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#flock#reason#police#officer#should#cameras#don#local#case#field
Discussion (54 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Flock designed their software so that the police have to state a reason. This can't be turned off. And it's logged for auditing purposes. And then the local governments made the logs public.
So Flock and the local governments are acting responsibly here. The police officer is not and should be reprimanded.
Who is responsible for ensuring that agents of the government in jurisdictions that host Flock cameras adhere to proper procedures, if not the local governments themselves? Who is designing access systems that permit random text in lieu of actual case numbers that can be verified in real time and properly gate the system? If Flock and the IT departments of local governments cannot provide proper locks against this sort of random surveillance then the cameras should be removed.
>Data reviewed by the EFF included searches labelled 'LMAO', 'LOL', 'Hehe', 'Haha', 'idk' and 'blah'. Other entries included 'asdfg' and strings of apparently random keyboard characters. In one case, an officer entered: 'robbery I don't remember the case number leave me alone'.
Seems like they really put a lot of thought into preventing abuse
>Network Size and ReachTotal Count: Flock Safety reports having over 120,000 active cameras.Community Spread: These cameras are placed in more than 6,000 communities.Data Collection: The system records roughly 20 billion vehicle scans every single month. [1] (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/09/14/trump-e...), [2] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_Safety)
He searched ~1/5 of the cameras available in America..
L O fucking L
And yet none of this stopped an individual from first accessing 19,000 cameras across 1558 cities with "LMAO" as the reason. The damage is already done and it could have been prevented.
Do they not know the name of this officer, or are they not reporting it?
If the search was granted based on human checks for the reason given, they would not dare be flippant about this. Of course it would take more time, humans don't scale, etc. but that's kinda the point: invasive methods should be a last resort.
lol wtf. Like, I get it, "haha quirky me", if it was a personal coding project or an informal setting, but not here!? I wouldn't believe if you told me they were older than, what, 30?
On second thought, that's absolutely possible.
My 3 "words" requirement because managers wanted more than just "caus" ended up with workers simply putting in "a o k".
These systems need more validation and teeth than simply letting the officers enter whatever text allows them to search. A case number isn't enough, IMO. There needs to be an actual warrant which the system checks. But further, misuse needs to be prosecuted (I know, fat chance).
The obvious flaw is that someone added this field as a requirement but they never actually audit it and hold officers accountable
I think you can trace both of these problems back to the police union.
Flock added the field as a requirement and logs it. It's up to the police/local government to reprimand abuse.
In the correct political environment, entire companies can be dismantled with one executive action. Not our current political environment, but in the 1980s one it could happen.
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Oh, also, companies were literally an act of Congress when this country started. We can change the rules back and dismantle any company that refuses to work for the benefit of this country.
Remember that one time when a large global company (The Dutch East India company) got a tax break from the king, and it angered the population so much that we took a bunch of tea (a symbol of the Dutch East India Company) and threw it into the Boston Harbor?
Ahhhhh yeah. I remember. Oh right, we teach that situation a bit differently today don't we? People probably don't remember exactly how easy it used to be or how this country used to treat companies that betrayed our values.
We can go back. But lets start with understanding that we _can_ go back. Step 2 is electing people who will agree with this political message.
This is something I'm sure all gun owners support.
Any large enough population will also include people failing at doing the-right-thing™ (when such a thing could at least reach some societal consensus) at least sometimes in their life. Expecting anything else is dooming the standard at the lowest possible floor level.
It's a called integrity and morality. Clearly another thing cops and their sycophants don't have.
The very clear point here is that cops are in practice misusing this system without a meaningful safeguard in place to ensure searches are legal. Which is especially worrisome in this country given that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Like, the constitution isn't unclear on this at all.