Flock updates privacy, accountability, security, and transparency safeguards

LLazyMans about 10 hours ago 64 commentsRead Article on flocksafety.com

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Discussion (64 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

jkestner•about 9 hours ago

Clearly, the stories in the press have hurt them, especially the police abuse. Requiring case codes is a good step, and proactively catching signs of abuse is a big change from "we're just an unopinionated tool; you should talk to your police department". They're still passing the buck on educating users on the limitations of their tool. I remain skeptical of any of their claims around data ownership.

Reading these actions, you can pick apart how to circumvent them, and the security audit is still pending — let's see how damning of a report they'll allow to be released.

explodes•about 9 hours ago

> More than one-third of our customers have voluntarily adopted Audit Assistance.

Looks like they don't actually give a shit. These safeguards should be the required bare minimum.

pj_mukh•about 9 hours ago

I dont know why we're not looking at the obvious answer here. Encrypt the data behind warrants and require narrow parameters for the warrants. It will require state-by-state implementation + legal changes sure but it's the safest, simplest solution.

P.S: Anyone know how London has solved this problem?

rmnoflock•about 1 hour ago

The obvious answer here is to take the cameras down and restore the fourth amendment. This is a policy failure, not a technical one.

ethanwillis•about 9 hours ago

The last thing I'd want replicated in the US is UK governance.

pj_mukh•about 8 hours ago

The last thing I'd wanna replicate is any kind of blanket statement like that.

pugworthy•about 8 hours ago

I would encourage anyone concerned about cameras in their town to explore the DeFlock website map (and app). It allows crowdsourced reporting of camera locations.

I also would STRONGLY encourage people to actually go look for any ALPR reported in their town, because DeFlock also allows crowdsourced corrections to misreported instances.

Where I live, it had been reported that we had 9 ALPR cameras, which in fact were not ALPR cameras but rather traffic management cameras - or in two cases not cameras at all. It gave the impression of a problem that didn't exist here.

ryandvm•about 9 hours ago

Flock can make all the promises it wants, but the reality is that once growth stalls out on camera installations, which it must, shareholders will immediately insist that they pivot into other monetization schemes. There aren't really any laws holding them back, just their already weasel-worded contracts that they could easily renegotiate once the police departments are putting pressure on the city/county/state/federal legislative bodies.

The possibilities are endless:

  - Is your employee visiting your competitors?
  - Where has your husband/wife/lover been?
  - What medical buildings has this person been to?
  - Does this person go to churches / gun ranges?

ClarityJones•about 9 hours ago

Ironically, those questions are more legal than Flock's current usage. The vast majority of Flock's revenue comes from government, and government cannot hire a 3rd party to do what would be unconstitutional if done directly. Thus far, pervasive monitoring without a warrant has been considered an unreasonable search.

[Edit: I think Flocks "victims" have a decent argument for injunctions for the removal of the cameras on the basis that Flock is conducting an illegal search on behalf of the government.]

However, the government can generally do what the public is allowed to do. So, if there are companies serving a genuine market for monitoring your employees, etc. via video surveillance installed on private property... then the government would not be restricted from accessing what private businesses have access to buy.

btown•about 8 hours ago

It’s an important reminder: I think a lot of people think that online privacy is just a thing that keeps you from being micro-targeted by ads and algorithms - and many don’t care about that. But it’s also a thing that keeps that data from governments that are increasingly confident that they can control the narrative, if and when they use this information in violent ways against their own residents. Because once it’s collected, it can and will be laundered for government use.

ranger_danger•about 8 hours ago

> government cannot hire a 3rd party to do what would be unconstitutional if done directly

Is there actually a legal precedent for this?

ClarityJones•about 8 hours ago

It's a general principle of agency law, but one example would be Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn., 489 US 602 (1989) involving a drug test performed by ostensibly private railroads, but pursuant to federal regulations. That was considered sufficient government action to implicate the 4th Amendment.

iamnothere•about 7 hours ago

I look forward to purchasing this data and building whereismycrush.com. Enter someone’s license plate and find out where they are, where they’ve been, and who’s riding with them. No more guessing games! After all, people have no right to privacy in public—especially that special someone.

thaumaturgy•about 8 hours ago

Those are small potatoes. The obvious big customer is the federal government. Founders Fund was an early investor, Flock's enormous volume of data would be a great fit for Palantir, and as early as 2020, Flock was facilitating direct access for fusion centers:

