Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Using Flock's Cameras to Stalk People (404media.co) 90
404 Media remembers how a Florida police office looked up his ex-girlfriend's license plate in the Flock automated license plate reader system at least 69 times in 2024 — even searching for her mom's license plate at least 24 times. The police office was charged with stalking and hacking-related offenses, serving one day in prison with five years of probation — but his case "was not a one-off." [Alternate link via Bruce Schneier]
Local news reports from around the country repeatedly detail police abusing the Flock surveillance system in order to stalk their partners or ex-partners. The contours of each story are much the same, with the police officer in question using their access to the system to repeatedly track a specific person over the course of weeks or months. The cases highlight the fact that Flock can be used to track the whereabouts of individual people, that police do not get a warrant in order to use the system, and that, if they have access to the system, they have the technical ability to look up any license plate they want for any reason they want. An April study by the civil rights group Institute for Justice found that at least 18 police officers have been caught around the country using Flock to stalk a romantic interest in the last few years; another database, called the ALPR Abuse Library, has documented 20 specific cases of "stalking/targeting" around the country.
The known cases of police stalking are almost certainly a vast underreporting of the overall abuse, because they largely include only cases in which the behavior was so egregious that it led to police officers being fired, arrested, or both. Flock told 404 Media that it is "aware of 15 incidents of abuse, each surfaced because of the transparency and accountability features deliberately built into our platform.... There are also 140,000 monthly active users of Flock, so the relatively rare instances of abuse, while obviously wrong and awful, are exactly that — rare," a Flock spokesperson told 404 Media. [One in 10,000.] "Humans are fallible; unlike most tools society provide law enforcement, Flock ensures that in the instances when our technology is misused, the evidence used to hold responsible parties accountable, is right there in our system. We also encourage all our customers to have a usage policy, regular training, and to implement our Audit Assistance tool, which proactively flags unintended use...."
But it is also the case that Flock has strenuously fought against lawsuits and potential regulations that are seeking to require police to get a warrant to use the system. And many cases of abuse have not been detected by police departments themselves but by those private citizens, journalists, and stalking victims who have found patterns of abuse in public records files they have obtained from their local police departments. In most cases of Flock-related stalking reviewed by 404 Media, the abuse occurred over the course of months or years, and the victims were subjected to dozens or hundreds of lookups. Other abuse cases have been discovered using the website HaveIBeenFlocked.com, a website that compiles Flock searches released via public records requests and turns them into a searchable database. Flock has repeatedly tried to get that website taken down, as we have previously reported.
The known cases of police stalking are almost certainly a vast underreporting of the overall abuse, because they largely include only cases in which the behavior was so egregious that it led to police officers being fired, arrested, or both. Flock told 404 Media that it is "aware of 15 incidents of abuse, each surfaced because of the transparency and accountability features deliberately built into our platform.... There are also 140,000 monthly active users of Flock, so the relatively rare instances of abuse, while obviously wrong and awful, are exactly that — rare," a Flock spokesperson told 404 Media. [One in 10,000.] "Humans are fallible; unlike most tools society provide law enforcement, Flock ensures that in the instances when our technology is misused, the evidence used to hold responsible parties accountable, is right there in our system. We also encourage all our customers to have a usage policy, regular training, and to implement our Audit Assistance tool, which proactively flags unintended use...."
But it is also the case that Flock has strenuously fought against lawsuits and potential regulations that are seeking to require police to get a warrant to use the system. And many cases of abuse have not been detected by police departments themselves but by those private citizens, journalists, and stalking victims who have found patterns of abuse in public records files they have obtained from their local police departments. In most cases of Flock-related stalking reviewed by 404 Media, the abuse occurred over the course of months or years, and the victims were subjected to dozens or hundreds of lookups. Other abuse cases have been discovered using the website HaveIBeenFlocked.com, a website that compiles Flock searches released via public records requests and turns them into a searchable database. Flock has repeatedly tried to get that website taken down, as we have previously reported.
24/7 round the clock surveillance is abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
But I mean what the hell am I supposed to do in a country where we are about to give the Iranian dictatorship $300 billion of taxpayer money and 37% of the country is cool with that because they think it's going to be private money. Like what the hell do I say to somebody who thinks like that? There is a fundamental breakdown in thought processes in this country with over 1/3 of the country unable to think and reason rationally or competently..
