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- Hacker News
- Nit: the police chief was also stalking and harassing at least one man
- But crimes against men don’t matter because by being a man, he is responsible for all crimes committed by men. /sby xigoi
- Warrants are needed, and much more transparency. These platforms should be monitored and policed aggressively to keep everybody honest. There's a precedent for this with for example body cam footage means it's now much easier to audit police conduct.
Surveillance technology potentially enables a lot of abuse if used without checks and balances. But the same technology also enables monitoring for abuse. Use of surveillance technology should be actively monitored and supervised. There should be auditable logs, footage, etc. with very long retention periods and active spot checks. In case of conflicts/abuse, there should be ample evidence.
- These platforms shouldn't exist to begin with... "land of the free" LOL!by Gud
- The fact police can go in and just look at camera footage without warrant proves your point precisely, officers have used it to stalk family members, etc.by connort459
- Is this much different than a doctor/sw/nurse/admin looking up patient records? I know that doctors are not the government, so no 4th amendment rights, but folks in the medical community have the basically the same level of access to much more sensitive information.
also, since there has been a lot of talk of warrantless searches, 4th a, etc.... is there an expectation to privacy when out in public when one would be captured on a flock camera? like red light cameras already exist and some non-sworn pd admin is looking through your file to send you a ticket...
by ckrusk - This type of thing is definitely real. A friend of mine went on a date with an NYPD cop back in the 90s. She refused a second date, and the stalking began. It wasn't 'tech stalking', like today, but the cop started asking interrogating questions to her landlord and co-workers; she started getting weird/false parking tickets, etc. The only way she made it stop was that her cousin was a veteran with NYPD, and well, he had a little chat with the young, stalking cop. But who knows where it all would've ended up if her cousin wasn't also a cop???by jimt1234
- Can I set up my own camera on the side of the road (in a public place) to scan people's faces and license plates, link them up to one of the many data brokers (or leaks) and use a big display to show the drivers' pictures and something like "Hey Rick Larsen, it's the 24th time we've seen you this week. We'll let our clients know there's no one home at 2930 Wetmore Avenue, Everett most weekdays between 8 and 4!", and then place them somewhere like oh, I don't know, in close proximity to a capitol building?
We can pay the regular fees that advertisers pay to have billboards up.
And if we're not allowed to do that, why is Flock?
by gigel82 - You can probably do that, so long as you're doing it on property you own.by etchalon
- Since when is Flock publicizing private information obtained through data leaks?by xigoi
- first - yes, as others have noted, very easy to set this up and I encourage you to try! you could have a mini flock set up for your neighborhood or apartment in no time (not to mention ring cameras - look up the super bowl ad that went south quick).
second - five eyes (i think?) treaties allow tons of mass surveillance, the only rule is that you can't spy on your own country, but trading the data is above board
by ckrusk - Yes, you are allowed to set up a camera, as long as you own the land you're putting the camera on or you have permission from the landowner.
Again, I'm surprised by how many people don't realize that it's legal to film people in public.
by Manuel_D - No one has the right to privacy in a public setting. That's why street photographers can roam around and take photos of anyone and publish them. Whether you can publish personally identifiable information based on that, I don't know.
- Check your town's website for correspondence with your state's chapter of the ACLU in regards to Flock cameras. If your police chief (not an elected official) is installing them then contact your local ACLU chapter about it. These are 4th amendment violations.by willis936
- Yes. Let's restrict police and take away every possible tool they can use to solve and fight crime. Not all criminals are bad criminals. They don't use Flock to spy on their ex-girlfriends but every cop in America has done it.
At least according to the internet which knows everything.
- To the contrary, little of what Flock does would be restricted by the 4th amendment. The cameras are in public, and neither the government nor individual citizens need authorization to film people in public.
Many Flock cameras are also privately owned, too.
by Manuel_D - No, it shows that we have a destructive, trust undermining security industry that sells abusive surveillance software that by spirit of the law would be clearly illegal in any country that pretends to be a free and open society and has a constitution in the direction.by raxxorraxor
- Freedom to take pictures of public spaces?by tiahura
- No, it shows that even trust has been utterly undermined by a police force that cannot control itself. This is just the latest in a long line of abuses, and completely eliminating Flock would not even touch the underlying problem.by jfengel
- >>Flock and law enforcement regularly cite documented cases where LPR helped solve violent crimes, recover stolen vehicles, and locate missing persons. Those outcomes are real.
My opposition wouldn't change regardless but are those outcomes real?
by Avshalom - The AI slop in that quote sure is real.by apothegm
- guess what prolific career criminals do with crime cars?
they look for a car that is very similar if not exact make and model of thier stolen vehicle, then they "clone" the victims license plate with a sheet of embossment copper and a stylus, apply paint at thier shop and affix the imposter to the crime vehicle. that buggers the whole LPR thing.
they can replicate dozens of plates in a day and offer the service for contras.
by rolph - I have no doubt that provided a vast camera network covering every ingress and egress into a city, and every major intersection, plus a database of when and where a license plate was last seen, cops can find their suspect
It used to be that news articles would claim that the police used “CCTV from local businesses” to catch a crook. Even back then I knew this was cover for Ring, Flock and who knows what else. they just didn’t want the bad press.
At this point you don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to understand that parallel construction happens all the time. They have more tools that we know about, and they want to keep it that way.
Everyone should throw some money to 404 media. They are independent and doing the best work right now to keep these things in the public eye.
by mingus88 - Yes. Prior to flock, my city trialed LPRs attached to the local power company’s poles. In the first month, they recovered more stolen cars than any prior years total recoveries. I’ve got mixed feelings about Flock, LPRs, and what it allows people and governments to do.
I’m 100% sold on the results.
by wil421 - Flock's position, statistically, is that if during the course of an investigation into a crime, a detective queries Flock, and the crime is later solved, that Flock "helped solve a crime", regardless of the merit or value of the query. "Saw a vehicle, look it up, "nope, unrelated", but still "helped solve".by FireBeyond
- In Seattle at least, the majority of homicide cases are solved with the assistance of surveillance cameras (though what % of said cameras are specifically Flock, I'm not sure): https://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2026/03/05/new-analysis-rtcc-...by Manuel_D
- > He characterizes the behavior as rare. He simultaneously identifies it as the most common form of abuse. The tension between those two statements is the problem Flock has left unaddressed.
I don’t see how there’s any tension between these statements. The overall occurrence of abuse can be rare while the most common form of the abuse that does occur is of officers tracking people they know.
by nkrisc - You're right both can be logically true. Now the tension doesn't reside in the logic, but in the intent of the statements.
First statement minimizes the problem's impact, second argues it's still worth tackling.
by makeitdouble - Rare in comparison to what, the total number of searches across the platform?
But even that is the wrong focus. One could make the same case for rejecting police body cams because incidents of police abuse are rare, relatively speaking.
The real issue is that the platform isn't completely locked down by default with strict access control grants, monitoring, auditing, etc. Shoot I have way less access at my work to data and systems which do not have that level of sensitivity and have to go through multiple approval steps to be granted anything new.
But I guess those things don't help the sales pitches. To be fair policing the police isn't flock's job and doesn't make them money. Laws and regulations are the only real vehicles of change.
by glitcher - The tension is that the abuse is far more likely than any value these cameras bring.
And what is commonly rare in a country of 342 million? Prairie Grove, Illinois has 1930 people and he did this to at least 3 people according to the report. .15% of the population. If you extrapolate that out to the national population, its roughly 520k people. Or, the entire population of Sacramento, Ca, being victimized by law enforcement with a surveillance power they should never have been allowed to have.