> “FLOCK already has their license plate reader systems in several neighborhoods in North SA [San Antonio] now,” James Glass, the deputy director of the Southwest Texas Fusion Center, wrote in an October 2020 email to colleagues. “In order to be granted free access to search the FLOCK system for license plate reader hits, we are asked to agree to sign this MOU.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/talon-flock-safety-cameras-p...

fusslo•about 9 hours ago

> Flock can make all the promises it wants

They lost me when the CEO lied to a city official in a public meeting. ( https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-c... )

LazyMans•about 8 hours ago

That wasn't the CEO, and "lie" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. A non-product person (CISO) was being asked if a specific feature exists and they believed it did not. Should they have said something along the lines of, "as far as I know, no" yes, they should have. It's a mistake, not a lie. Lie would require intentionally having knowledge of it and trying to obscure that fact.

giantrobot•about 8 hours ago

They do not deserve the benefit of doubt. If anything their executives or officers say is not truthful it must be interpreted as being knowing and malicious. Flock's systems have been too easily abused to assume anything else. A company their size can't be so stupid as to allow for the abuse that's happened without everyone in the decision chain being well aware of the possibility and those use cases.

smalltorch•about 7 hours ago

this one felt like lying though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H30Ub6olYL4&t=907s

tyrust•about 8 hours ago

> From the beginning, we have been clear that our customers own the data captured by their ALPR cameras. This has always been the case, but some of our contractual language has confused the public on this crucial point... The principle is simple: customers own the data, decide who can access it, and choose who they share it with.

I'm one of the general public that is continually confused by their usage of the word "own". I can't imagine that their language update will make it any more clear.

If the data is on Flock's servers (it is) and accessible by Flock (it is) then it is Flock who owns the data, not the PDs. Sure, they can allow the PDs to have say over what is done with the data, but ultimately Flock has the ability to use the data however they'd like.

This is not hypothetical: Flock have used previously shared data with DHS [0] without the so-called owner's permission and use data for their AI training [1] without option to opt-out.

Their definition of ownership is further contradicted later in this post:

> we will now require case codes for all law enforcement searches by the end of the year.

To be clear, I think this is a good change, but if PDs "own" their data, then they should be able to decide whether or not they want to use this feature.

All in all, this is not ownership.

[0] - https://apnews.com/article/immigration-abortion-license-plat...

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/...

LazyMans•about 2 hours ago

The general public are not lawyers and will not always understand all the terms across the multi-page terms of service. For all intents and purposes. The customers “own” it. For a SaaS company. What this looks like legally is “licensing” of data to Flock from the customer. Terms like that are needed to properly and defensibly “handle” footage and assets. Manage storage, retrieve and serve the content, etc.

The ToS is negotiable. As it usually is when talking large sums of money. You can retrieve this with a FOIA request and see how they tend to be unique to each city. Some customers like to define the relationship differently or make additional restrictions for data handling.

I really just want to point out that layman terms and contract law are two different things.

I wouldn’t care if anonymized data is being used,I would care if I’m told I control sharing but it turns out I don’t. It’s not clear to me Flock did anything wrong. It sounds like that department inadvertently shared with a federal agency because it wasn’t obvious to them they were doing so. (Federal agencies are clearly marked as such now, product complies with state law to prevent accidental sharing)

thangalin•about 9 hours ago

https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png ;-)

runjake•about 9 hours ago

For my miscellaneous Flock queries, I use case number "abc123".

My police chief is okay with it and the case number "abc123" is FOIA-exempt out of operational security concerns.

illithid0•about 9 hours ago

I don't care what they change, I want Flock gone. I will not accept that this is "just how things are now".

goda90•about 9 hours ago

I want all mass surveillance gone, regardless of the brand.

iamnothere•about 7 hours ago

Yes, people need to mention Axon more, who may be even worse given the broader scope of their products. Axon is replacing Flock in many places that cancelled Flock contracts.

abirch•about 9 hours ago

please remember to start locally. If your city/town is using it, please build a coalition and show up to meetings.

cyanydeez•about 9 hours ago

also start with your tech selections. way to many people feeding LLMs controlled by global corporations all their details.

user00005•about 9 hours ago

The only acceptable change is the removal of these cameras.

