Abuse by police officers and other individuals with access to these systems is the answer to the stupid but common question "why should I worry about surveillance if I have nothing to hide".
I never hear that question from Flock supporters. The question I hear[†] is "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?". It's a much harder one to answer than the straw man questions we set up for these things.
(To be clear: I think the current generation of ALPRs is a policy failure and that major changes need to happen inside state law enforcement systems before they can be deployed successfully. But I also think people on HN have a real problem in convincing themselves about the obvious righteousness of their anti-surveillance arguments.)
[†] I heard arguments like these because I was deeply involved in getting the cameras disabled in the inner-ring Chicago suburb in which I live, getting the first ACLU CCOPS ordinance in Illinois passed there, and helping draft what are probably the most detailed ALPR police General Orders in any municipality, or at least were at the time. Which is a long and pretentious way of saying I spent a lot of time talking to people who are not Very Online.
It should result in jail time. If I got access to government surveillance program and started using it for personal reasons, I would likely be charged with terrorism.
To paraphrase Homer: the cause of, and solution to, a problem! In this case police misconduct.
It does make me wonder whether electronic evidence of police behavior will materially impact actual behavior over time. But given that the normal reaction is to deny access to evidence, I doubt it.
The people who want to be police officers tend not to be the people everyone else would want to be police officers.
Correct. They're also rapidly rehired in neighboring jurisdictions. Public sector unions aggressively protect officers ability to migrate to new jurisdictions despite being fired for cause. Typically they end up working at less prestigious operations, and the chronically-fired ones bounce around until they're in the sticks, working as a deputy in a small county.
All of these officers will be lined up for jobs by the end of the week.
Whatever protections your area police have from these kinds of firings are a matter of public record. Have you FOIA'd your local department to see what they are? You might be surprised.
The real teeth behind these disciplinary events, at least in suburban/metro areas, are that departments don't want to lose the cameras, and know that they will if abuses aren't answered.
There's basically 3 ways to get a council to cancel a contract. 1) Persuade them to do it because it's the right thing for the community. This is best done in private. 2) Convince them that the legal liability out weighs the public benefit. This is best done in public. 3) Run for office.
If you have the energy you can do all 3 in parallel.
Please compare the number of officers doing such a thing to the number who did not. Also compare it to the number of incidents where the cameras helped capture criminals and pursue other illegal activities.
I'm betting that the number of officers who used it this way compared to the value it provides is minute to almost nil.
It would be interesting to find the number of Meta employees or Google employees who do similar activities.
> Please compare the number of officers doing such a thing to the number who did not.
Please compare the number of people who committed burglary at a location to the number who did not.
The act of violating laws has nothing to do with the number of those whom do not. Furthermore:
SPD’s administrative investigation determined the employees
violated department policies governing the authorized use
of law enforcement technology and departmental resources.
Investigators found that employees were running searches on
personal acquaintances and family members. One officer was
found to have given someone from an outside law enforcement
agency access to SPD’s Flock Safety system, which they
weren’t authorized to do.[0]
> Also compare it to the number of incidents where the cameras helped capture criminals and pursue other illegal activities.
Non sequitur and irrelevant to the abuse documented.
> I'm betting that the number of officers who used it this way compared to the value it provides is minute to almost nil.
This is a variant of the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" fallacy. Or a nihilistic perspective of "the ends justify the means."
> It would be interesting to find the number of Meta employees or Google employees who do similar activities.
Again, non sequitur, irrelevant, and an assertion which can only be interpreted as a quintessential strawman[1].
I get that this comment is meant to warn about the creeping government overreach and a curtailment of free speech, by comparing the US against a society where government surveillance is already commonplace.
I wonder if it does a disservice to readers to not make that same comparison against more similar countries instead (UK, Germany, Australia to name a few examples)?
And digital billboards in every space will tell us what to think.
Can't wait for the two to pair up and the billboards to target whoever is seen in the nearest camera. Or are they already doing it?
From reading the article it seems the problem was not surveillance in any form but unauthorized use of police systems. I am not seeing anything new here. For decades police can be investigated for any improper searches of license plates or personal IDs, which can result in criminal referrals.
