They don't usually write the legislation for these types of things targeting a specific brand. In this case it looks like Hawley's legislation targets "automated license plate readers", and some other articles mention "AI-Powered Cameras".
Specifically, it would "block federal funding from state and local governments that use the [ALPRs]" and "let Americans sue the federal government for violation of their rights through ALPRs". Also:
> The Stop Flock Abuse Act would require a written approval process for each search; force agencies to delete driver data after ten days, with exceptions for active investigations; and ban ALPR networks from incorporating facial recognition technology
It also seems specifically geared to prevent the recent uses by ICE to document anyone attending No Kings or anti-ICE protests
A friend implemented a basic heart rate monitor using just video for a class project like 10-15 years ago. Just literally diffing pixel values per frame works, nothing more complicated than that.
The Surveillance Accountability Act is better as it essentially restores the fourth amendment and would cover Flock but it's still amazing to see mainstream support for privacy laws.
It seems like it only restricts the spread of government surveillance networks.
I'd like to see a public-facing-camera-permit system where you have to disclose your data sharing practices up front and put some money into a whistleblower escrow account as a reward for anybody who can prove you've violated your data sharing policies.
It only takes the combined weight of the entire free press, a complete social media blitz and hundreds to thousands of citizens risking felonies to just straight up destroy the cameras.
>> "which would prohibit federal agencies from using automatic license plate readers (ALPRs)"
...yup makes sense, no reason for federal governments to have unfettered access to this data.
>> "and block federal funding from state and local governments that use the cameras."
Wait..what? Why put this silly Poison Pill in the bill? So a city can't enforce its own traffic laws without having to put an over-zealous police force in the loop? The same guy that is handling drug dealers is stopping you for traffic tickets and people think nothing should go wrong?
Without cities adopting some massive road diet (fat chance) a reduction in ALPR's will kill people. Traffic deaths are at the same level as gun deaths in the USA.
It's one of the standard ways of prohibiting states from doing something, in order to enforce individual rights. Within the federal government, it can be harder to say "states may not" and easier to say "we won't give any money to states that". I'm glad to see these cameras prohibited locally, so that Flock and others can't just go shop it around to jurisdictions until they find one scared enough to buy.
As currently written in the Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and Merkley bill that funding cut provision is unconstitutional. Such provisions can only cut funding for things that are at least somewhat related to what the bill is regulating.
As written, it cuts off funding from entire agencies. For example it cuts DHS funds, which would include Medicaid reimbursements to the state for its health services to low-income residents. There is no way to make a case that Medicaid funding is in any way related to ALPR regulation.
The bill also is way too loose in its definitions. As written if someone reported a stolen car, gave the license plate, an officer entered that into a database of stolen cars, later another officer pulled over a car for speeding, entered its plate into the computer in their squad car, the computer looked it up in the database of stolen cars and generated an alert--that would count as using an ALPR and be at odds with the bill.
ALPR's pre-date Flock. The bill never mentions the brand "Flock". You could trivially mandate some stringent data retention policies, block cross-camera tracking if you really want, but just like his AI bill, a blanket ban is all this wing of the party can think of?
It's DOA, it'll never pass. He has the mandate to actually fix the privacy issue and he's p*ssing it away.
The idea that a for-profit company is allowed to scan licence plates and make this data available and searchable without restrictions seems ludicrous to me.
In The Netherlands, we do have ANPR camera's but they are run by the police and there are strict rules about data retention (no hit on a licence plate means drop the data). ANPR cameras aren't used as dragnet surveillance. The NL situation is not perfect, but it's on a different playing field.
With the absolute unregulated situation in the USA, the outcome has been predictable: cops stalking people and innocent people jailed for weeks due to mistakes.
I love Benn Jordan's work, including the video where they went to a Flock office building, filming employees. They didn't like being filmed, but it did not teach them a lesson unfortunately.
If you (still) work for Flock, don't think of yourself as a moral, decent person.
How do you ensure privacy laws are being followed by police?