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I half expected you to segue into how it's America's car-centric nature that makes this sort of tracking possible in the first place.
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it's America's car-centric nature that makes this sort of tracking possible
Video surveillance in the UK. With facial recognition, you don't have to be in a car to be followed.
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That would have been an interesting angle, but I don't see 24/7 as the crux of the problem. The police-state/authoritarian personality is not crucially dependent on surveillance. If that were the case, then East Germany should still be going strong.
I can actually recall a stop-and-frisk scenario that convinced me the cops can find SOMETHING to make an issue of if they search carefully enough. Asking for a friend who feels lucky the police settled for a hundred bucks?
My own feelings are mixed. I'm a big beli
Re:24/7 round the clock surveillance is abuse (Score:4, Interesting)
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The real annoying thing about the climate stuff, is in 2026 we have all the knowledge in place to actually solve this cursed problem. Its literally cheaper to get power out of renewables than almost any other means, and if we are prepared for a lead time and a bit of cost, we are quite capable of going nuclear too, if we sort out the red tape and bullshit. But 50% of the population vote for parties that campaign on "DIG BABY DIG! PHYSICS IN THE SKY IS A COMMUNIST PLOT" and the other 50% of the population a
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supposed to do in a country where we are about to give the Iranian dictatorship $300 billion of taxpayer money and 37% of the country is cool with that because they think it's going to be private money.
Oh this should be good. Do tell where and how is Trump going to get the votes in Congress for such an appropriation even if that is his plan. How would the treasury/DOD/IC etc move such a large amount of money without an accounting that would get even Trump impeached if he does not go to congress for it.
The problem is 37% that thinks it is going to be tax dollars going to Iran - by the way this "deal" isnt going last a month if by some change it does actually get inked anyway - the problem is 37% that has
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Part if the reason is everyone is subscribing to their idealogy and own ideas and it's polarizing everything.
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It's easier to just believe and repeat than take a few moments to think...and then possibly disagree with your "friends".
This is made even worse by the pervasive way cancel culture has seeped into every day life. It's not the rock star getting canceled for hospitalizing their wife for the 3rd time. Sadly we skipped right over that and went to cancel someone unknowingly using a commonplace but mildly offensive term.
Now it's people deciding you can't be friends because of an all-or-nothing approach to every p
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I owe that kind of thing to a loss or change of morality, but to each their own.
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I'm more worried about the 2/3 (actually much less) that you didn't mention ... who mindlessly believe any nonsense that comes their way if it aligns with their political (dis)beliefs. The idea that the left has a monopoly on "the truth" is comically out of alignment with reality. Worse, the pseudo-religious dedication prohibits any kind of rational, neutral conversation. This isn't to say the right is always...right. They've got plenty of stupid too but generally seem more open to conversation or even cri
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If you can abuse surveillance, then it must be put under a warrant. 1) so you have transparency to who is getting the information 2) so there is control so not any idiot can access the information.
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I too hate the surveillance, but the good guys need tech at least equivalent to the bad guys to stand any chance of catching the bad guys. The bad buys will use whatever tech they can to get away, regardless of the rules.
How about this: The cops can have and use the tech to track people, but if it is shown to be unjustified (ie: privacy invasion does not prove guilt) that person can sue for a large amount, enough to discourage misuse. "Fruit of the poisonous tree" evidence would be allowed (if it pr
We have to ban these (Score:5, Insightful)
As Lord Acton said: Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We give a lot of surveillance power to law enforcement already. Adding this temptation is stupid and will not solve the crime problems.
You have to give something up (Score:2, Insightful)
You have to change how you vote and doing that means giving up other issues. These are going to typically be issues that appeal to the right wing, especially culture War issues because you can give those up without it directly impacting your civil rights or your income.
That's a tough sale for a lot of people especially anyone older. And they can always just tell
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This seems to be old vs young instead of left vs right. Both my progressive and GOP friends under 40 hate these things; anyone over 60 seems to love them. The people who have the most stuff seem to want them badly, and everyone else sees them as privacy-destroying nightmares.
