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> Camera data is owned by the police department and permanently deleted after 30 days There's so much going on in that sentence! What a thing of pure PR beauty

> Camera data is owned by the police department and permanently deleted after 30 days There's so much going on in that sentence! What a thing of pure PR beauty. What does "owned" mean in this sentence? Probably fairly little. What data does it even refer to? Just the actual video footage? Does the statement include derived data like license plate reads or ML models? And surely if data is flagged as relevant to an investigation it is not deleted, so is there an implicit "*unless retained"?

rconti 2mo ago
You know, unless they get a national security letter, or change their TOS, or....
- duped 2mo ago
  Or their app was configured to let other LE agencies access it without their knowledge in violation of state law (1). Only linked one case but afaik it happened in a number of CA cities. (1) https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-cameras-shared-license-plate-data-without-permission https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-came...
  - toomuchtodo 2mo ago
    https://www.ilsos.gov/news/2025/august-25-2025-giannoulias-audit-finds-license-plate-reader-company-in-violation-of-state-law.html https://www.ilsos.gov/news/2025/august-25-2025-giannoulias-a... > Giannoulias’ Audit Finds License Plate Reader Company in Violation of Illinois State Law > Flock Safety Shared Illinois Data with U.S. Customs and Border Protection Secretary, Orders Flock to Shut off Data Access https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flock-safety-and-texas-sheriff-claimed-license-plate-search-was-missing-person-it https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flock-safety-and-texas... > Last May, 404 Media obtained data revealing the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office conducted a nationwide search of more than 83,000 Flock ALPR cameras, giving the reason in the search log: “had an abortion, search for female.” Both the Sheriff's Office and Flock Safety have attempted to downplay the search as akin to a search for a missing person, claiming deputies were only looking for the woman to “check on her welfare” and that officers found a large amount of blood at the scene – a claim now contradicted by the responding investigator’s affidavit. Flock Safety went so far as to assert that journalists and advocates covering the story intentionally misrepresented the facts, describing it as "misreporting" and "clickbait-driven." > Earlier this month, there was purposefully misleading reporting that a Texas police officer with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office used LPR “to target people seeking reproductive healthcare.” This organization is actively perpetuating narratives that have been proven false, even after the record has been corrected. According to the Sheriff in Johnson County himself, this claim is unequivocally false. That sheriff has since been arrested and indicted on felony counts in an unrelated sexual harassment and whistleblower retaliation case. He has also been charged with aggravated perjury for allegedly lying to a grand jury. EFF filed public records requests with Johnson County to obtain a more definitive account of events.
cyanydeez 2mo ago
most likely the videos are deleted because it'd be a ginormous expense to keep it around; everything else, yeah, it's not being deleted.
- dessimus 2mo ago
  It might be deleted at the PD, does not mean it wasn't uploaded to Flock DCs for metadata analysis and retained there.
  - cyanydeez 2mo ago
    My point is theres no way theybregain the video as anything other than cost of holding terabytes. Of course they save the analysis and only thinkpeople care about the video. The journalists and police speak the same language of uncritical privacy violations.
  - EasyMark 2mo ago
    yep it's pretty easy to scan a frame and store the info as "blue car 17:25:36 20260805 WXC7868" and toss the video info if all you want is civilian tracking.
    - stvltvs 2mo ago
      Even better a single video frame because the OCR is demonstrably fallible.
roysting 2mo ago
[dead]
devsda 2mo ago
What if "owning" here means the same as "owning" any movie online. If questioned, I can already imagine someone defending that sort of agreement as a standard consumer, contractual terms and practices of the time.
joe_the_user 2mo ago
Yes, the police own the videos they take of you? Like LLM companies own the models they digest from the texts they don't own?
- ranger_danger 2mo ago
  I believe they're implying that Flock still has access to it even if the police technically retain legal ownership.
- advisedwang 2mo ago
  There's no such thing as legal ownership of data. There's IP rights, contracts and innumerable data regulation laws, but not actual ownership. "Ownership" here just provides a vague cover that sounds like something definite but is not.
- iAMkenough 2mo ago
  They’re not taking the videos of people, their contractor is. If the local police department were legally required to turn over all their computers and servers, it would only contain a fraction of what their contractor captured. The contractor’s employees have also been proven to abuse access to the contractor’s video files across the nation. Something the local police department has little to no control over.

