New Bedford police officer accused of using Flock cameras to track ex-partner | Hacker News Reader

New Bedford police officer accused of using Flock cameras to track ex-partner

newbedfordlight.org

205 pointsnewsomix9xl93 comments

I don't understand why a regular patrol officer would / should even have access to something like this without some level of extra authorization. They're not detectives running an open investigation ...

In this case this officer was searching numerous networks over and over again, that alone should trigger some metrics that raise the question "uh ... why?"

Pacheco has been one of the top users of the Flock system this year, according to data The Light previously obtained from the city. The most common reason inputted since April for her searches has been “traffic infraction.”

Just thinking of that reason, I don't even know what Flock would tell you at that point. It would tell you where else they were? Not going to do any good. Makes that reason pretty suspicious.

How else could they have arrested that wisconsin guy for driving to michigan to purchase cannabis? You know, apparently a totally valid use for such technology..

Because no one important cares and no one will do anything about it.

Celebrities get special treatment in hospitals built into pretty much all EHR software. Names are obfuscated, while searches and views get instantly flagged. I highly suspect the same thing exists here.

That's to protect the hospital. Inappropriate access to any medical record covered by HIPAA carries the same weight, it's just less of a legal shit show and less tempting for employees when they aren't rich powerful or famous.

It's not on the same level at all as medical records, but I remember years ago when I got my first "real job" working as a credit adjuster at a major credit card bank that you've definitely heard of.

Any employee could just search the name of a celebrity who was a card holder and view all their transactions. Not sure if that's still the case, but the only point I want to make here is that when this was brought up internally as a security issue, the top management clearly didn't care and did nothing about it.

The funny thing is if you have the Karen HOA edition of the Flock cameras (eg the “private” ones for gated communities etc):

https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/how-the-safe-list-solves-pr...

The HOA ones come with “safe list” whitelisting to somehow cause it to dump local reads for some plates? This slightly also seems like a bad idea at least because then you just need to steal a car inside the gated community to defeat its "safe list" and wander around it without its Flocks reading you.

(I mean, once you leave the gated community, you're fair game again, but still: the 'safe list' feature provides bullshit privacy relief to even more ignorant people who are probably more relieved that they think they're suddenly not the ones that will be tracked but only the evil minorities will be.)

You never worked for a startup where the CEO demanded administrator rights to everything just because he's CEO?

Patrol officer isn’t the equivalent of a CEO.

I've built such software for bigger police departments. I listen to what the stakeholders want and balance them against users.

If the stakeholder wants a way to bypass this or that, then that's what's going to happen. Neither users nor stakeholders will want to be handcuffed in the name of public accountability. Nobody wants to be handcuffed, really.

Police do not want any accountability, that much has been exemplified by the way the police leadership and police organizations object to any attempt to regulate them.

The world would have been better without you.

> Nobody wants to be handcuffed

I’m sure that’s the case for everyone, but we have permissions and security and auditing for reasons none the less.

Yes, because a stakeholder wanted it.

I really wasn't asking you about what you do. It's a larger question than that.

patrol officer is more like a junior QA in your analogy

yeah but not in a US cops version of their place in the analogy

I think they justify it as an ease of use vs security trade off

It was only about an hour ago I saw yet another mindless commentator on one of these threads saying "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about".

These risks were said to be theoretical what ifs? But headlines are showing that they are quite real problems.

Who watches the watchers?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a question that is roughly 2000 years old. Still no good answer.

The journalists uncovering this are doing good and necessary work. We need more transparency. Perhaps every search needs to be tied to a specific case and then made public after some time period.

> Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a question that is roughly 2000 years old. Still no good answer.

I feel like we are moving towards a very specific answer, without much thought: AI.

People who have nothing to hide get ambushed by police at gunpoint, because surveillance system misidentifies them.

Let them show themselves.

The funniest response I've read to this type of reasoning went something like this: a family gathering; topic of privacy came up; boomer-type trotted out the "nothing to hide" line; younger relative asked them if they enjoy a particular type of sexual intercourse with their spouse; red faces and looks of horror; the asker reminded everyone that privacy is important and it doesn't mean one is doing anything wrong.

