4 ms·

Flock or their defenders will lock in on the excuse that “oh these are misconfigured” or “yeah hacking is illegal, only cops should have this data”. The issue i

by edot 10mo ago

Flock or their defenders will lock in on the excuse that “oh these are misconfigured” or “yeah hacking is illegal, only cops should have this data”. The issue is neither of the above. The issue is the collection and collation of this footage in the first place! I don’t want hackers watching me all the time, sure, but I DEFINITELY don’t trust the state or megacorps to watch me all the time. Hackers concern me less, actually. I’m glad that Benn Jordan and others are giving this the airtime it needs, but they’re focusing the messaging on security vulnerabilities and not state surveillance. Thus Flock can go “ok we will do better about security” and the bureaucrats, average suburbanites, and law enforcement agencies will go “ok good they fixed the vulnerabilities I’m happy now”

dvtkrlbs 10mo ago
Yes and the biggest problem with this kind of ALPRs are they bypass the due process. Most of the time police can just pull up data without any warrant and there has been instances where this was abused (I think some cops used this for stalking their exes [1]) and also the most worrying Flock seems to really okay with giving ICE unlimited access to this data [2] [3] (which I speculate for loose regulations). [1]: https://lookout.co/georgia-police-chief-arrested-for-using-flock-cameras-for-stalking-and-harassment-searched-capitola-data-earlier-this-year/story https://lookout.co/georgia-police-chief-arrested-for-using-f... [2]: https://www.404media.co/emails-reveal-the-casual-surveillance-alliance-between-ice-and-local-police/ https://www.404media.co/emails-reveal-the-casual-surveillanc... [3]: https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-camera-network-data-shows/ https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-...
- throwway120385 10mo ago
  When you give access to any system that collects the personal information including location data for people in the US to the police, a percentage of the police will always use those systems for stalking their exes.
  - hugo1789 10mo ago
    What is not only true for police but for every sufficiently big group of people.
    - kcatskcolbdi 10mo ago
      Cops do have some unique tendencies but I think the real issue is the cops are able to leverage the power of the government in ways other large groups cannot.
      - djtango 10mo ago
        The problem with police is a) that police have to deal with bad people and it is very hard to stay untainted when you constantly deal with bad people, and b) being a cop is no longer a desirable or rewarding job which not only causes applicant pool issues but also polarises the job and police force itself. Then the nature of polarisation is that it is self reinforcing. So if your job isn't rewarding financially or socially, the "perks" must come from somewhere and so it attracts people who seek to abuse power etc
        SOLAR_FIELDS 10mo ago
        I believe strongly that people have zero problem paying their knuckle dragging police fuckwad of the day $150k if they would actually do the job they signed up for. It’s the fact that 99% of them can’t handle it that pisses people off
        heavyset_go 10mo ago
        > So if your job isn't rewarding financially I don't know where you are, but some of the highest paid public employees in my state are police. In fact, median salaries for cops are higher than those of software engineers. Add the fact that they get generous pensions + benefits, and can retire at 45 and draw from that pension until they die, they have it better than most of the people they police. It's one of the only professions where you can make north of $250k+ a year doing overtime by sitting in your car playing Candy Crush all night.
- candiddevmike 10mo ago
  Maybe with these systems we should require them TO be open for anyone to query against. Maybe then people would care more about how they impact their privacy.
  - toomuchtodo 10mo ago
    Flock’s objective is to hope people don’t care long enough to reach IPO. Will enough people care to dis enable this corporate dragnet surveillance apparatus? Remains to be seen. I don’t much care about the grift of dumping this pig onto the public markets (caveat emptor), but we should care about its continued use as a weapon against domestic citizens without effective governance and due process.
  - ipdashc 10mo ago
    IIRC, this happened in Washington state: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules-data-captured-flock-safety-cameras-are-public-records https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules... And as a result, they got rid of the cameras. Funny how that works!
- quitit 10mo ago
  I keep an unofficial record of instances where police and similar authorities have abused their access to these types of systems. The list is long. It's almost exclusively men stalking ex-partners or attractive women they don't know, but have seen in public. What's frightening is it's not rare, it actually happens constantly, and this is just within the systems which have a high level of internal logging/user-tracking. So now with Flock and data brokers we have authorities having access to information that was originally held behind a judge's signature. Often with little oversight, and frequently for unofficial, abusive purposes. This reality also ties back to the discussion about providing the "good guys" encryption backdoors. The reality is that there are no "good guys", everyone exists in shades of grey, and I dare say there are people in forces whom are attracted to the power the role provides, rather than any desire for public service. In conclusion it's a fundamental design flaw to rely on the operator being a "good guy", and that's before we get into the problem of leaks, bugs, and flaws in the security model, or in this case: complete open access to the public web - laughable, farcical, and horrifying.
