Well I mean the state does have the monopoly on violence.
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.
Technically yes, but it's not without many caveats, and often depends on what you're doing with the recordings. See https://www.freedomforum.org/recording-in-public/ for _some_ of the complexities. (Note: freedomforum.org is a US site concerned with US laws, but the incident in the main post was in Canada, so not everything is the same, but Canada also has caveats/restrictions on such recording.)
Most of those caveats are about spaces that aren't actually public, or recording audio. When it comes to pure surveillance-style video recording in actual public spaces, there's not much in the way of restrictions, and nothing where police have special privileges.
What nuance though? Did everyone give the state permission to sniff after them? Because I did not. And I am almost certain a majority would not be ok with it either. There is a reason people hate flock sniffers.
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.
> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.
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.
You're correct, and also the pushback to these needs to be less a concern of privacy (though they are) and more an infringement on freedom of movement. There is no expectation of broad strokes "privacy" in public, that's true. However what flock is effectively doing would be considered stalking by any other execution method, and the way they're getting around that is because they're stalking everyone at the same time and calling it surveillance instead.
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.
Agreed, how many times does the public have to be burned before "storing vast amounts of detailed, identifying information" will be banned. Not to be too hyperbolic, but to speak their language, shouldn't keeping this database of American's movements be considered a national security threat.
Not quite the same. Attaching a GPS tracker involves physical trespass and can track a person to non-public locations. Also, collecting data does not restrict one’s freedom of moment. Nor is it stalking. Stalking is a pattern of conduct designed to intimidate or inflict emotional distress. Flock may facilitate staking, but it is not stalking itself. If knowing that someone else knows you were at a particular location at a particular time causes you distress, you have issues. Do you flee from every other car that sees on the road?
> Not quite the same. Attaching a GPS tracker involves physical trespass
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.
If knowing that a snitch will accept cash for narc'ing info, even if that info is going to get used for unlawful purposes such as stalking (often by those with violent tendencies) causes you distress ...
> Stalking is a pattern of conduct designed to intimidate or inflict emotional distress.
I don't think you could get out of stalking charge by just being so good at stalking that person affected didn't detect it, assuming you get detected at some point for some reason.
> And I have no interest in the distinction between Joe Average and LEOs. That's about 6 months of training
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.
You're right of course. Given they have special privileges of authority that Joe Average doesn't have, they should have even _less_ of an expectation of privacy in public.
That already happens though, typical policemen are much more tracked by the police than even criminals are so they have the least privacy in every scenario. You never get more privacy in the same situation if you were an on duty cop instead of a civilian.
Youtube has a lot of videos of British "police auditors" who go to stand near police stations to take videos, get police attention and hilarity ensues. It's worth watching a few of them to get the taste.
We have the same auditors in the states, except that the auditors in the states who do this are often detained illegally by the police, then sue and win, and get paid out of taxpayer dollars with no repercussions for the police whatsoever who acted illegally. One guy in particular I know who used to do this went by TheBattousai or similar name and I believe went through this cycle 2 or 3 times with various police agencies. Not exactly hilarity here
You’d think something would have to give at some point. But as you say the police have very little incentive change since they bear little to no consequence for egregious behavior.
I've long thought (but not deeply enough to find a hole in it) that constitutional violations need to carry severe criminal penalties. Not just a "don't do that", a payout from the tax coffers, or dismissal of evidence but hard jail time.
The American cases are indeed not funny, because the American police are not only incompetent, but also aggressive, violent and are trigger-happy. The UK police are incompetent, but at least not murderous, therefore the situation is often hilarious.
US vs Carpenter might apply here. Just because you have no reasonable expectation of privacy doesn’t mean that therefore the state may execute total surveillance over a person
This was in Canada so I don't know if the same laws apply. In the US the justification for this tracking without a warrant is that you are in public. That same justification allows for filming police in the public.
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.
> I can see some nuance to this one. Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.
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.
> 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.
That's not unusual at all. Here is New York parking enforcement ticketing cars who are not participating in a specific activity, while disregarding other double-parked cars that are participating. He even explicitly states that the policy is to allow double parked cars, so long as the driver participates in the desired activity:
As per the statement on camera by the NYC parking enforcement officer, those who double park in order to pray in the mosque are permitted. All other reasons are not.