Also do you have any guarantees that national security apparatuses aren't able to access this data if they have the right excuse (e.g. counter-terrorism, narcotics enforcement, etc)
Nothing is foolproof. But I have far more trust that the police in the Netherlands will make reasonable choices with private data than a US for-profit surveillance company. In a functioning democracy, the police are kept honest via voters. Flock is only beholden to their investors, and their bottom line.
Sure, but I don't think we can make the Netherlands police in charge of our largest surveillance network.
Flock is despicable but after all the documented abuses of the system (assuming you don't accept that the entire system is an abuse) were enacted by cops (read: public officials).
I don't think a law making only ICE/FBI/etc able to access the data will do much to slow the rapid expansion of the surveillance state
Believe me, I’m as opposed to this all as you, but playing steelman for a possible solution if it really is helpful to law enforcement and civil society to have these cameras…
What if you made the data only recorded for flagged license plates, for example? Where all information is discarded at the camera-level (not even sent to remote servers) unless it matches a specific target given by police with an expiration date, with an audit trail for every entry, and manual blind-solution human review to confirm any matches before an event is even recorded
Right now, we are pretty much guaranteed that they can access the data. As opposed to no guarantees that they can't.
I'm not clear the point of your post. Is it to say that what we had before is not guaranteed safe, so let's do this worse centralized thing because reasons?
>In The Netherlands, we do have ANPR camera's but they are run by the police and there are strict rules about data retention (no hit on a licence plate means drop the data). ANPR cameras aren't used as dragnet surveillance.
In my city/state (Southern USA) you often see plain unmarked cars with multiple ALPR cameras mounted to the rear of the car. These are usually private companies patrolling streets & parking lots to build databases for REPO/Towing operations. Wouldn't surprise me if they are selling plate location databases to databrokers & law enforcement.
Plus Axon is already replacing Flock in some areas. Unfortunately there are multiple players in this game and Flock going down is only slowing their spread slightly.
404 (in collaboration with Benn Jordan) did a lot of the initial technical breakdowns and investigative research. Ofc many other journalists did a lot of incredibly important journalism around it but I don't think anyone went as deep into the security failures of the cameras as Jordan/404
Who collaborated with 404 Media in his investigations... 404 Media provided Benn Jordan with investigative resources, legal support, contract analysis, etc
Joseph Cox (the author of this article) is mentioned directly in many of Benn Jordan's videos
Yes but Benn Jordan in collaboration with 404 Media were some of the first to do deep investigative research into them. Many other sources reported on the investigations of Jordan/404. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also did important work in documenting stalking by cops and CBS News kept the Flock CEO in check by fact checking his statistics about crime rates
Hopefully they are broad enough to curb surveillance cameras in general, flock is just one of the many repugnant actors in this space.
They don't usually write the legislation for these types of things targeting a specific brand. In this case it looks like Hawley's legislation targets "automated license plate readers", and some other articles mention "AI-Powered Cameras".
Specifically, it would "block federal funding from state and local governments that use the [ALPRs]" and "let Americans sue the federal government for violation of their rights through ALPRs". Also:
> The Stop Flock Abuse Act would require a written approval process for each search; force agencies to delete driver data after ten days, with exceptions for active investigations; and ban ALPR networks from incorporating facial recognition technology
It also seems specifically geared to prevent the recent uses by ICE to document anyone attending No Kings or anti-ICE protests
In the hearing with walmart, walmart was shown to be reading shopper's heart rates and temp to gauge if they would buy something.
You’re going to have to back that up with a link. It is a long way from patent to implementation, and all I’ve ever seen is the patent.
A friend implemented a basic heart rate monitor using just video for a class project like 10-15 years ago. Just literally diffing pixel values per frame works, nothing more complicated than that.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5957265/
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2185520.2185561
The Surveillance Accountability Act is better as it essentially restores the fourth amendment and would cover Flock but it's still amazing to see mainstream support for privacy laws.
https://www.surveillanceaccountability.com
It seems like it only restricts the spread of government surveillance networks.
