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> “As much as Flock tries to be good stewards of the powerful tech we sell, this shows it really is up to users to serve their communities in good faith. Sellin

> “As much as Flock tries to be good stewards of the powerful tech we sell, this shows it really is up to users to serve their communities in good faith. Selling to law-enforcement is tricky because we assume they will use our tech to do good and then just have to hope we're right.” > The Flock source added “Even if Flock took a stance on permitted use-cases, a motivated user could simply lie about why they're performing a search. We can never 100% know how or why our tools are being used.” A second Flock source said they believe Flock should develop a better idea of what its clients are using the company’s technology for. In other words, why bother with safeguards when they'll just lie to us anyways?

mcherm 1y ago
There are ways to work around that problem. For instance, just making it a rule that they are not allowed to lie to you about how things are being used -- we know that won't work because if they're willing to lie they are also willing to ignore contract violations. Instead, put in a rule that says misuse of the system costs $X for each documented case. Now the vendor has a financial incentive to detect misuse, and the purchasers have a FINANCIAL incentive to curb misuse by their own employees. It's not a magic fix, but it's the sort of thing that might help.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  Better: require them to purchase misuse violation insurance. Make a neutral third party liable for the cost and then that third party which is mostly disinterested gets to calculate risk and compliance procedures. The only way we're really going to get data handling under control is to give the victims of data abuse financial beneficiaries of liability through the courts and insurance companies.
  - jasonjayr 1y ago
    ... a neutral third party where the some of the board of directors have a seat at the camera company, or city concil seat? This all ends in corporate feudalism, doesn't it?
  - wat10000 1y ago
    Better yet: make willful violation of constitutional rights a crime, with repeat violations punishable by prison, and an independent body empowered to investigate and bring charges against officers.
- godelski 1y ago
  Those are the same thing. Either way you need to go to court. Putting a number in doesn't magically make the contract more binding.
scottlamb 1y ago
> Even if Flock took a stance on permitted use-cases, a motivated user could simply lie about why they're performing a search. We can never 100% know how or why our tools are being used. I think this is a legitimate problem. But...isn't this what warrants are for? With a warrant, the police have to say why they want to perform a search to a judge, under threat of perjury. They have a powerful incentive not to lie. So...should warrants be required for this kind of Flock data also? Couldn't Flock set a policy that these searches are performed only under warrant? Or a law be enacted saying the same? I imagine it would make Flock much less attractive to their potential customers, and searches would be performed much less often. [1] So it's not something Flock is going to do on their own. I think we'd need to create the pressure, by opposing purchases of Flock or by specifically asking our elected representatives to create such a law. [1] If I'm being generous, because of the extra friction/work/delay. If I'm being less generous, because they have no legitimate reason a judge would approve.
- lesuorac 1y ago
  Eh, if a cop sat at a Dunkin Donuts and wrote down every license plate they saw that wouldn't require a warrant. Why should contracting that out to a private company require a warrant? Flock isn't say Google which collects location data because it needs it for Google Maps to function. Flock is only here because the local government paid it to setup equipment. It's really an issue for the local community. Do you want your local tax dollars going to support parks or tracking individuals?
  - jfim 1y ago
    They wouldn't require a warrant, but at the same time, that wouldn't be scalable to be able to record every license plate everywhere in the city. Having a barrier to accessing data can help prevent casual abuse in my opinion, so that officers can't look up say some ex girlfriend's license plate, but if they get a warrant they can look up some suspect's license plate.
  - ruined 1y ago
    if a cop followed you for private reasons in a private car while off duty, they wouldn't need a warrant. why should they need a warrant if they pay a private individual to do it? why should they need a warrant if they pay a private company to do it electronically? why should they need a warrant when they pay a private company to do it electronically while on the clock as part of their official duty? why should they ever need a warrant? they could just kill her if they wanted, nobody would do anything about it.
jayd16 1y ago
If only there was a process where a trusted individual could judge if an invasion of privacy was warranted.
b00ty4breakfast 1y ago
Maybe they should've tried not getting into the "dystopian surveillance network" business.
mulmen 1y ago
This is the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” bad faith argument applied to surveillance technology.
BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
Imagine being the person who talks to the media on behalf of the police mass surveillance company. Like man you fucked up in this life if that’s where you ended up.
advisedwang 1y ago
If only there was some person with good JUDGEment who could decide whether a situation WARRANTs police having data.
pyrale 1y ago
In yet another set of words: we built a spy network, how could we ever know that people were going to use it to spy on people?
Zigurd 1y ago
Flock could shut off any PD they think is abusing their product. No excuses.
- hnrich 1y ago
  Then they will stop getting paid. They do not want to stop getting paid.
tptacek 1y ago
We knew this going in with Flock: that with full sharing to Flock's network of law enforcement agencies, we'd be trusting our data to every one of tens of thousands of tiny, often completely unaccountable police departments around the country, many of whom wouldn't give the slightest possible fuck about whether they were contravening our own department's general orders. That's why we disabled sharing, first to any out-of-state departments, and then altogether; PDs that wanted data from us could simply call us up on the phone like human beings. It was implied, both by our department and, more vaguely, by Flock, that sharing was reciprocal: if we didn't enable it, other departments wouldn't share with us. That's false; not only is it false, but apparently, to my understanding, Flock has (or had?) an offering for PDs to get access to the data without even hosting cameras of their own. That obviously leaves Flock's own attestations of client data separation, and I get the cynicism there too, but basically every municipality in the country relies on those same kinds of attestations from a myriad of vendors, and unlike Flock those vendors have basically nothing to lose (since nobody is paying attention to them). I think you can reasonably go either way on all this stuff. But you can't run these stacks in their default configuration with their default sharing and without special-purpose ordinances and general ordinances governing them. I write this mostly to encourage people who have strong opinions about this stuff to get engaged locally. I did, I'm not particularly good at it (I'm a loud message board nerd), and I got what I believe to be the only ALPR General Order in Chicagoland written and what I know to be the only ACLU CCOPS ordinance in Illinois passed.
- mulmen 1y ago
  > I write this mostly to encourage people who have strong opinions about this stuff to get engaged locally. I did, I'm not particularly good at it (I'm a loud message board nerd), and I got what I believe to be the only ALPR General Order in Chicagoland written and what I know to be the only ACLU CCOPS ordinance in Illinois passed. What’s an ALPR General Order and a ALCU CCOPS ordinance? How did you get them passed?
  - tptacek 1y ago
    A General Order is a documented police policy. Flock is an ALPR. CCOPS is a model ordinance that requires board approval for any surveillance technology deployments.
awlirjalwk 1y ago
I mean, this argument has worked for the firearms industry for centuries. But oddly not for encryption ...
Forgeties79 1y ago
I would ask them “why bother with DUI laws if some people will drive drunk anyway?” If the only way we can have rules is if they are 100% followed 100% of the time, then we wouldn’t have any rules to begin with. Very publicly revoke the licenses of people who break your rules. You can’t stop everybody, but you can do something. This is just a lame excuse for in action.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
heavyset_go 1y ago
I want to know how much Flock paid the guy who came up with, "How could we know that building a nationwide panopticon for police would be used for police-state things?"