"Does your phone have a passcode? What are you hiding? Can I look through your text messages?"

The underlying principle here is that secrecy and privacy are not the same thing. The famous illustrative example is that when you’re taking a shit it’s no secret what you’re doing in there, but most people still prefer not to be watched when they do it.

Isn’t the easy reply here that there is no expectation of privacy in public, unlike in one’s home? There are tens, or more likely hundreds of millions of cameras recording outside in the United States.

It's not that simple. If you were in public, going about your business, but someone followed you around perpetually, noting down everything you did, you should feel stalked and harassed. That is exactly what these machines are doing. Being in public means that you're not hiding any one part of your behaviour, but nor are you telling everyone where you've been and where you're going, etc.

In some places, like Germany, that reasonable expectation of privacy standard extends into public. You’re not allowed to just film strangers that have nothing to do with you. In some ways, I feel like this is a better system for our future.

Regardless of their laws, Germany has plenty of CCTV style cameras outdoors just like NYC and other major cities worldwide.

CCTV cameras that are recording on a rolling tape that only keeps a few days of footage that is looked at by no one unless something happens can't be compared to internet connected systems that centralize all the camera feeds and uses AI to track vehicles and people.

> CCTV… is looked at by no one unless something happens

Exactly as these new more efficient systems should be used.

> … uses AI to track vehicles and people

Why would wasting a team of people’s time manually reviewing hours of footage be preferable to a computer doing it? If an Amber Alert goes out, why would we not want to use all technology possible to locate the suspect vehicle? The argument seems to have switched to cameras are fine, just not if they are efficient.

You can set up all kinds of horror scenarios with CCTV cameras, AirTags, cell phones, gps trackers, etc. There is, without a doubt, far less excuse for AirTags to exist than cameras in public spaces when comparing benefits to potential harm.

Why should I feel stalked and harassed by the cameras though? I didn’t feel bothered at all by cameras in NYC. I didn’t feel bothered in Singapore. I drove about 12 hours over the last couple of days and didn’t feel bothered by the numerous cameras along the interstate. I would certainly feel different if followed by an actual human for sure, but cameras give me no reaction honestly.

Is it the AI? If so, why does it matter if it’s AI vs paying a team to manually track your movements on these cameras? Seems hugely inefficient.

Perhaps you'll feel differently if you, or someone you care about, happen to be one of the lucky future misidentifications.

Certainly would be upset, just like if I were misidentified by a human reading the plate number? Of course, I don’t see how it’s relevant though. I would expect at least some human review at some level, for sure!

On the other hand, I have experienced a violent mugging on my street where neither my camera, nor any of my neighbors cameras, worked well enough in low light to identify the plates at all. Car pulled up, passenger jumped out and attacked two older ladies. There are plenty of cases just like this, where video evidence is lacking and would make all of the difference, that I personally feel vastly outweigh potential plate reading issues.

I think that's conflation. Having high visibility of an area so that cameras can be consulted for evidence can be, as you attest, a good thing. Being tracked over an indeterminate length of time, profiled, and maybe one day punished for thoughtcrime, is a very different beast.

And if you think thoughtcrime is far-fetched or paranoid, you aren't paying attention. Governments around the world are moving to crush dissent by limiting gatherings for protest, labelling/charging people as terrorists without having committed any terrorist acts, etc. What makes you think anyone will ever be able to organise against oppression, even if the cause is just, when one is treated as guilty without committing any crime?

Absolutely against using any sort of law enforcement powers for those purposes. I am against thought crime and support all sorts of wide ranging freedoms. We just disagree on if the possibility for misuse outweighs very real and powerful uses.

>I would certainly feel different if followed by an actual human

Why would this bother you? Because of the prospect of physical harm, or the idea that they are watching you/invading your privacy?

Mostly due to the antisocial behavior described. I would not feel at all worried if someone walking on the same sidewalk as me was recording their child with me in the frame. Someone following me and jotting down notes is very strange behavior, at least for someone like me without celebrity.

