8 ms·

I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

• kstrauser 7mo ago
  I wrote this. I had/have absolutely no expectation that Flock would comply with my request, but figured I should try anyway For Science. Their reply rubbed me wrong, though. They seem to claim that there are no restrictions on their collection and processing of PII because other people pay them for it. They say: > Flock Safety’s customers own the data and make all decisions around how such data is used and shared. which seems to directly oppose the CCPA. It's my data, not their customers'. Again, I didn't really expect this to work. And yet, I'm still disappointed with the path by which it didn't work.
  • carefree-bob 7mo ago
    They were saying "don't write to us, talk to the people who own the cameras and ask them to delete the data". A company that manufactures video cameras is not the one to talk to when someone records you, talk to the person who recorded you. But a reasonable person would say -- the data is stored on Flock servers, not with the camera owners. And Flock would say, just because we sell data storage functionality to camera owners doesn't mean we own the data, anymore than a storage service you rent a space from owns what you put in that space. But then an even more reasonable person would say: the infrastructure is designed in such a way as to create inadvertent sharing, and the system has vulnerabilities that compromise the data, so Flock has responsibility for setting up the system in such a way that it's basically designed to violate privacy. And that is the main criticism of Flock. You need to have a more nuanced criticism. It would be really interesting to see this litigated.
    • fudgy73 7mo ago
      AFAIK Flock owns the cameras and leases them out [0]. [0] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-does-my-neighborhood-need-flock-security-cameras https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-does-my-neighb...
      • mminer237 7mo ago
        If you go to Rent-A-Center and rent a DSLR, that doesn't make Rent-A-Center responsible for the pictures taken by their cameras.
        • kstrauser 7mo ago
          If Rent-A-Center installed the camera in a bathroom, I'd contend that it does. Flock's cameras aren't in bathrooms. However, they're still recording people who haven't opted into it. ("But you have no expectation of privacy in a public place!" "You have the expectation that someone might inadvertently overhear you. You don't have the expectation that someone is actively recording you at all times.")
          • valianteffort 7mo ago
            [dead]
        • danielsunsu 7mo ago
          I think if it were only offline storage it would not be as big of an issue. A more accurate analogy would be renting a DSLR that automatically transmits every picture to Rent-A-Center servers.
        • yabutlivnWoods 7mo ago
          Your example is apples and oranges. Flock maintains private infrastructure that stores data. If the DSLR uploaded them to Rent-A-Center owned/leased servers it would in fact require Rent-A-Center to take the necessary steps. As Rent-A-Center would be the only group with proper access to data storage they would have inserted themselves into the chain of custody, and thereby have such obligation to ensure others data is wiped from systems they control.
          • tptacek 7mo ago
            AWS also maintains private infrastructure that stores data. Go write them asking to purge data pertaining to you from S3 and see how that goes.
    • mistrial9 7mo ago
      the way this has been addressed in complex product liability in the past in the USA is that the public-facing Brand Owner has certain legal liability for the product, despite contractors or supply chains. In this case, it appears that the Flock company is the brand owner and is public-facing.
    • halJordan 7mo ago
      It easily goes both ways. But we do sue American gun makers for deaths caused by lunatics. We sue drug makers for drugs prescribed by a doctor. We sue cloud providers for not reporting illegal photos. Printers are forced to id every printed page to combat counterfeiting. Banks are forced to do close accounts even though it's not their dirty money
      • thebaine 7mo ago
        Most of those examples have to do with the manufacturers knowing that their products were dangerous, addictive or illegal and advertising them aggressively as safe. They're mostly litigated on product liability claims. Banks are regulated by an entire architecture of laws, and we could enact laws that would regulate Flock too, as one of the other commenters pointed out they're doing in Oregon.
      • BobaFloutist 7mo ago
        > But we do sue American gun makers for deaths caused by lunatics. No we don't, there's a federal law explicitly protecting gun manufacturers from liability for gun crime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_in_Arms_Act# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_...
    • justinclift 7mo ago
      Wonder if Flock could be DMCA'd to remove the data they're hosting then? :)
    • dozerly 7mo ago
      I don’t think you’re informed on the topic. They do not just manufacture cameras.
    • deleted 7mo ago
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    • deleted 7mo ago
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    • robot-wrangler 7mo ago
      > They were saying "don't write to us, talk to the people who own the cameras and ask them to delete the data". The response to this should just be, "Yes, very well, please divulge a complete list of your customers, their contact information, and information about camera locations so I will be able to pursue this per instructions". When that obviously doesn't work either then we can all agree the law as written is completely useless, and feel great about rewriting it in a way that's calculated for maximum damage to both the vendor and their customers, and collateral damage to the whole panopticon. Or, just spitballing here, we can just skip to the punchline here and do all that anyway
      • MaxikCZ 7mo ago
        > we can all agree the law as written is completely useless But they wont agree, they find the law very nice in its current form, and have more brib.. ehm, lobying money for it to stay that way.
