[collabs]

I know this is preaching to the choir but from the article on the person holding the skimmer

> Police can also use the cameras to surveil protestors and stalk ex-lovers—or strangers they find attractive.

I didn't believe police actually did this until a roommate's new classmate told me her story. She has recently moved in to the neighborhood (an HOA at that). She was walking her dog one evening when a police officer who also lives in the HOA greeted her by her full legal name which she swears she never uses anywhere so the only way someone would know it was if they looked her up. She was just a roommate at this new place so her name wouldn't be in any HOA papers.

The police (or any law enforcement) really should not have access to any kind of dragnet surveillance.

They won't use technology to find our lost/stolen phones but they want even more surveillance for what?

[jodacola]

A little searching will find you all sorts of such hits, like an officer tracking her domestic partner [0], an officer stalking someone after meeting on a TV set* [1], another officer tracking his ex partner [2], another officer tracking his mistress [3]. This is just a random sample.

* Note this scenario was not with Flock, which is important: there's more than one player in this space. Kill Flock and others might roll in; something broader is needed like, oh, I don't know, constitutional protections or something.

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/atlanta/news/police-supervisor-accus...

[1] https://www.404media.co/footage-shows-cop-stalking-woman-he-...

[2] https://www.404media.co/cops-keep-getting-arrested-for-using...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byhWSvwz1Vw

[Freedom2]

This is quite distressing to hear. It's not the United States I know or even grew up in. What went wrong and how can we try to fix it?

[asveikau]

It is exactly the United States you grew up in. You just were not aware.

It's not like people having good reason to be skeptical of police is a new thing.

[Zigurd]

I wouldn't be surprised to find that the quality of the average cop in the US has improved since the 1960s, at least by some measures. But they are a lot more heavily armed, so mistakes and malfeasance on their part is deadlier.

[fwip]

The big thing that's changed is that you're hearing about it. The second biggest thing is that we've given cops more and more access to automated systems that they can misuse.

[Lord-Jobo]

Police are, in the most generous light, just as fallible and likely to abuse power as the rest of us. You can loosely define power as “Effect minus repercussion”. Massive effects like the nuclear football have massive repercussions like the end of civilization, so we tend to view them with a degree of balance. MAD has worked on this principle for decades pretty effectively. Even a tiny bit of Effect, with zero Repercussion, leads to unjust abuse, such as the diplomatic immunity issues in New York City. Nearly everything we have given the police has huge Effect, mostly by necessity, but more every day with tools like flock and the stripping of our rights. Endless military hardware, etc. Simultaneously we have ALSO been shrinking the repercussions for police. for decades. When sued the taxpayers pay for their defense. When they lose the lawsuits, the taxpayers pay the plaintiffs out and the police very very rarely face prison. Often times they can keep working in another department. They have extra protections nobody else has so they are less likely to lose those cases in the first place. There is next to ZERO oversight of all the tools we give them, to prevent the lawsuits. Federal police can remain anonymous when they commit obvious homicide or executions, apparently. We are very close to an effectively infinite power situation because there are next to zero repercussions. Even IF cops had no firearms, no armored vehicles, no flock, no palantir. They could still bust the door down to their ex girlfriend’s place and beat up their new boyfriend for any kind of flimsy excuse. Because what are you going to do about it? Sue them? You’re just offering them a free vacation.

[9x39]

We were hearing during the Snowden era about the abuse of NSA systems like XKeyscore and others through what was termed jokingly LOVEINT. Anything that's built will get abused in some way - sometimes its even best not to build such databases at all.

Here's CNN discussing NSA analyst abuse from 13 years ago:

https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/27/politics/nsa-snooping/

Here's an article from 10 years ago discussing the police doing it:

https://apnews.com/general-news-699236946e3140659fff8a2362e1...

[jubilanti]

This is 10 years old, but in 2016 the Associated Press did a massive public records request for police departments across the country. Between 2013-2015, they found over 600 cases where the police department actually did an internal investigation, found this kind of misuse, didn't cover it up, and handed over the records. About half of those cases resulted in a firing, suspension, or resignation.

This is clearly an undercount, and I'm sure it's only gotten worse since 2016.

https://apnews.com/general-news-699236946e3140659fff8a2362e1...

[moshun]

My only question is why you didn’t believe police could/would do this in the first place? My default perspective is that this is exactly what law-enforcement and other government officials would use this technology to do, especially if there are no guardrails or laws preventing them from abusing it.

[vlod]

I kinda expect the s/w engineer who wrote this would create an audit log. i.e. police-id, licence-place-id.

Well that's the way I would write it.

[ceejayoz]

https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-c...