It doesn't seem all that different. Cops use these cameras to stalk ex-girlfriends, target political foes, and perv on the public at large. The public watching them hardly seems worse.
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.
That's trying to unbake the cake. This technology will not go away. The powerful will use it in secret; and sometimes the less powerful too.
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.
I concur, but let's be real here 99% of HN will be screaming bloody murder when someone makes an app to tell jobsites when to have break time based on where the unmarked Ford Explorer that probably has the OSHA guy in it is.
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.
In the US, photographing and recording police are first amendment-protected activities.
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, there's no difference between one officer recording one person, and a large-scale, automated surveillance system recording everyone.
So why would there be a legal difference between one person recording a police officer, and a large-scale, automated surveillance system recording every police officer?
Given that this is Canada, the first and fourth amendments don't come into the discussion.
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;
US courts giving insane leeway to corporations in what a contract can include has nothing to do with whether rights are defined absolutely or not. The exact same scenario could play out if the voluntarily waived rights were reasonably limited rather than unlimited.
I think this just highlights that a law, as written, isn't everything.
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.
I disagree as there's often reasonable exceptions to "rights", especially when they might infringe other people's rights. e.g. The right to freedom isn't absolute in any country that has prisons.
I would think the natural follow on would be that police have a relative expectation to be photographed and recorded by the public, their actions being public record - they're acting on behalf of the government, FOIA and all that sort of thing applies, right?
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.
I believe the American Supreme Court explicitly ruled against that in the past ~10 or so years. Except it was one GPS tracker on one car, done without a warrant.
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.
While this doesn't apply to Canada, an American law professor (who leans very conservative politically) has argued that the public has the right to record the police doing their jobs, based on the due-process clause of the U.S. Constitution rather than on the First Amendment. (EDIT to clarify: he's not arguing that there isn't a First Amendment right to record the police, he's saying that besides the First Amendment, the due-process clause also gives citizens a right to record the police doing their jobs). You can read the 2012 paper "A Due Process Right to Record the Police" at https://ir.law.utk.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1460&cont...
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.
> The courts have found that legally, one officer recording one person is no different from a large-scale, automated surveillance system recording everyone.
That is not the case. It hasn't been truly tested, and there are very strong hints in SCOTUS 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.
> The courts have found that legally, one officer recording one person is no different from a large-scale, automated surveillance system recording everyone.
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.
Cops usually are worse than average Joe on many negative statistics (domestic abuse, etc), and that's not even factoring in how numbers are skewed by the well established thin blue line.
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.
"When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny."
-- Thomas Jefferson
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.
If Flock is specifically for law enforcement then it is a cut and dry violation of the 4th amendment. Case closed.
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.
US vs carpenter might apply here, just because there is data in a private corporations possession doesn’t necessarily entitle the police to access it without a warrant.
If you’re driving a publicly funded vehicle we can know where you are and what you’re doing. Seems straightforward.
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.
The only nuance possible here is either that the government is more trustworthy than the average person (rather than less, as has been repeatedly proven), or that the police deserve special immunity in their activities (rather than needing closer scrutiny, as has been repeatedly proven as well). Either that, or that Flock is somehow a more trustworthy steward of the data, in terms of controlling access by agencies and individuals. It's also been proven that they're not, though, so that can't be either. IMO, this entire thing is just stupid hypocrisy.
Why do you equate government and the honorable Joe Average? The government works at the pleasure of the Joe Average, so it's natural that the said Joe is interested to watch how his servants perform their duties - after all, he elected them to do that and pays them for that. At the same time Joe might be not interested for his lowly servants to keep tabs on him - that's none of their business, after all they don't compensate him for that information, so why shouldn't we have cameras to watch the police while completely denying them to use cameras to watch us?
> 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.
The fine article mentions that 3% of the queries against the database are from local law enforcement.
Under the American theory of government, Cops tracking people without warrant is the same amount of lawful as people tracking cops without warrant, in fact, the former is more restricted.
> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.
Is it not the opposite - such a wide warrantless surveillance would not be permitted for law enforcement ... but if Joe Average (megacorp) exercises their right to record in public - law enforcement are free to purchase said information in pursuit of justice ...
> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.
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.
It's a minimum of academically average, but no worse.
> 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
I'm not sure how it is in Canada, but my understanding in the US is that data gathered by a public (government) entity (the police) is just that... public. And we've seen that play out in some cities where people asked for a copy of their town's Flock data, and everyone got all surprised pikachu on them because it turns out that's legal, and suddenly the government doesn't want to collect that data anymore.
> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average
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.
Flock has the rights of a private citizen. Police accessing flock cameras is like asking you for the security camera footage from the camera on your house.
Perhaps some officially recognized oversight committee could "track cops" licitly for good reasons. But I see no reason for random citizens to know what police are up to, where they are, what they are seeing or saying at every moment of the day.
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.
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?
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?
99% of law enforcement are suppose to be "average joes" though. They do not have some special Citizen Plus status. Anything cops can do to the people the people should be able to do to the cops.
This is one of those emotionally satisfying stories... if you don't think about it very hard. It's symbolically rich, it fits the simplistic narratives of good vs evil we're all raised with, but this isn't a great example of a 'gotcha' moment.
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.
Your “private individual” wording is carrying a lot of weight here. I wonder if Google knows where all the cops with Androids are? Or if Meta lets you bid for ad impressions from users “interested in law enforcement”
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
> I don't want HN'ers setting up surveillance networks anymore than I want them strapping a pistol to their hip and fighting crime.
In exactly equal measure: I don't want cops setting up surveillance networks any more than I want HN'ers doing it. So this post, bringing attention to that issue, is good, imo.
And as long as random joe dropout with a badge from boss hogg can do it, so can the rest of the people. Cops are only special to the degree that We The People want them to be.
"Raising awareness" is a scam, especially in this context on this site. Not a single person here is unaware of surveillance as a topic, that's no a serious idea. Again a simplistic model that "If A can do B, B can do A" is how children see the world. Different roles comes with different levels of accountability and oversight. Arguing for more or different oversight? Arguing to vote against mass surveillance measures and the politicians who support them? Organizing as a community? ALL GOOD.
Stunts for attention so that libertarians on HN can get a smugrection? Nah.
That's an argument you could make if police had to obtain warrants to access them. But they do not, at least in the US (things might be different in Canada where this happened, but I doubt it). Instead, they rely on rulings that there is no expectation of privacy in public. By the same principle, it's perfectly valid and legal for a civilian (or group of civilians) to set up an equivalent system to track police.
We can watch them, as is evidenced by the fact that he is watching them. Misrepresenting the police response as preventing his actions is clearly not true. Characterizing a polite conversation as "slavery" is disrespectful to people worldwide actually experiencing slavery.
Preventing, no. But it was certainly a form of intimidation, even if (and I'm being very charitable here) they didn't intend it that way.
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.
I feel like this isn’t the best way to draw attention to the problem. Presumably having the police visit is what the YouTuber wanted? I’m not really sure of the lesson here but drama’s presumably the point as opposed to a side effect so it’s hard to take seriously.
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.
Biggest investors have always chosen the side of oppression. YC is no different than any other money lender. They will happily choose fascism over any kind of socialist wealth redistribution. Do not try to humanize an org that uses its wealth as a leverage to gain more wealth.
I'm not familiar with privacy and filming laws on canada, but if the cops just came there and chatted with him without any arrests, warnings, citations, detainment, etc, then it isn't really different from any other random citizen knocking on your door and asking about your security camera.
So the cops visited and talked to him, but didn't pursue any charges or issue any warnings. He was free to pursue his project (so far).
>“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.
Police cars are painted differently to make them visible. They are public information. Police stations are visible. Cops addresses are not made public.
Police visiting a home is form of intimidation. That's not something to brush off.
Oh you haven't seen the all-white decals on white cruisers with no top lights? Or the decals that are visible only when you're directly in line with the cruiser? There was an undercover Mitsubishi Lancer back in my home town. They aren't always so up front.
It's funny, reading that list, it all gives me an instinctual "less-nice neighborhood I wouldn't want to live in" vibe. But I'm sure it's perfectly normal for people who live in more exciting places.
