Ousted Savannah police officer gave ICE agent husband access to Flock system

fugalfervor

Is this not cybercrime and illegal surveillance?

educar

"Sorry, this content is not available in your region."

mysterydip

> He said every search was related to his federal law enforcement work and denied using the system for personal reasons. Assuming that’s true, why wouldn’t he have his own flock account to do his searches?

kotaKat

Wonder how many low level Lowes or Home Depot asset protection employees would also happily hand their credentials over for nationwide search access, too.

p-e-w

I’m less surprised that such things are happening (much worse has been happening for over 20 years) than by the fact that many people seem to genuinely believe that voting, protesting, or calling some representative is going to get us out of this.

giantg2

Is this any different, legally , than sharing your Netflix login etc? Because the data is purchased, most jurisdictions don't require a warrant. The only legal issue I can see currently is that Flock lost revenue from having another subscriber.

kylecazar

Wait, this system is standard SaaS and they can sign in from anywhere, not locked to department devices? That's crazy.

Kevin_Flynn

[movies] Big Brother is an evil AI, that controls all our lives. [reality] It's just the police, beating us with better batons, same as it ever was.

DebtDeflation

In Chatrie v. United States (June 2026) the SCOTUS ruled that individuals maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in their digital location history and that geofence warrants constitute a search under the 4th Amendment. It's only a matter of time until a similar case involving Flock comes before them and they rule that a search of the Flock database constitutes a search under the 4th Amendment and that every single search requires a specific warrant.

Alexander-Barth

Apparently the system was not protected by 2FA.

mrweasel

Every time law enforcement is given surveillance tools the same thing happens, the people with legal and approved access will abuse it. Politicians are completely naive in their understand how people works, if it's abused, the system isn't locked down enough or that one person circumvented the procedure. They completely fail to understand that there exists people to whom you cannot grant access and screening people in advance probably impossible. Some cop checks all the boxes, gets access to databases, then their partner leaves them and they are now no longer safe to grant access. I don't understand why it's hard to grasp that surveillance tools are dangerous and rather using them to protect others, law enforcement will use these tools to do bad things. It's as if that we assume that cops are better people and follow rules better. Even in countries that actually train their police force this isn't remotely true. The US might be different, I doubt it, but society is getting increasingly SAFE, there is less and less need for these tools.

close04

> Interim Maj. Max Nowinsky sustained the allegation and recommended an eight-hour suspension Lots of explanations provided for wanting to go easy on her. Is the same logic applied for the many victims of a police department? If it's preferential treatment then maybe Interim Maj. Max Nowinsky should also be kicked to the curb. > Tyler Harpe, a federal ICE agent Federal ICE agent Tyler Harpe, may you enjoy your new found fame.

Razengan

@Americans who laugh at China and Russia thinking you're still much better off in freedom and rights: That is exactly how you look like to the rest of the world.

whh

Exact same idiotic issues with the NHS in the UK - people looking up patient medical records who have zero right doing so.

nekusar

Can't give access if you dont collect it. I'm not completely opposed to 'camera, cell, solar, battery on a pole'. Its pretty low tech honestly... But there absolutely be a minimum standard of search warrant approval in front of a judge before using it. AND it should be a criminal offense to use it without a search warrant. However there's this whole problem of "illegal for government to do it but whitewashing through for profit company to do illegal thing".

psychoslave

Anything that can be abused through collusion in a wide scale scenario will eventually happen. This is not a contingent issue, it’s a fundamental integrated flaw of any system that put general totalitarian spy as an aimed outcome. Whatever the way it’s green-washed over safety tradeoffs won’t change this obvious fact.

schnitzelstoat

They should both go to prison. One for giving out unauthorised access of the resource and the other for exploiting it. If the authorities want people to accept systems like Flock etc. then they need to severely punish abuse like this.

cucumber3732842

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the abuse is tangential to the fact that "the system working as intended" is designed to comprehensively and cheaply subjugate us all to the whims of whoever or whatever has the ear of government at any particular minute. If you wave a magic wand and fix the abuse you will not fix the very nature and purpose of these systems. 1984 would not magically become acceptable if cops couldn't stalk their girlfriend or creds could not be shared among agencies off the books. A large enough to be a problem subset of the people decrying abuse fancy themselves an armchair central planner (the more self aware ones fancy themselves armchair despots). In the back of their mind they're thinking "if only we got rid of the abuse then the public would buy into this Orwellian system then I could get the government enforce my pet policies with an iron fist and get minimal pushback". Beware of these people. They are the true evil. They all seek to take a bite out of your day to day freedom and it doesn't take all that many of them getting their way before there is nothing left. The politicians feeling emboldened to sign contracts with Flock or any other surveillance vendor only feel emboldened to do so due to the existence and frequency of these people. Abuse or not these systems are rotten and incompatible on a fundamental level with a free society.

lenerdenator

And this is why cities are letting their contracts expire, or citizens are shooting, stealing, and vandalizing Flock cameras.

steveBK123

There are probably systems that even if they should exist (debatable for some), they should do so only in secured facilities that the government worker must badge into physically to access. This would at least reduce some of the avenues for abuse.