I wonder what our founders would think about tools like Flock.
From what I understand these systems are legal because there is no expectation of privacy in public. Therefore any time you go in public you cannot expect NOT to be tracked, photographed, and entered into a database (which may now outlive us).
I think the argument comes from the 1st amendment.
Weaponizing the Bill of Rights (BoR) for the government against the people does not seem to align with my understanding of why the Bill of Rights was cemented into our constitution in the first place.
I wonder what Adams or Madison would make of it. I wonder if Benjamin Franklin would be appalled.
I wonder if they'd consider every license plate reading a violation of the 4th amendment.
Flock or their defenders will lock in on the excuse that “oh these are misconfigured” or “yeah hacking is illegal, only cops should have this data”. The issue is neither of the above. The issue is the collection and collation of this footage in the first place! I don’t want hackers watching me all the time, sure, but I DEFINITELY don’t trust the state or megacorps to watch me all the time. Hackers concern me less, actually. I’m glad that Benn Jordan and others are giving this the airtime it needs, but they’re focusing the messaging on security vulnerabilities and not state surveillance. Thus Flock can go “ok we will do better about security” and the bureaucrats, average suburbanites, and law enforcement agencies will go “ok good they fixed the vulnerabilities I’m happy now”
Yes and the biggest problem with this kind of ALPRs are they bypass the due process. Most of the time police can just pull up data without any warrant and there has been instances where this was abused (I think some cops used this for stalking their exes [1]) and also the most worrying Flock seems to really okay with giving ICE unlimited access to this data [2] [3] (which I speculate for loose regulations).
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 think more importantly people need to recognize that cops are people, flawed and fallible as is the flock system in general. It should never be the whole solution and be used as evidence alone.
Nothing will be done until one of the investors of the tech end up embarrassed from weaponization of the tech against themselves. These people have no clue how creepy some of their technologic betters can be. I once witnessed a coworker surveilling his own network to ensure his girlfriend wasn't cheating on him (this was a time before massive SSL adoption). The guy just got a role doing networking at my company and thankfully he wasn't there for very long after that.
I don't want these cameras to exist but, if they're going to, might we be better off if they are openly accessible? At the very least, that would make the power they grant more diffuse and people would be more cognizant of their existence and capabilities.
Did you see the other post about this where the guys showed a Flock camera pointed at a playground, so any pedo can see when kids are there and not attended?
Or how it has become increasingly trivial to identify by face or license plate such that combining tools reaches "movie Interpol" levels, without any warrant or security credentials?
If Big Brother surveillance is unavoidable I don't think "everyone has access" is the solution. The best defense is actually the glut of data and the fact nobody is actively watching you picking your nose in the elevator. If everyone can utilize any camera and its history for any reason then expect fractal chaos and internet shaming.
No, but the same argument could be made for things like open source software. We assume/hope that someone more aligned with our outcomes is actively looking.
Or, at the very least, that we can go back and look later.
I don't think they are similar. Public feeds would enable someone to document and sell people's whereabouts in real time. The fact that I could do the same or go back and look later is no defense.
This is a different argument than what I was responding to.
> I know in theory we all can continuously download and datamine these video feeds but can everyone really?
To which my response is "this is like OSS." What I mean by that is that, in theory, people audit and review code submitted to OSS software, in reality most people trust that there are other people who do it.
> Public feeds would enable someone to document and sell people's whereabouts in real time. The fact that I could do the same or go back and look later is no defense.
This is a different argument to me and one that I'm still torn about. I think that if the feeds exist and the government and private entities have access to them, the trade-offs may be better if everyone has access to them. In my mind this results in a few things:
1. Diffusion of power - You said public feeds would "enable someone to document and sell people's whereabouts in real time." Well, private feeds allow this too. I'd rather have everyone know about some misdeed than Flock or the local PD blackmail someone with it.
2. Second guessing deployment - I think if the people making the decisions know that the data will be publicly available, they're more likely to second guess deploying it in the first place.
3. Awareness - if you can just open an app on your phone and look at the feed from a camera then you become aware of the amount of surveillance you are subject to. I think being aware of it is better than not.
There's trade-offs to this. The cameras become less effective if everyone knows where they are. It doesn't help with the location selection bias - if they're only installed in areas of town where decision makers don't live and don't go, the power is asymmetric again. Plenty of other reasons it is bad. None of them worse than the original sin of installing them in the first place.
Yes, they should be secured so they can only be accessed by law enforcement.
But if your spouse/SO/sister/mother/girlfriend/whatever was assaulted while jogging in a park that had Flock cameras, and it allowed law enforcement to quickly identify, track, apprehend and charge the criminal, you'd absolutely be grateful for the technology. There's nothing worse than being told "we don't have any leads" when someone you care about has been attacked.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t want laws to be written to the level of my emotional individual reaction to a singular crime. I want laws to reflect the ideals and values of society, and to work at scale when balancing individual freedom, societal safety, and protection from government abuse.
