7 ms·

Flock cameras keep telling police a man who doesn't have a warrant has a warrant

192 points by johnbarron 6mo ago

baby_souffle 5mo ago
Is there some argument to aid here that this constitutes or facilitates systemic harassment? Or is that just going to be nigh on impossible to use as grounds for a lawsuit?
- LocalH 5mo ago
  Even if there are grounds for a lawsuit, chances are "qualified immunity" will mean the wronged parties get zero recompense
  - garciasn 5mo ago
    Go after Flock; they are not protected by extension as they are the ones who are alerting the police and have no system-wide removal option according to the Chief interviewed.
    - gwerbin 5mo ago
      They're going to say it's the police's fault for not double checking the AI recommendation, or something like that. Privatization primarily serves to launder responsibility.
LocalH 5mo ago
Flock should be shut down and their entire c-suite should be sent to prison for human rights violations Also, not just an isolated incident: https://youtu.be/8BImTddknfk https://youtu.be/8BImTddknfk We need strong laws preventing any AI process from being used for law enforcement at all. The mere presence of AI at any step in the process should result in complete exoneration.
- lotsofpulp 5mo ago
  Why punish the employees of a business when the root cause is corrupt government employees abusing their power? Edit to respond to smt88: IBM knowingly selling services to the Nazis specifically to violate human rights is not the same as Flock selling services to cops to aid in identification. In addition, going after 1 business is simply an inefficient use of resources, when the government employees can simply use a different business to abuse their power.
  - LocalH 5mo ago
    I didn't say the employees should be imprisoned. I said the c-suite, the ones actually in charge. They're enabling these cops to be lazy and not do their job properly, and have directly contributed to numerous human rights violations.
    - lotsofpulp 5mo ago
      C Suite are employees too. I do not see them breaking any laws, but I do see government employees abusing their power, if not breaking the law.
      - toast0 5mo ago
        C-suite are officers. Officers have more responsibility.
      - toast0 5mo ago
        C-suite are officers. Officers have more responsibility for the conduct of the company than employees.
      - anigbrowl 5mo ago
        No they're not, they're executives who can only be fired by the board. Equating them with line-level employees is somewhere between naive and isingenuous.
      - LocalH 5mo ago
vorticalbox 5mo ago
In the video he said that the courts ask "who is the warrant for" and he replied "no one", but surely one could also look up the number plate and find it that way?
LocalH 5mo ago
Since I got downvoted, this isn't just this guy. https://youtu.be/8BImTddknfk https://youtu.be/8BImTddknfk Turns out police are putting ambiguous plates in the system under all variants, and Flock is lapping it up. The cops who do so should also go to prison.
- smt88 5mo ago
  Cops have qualified immunity and unions with supreme power. No one will go to prison or even reprimanded for this.
  - LocalH 5mo ago
    I hope you agree with me that is exactly the problem, but AI use in law enforcement only enables the problem to become way worse, with few upsides.
  - Zigurd 5mo ago
    That's not true everywhere. Qualified immunity can be removed at the state level, and has been in some places. Nothing the cop union can do about that.
pj_mukh 5mo ago
Paraphrasing the crux of the issue: "It's regular practice in Colorado to list license plates with both versions, the one with 'O's and the other with Zeros in the warrant list." Insane. Practice. As always, this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI, but "law enforcement has an insane lazy practice" doesn't make for a very good headline anymore.
- LocalH 5mo ago
  The AI is making it way worse because they're continually flagging these individuals even after the police make contact. Police are starting to use AI as a shortcut to avoid doing actual policing, and that's the real problem. AI has no place in law enforcement. Its use should result in complete spoilage of the case, and complete exoneration of the accused, with prejudice.
  - pj_mukh 5mo ago
    No licensed engineer can say "Well Claude made this bridge for me, it's not my fault". If you're licensed by the state to carry a gun around, your standard should be higher than that, not lower. AI has nothing to do with this. Cops have been using facial recognition since the 2010's, computers and databases with glitchy connections even longer than that. AI is just the latest boogeyman hiding the actual issue.
    - LocalH 5mo ago
      Still, AI has no place in law enforcement. It's the hammer that is being used to put screws in. It enables injustice at a far larger scale than ever before. See: the TN woman who was extradited to NC, having never been there, for a crime that the AI "face recognition" flagged as her, and the cops did zero actual investigation, they just took the AI at its word and put her in jail for six months. I also remember a man who was jailed for violating someone else's casino trespass under similar reasons. Bodycams in that case showed the cops says "the software is saying it's him 100%" Edit: it was North Dakota, not North Carolina.
gdulli 5mo ago
Law enforcement, from the same industry that brought you targeted ads recommending refrigerators because you just bought a refrigerator.
sirtimbly 5mo ago
Impersonal, tech-mediated surveillance was clearly the next logical step for law enforcement after the events of 2020.
- JuniperMesos 5mo ago
  A lot of police policy wonks explicitly argue for replacing the human judgement of cops with impersonal, tech-mediated surveillance, on the grounds that this reduces the possibility of human bias against groups of people (typically black people); or just reduces the possibility of physical contact between a cop and certain people (again, typically black people), which therefore reduces the chances of the police stop escalating into a shooting. This is an argument for e.g. automatic red light cameras in lieu of having police stake out and pull over cars who run red lights.
kevin_thibedeau 5mo ago
I've had two police stops in the past initiated by ALPR systems fraudulently claiming I didn't have a valid registration. Presumably because the state that issued the plates didn't share such data. I wasn't motivated to do anything about it but something more severe like this should be fought with a multimillion dollar libel suit against the C-suite and board.
calin2k 5mo ago
the number of flock apologists comments in this post are a aberration from normal, there must be an artificial factor at play
- LocalH 5mo ago
  flock employees are probably already trying to figure out who i am so they can flag me only half /s
- strathmeyer 5mo ago
  [dead]
- zzgo 5mo ago
  We discuss Flock occasionally in my local subreddit since they granted our city of fewer than 100K like 40 of these within the last year. Plenty of Flock apologists appear as soon as the threads on the subject are posted. I'm convinced the majority of that is astroturfed.
- gwerbin 5mo ago
  It's the tech version of a temporarily-embarrassed millionaire trope. Any technology must be a good thing, and if only I could just get in early on the next big tech trend, I'll have fame and money and power and women and ...
FrankWilhoit 5mo ago
This is the future. Does the future also have good things in it? Maybe! But they don't matter, and this is why.
- user3939382 5mo ago
  The future is Flock, Palantir, and Ring or their descendants tracking your every move and generating your social credit score.
frogperson 5mo ago
This man should sue for libel.
rolph 5mo ago
when you use typos to broaden the scope of a warrant to include individuals that have not commited crime or acts prerequisite to indictment, you are exceeding the authority granted by a justice. i would like to be privy to such discourse, as "your honour we need to include spellings of name or other identifiers, contrary to those of the person in the warrant you have issued."

