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Why would you trust the city more than Flock. One of the common claimed abuses of Flock data is city cops using it to stalk exes and crushes. The problem with
by SoftTalker 4mo ago
Why would you trust the city more than Flock. One of the common claimed abuses of Flock data is city cops using it to stalk exes and crushes.
The problem with Flock is not who owns the data, it's the potential for abuse.
- cucumber3732842 4mo agoBecause there's a more robust legal framework for curtailing the inevitable abuse when the government does it than when it's done via the "oops our contractor who's a private company" slight of hand. Same basic reason I'd rather have the cops after me than have the environmental/zoning/whatever civil enforcement jerks after me. There's just sooooo much more scrutiny (which really says a lot considering how bad the cops are).
- moate 4mo agoSaid by someone who's clearly never had cops after them...
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- cucumber3732842 4mo agoSaid by someone who's clearly never tangled with civil enforcement. Nearly your rights go out the window when it's non-criminal prosecution. The organizations also aren't nearly as robustly structured to limit damage by "bad apples" as real police departments are. I know this sounds insane in light of how bad the cops are. That's because it is. Civil enforcement is essentially 50yr behind policing when it comes to transparency and accountability.
- 8note 4mo agohow many times does civil enforcement shoot people in a year though? do they have the power to assault you and then have it be your fault?
- cucumber3732842 4mo agoOf course the civil enforcers aren't shooting people. That's the cop's job. The civil enforcers are basically threatening to send the cops after you. How many people get shot by cops because something civil escalated into a bench warrant? Walter Scott's child support comes to mind.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- nemomarx 4mo agoflock shares the data with other cities and jurisdictions a little more easily, and also flock workers can see your videos. That's some amount of extra abuse potential?
- moate 4mo agoThe problem with Flock is its continued existence as part of the surveillance state. Like guns or bombs, these are things with one intent, and that intent is always ALWAYS bad as the resource is inevitably concentrated in the hands of a few to control the many.
- FireBeyond 4mo agoGarrett would acknowledge being inspired by Minority Report, ignoring the message of it as a cautionary tale. Hell, he's even said that to him, a false positive in Flock is better than a false negative, which is a hell of a hot take in our current climate.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 4mo agoAlso, there's plenty of past incidents of cops abusing their access to state and federal databases for the same kinds of purposes. The profession attracts individuals who are willing to abuse power for their own purposes. That's not to say that every cop is in the job to abuse power, but many are, and we have to build our law enforcement structures in a way that directly acknowledges and addresses this fact.
- moate 4mo agoAs the saying goes: A few bad apples spoil the bunch. It's a rotten profession.
- Zigurd 4mo agoHave you seen Flock's CEO?
- someperson 4mo agoA better designed system could be driven by warrants issued by courts, without (or at least minimal) access to individual officers. It requires better access controls. Even invasive ideas like automated license plate scanning city-wide can have its data only accessible to an API to eg, track a stolen car across the city to avoid a dangerous high-speed chase in populated areas. I think to throw the baby out with the bathwater around networked security cameras is failure around designing robust and secure APIs and systems (including audit trails).
- SV_BubbleTime 4mo agoOr… hear me out… no surveillance system at all.
- cucumber3732842 4mo agoBars on windows and cages on retail goods, gated driveways, armed security at anything of importance, etc, etc, are a heck of a lot cheaper in the long run than a 1984 police state.
- SV_BubbleTime 4mo agoMaybe enforced small theft laws and shared cultural values… you know… what worked FOREVER…
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- bko 4mo agoI think Flock is probably the worst solution besides all the rest. They seem to be the most auditable and accountable. The fact that anyone even knows the service and founder is a testament to accountability.
- chaps 4mo agoKnowing about the CEO of a company is the lowest bar for, "testament to accountability" I've ever seen.
- bko 4mo agoYou have someone in charge. You know who to question. You can even spam him on social media and a decent chance he'll reply. Try to get something out of the CEO of Bank of America or some other faceless corporation
- FireBeyond 4mo agoIf you're lucky, he might call you a domestic terrorist for questioning him and Flock's motives!
