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Georgia police officers fired after Flock camera misuse
- angry_octet 2mo ago...andd they are now working for ICE HSI for higher pay.
- smallerize 2mo ago"The names of the fired employees aren’t being released right now." Somehow even after being fired there is no accountability.
- parineum 2mo agoRe-read that last sentence.
- phoghed 2mo agoI guess you mean the “right now” Good move by them, wait until nobody is paying attention anymore and they’re on to the next gig.
- parineum 2mo ago> ...even after *being fired* there is *no accountability*
- angry_octet 2mo agoIf criminality is a matter of public record, why is malfeasance in public office held to amlower standard? Will they not just get jobs one town over? If justice is not seen to be done then we have one law for cops and another for citizens.
- jiveturkey 2mo ago> weren’t authorized this is easily solved with current technology, if they had an incentive to do so. besides firing folks that get caught, flock themselves should be brought to court.
- akerl_ 2mo agoThis feels like a weird comment on an article about how they monitored usage, identified misuse, and terminated the people involved. There's surely plenty of entities that need better controls around usage of technology / records / etc, but this is an example of somebody having an incentive and then following through.
- paimapi 2mo agoit's also possible that we're only seeing a few select departments fire their officers. there are no laws around this as far as I'm aware so enforcement is purely departmental policy. how many sheriff's offices and police departments do these audits and how many of them act on abuses? you should need a warrant to monitor the products of mass surveillance and it should be as narrowly targeted towards a suspect as possible. or just not have any of the mass CCTV placements everywhere in the first place
- akerl_ 2mo agoI think we may be agreeing? I'm in favor of pushing for police departments (and really any governmental body with access to any kind of data) to have regulations around access to that data, access controls to restrict illegitimate access, and monitoring to detect improper access by people who do have legitimate access but don't follow the proper regulations. I think you're correct that we don't tend to see the instances where improper usage occurs, tautologically because those entities aren't doing their homework on the above.
- paimapi 2mo agoI think the point we disagree on is the idea that accountability by a singular department is an indication that it's sufficient for vendor to avoid regulatory action. in terms of privacy protections, the strategy should be defense in depth. I think about the audits that happen in health tech for eg on the software side, both at the request of regulatory agencies and their clients any platform that enables people to be stalked, harassed, tracked, and so on should face the same level of scrutiny in the form of auditing and open access to internal policies around data sharing
- timoxley 2mo agonobody saw this coming
- tptacek 2mo agoFlock cameras appear to be one of the few things that can get police officers fired.
- xnx 2mo agoSilver lining! The cameras are catching criminals.
- shermantanktop 2mo agoTo paraphrase Homer: the cause of, and solution to, a problem! In this case police misconduct. It does make me wonder whether electronic evidence of police behavior will materially impact actual behavior over time. But given that the normal reaction is to deny access to evidence, I doubt it. The people who want to be police officers tend not to be the people everyone else would want to be police officers.
- parineum 2mo ago> The people who want to be police officers tend not to be the people everyone else would want to be police officers. It's tiring for good people when everyone they interact with thinks they're the villain.
- AtlasBarfed 2mo ago[flagged]
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- Tostino 2mo agoMy town's covered with them already, without much warning in the local news, at least none I saw. And they're about to add 50% more all over the county. Planning on going to the zoning meeting Tuesday to speak against them. Also had a handful of yard signs printed up and put them at major intersections around town warning about the expansion, pointing people to the zoning meeting. Very much not okay with this surveillance state bullshit.
- quacked 2mo agoI don't believe a legal solution is possible. We need a three-tiered response to Flock's surveillance state business strategy, depending on what level of meddling each citizen is comfortable with. 1. Protest via yard signs and awareness (what you're doing) 2. Impermanent vandalism. I like the idea of hanging copies of the fourth amendment over the lenses 3. Permanent vandalism. I think we need bounties on camera destruction and public legal funds to assist in defense, bail, etc. The police as a class/caste are not interested in the fundamental principles that America was founded on. Individual officers may be interested in civil freedom and privacy but as an entity they only ever march in the direction of total surveillance and domination of the citizenry.
- edot 2mo agoAbsolutely not. Horrible advice. You give the rest of us peaceful majority a bad name. Protest legally. Your post glows.
- crooked-v 2mo agoGenuinely effective protests are rarely entirely legal.
- onoesworkacct 2mo agoWho's more effective at protesting, USA or France? And, which country routinely sets a bunch of shit on fire when they need to? That's right.
- edoceo 2mo ago
- madhacker 2mo agoFlock is importing China's ubiquitous surveillance in America until every habitable space is captured
- roumenguha 2mo agoI get that this comment is meant to warn about the creeping government overreach and a curtailment of free speech, by comparing the US against a society where government surveillance is already commonplace. I wonder if it does a disservice to readers to not make that same comparison against more similar countries instead (UK, Germany, Australia to name a few examples)?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- FpUser 2mo agoChina is not responsible for your fuck-us, you own it
- tremon 2mo agoIt's not that useful to single out Flock for that purpose. Google Nest and Amazon Alexa are also in that category.