  - marcus_holmes 10mo ago
    No idea why you're being downvoted, this is all true. Same was found in Australia when they looked into police access of data [0] [1] [2] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/28/revealed-the-amount-of-times-australian-police-have-breached-the-trust-afforded-to-them https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/... [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-15/victoria-police-leap-database-pursue-stalk-harass-women/101663452 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-15/victoria-police-leap-... [2] https://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/Docs/Public-Hearings/Impala/Exhibits/Operation-Impala-Exhibit-15-Research-Paper-Misuse-of-Police-Information-Systems-Pages.pdf https://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/Docs/Public-H...
  - Phemist 10mo ago
    > What's frightening is it's not rare, it actually happens constantly, and this is just within the systems which have a high level of internal logging/user-tracking. Would not be surprised if these types of abuse serve to obfuscate other abusive uses as well and are thus part of the system operating as it should. Flood the internal logging with all kinds of this "low-level" stuff, hiding the high-level warrantless tracking.
- tdeck 10mo ago
  I'm sure the 40 percent of cops who are domestic abusers and the white supremacists militias recruited wholesale into ICE will use this power responsibly.
  - MSFT_Edging 10mo ago
    You can go onto the ICE subreddit and see a ton of posts that ask if their previous domestic abuse/gross misconduct/ejection from police academy/etc will effect their ICE application. These aren't people who should hold any kind of intel. It's an actual danger to the population to give these people this much power.
    - Lord-Jobo 10mo ago
      They aren’t people that should be walking free, if we are being honest. Lock them up until we can get enough prison reform to genuinely try to rehabilitate them. The damage they are doing to our country is too high to hedge on this issue. >“That’s so extreme, they just shouldn’t have power, freedom is paramount, return to normal” etc. Sorry, too late for this. I advocated for more gentle measures 10 years ago when they were possible/plausibly effective. Just like any other infection, if you wait too long to address the problem you are forced towards extreme action. Or death. No third option.
SamInTheShell 10mo ago
Nothing will be done until one of the investors of the tech end up embarrassed from weaponization of the tech against themselves. These people have no clue how creepy some of their technologic betters can be. I once witnessed a coworker surveilling his own network to ensure his girlfriend wasn't cheating on him (this was a time before massive SSL adoption). The guy just got a role doing networking at my company and thankfully he wasn't there for very long after that.
- tejtm 10mo ago
  flock is a YC startup We have met the enemy and he is us -Pogo
  - haimez 10mo ago
    Are we the baddies?
    - therobots927 10mo ago
      Yep
  - fleshmonad 10mo ago
    I am the "Y-combinator". Do you have any questions?
    - tejtm 10mo ago
      no questions asked go eat yourself now or at least your own dog food
- StanislavPetrov 10mo ago
  As O’Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped. Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue. ‘You can turn it off!’ he said. ‘Yes,’ said O’Brien, ‘we can turn it off. We have that privilege.’
tracker1 10mo ago
I think more importantly people need to recognize that cops are people, flawed and fallible as is the flock system in general. It should never be the whole solution and be used as evidence alone.
- monkaiju 10mo ago
  This totally misses the OCs point, which is that this data shouldn't be gathered at all, regardless of the competency (or lack there of) of the cops
  - tracker1 10mo ago
    It wasn't my intent to argue otherwise... I was only trying to add to the conversation.
crises-luff-6b 10mo ago
[dead]
Spooky23 10mo ago
Was it misconfigured? Or “misconfigured” so people in the know can bypass the minimal controls that are in place?
kjkjadksj 10mo ago
I know right. It is like we all forgot that cops were literally sharing pictures of Kobe Bryant’s mutilated body in bars for a laugh. A lot of people in law enforcement are totally screwed up in the head.
coffeebeqn 10mo ago
How is this different from the CCP surveillance? I guess this is easier for third parties to access?
- AlexCoventry 10mo ago
  The PRC has nothing remotely corresponding to the Fourth Amendment, as far as I know.
- edot 10mo ago
  I hate the CCP surveillance too. No state should have this close of an eye on its people. It’s anti-freedom.
- AngryData 10mo ago
  It isn't any different, it is the exact same thing with a different PR spin.
newRoMncr 10mo ago
[dead]
SOLAR_FIELDS 10mo ago
I’m glad Benn has gone into the YouTube space. He has demonstrated a great balanced view on how to sell your soul for advertisement money in YouTube land. I’ve known of him a long time simply because of his extremely progressive views towards releasing his own music. In other words, I would not care about Benn Jordan but for the fact that he was releasing his own torrented music on WCD 15 years ago
KurSix 10mo ago
Fair point but there's a crucial nuance: state surveillance used to be limited by human resources. You couldn't assign an agent to every citizen - there aren't enough people. Flock with their AI tracking has effectively removed this scalability constraint. This vulnerability just highlighted how powerful a tool they've built. If these were just dumb cameras, the state would have to hire an army of operators. As it stands, the technology allows for total surveillance with essentially zero marginal cost. And when they fix the security, that terrifying potential for infinite scale isn't going anywhere; it just goes back under the client's control

