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- Hacker News
- I recently listened to the Flock CEO on All In podcast, and he mentioned an ironic thing about Flock and it's audit trail is that it serves as a honeypot to root out bad police.
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...
by bko - > an ironic thing about Flock and it's audit trail is that it serves as a honeypot to root out bad police.
That's like saying the SS served as a honeypot for genocidal maniacs.
by tomkarho - This assumes that the chain of management within the police believes in accountability, which bring to mind a famous quote about assumptions.by pstuart
- I'm sure once Flock notifies departments of these bad apples, they will take swift inaction.by dudu24
- Flock is putting huge PR spin on this. They will not disable features that are illegal for your agency to use in your state. They will give you training on it.
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).
by FireBeyond - 1) Flock is a company.
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.
by m3047 - Flock is not just a license plate reader. They have many products. Here's an article today that includes a decent deep dive into the code of one of its new projects that's... definitely more than just license plate reading.by chaps
- If he didn’t say “Because I wanted to have sex with her,” he is lying. He wanted to have sex with her so he stalked her. I bet this is several orders of magnitude more common than hat is reported among police with access to databases.
- Just unacceptable all around.
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.
by avgDev - You’re focusing on the bad behavior of a couple individuals but the bigger story is the license plate cameras going up all over the country may be used just as easily to stalk ex girlfriends as they are to solve crimes.by jazzyjackson
- To be fair, the full quote is
> 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.
- 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. It's like seeing a slave labor gulag and saying that the prisoners need better recreation ad more frequent laundry. To say these little things like access controlled need to be fixed is advocating for turd polishing. Even with proper access controls the purpose of these systems is to create misery at the hands of the state. The turd is still a turd.
- > to varying extents
Is doing an INSANE amount of heavy lifting here for that generalization but yeah point taken.
by srustagi - Can a native English speaker explain what "I saw a shiny thing" means?
- They see a good looking attractive woman and spy on them. Their low IQ vanishes completely and all the blood rushes to their pants.
They are like a toddler in a toy store and want the shiniest thing.
by avgDev - It's a metaphor. He was comparing seeing the woman to seeing an attractive or valuable object like a coin on the ground or a jewel.by overtone1000
- The police officer is saying that he is so brain damaged or otherwise incapable of self control, rational thought, and restraint, that an attractive woman existing in his presence caused him to immediately commit many crimes to see her again.
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.
by mrguyorama - In the 2000s I knew a guy who was transitioning to software development after working in HR at a large American police department. He told me you couldn't become a cop unless you had a mental illness. They psychologically screen candidates to filter out people who have too much empathy. They would reject you if you said you had a close relationship with your mother, for example. They wanted people with aggressive tendencies. They loved it when someone had a superhero tattoo or had a parent die when they were a child.
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.
by lisp2240 - It sounds like that guy may have been exaggerating a bit. Aggressive people are a liability. Especially in law enforcement. Not just to the department but to fellow officers. They stir shit up and it is dangerous and annoying.
Cops do need more training, like dramatically more training. I think the screening process is trying to solve a really difficult problem. You don't know if/how someone will be corrupted when they have a little bit of power. Or how they will change over time.
by grepex