I think there's also a party-in-power vs not-in-power dynamic. When Biden surveilled a bunch of large Catholic families via the FBI becuase they liked their religion, GOP railed and Dems turned a blind eye or made excuses. Now that the
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The Biden-era FBI targeted devout Catholics. See here: https://judiciary.house.gov/me... [house.gov]
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Probably something similar to the current regime asking colleges for lists of Jewish students and faculty.
They take a "special interest" in them as a voting/fundraising constituency, and were too stupid to consider the optics of building a list.
Re:You have to give something up (Score:5, Informative)
I agree with Patent Lover, but I'll also object to your ageist bigotry. I'm in my late 60s and I hate those cameras every bit as much as you do. Then you also out yourself as hating old people because you think we have all the stuff and money. Newsflash NOT from the media but from the real world: All the old people you see every day working retail jobs are not rich hoarders; they're poor and have to work despite being old. Go bitch at the ultra-rich. Old people deserve as much courtesy and respect as anybody else does.
It's not about hating the cameras (Score:1)
I don't pay much attention to the media. It's billionaire owned and they are fully exercising their power now. It's mostly just propaganda now. AP and rueters are still a little functional but they are in the process of being dismantled.
Give me a list of two or three issues you would be willing to compromise on in order to ban those cameras. Give me a list of the last three people
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When I find people who react to me pointing out that old people are terrible they are almost always the kind of people who are pretty fucking conservative and maybe you're willing to let the trans girls have their hormones as long as you don't have to look at them in public. Hell maybe you are begrudgingly willing to let them be out in public. Or maybe it's not trans people that pushes your buttons maybe it's something else. Maybe it's violent video games or maybe you're obsessed with getting lower taxes or maybe you want to make kids work harder for less or something. But there's some little bit of nastiness in your soul that you won't let go.
Damn, you're bitter. And fuck you for trying to stereotype me. You're WAY off in that entire paragraph. Asshole. I really hate swearing in posts, but you deserve that one.
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The median net worth of a person in their late 60s is $410,000, while that of a person under 35 is $39,040. [nerdwallet.com] So the person you're responding to has an evidence-based point.
It's even worse in California where voters in 1978 (people born in 1960 or earlier who would be in their mid to late 60s today) decided to rob from future generations [slate.com] and then require a supermajority to repeal what they did.
But you're right that many elderly are poor, the one
It's because old people lean right (Score:3)
There is also a healthy amount of pulling the ladder up behind you. People for example who had their education paid for by the government but didn't know that it was happening because the subsidies were indirect. So those people desperately fight to prevent student loan debt forgiveness because it's not fair it's not fair it's not fair. When they had the government paying for their education the ent
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You have to change how you vote and doing that means giving up other issues. These are going to typically be issues that appeal to the right wing, especially culture War issues because you can give those up without it directly impacting your civil rights or your income.
And there it is again. You're saying the quiet part out loud. Nothing really matters to you but income and protecting your little gravy train of give awayd.
Culture, Values, etc are what we live for, bread alone is not enough. rsilvergun lays it bare, the truth about leftism is that it truly is just about hedonism and greed! Which is of course why they always attack conservatives for any policies that let someone keep something they earned or perhaps were given, its all about masking their desperate hypoc
That is a lot of dog whistles (Score:2)
When the fascists are done letting you beat the hell out of queers and brown people they're going to do terrible things to you. If you happen to be getting paid they'll take all your money and property. Of course this is probably I'm just responding to a bot. After all Trump fucks kids. And by repeating Trump fucks kids a few times these shitty little llms pick that up.
But there are a lot of mean old ra
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The most virulent racist on this forum is you!
Every other comment of yours is some form of bigotry toward white people or older people. The relative handful of posts that are not that are some kind of christophobism.
You are really sad, small, terrible person. I only even both commenting because I worry someone might otherwise come to this forum unfamiliar with unhinged anti-social, nature and think it represents any significant portion of broader thinking here. I like Slashdot, and I hate watching you des
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The irony of you being the only one here going on about the n-word and calling people fascists.
Assuming anyone who rejects this unhinged nonsense is a bot is just another way to reinforce your echo chamber. It's much easier to label someone a racist and dismiss them instead of considering the garbage you're spoon fed (lol AP) is unbiased and accurate.
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Green lasers
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Infrared would probably be better.... if you can aim the damn things safely.... maybe if they had a laser sight on them...