rconti 2mo ago

You know, unless they get a national security letter, or change their TOS, or....

duped 2mo ago
Or their app was configured to let other LE agencies access it without their knowledge in violation of state law (1). Only linked one case but afaik it happened in a number of CA cities. (1) https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-cameras-shared-license-plate-data-without-permission https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-came...
- toomuchtodo 2mo ago
  https://www.ilsos.gov/news/2025/august-25-2025-giannoulias-audit-finds-license-plate-reader-company-in-violation-of-state-law.html https://www.ilsos.gov/news/2025/august-25-2025-giannoulias-a... > Giannoulias’ Audit Finds License Plate Reader Company in Violation of Illinois State Law > Flock Safety Shared Illinois Data with U.S. Customs and Border Protection Secretary, Orders Flock to Shut off Data Access https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flock-safety-and-texas-sheriff-claimed-license-plate-search-was-missing-person-it https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flock-safety-and-texas... > Last May, 404 Media obtained data revealing the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office conducted a nationwide search of more than 83,000 Flock ALPR cameras, giving the reason in the search log: “had an abortion, search for female.” Both the Sheriff's Office and Flock Safety have attempted to downplay the search as akin to a search for a missing person, claiming deputies were only looking for the woman to “check on her welfare” and that officers found a large amount of blood at the scene – a claim now contradicted by the responding investigator’s affidavit. Flock Safety went so far as to assert that journalists and advocates covering the story intentionally misrepresented the facts, describing it as "misreporting" and "clickbait-driven." > Earlier this month, there was purposefully misleading reporting that a Texas police officer with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office used LPR “to target people seeking reproductive healthcare.” This organization is actively perpetuating narratives that have been proven false, even after the record has been corrected. According to the Sheriff in Johnson County himself, this claim is unequivocally false. That sheriff has since been arrested and indicted on felony counts in an unrelated sexual harassment and whistleblower retaliation case. He has also been charged with aggravated perjury for allegedly lying to a grand jury. EFF filed public records requests with Johnson County to obtain a more definitive account of events.

cyanydeez 2mo ago

most likely the videos are deleted because it'd be a ginormous expense to keep it around; everything else, yeah, it's not being deleted.

dessimus 2mo ago
It might be deleted at the PD, does not mean it wasn't uploaded to Flock DCs for metadata analysis and retained there.
- cyanydeez 2mo ago
  My point is theres no way theybregain the video as anything other than cost of holding terabytes. Of course they save the analysis and only thinkpeople care about the video. The journalists and police speak the same language of uncritical privacy violations.
- EasyMark 2mo ago
  yep it's pretty easy to scan a frame and store the info as "blue car 17:25:36 20260805 WXC7868" and toss the video info if all you want is civilian tracking.
  - stvltvs 2mo ago
    Even better a single video frame because the OCR is demonstrably fallible.

roysting 2mo ago

[dead]

devsda 2mo ago

What if "owning" here means the same as "owning" any movie online. If questioned, I can already imagine someone defending that sort of agreement as a standard consumer, contractual terms and practices of the time.

joe_the_user 2mo ago

Yes, the police own the videos they take of you? Like LLM companies own the models they digest from the texts they don't own?

ranger_danger 2mo ago
I believe they're implying that Flock still has access to it even if the police technically retain legal ownership.
advisedwang 2mo ago
There's no such thing as legal ownership of data. There's IP rights, contracts and innumerable data regulation laws, but not actual ownership. "Ownership" here just provides a vague cover that sounds like something definite but is not.
iAMkenough 2mo ago
They’re not taking the videos of people, their contractor is. If the local police department were legally required to turn over all their computers and servers, it would only contain a fraction of what their contractor captured. The contractor’s employees have also been proven to abuse access to the contractor’s video files across the nation. Something the local police department has little to no control over.