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- Hacker News
- Downweighted(?) post: off front page to third, down to rank 89 at +3hr, 205 comments, 232 points. Perhaps considered followup or to avoid too much Flock on homepage.by Barbing
- The institution of police has run its course and is time to deprecate.
Flock cameras... I mean, look: our society, without any central organization at all, has the capacity to record nearly every crime that occurs, just by dint of our camera phones and private surveillance systems. So Flock really just gives the police more information, creating a an asymmetry with the rest of society.
Given that we can already record all that we need to, and call for help from each other at a moment's notice, what good can police do for the next few centuries? And what possible hope is there that it will outweigh the bad?
by jMyles - Why did they need to have guns drawn and that many cops, even if the flag had been correct? A car involved in a homicide investigation doesn't mean it's even being driven by the suspect. It's not a positive ID at allby nemomarx
- I think the police should especially have guns drawn if they are pulling over a car owned by a murder suspect. It is reasonable enough to assume the driver is the suspect. If they PID the driver as not the suspect, holster up, no problem. Police always have guns drawn for any felony stop as an officer safety precaution, no reason to not when you have a high risk suspect.by M3L0NM4N
- The process is the punishment
- Not to mention fake and stolen plates are a thing.by giantg2
- That's what their training requires and if they don't engage that way, they will be reprimanded.by mywittyname
- We've given a bunch of people hammers and impunity for using the hammers and ask why they keep hitting people with them.
- We don't the details of the flag.
In general cops err on the side of protecting themselves from danger and I can't fault them for that. How would you approach a car whose driver is suspected of homicide?
Obviously someone made a mistake here but I'm not sure this has anything to do with Flock. The car had an "APB" out. We want cops to pull over "wanted" cars, right?
by stickfigure - I am currently in the countryside, outside of the USA.
I speak to folks about the USA sometimes, and guns come up. We are known for that. They think they want them. I get it... they do sound cool.
I try to explain that in the USA, the ratio of guns to people is far above 1:1. Therefore, if I was a police officer approaching any car, I would assume that the driver had a gun. That reality increases the chances of bad things happening due to human factors. "Do you really want every speeding pull-over to become a twitchy wild-west situation? Maybe your kids are in the car!"
Sometimes, this seems to wake people up to the reality of ubiquitous firearms. Please note, I am not making judgements here. These just seem like facts.
by consumer451 - Same reason why so called "Swatting" is largely a non-issue outside the US: Police in the US are trained to respond to the hilt by default, and then lower their heavy-handed response later if they warrant it. Contrast that with most other countries, where police are trained to respond and only escalate based on the findings/as the situation unfolds.
This training is supposedly for "officer safety." But being a police officer in the US isn't even in the top-10 most dangerous fields, and the vast majority of deaths are from traffic accidents or health issues while on the job (e.g. heart attack/stroke), not gun-related. So it is more likely a cultural issue within the profession.
by Someone1234 - I parked in a mall when someone stole my plate and replaced it with one from a stolen car. The next day, my brother, brand new in the country, borrowed my car to go to his first job. He was surrounded with dozens of LAPD cars, held at gun point in the middle of a boulevard and dragged through the mud in his first day work clothes.
He tells me the only thing that saved him that day for not getting shot was not having the vocabulary to ask questions or explain himself. He was kneed, arms twisted, humiliated, then tossed in the back of a cruiser. Our car was a white infiniti. The stolen car was a black honda.
When the cops get information there is zero investigation. It's "we got him!" And act immediately. It's like having a giant llm generated PR and you just comment "lgtm" and merge, only someone's life is on the line.
by firefoxd - This is my biggest fear for the law enforcement officers. They're becoming overdependent on these technology tools and forgetting to do actual police work. I say this as a former police officer myself.by grepex
- I just spoke at my county commission meeting this morning, against these cameras, as they're debating putting 50% more cameras up across the county. The original set went up without any news coverage or fanfare.
https://www.youtube.com/live/1OmEmpL-7qY?t=720&is=z_mb9ZEVCs...
