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Flock license plate reader wrongly linked a San Diego man to a violent crime
- variety8675 4mo agoI'm no fan of flock, but I dislike how these articles are blaming the technology when the real issue is the police not bothering to check the information they're given
- SoftTalker 4mo agoYeah this reads like the cops simply didn't properly identify the vehicle. If anything, the Flock camera photo proves he was miles away.
- garyfirestorm 4mo agoBut flock hit is the entire reason for the cops to go arrest them. And you’re right if they did careful assessment of other flock camera data, even the data of this particular flock camera they would have known this car was 5 miles away 23 seconds later. The whole point being misusing/abusing flock data to wrongly jail people and that is precisely what happened here. Flock is the center of this story.
- wombatpm 4mo agoPolice would just argue that the second datapoint was wrong.
- cwmoore 4mo agoObviously so, maybe society should hire criminals to catch the police.
- garyfirestorm 4mo agoSchrodinger's flock - the 'hit' helped us catch the criminals and the hit is wrong. but we are going ahead with prosecution nonetheless.
- bhickey 4mo ago> [T]hey would have known this car was 5 miles away 23 seconds later. Tack on a reckless driving charge and a speeding ticket.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- loteck 4mo agoThey simply didn't properly identify the vehicle because Flock's ALPR gave them the pass. The innocent person would not have needed "photo proof" of his distant location if the ALPR didn't exist in the first place. Then he would not have been forced to spend a month of his life in jail.
- OutOfHere 4mo agoIt is Flock's responsibility to grant access only to trained professionals who undergo routine training and testing in how to and how not to use the system.
- pixl97 4mo agoSo they can't show it to the police in the US?
- OutOfHere 4mo agoEvery police officer with access to the system must ideally have to undergo mandatory annual training and testing in using it to protect the rights of innocents. If they don't pass the testing, they ideally should not be granted access. Flock should be held accountable for ensuring adequate protections exist to prevent misuse.
- pksebben 4mo agoIt's not a training problem, it's an incentive problem. You put these guys in a structure that requires them to justify their jobs at minimal cost of effort and then ooh ack surprise when they don't take the proper care to ensure that they're not stepping on innocent people in the pursuit of a healthy career. Couple that with overburdening them with petty nonsense all the time and training them in military equipment and tactics and like it doesn't matter what tools you give them, those tools will be abused at convenience. The issue is structural, not technical, but power tools = more damage per capita.
- OutOfHere 4mo agoIt's not a dichotomy. "Checks and balances" are a thing since the founding of the United States. If the local government fails to institute them, it should be the complementary responsibility of the vendor to have them. In their absence, lawsuits targeting all parties are highly desirable.
- pixl97 4mo ago
- aaomidi 4mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
- turtlesdown11 4mo agoA tool that requires perfect human oversight to avoid harming innocent people is a problem
- dlcarrier 4mo agoIronically, they're showing a situation where more tracking makes innocence clear. There's countless examples of innocent people being caught in a dragnet, based on data that correlates with but does not prove guilt, where more data collection leads to more innocent people suffering. That's what they should be focusing on.
- FireBeyond 4mo agoThere is absolutely that, but the CEO of Flock has said he believes a false-positive is better than a false-negative, so everything around the stack pushes police that way, too. I love these elites who say "Yeah, it's no big deal, the police will arrest you but they'll figure it out and you can go on your way, and if you have to spend a couple of nights in jail first, or hire an attorney at considerable expense, or you lose your job or become less hirable because your state reports arrest records, not just charge or conviction records, well, that's a small price to pay for Zero Crime State, presented by Flock(TM)!"
- loteck 4mo agoWe blame the technology because police misusing their powers is a tale as old as police, is demonstrably not fixable, and this technology is at fault for aggressively selling itself to police to give them these powers that we all know will be misused. Flock absolutely bears significant responsibility for creating the technology and conditions for this unjust behavior to exist, and continuing to advocate against those pushing back on it by trying to brand them as terrorists.
- helterskelter 4mo agoACLU needs to take his case and sue everything in sight. Why would they not have a human look at the hit? Flock, San Diego and the SDPD are all liable.
