Georgia police officers fired after Flock camera misuse

angry_octet

...andd they are now working for ICE HSI for higher pay.

jiveturkey

> weren’t authorized this is easily solved with current technology, if they had an incentive to do so. besides firing folks that get caught, flock themselves should be brought to court.

timoxley

nobody saw this coming

tptacek

Flock cameras appear to be one of the few things that can get police officers fired.

Tostino

My town's covered with them already, without much warning in the local news, at least none I saw. And they're about to add 50% more all over the county. Planning on going to the zoning meeting Tuesday to speak against them. Also had a handful of yard signs printed up and put them at major intersections around town warning about the expansion, pointing people to the zoning meeting. Very much not okay with this surveillance state bullshit.

madhacker

Flock is importing China's ubiquitous surveillance in America until every habitable space is captured

austin-cheney

From reading the article it seems the problem was not surveillance in any form but unauthorized use of police systems. I am not seeing anything new here. For decades police can be investigated for any improper searches of license plates or personal IDs, which can result in criminal referrals.

simonw

Abuse by police officers and other individuals with access to these systems is the answer to the stupid but common question "why should I worry about surveillance if I have nothing to hide".

rmnoflock

There's basically 3 ways to get a council to cancel a contract. 1) Persuade them to do it because it's the right thing for the community. This is best done in private. 2) Convince them that the legal liability out weighs the public benefit. This is best done in public. 3) Run for office. If you have the energy you can do all 3 in parallel. Here's my attempt at 2: https://rmnoflock.com/2026/07/29/rolling-meadows-flock-camer... Does anyone have advice or experience with 2?

assimpleaspossi

Please compare the number of officers doing such a thing to the number who did not. Also compare it to the number of incidents where the cameras helped capture criminals and pursue other illegal activities. I'm betting that the number of officers who used it this way compared to the value it provides is minute to almost nil. It would be interesting to find the number of Meta employees or Google employees who do similar activities.

AngryData

It should result in jail time. If I got access to government surveillance program and started using it for personal reasons, I would likely be charged with terrorism.

Zhenya

Sounds like flock should be monitoring law enforcement more than civilians…

an0malous

We should put up Flock cameras in every police station and make the feeds public. If they’re not doing anything illegal, they should have nothing to hide.

philip1209

I know there are lots of reasonable concerns about unauthorized access to private information. This is somewhat solved problem in other areas, like banking and government. Not zero, but asymptotically low. I think we need to criminalize misuse more clearly, preferably on a federal level. We need clear justifications for each use of data. And, we should require periodic audits by an independent third party - perhaps funded in the purchase contracts as a line item and held in reserve. This doesn’t solve the problem of legal use - which could be contentious now or in the future. But, this technology isn’t going away and good legislation to control it makes sense.

bdangubic

there is super easy solution here, anyone caught misusing the data goes to prison for life without ability for parole. mandatory sentence, no exception and no pardons.

k310

Beyond all of this, "firings" are meaningless. Abusive cops are just hired elsewhere.