I'd like to see a public-facing-camera-permit system where you have to disclose your data sharing practices up front and put some money into a whistleblower escrow account as a reward for anybody who can prove you've violated your data sharing policies.
Honestly, this warms my heart a little bit. Maybe American democracy isn't dead. If the citizens make enough noise, lawmakers do listen.
It only takes the combined weight of the entire free press, a complete social media blitz and hundreds to thousands of citizens risking felonies to just straight up destroy the cameras.
Democracy only working in the weeks and some months before an election is a major bug, though.
>> "which would prohibit federal agencies from using automatic license plate readers (ALPRs)"
...yup makes sense, no reason for federal governments to have unfettered access to this data.
>> "and block federal funding from state and local governments that use the cameras."
Wait..what? Why put this silly Poison Pill in the bill? So a city can't enforce its own traffic laws without having to put an over-zealous police force in the loop? The same guy that is handling drug dealers is stopping you for traffic tickets and people think nothing should go wrong?
Without cities adopting some massive road diet (fat chance) a reduction in ALPR's will kill people. Traffic deaths are at the same level as gun deaths in the USA.
It's one of the standard ways of prohibiting states from doing something, in order to enforce individual rights. Within the federal government, it can be harder to say "states may not" and easier to say "we won't give any money to states that". I'm glad to see these cameras prohibited locally, so that Flock and others can't just go shop it around to jurisdictions until they find one scared enough to buy.
As currently written in the Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and Merkley bill that funding cut provision is unconstitutional. Such provisions can only cut funding for things that are at least somewhat related to what the bill is regulating.
As written, it cuts off funding from entire agencies. For example it cuts DHS funds, which would include Medicaid reimbursements to the state for its health services to low-income residents. There is no way to make a case that Medicaid funding is in any way related to ALPR regulation.
The bill also is way too loose in its definitions. As written if someone reported a stolen car, gave the license plate, an officer entered that into a database of stolen cars, later another officer pulled over a car for speeding, entered its plate into the computer in their squad car, the computer looked it up in the database of stolen cars and generated an alert--that would count as using an ALPR and be at odds with the bill.
ALPR's pre-date Flock. The bill never mentions the brand "Flock". You could trivially mandate some stringent data retention policies, block cross-camera tracking if you really want, but just like his AI bill, a blanket ban is all this wing of the party can think of?
It's DOA, it'll never pass. He has the mandate to actually fix the privacy issue and he's p*ssing it away.
> You could trivially mandate some stringent data retention policies, block cross-camera tracking if you really want,
...or ban them. Just ban them. Let's have less surveillance.
The pro surveillance side keeps ratcheting things upwards and moving the Overton window. Let's claw some things back.
ALPR's have been a thing since the 1980's, nobody's been moving any windows, anywhere.
Hawley is the guy who was tweeting campaign emails during J6 while hiding in the corner... color me surprised.
They are talking about the Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and Merkley bill, not the Hawley bill.
Though the horsehoe is the horseshoe.
> Why put this silly Poison Pill in the bill?
Because then the states would install the flock cameras and "forget" to block the feds from accessing them:
> ...yup makes sense, no reason for federal governments to have unfettered access to this data.
The idea that a for-profit company is allowed to scan licence plates and make this data available and searchable without restrictions seems ludicrous to me.
In The Netherlands, we do have ANPR camera's but they are run by the police and there are strict rules about data retention (no hit on a licence plate means drop the data). ANPR cameras aren't used as dragnet surveillance. The NL situation is not perfect, but it's on a different playing field.
With the absolute unregulated situation in the USA, the outcome has been predictable: cops stalking people and innocent people jailed for weeks due to mistakes.
I love Benn Jordan's work, including the video where they went to a Flock office building, filming employees. They didn't like being filmed, but it did not teach them a lesson unfortunately.
If you (still) work for Flock, don't think of yourself as a moral, decent person.
How do you ensure privacy laws are being followed by police?