> While Flock’s audit logs have been successful in bringing to light certain abuses, that very fact is likely to deter many officers from honestly describing the purposes of their searches moving forward. Take the controversial Texas abortion search. If the officer who logged, "had an abortion, search for female" had just left out the word "abortion” that story never would have seen the light of day. And there’s no doubt that the department — and police around the nation — realize that.

https://footnote4a.org/news/secret-searches-part2

> Our ability to identify officers was clearly effective. In a direct attempt to stop us from providing transparency, Flock and police departments have dropped the unique IDs (UUIDs) in the transparency portals entirely. They now simply replace them with the word “redacted” in the public audit logs, effectively preventing oversight and individual accountability.

> Flock Safety updated the system on 12/11/2025 to protect officer safety and active investigations, Network Audit Logs no longer include officer names, license plate, or vehicle fingerprint information.

[kentm]

Audit logs are only useful if they are used to action abuses. The issue is that police departments protect abusers due to the “thin blue line” mentality.

[Zigurd]

I'm sure there is an audit log. But because, you know, computers, they'll probably charge you a few thousand dollars to process the FOIA request. If you could get the time cards and GPS tracks from police departments, how much detail and overtime fraud do you think you would find?

[redundantly]

If something can be abused, especially with little to no accountability, it will be abused.

[derektank]

>They won't use technology to find our lost/stolen phones

Our local sheriff’s department used Apple’s FindMy to search for my parent’s iPad that had been stolen from their car during a smash and grab. In this case, he found it in the possession of a couple that had found it tossed on the side of the street after the thief had stripped it for cash and credit cards, but it saved them the hassle and cost of having to buy a new one.

Anyways, there’s nothing stopping PDs from searching for stolen electronics. Maybe you should talk to your local city council and ask why yours don’t?

[telesilla]

Check out the new Netflix doc, A Toxic Love Story. US Marshall at the center of it all (no spoiler).

[_doctor_love]

Well known pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT

[charcircuit]

Why don't they instead push for making abuses of law enforcement access illegal? That way we can both catch criminals and missing people along with avoiding abuse.

[cortesoft]

Those things are illegal, but it still happens because it is so easy and they usually aren't caught. We only hear about the rare instances where something actually happens to the cop doing it, most of the time it is never reported.

This isn't because police are inherently horrible people, it is because they are normal humans.

We all know people who would abuse the ability to track anyone they want. And we also have all seen times at work where employees ignore or cover for another employee breaking the rules, for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes because the coworker is a friend, sometimes because of peer pressure, and sometimes just because we don't want the hassle and paperwork and stress of reporting someone for what seems at the time like a minor infraction. And then the next time it happens with a slightly worse infraction, you think, "Well, I didn't report them when the did X, and this isn't that much worse, so ill just keep my mouth shut"

That is just human nature, and it is why sometimes making something illegal isn't enough. You have to make it impossible.

[charcircuit]

Considering all of the access gets logged surely it's possible to build a system to flag abusive usage that is unrelated to a current case.

[fwip]

> This isn't because police are inherently horrible people, it is because they are normal humans.

Well, you also have to remember that police aren't selected at random from the population. The kind of guy (or gal) who wants to be a cop is often attracted to the power that the job brings. This sets a culture, which is self-perpetuating, affecting the kind of person who they hire, and how people think once they get in.

A few bad apples spoil the bunch - and boy oh boy, we did not get rid of those bad apples in time. It's not a perfect metaphor, of course, but we've been dealing with constant police corruption issues for at least 50 years now. I feel like we gotta try something new.

[ceejayoz]

> Why don't they instead push for making abuses of law enforcement access illegal?

We did. Guess who you have to call when it happens?

[charcircuit]

Police are not above the law. Police officers can arrest and charge other police officers.

[ceejayoz]

Can? Sure. Will? Often not.

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

It's like communism; works great, until humans get involved.

[rsoto2]

They will investigate themselves?

Police do not prevent crime and rarely catch criminals, in fact they are often _involved_ in crime. There are scientific approaches to solving crime and larger budgets for more cameras and police tanks is not it.

[rsoto2]

Also, he and Flock recently boasted on LinkedIn that they are not shipping face-tracking in some cities. Wow this makes them so much more secure and private right? No it's likely because most people are looking at their phones and they can more easily identify you via the way you walk, the clothes you wear, and the places you visit.

[Analemma_]

Because in the United States, cops are de facto above the law. Either because of qualified (translation: total) immunity or because if you try to enforce the law on them they throw tantrums and work stoppages. Attempting to constrain their behavior with the law is basically useless, so it has to be done on the level of functional capabilities.