- throwaway87557 4mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- bryan0 4mo ago> Meanwhile, on the other side of town, five miles away in Old Town, just 23 seconds after San Police Officers in Golden Hill tried stopping the suspected carjacker, a Flock Automated License Plate Reader captured a photo of a red Alfa Romeo driving on the 2200 block of Moore Street. 5 miles in 23 seconds is 782 mph.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- throwaway73939 4mo ago[flagged]
- tptacek 4mo agoThis doesn't seem like a Flock story so much as SDPD making an arrest purely on a nexus to "red Alfa Romeo with tinted windows". From what I understand of the story, the Flock camera did in fact tag a red Alfa Romeo (there's a still frame in the article). It wasn't the right one, but ALPR cameras aren't psychic; they tell you features, make/model, and plate, not "criminal culpability".
- turtlesdown11 4mo agoright, its the cops who decide "criminal culpability" all Flock did was lead them to the wrong person...poor innocent Flock
- tptacek 4mo agoIt didn't lead SDPD to any person at all. It led them to a red Alfa Romeo with tinted windows. Flock doesn't do facial recognition. It's a real-time search engine for cars on video feeds.
- turtlesdown11 4mo agoas I posted elsewhere, a tool that requires perfect human oversight to avoid harming innocent people is a problem
- tptacek 4mo agoPeople are writing as if an ALPR directed these cops to arrest someone. No, it didn't. They asked it where they could find a red Alfa. It accurately told them. It's not the tool's fault it didn't occur to SDPD that there could in San Diego be in fact 2 red Alfas.
- turtlesdown11 4mo agoIs it also not the tool's fault that cops keep using it to stalk people? https://www.404media.co/cops-keep-getting-arrested-for-using-flock-to-stalk-people/ https://www.404media.co/cops-keep-getting-arrested-for-using...
- bryan0 4mo ago> Their tort claim notes that the path the men took to the cigar lounge passed by several other Flock cameras, which could have corroborated their story, as well as the location data on their cell phones. It seems like if the police actually looked at the Flock data it would have exonerated them?
- rasz 4mo agoCue recent video of a cop giving armless woman ticket for holding a cellphone.
- pixl97 4mo agoQuite often the cops job is to find someone close enough and then toss them into the jaws of the criminal justice system. We like to say "innocent until proven guilty", but you goddammed better be ready to prove yourself innocent unless you want to find yourself imprisoned.
- cwmoore 4mo agoOur justification systems are already overburdened with people lacking plausible alibis.
- amazingamazing 4mo agoIronically flock is what proves innocence. What would happen here without it?
- dehrmann 4mo agoThere's a well-known story about a man who escaped a murder conviction because he was at a Dodgers game when the murder happened, and there just happened to be a TV show filming at the stadium that just happened to record him there. https://innocenceproject.org/news/how-curb-your-enthusiasm-saved-an-innocent-man-from-death-row/ https://innocenceproject.org/news/how-curb-your-enthusiasm-s... I'd like to think motive and a police sketch wouldn't be enough evidence for a conviction, but that's optimistic.
- sam1r 4mo ago[flagged]
- throwaway87557 4mo ago[flagged]
- 4MOAisgoodenuf 4mo agoI don’t think someone should be thrown in jail for a month for having polarized windows on their car. Red is a very popular color for the Giulia and window tint is not an uncommon item. Any random person on the street could be described as able to be “caught without enough evidence to convict”
- throwaway87557 4mo ago.
- pksebben 4mo agoDumb astroturf grok bot is dumb. Don't feed the trolls.
- ErroneousBosh 4mo ago> It would only take 3 mins to get 5 miles away at 100 mph. It would take a lot longer than that.
- crooked-v 4mo ago> Trying to say it was 5 miles away 23 seconds after an unknown reference is being intentionally obtuse. The article specifically says: > just 23 seconds after San Police Officers in Golden Hill tried stopping the suspected carjacker > Their tort claim notes that the path the men took to the cigar lounge passed by several other Flock cameras, which could have corroborated their story, as well as the location data on their cell phones. Your argument is that, what, this guy you argue has no money also hacked the phone company to fake their records while driving at 100 mph through San Diego under an invisibility cloak so no other cameras or people saw anything?
- himata4113 4mo agoI saw a video recently that flock camera installations don't follow local or city laws. All poles that hold roadsigns generally need to safely handle impact and get certified / inspected. However, flock cameras have none of it. Not the same video, but best I could find: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_zmZLJY5Ev4 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_zmZLJY5Ev4