by edot 10mo ago

dvtkrlbs 10mo ago

Yes and the biggest problem with this kind of ALPRs are they bypass the due process. Most of the time police can just pull up data without any warrant and there has been instances where this was abused (I think some cops used this for stalking their exes [1]) and also the most worrying Flock seems to really okay with giving ICE unlimited access to this data [2] [3] (which I speculate for loose regulations). [1]: https://lookout.co/georgia-police-chief-arrested-for-using-flock-cameras-for-stalking-and-harassment-searched-capitola-data-earlier-this-year/story https://lookout.co/georgia-police-chief-arrested-for-using-f... [2]: https://www.404media.co/emails-reveal-the-casual-surveillance-alliance-between-ice-and-local-police/ https://www.404media.co/emails-reveal-the-casual-surveillanc... [3]: https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-camera-network-data-shows/ https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-...

throwway120385 10mo ago
When you give access to any system that collects the personal information including location data for people in the US to the police, a percentage of the police will always use those systems for stalking their exes.
- hugo1789 10mo ago
  What is not only true for police but for every sufficiently big group of people.
  - kcatskcolbdi 10mo ago
    Cops do have some unique tendencies but I think the real issue is the cops are able to leverage the power of the government in ways other large groups cannot.
    - djtango 10mo ago
      The problem with police is a) that police have to deal with bad people and it is very hard to stay untainted when you constantly deal with bad people, and b) being a cop is no longer a desirable or rewarding job which not only causes applicant pool issues but also polarises the job and police force itself. Then the nature of polarisation is that it is self reinforcing. So if your job isn't rewarding financially or socially, the "perks" must come from somewhere and so it attracts people who seek to abuse power etc
      - SOLAR_FIELDS 10mo ago
        I believe strongly that people have zero problem paying their knuckle dragging police fuckwad of the day $150k if they would actually do the job they signed up for. It’s the fact that 99% of them can’t handle it that pisses people off
      - heavyset_go 10mo ago
        > So if your job isn't rewarding financially I don't know where you are, but some of the highest paid public employees in my state are police. In fact, median salaries for cops are higher than those of software engineers. Add the fact that they get generous pensions + benefits, and can retire at 45 and draw from that pension until they die, they have it better than most of the people they police. It's one of the only professions where you can make north of $250k+ a year doing overtime by sitting in your car playing Candy Crush all night.
candiddevmike 10mo ago
Maybe with these systems we should require them TO be open for anyone to query against. Maybe then people would care more about how they impact their privacy.
- toomuchtodo 10mo ago
  Flock’s objective is to hope people don’t care long enough to reach IPO. Will enough people care to dis enable this corporate dragnet surveillance apparatus? Remains to be seen. I don’t much care about the grift of dumping this pig onto the public markets (caveat emptor), but we should care about its continued use as a weapon against domestic citizens without effective governance and due process.
- ipdashc 10mo ago
  IIRC, this happened in Washington state: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules-data-captured-flock-safety-cameras-are-public-records https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules... And as a result, they got rid of the cameras. Funny how that works!
quitit 10mo ago
I keep an unofficial record of instances where police and similar authorities have abused their access to these types of systems. The list is long. It's almost exclusively men stalking ex-partners or attractive women they don't know, but have seen in public. What's frightening is it's not rare, it actually happens constantly, and this is just within the systems which have a high level of internal logging/user-tracking. So now with Flock and data brokers we have authorities having access to information that was originally held behind a judge's signature. Often with little oversight, and frequently for unofficial, abusive purposes. This reality also ties back to the discussion about providing the "good guys" encryption backdoors. The reality is that there are no "good guys", everyone exists in shades of grey, and I dare say there are people in forces whom are attracted to the power the role provides, rather than any desire for public service. In conclusion it's a fundamental design flaw to rely on the operator being a "good guy", and that's before we get into the problem of leaks, bugs, and flaws in the security model, or in this case: complete open access to the public web - laughable, farcical, and horrifying.
- marcus_holmes 10mo ago
  No idea why you're being downvoted, this is all true. Same was found in Australia when they looked into police access of data [0] [1] [2] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/28/revealed-the-amount-of-times-australian-police-have-breached-the-trust-afforded-to-them https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/... [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-15/victoria-police-leap-database-pursue-stalk-harass-women/101663452 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-15/victoria-police-leap-... [2] https://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/Docs/Public-Hearings/Impala/Exhibits/Operation-Impala-Exhibit-15-Research-Paper-Misuse-of-Police-Information-Systems-Pages.pdf https://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/Docs/Public-H...
- Phemist 10mo ago
  > What's frightening is it's not rare, it actually happens constantly, and this is just within the systems which have a high level of internal logging/user-tracking. Would not be surprised if these types of abuse serve to obfuscate other abusive uses as well and are thus part of the system operating as it should. Flood the internal logging with all kinds of this "low-level" stuff, hiding the high-level warrantless tracking.
tdeck 10mo ago
I'm sure the 40 percent of cops who are domestic abusers and the white supremacists militias recruited wholesale into ICE will use this power responsibly.
- MSFT_Edging 10mo ago
  You can go onto the ICE subreddit and see a ton of posts that ask if their previous domestic abuse/gross misconduct/ejection from police academy/etc will effect their ICE application. These aren't people who should hold any kind of intel. It's an actual danger to the population to give these people this much power.
  - Lord-Jobo 10mo ago
    They aren’t people that should be walking free, if we are being honest. Lock them up until we can get enough prison reform to genuinely try to rehabilitate them. The damage they are doing to our country is too high to hedge on this issue. >“That’s so extreme, they just shouldn’t have power, freedom is paramount, return to normal” etc. Sorry, too late for this. I advocated for more gentle measures 10 years ago when they were possible/plausibly effective. Just like any other infection, if you wait too long to address the problem you are forced towards extreme action. Or death. No third option.