- etdznots 4mo agoYes guys if you don’t like flock please please please just send a dm to the ceo with your social media account, or you can send him a letter in the mail, just dont send some anonymous crap he doesnt like that just use your real name and address or your social media handle and just go ahead and send him a message and let him know how ya feel. Flock loves to know how it’s customers are feeling, and will definitely keep a ticket open for any unsatisfied customers with your name and how to contact you so they can fix it.
- saghm 4mo agoYou do realize that we have "executives" in most government jurisdictions as well? And that there are actual mechanism for changing who they are that you have the ability to take part in as a citizen, which is not a privilege afforded to everyone under surveillance by these systems for the CEO of Flock? (Yes, I know that shareholders have the ability to vote on board proposals as well, but even if you think those mechanisms are equivalent, there's a pretty huge difference between "if you buy stock, you get the right to vote" and "you have inherent human rights including but not limited to the ones enumerated by a written constitution")
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> Why would you trust the city more than Flock Nationally, I trust a system where the data are split up between siloes more than a single, privately-owned database.
- throwaway894345 4mo agoAgreed, and more than that, those siloes are governed by democratic processes. Of course, democracy doesn't preclude abuse but it's a lot better than private governance.
- sandeepkd 4mo agoIn other words centralization of the power is most risky end game here
- logancbrown 4mo agoThe large distribution of silo'ed law enforcement across the US is one of the driving reasons why it can be so hard to solve crimes (murder, vehicular theft, etc). Once any crime has the potential to cross state or even jurisdiction lines, dealing with the inner-bureaucracy of crossed enforcement agencies adds days to weeks to solving urgent crimes. A distributed system without consideration into how to coalesce the data together is no better of a solution vs what we have today.
- vablings 4mo agoI would like to see some evidence of this demonstrated. I feel a large majority of high-profile cases that went unsolved for a long time most often hinged on incompetence or negligence rather than lack of information sharing. Also, once crime does cross state lines the local FBI gets involved and they have a lot more resources than a small-town police force
- cliglot 4mo ago> often hinged on incompetence or negligence rather than lack of information sharing. Or just technology. Almost every “50 year old cold case solved” I see is because advancements in DNA processing .
- sandeepkd 4mo ago> The problem with Flock is not who owns the data The one who owns the data is the one who should be responsible to provide proper guardrails in certain cases if not all, specially like these ones. It comes down to the fine line around business, rules and regulations. The motivation of business is to make most profit with least cost and implementing regulatory mechanisms are cost. Abuses are natural to happen in the absence of guardrails and audits.
- er4hn 4mo agoThe purchasers of the cameras, ie HOAs, law enforcement, etc, own the data. They are also the ones routinely caught abusing this. This is a real problem that should be dealt with by enforcing laws against the people improperly using the data. I'm not sure what a realistic solution is for Flock to try and manage data they do not own nor if it makes sense for them to deny access to data they are not the owners of.
- vablings 4mo agoThis is false. the HOAs and LEOS have access to the data. Even if the contract specifies that the data is owned by these organizations, they are not the true owners.
- ajmurmann 4mo agoI wonder why we aren't addressing the real problem which seems to be cops behaving completely unethically. Their job is about enforcing the system that codifies our societies agreed up and codified rules of ethics. They should be obsessed with this the same way people here obsess over system performance, correctness, etc! If we cannot trust them with the very basics of ethical behavior they are absolutely in the wrong job and there need to be very clear consequences.
- nickff 4mo agoIt seems that making government union members accountable is an intractable problem in the current political landscape.
- inahga 4mo agoIf you hold police accountable, they respond by refusing to work. That's a problem that, at this time, has no solution.
- cliglot 4mo agoThe government has had no qualms in the past using the army or national guard to break strikes.
- stackskipton 4mo agoThey don't strike, they just respond really slowly, pretend they didn't see something or just take reports and barely solve anything. Since they are all unionized and replacing them is crazy slow and expensive, nothing happens.
