. Load up the database with license plate numbers of local politicians and/or law enforcement
3. Create a "Where is my senator?" web site that uses that data
4. Watch all hell break loose
5. Get distributed stalking without a warrant outlawed
Neat!