Cops Searched Thousands of Flock Cameras for Reasons of 'LMAO,' 'IDK,' 'Hehe,' And 'Asdfg' (eff.org) 166
404 Media reports:
Last summer, a cop with the Lake County, Indiana Sheriff's Department used Flock's surveillance search engine to look for a license plate across more than 19,000 cameras in 1,558 cities and towns. The cop's stated reason for the search, according to a record of Flock's system, was "LMAO."
The cop is one of dozens who put gibberish, jokes, or other nonsense into Flock's "reason" box, highlighting the casualness and lack of care some cops have when searching an incredibly powerful surveillance system. This is on top of the thousands upon thousands of cops who simply wrote something like "investigation," "test," or left the box blank as their search "reason," according to a new analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and shared with 404 Media. EFF's investigation found cops across dozens of jurisdictions writing "LMAO," "LOL," "Hehe," "Haha," "idk," "blah," "TBD," and "robbery I don't remember the case number leave me alone" in Flock's "reason" box for searches.
They found cops writing "idiot," "fuck this new search engine," "dickhead," "shithead," and "WEIRD KID" in the reason box. And they found an entire class of police button mashers, who ran searches for reasons of "asdfg," "gyghkkghghjkghjk," "jhjhjkhj," "jkhhkjhjk," "nmbvcbnm," and so on and so forth. The searches came from police departments across the country from 2023 through late 2025, when Flock changed how the "reason" box in its search system functions...
Each time a search is performed, a record of it is saved in the Flock system, which can be obtained by the public using government records requests. These audit logs show hundreds of thousands of searches of the system; after 404 Media and other news outlets used these types of logs to show police using the Flock system to look for undocumented immigrants on behalf of ICE, a woman in Texas who had an abortion, and protesters, cops were warned by government surveillance centers to be "as vague as permissible" about the reasons for their searches...
A police department said it investigated a cop who wrote "driving around being weird" in the reason field but found it was for "legitimate public safety purposes."
If a police chief "stood in front of a city council and asked for permission to install hundreds of cameras just so his officers could investigate the high crime of 'haha,' they would be laughed out of the room," argues the EFF blog post, calling this proof that agencies can't be trusted to oversee themselves.
But judges aren't being asked to authorize searches or review evidence, which the EFF post argues shows laws and courts haven't caught up yet with a new technology. Whatever auditing happens is clearly "deficient," the EFF warns, and while many jurisdictions require by law an actual reason for searches, "this keeps happening because police use automated license plate readers as a convenient shortcut around constitutional privacy safeguards." The EFF sees police officers "making a mockery of our civil liberties" by logging reasons like "LOL", "LMAO", "sexy", and "idk" while accessing sensitive location data.
In fact, they argue the warrant-less databases fostered a culture of abuse that "allowed police to treat a mass surveillance network like their own personal search engine, permitting the tracking of the movements of everyday citizens for low-level complaints, personal whims, and sometimes, seemingly, for the lols." Flock Safety claims it has improved its system by requiring officers to select from a dropdown list of crimes before running a search-but that only makes it easier for officers to hide improper searches behind the veneer of uniformity. The system does not require proof that the dropdown reason actually matches the true purpose of the search... Since this update, officers are no longer required to type out why they are digging through a driver's movement history, and instead can select a pre-packaged option like "Traffic infraction" or "Other" in half a second...
Mass surveillance is incompatible with a free society, and especially so when the people with access to this data are treating it like a joke. This ALPR mass surveillance — the indiscriminate, continuous collection and retention of location data on every driver, regardless of suspicion — should not exist. But because it does, EFF continues to urge courts and state legislatures to immediately step in and impose strict, enforceable restrictions to rein in this abuse. At an absolute minimum, this means mandating rigid data deletion deadlines and an ironclad warrant requirement.
If police want the power to track a person's movements, they must be required to convince a judge with evidence and probable cause. They should not be able to bypass the Constitution with a search for "haha."
