YouTuber Says Cops Visited Him After He Built a Flock-Style Camera to Track Cops

LadyCailin

Tracking for thee but not for me

john_strinlai

risky move to talk to cops at your door without a lawyer present, although i am not sure how different it is in canada

haunter

That was in Canada (Peel, Ontario) not in the US just for context and for people not reading the article

rootusrootus

I can see some nuance to this one. Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average. Tracking cops and then publishing that information is not exactly the same as turning Flock back on the Flockers. I think the best solution is to just say nobody can do this, including the government. Or that if we allow things like Flock to exist, then we'd need actual legislation that tightens considerably how available the data is to be searched, and what approvals are necessary to access it. The obvious next step, otherwise, is for someone to start OpenALPRMap and we all get to suffer together.

EA-3167

This is one of those emotionally satisfying stories... if you don't think about it very hard. It's symbolically rich, it fits the simplistic narratives of good vs evil we're all raised with, but this isn't a great example of a 'gotcha' moment. Do I like Flock cameras? No. Do I like mass surveillance? No. Do I see a difference between an agent of the state doing something involving law enforcement or surveillance activities, and a private individual doing the same? Yes. You can't run around in uniform handcuffing people either. I don't want HN'ers setting up surveillance networks anymore than I want them strapping a pistol to their hip and fighting crime. It's an asymmetry by design because the alternative is an unworkable nightmare, whereas the sad reality is that if people keep voting for people who openly spy on us, they're going to keep doing it.

shevy-java

So they can watch us - but we can not watch them. At which point is this called slavery?

exe34

Rookie mistake. Need to start a religion first, then you can do whatever you want if you call it righteous.

adamtaylor_13

YouTuber is shocked to find out that the government is legally able to do things that you, a private citizen, cannot do.

andy99

I feel like this isn’t the best way to draw attention to the problem. Presumably having the police visit is what the YouTuber wanted? I’m not really sure of the lesson here but drama’s presumably the point as opposed to a side effect so it’s hard to take seriously.

IncreasePosts

I'm not familiar with privacy and filming laws in canada, but if the cops just came there and chatted with him without any arrests, warnings, citations, detainment, etc, then it isn't really different from any other random citizen knocking on your door and asking about your security camera.

legitster

So the cops visited and talked to him, but didn't pursue any charges or issue any warnings. He was free to pursue his project (so far). >“One of [the officers] took the time to specifically mention how scary it would be for them, because people would be able to find out where they lived, when they got on their shift and what they were doing throughout the day, and that that type of powerful information could put them personally at risk [from] any bad apples that might want to track them down.” I know we're supposed to distill everything down to a "them vs us" mentality. But cops have been tracked down and killed by people using apps like Waze so it's not a completely unwarranted fear. This also isn't an apples and oranges situation. A Flock database isn't public - police have access but at least ostensibly have oversight from the legal system. That's a much different set of concerns than the "UNO reverse card" the TikToker is trying to make it to be.

prymitive

Is it that different from members of the public asking cops what intentions they have using Flock? Seems like everyone is concerned about privacy, the only difference is that the police is more organised and has more leverage to protect themselves vs (often) fragmented public.

vamos_davai

This is government overreach. Everyone should be allowed to run a surveillance system. People should be allowed to sell biometric data to each other, to corporations, or to the government. Such a restriction is preventing so many jobs from being created.

jwsteigerwalt

It’s Canada, silly to expect the same standard of civil rights as their southern neighbors.

Aboutplants

Sounds like there should be some laws in place that governs both the police and civilian surveillance. But alas

phyzome

Fantastic, I love it. (I mean the activist's work, not the cops trying to scare him into stopping.) These kinds of projects are needed to give government officials some empathetic understanding of what they're doing to the people. Keep up the good work!

cryptoegorophy

Why is nothing being done about this? This is 1984 we were laughing about. USA laughed at China when they did the same, but when USA is doing the same people are not outraged shooting those down, painting over them. Am I missing something?

tintor

Someone should build OpenFlock which only tracks and makes public movement of city council members who voted for Flock cameras in their city. For empathy.

thomasjeff1

A decentralized p2p impossible to delete/sanction software to track cops would be good.

thenthenthen

In Europe there is this radio beacon tracking device listening for emergency services radio signals (Tetra/C2000), called Target Blue[1]. This is not illegal, except apparently for in Belgium. [1] https://blu-eye.eu/en