Also do you have any guarantees that national security apparatuses aren't able to access this data if they have the right excuse (e.g. counter-terrorism, narcotics enforcement, etc)
Nothing is foolproof. But I have far more trust that the police in the Netherlands will make reasonable choices with private data than a US for-profit surveillance company. In a functioning democracy, the police are kept honest via voters. Flock is only beholden to their investors, and their bottom line.
Sure, but I don't think we can make the Netherlands police in charge of our largest surveillance network.
Flock is despicable but after all the documented abuses of the system (assuming you don't accept that the entire system is an abuse) were enacted by cops (read: public officials).
I don't think a law making only ICE/FBI/etc able to access the data will do much to slow the rapid expansion of the surveillance state
Believe me, I’m as opposed to this all as you, but playing steelman for a possible solution if it really is helpful to law enforcement and civil society to have these cameras…
What if you made the data only recorded for flagged license plates, for example? Where all information is discarded at the camera-level (not even sent to remote servers) unless it matches a specific target given by police with an expiration date, with an audit trail for every entry, and manual blind-solution human review to confirm any matches before an event is even recorded
Right now, we are pretty much guaranteed that they can access the data. As opposed to no guarantees that they can't.
I'm not clear the point of your post. Is it to say that what we had before is not guaranteed safe, so let's do this worse centralized thing because reasons?
The Netherlands situation is not a legal (nor political) possibility in the US. US police is extremely decentralized compared to other nations
Settling for some minor reforms is not the answer to the US's exploding surveillance state problem
>In The Netherlands, we do have ANPR camera's but they are run by the police and there are strict rules about data retention (no hit on a licence plate means drop the data). ANPR cameras aren't used as dragnet surveillance.
In my city/state (Southern USA) you often see plain unmarked cars with multiple ALPR cameras mounted to the rear of the car. These are usually private companies patrolling streets & parking lots to build databases for REPO/Towing operations. Wouldn't surprise me if they are selling plate location databases to databrokers & law enforcement.
Plus Axon is already replacing Flock in some areas. Unfortunately there are multiple players in this game and Flock going down is only slowing their spread slightly.
Related:
Ban Flock Act Proposed in the US Senate
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49947176
Good luck! If this doesn't get an up/down vote, then there is always De-Flock America night this month. Many ways that the constituency can be heard.
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Is this just poorly worded, or a bad-faith argument? I read it as: "if you're against Flock cameras, you must be a criminal".
EDIT: Ah, the ninja edit. At least the edit clarifies that it's a bad-faith argument.
Being against laws that makes LE's job harder is not bad faith.
I mean, we could just make everyone wear ankle monitor trackers 24/7. That would trivially be proven to reduce crime.
Are you a criminal for not supporting this?
This is much more expensive and more inconvenient compared to what the standard is around the world of using cameras with facial recognition.
Perhaps there's a YC startup idea in there!
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It’s laughable to me that 404 Media is trying to take credit for this.
404 (in collaboration with Benn Jordan) did a lot of the initial technical breakdowns and investigative research. Ofc many other journalists did a lot of incredibly important journalism around it but I don't think anyone went as deep into the security failures of the cameras as Jordan/404
This is pretty expected from them as a framing. The gossip rag of news media themed after technology reporting.
Which media source would you credit for investigating and reporting on Flock antics?
Benn Jordan
Who collaborated with 404 Media in his investigations... 404 Media provided Benn Jordan with investigative resources, legal support, contract analysis, etc
Joseph Cox (the author of this article) is mentioned directly in many of Benn Jordan's videos
Many media outlets have covered this and there’s been considerable citizen activism. It’s laughable that 404 thinks they’re the catalyst.
Yes but Benn Jordan in collaboration with 404 Media were some of the first to do deep investigative research into them. Many other sources reported on the investigations of Jordan/404. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also did important work in documenting stalking by cops and CBS News kept the Flock CEO in check by fact checking his statistics about crime rates
Weren't many of these reports after 404's reporting?