What did they think would happen? Installing surveillance systems to monitor people is acceptable, as long as they're only used against the majority? I don't understand the logic here.
I think this is a case of, tools used to fight one type of crime are being used to fight another type of crime that disrupting the community. Kind of an unforeseen consequences situation.
They had never picked up a history book so they didn't realize that the systems they envisioned being used to stop the jackboot upon people they don't like would eventually be used to stomp people they do.
Who? I don't understand your logic either. I don't think anyone said this "is fine as long as it's used against the majority". Virtually every large city uses Flock. This is the norm.
What kind of innane logic are you using here?! Yes, if the systems are installed for a reason approved by the public, and then they're used for a different reason, people don't like that.
Specifically interesting is the section "State and local law enforcement agencies may not provide nonpublicly available personal information about an individual..." which puts police in a bind with Flock data: if the data is public, anyone can request it (including ICE) and they have to provide it to all comers. If they declare it not to be subject to public records request, then they also can't share it with ICE -- which is outside their control in practice, since Flock independently sells access to AI summaries of the data. In the face of this contradiction, turning the things off seems to be the only way to stay legal until the courts get done chewing on this.
It's pretty simple: People will tolerate surveillance technology if it promises to promote order and justice. People imagine them being instrumental in convicting murders, rapists, etc. ICE raids have been shown to be (I'm being generous here) sloppy and chaotic and seemingly targeting towards working people to grind towards a government-mandated quota - not the "bad guys" that plague our streets. Few are interested in a massive surveillance network to clamp down on what are essentially civil infraction of otherwise law-abiding and productive members of the community.
A little annoyed, this seems like is has nothing to do with the ICE arrests...
> The city suspended its Flock system because city officials could not guarantee they wouldn’t be forced to release data collected by those devices someday, she said.
Key part is "someday". Seems like the article is implying that flock may have shared this data with ICE which led to the arrests... but there is no proof supporting this...
> On Thursday, a Skagit County Superior Court judge ruled that pictures taken by Flock cameras in the cities of Sedro-Woolley and Stanwood qualify as public records, and therefore must be released as required by the state’s Public Records Act, court records show.
This is the more likely reason. What do folks here think about this ruling?
IMO it seems obvious that this should be public records/data, but would love to hear alternative positions to this.
From what I read, the pressure from activist groups on Redmond’s city leadership began before the Skagit County ruling. So it is probably unrelated. But I think it’s still a bad outcome for Redmond. Why wouldn’t you want law enforcement to be able to observe public spaces (which these cameras are monitoring) and identify or track suspects? We want our city services (like policing) to be efficient, right? We want criminals to be arrested and face consequences, right? We all want safe cities and neighborhoods, right?
I think the Skagit county ruling is likely to be appealed. There is a lot of information that governments can redact for a variety of reasons, despite FOIA or state/local transparency laws. It seems obvious that there’s a case for law enforcement to be able to access footage but to avoid handing over that kind of intelligence to the general public, where criminals could also abuse the same data. And I just don’t buy the argument that surveillance through cameras is automatically dystopian - we can pass laws that make it so that data is only accessible with a warrant or in a situation with immediate public risk. There are all sorts of powers the government has that we bring under control with the right laws - why would this be any different?
As for Redmond turning off its cameras - this is just fear-mongering about ICE. In reality, it’s just sanctuary city/state resistance to enforcing immigration laws. Redmond’s police department confirmed they’ve never shared this camera data with federal agencies, but that doesn’t stop activist types from making unhinged claims or exerting pressure. In reality, it’s activists of the same ideological bias as the soft on crime types that have caused crimes to go up dramatically in the Pacific Northwest in the last 20 years. They’re happy to see law enforcement hampered and the public put at risk - the ICE thing is just the new tactic to push it.
"On Thursday, a Skagit County Superior Court judge ruled that pictures taken by Flock cameras in the cities of Sedro-Woolley and Stanwood qualify as public records, and therefore must be released as required by the state’s Public Records Act, court records show."
This video by Tom Lehto talks more about that court case that illustrates citizens can legally do FOIA requests for traffic cameras (e.g. Flock): https://youtu.be/1vQn4MWBln0
Couldn't they just not log the license plates and only look for license plates on the list like stolen cars, stolen plates, amber alert etc? Why do they a need a list of all cars that the camera saw?