“It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.” - Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
They should also require a warrant at least, especially for any data sharing. With "they can only be accessed by law enforcement", we've already had plenty of police harassing their exes. If they couldn't convince a judge to let them use the camera, there's really no hope of the case going anywhere.
> There's nothing worse than being told "we don't have any leads" when someone you care about is attacked.
I'd argue worse is "we know exactly who did it and we're not going to do anything about it (but we would do something if you try to do something about it yourself)".
Until your spouse/SO/sister/mother/girlfriend spurns a LEO, and then the LEO uses it to stalk and harass them. Talk to any LEO, they constantly misuse their data access to look up friends/family/neighbors to find dirt. Most of the time its relatively harmless gossip, but it can easily be used to harass people.
What if your spouse/SO/whatever was wrongfully arrested because they were on a Flock camera and conveniently matched what the police were looking for? Or if they ran whatever dogshit AI algorithm over it looking for suspects?
We can make up situations all day where it can or can not be validated but the reality is that this is a defacto surveillance state. If every move you make can be monitored, you should assume that the state can and will abuse it to hurt innocent people in the name of politics or whatever.
What's the point of making a statement like that? Is it like a Snapple cap thing, or do you expect people to actually give up on talking about the blatant government overreach?
And what a dumb way to frame it. "Think of the woman" is the same argument as "think of the children". Why not just say if you were attacked you'd want it to be on camera? Afraid it'll make you sound weak? Well, so does bootlicking.
I just watched the Benn Jordan's video on this. Even if this is just configuration error on some of their cameras this is terrifying and I think they should be held accountable for this and their previous myriad of CVEs.
I wonder what our founders would think about tools like Flock.
From what I understand these systems are legal because there is no expectation of privacy in public. Therefore any time you go in public you cannot expect NOT to be tracked, photographed, and entered into a database (which may now outlive us).
I think the argument comes from the 1st amendment.
Weaponizing the Bill of Rights (BoR) for the government against the people does not seem to align with my understanding of why the Bill of Rights was cemented into our constitution in the first place.
I wonder what Adams or Madison would make of it. I wonder if Benjamin Franklin would be appalled.
I wonder if they'd consider every license plate reading a violation of the 4th amendment.
Flock or their defenders will lock in on the excuse that “oh these are misconfigured” or “yeah hacking is illegal, only cops should have this data”. The issue is neither of the above. The issue is the collection and collation of this footage in the first place! I don’t want hackers watching me all the time, sure, but I DEFINITELY don’t trust the state or megacorps to watch me all the time. Hackers concern me less, actually. I’m glad that Benn Jordan and others are giving this the airtime it needs, but they’re focusing the messaging on security vulnerabilities and not state surveillance. Thus Flock can go “ok we will do better about security” and the bureaucrats, average suburbanites, and law enforcement agencies will go “ok good they fixed the vulnerabilities I’m happy now”
Yes and the biggest problem with this kind of ALPRs are they bypass the due process. Most of the time police can just pull up data without any warrant and there has been instances where this was abused (I think some cops used this for stalking their exes [1]) and also the most worrying Flock seems to really okay with giving ICE unlimited access to this data [2] [3] (which I speculate for loose regulations).
[1]: https://lookout.co/georgia-police-chief-arrested-for-using-f... [2]: https://www.404media.co/emails-reveal-the-casual-surveillanc... [3]: https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-...
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.
What is not only true for police but for every sufficiently big group of people.
I think more importantly people need to recognize that cops are people, flawed and fallible as is the flock system in general. It should never be the whole solution and be used as evidence alone.
Nothing will be done until one of the investors of the tech end up embarrassed from weaponization of the tech against themselves. These people have no clue how creepy some of their technologic betters can be. I once witnessed a coworker surveilling his own network to ensure his girlfriend wasn't cheating on him (this was a time before massive SSL adoption). The guy just got a role doing networking at my company and thankfully he wasn't there for very long after that.
I don't want these cameras to exist but, if they're going to, might we be better off if they are openly accessible? At the very least, that would make the power they grant more diffuse and people would be more cognizant of their existence and capabilities.
Did you see the other post about this where the guys showed a Flock camera pointed at a playground, so any pedo can see when kids are there and not attended?
Or how it has become increasingly trivial to identify by face or license plate such that combining tools reaches "movie Interpol" levels, without any warrant or security credentials?
If Big Brother surveillance is unavoidable I don't think "everyone has access" is the solution. The best defense is actually the glut of data and the fact nobody is actively watching you picking your nose in the elevator. If everyone can utilize any camera and its history for any reason then expect fractal chaos and internet shaming.
Is it more symmetrical? I know in theory we all can continuously download and datamine these video feeds but can everyone really?