- edoceo 2mo agoMaybe Ring too?
- austin-cheney 2mo agoFrom reading the article it seems the problem was not surveillance in any form but unauthorized use of police systems. I am not seeing anything new here. For decades police can be investigated for any improper searches of license plates or personal IDs, which can result in criminal referrals.
- tyre 2mo agoOut of curiosity, what are the non-surveillance uses for a license plate tracking service
- jameslars 2mo agoThe estimated travel times displayed in major cities along highways are calculated by license plate sampling from what I understand
- voxic11 2mo agoSo you think that is the unauthorized use that the officers were fired for?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- SoftTalker 2mo agoThat seems overly complicated when simple speed sensors would do the job.
- CableNinja 2mo agoI dont think thats everywhere. CA freeways have speed sensors every mile or two, and from that, along a given route you can estimate time
- austin-cheney 2mo agoThis is called a strawman. The article was about misconduct, not technology.
- simonw 2mo agoAbuse by police officers and other individuals with access to these systems is the answer to the stupid but common question "why should I worry about surveillance if I have nothing to hide".
- tptacek 2mo agoI never hear that question from Flock supporters. The question I hear[†] is "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?". It's a much harder one to answer than the straw man questions we set up for these things. (To be clear: I think the current generation of ALPRs is a policy failure and that major changes need to happen inside state law enforcement systems before they can be deployed successfully. But I also think people on HN have a real problem in convincing themselves about the obvious righteousness of their anti-surveillance arguments.) [†] I heard arguments like these because I was deeply involved in getting the cameras disabled in the inner-ring Chicago suburb in which I live, getting the first ACLU CCOPS ordinance in Illinois passed there, and helping draft what are probably the most detailed ALPR police General Orders in any municipality, or at least were at the time. Which is a long and pretentious way of saying I spent a lot of time talking to people who are not Very Online.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- aftbit 2mo agoWhat was your answer then?
- rmnoflock 2mo agoThere's basically 3 ways to get a council to cancel a contract. 1) Persuade them to do it because it's the right thing for the community. This is best done in private. 2) Convince them that the legal liability out weighs the public benefit. This is best done in public. 3) Run for office. If you have the energy you can do all 3 in parallel. Here's my attempt at 2: https://rmnoflock.com/2026/07/29/rolling-meadows-flock-cameras-used-in-holiday-hills-stalking-case/ https://rmnoflock.com/2026/07/29/rolling-meadows-flock-camer... Does anyone have advice or experience with 2?
- assimpleaspossi 2mo ago[flagged]
- hyperhopper 2mo agoIf you think the average Google employee has as much access to PII or sensitive information as a cop, you're deeply mistaken.
- assimpleaspossi 2mo ago[flagged]
- AdieuToLogic 2mo ago> If you think some Google employees doesn't have MORE access than a cop, you are WILDLY mistaken. This is a conspiratorial position at best. If you can cite from a reputable source similar abuse attributed to those organizations, then do so. Otherwise, the position you are championing lacks both fact and reason. Additionally, as others in this thread have made clear, both Google and Meta are not police departments authorized to inflict lethal force. So there's that.
- assimpleaspossi 2mo ago[flagged]
- AdieuToLogic 2mo ago> Please have everyone cite their sources and I will cite mine. I did not ask "everyone." I asked you to do so. > That Google and Meta employees are not law enforcement completely misses the point I'm making but I never expect people on liberal social media sites to see that You wrote, and I quote: If you think some Google employees doesn't have MORE access than a cop, you are WILDLY mistaken. That you chose to invoke the trope "people on liberal social media sites" speaks not to a sound position so much as an intrinsic bias evident to all. I wish you well in your path in life.
- AngryData 2mo agoIt should result in jail time. If I got access to government surveillance program and started using it for personal reasons, I would likely be charged with terrorism.
- Zhenya 2mo agoSounds like flock should be monitoring law enforcement more than civilians…
- an0malous 2mo agoWe should put up Flock cameras in every police station and make the feeds public. If they’re not doing anything illegal, they should have nothing to hide.
- philip1209 2mo agoI know there are lots of reasonable concerns about unauthorized access to private information. This is somewhat solved problem in other areas, like banking and government. Not zero, but asymptotically low. I think we need to criminalize misuse more clearly, preferably on a federal level. We need clear justifications for each use of data. And, we should require periodic audits by an independent third party - perhaps funded in the purchase contracts as a line item and held in reserve. This doesn’t solve the problem of legal use - which could be contentious now or in the future. But, this technology isn’t going away and good legislation to control it makes sense.
- bdangubic 2mo agothere is super easy solution here, anyone caught misusing the data goes to prison for life without ability for parole. mandatory sentence, no exception and no pardons.
- k310 2mo agoBeyond all of this, "firings" are meaningless. Abusive cops are just hired elsewhere.
- EtienneDeLyon 2mo ago[dead]