Wisconsin cops used Flock over 100 times to track a Navy veteran after he recorded a traffic stop
Flock used >100 times to track veteran who recorded traffic stop
A federal lawsuit alleges that the Waukesha County Sheriff's Office used Flock Safety's automated license plate readers over 100 times to track Navy veteran Napoleon Jones in the weeks following his lawful recording of a traffic stop. Jones was unlawfully arrested by Deputy Brandon Shayhorn, who later searched for Jones's vehicle without legitimate purpose, allegedly in retaliation for exercising his First Amendment rights. The case highlights the potential for abuse of surveillance technology.
I couldn't understand why or how that would even be a possibility from what happened at the beginning of May would lead me to be searched in the Flock system because from my understanding, it's for criminal stuff.
- claaams
How was there ever any doubt that these cameras and this access would be used in this way?
I personally blame the lack of accountability that police have in the US and the lack of public oversight into how departments operate.
- jmward01
When people believe they are being watched they act differently. Essentially you are coercing them. People need a reasonable sense of privacy to be able to act freely so, to me, this means that privacy is a central requirement of freedom.
There are legitimate reasons for some ability to conduct surveillance, but without a cost any surveillance method becomes mass surveillance. That cost must be human, it must scale in human time, or it turns into mass surveillance since without a human cost all it takes is one person and one button to watch one or a hundred thousand people.
Technologies like flock have no human scaling cost. They run 24/7/365 and make surveilling one person or hundreds of thousands of people as easy as pushing a button. There is no human scaling cost to them. That means that all it takes to abuse a massive portion of the population is one person and one action. The probability of abuse, abuse which harms a population as a whole, therefore approaches 100% no matter how 'good' the controls are on it. All mass surveillance technologies have this fundamental flaw. The consequence of that abuse is that people, rightfully, will believe that they are being watched, legitimately or not, 24/7/365. The harm here is clear. A society that is under mass surveillance is a society that is having its basic freedoms continuously attacked.
Mass surveillance, surveillance without a direct human cost that scales with the level of surveillance, is not compatible with any definiti […]
- ventana
Cops love Flock. I'm subscribed to some of the local police department accounts in social networks, and Facebook shows me more of those across the country, and I see a lot of posts like “a serious crime happened, we tracked the car using the Flock license place reader and the suspect is now in custody”.
I think it's true that Flock indeed helps with the actual policing, no doubt about that. But it also seems like police departments across the country really try to promote the view that Flock is a good technology that helps safety, because some cities ultimately voted to disable Flock [1], and I'm sure police are just mad about this and don't want this to happen.
I can't wait until this finally reaches the Supreme court and they hopefully decide that those cameras are unconstitutional.
[1]: just a local example: https://www.mountainview.gov/Home/Components/News/News/1211/...
- venusenvy47
How can we find more information about when we can refuse police requests as is mentioned here? It seems like the public needs to know about when we can legally do this.
"Shayhorn's supervisor informed him shortly after the arrest that he'd, in fact, illegally stopped Jones, and he therefore could not compel Jones to produce his identification"
- tostrstrudel
- theturtletalks
Was just reading into this and it’s infuriating. He was recording another person’s traffic stop in a parking lot. Once the stop was done, he walks to his car. The same officer goes to his car and “pulls him over.” The vet says that you can’t pull someone over in a private parking lot, that’s not a legal stop. Doesn’t matter, he’s arrested and car towed.
He’s kept in jail for 5 hrs before being released for it not being a legal stop just like the vet said. Then that officer tracked him thru flock over 100 times for some personal vendetta.
- wateralien
Surely access to footage can be gated behind some sort of expedited digital court warrant?
I always think of that scene in Minority Report where 3 judges are conferenced in live when a “vision” arrived.
Because if used properly and lawfully these cameras can be useful to keep people safe. Including from the cops.
- thangalin
https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png ;-)
See also: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/