> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.

Isn't Flock's alleged legality predicated on the principle that there is no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in public? I don't see why that would change depending on whether it's "Joe Average" or a police officer at the controls---IIUC I'm allowed to capture images, video, etc. of people in public just as much as cops are.

Agreed that these systems simply need to be banned.

In the US, photographing and recording police are first amendment-protected activities.

Likewise, the fourth amendement doesn't forbid a police officer from recording someone in public, because there's no expectation of privacy when out in public.

The courts have found that legally, one officer recording one person is no different from a large-scale, automated surveillance system recording everyone.

Well, that argument goes both ways. If the scale and automation don't make a difference, they don't make a difference.

That's trying to unbake the cake. This technology will not go away. The powerful will use it in secret; and sometimes the less powerful too.

I'd rather see surveillance first pointed towards government leaders, and then once the government is highly surveilled, then maybe we can trust the government to surveil everyone else.

I don't know. My idea here isn't very realistic. It's not going to happen (though we should still try), so maybe just outlawing all of it would be more realistic.

> I can see some nuance to this one. Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.

I feel that's like saying there's "nuance" when the police choose to pull someone over because--unlike the other car--they didn't have a "I Donated To Cops" license plate.

Yes, it's technically a difference, but if it matters then the police are abusing their power to play favorites.

It doesn't seem all that different. Cops use these cameras to stalk ex-girlfriends, target political foes, and perv on the public at large. The public watching them hardly seems worse.

I do agree that we just shouldn't have this kind of mass-surveillance in general, and I think that's kind of the point of this particular endeavor.

> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average

Then why can Lowes and Home Depot buy their own units, place them across properties that aren't theirs and search them nationwide?

Cops usually are worse than average Joe on many negative statistics (domestic abuse, etc), and that's not even factoring in how numbers are skewed by the well established thin blue line.

It's safer to give your info to average joe population than cops.

I would feel better if only cops didn't have access to see me on flock cameras and cops had to request footage through a public reddit or something.

This is all a bit of a joke sure, but less than police access to flock cams is.

Unfortunately, Joe Average knows a cop willing to sell their Flock credentials on the dark web so Joe can perform nationwide searches of his ex-wife.

You have to assume it’s not just used by sworn law enforcement officers, especially when Flock’s own civilian employees have abused it.

This was in Canada so I don't know if the same laws apply. In the US the justification for this tracking without a warrant is that you are in public. That same justification allows for filming police in the public.

The intent of Flock in the US at least was just to use technology to get around the 4th amendment.

The police shouldn't be allowed to use automated tools like this without a warrant.

Well, actually mostly Average Joes become cops. As a matter of fact those Average Joes stalked on random people with 'LOL' in reason column.

What nuance though? Did everyone give the state permission to sniff after them? Because I did not. And I am almost certain a majority would not be ok with it either. There is a reason people hate flock sniffers.

When the people turn it around and sniff on cops, why is that then any different suddenly?

> we'd need actual legislation

Can the people do legislation? It's always some judges and politicians who form a clique at the end of the day.

If anyone is allowed to do this, everyone should be allowed to do this. Which is to say that no one should be allowed to do this.

Yes, it is.

A city member coming to your house to ask you about your intentions for something is different from you going to city council meeting. Police, city official, elected officials etc are public servants, they work for the public. The public does not work for public servants and public servants are expected only to ask members of the public their intentions under specific circumstances (common circumstances but specific circumstances - the cops can pull you over for a number of things but they, officially cannot pull you over at random or based on you exercising your 1st amendment rights, etc).

Can you explain your thinking?

Flock, at the core, isn't a public entity. They aren't a government. So they're a private entity, just like an individual, tracking who they want, when they want.

This person is doing the exact same thing as Flock, and suddenly it is a problem? Seems like a double-standard.

You feel that greater attention is typically paid online to undramatic things?

Police cars are painted differently to make them visible. They are public information. Police stations are visible. Cops addresses are not made public.

Police visiting a home is form of intimidation. That's not something to brush off.

> But cops have been tracked down and killed by people using apps like Waze so it's not a completely unwarranted fear.

Has this actually happened, or is it something you made up? Because I found articles with police spokesmen saying it _could_ happen, but nothing suggesting it has.

Hundreds of people have been tracked down and killed with flock cameras unnecessarily. The police routinely escalate interactions as a matter of procedure until they end in shootings.

On average over 1000 people are killed by police each year. A police officer is by far the most dangerous person you'll likely interact with on a day to day basis.