I can't go walk my dog around the neighborhood without looking up and seeing police accessible cameras. They can track my movements with no probable cause and no warrants.

stronglikedan•about 8 hours ago

And they're objectively ugly as fuck. I am fortunate enough to live in a neighborhood with a two mile tree-lined path, and these are the only inorganic "scenery" besides the path and adjacent road. It's ruined my daily walks.

rustcleaner•about 8 hours ago

I am lucky to be in a city which has not rolled any of this out, but it's surrounded by cities which have gone whole-hog on rollout. I use DeFlock app to see camera locations (but do not route or give it GPS because it has Network permission), then manually create a route in OSMAnd~ (no Network permission) to avoid the cameras. OSMAnd really really needs to roll out an addon for ALPRs just like it has for speed cameras, like yesterday!

Teever•about 8 hours ago

That isn't enough.

It doesn't deal with the lingering threat that remains of the people who would be willing to do this kind of stuff for money.

The problem is ultimately that there are people motivated to spy on their neighbours and bring about a totalitarian surveillance nightmare in exchange for money.

You're just playing whack-a-mole as long as these people can still operate in society. They'll be back, and more insidious and more determined to destroy society.

What's the solution to that?

ranger_danger•about 9 hours ago

> They can track my movements with no probable cause and no warrants

My understanding is that IF they are tracking your historical movements over time from multiple different cameras, that constitutes a "search" and the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant in that case.

There have been slightly different variations to this in the courts lately, such as google location history and geofence warrants, but unless you know of a legal precedent (besides "they're getting away with it right now") that says historical movements don't need a search, I'm inclined to believe that they do.

Whether or not that is currently being successfully tested in court is another story.

williamcotton•about 8 hours ago

Seems like there is some caselaw that supports your theory based on US Supreme Court rulings in Kyllo v. United States (2001) (thermal imaging), United States v. Jones (2012) (GPS tracking) and Carpenter v. United States (2018) (tracking via cell site data).

VCFundedGenYer•about 8 hours ago

Pointless changes made for performative purposes by clueless execs.

The company is dead to rights in the eyes of the public.

ethanwillis•about 9 hours ago

The people running Flock are simply bad people with the completely wrong temperament.

We shouldn't have these cameras at all but even if we were forced to have them the people running Flock are the last people who should be in control of them.

The way they act on social media and in interviews they just come off (and surely are) fragile ego children.

jkestner•about 7 hours ago

I read the letter as the CEO feeling pressure from his bosses to give opponents less ammunition lest he be replaced with "sober leadership". Flock truly has been their own worst enemy.

We should anticipate a future where a more competent malicious actor like Axon is leading this industry. As the Kleenex of surveillance cameras, Flock has poisoned the category, so I don't think switching brands will fool anyone, but we will have less of an attack surface.

LazyMans•about 10 hours ago

I think the biggest change I like to see is locking out users on suspicious activity, instead of waiting for police departments to police their own.

qwerty_clicks•about 9 hours ago

Flock is still a snowballing disaster for eroding personal privacy and increasing abuse.

Guns have safety triggers but cops still have no problems with discharging them too quickly and wrongly.

Let’s learn from guns, we should have limited them in the US decades ago and today the problem is hugely based on lack of will for action at every step in history.

NDlurker•about 9 hours ago

Those triggers set to have a higher weight trigger pull are less safe, throws the aim off

AngryData•about 9 hours ago

For a skilled, trained, and calm shooter maybe. Cops don't practice enough or are trained well enough for IMHO that to matter. US cops don't take time to aim, they just mag dump.

NDlurker•about 8 hours ago

True. This incident is where I first heard of the 12lb trigger pull.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna48792998

josefritzishere•about 9 hours ago

There is no "fixing" Flock. It's an affront to our Constitutional rights. The company should be dissolved.

micromacrofoot•about 9 hours ago

too little too late, the brand is poisoned

bilegeek•about 9 hours ago

Plenty of synonyms[1] for groups of animals to choose from. I'd recommend the one for Ravens ("unkindness" or "conspiracy", seriously).

[1]https://www.britannica.com/science/Animal-Group-Names

edot•about 8 hours ago

I highly encourage everyone to start organizing locally. It’s extremely easy to do. Read your city’s local meeting transcripts (LLMs can help find ones with Flock mentions), see who said what, email them. Make a website, find who else has publicly commented and reach out to them, reach out to local newspapers.

Make a site specific to your area. I’ve created https://stopflock419.com for my part, and I’ve already had five people in my area reach out to me (after spreading it around via friends and family).