    • beambot 7mo ago
      Isn't this the equivalent of asking Google to delete your image off every Android phone (not just yours)?
  • themafia 7mo ago
    These laws get complicated quickly. There's a specific ALPR law in the CA civil code which seems to carve out several exceptions for a business like Flock: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=CIV&division=3.&title=1.81.23.&part=4.&chapter=&article= https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x... The enforcement provisions are rather bleak as well and afford no opportunity to directly bring a case against the agency that operates the system but instead just the individual who misuses it. I think one of the more direct attacks would be going after jurisdictions that chronically have officers misusing the system. I think you're going to have to create precedent in this way to foment actual change.
  • everdrive 7mo ago
    Nice work all the same. These systems need to be prodded and tested. Even unsuccessful results such as this tell us something about the situation we're in.
  • nainachirps_ 7mo ago
    I am not a lawyer myself but can't one argue that this company has duty to ensure that data it is processing for client is legally obtained. If they are processing data after being told it was not obtained with consent do they not have any liability?
  • Glyptodon 7mo ago
    I think you should write them back and ask that they provide you with a customer list and continually update you as they get new customers so that you may follow the advice they've given you.
    • kstrauser 7mo ago
      Ooh. I like this.
      • kube-system 7mo ago
        Why? The response is predictable. No company is going to give you a customer list.
        • kstrauser 7mo ago
          I wouldn't be so sure. In this specific case, they told me to ask their customers to comply with my CCPA rights. Without that information, it's impossible for me to exercise those rights. IANAL, but that sounds like a pursuable path.
          • kube-system 7mo ago
            I don't see any provision in CCPA that requires that. And outside of an explicit requirement to do so, nobody is required to help you. Edit: from https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa > If a service provider has said that it does not or cannot act on your request because it is a service provider, you may follow up to ask who the business is. However, sometimes the service provider will not be able to provide that information. You may be able to determine who the business is based on the services that the service provider provides, although sometimes this may be difficult or impossible.
            • bloppe 7mo ago
              Perhaps the next step is writing to your state representative, or to Alastair Mactaggart, and complain about this hole in the legislation.
  • deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  • ratdragon 7mo ago
    maybe eff.org would be able to help you lawyer up or otherwise to push this forward. good luck!
    • kstrauser 7mo ago
      I've reached out, albeit very informally. I'll completely understand if this isn't something they have the time and energy to help with. If I accidentally caught them at a weak moment when they're looking for something to do, though, I'm all in.
  • tptacek 7mo ago
    Wait, is it your data? If you drive your car in front of a Ring camera on my house (I don't have a Ring camera don't @ me), is it your claim that you own the data on that camera?
    • kstrauser 7mo ago
      Did you put up a Ring camera on a stand in front of your house for the specific purpose of selling that I drove past at this specific timestamp? If so, yes. The CCPA[0] gives me explicit legal rights: * The right to know about the personal information a business collects about them and how it is used and shared; * The right to delete personal information collected from them (with some exceptions); * The right to opt-out of the sale or sharing of their personal information including via the GPC; This isn't someone incidentally taking pictures of license plates in an otherwise noncommercial setting. It's a company literally created to collect and sell PII. Laws are different for them than for us. [0]https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa
      • snowwrestler 7mo ago
        “Personal information” has a legal definition and photos of you in a public street might not satisfy it, regardless of the photographer’s intent.
        • kstrauser 7mo ago
          I think it'd be challenging to rule that a license plate number is not personally identifiable information, when the same regulations often state that an IP address is.
          • uoaei 7mo ago
            "Anyone could have been driving my car, you can't positively identify me in the driver's seat with the evidence you have submitted" is routinely used to toss out cases involving traffic violations. It's not necessarily common but it does happen. By this logic a license plate does not personally identify the person driving, only the person the car is registered to.
  • mindslight 7mo ago
    Isn't this just the routine fascist playbook at this point? Start by declaring that the law doesn't even apply to them, on whatever flimsiest of bases. Personally I would really like to see torts for attorneys who willfully promulgate blatantly incorrect legal interpretations - they're effectively providing incorrect legal advice. A non-attorney is likely to believe such advice coming from a member of the Bar, and the net goal is to discourage the target from seeking further legal advice.
    • SoftTalker 7mo ago
      An attorney whom you have not engaged in counsel is not providing legal advice.
      • mindslight 7mo ago
        I'm well aware of how it's currently legally defined - hence "effectively". My comment is in the context of what ought, not what is.
      • efreak 7mo ago
        An expert in any subject matter should not be allowed to provide misleading statements, regardless of whether they're speaking in an official/paid capacity. It doesn't matter if it's considered legal advice or not, the fact that you've got a license and know better should be enough.
  • snowwrestler 7mo ago
    It’s not clear to me that it is actually your data. If I take a picture of you in a public place, I own the picture, not you. But maybe I am unclear on how Flock works.
