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#flock#axon#data#cameras#police#public#https#com#sharing#don
Discussion (41 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
All of Winona Police Department's Flock cameras cut down and stolen
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171656
257 comments
Cops Used Flock to Track a Man Across State Lines for a Pretextual Weed Search
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49184190
202 comments
How Cops Are Trying to Hide Their Use of Flock
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49172076
10 comments
Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156650
118 comments
Flock – Chilling Effects: Long Island's Emerging Open-Air Prison
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49148541
40 comments
Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158837
17 comments
> Axon, simply, does not have a national network. Meaning that it would not be possible for cops in one jurisdiction to search cameras across the country. [...] Police departments using Axon can enter into data sharing agreements with each other, though.
> Denver, just like the City of Ferndale, explicitly mentioned this lack of this national network as part of its decision to ditch Flock for Axon.
This (probably alongside all the bad press Flock has gotten) appears to be the crux of the switching. Ultimately, the tech actually being deployed seems similar.
Also interesting:
> One reason why journalists, activists, and residents have been able to learn so much about what police use Flock for is that the company has built auditing tools that the public can access through records requests.
Generally, silly jokes but a very serious research and fact checking team.
> One reason why journalists, activists, and residents have been able to learn so much about what police use Flock for is that the company has built auditing tools that the public can access through records requests.
As someone else says, "in theory". Also of note, their "Transparency Portal" is... not. I know of at least three agencies in my County who are using Flock who are not listed on the Transparency Portal...
You should fully own and control your home security cameras. Right now many homeowners are shipping their data to national datacenters.
Municipalities should fully own and control their public security cameras, on municipal datacenter resources.
Data sharing / federation should always be intentional and time-bound. It should be impossible for a small town cop to unilaterally access security records from a random city he has no jurisdiction in.
The issue is a massive unaccountable dragnet that is prone to abuse and mistakes being treated as infallible by less than competent police.
People really don’t care if the local PD puts up cameras at an intersection with high accident rates, or a street with high crime rates. The issue is automated proactive alerts on incorrect license plates, tracking, nationwide data sharing, lack of judicial oversight, data in private databases, etc.
In practice it's difficult to do and offer remote access.
If they can get the data to their server to store it, they could just as easily not do that and instead serve it from your local device by proxy through their server.
It’s t he exact same difficulty as what they are already doing. Arguably easier since you don’t have to manage file storage in the cloud.
If another district wants to ask a question, they have to follow the appropriate chain of command and use the correct tools.
Flock appears to have been a way for them to work around all of that and just answer any question they had willy-nilly.
And I think as people are learning about it, they are outraged across the political spectrum; perhaps we should capitalized on that instead of trying to turn it into a red/blue thing.
> Axon’s documentation for its ALPR product, a “shared data” option “extends the query to partner-agency detections once a sharing relationship is active.”
Axon develops a data marketplace to streamline so-called lawful sharing of data, or acquires it via Flock and rebrands the network name. Audit capabilities are removed to streamline operational efficiency and reduce political risk. The public is no better off than before.
If anything this will make it go from bad to worse along all axes -- decentralized sharing, making it harder to track data request/usage, hide surveillance in an infrastructure that is considered essential, and host of other things..
More likely for Axon to acquire flock than the other way around.
The direction would be the other way around. Axon is showing that they want the market, that they can build the tech themselves, and that they can leverage their extensive existing relationships with law enforcement and municipal governments as sales channels.
I find it slightly less objectionable, as the chances that I drive by Flock's cameras every day are nearly 100% but the chances that I'm within visual range of a police car are much lower and more random.
Axon just replaces Flock in some places. But I forgot to say that it probably doesn't matter much, and that whatever anyone resents about the whole thing, will just get worse.
The masses, or 'other' population, whoever it is that protests this variety of surveillance; the angry minority/ineffectual-majority, the misguided few/many that don't embrace the panopticon, etc. Regardless, it's not going away. From here onward, whatever form of surveillance or control it is, it's not going away. Eternal whackamole, eternal malcontent, we can hate it and spray-paint it all we want, but the only means to stop it is the one most people are either not capable of, or do not believe they are capable of, and it does not involve vandalism, feeble expressions of frothing contempt or anything but serious organized and unfortunately, legal methodology. Everything else is mostly symbolic, in a time when public opinion is less valuable than ever, and symbols offer little more than forensic evidence and fuel for long-term counter strategy.
Flock, Axon, ARGUS-IS, Xfinity CSI multi-AP WiFi sensing fusion, evil smartphones -- it's all here to stay, and evolve, and get pushed in our lives.
Might is Right. However terribly wrong it might be. And might is especially right when society divests from the primary tool capable of making it wrong. And I think, largely, that is what we've done. A city council is a minority. Whether it represents the majority, is, I think, not always consistent.