Local campaigning is easier than you think! Most of the councils who approved these were a) lied to about the cameras’ capabilities and b) generally just on autopilot, they aren’t Flock fanboys, they just kind of take the police chief at their word that these are good tools.

iririririr•about 8 hours ago

the whole world agrees flock is awful and unfixable.

Now, flock investor should get more hate.

tonetheman•about 9 hours ago

Another great company ycombinator funded... helping ICE and destroying lives everywhere.

Just another example of tech bros enriching themselves and destroying as much as they can along the way.

rustcleaner•about 8 hours ago

The wealth taxes on hexamillionaires+ can't come soon enough! Return to the '50s and implement 90% income taxes too on >$X MM/year, and on corporations after operating cost deductions but before dividends and buybacks. The Golden Age of the 20th century wasn't just because of America's post-war industrial monopoly, but also its laws and tax codes that kept a hard check on massive wealth accumulation.

CPLX•about 9 hours ago

Interesting to see the sentiment expressed in the comments here given the context that they are being posted on a promotional website for the private equity firm that launched Flock.

slowin•about 9 hours ago

Seems like the perfect place to voice our opinions to discourage similar investments in the future.

CPLX•about 6 hours ago

Yes of course. Just interesting to see the divergence between the community and its host.

slibhb•about 9 hours ago

Policies to limit misuse should be adopted. But the idea that you have a right to privacy while in public is wrong and bad.

abirch•about 9 hours ago

I would say that the right to privacy is wrong but it's not bad. Mass surveillance is dangerous. It back fired spectacularly in like what happened in Iran: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/03/middleeast/us-israel-plot-kil...

fusslo•about 8 hours ago

> right to privacy is wrong

Even this isn't true (unless you meant morally, which I can't agree with) in the USA. There are times and situations where you absolutely have a right to privacy in public. For example, the government still needs a warrant to listen to you on a phone call in a public phone booth. The government needs a warrant to attach a gps tracker to your car even if it's on the public streets.

Personally, I would love extending protections against private corporations (not just government), and prevent the storage and aggregation of surveillance sensor data.

abirch•about 7 hours ago

I meant practically the right to privacy is wrong: I should have the right but I don't expect it. Similar to not being robbed is a right, but I don't expect it at times and in all locations.

JoshTriplett•about 9 hours ago

> But the idea that you have a right to privacy while in public is wrong and bad.

On the contrary, you should absolutely have a right to not be pervasively tracked and surveilled.

Cider9986•about 9 hours ago

The idea that our government should surveil us is wrong and bad.

tjoff•about 9 hours ago

Yeah, that should be reserved for apple and google! /s

iamnothere•about 7 hours ago

How about none of the above?

explodes•about 9 hours ago

I mean, you wouldn't mind if I followed you everywhere then, right? And waiting outside your home when you're inside. They call that stalking. Doing that systematically to everybody doesn't make it ok.

Plainly, I think it makes sense to not be constantly in view of a single entity when in public.

LazyMans•about 1 hour ago

This is why the courts have not ruled it a violation. It’s not following you. Not literally taking precise measurements of your position. It’s not even you, nor could it be proven you are even driving in the majority of cases. It’s an image of the rear of a car. Only while passing a stationary point.

What is to be decided, is how many single points does it take to be considered “precise” measurement. If I put a camera every 500ft of roadway, is it tracking how? Probably. Still not your though, it’s a car. Is a car an extension of you? Do your rights extend to the car?

In case law, even though a phone is not you, it’s considered an extension of you. A car is not. A phones location data continues even when in the privacy of your home, or in a private building. A church, a hospital, whatever.

That is why cellular gps data requires a warrant.

Dispersed points on a map, with a timestamp, and image of the rear of a car are not the same.

HDBaseT•35 minutes ago

>Dispersed points on a map, with a timestamp, and image of the rear of a car are not the same.

It might as well be the same for all intents and purposes though. If you place a Flock camera every 100m, the accuracy effectively becomes <50m. You can reveal basically every outdoor movement of a human with that level of precision.

Across weeks and months it can be used to profile you. The statistical analysis capabilities are insane. It also is not just "license plates" its everything. How you look, how you walk, your clothing, everything gets captured.

These cameras aren't just placed on road sides, the capture footpaths, parks, entries to peoples home, swimming pools even!

slibhb•about 8 hours ago

My building already has cameras at the entrances and in the halls. Doesn't bother me.

Abuse is possible, but I don't see why we can't limit it with laws and regulations. And the potential gains in terms of preventing crime and catching criminals are huge.