This feels like a weird comment on an article about how they monitored usage, identified misuse, and terminated the people involved.
There's surely plenty of entities that need better controls around usage of technology / records / etc, but this is an example of somebody having an incentive and then following through.
its good PR for these systems that they are very keen to roll out, i would say theres a vested interest in stories like these from the exact agencies deploying them
If government entities get good PR for rolling out strong policies, practices, and tooling for the data they have, and that makes more of them very keen to do so... mission accomplished?
it's also possible that we're only seeing a few select departments fire their officers. there are no laws around this as far as I'm aware so enforcement is purely departmental policy. how many sheriff's offices and police departments do these audits and how many of them act on abuses?
you should need a warrant to monitor the products of mass surveillance and it should be as narrowly targeted towards a suspect as possible. or just not have any of the mass CCTV placements everywhere in the first place
I'm in favor of pushing for police departments (and really any governmental body with access to any kind of data) to have regulations around access to that data, access controls to restrict illegitimate access, and monitoring to detect improper access by people who do have legitimate access but don't follow the proper regulations.
I think you're correct that we don't tend to see the instances where improper usage occurs, tautologically because those entities aren't doing their homework on the above.
There always ends up being a real world to digital interface and it always has the potential for abuse, and thus always requires some level of monitoring and validation.
The department in this article appears to be doing just that:
> Every search run through the Flock Safety platform is automatically logged — who ran it, when, and the reason they gave for doing it. SPD said they also have other safeguards in place, including mandatory training, role-based access controls and supervisory oversight.
My town's covered with them already, without much warning in the local news, at least none I saw. And they're about to add 50% more all over the county. Planning on going to the zoning meeting Tuesday to speak against them. Also had a handful of yard signs printed up and put them at major intersections around town warning about the expansion, pointing people to the zoning meeting.
Very much not okay with this surveillance state bullshit.
I don't believe a legal solution is possible. We need a three-tiered response to Flock's surveillance state business strategy, depending on what level of meddling each citizen is comfortable with.
1. Protest via yard signs and awareness (what you're doing)
2. Impermanent vandalism. I like the idea of hanging copies of the fourth amendment over the lenses
3. Permanent vandalism. I think we need bounties on camera destruction and public legal funds to assist in defense, bail, etc.
The police as a class/caste are not interested in the fundamental principles that America was founded on. Individual officers may be interested in civil freedom and privacy but as an entity they only ever march in the direction of total surveillance and domination of the citizenry.
In what possible way would the broader public destroying Flock cameras on sight and allying with one another to defend those caught doing it benefit intelligence agencies?
You'll never gain traction with your post on social internet forums like this despite the reality and truth of it. You'll be downvoted to quiet and eliminate your opinion.
I would encourage you to add arrows to your signs/ stickers pointing out the cameras. More impactful when people see (and are unconsensually recorded by) the device first hand.
Abuse by police officers and other individuals with access to these systems is the answer to the stupid but common question "why should I worry about surveillance if I have nothing to hide".
I never hear that question from Flock supporters. The question I hear[†] is "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?". It's a much harder one to answer than the straw man questions we set up for these things.
(To be clear: I think the current generation of ALPRs is a policy failure and that major changes need to happen inside state law enforcement systems before they can be deployed successfully. But I also think people on HN have a real problem in convincing themselves about the obvious righteousness of their anti-surveillance arguments.)
[†] I heard arguments like these because I was deeply involved in getting the cameras disabled in the inner-ring Chicago suburb in which I live, getting the first ACLU CCOPS ordinance in Illinois passed there, and helping draft what are probably the most detailed ALPR police General Orders in any municipality, or at least were at the time. Which is a long and pretentious way of saying I spent a lot of time talking to people who are not Very Online.
It should result in jail time. If I got access to government surveillance program and started using it for personal reasons, I would likely be charged with terrorism.
Flock cameras appear to be one of the few things that can get police officers fired.
Silver lining! The cameras are catching criminals.
To paraphrase Homer: the cause of, and solution to, a problem! In this case police misconduct.