192 points by johnbarron 6mo ago

Is there some argument to aid here that this constitutes or facilitates systemic harassment? Or is that just going to be nigh on impossible to use as grounds for a lawsuit?

LocalH 5mo ago
Even if there are grounds for a lawsuit, chances are "qualified immunity" will mean the wronged parties get zero recompense
- garciasn 5mo ago
  Go after Flock; they are not protected by extension as they are the ones who are alerting the police and have no system-wide removal option according to the Chief interviewed.
  - gwerbin 5mo ago
    They're going to say it's the police's fault for not double checking the AI recommendation, or something like that. Privatization primarily serves to launder responsibility.

LocalH 5mo ago

Flock should be shut down and their entire c-suite should be sent to prison for human rights violations Also, not just an isolated incident: https://youtu.be/8BImTddknfk https://youtu.be/8BImTddknfk We need strong laws preventing any AI process from being used for law enforcement at all. The mere presence of AI at any step in the process should result in complete exoneration.

lotsofpulp 5mo ago
Why punish the employees of a business when the root cause is corrupt government employees abusing their power? Edit to respond to smt88: IBM knowingly selling services to the Nazis specifically to violate human rights is not the same as Flock selling services to cops to aid in identification. In addition, going after 1 business is simply an inefficient use of resources, when the government employees can simply use a different business to abuse their power.
- LocalH 5mo ago
  I didn't say the employees should be imprisoned. I said the c-suite, the ones actually in charge. They're enabling these cops to be lazy and not do their job properly, and have directly contributed to numerous human rights violations.
  - lotsofpulp 5mo ago
    C Suite are employees too. I do not see them breaking any laws, but I do see government employees abusing their power, if not breaking the law.
    - toast0 5mo ago
      C-suite are officers. Officers have more responsibility.
    - toast0 5mo ago
      C-suite are officers. Officers have more responsibility for the conduct of the company than employees.
    - anigbrowl 5mo ago
      No they're not, they're executives who can only be fired by the board. Equating them with line-level employees is somewhere between naive and isingenuous.
    - LocalH 5mo ago

vorticalbox 5mo ago

In the video he said that the courts ask "who is the warrant for" and he replied "no one", but surely one could also look up the number plate and find it that way?