In my case, IIRC, once like 15-20 years ago for some paperwork that needs an adress verified by the police, or something like that. I don't remember if it was for me or my wife. I don't remember the details.
What a BS take. Do a cursory google search and you'll find many abuses of the Flock cameras. There is no oversight. How incredibly ironic:
>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.
Hundreds of people have been tracked down and killed with flock cameras unnecessarily. The police routinely escalate interactions as a matter of procedure until they end in shootings.
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.
In Georgia, a police chief was found to have tracked his ex-girlfriend and her teenage daughter approximately 600 times.
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".
> But cops have been tracked down and killed by people using apps like Waze so it's not a completely unwarranted fear.
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.
So the cops showed up to intimidate a law-abiding citizen for doing something they don’t like, but were not feeling bold enough to rough him up or cart him off to jail on some made-up charge. Yay.
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.
Is it that different from members of the public asking cops what intentions they have using Flock?
Seems like everyone is concerned about privacy, the only difference is that the police is more organised and has more leverage to protect themselves vs (often) fragmented public.
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).
This is government overreach. Everyone should be allowed to run a surveillance system. People should be allowed to sell biometric data to each other, to corporations, or to the government. Such a restriction is preventing so many jobs from being created.
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?
Agree. users as rationalist just don't have the cultural inclination for such subtle insinuations, and sadly this speaks for a big populance on hackernews
I don't know. Personally I wouldn't have a stone to throw w.r.t. detecting sarcasm. I just thought this particular snark was exceptionally delicious (not that subtle either, IMO :D).
You guys are still dealing with widespread suppression of civil liberties that occurred during the illegal repression of the Freedom Convoy more than 4 years ago.
Fantastic, I love it. (I mean the activist's work, not the cops trying to scare him into stopping.) These kinds of projects are needed to give government officials some empathetic understanding of what they're doing to the people.
Why is nothing being done about this? This is 1984 we were laughing about. USA laughed at China when they did the same, but when USA is doing the same people are not outraged shooting those down, painting over them. Am I missing something?
Ideal outcome in theory but let's be realistic here, change through voting takes years to propagate through a political system while corporate buildouts can take place within months.
First you have to vote out all the representatives that voted for the cameras. Then you have ensure the replacements vote to remove them. then you have to be prepared for potentially years of litigation and negative PR campaigns. And that's just on one issue. Many politicians will correctly decide that it's easier to take corporate cash and kiss more babies and get sent back to office anyway.
we need to stop relying on representative democracy. It worked somewhat OK during periods of technological stasis or relatively sedate change, but it's absolutely inadequate to teh challenges of the digital era. Sortition or electronic democracy are the only credible alternatives.
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.
I don't think it's that simple... the vast majority of people simply don't know what having Flock means in the first place besides "less crime".
They don't understand how it could personally affect them and hence why they should care.
The "nothing to hide" crowd never thinks about data harvesting, leaks, hacks, malware, viruses, corrupted employees or other threat actors using the data maliciously.
Manipulating leaked/stolen data is also an extremely easy way to frame someone because the accuracy of the data is almost never questioned.
Because "1984" is one of those books that people pretend to have read so that they can use the word "Orwellian" to talk about surveillance they personally don't like while excusing the sort that's convenient or economically expedient for them.
(For what it's worth I haven't read ~half of the books on my book shelf. "Simulacra and Simulation" is mocking me from across the room)
So it still scans Bluetooth as explained in other comments here. Someone needs to build an easy to install faraday cage around it, something universal that can be easily installed on cameras that have been ordered to be removed.
Apologies. I'm mixing up this story with another story where I read the court ordered Flock to disassemble the cameras, and they left it in place for quite a long time so the state put a bag over it, but it was still collecting data via Bluetooth.
ends up a good % of the US population is in favor of fascism. Same reason we elected orange mango man, same reason ICE is running around shooting people and imprisoning America citizens.
Just the part where you're supposed to be doing something about it, otherwise don't you think it's a bit hypocritical to call out others for doing the same thing?
Someone should build OpenFlock which only tracks and makes public movement of city council members who voted for Flock cameras in their city. For empathy.
