8 ms·

Pump the Brakes on Your Police Department's Use of Flock Safety

147 points by skadamat 1y ago

dylan604 1y ago
"Such a system provides even small-town sheriffs access" Huh? Sheriffs are top law enforcement for a county, not a particular city. There's only one per county, everyone else is a deputy. This seems strange for someone like the ACLU to not know this
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
  Yeah, in Washington state law, sheriffs are called out "the chief executive officer and conservator of the peace of the county." Additionally, they're the only law enforcement officer directly accountable to the people, since they're elected. This isn't true of literally any other law enforcement at any level (local to fed).
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    > Additionally, they're the only law enforcement officer directly accountable to the people, since they're elected. Usually this is probably a good thing, but sometimes their need to be popular with locals means the position gets filled by loud mouthed showboaters who even get themselves into national news with their not always harmless antics. Most of the most famous/notorious police in America have been sheriffs for this reason. Joe Arpaio, Mike Chitwood, etc.
    - ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
      This is the primary critique of democracy, not just American sheriffs.
    - alistairSH 1y ago
      While true, they're still accountable to their electorate. Their electorate just happens to love loudmouthed bullies.
    - int_19h 1y ago
      In Washington specifically we have Loren Culp, who breaks that trend - he was a Police Chief of Republic, WA rather than a sheriff.
      - tremon 1y ago
        Did they break the trend, or expand the trent? Your post seems to imply the latter -- he was police chief rather than sheriff, but still a loud mouthed showboater? If it was about breaking the trend, I'd assume the example would be a sheriff with actual substance.
  - alistairSH 1y ago
    Here in Fairfax County, VA, we have a sheriff, who is elected, but they only run the courthouse and prison. We also have an unelected (appointed by the county board of supervisors, who are elected) police department that handles regular law enforcement.
    - ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
      Very interesting. In King County WA they have an elected "County Executive" who then appoints the King County Sheriff. That Sheriff does have normal law enforcement and court duties. I believe that is an aberration in WA state though.
      - alistairSH 1y ago
        Neighboring Loudoun County has a sheriff handle all law enforcement duties. And the other neighboring county, Prince William, has a distinct sheriff, police department, and the detention center runs itself (not the sheriff). So the sheriff only does court room security and tracking of fugitives.
- buildbot 1y ago
  More of turn of phrase than a statement of belief on where sheriffs work I’d say. Calling in a vague wild west vibe.
  - aerostable_slug 1y ago
    That's exactly it. The ACLU would be well-advised to police their use of that kind of language (pun intended), because it comes off as the kind of thing a member of the coastal elite who unironically uses the phrase "flyover state" would say.
- kube-system 1y ago
  A sheriff would typically have an office in the county seat, and that county seat could be a small town. This is what the sentence is referring to.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > Huh? Sheriffs are top law enforcement for a county, not a particular city. There's only one per county, everyone else is a deputy. This seems strange for someone like the ACLU to not know this A “small-town sheriff” is a common idiom describing the sheriff of a county whose seat is a small town, rather than big city. It is a common phrase in American English. This seems strange that someone commenting on HN that has enough concern for American society to have an opinion about what the ACLU should not know this.
- BryantD 1y ago
  It's an American English idiom -- "small town" as a synonym for remote rural areas. Not incredibly common but not unusual. It shows up as a tag in TMDB (movie database) and Goodreads, and I believe there's at least one romance novel using the term.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    nobody's questioning what a small town is. sheriffs patrol the whole county, not just a small town. there are plenty of small towns that do not have a local police department and depend on the sheriff's office; I grew up in one. maybe my sheriff was just a dick about it, but he was quick to distance from the small town label in conversation.
    - BryantD 1y ago
      Yes. When I say tag, I mean specifically "small town sheriff" as a tag. Saying "small town sheriff" is technically inaccurate but understandable in context.
troupo 1y ago
Anything you've read about and was appalled by in dystopian literature is already here, and not in some distant future.
- technothrasher 1y ago
  Wait, you mean if I go for a nice morning drive, I'm going to get harassed by people in Modern Safety Vehicles trying to run my MGB off the road?