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On the other hand, this is a great way to fish out the few bad ones. If you can't control a temptation to use power for personal gain, you shouldn't be a police officer.
This provides both opportunity, and also hard evidence admissible in court if someone takes it.
I.e. cop with tendencies to stalk would use other means to stalk that are less traceable. This reveals them.
Re:We have to ban these (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, this is a great way to fish out the few bad ones.
Except it doesn't. Only a tiny fraction of the cops doing such stalking get caught.
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Ideally this would keep bad cops off the streets. In the real world, said bad cop just gets a job being a cop somewhere else with a boss who is fully aware of their bad conduct and implicitly approves.
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"Fishing out" only works when the fisherman isn't on the same team as the fish.
One day in prison? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah anyone else would get years.
Re: One day in prison? (Score:2)
I've been to jail. I assume as a cop accused of this level of misconduct, one day probably means he spent from 11.59pm to 12.01am in a holding cell at the police station.
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I've been to jail. I assume as a cop accused of this level of misconduct, one day probably means he spent from 11.59pm to 12.01am in a holding cell at the police station.
Do you blame them? A cop in a general population would not do well, even for a short amount of time. Many of the prisons in the U.S. are abusive, rights-violating places that fail to recognize that a vast majority of the inmates will be released back into the population, and having abusive, criminal-producing prisons is about as far away from rehabilitation and prevention of future crime as we can get.
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Our prisons should be about justice and prevention of future crime. Instead, they are about revenge and generating profits for for-profit jail and prison operators.
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Protecting the public from the criminal
Punishing the criminal
Preventing crime
The latter is expected to be a combination of rehabilitation and deterrence.
The second is not revenge, it is one of the core components of Justice. Punishment is not revenge. I don't pop my dog on the nose for revenge; I do it because she needs to not poop on the floor. She's very friendly and rarely poops inside.
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Plus probation. Not sure if that will matter, though it might for anyone forced to look elsewhere for employment.
If you have nothing to hide... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheap = abused. (Score:5, Interesting)
The real problem is that the use of the Flock system is cheap. If the cops had to pay $1,000 per search request I guarantee that a police officer would become a gate keeper ensuring that each and every request was valid.
Re: Cheap = abused. (Score:5, Insightful)
But, then we get all the complaints about all the cops say it's not worthwhile to track down felony shoplifters because the searches cost too much.
Won't you think of the cats and dogs?!They're eating the cats and dogs over there and there's nothing we can do to stop them because we don't have the budget to search their license plates.
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In school I was issued $5 of printer credits for free each month, if I needed more I had to buy them; this meant you couldn't abuse the privileges by printing out 1000 copies of "CowboyNeal Sucks" over and over.
So you would think they could issue so many searches to the officers and any that go over could be flagged.
This would be an admin headache and cost money so I doubt it will go anywhere. Plus I've always been a proponent of "trust your employees" but it seems in this case that might be a little bit na
Re: Cheap = abused. (Score:3)
But CITIZEN! THAT is an OBSTACLE to police investigations!
Don't you want police to investigate crimes!?
You aren't SOFT ON CRIME, are you!? Only criminals would have anything to fear from expanded police powers, citizen!
Remember Citizen, Reauthorizing FISA is absolutely ESSENTIAL to our national security, because the gatekeeping by all those bad, onerous warrants we used to need were OBSTACLES to INVESTIGATION! Those mean, bad terrorists that hate our way of life are aided and abetted by our heroic men and
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The last thing these scummy ALPR companies need is more money.
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What you're suggesting is for a private company to charge a public organization punitive fees that are not based on any market reality, or open bidding process.
If you believe that is the way to hold police accountable, you will never hold police accountable. You will just enrich another bro - who will use that money to buy your politicians, police, and government wholesale.
ACAB (Score:4, Informative)
Some cops are bad cops. Some cops are presumably not-bad, but have done a piss poor job of policing the bad cops.
"The rotten apple spoils his companion." — Poor Richard's almanack, 1736
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I saw a fake advert in Germany in May 2021, posted in the name of satire.
The advert looked like one for "Parship" which is an online dating service.
