Once the police started to record every interaction with the public, along with their existing habit of placing traffic cameras left and right, they acquired enough data to track people.
Trying to restrict the analysis of existing data is never going to work. The police can always point to some death that wouldn't have happened, if they had ran Flock's software on their surveillance footage.
And even if by some miracle you manage to forbid plate recognition, cross referencing, etc, every ambitious (or lazy) detective would start doing it on the down low with OSS software.
I was sold during the recruiting process on high ethics and morals and an idealistic vision.
The reality was a surveillance state, questionable policies on data sharing between agencies and private installations (HOA, etc.), and a CEO with a very literal belief that Flock should "eliminate all crime" - not "visionary" but far more literal. It was way too Minority Report for my liking.
They have a public "disclosure" site that supposedly shows the agencies using Flock that is absolutely inaccurate (there are three agencies in my County alone using it that are not listed there).
Any conversations about ethics and the other "should we even do this?" questions got consistently shorter and superficial during my time there.
Why must it be this way?
Because we're a bunch of bitch-ass pansies unwilling to tell our fellow countrymen (and women) to shove it when they permit the use of such logic.
I don't care "how many children need to die" or whatever, the sum total of the affronts upon our freedom a is not worth it. What even is the point of caring about the children if we're giving them a totalitarian dump to inherit?
I don't think this is true? As far as I can tell any time the recording is mentioned in a complaint at the police behaviour the camera was off due to [battery life|maintenance|other].
You also get just rank intimidation. My friend got out of jail and the next day tried to file a complaint about an officer stealing his pocket money during an arrest. He was placed in a room with the arresting officer, who explained that any complaint which was filed would incur retribution from the DA with regards to the thing that got him arrested. This is happening in a large urbanized precinct, in a blue state.
To ever regain control of the police force, the various civilian & political oversight bodies would need to prosecute thousands of felony exortion, kidnapping, and assault cases a year.
If this feature is used to make an arrest, there's a good chance the case would be thrown out.
So, using our freedom of movement is now suspicious?
If they decide you are suspicious, they'll get an email alert about your location.
All fine so far. Except that the direction it was pointed at was the neighborhood middle school. Which means these three notably white college students started flock by surveilled predominantly black young kids.
The neighborhood was pissed - but what are you going to do?
Eventually Flock took off and they moved out.
My point is that if your product started as surveillance on not just another age demographic but a racial and class demographic, is it any surprise that all of this is fundamentally in the DNA of the company?
Change the race of the parties up all you want and it doesn't change a thing.
I do not feel guilty of the unethical actions of others.
It’s time to snip the flock.
In the first video, note the checkbox in the analysis program for displaying vehicles with "strange plates" which were in range for reading but not read. Trying to obscure a plate draws automated attention.
Big Brother has AI, too.
Gotta have some number on the thing for your own ID purposes and if it saves tou a $50 semi truck toll bill 1/500th of the time that's icing on the cake.
Larry Ellison said it best a few months ago: "AI will keep you on your best behavior"[1].
[1] Meeting with Sam Altman, President Trump, and Masayoshi Son, announcing $500 million infrastructure deal.
The last ten years have stuck out as a continuous loop of "this is so messed up it wouldn't be a believable/good movie plot".
And once you're on their radar, you're probably going to also end up being marked for extra scrutiny. You might find yourself being pulled over more often, or getting the SSSS on your airplane boarding pass.
ICE are to a large extent above the law. Their entire purpose is to snatch people and move them to locations where they can be denied legal redress. A couple of high profile cases have only got redress due to very dedicated intervention by congresspeople, which does not scale.
I think people need to start reckoning with the underlying problem, which is that oppressive policing in America is popular provided it's happening to someone else.
Curious how "Homeland Security" and "State Security" are equivalent names.
Looking forward to a "Report suspicious neighbors"-program next. Your neighbor made fun of Trump? Report this unamerican activity to Kristi Noem!
The heuristics are clearly about who to pull over, etc. Evidence for arrest/search will be determined afterwards. And, as far as search is concerned, it could be as simple as getting a dog to bark.
They'll just parallel construct the crap out of it and get their arrest anyway.
So if they flock to the cause, all arrests are go. And there are always fallback crimes everyone in a modern society commits, that can be dragged in after a search .
And one final thing about this... the prosecutor (who has probably said some variation of "ignorance of the law is not an excuse" to try to get a conviction) can't claim ignorance as a defense to a Brady violation. Failing to disclose, whether they knew or not, is a Brady violation.
Yes, but the unfortunate thing with names is that people get to pick them to sound however they want.
This is why the official name of the Berlin Wall translates as "anti-fascist protection barrier", along with all the examples that probably inspired 1984 (written in 48, so before the wall).
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/coronavirus-in-minnes...
I’m sure there are also ways to anonymously report illegal immigrants to ICE as well. People are still free to criticize Trump all they want. The First Amendment is pretty clear on this.
I guess it depends on how you define "person."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activist_deportations_in_the_s...
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/19/trump-deportation-g...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/nyregion/ice-arrests-pale...
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/rumeysa-ozturk-tufts...
In theory.
He's not a king or a dictator. Much of his agenda is being put in check by the other two branches of government.
Paramount paid $16 million to the Trump library fund to settle a meritless case, because of his ability to wield the FCC to squash their merger.
Colbert called this out on his show as rampant extortion by the Trump Administration, and they promptly cancelled his show.
Sure, you can argue that this wasn't a police/military act, and the government itself did not punish Colbert for his views and speech.
But in cronyism, especially under a regime actively trying to gut the federal government and allow private parties to assume it's functions, this becomes at best a nominal distinction. If you, in an official government capacity, can wield your power to enact vengeance on your opponents and dissidents, maybe even going as far as to diacriminate against entire states that vote against you (https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/trump-discriminati...), you have a mechanism with which you can quasi-legally (good luck fighting this one in court) punish Speech You Do Not Like.
For the average, or even exceptional person, this functionally amounts to a restriction on your speech. I am highly critical of Trump, but not under any avenue tied to my identity.
I am far from the only person who operates this way. The assertion that you can freely citizen the administration without fear of reprisal does not hold water.