  - linksnapzz 1y ago
    Happened to me once, while visiting my elderly uncle out in the countryside.
ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
Once again I am struck by how tech makes the world smaller. We're back to a small village or tribal camp where everyone knows your business all the time. It appears the last 50-100 years were a golden age of privacy and an aberration, not the norm.
- Sanzig 1y ago
  At least you could always leave the small village. Can't really do that anymore.
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
    I don't know that this was true. I was recently reading "A Hangman's Diary", which included a Forward for the modern reader. It would appear that outsiders were viewed with extreme suspicion in those times. Obvi that's just a single snapshot of a single region, but it makes sense. "what did this person do that they left all their family and friends to come to our town"
    - barbazoo 1y ago
      There's archeological evidence that early humans mixed with outsiders quite a but so it's probably something that comes and goes depending on what's happening at the time.
  - squigz 1y ago
    You couldn't always just leave your village. Family, friends, livelihood was all tied there. And it's still just as difficult to up and leave.
  - giraffe_lady 1y ago
    You couldn't in practical terms. The vast majority of premodern people were peasant farmers who owned no capital other than (possibly!) the land & livestock they farmed and the tools used to farm them. All this having almost no liquid value in the market such as it existed at the time. It was essentially impossible to pick up and start over somewhere else. That's aside from if you even had the right to do that; depending on time and place peasants were sometimes legally bound to their landlord.
mystraline 1y ago
Deflock is a thing. https://discord.gg/2Ug7KC2R https://discord.gg/2Ug7KC2R There's a lot of local Flock maps out there. You can also submit your own. For those who are more inclined to direct protest, you can spraypaint the lenses and/or the solar panels. If you dont want to get caught with spraypaint, use nutella or peanut butter. Its sticky and easily spreadable. Not that I would ever recommend vandalization. Sure, the EFF and ACLU are going the legal route. That's all they can do.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  I use flock maps (but not this discord -- it smells suspicious to me) so that I can be aware of what streets to avoid traveling on.
  - aerostable_slug 1y ago
    It's an abuse of the system so I'm not advocating it, but there's a temptation to add my residential subdivision to the map. I have to be honest: I don't really want people who wish to avoid police tracking in my neighborhood. I don't care why you don't want to be tracked; I suspect that some subset of those who don't want to be tracked may be criminals, and there's zero loss to me from reduced vehicular traffic, so why not? Why not take advantage of the perceived threat to privacy? It's like putting signs up on one's home or business windows that advertise surveillance cameras are in place — it's either neutral or a win to me no matter why the existence of said surveillance bothers someone.
    - freedomben 1y ago
      I disagree with you, but I applaud your willingness to be honest even though you had to have known it wouldn't be popular in this thread. I think you are articulating the same feelings that the majority of people probably feel, so I think your perspective is valuable. Thank you for sharing!
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > Deflock is a thing. https://discord.gg/2Ug7KC2R https://discord.gg/2Ug7KC2R Can you describe what this is? If this is related to your other point about spraypainting lenses, I don't want to accidentally start clicking links for Discords about vandalizing government operations from my home IP address.
athrowaway3z 1y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ Benn Jordan did a great video on this. People on here regularly bash the EU's GDPR, but blocking this kind of corporate-driven police state is a heavy point in its favor.
antibull 1y ago
[dead]
Barbing 1y ago
For a video overview of this stuff: “Breaking The Creepy AI in Police Cameras”, Benn Jordan [36min, 1.7m views, 9d ago] https://youtu.be/Pp9MwZkHiMQ https://youtu.be/Pp9MwZkHiMQ
- jp191919 1y ago
  I'm currently experimenting with this. It's been hard for me to find a pattern that the ai can't read without making it hard to visually read the plate.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- gs17 1y ago
  I'm wondering if it's possible to make a "reasonable" looking frame (that sits entirely outside the plate, not obstructing or obscuring it) for a license plate that breaks up the shape (with the same colors) to reduce detection success further. Possibly with some IR retroreflector decorations.
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
Related just yesterday: AI startup Flock thinks it can eliminate all crime in America https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45119847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45119847