Stripping this down a bit: would I be fine with a very friendly camera crew documenting everything I do outside in public? No, I wouldn’t like that for privacy reasons. I also wouldn’t like government cameras publicly searchable, and wouldn’t like my phone location publicly searchable, but do not mind law enforcement having access when necessary. It’s a good thought experiment though, and maybe exposes hypocrisy in my view? Not entirely sure.

You are intentionally trying to argue that your feeling of personal safety outweighs the privacy violations that are being discussed. There is the classic quote, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

But to frame it in analogies as you are doing, it is not "a person following you". It is every person following you, at all times. A police officer, your local shop manager who is setting the prices of your groceries, your car insurer, your home insurer, your health insurer. The IRS (etc) agent assigned to you. Me, too. I'm following you, your wife, your children. You don't know me but here I am anyway taking pictures and then selling them to the user above you. Also my bank who sold me a credit card is now also following you. As well as the criminals that want to steal that credit card. Also that criminals kid, who's just curious. There's also a large man in a hat following you. As well as the person who is going to sell you your next car, they're following you too.

All these entities, and more, are following you. Carving you up as a product to sell and exploit.

And to you, you don't mind because you aren't aware. In the same way that a cow in a pen doesn't mind and isn't aware that an enormous system of industry is raising it to be carved up as a product to sell and exploit.

It’s a nice dystopian fantasy but completely unrelated to cameras of public spaces in our current world. It sounds like you are more against the internet than cameras in public spaces, way better tracking data there!

There is zero liberty being given up here. There are already tons of cameras, hundreds of millions in the United States alone, recording public spaces. Banning filming in public spaces absolutely would infringe on our freedoms however, which is not something I would support.

>maybe exposes hypocrisy

I don't know that hypocrisy is the word, but it does seem that you're going a long way to carve out an exception, where there is no real difference.

That is, it appears that you've simply decided one scenario is okay, even though that scenario itself begs the question. The article on which you're commenting demonstrates one reason that's so—the potential for abuse.

So, seems it all boils down to "out of sight, out of mind" in your framing. As long as you don't see the people invading your privacy, you're okay with believing that no one is. You don't mind that all of the tools of surveillance are in place, because you've defined a scenario wherein it's not possible that they're being used to actually surveil you.

In sum, your thought experiment is essentially, "would this be OK in a world that doesn't exist". But, you're answering "yes" in the world that does.

Maybe that's what you're sensing as "hypocrisy".

Potential for abuse is an issue that should be met with legal constraints, not an abandonment of video evidence. A world without Flock or competitors is still a world with hundreds of millions of cameras recording public spaces at all times. There is zero privacy in public spaces, it’s part of the name. That footage is inefficient to access, but does not require a warrant of any kind. It would not surprise me at all if the compliance rate on law enforcement asking for footage from most homes or businesses is above 90%.

I would much rather have an efficient system with strict rules around access vs an inefficient system where each investigation takes massive amounts of human time.

>There is zero privacy in public spaces

You've agreed that this fact does not preclude uncomfortable scenarios, even for yourself. So, the discussion is about where people fall in their comfort.

I would sum up my response to the rest of your comment by noting the difference between individual citizens recording as they please, and a state-operated, always-on surveillance network, with the capacity to surveil every citizen outside of their homes.

It's worth noting here that the government famously faces stricter constitutional limits than do citizens.

The inefficiency you decry is what others value, as it protects privacy and constrains state power. There's long been a trade-off between efficiency and rights, which much of our legal system seeks to balance—as enshrined in various amendments.

Abuse of the frankly violative sort outlined in this article is but one concern, and likely cannot be properly contained in any case—particularly absent the requirement for warrants. This is precisely the reason warrants exist. We don't merely trust law enforcement to abide by its own "rules".

So, the larger point is that the very existence of state-operated surveillance networks is considered an intrusive form of abuse by many. One that uses previously unimaginable technology to circumvent the spirit of the Fourth Amendment, which consistency tells us would have otherwise explicitly protected us from such abuse.