The cop is one of dozens who put gibberish, jokes, or other nonsense into Flock's "reason" box, highlighting the casualness and lack of care some cops have when searching an incredibly powerful surveillance system. This is on top of the thousands upon thousands of cops who simply wrote something like "investigation," "test," or left the box blank as their search "reason," according to a new analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and shared with 404 Media. EFF's investigation found cops across dozens of jurisdictions writing "LMAO," "LOL," "Hehe," "Haha," "idk," "blah," "TBD," and "robbery I don't remember the case number leave me alone" in Flock's "reason" box for searches.
They found cops writing "idiot," "fuck this new search engine," "dickhead," "shithead," and "WEIRD KID" in the reason box. And they found an entire class of police button mashers, who ran searches for reasons of "asdfg," "gyghkkghghjkghjk," "jhjhjkhj," "jkhhkjhjk," "nmbvcbnm," and so on and so forth. The searches came from police departments across the country from 2023 through late 2025, when Flock changed how the "reason" box in its search system functions...
Each time a search is performed, a record of it is saved in the Flock system, which can be obtained by the public using government records requests. These audit logs show hundreds of thousands of searches of the system; after 404 Media and other news outlets used these types of logs to show police using the Flock system to look for undocumented immigrants on behalf of ICE, a woman in Texas who had an abortion, and protesters, cops were warned by government surveillance centers to be "as vague as permissible" about the reasons for their searches...
A police department said it investigated a cop who wrote "driving around being weird" in the reason field but found it was for "legitimate public safety purposes."
If a police chief "stood in front of a city council and asked for permission to install hundreds of cameras just so his officers could investigate the high crime of 'haha,' they would be laughed out of the room," argues the EFF blog post, calling this proof that agencies can't be trusted to oversee themselves.
But judges aren't being asked to authorize searches or review evidence, which the EFF post argues shows laws and courts haven't caught up yet with a new technology. Whatever auditing happens is clearly "deficient," the EFF warns, and while many jurisdictions require by law an actual reason for searches, "this keeps happening because police use automated license plate readers as a convenient shortcut around constitutional privacy safeguards." The EFF sees police officers "making a mockery of our civil liberties" by logging reasons like "LOL", "LMAO", "sexy", and "idk" while accessing sensitive location data.
In fact, they argue the warrant-less databases fostered a culture of abuse that "allowed police to treat a mass surveillance network like their own personal search engine, permitting the tracking of the movements of everyday citizens for low-level complaints, personal whims, and sometimes, seemingly, for the lols." Flock Safety claims it has improved its system by requiring officers to select from a dropdown list of crimes before running a search-but that only makes it easier for officers to hide improper searches behind the veneer of uniformity. The system does not require proof that the dropdown reason actually matches the true purpose of the search... Since this update, officers are no longer required to type out why they are digging through a driver's movement history, and instead can select a pre-packaged option like "Traffic infraction" or "Other" in half a second...
Mass surveillance is incompatible with a free society, and especially so when the people with access to this data are treating it like a joke. This ALPR mass surveillance — the indiscriminate, continuous collection and retention of location data on every driver, regardless of suspicion — should not exist. But because it does, EFF continues to urge courts and state legislatures to immediately step in and impose strict, enforceable restrictions to rein in this abuse. At an absolute minimum, this means mandating rigid data deletion deadlines and an ironclad warrant requirement.
If police want the power to track a person's movements, they must be required to convince a judge with evidence and probable cause. They should not be able to bypass the Constitution with a search for "haha."
Lock them up or fire them, at least (Score:5, Insightful)
doctors & nurses get canned for looking at someone's chart if they're not directly associated with providing care
Re:Lock them up or fire them, at least (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The fix is a couple parts:
1) Requiring a warrant issued by a state judge to access the cameras at all, with the requirement that the officer personally testify to facts. No fobbing it on random informant, they are required to own it.
