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- Hacker News
- Flock typifies a batch of "real world/real problem" platforms building things that are raytheon-tier risky with restaurant-grade governance.
Literally, the word "govern" seems to appear only with reference to others (new deployments) on their website. My jaundiced hope is that they follow the path of openai and anthropic to restructure as a PBC before their listing. That would make their marketing-y public benefit statements legally binding under a standard that has yet to be applied.
Nobody cares, but this sort of thing gets me all hot and bothered. Public Benefit Corporations are definitely overrepresented in the portfolios I manage at [Ethical Capital](https://ethicic.com). Much of what's out there is transparently sketchy (a for profit college, sugar water, payday lending) but wouldn't it be nice if it came to resemble a legitimate asset class?
Today it's more of an aesthetic format and a way to shield directors from liability.
But it's possible investor pressure could result in one or more of these companies' boards being held liable for neglecting their public purpose. These statutes have not been adjudicated in Delaware court, which puts double extra secret pressure on the activist's target to reach an out of court settlement.
Incidentally: tech workers, if you're looking for a long term way to organize and your company is on the march to IPO, now is the time to make sure that your "don't be evil" sits somewhere it can't be easily revoked. Governance is how systems survive individuals. It matters for ai agents, why not the people who run your company?
by srvo - If ever there was a corporation that deserved the death penatly, it's Flock.by TylerE
- Worse even than Palantir?
- How often does this story have to play out? Surveillance + no oversight = abuse every time.by zombot
- It makes no sense that front line patrol officers would have access to those cameras. They're not detectives, and that much access should have flagged him to high heaven.by duxup
- I don't understand how Flock can possibly be legal. Unlicensed, warrantless, mass surveillance is not legal. Surveilling before the warrant is not a reasonable work around for the legal threshold, neither is using a third party. In a fair universe, this company would be eradicated by legal challenge.
- I think the public outrage about Flock is well-deserved but – moving slightly off-topic – I wish it weren't the only privacy- and data harvesting-related issue the media are reporting about.
(Context: I'm currently looking into renewing my US visa. I've been to the US many times before both for shorter and longer periods of time and on many different visa – so far without any problems whatsoever.)
The Trump administration recently made it mandatory for all visa applicants to disclose any social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, Reddit, LinkedIn, …) they have had in the last five years (EDIT: whether still existent or deleted). [0]
I'm scared shitless and don't know what to do. (Not visiting the US is not an option, unfortunately.) I don't think I have ever posted anything controversial or of relevance through any of my social media accounts but I just don't want anyone in the world to have that kind of data about me, particularly my private messages. Who says that once they know all my social media accounts, CBP officers won't start checking my messages whenever I cross the border in the future? Who says they won't abuse that access at some point?
Look, I am aware CBP officers can already search your phone without a warrant, and three-letter agencies probably get first-class access to all social networks, anyway, but consciously handing over your data as part of the application process is… a different level.
Where's the outrage here? I know non-citizens basically don't enjoy any rights whatsoever at US borders, so I've long given up on hoping someone would fight this in court but still… where are the public campaigns, the diplomatic notes & retaliation?
[0]: In fact, they require social media profiles to be made public for the duration of the application, apparently so that the State Department can access and review the accounts. (Which would be funny since we all know what the NSA can do – if it didn't also open up the social media accounts to crawlers and stalkers…)
- It's hostile and assessments will be ideologically driven, but it's also a visa application. If I ask for that type of information for you to be able attend my summer camp or to come to my party, that's really my prerogative. You're asking to be a guest.
Americans are having a problem where they are guaranteed a certain set of rights as citizens, and guaranteed a certain process by which it is determined that those rights apply or whether they were applied. Those things are being routinely violated. Having any visitors at all (unless part of a treaty) is optional.
America colonized a lot of the world's dreams, but that doesn't obligate America to help you live them. We should want to, but we can't even protect ourselves. Americans are being harassed at the border. If we can't even get into our own country without unreasonable searches and seizures, there's no "outrage" left for the sake of other countries' elites. Most Americans can't afford to travel.
by pessimizer - Yes, invasive background checks like this are scary. Biometrics collection becoming normalized as well.
I encourage you to delete or suspend your accounts, and therefore legally list no accounts.
Maintaining a largely un-used social under your legal name with some cute photos of your pets which you can cite if need be is also a strategy many have used.
by CircuitSeuss - It's baffling to me how they can get away with such evident naming!by Insimwytim
- > inb4 I have nothing to hide
Every damn time you have an invasive system it gets abused this way. Every damn time.
by gherkinnn - I’d like to see HIPAA-style audit log and review for surveillance products like Flock. An aspect of log reviews that I don’t have direct info about is contextual access alerts—the gist of it is that whatever record you access is evaluated for things like patients who live in your neighborhood, or are related to you and it pings the compliance office.