    • bjt 7mo ago
      Setting aside Flock, the "ownership" situation is not as clear as you say above. What you own is the image copyright. But the right to copy is only one of the rights at issue. Under various state laws (California in particular), you might not be entitled to do all the things with that picture that you could do of one that doesn't have my likeness. Privacy laws like the CCPA are one possible carve-out. A "right of publicity" is another. There's an old saying about property law that "property is a bundle of sticks". The bundle can be subdivided. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/publicity https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/publicity
    • pksebben 7mo ago
      Isn't flock's whole thing that they extract information from the pictures they have? Like, say I have an interview in your office and you step out for coffee. I take a picture of the applicant list on your desk. That doesn't make the list of applicants "my data".
      • lotsofpulp 7mo ago
        >I take a picture of the applicant list on your desk. That doesn't make the list of applicants "my data". If the list is sitting there out in the open, then yes, it does make it your data.
        • throwway120385 7mo ago
          Well, maybe not. A reasonable person might not think that about that applicant list. I bet you could make a different argument for taking a picture versus memorizing the list too. The legal system thrives on specifics of a situation, so simply asserting that the list of applicants is or is not "yours" because you can see it seems like a gross oversimplification. The specifics of how you came to be there, what your relationship with the officeholder is, and so on probably matters a lot in that situation and I think there might be some unwritten rules or social norms that you'd be expected to follow as well.
  • goodluckchuck 7mo ago
    The CCPA clearly violates the 1st Amendment. If you're out in public, then people are allowed to see you, to remember it, to communicate that it happened, etc.
    • 2bitencryption 7mo ago
      Not exactly. One can be charged with stalking, even though the offender only went to places in public that the victim also went to. If combined with a pattern of behavior that, in aggregate, infringes upon the rights of the target, it can become a crime.
    • efreak 7mo ago
      > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. This is the entire text of the first amendment. Congress did not make the CCPA. The first amendment is irrelevant. Technically the first amendment also does not prevent Congress from saying you're not allowed to remember or see things, either, though likely there's other laws about this and/or an assumption that Congress will not make laws against thought crime and reality.
  • necovek 7mo ago
    This answer is relevant: https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa#collapse6d https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa#collapse6d In short, Flock is a "service provider" and not the entity doing the recording. Perhaps you can make a case that they are a "data broker" instead (https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa#collapse1i https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa#collapse1i), but that is a separate law, and what you are really looking at is a combination of license plate, time and location being collected as data being collected and sold without your consent. Obviously, I am not a lawyer (and not even US-based), but I like when privacy is respected :)
  • zbrozek 7mo ago
    I tried the same, got a similar response, and complained to the AG. Nothing.
  • wakamoleguy 7mo ago
    The data ownership is really interesting, as many threads here are going into. I wonder if it's possible to sidestep that entirely, though! Under the CCPA, "personal information" is defined as information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked — directly or indirectly — with a particular consumer or household. That says nothing about ownership. To the extent that Flock is only storing the data on behalf of their customers, I'd understand they wouldn't be required to delete it. But to the extent that they are indexing it, deriving from it, aggregating it across customers, and sharing it via their platform, it seems they should be required to remove that data from those services. But then again, I am not a lawyer!
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 7mo ago
    Under GDPR, I believe that would be accurate. I think CCPA was to some extent inspired by GDPR so I wouldn't be surprised if they copied this point too. Which, hilariously, means that under GDPR, you only need to contact the web site, and they have to go talk to their 1207 partners that value your privacy to fulfill your request (I'm sure that in practice they'll say "sorry it's all 'anonymous' so we can't" or "we can't be sure that it's you even though you provided the identifier from your cookies"). I'm really disappointed that NOYB hasn't started going after web sites like that - that's quickly put a damper on the whole web surveillance economy.
  • charcircuit 7mo ago
    >It's my data, not their customers'. Just because data is about you, that doesn't mean it is your data.
    • john_strinlai 7mo ago
      you may be minunderstanding the california consumer privacy act (ccpa). in the ccpa, personal data is defined as: "Personal information is information that identifies, relates to, or could reasonably be linked with you or your household." and, you do have the rights set forth in the ccpa (know, delete, correct, limit exposure, etc.) regarding that data.
  • lmkg 7mo ago
    > which seems to directly oppose the CCPA. I have some background in data privacy compliance. It sounds like they are claiming to be a Service Provider under CCPA, which is similar to a Processor under GDPR. Long story short, a Controller is the one legally responsible for ensuring the rights of the data subject, and a service provider/processor is a "dumb pipe" for a Controller that does what they're told. So IF they are actually a Service Provider, they're correct that the legal responsibility for CCPA belongs to their customers and not them. That's a big IF, though. Being a Processor/Service Providor means trade-offs. The data you collect isn't yours, you're not allowed to benefit from it. If Flock aggregates data from one customer and sells that aggregate to a different customer, they're no longer just a service provider. They're using data for their own purposes, and cannot claim to be "just" a service provider.