2) Accessing the cameras without a warrant is a felony worth a minimum of 5 years in prison, but up to 10 years.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't let perfect get in the way of good.
Who's going to pay for it? (Score:3, Insightful)
We turned police training into a racket for well-connected political operatives.
This means that even though the training is substandard and focused on mostly violence that the vast majority of police officers will never get a chance to engage in (73% of cops will never draw their sidearm in their entire career) we spend a fortune training them.
This means that every single municipality is desperate to snap up any
Re: (Score:2)
European law makes this behaviour very illegal (Score:5, Informative)
The UK sees a steady flow of people such as medics and police officers sacked for this
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And a few cops in the US have been jailed. Should be more, but you gotta start somewhere.
Qualified immunity has to go (Score:5, Insightful)
Many other countries do not have it and they are not dens of lawlessness.
Re: (Score:2)
The police will pitch a hissy fit and threaten a work stoppage.
Re:Qualified immunity has to go (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't threaten me with a good time [nytimes.com].
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This is a real problem.
If we do not extend special treatment to cops, they will not do cop things for us and our communities will suffer.
If we extend special treatment to cops, they abuse the privilege and our communities suffer.
We can choose to be stricter about who can be a cop and only accept people who do good work without the need for special privileges. This would leave us with less cops, but they would be better cops.
Can we handle having fewer, better cops? Or do we accept the diminished quality of
Re:Qualified immunity has to go (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a real problem.
It is. The additional problem with a badly restrained police is that you always slide towards a police state, where the police has no accountability and can do whatever they like as long as they still serve the rich and powerful. ICE is a nice example of that, even when it now looks like they may not get away with all the murdering, raping, child-abusing, etc. that they did.
Hence the police must be restricted carefully, no doubt about that. Also makes it more expensive. But European standard is that cops have no immunity, just some special powers. They are typically required to get a bachelor’s degree before they are allowed to do anything and that weeds out most of the assholes that are just after power. Sure, there are still bad apples, but they have a high chance of getting caught and punished.
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tie it to a case number (Score:5, Interesting)
This seems like a very obvious and straightforward requirement, force the officer to select an active case to tie the inquiry to.
And at the same time display a warning that selecting an unrelated case "will result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination".
Make them just as accountable as any other security system in the pirvate sector.
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Make them just as accountable as any other security system in the pirvate sector.
That's how accountable they are now. Databases of PII you have to pay to access are just as accountable. There's a field, you enter something into the field or not, you click the button and get the report. For example Equifax's service The Work Number has a field for a tracking number but it's completely optional. I can put anything or nothing there when I use it. (As a rule, I put in nothing, because I am not trying to leak the slightest bit of unnecessary information to Equifax. It's bad enough you have t
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Oh yeah I forgot to mention MERLIN, that was what I wanted to write about first. You can buy access to MERLIN via a data broker if you are in any industry which has a legitimate business interest. The prime example is debt collection but there's also PIs and mortgage officers and so on that can look up that data. All you really need to get access is a business license and a credit card. It doesn't let you look up SSNs, but you can look up a ton of shit even without one, and a metric fuckton with. So basical
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How do you propose that this would work? Would Flock have access to each police department's database of active cases? That would be a cure worse than the disease.
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"How do you propose that this would work? Would Flock have access to each police department's database of active cases"
I imagine it could be made to work the way a federated login works, like how you can use your Gmail / FB / Twitter account to login almost anywhere without the site you're trying to login to knowing any details beyond your userID
Just the case number? (Score:2)
Shouldn't be an issue to have that data available to a remote enquiry without giving any wider access
Re: (Score:2)
An app hosted within the police department that queries both the police department's database and also the Flock database.
Re:tie it to a case number (Score:5, Insightful)
Flock doesn't need access to the police database. There just needs to be somebody at each police dept that reviews all Flock searches for their dept, make sure they match a legitimate case, and be able to bring down punishments - specifically any officer grossly misusing Flock system, even once, should be immediate fired with any and all related credentials revoked.
