5 ms·

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

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-flock-cameras-for-stalking-and-harassment-searched-capitola-data-earlier-this-year/story https://lookout.co/georgia-police-chief-arrested-for-using-f... [2]: https://www.404media.co/emails-reveal-the-casual-surveillance-alliance-between-ice-and-local-police/ https://www.404media.co/emails-reveal-the-casual-surveillanc... [3]: https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-camera-network-data-shows/ https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-...

throwway120385 9mo ago
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.
- hugo1789 9mo ago
  What is not only true for police but for every sufficiently big group of people.
  - kcatskcolbdi 9mo ago
    Cops do have some unique tendencies but I think the real issue is the cops are able to leverage the power of the government in ways other large groups cannot.
    - djtango 9mo ago
      The problem with police is a) that police have to deal with bad people and it is very hard to stay untainted when you constantly deal with bad people, and b) being a cop is no longer a desirable or rewarding job which not only causes applicant pool issues but also polarises the job and police force itself. Then the nature of polarisation is that it is self reinforcing. So if your job isn't rewarding financially or socially, the "perks" must come from somewhere and so it attracts people who seek to abuse power etc
      - SOLAR_FIELDS 9mo ago
        I believe strongly that people have zero problem paying their knuckle dragging police fuckwad of the day $150k if they would actually do the job they signed up for. It’s the fact that 99% of them can’t handle it that pisses people off
      - heavyset_go 9mo ago
        > So if your job isn't rewarding financially I don't know where you are, but some of the highest paid public employees in my state are police. In fact, median salaries for cops are higher than those of software engineers. Add the fact that they get generous pensions + benefits, and can retire at 45 and draw from that pension until they die, they have it better than most of the people they police. It's one of the only professions where you can make north of $250k+ a year doing overtime by sitting in your car playing Candy Crush all night.
      - jonway 9mo ago
        I don’t agree that police isn’t attractive or rewarding, the salaries have gone up and requirements reduced (college degree requirements in places for example) Come with a pension and active lifestyle with a club(FoP) and a union in some positions, its ostensibly public service and you get to much more than peek behind the curtain. Personally, I feel both ways about cops writ large. I feel like we could do a lot better really easily(mandatory body cam recordings please? Our guys literally just take them off.), and on the other hand I get it, they’re doing important work often enough.
- godelski 9mo ago
  Don't forget we even saw that in the Snowden leaks. Those were people with much higher scrutiny and background checking than your average cop. Those were people that themselves were more closely monitored. And yet... we want to give that to an average cop? People who have a higher than average rate of domestic abuse?
  - jofla_net 9mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT
candiddevmike 9mo ago
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.
- toomuchtodo 9mo ago
  Flock’s objective is to hope people don’t care long enough to reach IPO. Will enough people care to dis enable this corporate dragnet surveillance apparatus? Remains to be seen. I don’t much care about the grift of dumping this pig onto the public markets (caveat emptor), but we should care about its continued use as a weapon against domestic citizens without effective governance and due process.
- ipdashc 9mo ago
  IIRC, this happened in Washington state: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules-data-captured-flock-safety-cameras-are-public-records https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules... And as a result, they got rid of the cameras. Funny how that works!
quitit 9mo ago
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.
- marcus_holmes 9mo ago
  No idea why you're being downvoted, this is all true. Same was found in Australia when they looked into police access of data [0] [1] [2] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/28/revealed-the-amount-of-times-australian-police-have-breached-the-trust-afforded-to-them https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/... [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-15/victoria-police-leap-database-pursue-stalk-harass-women/101663452 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-15/victoria-police-leap-... [2] https://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/Docs/Public-Hearings/Impala/Exhibits/Operation-Impala-Exhibit-15-Research-Paper-Misuse-of-Police-Information-Systems-Pages.pdf https://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/Docs/Public-H...
- Phemist 9mo ago
  > 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. Would not be surprised if these types of abuse serve to obfuscate other abusive uses as well and are thus part of the system operating as it should. Flood the internal logging with all kinds of this "low-level" stuff, hiding the high-level warrantless tracking.
tdeck 9mo ago
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.
- MSFT_Edging 9mo ago
  You can go onto the ICE subreddit and see a ton of posts that ask if their previous domestic abuse/gross misconduct/ejection from police academy/etc will effect their ICE application. These aren't people who should hold any kind of intel. It's an actual danger to the population to give these people this much power.
  - Lord-Jobo 9mo ago
    They aren’t people that should be walking free, if we are being honest. Lock them up until we can get enough prison reform to genuinely try to rehabilitate them. The damage they are doing to our country is too high to hedge on this issue. >“That’s so extreme, they just shouldn’t have power, freedom is paramount, return to normal” etc. Sorry, too late for this. I advocated for more gentle measures 10 years ago when they were possible/plausibly effective. Just like any other infection, if you wait too long to address the problem you are forced towards extreme action. Or death. No third option.