I'm in the PNW and they put Flock cameras up in my area recently. Nobody likes them (libs or cons), and we've seen some rather creative approaches to uh...disabling them. One person took a pipe cutter to the mount and spirited the whole unit away, another apparently fired a shotgun slug through it, somebody else looks like they used it to relieve their anger problems with a metal pipe.
I live in the Bay Area and went to my Nextdoor because I was thinking of seeing if there's much anti-Flock sentiment, and (not surprisingly for Nextdoor), most people seem to think anti-camera people are paranoid, or have something to hide, and wish they were installed in more places to solve the (non-existent) raging crime issues, or speeding, or god knows what.
I shouldn't have expected much more, though, to be fair. There's a reason I don't use nextdoor.
The funny thing is the people calling anti-Flock people "paranoid". Well, I don't believe in dash cams or ringing my house with surveillance cameras and peering at the footage all day and all night. I think _those_ are the paranoid ones. What happened to just living your life and not worrying about everything?
There are a lot of Flock supporters out there. In my neighborhood, homeowners can volunteer to put Flock cameras on their property, and a number of people are doing this.
It's like having a Ring doorbell and sharing the feed with the police, which is also pretty popular in some areas. If you trust your local police to ethically fight crime, why not help them out?
So I definitely agree it's a positive development that these cameras are being taken down because they're absolutely orwellian, but I really don't understand why "the line" is being drawn at immigration enforcement? Were people really okay with this until the point where they found out that illegal immigrants can be tracked by the surveillance state too?
I know there's a massive hate for flock online but it solved a murder that happened in a park behind my house in less than 24 hours which was pretty cool.
29 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 47.9 ms ] threadSpecifically interesting is the section "State and local law enforcement agencies may not provide nonpublicly available personal information about an individual..." which puts police in a bind with Flock data: if the data is public, anyone can request it (including ICE) and they have to provide it to all comers. If they declare it not to be subject to public records request, then they also can't share it with ICE -- which is outside their control in practice, since Flock independently sells access to AI summaries of the data. In the face of this contradiction, turning the things off seems to be the only way to stay legal until the courts get done chewing on this.
> The city suspended its Flock system because city officials could not guarantee they wouldn’t be forced to release data collected by those devices someday, she said.
Key part is "someday". Seems like the article is implying that flock may have shared this data with ICE which led to the arrests... but there is no proof supporting this...
> On Thursday, a Skagit County Superior Court judge ruled that pictures taken by Flock cameras in the cities of Sedro-Woolley and Stanwood qualify as public records, and therefore must be released as required by the state’s Public Records Act, court records show.
This is the more likely reason. What do folks here think about this ruling?
IMO it seems obvious that this should be public records/data, but would love to hear alternative positions to this.
I think the Skagit county ruling is likely to be appealed. There is a lot of information that governments can redact for a variety of reasons, despite FOIA or state/local transparency laws. It seems obvious that there’s a case for law enforcement to be able to access footage but to avoid handing over that kind of intelligence to the general public, where criminals could also abuse the same data. And I just don’t buy the argument that surveillance through cameras is automatically dystopian - we can pass laws that make it so that data is only accessible with a warrant or in a situation with immediate public risk. There are all sorts of powers the government has that we bring under control with the right laws - why would this be any different?
As for Redmond turning off its cameras - this is just fear-mongering about ICE. In reality, it’s just sanctuary city/state resistance to enforcing immigration laws. Redmond’s police department confirmed they’ve never shared this camera data with federal agencies, but that doesn’t stop activist types from making unhinged claims or exerting pressure. In reality, it’s activists of the same ideological bias as the soft on crime types that have caused crimes to go up dramatically in the Pacific Northwest in the last 20 years. They’re happy to see law enforcement hampered and the public put at risk - the ICE thing is just the new tactic to push it.
This video by Tom Lehto talks more about that court case that illustrates citizens can legally do FOIA requests for traffic cameras (e.g. Flock): https://youtu.be/1vQn4MWBln0
Flock cameras, America's bipartisan issue?
I shouldn't have expected much more, though, to be fair. There's a reason I don't use nextdoor.
The funny thing is the people calling anti-Flock people "paranoid". Well, I don't believe in dash cams or ringing my house with surveillance cameras and peering at the footage all day and all night. I think _those_ are the paranoid ones. What happened to just living your life and not worrying about everything?
It's like having a Ring doorbell and sharing the feed with the police, which is also pretty popular in some areas. If you trust your local police to ethically fight crime, why not help them out?
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/ulez-cameras-van...