I am misunderstanding the article, if "The searches came to light in a Wisconsin criminal complaint against Edward Abrams-Phillips, who was wanted for bail jumping on domestic violence charges." he was wanted, why do they need a pretext for the stop?
This is the big problem with mass surveillance as a whole. With enough time, they'll find some pretext to bring you in, even if the original crime they want you for is weak.
This will ruin lives, even if they're eventually let go. Jobs lost, evicted from homes, cars towed, pets surrendered and put down.
Lives will be completely derailed, police and judges will not be held accountable. The wrongful arrestees will still be in debt to the local jail and court for various fees they racked up. Trust in the justice system will continue to degrade and more and more violence will be used against people to maintain order.
We hold police to high standards for search/arrest because they have the monopoly on violence. Even if they're wrong, you can't shoot back. Even if they're slamming your loved ones into the pavement, breaking their teeth, you cannot kick the cop in the head or else they have permission to murder you both.
Based on my observations (news reports, local chatter, etc) it seems that every state that borders a state with legal Cannabis does this. Idaho does this very frequently (since just about every border is a legal source). They take advantages of the bottlenecks on highways and have cameras and/or officers there.
If it is Flock, interagency communications, license plate readers or just "enhanced stops" for things like a crack in the windshield.
People seem to forget that while buying in one state is legal it actually can become a much larger crime than just possession as soon as you cross state lines. It "can" become a federal matter...
This person in the article attracted the gaze of Sauron.
I don't quite get the thesis of the author here. Regardless of the view that one may have on Cannabis laws, they are illegal, if the system is correctly detaining people that break those laws, and you have a problem with that, is the problem with the enforcement system or the law?
If you don't like some aspect of this, should you be campaigning for removal of flock cameras? Or campaigning for cannabis rights and Controlled Substances reform?
I've seen it suggested to add a warrant requirement for police to use ALPRs. A warrant requirement is not a reasonable bandaid to consider allowing mass spying. There should be no mass spying by default.
A warrant requirement makes sense for something like the locations of customers on cellular networks, because it's built into the tech.
When you make the optional choice to create mass spying, safeguards do not make it acceptable.
Not from the US, but I really wish folks from the US started thinking of creative ways to "produce probable cause" (if that makes any sense), get stopped without any harm, assemble enough individual cases into some kind of catalogue, and then be able to show people just how much the whole thing is bad with evidence that did not result in them actually getting what they were looking for.
If I asked a random person about this, they'd probably just say - "but they found weed, right?"
I'm so confused, how is this creating a pretext? A pretext is a false reason. Like if they searched for one reason but they really did it for a different one. But that's not what I'm reading here? It seems they suspected something, they used that exact reason to perform a search, and that's exactly what they found. Terrible reason, okay, but why are they being accused of lying? If a thief threatens you saying you look like you have money, and it turns out you did, and he takes it, is that a pretext too?
To my mind, tracking a vehicle/person's movements sounds pretty much like a search. What concerns me is that they didn't have any reason to conduct that search in the first place. It surprises me that the cops don't need a warrant to track anyone for any reason - that's very much open to abuse as cops are not known for being impartial.
Fake news. Heck of a twist on what really happened.
Wisconsin police used Flock travel history to locate an already wanted man and develop marijuana suspicion. An officer’s claimed marijuana odor led to a vehicle search.
Again, I get downvoted by the fear-police on hacker news for this:
- Montana LLC ownership of vehicles. Don't own your vehicles ya'll, and at least those license plates won't be traced to you.
- Speak to a lawyer for how to meet any lawful use-tax obligations. Don't use this to avoid paying legitimate sales tax.
- Maybe the insurance company tied to you and your driving of this vehicle, has a partnership with the flock network. Someone argued they could give away your vin-tied identity, though I haven't seen proof this is happening. Plus, if the market shows a need for insurance companies to offer privacy protection, maybe that will emerge.
I trust we can figure out a way to normalize privacy to stand up against crimes and abusive behavior by state officials, the bad police, and an elected class of corrupted leaders who do not care about everyones rights to protect their own safety over yours. I would love if more people would send a powerful message to their officials of how this unconstitutional violation and compromise of basic decency, dignity and safety for most people for the benefit of a few has consequences.
Y'all want to shit on hippie liberal states like Oregon that keep the police in a tight leash and de-facto decriminalized everything, but we had a whole state appeals court decision on this exact issue that means this should would NOT happen here:
IANAL but the probable cause here (traveling across state lines) seems really weak. There's a million legitimate/legal reasons for someone to travel across state lines. That's the issue that jumps out at me here.
Police are actively using flock to identify people traveling over state borders to buy marijuana and search their cars.
What actually happened:
Police used flock to locate someone with an active warrant for their arrest related to domestic violence. They noticed a pattern of crossing state lines at certain times, and used that to nab him. It turns out it was to buy marijuana and his car reeked of it, so he was charged with that, too.
Mass surveillance based on social media is prohibited in The Netherlands and presumably other European countries. However, running specific profiles on police owned ANPR camera's could be declared a proportional breach of privacy and thus legal.
