Once the police started to record every interaction with the public, along with their existing habit of placing traffic cameras left and right, they acquired enough data to track people.
Trying to restrict the analysis of existing data is never going to work. The police can always point to some death that wouldn't have happened, if they had ran Flock's software on their surveillance footage.
And even if by some miracle you manage to forbid plate recognition, cross referencing, etc, every ambitious (or lazy) detective would start doing it on the down low with OSS software.
I was sold during the recruiting process on high ethics and morals and an idealistic vision.
The reality was a surveillance state, questionable policies on data sharing between agencies and private installations (HOA, etc.), and a CEO with a very literal belief that Flock should "eliminate all crime" - not "visionary" but far more literal. It was way too Minority Report for my liking.
They have a public "disclosure" site that supposedly shows the agencies using Flock that is absolutely inaccurate (there are three agencies in my County alone using it that are not listed there).
Any conversations about ethics and the other "should we even do this?" questions got consistently shorter and superficial during my time there.
> The police can always point to some death that wouldn't have happened
Why must it be this way?
Because we're a bunch of bitch-ass pansies unwilling to tell our fellow countrymen (and women) to shove it when they permit the use of such logic.
I don't care "how many children need to die" or whatever, the sum total of the affronts upon our freedom a is not worth it. What even is the point of caring about the children if we're giving them a totalitarian dump to inherit?
> Once the police started to record every interaction with the public
I don't think this is true? As far as I can tell any time the recording is mentioned in a complaint at the police behaviour the camera was off due to [battery life|maintenance|other].
I get the feeling that judges & juries are less and less likely to give the benefit of the doubt if charges/lawsuits are ever actually filed against the officer, year by year.
You also get just rank intimidation. My friend got out of jail and the next day tried to file a complaint about an officer stealing his pocket money during an arrest. He was placed in a room with the arresting officer, who explained that any complaint which was filed would incur retribution from the DA with regards to the thing that got him arrested. This is happening in a large urbanized precinct, in a blue state.
To ever regain control of the police force, the various civilian & political oversight bodies would need to prosecute thousands of felony exortion, kidnapping, and assault cases a year.
Actually now that they have all pervasive surveillance, there is real evidence to be used against them in incompetence and allowing crimes to occur. This is not going to go the way they hoped
Courts have previously held that heuristics based determinations are not sufficient to serve as probable cause. E.g. "predictive policing" technologies can be used for e.g. scheduling officers to different areas, but aren't valid to conduct a search.
If this feature is used to make an arrest, there's a good chance the case would be thrown out.
The case can be thrown out, but it's still going to cause you massive disruptions. Everything from just being arrested in the first place and being held in custody for some amount of time, to having to hire a lawyer, to the social consequences of your name being tied to being arrested. It's going to cost you time, money, stress, family and social relationships. And there's a non-zero chance that if your life starts being investigated after such an arrest, something could be found to still affect you or your family and friends.
And once you're on their radar, you're probably going to also end up being marked for extra scrutiny. You might find yourself being pulled over more often, or getting the SSSS on your airplane boarding pass.
ICE are to a large extent above the law. Their entire purpose is to snatch people and move them to locations where they can be denied legal redress. A couple of high profile cases have only got redress due to very dedicated intervention by congresspeople, which does not scale.
I think people need to start reckoning with the underlying problem, which is that oppressive policing in America is popular provided it's happening to someone else.
I'm not sure such cases would be thrown out. See "parallel construction" for examples of illegally obtained data the DEA was advised to build an evidence chain NOT based on the illegally obtained info, but based upon evidence gleaned after the fact but built to show discovery during the course of investigation.
Who says the feature will be used to make an arrest?
The heuristics are clearly about who to pull over, etc. Evidence for arrest/search will be determined afterwards. And, as far as search is concerned, it could be as simple as getting a dog to bark.
Why? Because the prosecutor doesn't want all their work to go to waste because they didn't disclose Brady evidence. Even if they successfully argue that Officer Flock's reporting isn't exculpatory, they still have to do extra work to respond to a Brady motion for a case that already got a conviction.
But flock now has an Api for to Cause, the parallel construction AI. /s
So if they flock to the cause, all arrests are go. And there are always fallback crimes everyone in a modern society commits, that can be dragged in after a search .
I live in the neighborhood where Flock started. The three Georgia Tech grads moved into a house in the West End in Atlanta. It’s a great neighborhood but like any urban neighborhood, you often deal with car break-in’s, so the roommates built a prototype security cam.
All fine so far. Except that the direction it was pointed at was the neighborhood middle school. Which means these three notably white college students started flock by surveilled predominantly black young kids.
The neighborhood was pissed - but what are you going to do?
Eventually Flock took off and they moved out.
My point is that if your product started as surveillance on not just another age demographic but a racial and class demographic, is it any surprise that all of this is fundamentally in the DNA of the company?
