[pj_mukh]

"Law enforcement is setting up a multi-county dragnet by putting every version or mistype of a license plate into a warrant list"

wouldn't be a story? It should be! We should have a higher standard for the people with guns and a badge on the street.

[LocalH]

Flock is the problem too because their system is enabling the rights violations to scale up.

[tcp_handshaker]

Its by design. By using a third party, they can get around the 4th amendment.

[LocalH]

Using a third-party to bypass legal restrictions should in and of itself be considered willful and knowledgeable intent to violate the Constitution under color of law, regardless of the specific actions taken

[ranger_danger]

I'm not convinced they can always get around it... I think they could challenge their arrest in court on Fourth Amendment grounds and have a chance at winning:

https://epic.org/vehicle-fingerprinting-through-pervasive-ca...

>In the 2018 case Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court affirmed that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their long term movements (even in public spaces) and, because of that expectation, queries into long term location tracking data constitute a Fourth Amendment search that requires a warrant.

I suppose they would also have to argue that they are not the actual target of the warrant.

[joquarky]

That's all fine until you learn about

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

[ranger_danger]

My problem with this is that Flock explicitly does not manage their own equipment or store data obtained by cameras installed by their customers on any Flock-owned servers, so I'm not sure how they would be tipped off to anyone from outside the police department.

And if that did happen, I feel like one could have a strong case against it by claiming that there is no reasonable way to have had that information without obtaining it illegally.

[_DeadFred_]

How are they not an 'agent of the state' and how does the 4th not apply? If the government asked for the scan/info on the vehicle, they are acting on behalf of the government?

https://www.fletc.gov/audio/definition-government-agent-unde...

[ranger_danger]

Flock claims that "Fourth Amendment case law overwhelmingly shows that LPRs do not constitute a warrantless search because they take point-in-time photos of cars"

And that may be true, however Carpenter v. US established that long-term tracking of a person's location without a warrant is still not allowed under the Fourth Amendment.

[kayfox]

Flock can also fix this by validating the description of the target vehicle against the detected vehicle.

The dispatch backend can fix this by annotating this warrant with a warning that its not this particular vehicle.

Police themselves can fix this by being a human check on dumb entries in computer systems.

[LocalH]

As we've seen with multiple incidents across the country, police largely don't want to be a human check. They want the computer to tell them who to arrest, regardless of facts in reality.