A Cop's Case for Flock

Kevin_Flynn

As a person who suspects to have been a victim of Fl*cks central database, and its access to a growing wave of narcissist pranksters aka abusers, I gift the following design for a de-centralized Fl*ck like system into the public domain: 1) homeowner / business owner installs their own cameras. 2) open source camera server software, analyses said video using any number of plugins, and categorizes said video / issues alerts. 3) results of video analysis are OPTIONALLY made available in a queryable manner, in a radius selected by the camera operator. 4) victims of crime and investigating officers in an area, can search for video/analysis that might help, and contact the owner of the video directly. 5) camera operator could OPTIONALLY charge a small fee for the service of providing the video, to recoup camera / system operating costs. At no time does the system upload any video or analysis not expressly approved by the operator of the camera. Because each camera operator has control over their own video and analysis/events, and can retract them at different times, the history of any individual as they go about their business is fragmented, and by design not made available in a centralized database form. This was spitballed. Tear it apart. Fill the cracks with bondo. Paint over it. Make it shine. V

Gimpei

We could also just hire a lot more cops. The US is underpoliced in relation to Europe and there’s decent evidence that it’s a major contributor to the higher crime rate in the US.

wredcoll

Look, there's two problems here: 1) The increased availability of semi-private information about people and how large amounts of "public" data can be used to reveal very private details, along with how just the just the existence of such databases leads to more abuse, based in the simple logic that if they didn't exist they couldn't be abused. 2) The absolutely atrocious behavior of (american) police. It's probably not all that worse than 100 years ago, but these days we have cameras and digital communications so we see every crime they commit. Frankly it's not even about cops committing crimes (or things that really should be) but the lack of accountability in the form of arrests. I am continually confused by stories about a cop being caught committing a crime and the end result is they get fired. How is that a sufficient response? All of this means that people are extremely unlikely to be happy about giving police more power in the form of mass surveillance software.

khalic

Is this satire?

isalmon

I understand the problem is privacy, but I don't understand why people choose the solution that basically throws the baby out with the bathwater. Clearly there are benefits of ALPR's in terms of reducing crime. Would it not be better to implement some measures to prevent privacy violations by the cops and also toughen the penalties for doing it instead of taking the path of least resistance (and an easy idea to sell) and simply ban the cameras?

ck2

if Flock was solving felonies, especially violent crime, every statement about it would open with all those stats Except they don't, which means it doesn't Give us the prosecution numbers, how many violent felons were taken off the streets? Or rather is it being used to disappear the latina grandmas into an ICE prison for months to suffer until she signs away her rights and "self-deports" to escape the torture? * https://archive.ph/szKxX (look at the red line vs green line)

tempoponet

The article takes a hand-wavy attitude towards abuse and negligence, with little attempt to counter-balance it with transparent accountability. If we can't address that in good faith, I see no reason to give the other 98% of the article weight.

m348e912

This video includes a presentation by Chief of Police of Louisville, CO - Rafael Gutierrez https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smGMG0H2Sd8 @1:08:00 Ultimately the city council decided not to renew their Flock contract but if you're looking for more insight as to why police actually want to use flock for actual policing, it's pretty insightful. FWIW, I am not pro flock, so don't come at me.

DennisP

> In 1983, the Supreme Court held unanimously that ‘a person travelling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another’. And in January of 2026, a federal judge in Virginia ruled in a challenge by two civil rights activists against Flock specifically that: ‘An individual scan of a license plate, a vehicle identifier that generally must be displayed under state law, does not invade any privacy interests’. And a week ago, a federal court in Oklahoma threw out the evidence after a cop with no warrant checked a month of Flock's travel history on a car, used that as grounds for suspicion, searched the car and found drugs. https://www.lawcommentary.com/articles/flock-license-plate-s...

cestith

Plain view doctrine is a bullshit excuse in this discussion. Yes, you can expect to be in plain view of people including the police. You can expect that a camera can see you and record you. That part indeed is not a search. A database of your movements and the associated photos or videos of those movements is not plain view. That's assembling a dossier. That is related to things like harassment laws and stalking laws. Being able to access that database with a query is literally - literally, in the literal sense - a search. It's a search of information compiled about you going about your Constitutionally protected rights to travel, assemble, earn a living, and whatever else is not specifically illegal. It's a Fourth Amendment issue the very same way cell phone geofencing is a Fourth Amendment issue, and the US Supreme Court recently ruled on dragnets of cellphone data. It requires a judicial warrant. Being in plain view in public does not give a police officer probable cause to follow you wherever you go, take down photos, videos, and notes about your route, and publish that to an interagency database as if you're a known suspect just so they can find you later in case you become a suspect. Doing the same thing with a little AI box on the side of the road is the same thing, not something entirely different.

stickfigure

There used to be a saying, back before the Republican party went full wingnut, "a Democrat is a Republican that hasn't been mugged yet". The modern equivalent is something like "people hate Flock right up until their car gets stolen". I used to live in a high crime area. It sucked. I would have accepted any number of cameras of any type to make the crime stop. There are a million ways you can be tracked (the device you're probably reading this message on, included) so ALPRs are hardly new or threatening. But they make cars practically unstealable, and that's why I've come 'round to being pro-Flock. Sorry.

dpkirchner

I would be OK with Flock-like systems if and only if every search required a narrow warrant signed by a judge. The system should show a blank screen without a valid warrant. Until we have that, the tech should be avoided and IMO destroyed. It's interesting the word warrant never appears in the article. (The very idea that the existence of cameras means cops will truly take vehicle theft seriously is laughable. Perhaps it has improved the numbers in the short term, but laziness will take hold soon enough.)

orwin

One of the last point is that no one in a vehicle should expect privacy, and IMHO it's the only point worth talking about, because others have been explored ad nauseam. Let's say he is right (there is a case for and against). In that case anybody should be able to access the data. To prevent abuse, let's have people requesting access fill a form with their last name, reasons for access+time constraints, and make the requests public, so that everyone know who searched for which car. Maybe add a secondary access, where you input a badge number and a warrant number, that prevent the data to reach the public for a set of time (at most a year). Also if that happens, I will probably make an app so you know when someone searched for your car. Sorry I'm hn brained today.