  • jsw97 7mo ago
    You might reach out to the California AG. I suspect they are itching for this kind of thing right now.
    • kstrauser 7mo ago
      Because life is weird, my kid played little league baseball against his. I might have to do that.
      • orthecreedence 7mo ago
        So maybe your kid throws some softball pitches to his kid, and in exchange he opens a quick and easy lawsuit dismantling the surveillance state's ability to operate within CA. Quid pro quo...
  • deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  • AlBugdy 7mo ago
    Read a few of your posts. Just wanted to comment on how I like your to-the-point succinct style and how you care about privacy. :) As a suggestion, I saw you have RSS: https://honeypot.net/feed.xml https://honeypot.net/feed.xml I didn't see it mentioned in the main page or About or Archive. Maybe add it to a more visible place?
    • kstrauser 7mo ago
      Aww, thanks! I appreciate that. And that's a good point. I'll look at that when I get home.
  • rkagerer 7mo ago
    It would be revealing to see a judge scrutinize the degree of control Flock maintains over the system and deliberate on whether the company truly is as hands-off as it claims when it comes to privacy obligations. Personally I feel if you're going to build so turnkey a system to facilitate collection of personal data by your customers at the scale Flock seeks, then at a minimum you should build an equally turnkey method to handle requests like the one you made. It would be a service both to their customers and to consumers at large who wish to exercise their rights under legislation to opt out. The fundamental reason we ended up in a world where companies just pay lip service to privacy and don't take it seriously is because consumers / voters put up with it. I'm heartened when I see individuals keyed into the issue. Is there some way to contribute funds toward your legal fees?
    • woodydesign 7mo ago
      [dead]
    • mixdup 7mo ago
      it is distinctly against Flock's interests to offer a turnkey system to help people opt out of data collection from among Flock's many customers. It might be a service to the general public, but it certainly would not be a service that Flock's actual customers would generally be interested in, at all
  • MrDrMcCoy 7mo ago
    You know... you might have some success getting LeaglEagle involved, especially since they'd make money on the attention it would bring. Benn Jordan would probably love to be an expert witness.
  • pdpi 7mo ago
    In GDPR terms, the point they're making is that people who own Flock hardware are the Data Controllers, and Flock act only as Data Processors. I'm not sure how (whether?) those roles map to the CCPA, and whether any court of law would agree with them is up for discussion, but at least the concept is not completely absurd. Of course, the word "owner" is almost rage baiting on their part.
    • FireBeyond 7mo ago
      Except under Flock's own contracts and their own website, Flock are the people who own Flock hardware. And this correlates with my understanding from when I was an employee.
  • cebert 7mo ago
    Police departments, courts, and similar entities are not subject to CCPA in the same way companies are.
  • gowld 7mo ago
    Lawsuit challenging Flock's illegal data brokerage: https://www.courthousenews.com/california-drivers-accuse-flock-safety-of-sharing-data-with-federal-and-out-of-state-agencies/ https://www.courthousenews.com/california-drivers-accuse-flo...
  • laylower 7mo ago
    Send it to EFF - they are big in California..
• barelysapient 7mo ago
  If that's a valid excuse than the CCPA isn't worth the paper its written on.
  • dylan604 7mo ago
    The rule of any documentation is that it is out of date as soon as the ink is dry. By the time a regulation is enacted, workarounds/loopholes have already been found (if not intentionally worked into it).
  • ldoughty 7mo ago
    I would argue that the request was invalid in the first place. If I see a flash on a speed camera operated by a business on behalf of a police department, your argument states I should be able to use CCPA to force the business to delete my picture and the record of me speeding If I can get the request to them before the police can file with the court and request that data as evidence. The data belongs to the government, and you can't get around that right by going to business that holds the data and asking them to delete it.
    • inetknght 7mo ago
      > If I see a flash on a speed camera operated by a business on behalf of a police department, your argument states I should be able to use CCPA to force the business to delete my picture and the record of me speeding If I can get the request to them before the police can file with the court and request that data as evidence. Sounds reasonable to me. If the police want to put up a camera, then the police should put up a camera. Offloading their legal responsibilities to a third party company is shitty.
      • SoftTalker 7mo ago
        So police departments should have to develop and host all their administrative software also? I think we can all see why that would be a terrible idea. Police are like any other government agency or business in that they contract with the private sector for a variety of services that are not in their area of expertise.
• ranger_danger 7mo ago
  To me this sounds like the equivalent of visiting a website that sells your data, and then asking AWS to delete your personal data when it actually belongs to a customer of theirs and only resides within their private storage. Would you ask your local ISP to delete data they provided to Tinder like your IP address? That doesn't make sense to me.
  • deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  • terrabitz 7mo ago
    Yeah I was getting the same feeling. I wonder if an equivalent request to California police agencies that contract Flock technologies would work though.
    • OkayPhysicist 7mo ago
      Probably not, as the law enforcement agencies get a bunch of exceptions to the CCPA.
  • deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  • monooso 7mo ago
    As I understand it, the author wrote to Flock as they are the entity collecting the PII. Your analogy would only make sense if the author had written to Flock's customers (and even then it's a rather strained comparison).
    • ranger_danger 7mo ago
      > they are the entity collecting the PII I'm not convinced this is the case. It might be equipment made by them, but does that necessarily mean they were ever even in possession of the data in question? Would you ask the manufacturer of your oven what you ate for dinner last week? No, you're just using an appliance that they made. In the case of Flock I don't think we have any evidence of whether Flock themselves ever hold or store any data produced by their devices when operated by a customer.
• ldoughty 7mo ago
  I think you're going to have a hard time with this... Flock seems to leave the data in ownership of the government. They are just providing the service of being custodians for storing and accessing that data. You probably would get a similar response by submitting your request to Amazon web services or Google cloud or whoever has Flocks data: "sorry, we're just holding the data on behalf of Flock" In either my example case or your stated case, you would have a very hard time convincing the host business to destroy their customers data without a court order or court case that shows their policy is invalid and they must comply. Not a lawyer, just noting the parallel. I do appreciate that Flock's response says that they cannot use the data they've collected for other purposes.. which further reinforces my cloud storage analogy -- the cloud vendor can't look at your data you upload to storage to e.g. build profiles on you/your business.
  • Barbing 7mo ago
    > the cloud vendor can't look at your data you upload to storage to e.g. build profiles on you/your business. Would our main check on this be whistleblowers?
• calmbonsai 7mo ago
  Per my understanding of the law for these sorts of data collectors, at least in the U.S., you need to contact the local municipalities (Flock's customers) for this redaction and the jurisprudence is governed at the state and municipal level. The best source of this information is https://deflock.org/ https://deflock.org/ . FWIW, this is run by a neighbor in Boulder, CO which has been wrestling with the use of these cameras.
  • cousinbryce 7mo ago
    Automating requests to every municipality sure would be fun
• nekusar 7mo ago
  The only opt-out the citizenry has is with any of the following: 2x4 rebar spraypaint spray foam battery powered metal cutter And bash those pieces of shit to chunks or completely ruin the lens and solar. Republican community? They love corporate surveillance. Democrat community? They too love corporate surveillance. There is no "Peoples' Party" that rejects this garbage.
  • draw_down 7mo ago
    [dead]
  • MengerSponge 7mo ago
    https://www.techspot.com/news/108045-lidar-great-cars-but-can-permanently-damage-cameras.html https://www.techspot.com/news/108045-lidar-great-cars-but-ca... It would be a pity if someone made dense point clouds of these devices.
    • maccam912 7mo ago
      One could start doing tours of their city to show tourists where each and every camera is. They're kinda small though, it might be worth a strong laser pointer so you can direct their attention to the cameras easily...
    • culi 7mo ago
      It would be a pity if someone created a little laser that aims an infrared beam at these cameras as you drive. The beam would be invisible to the human eye and quite hard for anyone to notice what's going on
  • pugworthy 7mo ago
    All materials available at major home improvement centers - which happen to be very popular Flock camera locations.
  • MrDrMcCoy 7mo ago
    I have a better idea: we should invest in ladders and tools to safely and cleanly take them down. Then mail them back to flock with a note saying "I found this on the side of the road and thought you might want it back."
• deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
• empathy_m 7mo ago
  I noticed that the company is glossed as "Flock" and not "Flock Safety (YC S17)" in posts like this and last week's "US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47689237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47689237. Did YC house style change a while back to drop the "(YC xxx)" annotation since so many popular firms particpate / or because it's well known?
  • mikey_p 7mo ago
    Who know, maybe they're trying to distance themselves from the privacy disaster, but I doubt anyone at YC or HN is smart enough to read the room on Flock.
    • bix6 7mo ago
      Which room? The one paying them millions to spy on people? Cash Rules Everything Around Me.
  • tptacek 7mo ago
    I see less of it now across the board but note that this headline was almost certainly created by the story's submitter; it's not like there's an automated process to apply the label.
    • FinnKuhn 7mo ago
      There are definitely some automatic formatting rules for titles though. E.g. capitalization or one that removes any "How" from the beginning of a title. When I wanted to submit "How Pizza Tycoon simulated traffic on a 25 MHz CPU" I had to edit it after posting or it would have said "Pizza Tycoon simulated traffic on a 25 MHz CPU", which doesn't make any sense.
      • lionkor 7mo ago
        How does that not make any sense? It turns into a statement. If it no longer makes sense, the original title was bad clickbait, no?