LocalH 5mo ago

Since I got downvoted, this isn't just this guy. https://youtu.be/8BImTddknfk https://youtu.be/8BImTddknfk Turns out police are putting ambiguous plates in the system under all variants, and Flock is lapping it up. The cops who do so should also go to prison.

smt88 5mo ago
Cops have qualified immunity and unions with supreme power. No one will go to prison or even reprimanded for this.
- LocalH 5mo ago
  I hope you agree with me that is exactly the problem, but AI use in law enforcement only enables the problem to become way worse, with few upsides.
- Zigurd 5mo ago
  That's not true everywhere. Qualified immunity can be removed at the state level, and has been in some places. Nothing the cop union can do about that.

pj_mukh 5mo ago

Paraphrasing the crux of the issue: "It's regular practice in Colorado to list license plates with both versions, the one with 'O's and the other with Zeros in the warrant list." Insane. Practice. As always, this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI, but "law enforcement has an insane lazy practice" doesn't make for a very good headline anymore.

LocalH 5mo ago
The AI is making it way worse because they're continually flagging these individuals even after the police make contact. Police are starting to use AI as a shortcut to avoid doing actual policing, and that's the real problem. AI has no place in law enforcement. Its use should result in complete spoilage of the case, and complete exoneration of the accused, with prejudice.
- pj_mukh 5mo ago
  No licensed engineer can say "Well Claude made this bridge for me, it's not my fault". If you're licensed by the state to carry a gun around, your standard should be higher than that, not lower. AI has nothing to do with this. Cops have been using facial recognition since the 2010's, computers and databases with glitchy connections even longer than that. AI is just the latest boogeyman hiding the actual issue.
  - LocalH 5mo ago
    Still, AI has no place in law enforcement. It's the hammer that is being used to put screws in. It enables injustice at a far larger scale than ever before. See: the TN woman who was extradited to NC, having never been there, for a crime that the AI "face recognition" flagged as her, and the cops did zero actual investigation, they just took the AI at its word and put her in jail for six months. I also remember a man who was jailed for violating someone else's casino trespass under similar reasons. Bodycams in that case showed the cops says "the software is saying it's him 100%" Edit: it was North Dakota, not North Carolina.

gdulli 5mo ago

Law enforcement, from the same industry that brought you targeted ads recommending refrigerators because you just bought a refrigerator.

sirtimbly 5mo ago

Impersonal, tech-mediated surveillance was clearly the next logical step for law enforcement after the events of 2020.

JuniperMesos 5mo ago
A lot of police policy wonks explicitly argue for replacing the human judgement of cops with impersonal, tech-mediated surveillance, on the grounds that this reduces the possibility of human bias against groups of people (typically black people); or just reduces the possibility of physical contact between a cop and certain people (again, typically black people), which therefore reduces the chances of the police stop escalating into a shooting. This is an argument for e.g. automatic red light cameras in lieu of having police stake out and pull over cars who run red lights.

kevin_thibedeau 5mo ago

I've had two police stops in the past initiated by ALPR systems fraudulently claiming I didn't have a valid registration. Presumably because the state that issued the plates didn't share such data. I wasn't motivated to do anything about it but something more severe like this should be fought with a multimillion dollar libel suit against the C-suite and board.

calin2k 5mo ago

the number of flock apologists comments in this post are a aberration from normal, there must be an artificial factor at play

LocalH 5mo ago
flock employees are probably already trying to figure out who i am so they can flag me only half /s
strathmeyer 5mo ago
[dead]
zzgo 5mo ago
We discuss Flock occasionally in my local subreddit since they granted our city of fewer than 100K like 40 of these within the last year. Plenty of Flock apologists appear as soon as the threads on the subject are posted. I'm convinced the majority of that is astroturfed.
gwerbin 5mo ago
It's the tech version of a temporarily-embarrassed millionaire trope. Any technology must be a good thing, and if only I could just get in early on the next big tech trend, I'll have fame and money and power and women and ...

FrankWilhoit 5mo ago

This is the future. Does the future also have good things in it? Maybe! But they don't matter, and this is why.

user3939382 5mo ago
The future is Flock, Palantir, and Ring or their descendants tracking your every move and generating your social credit score.

frogperson 5mo ago

This man should sue for libel.

rolph 5mo ago

when you use typos to broaden the scope of a warrant to include individuals that have not commited crime or acts prerequisite to indictment, you are exceeding the authority granted by a justice. i would like to be privy to such discourse, as "your honour we need to include spellings of name or other identifiers, contrary to those of the person in the warrant you have issued."