Completely agree that there is a possible silver lining of exposing some of these. However, even if they get fired from this department, they often just get hired later by their buddies in the neighboring county.
Public records and databases available to citizens is a control against these folks getting hired again in positions of power and trust in the future. It is a form of append only trust public distributed ledger.
I have to assume this is just the dumbest of the criminals that are getting caught. I don't know why it takes 2K cases to determine "hey, this might not be above board...".
It's sounds like it was detected only after Flock turned on their AI auditor. Kinda concerning no one was looking at the data previously. Unless the target is the most slippery criminal mastermind and is evading police several times a day in broad daylight, 2000 searches by the same user is almost certainly an abuse of the system.
If that's the tact and PR they want to take until their operational model is outlawed or strictly regulated, more power to them. Keeps someone on their comms/PR team employed I suppose.
This is just a drop in the bucket. There have been at least 50 cops charged with using flock data to stalk ex partners and women they are interested in!
They must really want to use this tech on us if they're willing to throw their own under the bus for using it "wrong".
Regardless, hemming and hawing about lack of access controls and rogue (i.e. not using to do their job properly) cops is implicitly saying that this system could/would/should exist if it has "proper" access controls, whatever that means. It's like seeing a slave labor gulag and saying that the prisoners need better recreation ad more frequent laundry as if that would make it not fundamentally a gulag. To say things like access controls need to be fixed or tied to warrants is advocating for turd polishing. Even with proper access controls the purpose of these systems is to create misery at the hands of the state. The turd is still a turd even if it's shiny.
The aristocrats have had to split their treasure with the thugs since the beginning of time and this represents a very real chance to keep huge swaths of that treasure for themselves. Finally they can automate away doing violence against anyone who threatens the social order when it used to be an unavoidable cost of doing business.
Available tech will be used. If it will be used, there will be instances when it is abused. In banking world, people often have access to data from lx, tr and other data brokers, and even though access and use is rather heavily tracked, you still have people checking things they shouldn't.
I guess I'm a heartless engineer, because I could never imagine myself loving (obsessing over) someone so much that I would feel a need to check in on them 2,000 times.
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 5.9 ms ] threadThe IJ Database of ALPR Abuse - https://ij.org/the-ij-database-of-alpr-abuse/ (181 incidents documented, as of this comment)
Only if they do it 2k times.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-pol...
Who watches the watchers?
Abuse of the privilege should be harsher as the privileges grows.
Yeah, I bet you don't.
Regardless, hemming and hawing about lack of access controls and rogue (i.e. not using to do their job properly) cops is implicitly saying that this system could/would/should exist if it has "proper" access controls, whatever that means. It's like seeing a slave labor gulag and saying that the prisoners need better recreation ad more frequent laundry as if that would make it not fundamentally a gulag. To say things like access controls need to be fixed or tied to warrants is advocating for turd polishing. Even with proper access controls the purpose of these systems is to create misery at the hands of the state. The turd is still a turd even if it's shiny.
Flock employees themselves have allegedly watched a pretty questionable stuff, for example kids' gymnastics room: https://www.gadgetreview.com/flock-safety-employees-watched-...
I am unsure if I'm 100% anti-Flock, but requiring a court order or exigent circumstance to look at any Flock camera feed may be necessary.
Shut it all down until we build a framework for handling this kind of power responsibily.
And shut it down.
Frameworks only work when there are consequences for not following them.