• kube-system 7mo ago
  I don't think they need your permission to use ALPR on your publicly displayed license plate. > (2) (A) “Personal information” does not include publicly available information [...] > (B) (i) For purposes of this paragraph, “publicly available” means any of the following: > (I) Information that is lawfully made available from federal, state, or local government records. > (II) Information that a business has a reasonable basis to believe is lawfully made available to the general public by the consumer
  • _moof 7mo ago
    The information being collected isn't your license plate, it's your location. (Still might not be personal information.)
• wcv 7mo ago
  Flock has stonewalled with the "we are not the controllers" excuse here in MN too. We have similar rights to opt-out and delete under the MCDPA [0]. [0] https://ag.state.mn.us/Data-Privacy/Consumer/ https://ag.state.mn.us/Data-Privacy/Consumer/
  • tptacek 7mo ago
    They're not stonewalling; they're following the law. Their state and municipal customers would not want them honoring these requests!
• deepsun 7mo ago
  If Flock collects and processes PII data, then all their customers are "subprocessors". Flock should really have a Data Processing Agreement with their subprocessors, to legally ensure they follow the same PII handling controls as Flock does. For example, if Flock receives a legitimate request to delete some data, then Flock must forward that request to all their Data Processors (e.g. including AWS/GCP/Cloudflare) and they must delete it as well.
  • Aaargh20318 7mo ago
    It’s the other way around. Flock is the subprocessor for whoever hired them to collect data. If they are collecting data on behalf a city or municipality, those are the entities you need to address.
    • deepsun 7mo ago
      I'm not sure about that, I'm pretty sure any company that has your PII is obliged to follow the law, regardless of their contracts with their customers/vendors. Law doesn't make you investigate who's the end customer for your data, only who has it. As for "subprocessor" -- it might as well be the case that both sides are subprocessors for each other, nothing wrong with that.
      • Aaargh20318 7mo ago
        I don’t know this specific law, I just know how it works in the EU with the GDPR. Of course any company that has your PII has to follow the law, but it matters which entity is the one that has is the end customer for your data. They are the one that has to have a legal basis for even collecting that data and they are the one you as a use deal with. If they use a sub-contractor then that’s an internal matter for them and not something you as the subject has to deal with. Of course they have to have a DPA in place with the sub-contractor and they have the responsibility to make sure the sub-contractor follows the law. Likewise the sub-contractor has to make sure that their client has a sound legal basis for processing the PII. For example: if a bank outsources part of their KYC process to a third party, that’s not something you have to concern yourself with, you only deal with the bank.
• mmmlinux 7mo ago
  Lot of Flock Defenders in here.
  • pwython 7mo ago
    Not Flock defenders, just people explaining how this is not a CCPA violation. I could set up 100 cameras around town (with property owners permission) and record cars driving by, birds, etc all day. Then I could sell access to that footage to whoever I want. If they want to scrape license plates that's up to the customer and their problem. Or if they want to track birds, cool, that could be in the frame too.
    • kstrauser 7mo ago
      It gets a little weird when you explicitly market them for a purpose, though. Flock doesn't advertise a fleet of cameras suitable for birdwatching or other random activities. They market them specifically for the collection and processing of PII. By analogy, Google Docs isn't marketed for healthcare use. If you wanted, you could put a bunch of PHI in a Google doc and it wouldn't be their responsibility. They certainly didn't tell you to do that. However, if they marketed Google Docs as a great place to store PHI, yeah, then suddenly they're on the hook for complying with the relevant laws like HIPAA. (Although in this case Google will sign a HIPAA business associate agreement with you and voluntarily agree to comply. They still don't market it that way, or at least don't predominantly do so.)
• annoyingnoob 7mo ago
  I've had the same kind of response from Email providers like Sendgrid, they claim its not their data. There is no way to have Sendgrid block you in their entire network, you have to play whack-a-mole with their customers. Seems like a flaw in these privacy laws when you can't ask the actual record holder to remove the records.
• hmokiguess 7mo ago
  https://www.flocksafety.com/legal/lpr-policy https://www.flocksafety.com/legal/lpr-policy > In accordance with its Terms and Conditions, Flock Safety may access, use, preserve and/or disclose the LPR data to law enforcement authorities, government officials, and/or third parties, if legally required to do so or if Flock has a good faith belief that such access, use, preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with a legal process, enforce the agreement between Flock and the customer, or detect, prevent or otherwise address security, privacy, fraud or technical issues. Additionally, Flock uses a fraction of LPR images (less than one percent), which are stripped of all metadata and identifying information, solely for the purpose of improving Flock Services through machine learning. In this document, to which they linked in their reply, it says clearly "address ... privacy ... issues." Does your case not constitute a privacy issue? I would say so. Continuing down below, their claim on "Trust Us" about how they employ machine learning would need some proper transparency into how can that be guaranteed.