The text translates to "A policeman/woman looks up Helene Fischer's data every 17 minutes" (she is a singer) and the small print went into more detail of abusive searches by the police (of just one state) in their online database. A lawyer was getting threatening letters from self-proclaim
Not everything should exist (Score:2)
This is why you don't create stuff like this. You know what human nature is, and you know not everyone is going to have the self discipline to not abuse these systems.
Flock cops (Score:1)
There, I said it
silver lining (Score:2)
At least abusive cops are outing themselves. These abused are an embarrassment for any police department forced to arrest one of their own.
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abusers, stupid autocorrect
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I think it's correct either way. They should be embarrassed of the people they abused.
Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
And that title is backed by the fact that a decade ago or so I was implementing proper auditing to track cops because they were... abusing video systems and it made it into the news.
Cops are just people, the badge doesn't confer ethics or strength of character. It often does confer a sense of superiority to the general public and a belief that they're above some of the rules the rest of us abide by.
Even the best, most upright cop should never be taken at their word - there should always be some form of oversight. Because they're humans.
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Even the best, most upright cop should never be taken at their word - there should always be some form of oversight. Because they're humans.
Couple of options:
1) The data should be controlled and accessed by the courts instead of the police. The police can submit a query to the court, effectively making it the same as a warrant application.
2) All data queries require an identifier/password/key that is included with a warrant issued by a court. Any query that doesn't include a valid identifier results in immediate dismissal of the officer. Probably easier to implement than 1, though maybe not as effective.
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1) Typically the systems monitoring, if not the systems themselves, is dumped on the police along with the funding. I agree in principle that police data systems should be handled by an arms-length agency without ties to any particular police service. I also believe this should include their body cams, interview room video, and even their fleet and weapons/ammo tracking. They should not have any oversight over their own data because that leads to the potential for abuse.
2) At least where I am... office
Flock actually makes a good argument I think (Score:1)
Cops are going to stalk ex-girlfriends either way. If they're snitching on the ones who do it with their hardware... that sounds like a win.
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Yeah. The alternative is that cops slap one of their own trackers on a subjects vehicle. Upside (for dirty cops): Those aren't logged to the same degree. If at all. Downside (for cops in general): You have to know who you are tracking ahead of time. And then get near or in* their car. And maybe even have a warrant in your pocket. It does no good to answer a question like: Who was in the vicinity of a bank robbery at some date/time.
*Pro tip for idiot cops: I've found trackers spliced into any old wire that
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Used to walk the dog rather late at night, and several times I saw a local cop driving very slowly down the street with his lights off past his ex-wife's house. This is nothing new.
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cue Juvenal (attributed) (Score:1)
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Perhaps appropriately, the original context had to do with someone trying to control his wife.
A really good tool? But not for what you think. (Score:2)
Since the assertion is that crooked cops keep getting flushed out for using Flock camera footage for illegal and even evil purposes. Seems to me if that assertion holds we have here in our hands a really good if slightly dangerous tool to deploy for finding crooked cops. As for personal privacy, that ship has sailed, repeatedly. Privacy today is nothing like what I grew up with in the 1950s'.
{o.o}
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In law, indeed the privacy was not there. In practice it is only relatively recent nearly everybody carries around cameras. The density of people was enough smaller that the illusion of more privacy than legally existed persisted. The practical privacy we had was significantly greater in most regards and, yes, less in others. Today one must actively assert privacy rights. Back then most people were not Nosy Nellies. Whether that was a good thing or not is still debatable. But, *I* liked it.
{^_^}
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And they probably respect privacy in more traditional ways. (And, yes, they probably still gossip about it in some circles. But that selected out the people you did not want to get close to.)
Back in the 50s I was a VERY free range child. Now that's a guaranteed call to the parent from the child protection pricks.
{^_^}
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While it exists it is a powerful tool to expose the dirty cop minority. I figure that fact alone would put the dirties firmly against the cameras that have too little security applied to prevent a dirty from stalking somebody. (Trust me. That ain't fun based on personal experience.) You and I and, indeed, everybody else must answer for themselves whether solving a kidnap and murder even an inept cop could solve with cameras is more of a problem than our worries that some behavior we take part in is likely t
You can't give power to people... (Score:2)
...and not expect someone to abuse it. Goes for surveillance, back doors, anything that might be conducive to abuse.
In this particular case, it doesn't surprise me at all that a cop would use surveillance for personal gain. What surprises me a little was that he was caught.