> One that uses previously unimaginable technology to circumvent the spirit of the Fourth Amendment, which consistency tells us would have otherwise explicitly protected us from such abuse

Is it the AI or the number of cameras? It can’t be cameras in general, and I struggle to believe it’s the number of cameras because we have so many cities with tens of thousands of cameras already. So it’s just that it became too efficient and instead, for any investigation, we should pay a team to spend hundreds of man hours collecting and reviewing footage that a computer could have finished immediately?

>Is it the AI or the number of cameras?

To be clear, the controversy didn't just arise with AI—it only intensified.

>we should pay a team to spend hundreds of man hours...

Some argue that none of it should be happening, so would say that it should be prohibitively expensive. But, again, the added "efficiency" makes the problem far worse. Inefficiency is the throughline of the Fourth Amendment.

You've made clear that you value efficiency. But, you've not addressed any of the actual arguments against it.

it's not about privacy in the moment, courts have already said flock is equivalent to warrantless tracking; it's more about privacy in all time-based aspects of your life: where you go, when you go there and the multitude of second order details you can easily infer from this.

There are all kinds of law enforcement powers that do not require a warrant. Video footage is heavily volunteered as it is - they just go to your door and ask for you to send them a copy. I’m guessing the compliance rate is incredibly high, but that’s just a guess. We have cities with tens to hundreds of thousands of cameras already, not Flock but why does it matter? They can track you, but it’s fine because we need to pay $1000 per hour for a team of people to watch hours of CCTV instead of having the computer do it?

The C in CCTV stands for "closed" mate.

Apples to orangutans.

There was a time when you could paste a reddit username into an online tool and it would build a profile of the person in question. And when I came across one of these "if you have nothing to hide..." people, I did just that. After I asked them how the weather was and how their dog was doing they deleted their account. Lightweights.

If you want a bad time just ask a chatbot what it knows about your username.

At this point I think it's necessary to notify anyone who has been tracked after a fixed number of days, unless a court order is used to extend that period. An officer using this for legitimate reasons should have few problems getting that court order. This would at least give people some amount of safety net from stalking by LE.

I think this or similar accountability measures is where we'll need to end up with this kind of technology. It's too useful for catching vehicle theft rings and similar kinds of highly disruptive criminal networks to abandon the technology entirely.

LOVEINT has been a thing for as long as electronic surveillance has existed. We fire and/or prosecute people for it. We didn't turn out back on those capabilities.

I'd like to see someone using systems not available to the general public to to look up info on people without a legitimate purpose be treated as a kind of aggravated stalking.

Government employees should be held to a higher standard because they are in a position of public trust, but TBH people at companies like Google, Meta, Verizon, Comcast abusing internal tools for this should be similarly held accountable because they have access to resources far beyond e.g. one hobbyist logging TPMS IDs on passing vehicles.

Fair point, we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, however I am fearful of a surveillance state. These trust issues seem to be stacking up, so I think statutory transparency is necessary.

With Flock, we can and absolutely should throw the baby out with the bathwater. Good riddance for that demonic little pest.

Fuck that baby and the bath water.

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

In the words of the civil rights attorney on YouTube, "Freedom is scary, deal with it."

but wouldn't such vehicle theft rings change the license plates?

But who's going to police the literal police? They have a track record in this country of having near zero accountability

It's not that I disagree, but police looking up protestors license plates in order to trigger a "law enforcement looked you up" email is one hell of an intimidation tactic

Welp, glad I posted this, because that's an extremely good point. Will have to think about this more. It kind of reminds me of how the reddit self harm notification system was abused. Maybe it can be an opt in type of system, or even based on some threshold. I wonder though, if I were a protestor, and that lookup happened more some expected number of times, it could be important to know.

In my experience there's almost always a way in which things like this can be abused, which is why I lean more towards it being made illegal altogether and accepting the cost of not having mass surveillance. I am yet to find a way in which its not a large can of worms no matter what you do.

But if prohibiting mass surveillance is not an option, the second best thing would be good checks that make sure tools like this can't be used in silence.