SamInTheShell 10mo ago

Nothing will be done until one of the investors of the tech end up embarrassed from weaponization of the tech against themselves. These people have no clue how creepy some of their technologic betters can be. I once witnessed a coworker surveilling his own network to ensure his girlfriend wasn't cheating on him (this was a time before massive SSL adoption). The guy just got a role doing networking at my company and thankfully he wasn't there for very long after that.

tejtm 10mo ago
flock is a YC startup We have met the enemy and he is us -Pogo
- haimez 10mo ago
  Are we the baddies?
  - therobots927 10mo ago
    Yep
- fleshmonad 10mo ago
  I am the "Y-combinator". Do you have any questions?
  - tejtm 10mo ago
    no questions asked go eat yourself now or at least your own dog food
StanislavPetrov 10mo ago
As O’Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped. Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue. ‘You can turn it off!’ he said. ‘Yes,’ said O’Brien, ‘we can turn it off. We have that privilege.’

tracker1 10mo ago

I think more importantly people need to recognize that cops are people, flawed and fallible as is the flock system in general. It should never be the whole solution and be used as evidence alone.

monkaiju 10mo ago
This totally misses the OCs point, which is that this data shouldn't be gathered at all, regardless of the competency (or lack there of) of the cops
- tracker1 10mo ago
  It wasn't my intent to argue otherwise... I was only trying to add to the conversation.

crises-luff-6b 10mo ago

[dead]

Spooky23 10mo ago

Was it misconfigured? Or “misconfigured” so people in the know can bypass the minimal controls that are in place?

kjkjadksj 10mo ago

I know right. It is like we all forgot that cops were literally sharing pictures of Kobe Bryant’s mutilated body in bars for a laugh. A lot of people in law enforcement are totally screwed up in the head.

coffeebeqn 10mo ago

How is this different from the CCP surveillance? I guess this is easier for third parties to access?

AlexCoventry 10mo ago
The PRC has nothing remotely corresponding to the Fourth Amendment, as far as I know.
edot 10mo ago
I hate the CCP surveillance too. No state should have this close of an eye on its people. It’s anti-freedom.
AngryData 10mo ago
It isn't any different, it is the exact same thing with a different PR spin.

newRoMncr 10mo ago

[dead]

SOLAR_FIELDS 10mo ago

I’m glad Benn has gone into the YouTube space. He has demonstrated a great balanced view on how to sell your soul for advertisement money in YouTube land. I’ve known of him a long time simply because of his extremely progressive views towards releasing his own music. In other words, I would not care about Benn Jordan but for the fact that he was releasing his own torrented music on WCD 15 years ago

KurSix 10mo ago

Fair point but there's a crucial nuance: state surveillance used to be limited by human resources. You couldn't assign an agent to every citizen - there aren't enough people. Flock with their AI tracking has effectively removed this scalability constraint. This vulnerability just highlighted how powerful a tool they've built. If these were just dumb cameras, the state would have to hire an army of operators. As it stands, the technology allows for total surveillance with essentially zero marginal cost. And when they fix the security, that terrifying potential for infinite scale isn't going anywhere; it just goes back under the client's control