>But cops have been tracked down and killed by people using apps like Waze so it's not a completely unwarranted fear.

Sure, but you haven't made the case for why the fear is anyone else's problem. If a person is too scared to be a cop there's an easy fix: stop being a cop. Unfortunately, regular citizens who can't afford to up and move to a country that has civil rights (that is, most of them) don't have the same recourse.

What a BS take. Do a cursory google search and you'll find many abuses of the Flock cameras. There is no oversight. How incredibly ironic:

>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.

This is the exact reason Flock cameras shouldn't exist. Hell even you know how there is no oversight otherwise you wouldn't have used the word "ostensibly" with italics.

BTW did you just gloss over how they came to his home to intimidate him? Cops SHOULD be tracked because American cops are simply the worst bullies on the planet.

> cops have been tracked down and killed by people using apps like Waze

Do you have a source for that? I can only find 2 examples vaguely similar but neither are really what that statement claims. Specifically one of them was just cops making stuff up about wayze which was factually incorrect.

> police have access but at least ostensibly have oversight from the legal system

We've already seen plenty of examples of cops tracking ex-wives and such similar abuses with no real accountability - nobody's lost their job over it

Cops know exactly what they do when they show up like this, it's meant to intimidate, there are also plenty of cases where cops have repeatedly crossed the line harassing citizens breaking no laws, it's disgusting

In Georgia, a police chief was found to have tracked his ex-girlfriend and her teenage daughter approximately 600 times.

In Texas, a sheriff's deputy utilized Flock ALPRs to locate a woman at the behest of her abusive partner.

Marin County Sheriff’s Office was sharing the sensitive location data of millions of drivers with out-of-state agencies and federal authorities, explicitly including ICE and CBP, circumventing California law.

So, yes, it's messed up that cops' fears are warranted, in your eyes, but not private citizens'.

> He was free to pursue his project

No, being intimidated by uniformed officers is not being "free".

Your “private individual” wording is carrying a lot of weight here. I wonder if Google knows where all the cops with Androids are? Or if Meta lets you bid for ad impressions from users “interested in law enforcement”

What if I wanted to record the cops to schedule my lemonade stand?

Basically, the answer to “Who gets to surveil?” is: Everyone but you

"You have no expectation of privacy in public, citizen."

"Officer, do you have any expectation of privacy in public?"

"That's different."

Well I mean the state does have the monopoly on violence.

In a functioning state, anyway.

So yeah, of course rules are different for normal people compared with people that have a special role as assigned by the democratically legitimized system.

We can watch them, as is evidenced by the fact that he is watching them. Misrepresenting the police response as preventing his actions is clearly not true. Characterizing a polite conversation as "slavery" is disrespectful to people worldwide actually experiencing slavery.

Words have meanings

What he did was not illegal and he was not charged. Four cops came to his house to intimidate him but left when it did not work

Shocked? No; he's not shocked. If anything, this was for shock value and the lulz (aka ad revenue).

But; he does help others, who may be far less aware of the irony in all of this, that local, state/province, and federal/national governments need to be SIGNIFICANTLY pressured into not funding these sorts of mass surveillance efforts.

While Flock is getting flack for this, currently, it's ultimately the governments who utilize Flock's services that are ultimately at fault for not only allowing the technology to exist, but deploying at scale.

Eventually, the Flock backlash will die down and some other far less obvious company will take its place in the market and the citizenry needs to be vigilant in not allowing this to occur.

The YouTuber just forgot that they need more subscribers to unlock those perks.

You gain those at iirc 10 million or so? Even comes with a decorative plate for your wall.

Goverement has monopoly to use violence against own citizens. Legally. Why opposite is illegal?

Flock isn't "the government". This is an interesting conversation because often Flock is a circumvention to the police not being able to do these things.

Why deal with annoying oversight and restrictive governance and audits and usage monitoring when you can just offload it to a private company and stalk women without restraint?

this is not a good summary of the video

Legal gray area is still a legal gray area...

Technically, it is home users volunteering data to a cloud provider, that then mines the disclosed data as a service for any creep.

It would be a constitutional matter, and the city would lose in court given precedent lawsuits... if police used direct surveillance to follow people around even on public property where there was no expectation of privacy. Sue, and remember to vote. =3

Cops, like everyone, have no "reasonable expectation of privacy." Until then, they are in fact treated like everyone else.

What I saw was cops making up laws and trying to intimidate people into following them. Wouldn't be the first time.