The trigger email should obviously go to somebody with more power than a police officer (so that the fear of getting asked ugly questions might slightly intimidate the police officer). Not sure who exactly that somebody would be.

We need strong laws against these authoritarian / fascist companies; and we need to elect representatives who destroy their businesses and zero out the investors.

Seriously. Every dollar that has gone to flock or any similar company needs to be incinerated, or else it will continue, because billionaires like Paul Graham _love_ the idea of having greater control over the masses.

A product that provides surveillance with strict controls and limited scope is potentially great.

This shit is just an attempt to turn America into communist Russia -- where the regular people have no rights, and oligarchs run everything. it's evil, anti-American, and regular people need to ensure that billionaires like Paul Graham, and their lackeys (like hn's own dang) stop being rewarded for their decision to dedicate their lives to the destruction of liberty.

They're evil fucking people, and they will never police themselves. They're all mentally ill.

> A product that provides surveillance with strict controls and limited scope is potentially great.

It's simply not possible for such a thing to exist.

If it can be abused it will be abused.

This has already been demonstrated, repeatedly, throughout history.

At this point I think it's time to ban this dystopian 4th amendment violation surveillance state.

https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png

;-)

Cops abuse every system that's given to them, to varying extents.

Whining about lack of access controls and rogue (i.e. not using to do their job properly) cops is implicitly saying that this system could/would/should exist if it has "proper" access controls, whatever that means.

3d printing to the rescue: https://makerworld.com/en/models/3107766-flock-sock-flock-ca...

As an observer from another country, it is increasingly obvious that America can no longer call itself 'The Land of the Free' unironically.

In my view it is closer to a police state.

This is actually one of the more limited and benign risks of voluntarily installing a municipal/private panopticon system owned by a corporation.

Because of the motivations and degrees of agency associated with under-regulated capitalism, derived data about vehicles and people will be stored indefinitely because it has value to be extracted, to be sold and leased, to the highest bidder, be it to data brokers, police agencies (as is the supposed mission), and intelligence agencies. They won't necessarily be US-based entities either. It will be used to form judgements, discriminate, make inferences, and accusations about people with limited or wrong "evidence" anytime between now, days, years, and who knows for how long in the distant future. No privacy and unknowable risks of misuse and abuse that manifest with use of new technology developed or "connections" made with new information at any time in the future.

News that it’s a woman for once.

Wonder how quick this will get removed off the front page, like the last one about a woman pulled over at gunpoint multiple times because the ALPR kept making a mistake.

Like I said in the last thread... I went and spoke at my county commission meeting today against these cameras: https://www.youtube.com/live/1OmEmpL-7qY?t=720

I went back and got transcripts for the rest of the meetings for the day, and after saying it was not up for a vote today, two of the commissioners attempted to push it through within 10 min of the end of day, but it ended up failing in a tie. So, decision is delayed, and there is actually a chance of fighting these being put up, as well as the ones already there.

> Wonder how quick this will get removed off the front page

YC’s an investor after all

That's not why these are getting flagged.

The tech angle is very weak otherwise too similar to the ordinary news. It's not that we don't care or even disagree.

I'm not saying this to stir an argument either. I'm just giving an honest answer why the rest of us ordinary folk flag these. They go into the same bin as most of the AI posts.

As well, I can't speak for everyone, but the pushback replies to my comment here (if any) would likely be assumed bots/paid engagement.

This problem isn't unique to HN either. The discussion can be fine sometimes, especially if it's more about the tech than the politics, but if people wanted reddit or the ordinary news they'd be over there and wouldn't come here. You can bang your drum over there.

The tech angle is weak? This is about the impact of tech, on privacy, surveillance, and society.

This is a crime that could not be committed without AI, the internet, and relatively inexpensive cameras using solar panels. It is a very tech oriented crime that could not be committed 30 years ago.

If the tech angle is so weak, why is YC invested in the company?

They are enabling a different type of mass surveillance than was possible before due to the new tech available today for searching through mass amounts of video and audio, and aggregating data from all sources in one easy to use interface.

ANY push back is bots? Yeah this is boot-licker bullshit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com