- perihelions 1y ago
  Also, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44561716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44561716 ("Oakland cops gave ICE license plate data; SFPD also illegally shared with feds (sfstandard.com)", 563 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40222649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40222649 ("Flock Safety is the biggest player in a city-by-city scramble for surveillance (newsobserver.com)", 143 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41979258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41979258 ("License Plate Readers Are Creating a US-Wide Database of More Than Just Cars (wired.com)", 24 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33994205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33994205 ("Flock is Building a New AI-Driven Mass-Surveillance System [pdf] (aclu.org)", 15 comments) https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety (YC S17)
hamdingers 1y ago
Remember that you are not being tracked, the vehicle is, because the vehicle is the dangerous thing. The baseline expectation of anyone operating heavy machinery in public should be that it is tracked for safety and accountability. This is a good thing. We've been installing tracking numbers on them for decades, what did you think they were for? I understand for many people, their movements and their vehicle's movements are 1:1, so it can feel like tracking their vehicle is tracking them. If you care about privacy, travel without the heavy machinery. Walk, bike, transit. If your region does not allow you to do this, direct your privacy-related energy towards making that possible, rather than reducing accountability for drivers. Edit: I wonder how the commenters below feel about tracking jets, probably similar to how I feel about tracking their cars.
- alistairSH 1y ago
  While I sort of agree with the premise, Flock is a camera system - I can't opt out of being recorded by the camera. By walking, I'm only opting out of being easily catalogued by default. It's not a reach for Flock to add a "men with black hoodies" mechanism alongside the existing "BMW with plate ABC-1234" mechanism.
  - jMyles 1y ago
    > I can't opt out of being recorded by the camera. That's the nature of the universe, though. Photons are emitted (including by you), captured, and the impressions they make are recorded and recalled (by biological brains and now electronic ones). It's the police that we need to abolish, not the cameras that they (and every other organism) uses.
    - LtWorf 1y ago
      Megacorps hoarding your data and oppressive governments are part of the nature of the universe‽ I agree that the camera is not the problem per se, but your framing is a bit strange. There's more to a camera than passively receiving photons.
andrewla 1y ago
I continue to believe that privacy in public spaces is not a civil liberty and we should not be treating it as such. You have the right to be secure in your home or in private spaces, but it is your obligation to ensure that you have made an effort to preserve that privacy. Once you are in public, there should be no expectation that anything that another person could see or otherwise observe is not subject to public exposure. We should not be expending effort trying to regulate the state's ability to observe and record any publicly observable thing. When the state takes action to deliberately make public or otherwise observe things that are reasonably private, then we can activate the right to be free of searches and seizures without probably cause. The one area that I do feel affects this particular debate is whether it should be legal to conceal your vehicle's identity, so long as it is not being done for fraudulent or criminal purposes. Here I think the fact that your car's identity is being observed and recorded is sufficient cause to make it reasonable to mask or alter your license place or other identifying aspects of your car.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  > We should not be expending effort trying to regulate the state's ability to observe and record any publicly observable thing. But then what can we do? Are we supposed to just never leave our homes? If we can't regulate the power of the state to minimize the harm it can cause, then all is lost. Also, Flock isn't just a "power of the state" sort of thing. It's a private company and is often used by private entities.
  - andrewla 1y ago
    No, go ahead and leave your home. Why wouldn't you leave your home? What if a police officer or a nosy neighbor is watching your house specifically and writes down your comings and goings? You surrender a certain amount of privacy by leaving a private space, and this is just how the world works. The Flock is a private company does not entitle them to fewer powers than the state. The state has a lot of power and is severely constrained; many of those constraints simply do not apply to private entities and individuals. The only reason why this is an issue at all is that law enforcement uses data from Flock, and the various rights that you have prevent agents of the state from doing things that the state itself is not entitled to do. For "harm" you need to be extremely specific. If the state uses this data to blackmail you or extort you, then they are committing the crimes of blackmail and extortion. Those are illegal already, regardless of the method used to obtain the data. If they use the data to interfere with the rights of freedom of association in any way then that is also illegal and they should be prosecuted for it, or at the very least be unable to use that as evidence.