Looks like I have two serious opponents to privacy on the commission to deal with, and the commissioner seems to at least want to end the contract. I have no idea where the other two members sit.
by Tostino - Find their campaign donors, that’s almost always a fun reveal. Downballot candidates don’t really expect many people to look into their funding so it’s sometimes less opaque than big name campaigns.by foco_tubi
- How do you feel about people like me who own a home (multiple homes actually), have dozens of cameras around it, with license plate readers, and work with local police? As I enter retirement I plan on starting an open source style project where others can join a network of home owners that can upload video/data (with license plate number, bluetooth identifiers, etc) and have this publicly accessible and free. Cars have dashcams that we can integrate. Ring doorbells, etc. I made a fortune off of big tech at a relatively young age, now it's time to apply what I've learned toward my passion projects
- Have you thought about running against them? Go get the paperwork, stand out in front of the post office and collect signatures.by Simulacra
- 1) I love your argument, and I'm really impressed you were able to step up and do this. 2) It's wild that you, and everyone else, broadcast your name and address on live cam, while also arguing against the surveillance state.by nphardon
- This happened while I was up in Maine - friend had purchased a used vehicle with all the paperwork earlier in the day. Both parties happy, somehow flock wrongly flagged the vehicle as "stolen" and dispatched police without any probable cause or ask from the buyer or seller. This is completely NOT ok.by tezo_cooper
- The outrage level and desire to stop tech being used this way ought to be reaching a fever pitch rather than being a kind of unfortunate documentary of how it isn't working right.by thataccount
- Most people don't care as long as it doesn't affect them. You'd probably have to get to 10% affected for it to start mattering. Most people are happy to be ignorant.by giantg2
- Facebook is flooded with Anti-Flock content and encouragement to cut them down right now. And the comments are overwhelmingly in support aside from the usual "if you have nothing to hide..." comments.by allthetime
- People are vandalizing and tearing down Flock cameras. There is absolutely a strong response happening right now, not just documentation.by Jtsummers
- That's not a Flock error. That's a law enforcement error. Flock isn't responsible for a bogus warrant in the system.
The woman probably has a good case for damages from the police department for doing it twice. That's sloppy police work.
by Animats - Her car was flagged as being involved with a homicide.
What should the cops have done? Ignored it?
I'd argue Flock making that incorrect association is similar to a false accusation and the consequences should be on Flock.
by duxup - No this is bad logic. Flock is absolutely responsible and they should not be releasing or selling products that are this poorly made.
Saying that the responsibility is only on the user is extremely myopic. It's also dismissing the role Flock has in how they make and design their software.
If they can't handle this maybe they should be disbanded as a company or nationalized for better public control.
by shimman - It's a failure on all fronts. I think it's an indictment of Flock in the same way that full body scans are a scam. If you are always scanning for illnesses/crimes you will inevitably find tons and tons of false positives without ever meaningfully improving outcomes. The juice isn't worth the squeeze. Flock has been around long enough that if it had a meaningful benefit to safety, they'd be able to prove it in numbers. Instead we just have a long list of instances where it has made the world worse.by ertgbnm
- IDK. This can be a banal point.
Product, technology, implementation, police department, policing method, workflow. These aren't discreet. Incidents involve all of them.
Responsibility is on people.Technologies cannot be "found guilty." But... this isnt' a trial. There are consequences to doing policing any particular way, and that's the subject.
Doing it this way... using baby skynet for command and control has advantages, like response time. It has disadvantages, like false positives. "Law enforcement error" is technically correct, but not informative about the matter at hand. The error
by netcan - How often are police actually held accountable for anything?by cdrnsf
- American police have no obligation to protect, serve, or tell the truth. The police steal more money than all petty thieves every year.
Qualified immunity makes accountability a distant mirage.
The police operate exactly as they are allowed and encouraged, by the system they labor within, to behave.
Your words 'sloppy' and 'error' imply that a 'careful, correct' approach fixes these ills. History and experience shows us that this hypothetical good will not be produced until laws and incentives more broadly, change.
by lkey