It does make me wonder whether electronic evidence of police behavior will materially impact actual behavior over time. But given that the normal reaction is to deny access to evidence, I doubt it.
The people who want to be police officers tend not to be the people everyone else would want to be police officers.
Right, because you don’t want to let the little guys mess it up for the big guys: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/fbi-seeks-us-wid...
Gotta make a statement with the low level grunts so the citizenry think these systems have accountability.
Not true, but also not widely reported. Cops are fired all the time for a wide variety of reasons.
Correct. They're also rapidly rehired in neighboring jurisdictions. Public sector unions aggressively protect officers ability to migrate to new jurisdictions despite being fired for cause. Typically they end up working at less prestigious operations, and the chronically-fired ones bounce around until they're in the sticks, working as a deputy in a small county.
All of these officers will be lined up for jobs by the end of the week.
Until they negotiate protections in their next contract.
Whatever protections your area police have from these kinds of firings are a matter of public record. Have you FOIA'd your local department to see what they are? You might be surprised.
The real teeth behind these disciplinary events, at least in suburban/metro areas, are that departments don't want to lose the cameras, and know that they will if abuses aren't answered.
There's basically 3 ways to get a council to cancel a contract. 1) Persuade them to do it because it's the right thing for the community. This is best done in private. 2) Convince them that the legal liability out weighs the public benefit. This is best done in public. 3) Run for office.
If you have the energy you can do all 3 in parallel.
Here's my attempt at 2: https://rmnoflock.com/2026/07/29/rolling-meadows-flock-camer...
Does anyone have advice or experience with 2?
Please compare the number of officers doing such a thing to the number who did not. Also compare it to the number of incidents where the cameras helped capture criminals and pursue other illegal activities.
I'm betting that the number of officers who used it this way compared to the value it provides is minute to almost nil.
It would be interesting to find the number of Meta employees or Google employees who do similar activities.
> Please compare the number of officers doing such a thing to the number who did not.
Please compare the number of people who committed burglary at a location to the number who did not.
The act of violating laws has nothing to do with the number of those whom do not. Furthermore:
> Also compare it to the number of incidents where the cameras helped capture criminals and pursue other illegal activities.Non sequitur and irrelevant to the abuse documented.
> I'm betting that the number of officers who used it this way compared to the value it provides is minute to almost nil.
This is a variant of the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" fallacy. Or a nihilistic perspective of "the ends justify the means."
> It would be interesting to find the number of Meta employees or Google employees who do similar activities.
Again, non sequitur, irrelevant, and an assertion which can only be interpreted as a quintessential strawman[1].
0 - https://www.wtoc.com/2026/08/07/savannah-police-department-f...
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
Meta and Google employees can't legally kill me or deprive me of my freedom. So they are completely irrelevant as a comparison.
If the answer is more than 1, that is too much. Cops shouldn't have access to surveillance cameras or data at all.
If you think the average Google employee has as much access to PII or sensitive information as a cop, you're deeply mistaken.
If you think some Google employees doesn't have MORE access than a cop, you are WILDLY mistaken.
Flock is importing China's ubiquitous surveillance in America until every habitable space is captured
I get that this comment is meant to warn about the creeping government overreach and a curtailment of free speech, by comparing the US against a society where government surveillance is already commonplace.
I wonder if it does a disservice to readers to not make that same comparison against more similar countries instead (UK, Germany, Australia to name a few examples)?
And digital billboards in every space will tell us what to think. Can't wait for the two to pair up and the billboards to target whoever is seen in the nearest camera. Or are they already doing it?
It's not that useful to single out Flock for that purpose. Google Nest and Amazon Alexa are also in that category.
Maybe Ring too?
Certainly! And probably a multitude of other devices and phone apps as well.
China is not responsible for your fuck-us, you own it
No claim was made that China is responsible. Stay on point.
From reading the article it seems the problem was not surveillance in any form but unauthorized use of police systems. I am not seeing anything new here. For decades police can be investigated for any improper searches of license plates or personal IDs, which can result in criminal referrals.