scottbez1 1y ago
Having no expectation of privacy in public used to be a reasonable stance when there was a real time+money cost to extended surveillance, which meant that you still had a moderate amount of privacy unless someone was willing to personally target you and spend significant resources. You either had to have a cop or a PI tail you, or spend time and effort talking to neighbors and acquaintances collecting information and correlating it, and it was much harder to do so secretly. Technology has reduced the cost of surveillance by several orders of magnitude, and although the premise is unchanged - that you've never had privacy in public - the practical impact has changed in an extremely disturbing way. I think we're long overdue to rethink and strengthen privacy protections in public in the US. Technological limits, and policy limits on specific implementations are better than nothing, but it's clear to me that surveillance will continue to get cheaper and thus your effective privacy in public will continue to erode until a culture and legal shift in public privacy expectations. I'm not optimistic about that.
- aetherson 1y ago
  I agree with your historical analysis, and I'm also uncomfortable with the total surveillance, but I'm not sure I buy there exist effective legal solutions. The truth is that everyone carries a camera, that all vehicles have cameras and will to a greater and greater degree be using those cameras all the time. I don't know what kind of limits we can put on the lack of privacy there that aren't incredibly intrusive attempts to control everyone's behavior or stop all technology.
  - wongarsu 1y ago
    Europe provides plenty of examples of how this can work. The implementation varies from country to country, but the common thread is that you need a lot of subtlety. Rules like "it's fine to photograph a street full of people, but if you focus on a single person you need their consent" and "you can photograph a busy street for artistic reasons, but the same photograph is illegal if the intent is collecting data about the people or vehicles in the shot, unless it's for research or education"
    - 1y ago
jimt1234 1y ago
I used to say, "If you're gonna commit crimes, leave your cell phone at home." [1] However, now it's, "If you're gonna commit crimes, leave your cell phone at home at cover your license plates." ... But seriously, just don't commit crimes. [1] I was a juror on a case years ago, maybe 2010 - some dudes robbed a jewelry store early in the morning. It took the cops about 15 minutes to figure out who did it because the crooks all brought their cell phones, and it was early, so they were the only cell phones in the area at the time. The accused looked shell-shocked during the trial when the cops explained this. Oh yeah, it didn't help that they told all their friends what they had done, and they tried to pawn the jewelry to a former cop.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  During the whole Fannie Willis shindig they dredged up decade old (i.e. before any of these people mattered) cell location data reports and introduced them as evidince with less than no fanfare as though they were as standard as googling someone's name. I think that speaks volumes about the kind of tracking we're subject to.
- EvanAnderson 1y ago
  Presumably today the lack of your cell phone following its normal location patterns (i.e. you left the phone at home while you committed the crime) would be a data point, too.
gogurt2000 1y ago
I certainly expect Tesla to use the cameras on their cars for similar purposes if they haven't already. Although I would expect them to distance themselves from it by selling the location data 'in aggregate' to another company that interfaces with law enforcement agencies.
kylehotchkiss 1y ago
Just throw a SovCit plate on the back of your car. You weren't driving, you were traveling.
g42gregory 1y ago
There was a time, when I sincerely thought ACLU was there to protect civil liberties. These days, I don’t know. Certainly an instrument of a particular party. Plus, owned by various special interest groups beyond that.
- gs17 1y ago
  Fighting this kind of surveillance is definitely protecting civil liberties. And if you don't like the ACLU, the IJ is also fighting: https://ij.org/issues/ijs-project-on-the-4th-amendment/ https://ij.org/issues/ijs-project-on-the-4th-amendment/ https://www.plateprivacy.com/ https://www.plateprivacy.com/
  - g42gregory 1y ago
    Good point.
- Ancapistani 1y ago
  How does the ACLU count to ten? 1, 3, 4, 5… Seriously, though - they’re 100% correct on this one. Flock cameras are abhorrent, and I’m honestly aghast that people aren’t up in arms.

