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by roncesvalles 9 days ago
In a way, new companies like Flock entering such domains are a boon because they probably maintain tight audit logs and alerting mechanisms.

Traditional look-up software is probably being misused by cops all the time (à la the old noir trope of a PI having "a buddy in the department" who can look up anything for him).
3 comments
themaninthedark 9 days ago
This news and the timing of it seems like it is trying to elicit your response. Flock has been getting a lot of bad press recently.

The first batch of firing that happened in GA was not because of Flock safeguards, it was because an internal auditor said let's look at your new system.

If they cared about privacy, they would have had such a system in place not something that is just being rolled out.

Second, these people are getting caught because “The activity identified during the audit revealed that the employees searched their own license plates or those of a family member/acquaintance, and not random members of the public,”

A fair reading of that says it is ok to look up information on random members of the public. I feel better already.

If the bar is set at random people, a friend of a friend looking up the info and getting it back to you would get around the safeguards, back to the old buddy in the department.

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jareklupinski 9 days ago
i always hoped the "buddy" would be the lever that goes "no, that's crossing the line between friendship and ethics, please rethink your request"

something an artificial buddy will happily do anyway when you promise that your grandmother is on the line

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lovich 9 days ago
> i always hoped the "buddy" would be the lever that goes "no, that's crossing the line between friendship and ethics, please rethink your request"

What percent of law enforcement agents do you think would meet that bar?

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defrost 9 days ago
It's going to vary by country, state, and "culture".

Here, in my locale, honest LEOs that that have strict ethics run at about 80%.

Interestingly the things that LEOs are strictly ethical about varies by interaction and preconceptions - straight bat with fourth generation farmers, entirely willing to bend the law in bad ways when dealing with indigenous people etc. is not uncommon.

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lovich 9 days ago
Is that locale in the United States as I assumed based on the conversation being around flock cameras?

If it is, and you are assuming 80% strict ethics then I have a PBA card from my grandfather to pull out to show you how incorrect that is on a statutory basis.

Also your second paragraph

> Interestingly the things that LEOs are strictly ethical about varies by interaction and preconceptions - straight bat with fourth generation farmers, entirely willing to bend the law in bad ways when dealing with indigenous people etc. is not uncommon.

How can you assume they have strict ethics but also understand that they change their ethical stance depending on who they are dealing with. That’s not strict ethics by any definition.

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defrost 9 days ago
No, and Venn diagrams.

How can you assume the LEOs with variable ethics are in the 80% and not the 20%?

Also, Philippine Basketball Association membership carries no weight here.

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FireBeyond 9 days ago
No.

My father worked as what would be (roughly) equivalent to the US Marshal service in Australia.

One day in 2001 one of his coworkers was fired because he saw what he thought was a cute girl in a newspaper article who had won a car in a lottery, and her new license plate was visible. He looked her up.

He didn't interact with her, communicate with her, drive by her home, call her. He looked her up out of sheer bored curiosity, and within 2 months, auditing of the warrants he was working couldn't find a correlation as to why he'd queried this license plate, and he was asked to explain, and couldn't.

Please don't conflate Flock with responsible use of technology. The CEO is on record as saying he says a false positive is better than a false negative. And Flock itself won't turn off data sharing options that are illegal in a state to an agency of that state. They'll happily give training on how to use that data sharing to that agency. They've stated that it's not their policy to tell agencies how to abide by data sharing laws.

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etdznots 9 days ago
The same exact thing happens with Flock, the only cases we hear about are because the tool empowers such easy abuse of liberty that people make no efforts to hide what they’re doing
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