- g8oz 4mo agoYup, we saw it happen after the George Floyd/BLM protests. An undeclared work to rule action.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- kmacdough 4mo agoThe government is not a monolith. Being owned by the city doesn't have to mean the cops are in control. The municipality can determin by law exactly who operates the infrastructure, who has access to what, what process they must follow, and how that all will be monitored and enforced. "The government didn't handle this well, therefore they can't be trusted for anything like it again" is a misunderstanding of how governments are constructed and how power can be separated between legislatively mandated structures. Find the source of the abuse, then build a structure to check that abuse.
- krupan 4mo agoThe structure that prevents abuse is, don't do mass surveillance
- stonogo 4mo agoAnd another common claimed abuse of Flock data is cops using it to stalk people in other cities, other states, and across the country. The potential for abuse rises with the number of people who have access to that data, regardless of who they work for. Restricting access strictly to users in the municipality under contract reduces the number of people with access and thereby mitigates some abuse vectors.
- cdrnsf 4mo agoI'd trust a municipality I have a vote in more than a private company.
- Barbing 4mo agoI want local cameras that require physical connections to offload data. Camera access panels can be locked with a wireless system that publishes the access timestamp and details to the city’s website. Each access must correspond with signed warrant. If my family gets kidnapped, I want a department to be able to check a camera. I’ll wait for the judge’s signature. But that’s night & day from today’s reality. I simply cannot stand being recorded to the cloud by a creepy corporation everywhere I drive in California with just about no oversight.
- alex43578 4mo agoDo you have a phone, modern car, or social media account? If so, I have some bad news for you…
- Zigurd 4mo agoDo you give up when faced with multiple related problems?
- Barbing 4mo agoLongest comment ever incoming! Cindy Cohn, EFF legend, on Hard Fork podcast: “I think a lot of it, too, is that I don't think that there is a sense among just users of these platforms that privacy is a winnable fight anymore. I hear so much nihilism and fatalism about this when I talk to people, and they, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, asking them about their privacy practices, and they're kind of like, well, that ship has sailed. Like, the government has all my data anyway. What is the point of trying to fight? I'm sure you get this, too. Starting point is 00:57:11 [Yes. What is your response to the privacy nihilists?] I think there's a couple of things. One is that this idea that because your information is already out there, it's all over. Like, if you talk to people in intelligence or in cops, they will tell you that old information has a, it's a very short shelf life, right? So your information isn't all out there because you're continuing to live your life. And so, yes, it would have been great if 10 years ago we'd passed a comprehensive privacy law that included law enforcement as well as the commercial Starting point is 00:57:46 entities. That's the first best time. The second best time is today. Because if we can begin to cut the knees out from under this massive data collection, the information will get less and less important and their ability to spy on us will get smaller and smaller. So it's never, I mean, if it were game over, they'd stop spying on us, right? Like, they're not like, oh, we're going to unplug the spying machine because we've got everything we need, folks. Like, that would be a different world than the one we're living in. So one of the things is, like, it's never game over. It's not game over. I mean, it's ultimately game over when you're not live anymore maybe, but as long as you're living, your data is valuable to the, to the government Starting point is 00:58:31 and to the companies, and the minute we stop this business model, the better. The second thing I would argue is it's easy to say it's all over and there's nothing I can do if they're not sweeping up your grandma in an immigration raid. But I think it's a, it's a bit of a denial or entitled position to think that you could not care and nothing because what's what's going on there and the nihilism is I don't have to I don't care about this. It feels like too big a fight and nothing will really happen to me or anyone I love if I don't care about this. And I think we're living in a time where that's not a safe assumption anymore. We have to fight for our privacy.”
- cdrnsf 4mo agoThe city doesn't run around accusing private citizens of being terrorists like Flock's CEO does.
- fg137 4mo agoYou don't need to trust them. You can request information as allowed under FOIA and vote the mayor out in the next election if there is any sign of misuse. With Flock? Good luck.
- bigbuppo 4mo agoThe difference is that the government has rules and limitations on the data they collection. Meanwhile for-profit corporations operate under an obligation to make as much money as possible for the shareholders.