6 ms·
The other thing that's going on is that Flock is essentially an always-on "dragnet." A "dragnet" is when you set up police checkpoints everywhere and essential
by jordanb 23d ago
The other thing that's going on is that Flock is essentially an always-on "dragnet."
A "dragnet" is when you set up police checkpoints everywhere and essentially put entire cities under watch to find a fugitive. This happened in Boston after the bombings.
"Dragnets" are illegal except in extreme circumstances (like a bombing).
Flock is a "dragnet on demand." You have a digital dragnet in place not just in one city but potentially in every city, and with a single search can pull the results of the dragnet on anyone for any reason.
- hippich 23d agoRecently was driving in the middle of nowhere in Texas.. And I saw a few flock cameras watching both ways in highways there too. So it is not just cities, states are implicated too.
- apercu 23d agoProbably selling data to CBP/DEA. I went through a combined military and police checkpoint a bit north of Rio Hondo last August and it was surreal.
- pstuart 23d agoIt's for a good cause! This has enabled the DEA to keep all dangerous drugs out of the country and avoid any sort of drug abuse epidemics! Think of the children!
- ryan_j_naughton 23d agoI'm guessing this was /s sarcasm given the "think of the children" reference. Just saying so in case others didn't get the reference and thought you were being sincere...
- allthetime 23d agoUh, the rest of the comment is obviously false and sarcastic as well. Dangerous drugs are at an all time high and the epidemic is immediately apparent in downtown streets
- pstuart 22d agoYes, it was entirely sarcasm. The DEA should be abolished, period. Not only is the War on Drugs a war of oppression on the citizenry, it has funded the cartels and promoted crime throughout the world. Secondly, the DEA controls what my doctor can prescribe me (I am "blessed" with chronic pain), and those fuckwits have no business in the doctor-patient relationship. And this will go on forever, because propaganda has brainwashed the populace that people need to be "protected" from dangerous drugs. Sure, drugs can be dangerous but the way it's being done now is beyond stupid, it is inherently evil. Do I sound angry? Perhaps it's because I am. There's so much needless death and suffering and people just shrug their shoulders.
- buellerbueller 23d agoPoe's law.
- bix6 23d agoSurreal in what way? Edit: thanks for the downvotes? Genuinely curious on GPs experience.
- jkahrs595 23d agoIn what way is going through a military/police checkpoint while driving ordinary?
- bix6 23d agoI don’t live in Texas but I thought they ran checkpoints like that near the border already? I was told to avoid the most southern zones when I drove cross country years ago.
- mrtesthah 23d agoSurreal in the way that your constitutional rights are being casually violated?
- bix6 23d agoPlease see my reply to the other response
- Manuel_D 22d agoThe Constitution does not prohibit government (or anyone for that matter) from recording people in public spaces. ALPRs have been in widespread use since the 90s, I am continuously puzzled where people get the idea that this is new technology.
- deleted 22d ago[deleted]
- Ancapistani 22d agoThey’re all over the rural South. Public opinion seems to be increasingly changing that, but a lot of them are installed by entities with little accountability.
- philipwhiuk 23d agoFISA basically authorises dragnet on demand - it's how XKeyscore operates.
- smallmancontrov 23d ago"It's not a search unless we found something." - FISA courts, re: 4th Amendment
- DoneWithAllThat 23d agoNo. It is not and to claim otherwise is hyperbole. The key difference is police stopping and/or questioning people en masse without reasonable suspicion is in fact illegal unless under extreme circumstances. Simply noting everyone’s license plate is wholly legal, and more importantly for this conversation, is drastically less intrusive and qualitatively different from a so-called dragnet. You don’t get to just conflate the two scenarios to better fit your personal preferences of what is or is not legal.
- jordanb 23d agoDragnets have been constrained on both fourth and fifth amendment grounds. It's not merely the inconvenience of being stopped and questioned that makes a dragnet illegal, it is also an illegal search.
- Manuel_D 22d agoBut Flock isn't searching anybody. You keep calling it a dragnet, or an illegal search, but the courts have repeatedly held that recording images in public needs no warrant or probable case.
- text0404 22d agoLaw enforcement is using a third party (Flock) to get around constitutional requirements. A camera pointed at a public street isn't the same constitutional question as LE searching a persistent database to reconstruct someone's movements. The latter falls into fourth amendment search territory.
- Manuel_D 22d agoJesus, how many times are you just going to parrot the same replies over and over? No, the putting public facing camera video into a database does not make it a search. The case you cited, Chatrie vs. United States, involved the government demanding that Google hand over private cellphone location data on everyone inside of a geofence boundary. The court decided that forcing Google to hand over geolocation data was akin to forcing Google to hand over email contents, which requires a warrant. You're trying to turn around and interpret this to saying that the plain view doctrine doesn't apply to ALPRs, which record public spaces. This isn't the case of law enforcement using a third party to get around constitutional requirements. The government could set up their own cameras doing exactly what Flock does, and it would still not violate anyone's constitutional requirements. Because people don't have a right to not be recorded in public, no matter how much you want that to be the case.
- Manuel_D 22d agoThe difference is that your example involves physically stopping and searching people. This is not the case with Flock, which records images in public. The government does not and never did require any warrant or justification to record people in public spaces. Not just the government, but normal people too: you can whip out four phone and start recording people in public any time you want.
- mypalmike 22d agoRecording equipment didn’t exist when the constitution was written.
- Manuel_D 22d agoThe Supreme Court has set precedence that video recordings of public spaces fall under the plain view doctrine: police don't need a warrant or probable cause to record things in public view.
- text0404 22d agoSure, but putting that data into a persistent database which law enforcement searches on demand is a violation of the fourth amendment.
- Manuel_D 22d agoNo? Which Supreme Court decision decided that persisting video recorded in public is a violation of the Fourth Amendment?
- deleted 22d ago[deleted]
- text0404 22d agoChatrie. It's about the use of the data, not the data itself. Law enforcement searches a database of recorded, retained, aggregated data about people who have not committed crimes: this constitutes a fourth amendment search. Go ahead and record all you want, but when law enforcement decides to use that data, they have to get a warrant.
- kspacewalk2 22d agoFlock is a retroactive dragnet on demand. Whenever you want to, you can go back in time and put a digital dragnet in an area of your choosing in order to identify someone you now know you want to find.