[edot]

Flock or their defenders will lock in on the excuse that “oh these are misconfigured” or “yeah hacking is illegal, only cops should have this data”. The issue is neither of the above. The issue is the collection and collation of this footage in the first place! I don’t want hackers watching me all the time, sure, but I DEFINITELY don’t trust the state or megacorps to watch me all the time. Hackers concern me less, actually. I’m glad that Benn Jordan and others are giving this the airtime it needs, but they’re focusing the messaging on security vulnerabilities and not state surveillance. Thus Flock can go “ok we will do better about security” and the bureaucrats, average suburbanites, and law enforcement agencies will go “ok good they fixed the vulnerabilities I’m happy now”

[dvtkrlbs]

Yes and the biggest problem with this kind of ALPRs are they bypass the due process. Most of the time police can just pull up data without any warrant and there has been instances where this was abused (I think some cops used this for stalking their exes [1]) and also the most worrying Flock seems to really okay with giving ICE unlimited access to this data [2] [3] (which I speculate for loose regulations).

[1]: https://lookout.co/georgia-police-chief-arrested-for-using-f... [2]: https://www.404media.co/emails-reveal-the-casual-surveillanc... [3]: https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-...

[tdeck]

I'm sure the 40 percent of cops who are domestic abusers and the white supremacists militias recruited wholesale into ICE will use this power responsibly.

[throwway120385]

When you give access to any system that collects the personal information including location data for people in the US to the police, a percentage of the police will always use those systems for stalking their exes.

[quitit]

I keep an unofficial record of instances where police and similar authorities have abused their access to these types of systems. The list is long. It's almost exclusively men stalking ex-partners or attractive women they don't know, but have seen in public.

What's frightening is it's not rare, it actually happens constantly, and this is just within the systems which have a high level of internal logging/user-tracking.

So now with Flock and data brokers we have authorities having access to information that was originally held behind a judge's signature. Often with little oversight, and frequently for unofficial, abusive purposes.

This reality also ties back to the discussion about providing the "good guys" encryption backdoors. The reality is that there are no "good guys", everyone exists in shades of grey, and I dare say there are people in forces whom are attracted to the power the role provides, rather than any desire for public service.

In conclusion it's a fundamental design flaw to rely on the operator being a "good guy", and that's before we get into the problem of leaks, bugs, and flaws in the security model, or in this case: complete open access to the public web - laughable, farcical, and horrifying.

[candiddevmike]

Maybe with these systems we should require them TO be open for anyone to query against. Maybe then people would care more about how they impact their privacy.

[SamInTheShell]

Nothing will be done until one of the investors of the tech end up embarrassed from weaponization of the tech against themselves. These people have no clue how creepy some of their technologic betters can be. I once witnessed a coworker surveilling his own network to ensure his girlfriend wasn't cheating on him (this was a time before massive SSL adoption). The guy just got a role doing networking at my company and thankfully he wasn't there for very long after that.

[bigiain]

> Nothing will be done until one of the investors of the tech end up embarrassed from weaponization of the tech against themselves.

I propose that it become mandatory for all senior managment, board members, and investors in Flock - to have these Condor camears and their ALPR cameras installed out the front of their houses, along their routes to work, along the route to nearby entertainment precincts, outside their children's school and their spouses workplace (or places they regularly visit if they don't work) - all of which must be unsecured and publicly available at all times.

(Yes I know, I'm dreaming. I reckon every Meta employee's children should be required to have un-parental-controlled access to Facebook/WhatsApp/Messenger/et al...)

[tejtm]

flock is a YC startup

We have met the enemy and he is us -Pogo

[StanislavPetrov]

As O’Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped.

Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue.

‘You can turn it off!’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said O’Brien, ‘we can turn it off. We have that privilege.’

[kjkjadksj]

I know right. It is like we all forgot that cops were literally sharing pictures of Kobe Bryant’s mutilated body in bars for a laugh. A lot of people in law enforcement are totally screwed up in the head.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

I’m glad Benn has gone into the YouTube space. He has demonstrated a great balanced view on how to sell your soul for advertisement money in YouTube land.

I’ve known of him a long time simply because of his extremely progressive views towards releasing his own music. In other words, I would not care about Benn Jordan but for the fact that he was releasing his own torrented music on WCD 15 years ago

[coffeebeqn]

How is this different from the CCP surveillance? I guess this is easier for third parties to access?

[AngryData]

It isn't any different, it is the exact same thing with a different PR spin.

[edot]

I hate the CCP surveillance too. No state should have this close of an eye on its people. It’s anti-freedom.

[AlexCoventry]

The PRC has nothing remotely corresponding to the Fourth Amendment, as far as I know.

[KurSix]

Fair point but there's a crucial nuance: state surveillance used to be limited by human resources. You couldn't assign an agent to every citizen - there aren't enough people. Flock with their AI tracking has effectively removed this scalability constraint. This vulnerability just highlighted how powerful a tool they've built. If these were just dumb cameras, the state would have to hire an army of operators. As it stands, the technology allows for total surveillance with essentially zero marginal cost. And when they fix the security, that terrifying potential for infinite scale isn't going anywhere; it just goes back under the client's control

[Spooky23]

Was it misconfigured? Or “misconfigured” so people in the know can bypass the minimal controls that are in place?

[tracker1]

I think more importantly people need to recognize that cops are people, flawed and fallible as is the flock system in general. It should never be the whole solution and be used as evidence alone.

[monkaiju]

This totally misses the OCs point, which is that this data shouldn't be gathered at all, regardless of the competency (or lack there of) of the cops