Clearly Flock etc are keeping pretty good access records or these stories couldn’t get written. What is missing is PD compliance offices proactively addressing inappropriate accesss. In addition to access monitoring, another aspect of HIPAA is that a patient can find out who has accessed their record. It makes sense that a tremendously powerful data collection would have similar rules of the road.
by adolph - seems like flock is a great honeypot to find bad copsby jeffchuber
- public roads are a great honeypot for citizens everywhereby m463
- And schools must be great honeypots to find mass shooters too, huh. It’s not a honeypot if it’s real databy mcmcmc
- And what do you do when you find them? Unless there are adequate consequences (and no, a paid vacation or getting “fired” and moving to the next town over don’t count) the abuses aren’t going to stop.by paxys
- The ironic, a democracy (or more like republic representation) democratised wanton abuse throughout whole country. And we demonized any countries not following our system even when their result is way better. We invent and paid for fake news to demonized them too. If you as citizen dont like it, you cant even vote against it as referendum bot allowed and voted rep no listen to you. They listen to the super rich that didnt vote for them, but paid their needs. Your only recourse is to sue or fight all the way to SCOTUS pretty much on your own effort and resources. And we all call this as the greatest nation on earth. Maybe what Nixon said is the precedence of lawful guidance, when he did it, is ok. Flock is just a symptom that we approved implicitly via doing anything but just grumble. We deserve this utopia. Nothing to see. Move on.by Haven880
- news like this is only coming out because Flock very recently rolled out a system that tracks usage and flags possible abuses: https://www.wsbtv.com/news/trending/flock-updates-safeguards...
the problem is that usage of this system with enforcement is not law. Police Departments opt-in and are the ones responsible for whether or not individuals are charged, fired, or simply disciplined, and they also choose whether or not to disclose this to the public. and the other problem is that it's not just Flock - other companies are stepping in like Axon and Motorola and are essentially eating the cake that is Flock's recent public infamy [0]
and law enforcement skirting of accountability is essentially a legalized thing now under legal mechanisms like qualified immunity. not to mention the boy's club that are police unions - my FIL is a former sergeant and has many stories of how he was blackballed by his union because he wouldn't cover for bad cops to the extent that they were pursuing taking away his pension and insurance coverage until just a few years ago
[0] https://www.atlasofsurveillance.org/search?location=&technol...
by paimapi - Yeah - I agree. I'm not sure the problem is Flock (because it will just be replaced with another camera system eventually).
That police officers just don't get successfully prosecuted for this because of qualified immunity: that should be the big takeaway here.
Flock is just the whipping boy of the hour.
by danesparza - There should really be platform bans for abuses like this. If Flock is aware it’s being abused against its own policies and the legal system they should be liable if they continue to let that person abuse the system, even if they get fired from one PD and given a job and a Flock login at anotherby mcmcmc
- > Flock very recently rolled out a system that tracks usage and flags possible abuses
I asked one of my nurse friends if they can see gory (figurative or literal) medical details for anyone who has been in their hospital or parent medical system. She said that in Epic, access is logged and audited so it would become a problem if you were just searching for local celebrities. Just as a warrant canary is a good thing to have as an early commit in your social network, "who saw what and when" is a feature that needs to exist early in any tool for authority figures.
by 1-more - I started watching the Snowden (2016) movie the other day, and got to the point about explanation of XKEYSCORE. The whole time I was thinking “how quaint, that this was such a shockingly abusive system at the time”. We’ve crossed the threshold long ago. We’re so far gone that it’s just taken for granted that we’re always being watched, everywhere. I stopped watching the film because it was really bumming me out. There’s nothing we can do about it and it’s so very sad.by binarymax
- Piling on. My friend worked for a Midwestern city, maintaining the water and sewer systems. Once, while in the field, 2 dudes ran across the street, one chasing the other, both in plain clothes. The chaser had a gun and was shooting indiscriminately. One bullet hit my friend's work truck, missing him by inches. He had to submit a report because of the bullet holes in his truck. His report said the chaser did the shooting, not the person being chased. He had no idea the chaser was an undercover cop. His report (about the truck) contradicted the police report of the event regarding who did the shooting. The next day at work my friend was told to resubmit his report, and to identify the person being chased as the shooter. He said no, because it wasn't true. He was then told there was a call from the police union to the head of his department, saying that if the report wasn't changed, the police would no longer support his department (police are often needed to help secure an area where repairs are being done). My friend was told if he didn't change his report, he would be fired and his pension would be in jeopardy. He ended up cashing out his pension and quitting. The police know how to protect their own.by jimt1234
- > qualified immunity
Qualified immunity gets thrown around a lot, but it's not iron clad. Cops can still be prosecuted for behavior that is a constitutional violation and outside the scope of what a normal cop would consider reasonable.
The real reason cops face no accountability is 2 fold.
1. Prosecutors refuse to prosecute cops because they need a working relationship with the department.
2. Police unions make any sort of accountability nearly impossible to enforce as they stop all tracking of misdeeds. (As you touch on).
"Defund the police" was an unpopular slogan but it's what we should actually do. We should stop paying this criminal organization and instead do a different public policing structure. Ideally you don't have the same people responding to a domestic dispute as you have responding to a robbery. As it currently stands, police departments are where the government goes to violate civil rights.
by cogman10