No, but the same argument could be made for things like open source software. We assume/hope that someone more aligned with our outcomes is actively looking.
Or, at the very least, that we can go back and look later.
I don't think they are similar. Public feeds would enable someone to document and sell people's whereabouts in real time. The fact that I could do the same or go back and look later is no defense.
This is a different argument than what I was responding to.
> I know in theory we all can continuously download and datamine these video feeds but can everyone really?
To which my response is "this is like OSS." What I mean by that is that, in theory, people audit and review code submitted to OSS software, in reality most people trust that there are other people who do it.
> Public feeds would enable someone to document and sell people's whereabouts in real time. The fact that I could do the same or go back and look later is no defense.
This is a different argument to me and one that I'm still torn about. I think that if the feeds exist and the government and private entities have access to them, the trade-offs may be better if everyone has access to them. In my mind this results in a few things:
1. Diffusion of power - You said public feeds would "enable someone to document and sell people's whereabouts in real time." Well, private feeds allow this too. I'd rather have everyone know about some misdeed than Flock or the local PD blackmail someone with it.
2. Second guessing deployment - I think if the people making the decisions know that the data will be publicly available, they're more likely to second guess deploying it in the first place.
3. Awareness - if you can just open an app on your phone and look at the feed from a camera then you become aware of the amount of surveillance you are subject to. I think being aware of it is better than not.
There's trade-offs to this. The cameras become less effective if everyone knows where they are. It doesn't help with the location selection bias - if they're only installed in areas of town where decision makers don't live and don't go, the power is asymmetric again. Plenty of other reasons it is bad. None of them worse than the original sin of installing them in the first place.
They don't grant power, they enhance it. Not helpful for those without don't have any actual power.
I'm not sure if it's better or worse to have it publicly accessible or only accessible to an elite group.
Related:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46356182 Benn Jordan – This Flock Camera Leak Is Like Netflix for Stalkers [video] (youtube.com)
Yes, they should be secured so they can only be accessed by law enforcement.
But if your spouse/SO/sister/mother/girlfriend/whatever was assaulted while jogging in a park that had Flock cameras, and it allowed law enforcement to quickly identify, track, apprehend and charge the criminal, you'd absolutely be grateful for the technology. There's nothing worse than being told "we don't have any leads" when someone you care about has been attacked.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t want laws to be written to the level of my emotional individual reaction to a singular crime. I want laws to reflect the ideals and values of society, and to work at scale when balancing individual freedom, societal safety, and protection from government abuse.
“It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.” - Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
What about when ICE uses this data to abduct and deport your spouse and family members? Will you be grateful then?
They should also require a warrant at least, especially for any data sharing. With "they can only be accessed by law enforcement", we've already had plenty of police harassing their exes. If they couldn't convince a judge to let them use the camera, there's really no hope of the case going anywhere.
> There's nothing worse than being told "we don't have any leads" when someone you care about is attacked.
I'd argue worse is "we know exactly who did it and we're not going to do anything about it (but we would do something if you try to do something about it yourself)".
Until your spouse/SO/sister/mother/girlfriend spurns a LEO, and then the LEO uses it to stalk and harass them. Talk to any LEO, they constantly misuse their data access to look up friends/family/neighbors to find dirt. Most of the time its relatively harmless gossip, but it can easily be used to harass people.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
What if your spouse/SO/whatever was wrongfully arrested because they were on a Flock camera and conveniently matched what the police were looking for? Or if they ran whatever dogshit AI algorithm over it looking for suspects?
We can make up situations all day where it can or can not be validated but the reality is that this is a defacto surveillance state. If every move you make can be monitored, you should assume that the state can and will abuse it to hurt innocent people in the name of politics or whatever.
Or if they were simply being harassed because their ex was a cop who decided to use the cameras to stalk them, where there's not even an excuse.
What's the point of making a statement like that? Is it like a Snapple cap thing, or do you expect people to actually give up on talking about the blatant government overreach?
And what a dumb way to frame it. "Think of the woman" is the same argument as "think of the children". Why not just say if you were attacked you'd want it to be on camera? Afraid it'll make you sound weak? Well, so does bootlicking.
I just watched the Benn Jordan's video on this. Even if this is just configuration error on some of their cameras this is terrifying and I think they should be held accountable for this and their previous myriad of CVEs.
Here's the video for interested folk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo
It's amazing that any vendor, let alone a CJIS vendor even allows unsecured deployments of their software in 2025.
It's getting pretty crazy out there. What's your recourse for this? Avoid most populated areas?
I live in a town of 6,000 and we have 5 Flock cameras
It's a quality of people problem not a quantity of people problem.
I mean. There are solutions...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46822472
Really great investigation, what's the URL of the "vibe coded" site with the access links?
Associated Benn Jordan video post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo