I'm sure the 40 percent of cops who are domestic abusers and the white supremacists militias recruited wholesale into ICE will use this power responsibly.

When you give access to any system that collects the personal information including location data for people in the US to the police, a percentage of the police will always use those systems for stalking their exes.

I keep an unofficial record of instances where police and similar authorities have abused their access to these types of systems. The list is long. It's almost exclusively men stalking ex-partners or attractive women they don't know, but have seen in public.

What's frightening is it's not rare, it actually happens constantly, and this is just within the systems which have a high level of internal logging/user-tracking.

So now with Flock and data brokers we have authorities having access to information that was originally held behind a judge's signature. Often with little oversight, and frequently for unofficial, abusive purposes.

This reality also ties back to the discussion about providing the "good guys" encryption backdoors. The reality is that there are no "good guys", everyone exists in shades of grey, and I dare say there are people in forces whom are attracted to the power the role provides, rather than any desire for public service.

In conclusion it's a fundamental design flaw to rely on the operator being a "good guy", and that's before we get into the problem of leaks, bugs, and flaws in the security model, or in this case: complete open access to the public web - laughable, farcical, and horrifying.

Maybe with these systems we should require them TO be open for anyone to query against. Maybe then people would care more about how they impact their privacy.

The PRC has nothing remotely corresponding to the Fourth Amendment, as far as I know.

> Nothing will be done until one of the investors of the tech end up embarrassed from weaponization of the tech against themselves.

I propose that it become mandatory for all senior managment, board members, and investors in Flock - to have these Condor camears and their ALPR cameras installed out the front of their houses, along their routes to work, along the route to nearby entertainment precincts, outside their children's school and their spouses workplace (or places they regularly visit if they don't work) - all of which must be unsecured and publicly available at all times.

(Yes I know, I'm dreaming. I reckon every Meta employee's children should be required to have un-parental-controlled access to Facebook/WhatsApp/Messenger/et al...)

flock is a YC startup

We have met the enemy and he is us -Pogo

As O’Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped.

Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue.

‘You can turn it off!’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said O’Brien, ‘we can turn it off. We have that privilege.’

This totally misses the OCs point, which is that this data shouldn't be gathered at all, regardless of the competency (or lack there of) of the cops