mcherm 1y ago

There are ways to work around that problem. For instance, just making it a rule that they are not allowed to lie to you about how things are being used -- we know that won't work because if they're willing to lie they are also willing to ignore contract violations. Instead, put in a rule that says misuse of the system costs $X for each documented case. Now the vendor has a financial incentive to detect misuse, and the purchasers have a FINANCIAL incentive to curb misuse by their own employees. It's not a magic fix, but it's the sort of thing that might help.

colechristensen 1y ago
Better: require them to purchase misuse violation insurance. Make a neutral third party liable for the cost and then that third party which is mostly disinterested gets to calculate risk and compliance procedures. The only way we're really going to get data handling under control is to give the victims of data abuse financial beneficiaries of liability through the courts and insurance companies.
- jasonjayr 1y ago
  ... a neutral third party where the some of the board of directors have a seat at the camera company, or city concil seat? This all ends in corporate feudalism, doesn't it?
- wat10000 1y ago
  Better yet: make willful violation of constitutional rights a crime, with repeat violations punishable by prison, and an independent body empowered to investigate and bring charges against officers.
godelski 1y ago
Those are the same thing. Either way you need to go to court. Putting a number in doesn't magically make the contract more binding.

scottlamb 1y ago

> Even if Flock took a stance on permitted use-cases, a motivated user could simply lie about why they're performing a search. We can never 100% know how or why our tools are being used. I think this is a legitimate problem. But...isn't this what warrants are for? With a warrant, the police have to say why they want to perform a search to a judge, under threat of perjury. They have a powerful incentive not to lie. So...should warrants be required for this kind of Flock data also? Couldn't Flock set a policy that these searches are performed only under warrant? Or a law be enacted saying the same? I imagine it would make Flock much less attractive to their potential customers, and searches would be performed much less often. [1] So it's not something Flock is going to do on their own. I think we'd need to create the pressure, by opposing purchases of Flock or by specifically asking our elected representatives to create such a law. [1] If I'm being generous, because of the extra friction/work/delay. If I'm being less generous, because they have no legitimate reason a judge would approve.