147 points by skadamat 1y ago

"Such a system provides even small-town sheriffs access" Huh? Sheriffs are top law enforcement for a county, not a particular city. There's only one per county, everyone else is a deputy. This seems strange for someone like the ACLU to not know this

ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
Yeah, in Washington state law, sheriffs are called out "the chief executive officer and conservator of the peace of the county." Additionally, they're the only law enforcement officer directly accountable to the people, since they're elected. This isn't true of literally any other law enforcement at any level (local to fed).
- lupusreal 1y ago
  > Additionally, they're the only law enforcement officer directly accountable to the people, since they're elected. Usually this is probably a good thing, but sometimes their need to be popular with locals means the position gets filled by loud mouthed showboaters who even get themselves into national news with their not always harmless antics. Most of the most famous/notorious police in America have been sheriffs for this reason. Joe Arpaio, Mike Chitwood, etc.
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
    This is the primary critique of democracy, not just American sheriffs.
  - alistairSH 1y ago
    While true, they're still accountable to their electorate. Their electorate just happens to love loudmouthed bullies.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    In Washington specifically we have Loren Culp, who breaks that trend - he was a Police Chief of Republic, WA rather than a sheriff.
    - tremon 1y ago
      Did they break the trend, or expand the trent? Your post seems to imply the latter -- he was police chief rather than sheriff, but still a loud mouthed showboater? If it was about breaking the trend, I'd assume the example would be a sheriff with actual substance.
- alistairSH 1y ago
  Here in Fairfax County, VA, we have a sheriff, who is elected, but they only run the courthouse and prison. We also have an unelected (appointed by the county board of supervisors, who are elected) police department that handles regular law enforcement.
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
    Very interesting. In King County WA they have an elected "County Executive" who then appoints the King County Sheriff. That Sheriff does have normal law enforcement and court duties. I believe that is an aberration in WA state though.
    - alistairSH 1y ago
      Neighboring Loudoun County has a sheriff handle all law enforcement duties. And the other neighboring county, Prince William, has a distinct sheriff, police department, and the detention center runs itself (not the sheriff). So the sheriff only does court room security and tracking of fugitives.
buildbot 1y ago
More of turn of phrase than a statement of belief on where sheriffs work I’d say. Calling in a vague wild west vibe.
- aerostable_slug 1y ago
  That's exactly it. The ACLU would be well-advised to police their use of that kind of language (pun intended), because it comes off as the kind of thing a member of the coastal elite who unironically uses the phrase "flyover state" would say.
kube-system 1y ago
A sheriff would typically have an office in the county seat, and that county seat could be a small town. This is what the sentence is referring to.
dragonwriter 1y ago
> Huh? Sheriffs are top law enforcement for a county, not a particular city. There's only one per county, everyone else is a deputy. This seems strange for someone like the ACLU to not know this A “small-town sheriff” is a common idiom describing the sheriff of a county whose seat is a small town, rather than big city. It is a common phrase in American English. This seems strange that someone commenting on HN that has enough concern for American society to have an opinion about what the ACLU should not know this.
BryantD 1y ago
It's an American English idiom -- "small town" as a synonym for remote rural areas. Not incredibly common but not unusual. It shows up as a tag in TMDB (movie database) and Goodreads, and I believe there's at least one romance novel using the term.
- dylan604 1y ago
  nobody's questioning what a small town is. sheriffs patrol the whole county, not just a small town. there are plenty of small towns that do not have a local police department and depend on the sheriff's office; I grew up in one. maybe my sheriff was just a dick about it, but he was quick to distance from the small town label in conversation.
  - BryantD 1y ago
    Yes. When I say tag, I mean specifically "small town sheriff" as a tag. Saying "small town sheriff" is technically inaccurate but understandable in context.

troupo 1y ago

Anything you've read about and was appalled by in dystopian literature is already here, and not in some distant future.

technothrasher 1y ago
Wait, you mean if I go for a nice morning drive, I'm going to get harassed by people in Modern Safety Vehicles trying to run my MGB off the road?
- linksnapzz 1y ago
  Happened to me once, while visiting my elderly uncle out in the countryside.

ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago

Once again I am struck by how tech makes the world smaller. We're back to a small village or tribal camp where everyone knows your business all the time. It appears the last 50-100 years were a golden age of privacy and an aberration, not the norm.

Sanzig 1y ago
At least you could always leave the small village. Can't really do that anymore.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
  I don't know that this was true. I was recently reading "A Hangman's Diary", which included a Forward for the modern reader. It would appear that outsiders were viewed with extreme suspicion in those times. Obvi that's just a single snapshot of a single region, but it makes sense. "what did this person do that they left all their family and friends to come to our town"
  - barbazoo 1y ago
    There's archeological evidence that early humans mixed with outsiders quite a but so it's probably something that comes and goes depending on what's happening at the time.
- squigz 1y ago
  You couldn't always just leave your village. Family, friends, livelihood was all tied there. And it's still just as difficult to up and leave.
- giraffe_lady 1y ago
  You couldn't in practical terms. The vast majority of premodern people were peasant farmers who owned no capital other than (possibly!) the land & livestock they farmed and the tools used to farm them. All this having almost no liquid value in the market such as it existed at the time. It was essentially impossible to pick up and start over somewhere else. That's aside from if you even had the right to do that; depending on time and place peasants were sometimes legally bound to their landlord.

mystraline 1y ago

Deflock is a thing. https://discord.gg/2Ug7KC2R https://discord.gg/2Ug7KC2R There's a lot of local Flock maps out there. You can also submit your own. For those who are more inclined to direct protest, you can spraypaint the lenses and/or the solar panels. If you dont want to get caught with spraypaint, use nutella or peanut butter. Its sticky and easily spreadable. Not that I would ever recommend vandalization. Sure, the EFF and ACLU are going the legal route. That's all they can do.

JohnFen 1y ago
I use flock maps (but not this discord -- it smells suspicious to me) so that I can be aware of what streets to avoid traveling on.
- aerostable_slug 1y ago
  It's an abuse of the system so I'm not advocating it, but there's a temptation to add my residential subdivision to the map. I have to be honest: I don't really want people who wish to avoid police tracking in my neighborhood. I don't care why you don't want to be tracked; I suspect that some subset of those who don't want to be tracked may be criminals, and there's zero loss to me from reduced vehicular traffic, so why not? Why not take advantage of the perceived threat to privacy? It's like putting signs up on one's home or business windows that advertise surveillance cameras are in place — it's either neutral or a win to me no matter why the existence of said surveillance bothers someone.
  - freedomben 1y ago
    I disagree with you, but I applaud your willingness to be honest even though you had to have known it wouldn't be popular in this thread. I think you are articulating the same feelings that the majority of people probably feel, so I think your perspective is valuable. Thank you for sharing!
Aurornis 1y ago
> Deflock is a thing. https://discord.gg/2Ug7KC2R https://discord.gg/2Ug7KC2R Can you describe what this is? If this is related to your other point about spraypainting lenses, I don't want to accidentally start clicking links for Discords about vandalizing government operations from my home IP address.

athrowaway3z 1y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ Benn Jordan did a great video on this. People on here regularly bash the EU's GDPR, but blocking this kind of corporate-driven police state is a heavy point in its favor.

antibull 1y ago

[dead]

Barbing 1y ago

For a video overview of this stuff: “Breaking The Creepy AI in Police Cameras”, Benn Jordan [36min, 1.7m views, 9d ago] https://youtu.be/Pp9MwZkHiMQ https://youtu.be/Pp9MwZkHiMQ

jp191919 1y ago
I'm currently experimenting with this. It's been hard for me to find a pattern that the ai can't read without making it hard to visually read the plate.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
gs17 1y ago
I'm wondering if it's possible to make a "reasonable" looking frame (that sits entirely outside the plate, not obstructing or obscuring it) for a license plate that breaks up the shape (with the same colors) to reduce detection success further. Possibly with some IR retroreflector decorations.