There are passive ways too on AliExpress like IR reflective sprays, coatings and films, but in my country, and I suspect in most of Europe, any intentional tampering with the legibility of your license plate is illegal and can land you hefty fines or even jail if caught.
They also don't help much any more. Not with cameras that do color, infrared, 4K or 8K video, high dynamic range, and vehicle make and model recognition.[1][2]
In the first video, note the checkbox in the analysis program for displaying vehicles with "strange plates" which were in range for reading but not read. Trying to obscure a plate draws automated attention.
What would happen if you stenciled paintings of license-plate-like patterns all over the back of your car? Then you're not tampering with the plate itself, but I guess you end up with a goofy-lookin' car.
Why do you think tons of fleets have 6-char alphanumeric vehicle IDs?
Gotta have some number on the thing for your own ID purposes and if it saves tou a $50 semi truck toll bill 1/500th of the time that's icing on the cake.
Readit News
Once the police started to record every interaction with the public, along with their existing habit of placing traffic cameras left and right, they acquired enough data to track people.
Trying to restrict the analysis of existing data is never going to work. The police can always point to some death that wouldn't have happened, if they had ran Flock's software on their surveillance footage.
And even if by some miracle you manage to forbid plate recognition, cross referencing, etc, every ambitious (or lazy) detective would start doing it on the down low with OSS software.
I was sold during the recruiting process on high ethics and morals and an idealistic vision.
The reality was a surveillance state, questionable policies on data sharing between agencies and private installations (HOA, etc.), and a CEO with a very literal belief that Flock should "eliminate all crime" - not "visionary" but far more literal. It was way too Minority Report for my liking.
They have a public "disclosure" site that supposedly shows the agencies using Flock that is absolutely inaccurate (there are three agencies in my County alone using it that are not listed there).
Any conversations about ethics and the other "should we even do this?" questions got consistently shorter and superficial during my time there.
Why must it be this way?
Because we're a bunch of bitch-ass pansies unwilling to tell our fellow countrymen (and women) to shove it when they permit the use of such logic.
I don't care "how many children need to die" or whatever, the sum total of the affronts upon our freedom a is not worth it. What even is the point of caring about the children if we're giving them a totalitarian dump to inherit?
I don't think this is true? As far as I can tell any time the recording is mentioned in a complaint at the police behaviour the camera was off due to [battery life|maintenance|other].
You also get just rank intimidation. My friend got out of jail and the next day tried to file a complaint about an officer stealing his pocket money during an arrest. He was placed in a room with the arresting officer, who explained that any complaint which was filed would incur retribution from the DA with regards to the thing that got him arrested. This is happening in a large urbanized precinct, in a blue state.
To ever regain control of the police force, the various civilian & political oversight bodies would need to prosecute thousands of felony exortion, kidnapping, and assault cases a year.
If this feature is used to make an arrest, there's a good chance the case would be thrown out.
And once you're on their radar, you're probably going to also end up being marked for extra scrutiny. You might find yourself being pulled over more often, or getting the SSSS on your airplane boarding pass.
ICE are to a large extent above the law. Their entire purpose is to snatch people and move them to locations where they can be denied legal redress. A couple of high profile cases have only got redress due to very dedicated intervention by congresspeople, which does not scale.
I think people need to start reckoning with the underlying problem, which is that oppressive policing in America is popular provided it's happening to someone else.
Curious how "Homeland Security" and "State Security" are equivalent names.
Looking forward to a "Report suspicious neighbors"-program next. Your neighbor made fun of Trump? Report this unamerican activity to Kristi Noem!
Dead Comment
The heuristics are clearly about who to pull over, etc. Evidence for arrest/search will be determined afterwards. And, as far as search is concerned, it could be as simple as getting a dog to bark.
They'll just parallel construct the crap out of it and get their arrest anyway.
So if they flock to the cause, all arrests are go. And there are always fallback crimes everyone in a modern society commits, that can be dragged in after a search .
So, using our freedom of movement is now suspicious?
If they decide you are suspicious, they'll get an email alert about your location.
All fine so far. Except that the direction it was pointed at was the neighborhood middle school. Which means these three notably white college students started flock by surveilled predominantly black young kids.
The neighborhood was pissed - but what are you going to do?
Eventually Flock took off and they moved out.
My point is that if your product started as surveillance on not just another age demographic but a racial and class demographic, is it any surprise that all of this is fundamentally in the DNA of the company?
Change the race of the parties up all you want and it doesn't change a thing.
I do not feel guilty of the unethical actions of others.
It’s time to snip the flock.
In the first video, note the checkbox in the analysis program for displaying vehicles with "strange plates" which were in range for reading but not read. Trying to obscure a plate draws automated attention.
Big Brother has AI, too.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qJsvBW05RI
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U2LWuBFIR0
Gotta have some number on the thing for your own ID purposes and if it saves tou a $50 semi truck toll bill 1/500th of the time that's icing on the cake.