throwway120385 9mo ago

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.

hugo1789 9mo ago
What is not only true for police but for every sufficiently big group of people.
- kcatskcolbdi 9mo ago
  Cops do have some unique tendencies but I think the real issue is the cops are able to leverage the power of the government in ways other large groups cannot.
  - djtango 9mo ago
    The problem with police is a) that police have to deal with bad people and it is very hard to stay untainted when you constantly deal with bad people, and b) being a cop is no longer a desirable or rewarding job which not only causes applicant pool issues but also polarises the job and police force itself. Then the nature of polarisation is that it is self reinforcing. So if your job isn't rewarding financially or socially, the "perks" must come from somewhere and so it attracts people who seek to abuse power etc
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 9mo ago
      I believe strongly that people have zero problem paying their knuckle dragging police fuckwad of the day $150k if they would actually do the job they signed up for. It’s the fact that 99% of them can’t handle it that pisses people off
    - heavyset_go 9mo ago
      > So if your job isn't rewarding financially I don't know where you are, but some of the highest paid public employees in my state are police. In fact, median salaries for cops are higher than those of software engineers. Add the fact that they get generous pensions + benefits, and can retire at 45 and draw from that pension until they die, they have it better than most of the people they police. It's one of the only professions where you can make north of $250k+ a year doing overtime by sitting in your car playing Candy Crush all night.
    - jonway 9mo ago
      I don’t agree that police isn’t attractive or rewarding, the salaries have gone up and requirements reduced (college degree requirements in places for example) Come with a pension and active lifestyle with a club(FoP) and a union in some positions, its ostensibly public service and you get to much more than peek behind the curtain. Personally, I feel both ways about cops writ large. I feel like we could do a lot better really easily(mandatory body cam recordings please? Our guys literally just take them off.), and on the other hand I get it, they’re doing important work often enough.
godelski 9mo ago
Don't forget we even saw that in the Snowden leaks. Those were people with much higher scrutiny and background checking than your average cop. Those were people that themselves were more closely monitored. And yet... we want to give that to an average cop? People who have a higher than average rate of domestic abuse?
- jofla_net 9mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT

candiddevmike 9mo ago

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.

toomuchtodo 9mo ago
Flock’s objective is to hope people don’t care long enough to reach IPO. Will enough people care to dis enable this corporate dragnet surveillance apparatus? Remains to be seen. I don’t much care about the grift of dumping this pig onto the public markets (caveat emptor), but we should care about its continued use as a weapon against domestic citizens without effective governance and due process.
ipdashc 9mo ago
IIRC, this happened in Washington state: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules-data-captured-flock-safety-cameras-are-public-records https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules... And as a result, they got rid of the cameras. Funny how that works!

quitit 9mo ago

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.

marcus_holmes 9mo ago
No idea why you're being downvoted, this is all true. Same was found in Australia when they looked into police access of data [0] [1] [2] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/28/revealed-the-amount-of-times-australian-police-have-breached-the-trust-afforded-to-them https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/... [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-15/victoria-police-leap-database-pursue-stalk-harass-women/101663452 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-15/victoria-police-leap-... [2] https://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/Docs/Public-Hearings/Impala/Exhibits/Operation-Impala-Exhibit-15-Research-Paper-Misuse-of-Police-Information-Systems-Pages.pdf https://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/Docs/Public-H...
Phemist 9mo ago
> 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. Would not be surprised if these types of abuse serve to obfuscate other abusive uses as well and are thus part of the system operating as it should. Flood the internal logging with all kinds of this "low-level" stuff, hiding the high-level warrantless tracking.

tdeck 9mo ago

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.

MSFT_Edging 9mo ago
You can go onto the ICE subreddit and see a ton of posts that ask if their previous domestic abuse/gross misconduct/ejection from police academy/etc will effect their ICE application. These aren't people who should hold any kind of intel. It's an actual danger to the population to give these people this much power.
- Lord-Jobo 9mo ago
  They aren’t people that should be walking free, if we are being honest. Lock them up until we can get enough prison reform to genuinely try to rehabilitate them. The damage they are doing to our country is too high to hedge on this issue. >“That’s so extreme, they just shouldn’t have power, freedom is paramount, return to normal” etc. Sorry, too late for this. I advocated for more gentle measures 10 years ago when they were possible/plausibly effective. Just like any other infection, if you wait too long to address the problem you are forced towards extreme action. Or death. No third option.