Out of curiosity, what are the non-surveillance uses for a license plate tracking service
The estimated travel times displayed in major cities along highways are calculated by license plate sampling from what I understand
That seems overly complicated when simple speed sensors would do the job.
So you think that is the unauthorized use that the officers were fired for?
This is called a strawman. The article was about misconduct, not technology.
nobody saw this coming
> weren’t authorized
this is easily solved with current technology, if they had an incentive to do so.
besides firing folks that get caught, flock themselves should be brought to court.
This feels like a weird comment on an article about how they monitored usage, identified misuse, and terminated the people involved.
There's surely plenty of entities that need better controls around usage of technology / records / etc, but this is an example of somebody having an incentive and then following through.
its good PR for these systems that they are very keen to roll out, i would say theres a vested interest in stories like these from the exact agencies deploying them
I'm getting https://xkcd.com/810/ vibes.
If government entities get good PR for rolling out strong policies, practices, and tooling for the data they have, and that makes more of them very keen to do so... mission accomplished?
it's also possible that we're only seeing a few select departments fire their officers. there are no laws around this as far as I'm aware so enforcement is purely departmental policy. how many sheriff's offices and police departments do these audits and how many of them act on abuses?
you should need a warrant to monitor the products of mass surveillance and it should be as narrowly targeted towards a suspect as possible. or just not have any of the mass CCTV placements everywhere in the first place
I think we may be agreeing?
I'm in favor of pushing for police departments (and really any governmental body with access to any kind of data) to have regulations around access to that data, access controls to restrict illegitimate access, and monitoring to detect improper access by people who do have legitimate access but don't follow the proper regulations.
I think you're correct that we don't tend to see the instances where improper usage occurs, tautologically because those entities aren't doing their homework on the above.
Systems should be built so abuse isn’t allowed in the first place, in addition to monitoring for compliance.
There always ends up being a real world to digital interface and it always has the potential for abuse, and thus always requires some level of monitoring and validation.
The department in this article appears to be doing just that:
> Every search run through the Flock Safety platform is automatically logged — who ran it, when, and the reason they gave for doing it. SPD said they also have other safeguards in place, including mandatory training, role-based access controls and supervisory oversight.
Ah but you see flock doesn't own the data so they're not responsible for misuse of it and other such legal deflections.
My town's covered with them already, without much warning in the local news, at least none I saw. And they're about to add 50% more all over the county. Planning on going to the zoning meeting Tuesday to speak against them. Also had a handful of yard signs printed up and put them at major intersections around town warning about the expansion, pointing people to the zoning meeting.
Very much not okay with this surveillance state bullshit.
I don't believe a legal solution is possible. We need a three-tiered response to Flock's surveillance state business strategy, depending on what level of meddling each citizen is comfortable with.
1. Protest via yard signs and awareness (what you're doing)
2. Impermanent vandalism. I like the idea of hanging copies of the fourth amendment over the lenses
3. Permanent vandalism. I think we need bounties on camera destruction and public legal funds to assist in defense, bail, etc.
The police as a class/caste are not interested in the fundamental principles that America was founded on. Individual officers may be interested in civil freedom and privacy but as an entity they only ever march in the direction of total surveillance and domination of the citizenry.
Absolutely not. Horrible advice. You give the rest of us peaceful majority a bad name. Protest legally. Your post glows.
In what possible way would the broader public destroying Flock cameras on sight and allying with one another to defend those caught doing it benefit intelligence agencies?
America started with an illegal protest.
Who's more effective at protesting, USA or France?
And, which country routinely sets a bunch of shit on fire when they need to?
That's right.
You'll never gain traction with your post on social internet forums like this despite the reality and truth of it. You'll be downvoted to quiet and eliminate your opinion.
Genuinely effective protests are rarely entirely legal.
I would encourage you to add arrows to your signs/ stickers pointing out the cameras. More impactful when people see (and are unconsensually recorded by) the device first hand.
Good work!
...andd they are now working for ICE HSI for higher pay.
"The names of the fired employees aren’t being released right now." Somehow even after being fired there is no accountability.