I remember a newspaper article where journalists dumped amd searched curbed trash of police commisioner and politicians and published their contents. Badass activism journalism.
Maybe the solution is more tech joins forces with the fourth institution
In Europe there is this radio beacon tracking device listening for emergency services radio signals (Tetra/C2000), called Target Blue[1]. This is not illegal, except apparently for in Belgium.
This is a great idea. I’ve been playing around with a cheap little SDR and seeing all these Tetra signal around. Kinda disappointing there isn’t really anything to do with them since it’s all encrypted. It’s kinda fun to see the meta data and whatnot…but this gives me some ideas!
Alright HN, here’s your challenge: build an open source Flock but for cops and politicians.
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.
Yes, if the company that makes them is shut down there won't be any to install, and if they're banned but seen on the street they'll be easy to take down. Are you serious right now
Exactly. Laws get followed when there are likely adverse consequences from not following them. We don't need huge punishments, we need likely punishments.
It's a low effort politically charged reddit style drive by remark that adds nothing to the discussion. Whether or not it's factually accurate or on topic is irrelevant.
If it's not removed from the device, why does it matter if it's three minutes or three milliseconds. With something longer (3 days) people could drive up and pull the records?
That mitigates one specific problem with Flock, and not entirely. Firstly, as long as any jackass can fill out a form and set a "hit," they can still target and stalk people.
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.
I don't understand why people are only talking about the ALPR aspect of Flock and similar devices. When the company does it it feels like they're trying to minimize the collection.
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.
I have a Watchy, a kit "smartwatch" built around an ESP32, that now runs firmware that listens for Axon/Taser and Flock bluetooth and wifi prefixes, and vibrates on my wrist when it detects them.
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.
How does it determine a "hit"? By making a query to a database? Then there is a log of the request anyway. Even if the database is on a local laptop there are application logs.
It's not the imagery that's really important, it's tracking the who+when+where.
If we're talking about license plate numbers, it seems fairly reasonable to just have the device download the entire target list.
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).
The technical feasibility is not the concern. It's that they would still have the logs of the queries anyway. "We're not uploading license plate images, just regular application audit logs."
Why do you think it is now an issue? Flock is a private company where other traffic cameras I'm familiar with were not. Those were problematic and in my state they were deemed not legal and removed. The other type of cameras I'm not a fan of are the ones for the toll roads. They take shots of license plates even if you have a tag. I don't know if they are searchable by law enforcement, but I have no reason to think they are not.
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.
The scale is the issue, for me. Having several small-time, disjointed ooerations doing ocr doesn't threaten the general population as much as having eyes everywhere taking notes of who is where at any given time.
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.
This assumes flock is just doing ALPR and it’s obvious from police statements and stolen flock camera data dumps they are well beyond that now, onto facial recognition.
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.
I'm in the middle, cameras can be useful in a crowded society as we see with body cams on cops. The can show truth really well, helping innocent people also, but there needs to be serious guard rails and criminal ramifications for misuse by users and companies itself so this is treated very seriously.
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.
If you accept the consequences in American politics of the slippery slope, the chilling effect, and inalienable rights, then you cannot condone any limited version of a technology which still serves the same perverse underlying purpose of subjugation and control.
Unfortunately, this involves a massive degree of trust to believe. And I simply dont believe that there's regulation and enforcement of any of this.
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.
Unfortunately that's up to a judge to decide and they don't need to introduce illegally retained data in court for parallel construction. Nor are courts an issue when they decide to share/sell this data to everyone under the sun, because it will be nearly impossible to figure out who they gave/shared it with, and the damage is already done regardless.
This argument consistently comes up in techie circles when it comes to regulating or outlawing, well, just about anything, and it really gets my goat.
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.
Well sure, making things illegal is better than letting things be illegal, but the current government gets away with a lot of illegal shit so the skepticism is warranted.
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.
Third party audits should be part of the enforcement. And even then, those third parties should be vetted and have full daylight as to ownership, conflicts of interest, etc.
So in the second push add a periodic audit requirement. In the third push mandate unmodifiable firmware and certain physical anti-tamper features. At some point circumventing the law using the existing infrastructure becomes similarly difficult to installing all new infrastructure.
The problem is, these "consecutive pushes" for reform rarely happen in practice and get silently shelved. That's how it went in Germany with a lot of things, anywhere from the Hartz IV reforms two decades ago all the way through the half-finished cannabis legalisation - and we have four years of legislative periods, while the US House is reelected every two years which leaves just one year (if not less) of productive work time.
Or it's just a flood of comments trying to take the moral high ground without actually helping in any way the cause. I'll call it pure aura farming or something, because I totally fail to see how constant bickering about any fixes is actually doing any fixing. Yes, I'm irritated.
It's the same critiques that come up with taxing the rich. "Oh people will just evade it". Cool then nail them then. Or if they all want to move to tiny tax shelters then tax them when they move their money there.
They want you to believe it's not possible to restrict them so that you don't try.
Good comparison! The best part is that it's not even true! Tax evasion is far from common, as no one wants to go to jail. It's tax… optimization? that's the problem.
In other words, the rich don't generally break the law to avoid paying taxes. Rather, they find _legal_ loopholes that work for them, and even create them through lobbying.
Which suggests that legal measures _would_ be likely to work!
To the common man, there is no real difference between tax evasion and tax "optimization". Especially since the people who most use those "optimizations" often have excessive impact on the writing of the tax code in the first place!
Having laws is generally a good thing when they are enforced. A law that is not enforced, selectively enforced or not enforceable is actually worse than no law since it gives power and agency to the enforcer without providing much to the people.
In this case what you've proposed is the exact same setup FISA, and other "national security" collection works under. Does this system work? who knows the people policing themselves won't say
I think if your threat model is "the government is constantly lying and deceiving you", you've already lost. I'm not saying you're wrong – it seems a correct observation about the US – but you have bigger problems then.
That being said: how about the New Hampshire law plus a provision for independent audits?
This is such a classic software developer's fallacy. Law is not code that is executed by society. The program called society is also orders of magnitude more complicated than the most complicated program you've ever worked with.
2. Whenever a camera detects a license plate, it hashes the license plate and only reports if the hash matches. Nothing leaves or even stored on the device if the hash does not match.
3. There's no "search for hits", you tell cameras which plates to record and every plate registration is associated with person who registered it and reason.
No point in hashing, it's trivial to infer the license plate from the hash since the space of license plate numbers is finitely small - one can just brute-force calculate a hash -> license plate table (also called a rainbow table).
Be careful what you wish for; the regulations don't cover Flock cameras because of the distinction between mobile(which is covered) and fixed(which is not) ALPRs. Among other issues.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 13.5 ms ] threadIn 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If knowing that a snitch will accept cash for narc'ing info, even if that info is going to get used for unlawful purposes such as stalking (often by those with violent tendencies) causes you distress ...
I don't think you could get out of stalking charge by just being so good at stalking that person affected didn't detect it, assuming you get detected at some point for some reason.
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.
Part of this is refusing to ever accept accountability for their actions, either individually or collectively.
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.
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.
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/J7yJfhsuJls
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.
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.
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.
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, there's no difference between one officer recording one person, and a large-scale, automated surveillance system recording everyone.
So why would there be a legal difference between one person recording a police officer, and a large-scale, automated surveillance system recording every police officer?
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.
If they're not absolute, they're not rights. It's a feel-good document that protects jack shit.
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.
Of course that's the same everywhere else, including the US, meaning it's not worth pointing out.
I disagree as there's often reasonable exceptions to "rights", especially when they might infringe other people's rights. e.g. The right to freedom isn't absolute in any country that has prisons.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That is not the case. It hasn't been truly tested, and there are very strong hints in SCOTUS 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.
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...>
You have to assume it’s not just used by sworn law enforcement officers, especially when Flock’s own civilian employees have abused it.
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.
Then why can Lowes and Home Depot buy their own units, place them across properties that aren't theirs and search them nationwide?
https://www.flocksafety.com/
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.
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.
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.
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?
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=snPDoXl9ZPs&si=mxrTyJpsBrZ...
Is it not the opposite - such a wide warrantless surveillance would not be permitted for law enforcement ... but if Joe Average (megacorp) exercises their right to record in public - law enforcement are free to purchase said information in pursuit of justice ...
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."
> 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:
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-...