They used to do this with normal DOT cameras anyways. That doesn't make it okay. The neat part is when they use fake names and badge numbers to deny that the stop ever even happened in the first place. It's much harder to get away with that these days
Experienced this about 15 years ago, was lucky to have my friend along for the ride, who was a photographer. The pictures of those cops are the only evidence we have that it even happened. They wrote a whole pile of tickets that didn't exist when I went to try and pay them.
Another time I had a state trooper say I was doing 140 in a 130hp car. He claimed that because I was wearing cutoff sweatpant shorts that I was growing weed? These dudes are useless.
Forget about all of this, though. If you want to be mad, check out the solve rate for hit and runs over the past 20 years. Damage only cases are something like 1 in 10. Fatalities 2 in 5. With all these fucking cameras. What percentage of those 9 in 10 or 3 in 5 are cops, do you think?
I used to get really upset when I saw a car on the road with obscured or disfigured plates. The rise of Flock/ALPRs has done a great deal to morally rehabilitate this behavior.
30 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 12.6 ms ] threadThis will ruin lives, even if they're eventually let go. Jobs lost, evicted from homes, cars towed, pets surrendered and put down.
Lives will be completely derailed, police and judges will not be held accountable. The wrongful arrestees will still be in debt to the local jail and court for various fees they racked up. Trust in the justice system will continue to degrade and more and more violence will be used against people to maintain order.
We hold police to high standards for search/arrest because they have the monopoly on violence. Even if they're wrong, you can't shoot back. Even if they're slamming your loved ones into the pavement, breaking their teeth, you cannot kick the cop in the head or else they have permission to murder you both.
Mass surveillance is a loophole to this contract.
More like a hammer to your head.
All of Winona Police Department's Flock cameras cut down and stolen
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171656
241 comments
How Cops Are Trying to Hide Their Use of Flock
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49172076
9 comments
Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156650
118 comments
Flock – Chilling Effects: Long Island's Emerging Open-Air Prison
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49148541
38 comments
Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158837
17 comments
If it is Flock, interagency communications, license plate readers or just "enhanced stops" for things like a crack in the windshield.
People seem to forget that while buying in one state is legal it actually can become a much larger crime than just possession as soon as you cross state lines. It "can" become a federal matter...
This person in the article attracted the gaze of Sauron.
If you don't like some aspect of this, should you be campaigning for removal of flock cameras? Or campaigning for cannabis rights and Controlled Substances reform?
;-)
See also:
* https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/
* https://medium.com/@speechgeek/scaling-joy-part-2-the-tech-t...
suddenly EVERYONE was getting tased
it's like that
give them a new "toy" to combat violent crime and instead it's used on everything else because zero repercussions
I am starting to see Flock on the side of the road at every major shopping center
unfortunately like "kavanaugh stops" I suspect the supreme court is going to put their permission into concrete regardless how they are abused
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavanaugh_stop
A warrant requirement makes sense for something like the locations of customers on cellular networks, because it's built into the tech.
When you make the optional choice to create mass spying, safeguards do not make it acceptable.
If I asked a random person about this, they'd probably just say - "but they found weed, right?"
Wisconsin police used Flock travel history to locate an already wanted man and develop marijuana suspicion. An officer’s claimed marijuana odor led to a vehicle search.
- Montana LLC ownership of vehicles. Don't own your vehicles ya'll, and at least those license plates won't be traced to you.
- Speak to a lawyer for how to meet any lawful use-tax obligations. Don't use this to avoid paying legitimate sales tax.
- Maybe the insurance company tied to you and your driving of this vehicle, has a partnership with the flock network. Someone argued they could give away your vin-tied identity, though I haven't seen proof this is happening. Plus, if the market shows a need for insurance companies to offer privacy protection, maybe that will emerge.
I trust we can figure out a way to normalize privacy to stand up against crimes and abusive behavior by state officials, the bad police, and an elected class of corrupted leaders who do not care about everyones rights to protect their own safety over yours. I would love if more people would send a powerful message to their officials of how this unconstitutional violation and compromise of basic decency, dignity and safety for most people for the benefit of a few has consequences.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/or-court-of-appeals/212471...
As usual, homie was in the wrong state.
Police are actively using flock to identify people traveling over state borders to buy marijuana and search their cars.
What actually happened:
Police used flock to locate someone with an active warrant for their arrest related to domestic violence. They noticed a pattern of crossing state lines at certain times, and used that to nab him. It turns out it was to buy marijuana and his car reeked of it, so he was charged with that, too.
Experienced this about 15 years ago, was lucky to have my friend along for the ride, who was a photographer. The pictures of those cops are the only evidence we have that it even happened. They wrote a whole pile of tickets that didn't exist when I went to try and pay them.
Another time I had a state trooper say I was doing 140 in a 130hp car. He claimed that because I was wearing cutoff sweatpant shorts that I was growing weed? These dudes are useless.
Forget about all of this, though. If you want to be mad, check out the solve rate for hit and runs over the past 20 years. Damage only cases are something like 1 in 10. Fatalities 2 in 5. With all these fucking cameras. What percentage of those 9 in 10 or 3 in 5 are cops, do you think?