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

Related just yesterday: AI startup Flock thinks it can eliminate all crime in America https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45119847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45119847

perihelions 1y ago
Also, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44561716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44561716 ("Oakland cops gave ICE license plate data; SFPD also illegally shared with feds (sfstandard.com)", 563 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40222649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40222649 ("Flock Safety is the biggest player in a city-by-city scramble for surveillance (newsobserver.com)", 143 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41979258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41979258 ("License Plate Readers Are Creating a US-Wide Database of More Than Just Cars (wired.com)", 24 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33994205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33994205 ("Flock is Building a New AI-Driven Mass-Surveillance System [pdf] (aclu.org)", 15 comments) https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety (YC S17)

hamdingers 1y ago

Remember that you are not being tracked, the vehicle is, because the vehicle is the dangerous thing. The baseline expectation of anyone operating heavy machinery in public should be that it is tracked for safety and accountability. This is a good thing. We've been installing tracking numbers on them for decades, what did you think they were for? I understand for many people, their movements and their vehicle's movements are 1:1, so it can feel like tracking their vehicle is tracking them. If you care about privacy, travel without the heavy machinery. Walk, bike, transit. If your region does not allow you to do this, direct your privacy-related energy towards making that possible, rather than reducing accountability for drivers. Edit: I wonder how the commenters below feel about tracking jets, probably similar to how I feel about tracking their cars.

alistairSH 1y ago
While I sort of agree with the premise, Flock is a camera system - I can't opt out of being recorded by the camera. By walking, I'm only opting out of being easily catalogued by default. It's not a reach for Flock to add a "men with black hoodies" mechanism alongside the existing "BMW with plate ABC-1234" mechanism.
- jMyles 1y ago
  > I can't opt out of being recorded by the camera. That's the nature of the universe, though. Photons are emitted (including by you), captured, and the impressions they make are recorded and recalled (by biological brains and now electronic ones). It's the police that we need to abolish, not the cameras that they (and every other organism) uses.
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    Megacorps hoarding your data and oppressive governments are part of the nature of the universe‽ I agree that the camera is not the problem per se, but your framing is a bit strange. There's more to a camera than passively receiving photons.

andrewla 1y ago

I continue to believe that privacy in public spaces is not a civil liberty and we should not be treating it as such. You have the right to be secure in your home or in private spaces, but it is your obligation to ensure that you have made an effort to preserve that privacy. Once you are in public, there should be no expectation that anything that another person could see or otherwise observe is not subject to public exposure. We should not be expending effort trying to regulate the state's ability to observe and record any publicly observable thing. When the state takes action to deliberately make public or otherwise observe things that are reasonably private, then we can activate the right to be free of searches and seizures without probably cause. The one area that I do feel affects this particular debate is whether it should be legal to conceal your vehicle's identity, so long as it is not being done for fraudulent or criminal purposes. Here I think the fact that your car's identity is being observed and recorded is sufficient cause to make it reasonable to mask or alter your license place or other identifying aspects of your car.

JohnFen 1y ago
> We should not be expending effort trying to regulate the state's ability to observe and record any publicly observable thing. But then what can we do? Are we supposed to just never leave our homes? If we can't regulate the power of the state to minimize the harm it can cause, then all is lost. Also, Flock isn't just a "power of the state" sort of thing. It's a private company and is often used by private entities.
- andrewla 1y ago
  No, go ahead and leave your home. Why wouldn't you leave your home? What if a police officer or a nosy neighbor is watching your house specifically and writes down your comings and goings? You surrender a certain amount of privacy by leaving a private space, and this is just how the world works. The Flock is a private company does not entitle them to fewer powers than the state. The state has a lot of power and is severely constrained; many of those constraints simply do not apply to private entities and individuals. The only reason why this is an issue at all is that law enforcement uses data from Flock, and the various rights that you have prevent agents of the state from doing things that the state itself is not entitled to do. For "harm" you need to be extremely specific. If the state uses this data to blackmail you or extort you, then they are committing the crimes of blackmail and extortion. Those are illegal already, regardless of the method used to obtain the data. If they use the data to interfere with the rights of freedom of association in any way then that is also illegal and they should be prosecuted for it, or at the very least be unable to use that as evidence.