lesuorac 1y ago
Eh, if a cop sat at a Dunkin Donuts and wrote down every license plate they saw that wouldn't require a warrant. Why should contracting that out to a private company require a warrant? Flock isn't say Google which collects location data because it needs it for Google Maps to function. Flock is only here because the local government paid it to setup equipment. It's really an issue for the local community. Do you want your local tax dollars going to support parks or tracking individuals?
- jfim 1y ago
  They wouldn't require a warrant, but at the same time, that wouldn't be scalable to be able to record every license plate everywhere in the city. Having a barrier to accessing data can help prevent casual abuse in my opinion, so that officers can't look up say some ex girlfriend's license plate, but if they get a warrant they can look up some suspect's license plate.
- ruined 1y ago
  if a cop followed you for private reasons in a private car while off duty, they wouldn't need a warrant. why should they need a warrant if they pay a private individual to do it? why should they need a warrant if they pay a private company to do it electronically? why should they need a warrant when they pay a private company to do it electronically while on the clock as part of their official duty? why should they ever need a warrant? they could just kill her if they wanted, nobody would do anything about it.

jayd16 1y ago

If only there was a process where a trusted individual could judge if an invasion of privacy was warranted.

b00ty4breakfast 1y ago

Maybe they should've tried not getting into the "dystopian surveillance network" business.

mulmen 1y ago

This is the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” bad faith argument applied to surveillance technology.

BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago

Imagine being the person who talks to the media on behalf of the police mass surveillance company. Like man you fucked up in this life if that’s where you ended up.

advisedwang 1y ago

If only there was some person with good JUDGEment who could decide whether a situation WARRANTs police having data.

pyrale 1y ago

In yet another set of words: we built a spy network, how could we ever know that people were going to use it to spy on people?

Zigurd 1y ago

Flock could shut off any PD they think is abusing their product. No excuses.

hnrich 1y ago
Then they will stop getting paid. They do not want to stop getting paid.

tptacek 1y ago

We knew this going in with Flock: that with full sharing to Flock's network of law enforcement agencies, we'd be trusting our data to every one of tens of thousands of tiny, often completely unaccountable police departments around the country, many of whom wouldn't give the slightest possible fuck about whether they were contravening our own department's general orders. That's why we disabled sharing, first to any out-of-state departments, and then altogether; PDs that wanted data from us could simply call us up on the phone like human beings. It was implied, both by our department and, more vaguely, by Flock, that sharing was reciprocal: if we didn't enable it, other departments wouldn't share with us. That's false; not only is it false, but apparently, to my understanding, Flock has (or had?) an offering for PDs to get access to the data without even hosting cameras of their own. That obviously leaves Flock's own attestations of client data separation, and I get the cynicism there too, but basically every municipality in the country relies on those same kinds of attestations from a myriad of vendors, and unlike Flock those vendors have basically nothing to lose (since nobody is paying attention to them). I think you can reasonably go either way on all this stuff. But you can't run these stacks in their default configuration with their default sharing and without special-purpose ordinances and general ordinances governing them. I write this mostly to encourage people who have strong opinions about this stuff to get engaged locally. I did, I'm not particularly good at it (I'm a loud message board nerd), and I got what I believe to be the only ALPR General Order in Chicagoland written and what I know to be the only ACLU CCOPS ordinance in Illinois passed.

mulmen 1y ago
> I write this mostly to encourage people who have strong opinions about this stuff to get engaged locally. I did, I'm not particularly good at it (I'm a loud message board nerd), and I got what I believe to be the only ALPR General Order in Chicagoland written and what I know to be the only ACLU CCOPS ordinance in Illinois passed. What’s an ALPR General Order and a ALCU CCOPS ordinance? How did you get them passed?
- tptacek 1y ago
  A General Order is a documented police policy. Flock is an ALPR. CCOPS is a model ordinance that requires board approval for any surveillance technology deployments.

awlirjalwk 1y ago

I mean, this argument has worked for the firearms industry for centuries. But oddly not for encryption ...

Forgeties79 1y ago

I would ask them “why bother with DUI laws if some people will drive drunk anyway?” If the only way we can have rules is if they are 100% followed 100% of the time, then we wouldn’t have any rules to begin with. Very publicly revoke the licenses of people who break your rules. You can’t stop everybody, but you can do something. This is just a lame excuse for in action.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

heavyset_go 1y ago

I want to know how much Flock paid the guy who came up with, "How could we know that building a nationwide panopticon for police would be used for police-state things?"