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Discussion (30 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
People always comment that we need to do more screening before people become cops, do more training. The screening and the training are the problem.
Pay close attention to how he insists that she was coming on to him. He genuinely believes that. He lives in a fake reality that he adjusts in whatever way will make him happiest because he has spent so long in a system that has zero repercussions or accountability.
He probably shouldn't be allowed to own a gun.
Men like this know they are doing bad things. They don't care. There are no repercussions. They do not feel bad about doing these bad things.
See also: https://www.bwss.org/abusive-men-describe-the-benefits-of-vi...
Basically, these people just choose to not care about other people. They know they are hurting someone. But minor personal convenience is more important to them than not hurting another person.
They are like a toddler in a toy store and want the shiniest thing.
Is doing an INSANE amount of heavy lifting here for that generalization but yeah point taken.
I've studied criminal justice before CS, and after getting to know cops I decided it isn't for me. The culture is awful. It is like high school, a lot of drama, sleeping around, many divorces, abuse of power and just screwed up mentality.
What makes this story worse is this for me: "The detective investigating Roman told the man “you’ll get past this bro” during his arrest, and later told the victim that he was "remorseful" and urged her not to post about the incident on social media, according to body camera footage obtained by 404 Media."
The detective urged the victim not post about it.....both should be stripped of badges immediately and never get certified again.
> I can’t tell you what to post or not post, but if you could refrain from posting anything until my investigation is over, I would appreciate it.
emphasis mine, given that, "The detective urged the victim not post about it" seems like taking things bit out of context.
No it didn't. It came from black activist movements and got popularized by BLM and the Black Visions Collective during the George Floyd protests, and abolition was very much an intended part of the message.
It then leaked into more formal and academic discussion as it was adopted by the white liberal mainstream because the original message was too radical to be acceptable. Which is understandable. No one wants to admit that their complicity in a white supremacist system is the problem.
Flock basically knows what a malicious request looks like. The simple example he gives is someone pinging the same license plate every day without putting it on a watchlist, because the officer doesn't want others to know. They started rolling out auto-detection of bad-faith queries and flagging those to supervisors.
If you figure that some percentage of cops are dirty, a simple easily detectable honeypot is extremely effective in identifying them and firing them. I guess the hard part here is actually holding the cops that abuse the system accountable but that's also likely solvable. It's a huge liability for the police force. Usually the ones that are protecting dirty cops are the police unions, but that's a whole different conversation
It's also important to note that Flock is just a license plate reader. It doesn't record video or do any facial recognition. And storage typically gets deleted between 1 and 7 days and is up to the precent to set.
https://singjupost.com/transcript-all-in-interview-with-floc...
https://www.wired.com/story/flock-safety-os-investigate/
> The code describes 45 tools at the AI’s disposal, giving it access to plate scans and camera metadata, arrest records, case files, dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives and associates.
Sounds like they're shipping an AI that can use external datasources like an MCP. By this regard, Claude does exactly the same thing. Give it access to a database with social security numbers and it'll query them for you.
The rest of the things described in the article is all a byproduct of having a database (typically kept around for 1-7 days) of cars, their license plates, locations and some physical description of the car. For instance:
> vehicles that left one city for another and returned within a week, made repeat roundtrips over 14 days, or passed through three areas in sequence.
If you have still photos of every car passing on particular street corners, this is just a query. They're just taking photos and reading license plates. And they started getting some description of the car, like unusual things. The CEO talks about that as well. From the interview:
> A car drives by, we take a still image of the vehicle, we read the license plate, and the system’s gotten more sophisticated with time. We can detect things like a roof rack or a bumper sticker or dent or damage, but that’s at its core what the technology does...
> So it’s pretty cool technology, and pretty effective, because if you think about what happens on a 911 call, most people don’t instinctively look at the license plate and remember it. They see the thing that was unique about the car — oh, it had damage on the right side.
I would definitely recommend the interview if you want to learn more.
Your goalposts are quite mobile.
2) One of their products is a license plate scanner / reader.
3) This scanner / reader consumes camera output which includes license plates.
3) One of their products is a tracker / alerter / searcher.
4) The searcher / tracker isn't limited to license plates, it can correlate on other aspects in the photo. These other aspects concern the vehicle, the vehicle occupants, objects and individuals elsewhere in the photo.
This is backed up by their statements. If you have an alt source supporting your statement please provide
That's like saying the SS served as a honeypot for genocidal maniacs.
And they identify lots more than just license plates. What license plates were visible inside the YMCA children's gym? Or at public pools on the pooldeck?
Garrett has also said that he sees false positives as a better outcome than false negatives, because the latter doesn't advance Flock's mission towards "a world with no crime, thanks to Flock" (with unironic apologies to Minority Report).