[charcircuit]

Qualified immunity is not total immunity and throwing a tantrum doesn't prevent you from being arrested. There is plenty of body cam footage that attests to that.

[ceejayoz]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrolmen%27s_Benevolent_Assoc...

> Approximately 4,000 NYPD officers took part in a protest that included blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and jumping over police barricades in an attempt to rush City Hall. Rioters were observed to be openly drinking, damaging cars, and physically attacking journalists from the New York Times on the scene. Rioters also chanted racial epithets towards the African-American Mayor Dinkins. The nearly 300 uniformed on-duty officers did little to control the riot.

> Of the nearly 10,000 participating officers, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly sanctioned 42 of them.

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

> In early August 1975, the SFPD went on strike over a pay dispute, violating a California law prohibiting police from striking. The city quickly obtained a court order declaring the strike illegal and enjoining the SFPD back to work. The court messenger delivering the order was met with violence and the SFPD continued to strike. Only managers and African-American officers remained on duty, with 45 officers and three fire trucks responsible for a city population of 700,000. Supervisor Dianne Feinstein pleaded Mayor Joseph Alioto to ask Governor Jerry Brown to call out the National Guard to patrol the streets, but Alioto refused. When enraged civilians confronted SFPD officers at the picket lines, the officers arrested them. The strike was joined by the city's firefighters. The ACLU obtained a court order prohibiting strikers from carrying their service revolvers. Again, the SFPD ignored the court order. On August 20, a bomb detonated at the Mayor's home with a sign reading "Don't Threaten Us" left on his lawn. On August 21, Mayor Alioto advised the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that they should concede to the strikers' demands. The Supervisors unanimously refused. Mayor Alioto immediately then declared a state of emergency, assumed legislative powers, and granted the strikers' demands. City Supervisors and taxpayers sued but the court found that a contract obtained through an illegal strike is still legally enforceable.

[cucumber3732842]

It's way worse than that. It runs full stack top to bottom. Your local municipal clerk is using that shit to look up the Applebees manager that told them to shove it.

[EA-3167]

I was with you up until the very last line. Why do people imagine that the police are in the business of property retrieval? Once your stuff is stolen in almost all cases it's long LONG gone! Cars are sent to be broken down for parts, tools are sold to fences and so on. The typical thief isn't some mastermind who carefully holds on to what they stole, they rush to their nearest fence or dealer to trade it for what they need.

Police are there to report a crime and add that to area stats, and if the issue is more than a lone junkie then it eventually gets to a detective in whatever the local version of Robbery is.

"They didn't get my stuff back" isn't a realistic criticism, and it detracts from the many other points that are.

[Zigurd]

With a few exceptions, like mob run baggage theft rings at big airports, criminals are not very smart and have pretty poor opsec. Solution rates could be a lot better than they are.

[EA-3167]

The sort of low-level thieves you're thinking off sold off their ill-gotten gains within a very short time for a fraction of their value, often in a direct trade for drugs. It would be very hard to justify the investment required to prevent that, track the route property takes through handoff networks, and recover it in a form the owner would accept. Given that society suffers from more serious crimes that's generally where effort goes, and that's the result of public demand.

People want to not pay a lot for police, they want them well trained and highly accountable, they want excellent 'customer service', and they want to defund the police all at the same time. Out of this incoherent mess of conflicting desires the compromise is to focus on crime prevention, fighting organized crimes, or crimes against people rather than property as the top priorities.

[quickthrowman]

This scene from The Big Lebowski is how all cops treat personal property theft cases (They got us working in shifts!): https://youtu.be/N0rOe59wKAc

Save your time and don’t get laughed at behind your back. By all means, report your stolen car but anything smaller than that is a waste of your time and the cops time since they do not care at all.

[rsoto2]

The Flock CEO Garret Langley called people that didn't want his unsecure surveillance state in their own communities "terrorists". A term that has a very loose meaning but is always used to invoke state violence. So he wants to create a strong police state and violence against regular people for money aka he's a fascist.

(but HN will flag me for "name-calling" a person promoting and creating violent state oppression)

[polotics]

Doing his job as a CEO he's making noises, desperately trying to move the overton window now that enough concerned citizens have been made aware of how much malfeasance his product enables, and how little safety it brings. I think at this point a few more inane statements from the guy are to be expected, desperately trying to shift the hate onto his well-protected person and away from his fragile electronic boxes & the malware they run.

[mc32]

That’s the sad part. There was a nationwide trend to ignore misdemeanor theft so much so that now there is a new baseline and most police have taken this to heart and don’t even pretend to put an effort into misdemeanor theft -yes, I know many or perhaps most departments are understaffed but still. It’s irritating.