  • FireBeyond 7mo ago
    > Continuing down below, their claim on "Trust Us" about how they employ machine learning would need some proper transparency into how can that be guaranteed. Wait til you see their "Transparency Portal" which, if my County and neighboring can be used as a sample size, doesn't even name at least 30% of agencies using Flock.
• _moof 7mo ago
  They seem to be implying that because they are a "service provider," they aren't responsible for complying with CCPA rules even though they are the ones with the data. Does this hold water? I'm reading the CCPA rules now but if anyone knows, it would save me some tedious research.
  • ezfe 7mo ago
    I guess if one likens it to AWS S3 holding your data on behalf of Apple it makes sense
  • pnw 7mo ago
    See point 7 at https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa
• pugworthy 7mo ago
  An interesting quandary here is that they'd need to constantly scan for you and your vehicle, etc. so that they could know it was you then delete you. So to ensure they don't observe you, they need to observe you.
• rdiddly 7mo ago
  Flock's customers own the data the same way Uber drivers are independent contractors, i.e. it's designed for weaseling out of obligations.
• lacker 7mo ago
  Isn't that how it should work? If you write the police and ask them to delete all their data about you, that isn't a thing that they do. It shouldn't matter if the police store their data on AWS or their own servers. Flock is a tool used by the police so it should work the same way.
  • nerevarthelame 7mo ago
    You're right are exemptions for both GDPR [0] and the CCPA [1] where organizations aren't obligated to comply with erasure requests if it would limit their ability to prevent or investigate crimes, fraud, or similar matters. But that's not what Flock is claiming. They're claiming that they don't even have to consider the request because they don't own the data. [0] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/exemptions/a-guide-to-the-data-protection-exemptions/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re... [1] https://www.clarip.com/data-privacy/ccpa-erasure-exemptions/ https://www.clarip.com/data-privacy/ccpa-erasure-exemptions/
• dsr_ 7mo ago
  Remember that the difference between "Flock can do whatever the hell it wants" and "Flock is required to delete your data at your request" is a law. Citizens vote for legislators. If you want this to be a higher priority for your legislators, buy them off. Or vote for/against them, that might work too.
  • joquarky 7mo ago
    Reminds me of this article from a while back: https://theonion.com/american-people-hire-high-powered-lobbyist-to-push-inte-1819571821/ https://theonion.com/american-people-hire-high-powered-lobby...
• nour833 7mo ago
  [dead]
• cold_tom 7mo ago
  Feels like a classic “we’re just the processor” answer But in reality you have no way to find or contact whoever actually controls the data, so it doesn’t really help. Kind of shows the gap between how the law works on paper vs how these systems work in practice.
• sklargh 7mo ago
  The concept of what constitutes a sale under CCPA is pretty expansive. An exchange of value can be a sale that occurs outside of a processing relationship. I’d say their note is inaccurate.
• carabiner 7mo ago
  It's not much worse than all the tracking adtech used by FAANG industry. Smartest people in the world working on these systems.
  • kstrauser 7mo ago
    I'd contend that it absolutely is. Adtech is creepy and invasive and weird. Flock is going a step further and actively tracking our movement through the cities where we live. I don't like either of those activities, but I think one of them is much worse.
    • jakeydus 7mo ago
      One is making implicit assumptions based on data available to it. The other is literally saying "hey they're right here at this time". At least adtech has _some_ level of obfuscation to it. But I'm with you both suck.
• rbbydotdev 7mo ago
  it would be nice if flock did not and could not exist
• atmosx 7mo ago
  Back in 2018, CloudFormation data leaked through a public gist (misconfigured gist plugin, I thought the gist was private but it wasn't... I had change the default config) and showed up on an obscure website being served via CloudFlare. When I contacted CF, they claimed they couldn’t remove the cached content because their system “doesn’t work like that". I pushed back and then they said that they're not responsible for the content and that I should send another email to abuse@cf... to get data about the hosting provider and deal with the content provider (e.g. VPS, ISP, whatever). After a few back and forth msgs, I made it clear that if the data wasn’t taken down within a week or so, I would escalate the issue to the local and German GDPR authority (see https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/european-network-of-ombudsmen/members/regional-ombudsmen https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/european-network-of-ombud...). And what do you know? I got not reply, but the content disappeared in ~48hrs.
• gguncth 7mo ago
  It’s fascinating how America could completely get rid of Flock cameras by sending criminals to prison and leaving them there, but we won’t do that so we have these endless arguments about these cameras.
  • AlotOfReading 7mo ago
    I'm trying to understand the argument here. Are you saying that never releasing convicted criminals would completely eliminate crime? That doesn't seem correct, even leaving aside the obvious moral issues with that.
    • kstrauser 7mo ago
      My interpretation was that they were saying Flock were criminals who should be sent away for good. I don't know if that's right but it would be consistent that way.
      • AlotOfReading 7mo ago
        That makes much more sense, yeah.
