New Bedford police officer accused of using Flock cameras to track ex-partner

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• Hacker News
• News that it’s a woman for once.
  by scrapedface
• This is actually one of the more limited and benign risks of voluntarily installing a municipal/private panopticon system owned by a corporation.

  Because of the motivations and degrees of agency associated with under-regulated capitalism, derived data about vehicles and people will be stored indefinitely because it has value to be extracted, to be sold and leased, to the highest bidder, be it to data brokers, police agencies (as is the supposed mission), and intelligence agencies. They won't necessarily be US-based entities either. It will be used to form judgements, discriminate, make inferences, and accusations about people with limited or wrong "evidence" anytime between now, days, years, and who knows for how long in the distant future. No privacy and unknowable risks of misuse and abuse that manifest with use of new technology developed or "connections" made with new information at any time in the future.

  by burnt-resistor
• As an observer from another country, it is increasingly obvious that America can no longer call itself 'The Land of the Free' unironically.

  In my view it is closer to a police state.

  by My_Name
• 3d printing to the rescue: https://makerworld.com/en/models/3107766-flock-sock-flock-ca...
  by ajsnigrutin
• Cops abuse every system that's given to them, to varying extents.

  Whining about lack of access controls and rogue (i.e. not using to do their job properly) cops is implicitly saying that this system could/would/should exist if it has "proper" access controls, whatever that means.

  by cucumber3732842
• https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png

  ;-)

  See also: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/

  by thangalin
• At this point I think it's necessary to notify anyone who has been tracked after a fixed number of days, unless a court order is used to extend that period. An officer using this for legitimate reasons should have few problems getting that court order. This would at least give people some amount of safety net from stalking by LE.
  by infinite_spin
• We need strong laws against these authoritarian / fascist companies; and we need to elect representatives who destroy their businesses and zero out the investors.

  Seriously. Every dollar that has gone to flock or any similar company needs to be incinerated, or else it will continue, because billionaires like Paul Graham _love_ the idea of having greater control over the masses.

  A product that provides surveillance with strict controls and limited scope is potentially great.

  This shit is just an attempt to turn America into communist Russia -- where the regular people have no rights, and oligarchs run everything. it's evil, anti-American, and regular people need to ensure that billionaires like Paul Graham, and their lackeys (like hn's own dang) stop being rewarded for their decision to dedicate their lives to the destruction of liberty.

  They're evil fucking people, and they will never police themselves. They're all mentally ill.

  by flockpaysforyc
• At this point I think it's time to ban this dystopian 4th amendment violation surveillance state.
  by qmr
• I think this or similar accountability measures is where we'll need to end up with this kind of technology. It's too useful for catching vehicle theft rings and similar kinds of highly disruptive criminal networks to abandon the technology entirely.

  LOVEINT has been a thing for as long as electronic surveillance has existed. We fire and/or prosecute people for it. We didn't turn out back on those capabilities.

  I'd like to see someone using systems not available to the general public to to look up info on people without a legitimate purpose be treated as a kind of aggravated stalking.

  Government employees should be held to a higher standard because they are in a position of public trust, but TBH people at companies like Google, Meta, Verizon, Comcast abusing internal tools for this should be similarly held accountable because they have access to resources far beyond e.g. one hobbyist logging TPMS IDs on passing vehicles.

  by jauer
• It's not that I disagree, but police looking up protestors license plates in order to trigger a "law enforcement looked you up" email is one hell of an intimidation tactic
  by petterroea
• It was only about an hour ago I saw yet another mindless commentator on one of these threads saying "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about".
  by King-Aaron
• Let them show themselves.
  by DANmode
• These risks were said to be theoretical what ifs? But headlines are showing that they are quite real problems.

  Who watches the watchers?

  by newsomix9xl
• The funniest response I've read to this type of reasoning went something like this: a family gathering; topic of privacy came up; boomer-type trotted out the "nothing to hide" line; younger relative asked them if they enjoy a particular type of sexual intercourse with their spouse; red faces and looks of horror; the asker reminded everyone that privacy is important and it doesn't mean one is doing anything wrong.
  by Walf
• There was a time when you could paste a reddit username into an online tool and it would build a profile of the person in question. And when I came across one of these "if you have nothing to hide..." people, I did just that. After I asked them how the weather was and how their dog was doing they deleted their account. Lightweights.
  by sixothree
• People who have nothing to hide get ambushed by police at gunpoint, because surveillance system misidentifies them.
  by tintor
• I don't understand why a regular patrol officer would / should even have access to something like this without some level of extra authorization. They're not detectives running an open investigation ...

  In this case this officer was searching numerous networks over and over again, that alone should trigger some metrics that raise the question "uh ... why?"

  by duxup
• How else could they have arrested that wisconsin guy for driving to michigan to purchase cannabis? You know, apparently a totally valid use for such technology..
  by nickthegreek
• I think they justify it as an ease of use vs security trade off
  by infinite_spin
• Because no one important cares and no one will do anything about it.
  by none2585
• You never worked for a startup where the CEO demanded administrator rights to everything just because he's CEO?
  by pudgywalsh
• Pacheco has been one of the top users of the Flock system this year, according to data The Light previously obtained from the city. The most common reason inputted since April for her searches has been “traffic infraction.”
  by newsomix9xl