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.
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?
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?
Start a company that does ALPR and facial recognition, but narrowly targeting politicians.
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...
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.
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
In exactly equal measure: I don't want cops setting up surveillance networks any more than I want HN'ers doing it. So this post, bringing attention to that issue, is good, imo.
And as long as random joe dropout with a badge from boss hogg can do it, so can the rest of the people. Cops are only special to the degree that We The People want them to be.
Stunts for attention so that libertarians on HN can get a smugrection? Nah.
You don't actually have to worry about "HN'ers setting up surveillance networks".
At which point is this called slavery?
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.
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.
I like Dan G, Paul G and all the lads but this is a fuck up. YC are supposed to be disruptive not borderline Stasi.
>“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.
Police visiting a home is form of intimidation. That's not something to brush off.
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.
Why would police visit people periodically?
- 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.
In my case, IIRC, once like 15-20 years ago for some paperwork that needs an adress verified by the police, or something like that. I don't remember if it was for me or my wife. I don't remember the details.
Is visiting a civil servant's home a form of intimidation?
>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.
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.
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".
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.
Is there a specific (confirmed) case you're referencing?
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.
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-...
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).
People are mostly objecting to government misuse of security tech to accelerate unconstitutional enforcement.
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?
Keep up the good work!
>> 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?
First you have to vote out all the representatives that voted for the cameras. Then you have ensure the replacements vote to remove them. then you have to be prepared for potentially years of litigation and negative PR campaigns. And that's just on one issue. Many politicians will correctly decide that it's easier to take corporate cash and kiss more babies and get sent back to office anyway.
we need to stop relying on representative democracy. It worked somewhat OK during periods of technological stasis or relatively sedate change, but it's absolutely inadequate to teh challenges of the digital era. Sortition or electronic democracy are the only credible alternatives.
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.
They don't understand how it could personally affect them and hence why they should care.
The "nothing to hide" crowd never thinks about data harvesting, leaks, hacks, malware, viruses, corrupted employees or other threat actors using the data maliciously.
Manipulating leaked/stolen data is also an extremely easy way to frame someone because the accuracy of the data is almost never questioned.
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.
(For what it's worth I haven't read ~half of the books on my book shelf. "Simulacra and Simulation" is mocking me from across the room)
I do think there is value in fighting the power... but 1984 is not a book that depicts such a choice working out well.
It was a beautiful thing.
The state ordered the cameras removed but they left the posts, someone stuck a flag inside the old post.
https://postimg.cc/q6vSQ01V
Why invoke China? The UK did this long before China.
Just the part where you're supposed to be doing something about it, otherwise don't you think it's a bit hypocritical to call out others for doing the same thing?
Maybe the solution is more tech joins forces with the fourth institution
[1] https://blu-eye.eu/en
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.
> 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.
This is why you have to codify in law accountability and oversight.
* 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...
FIFY
* 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.
Listen to Marc Anderseen, he’s a funder of Flock and a passionate advocate of that position.
Well... Flock only has themselves to blame for it getting politically charged.
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.
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.
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.
It's not the imagery that's really important, it's tracking the who+when+where.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They want you to believe it's not possible to restrict them so that you don't try.
In other words, the rich don't generally break the law to avoid paying taxes. Rather, they find _legal_ loopholes that work for them, and even create them through lobbying.
Which suggests that legal measures _would_ be likely to work!
> You can't build enforcement infrastructure around something that isn't yet illegal!
Yes. Yet merely making something illegal must not be an excuse to set up something that is sooo easy to breach.
In other words, stealing being illegal does not make it a good idea to recklessly leave stacked banknotes unattended on my lawn.
Some laws don't reflect what broader society thinks at all.
Selective enforcement is worse than no law at all.
That being said: how about the New Hampshire law plus a provision for independent audits?
1. Every hit is hashed and sent to every camera.
2. Whenever a camera detects a license plate, it hashes the license plate and only reports if the hash matches. Nothing leaves or even stored on the device if the hash does not match.
3. There's no "search for hits", you tell cameras which plates to record and every plate registration is associated with person who registered it and reason.
Since there can not be any trust in the supply chain and operations, the only way is to ban ALPR outright.