scottbez1 1y ago

Having no expectation of privacy in public used to be a reasonable stance when there was a real time+money cost to extended surveillance, which meant that you still had a moderate amount of privacy unless someone was willing to personally target you and spend significant resources. You either had to have a cop or a PI tail you, or spend time and effort talking to neighbors and acquaintances collecting information and correlating it, and it was much harder to do so secretly. Technology has reduced the cost of surveillance by several orders of magnitude, and although the premise is unchanged - that you've never had privacy in public - the practical impact has changed in an extremely disturbing way. I think we're long overdue to rethink and strengthen privacy protections in public in the US. Technological limits, and policy limits on specific implementations are better than nothing, but it's clear to me that surveillance will continue to get cheaper and thus your effective privacy in public will continue to erode until a culture and legal shift in public privacy expectations. I'm not optimistic about that.

aetherson 1y ago
I agree with your historical analysis, and I'm also uncomfortable with the total surveillance, but I'm not sure I buy there exist effective legal solutions. The truth is that everyone carries a camera, that all vehicles have cameras and will to a greater and greater degree be using those cameras all the time. I don't know what kind of limits we can put on the lack of privacy there that aren't incredibly intrusive attempts to control everyone's behavior or stop all technology.
- wongarsu 1y ago
  Europe provides plenty of examples of how this can work. The implementation varies from country to country, but the common thread is that you need a lot of subtlety. Rules like "it's fine to photograph a street full of people, but if you focus on a single person you need their consent" and "you can photograph a busy street for artistic reasons, but the same photograph is illegal if the intent is collecting data about the people or vehicles in the shot, unless it's for research or education"
  - 1y ago

jimt1234 1y ago

I used to say, "If you're gonna commit crimes, leave your cell phone at home." [1] However, now it's, "If you're gonna commit crimes, leave your cell phone at home at cover your license plates." ... But seriously, just don't commit crimes. [1] I was a juror on a case years ago, maybe 2010 - some dudes robbed a jewelry store early in the morning. It took the cops about 15 minutes to figure out who did it because the crooks all brought their cell phones, and it was early, so they were the only cell phones in the area at the time. The accused looked shell-shocked during the trial when the cops explained this. Oh yeah, it didn't help that they told all their friends what they had done, and they tried to pawn the jewelry to a former cop.

potato3732842 1y ago
During the whole Fannie Willis shindig they dredged up decade old (i.e. before any of these people mattered) cell location data reports and introduced them as evidince with less than no fanfare as though they were as standard as googling someone's name. I think that speaks volumes about the kind of tracking we're subject to.
EvanAnderson 1y ago
Presumably today the lack of your cell phone following its normal location patterns (i.e. you left the phone at home while you committed the crime) would be a data point, too.

gogurt2000 1y ago

I certainly expect Tesla to use the cameras on their cars for similar purposes if they haven't already. Although I would expect them to distance themselves from it by selling the location data 'in aggregate' to another company that interfaces with law enforcement agencies.

kylehotchkiss 1y ago

Just throw a SovCit plate on the back of your car. You weren't driving, you were traveling.

g42gregory 1y ago

There was a time, when I sincerely thought ACLU was there to protect civil liberties. These days, I don’t know. Certainly an instrument of a particular party. Plus, owned by various special interest groups beyond that.

gs17 1y ago
Fighting this kind of surveillance is definitely protecting civil liberties. And if you don't like the ACLU, the IJ is also fighting: https://ij.org/issues/ijs-project-on-the-4th-amendment/ https://ij.org/issues/ijs-project-on-the-4th-amendment/ https://www.plateprivacy.com/ https://www.plateprivacy.com/
- g42gregory 1y ago
  Good point.
Ancapistani 1y ago
How does the ACLU count to ten? 1, 3, 4, 5… Seriously, though - they’re 100% correct on this one. Flock cameras are abhorrent, and I’m honestly aghast that people aren’t up in arms.