    • gguncth 7mo ago
      Not never releasing convicted criminals, but 1) not letting any crime go without at least 1 day in jail 2) doubling the penalty on each successive offense would incapacitate a huge number of serial offenders
  • jancsika 7mo ago
    tldr; holding powerful people accountable is very hard. Take Cheney's post-911 warrantless wiretapping program. You had Bush's own top DOJ officials threatening to resign over it in 2004, and Jim Risen with a story about it ready to publish in the NYT before the 2004 election. But not only was the White House able to stave off the resignations (IIRC through some tepid FISA oversight of the program), they got NYT editor Bill Keller to scuttle the story on vague national security grounds. (NYT reluctantly published it after the election only because Risen threatened to scoop them in his upcoming book.) Then in 2008, Obama claimed the need to "look forward, not backward" wrt this and the Iraq War. Plus his admin renewed Bush's subpoena against Risen on another national intelligence story he'd done! Any effort to hold Cheney or the Bush administration accountable for this would have had to battle both parties at the same time as educating the public on the issue, without the help of and backing of media institutions like the NYT. I'd be fascinated to hear how anyone in America could seriously make the case that such an indictment could ever be achieved. Even now, decades after the fact when the base of both parties has absolutely nothing but disdain for people like Dick Cheney. But that's just one old example out of many-- current ones obviously are harder since people currently in power tend to be implicated.
• pext 7mo ago
  This reminds me of the Andrew Yang's "Data Dividend" project that ideally would have paid end users for their data rather than knowingly giving it aware for free. IMO, it was a great idea but flawed execution against all the lobbying.
• thangalin 7mo ago
  Sent to Benn Jordan: https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png See also a poster from IBM’s German subsidiary, circa 1934. The approximate translation: “See everything with Hollerith punch cards.” https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/opinion/op-eds/new-details-of-ibm-role-in-holocaust/article_d08dab3c-6ee0-11e1-b9f2-0019bb2963f4.html https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/opinion/op-eds/new-detai...
• tptacek 7mo ago
  I'm not sure how this request even makes sense. By the logic of the demand made here, a municipality can set up an ALPR system to record evidence of crimes (after the grim failure of Flock's alerting in Oak Park where I live, we rolled Flock back to a configuration where that was all it was used for), and random people can mail Flock to be exempted from that evidence collection. It's good to want things, and I get why people want this specific thing, but the logic that says this is a viable demand under current law seems like it would prove way too much.
• tedggh 7mo ago
  “United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that installing a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device on a vehicle and using the device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(2012) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(2012)
  • a-posteriori 7mo ago
    I am against Flock as a company. Are they "installing a Global Positioning (GPS) tracking device on a vehicle and using the device to monitor the vehicles movement"? No.
    • rkomorn 7mo ago
      If they have sufficient camera coverage to achieve similar tracking of a vehicle within a certain area, I'd say it becomes a distinction without a difference (which I'm guessing is along GP's point).
    • Gormo 7mo ago
      A more applicable case is Carpenter v. United States (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States), in which SCOTUS ruled that aggregating an "exhausting chronicle" of information from third-party data sources -- in that case, location data from cellular towers -- does indeed amount to a Fourth Amendment search.
• CSMastermind 7mo ago
  We truly need a constitutional amendment granting a formal right to privacy.
• gsleblanc 7mo ago
  How did we get to allowing this in the USA? I remember the zeitgeist used to be to make fun of China's mass surveillance / social credit system, and ten years ago proposing to build something like this in the USA would be unthinkable. It's wild that we're just willingly sliding into the same system here too.
  • nichos 7mo ago
    It's been bad since the patriot act.
  • orthecreedence 7mo ago
    > ten years ago proposing to build something like this in the USA would be unthinkable I think you have your history a bit mixed up. In 2013, Snowden exposed the PRISM program and nobody gave a rat's ass. It was the clear and booming signal that nobody really cares about privacy in the US, and a clear signal that fascist interests have an opportunity to expand. I think Flock would have done really well back then. There is a long, bloody road of futile fighting against the surveillance machine the US has become. We love to elevate ourselves above China while engaging in many of the same behaviors (although our version of insidious mass surveillance is privatized, which magically makes it better). All that to say, adjust your timeline by a decade or two and your statement is correct again.
• bix6 7mo ago
  https://trackbill.com/bill/california-senate-bill-274-automated-license-plate-recognition-systems/2647111/ https://trackbill.com/bill/california-senate-bill-274-automa... And Newsom killed this for some reason
• waterproof 7mo ago
  Happy to contribute to your lawyer fund. I want to see how this plays out.
• crimsonnoodle58 7mo ago
  [dead]
• rz2k 7mo ago
  I don’t really understand this response. I thought the entire business model of Flock was about circumventing the Fourth amendment by posing as a separate vendor selling information it has collected, rather than acting as an agent of the government. Are they describing third entities that are between Flock and the government end consumers, when they talk about customers that own the data?