It's legal to film publically - what's not necessarily legal is what you then do with that.

There are already precedents - for example it's legal to film ICE agents in public spaces, it's not necessarily legal to use information to dox if that can be construed as harassment.

Even if you crowd sourced the identification of somebody involved in a potentially criminal act, you can only share that with the police and not the wider public.

The law is asymmetric here because the police have powers reserved for themselves to stop vigilantism.

Perhaps an interesting angle here would be if you can make the case that companies like flock are involved in harressment themselves...

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hilariously 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's legal for ICE to kill you in the street, lie about what you were doing, and nothing will happen to them.

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15155 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> it's not necessarily legal to use information to dox if that can be construed as harassment.

This is an incorrect understanding of the issue, these individuals are protected using a unique and unusual statute. In a mass broadcast scenario, without identifying their profession in context, there's arguably no crime here. There's certainly no crime to broadcast that you've seen their license plates with no association with their names (the statute doesn't cover that.)

> Even if you crowd sourced the identification of somebody involved in a potentially criminal act, you can only share that with the police and not the wider public.

What are you talking about? This is most certainly legally false in the United States. If you are incorrect about someone you might be found against for libel, but there's no crime here. This is basic First Amendment activity. Have you never watched the news or read a newspaper? Allegations are part and parcel.

These are also entirely the wrong analogies. Both of these are highly individualized scenarios that are not akin to Flock. "Public Flock" is more like a public traffic cam that anyone can view, and these already exist without issue.

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DrScientist 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm trying to distinguish the collection of information from the use. Collection is legal - however there is no point to collecting it if you can't actually use it for anything.

For example:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/federal-prosecutors-char...

or https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/santa-monica-man-pleads...

	▲	15155 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I'm well aware of these cases (and have commented about the specific statute in question in the past here.) The originally purported analogy of a "public Flock" that you can "actually use" is completely different than what the statute protects. "Hey! Look! Here's an ICE agent's home address" is a lot different than "here's a list of vehicles who traveled down this street on a given date and time." The statute in question is 18 USC § 119: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/119 To preface: this statute is very arguably prior restraint and unconstitutional, which is likely why you only see those cases (non-affluent, non-connected defendants.) Furthermore, you'll notice that it requires "intent to threaten, intimidate, or incite the commission of a crime of violence." I hate to get specific into this one very questionable statute, but no general/broad restrictions exist with regards to disseminating the video data or license plate information contained within. License plate data doesn't fall into the statute's definition of "restricted personal information," and the operator of a hypothetical service that doesn't single out these "protected" individuals amongst the rest of the population cannot be possibly construed as having malicious intent. This is an extremely unusual statute, few others like it exist. A "public Flock" would let any interested party query the entire database of observed license plates. Collection isn't individualized to any one person, use and intent resides with the individual consuming the service.