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Great you've solved it. Police never look after their own.
I didn't say it should be another police officer.
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Re:tie it to a case number (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, this moves the attack (abuse) surface from Flock into DEMS. But, DEMS should already have strong guardrails around creating new cases (should always be linked to CAD / Records to start with). This kind of inter-system linkage is complex, but necessary, not just to mitigate Flock abuse.
Re:tie it to a case number (Score:4, Informative)
Re:tie it to a case number (Score:4, Interesting)
no mod points but great post
I find it amazing that nobody sat down and planned this out with this thinking in place - I know in healthcare it's basically impossible to do anything without having to integrate according to ABC standards and aligning to XYZ regulation. It really seems like someone just said "yeah let's use Flock, here's a search engine, have fun!". Truly mind boggling.
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No, that would be an auditing middleware layer within the local PD.
Once you progress through that layer, then it would allow access to the Flock data.
Re: tie it to a case number (Score:2)
Having enough data for oversight doesn't guarantee it will happen, but it makes it possible.
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Presumably, cases are audited and tied to performance.
Hey, John, looks like you have 1000 unsolved cases here, what's going on?
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This.
If the "reason" box isn't a pre-populated menu with legally validated options, someone royally fucked up that UI long before even considering the issues of mass survellience in America.
On a related note, no one managed to use "Copy McCopface" as the reason? C'mon man. If you're gonna troll the system, at least fashionably troll it.
They don't care about termination (Score:2)
So they will just pick a case that's open and tie it to that and move on.
If you want to make them accountable you have to change how you vote. The lack of police accountability is a political problem. You can't solve it with a few minor policy tweeks
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"will result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination"
NO it is a violation of the law for them to use it like this, The punishment must include jail time and be out of the departments hands.
Of course they did (Score:2)
have they seen some of these places? (Score:3)
Uh, have these people seen some of these city council folks before? Some of them would gladly throw money at the police department for any reason.
Who watches the watchers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or as it was put nearly two millennia ago, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
This is why systems like this require human oversight. Arguably if there's a judicial review process for allowing searches, then this system needs to be required to use that process. With a system containing precinct, local court district, municipal, county, state, and federal district jurisdictions, the nature of setting up proper permissions alone should be a mandatory herculean effort, probably the most difficult part of the entire system.
Without such a system requiring judicial oversight to confirm that searches are authorized, all we have is a further slide into a police-state.
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The problem is Flock is a private company so in theory anyone can pay for access. It just so happens all the customers are the police. That's the legal loophole.
Re:Who watches the watchers? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is possible to put laws into place that require how public-private partnerships work. It would be an imposition upon Flock and upon the police. And that is just fine, and as it should be.
Law enforcement contracting to the private sector should not be allowed to be a bypass of our rights.
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Law enforcement contracting to the private sector should not be allowed to be a bypass of our rights.
Which raises the question, will the Supreme Court rule 5-2 or 4-3 that Flocks 1st amendment right to do business (a form of speech) is the more important right.
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This is why systems like this require human oversight.
This is why systems like this should never be allowed to be built in the first place and should be destroyed wherever they are found.
Ah, the useless comment field again. (Score:2)
So essentially they added an unvalidated text box field that never gets checked but is intended to give Flock immunity from litigation because "Hey, it's the customer's responsibility to make sure the data is correct".
Someone needs to sue Flock silly to show them their place and their legal obligations.
Every single request should be validated by a human, ideally with a legal background.
You want access? Sure, let us properly review it first. Screw the fact that you want it now, Joe. 10 working days, mate. Ta
What are cops, really. (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course they're going to behave this way. People forget that cops are just 'D' students with guns.
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Nah, they become internet influencers.
It's time to surveil back (Score:2)
This is what Flock's doing to us; we
Needlessly Unchecked Power (Score:3)
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A contract is a contract is a contract. But only among Ferengi
The Elites can and are "interpereting" those "checks and balances" to mean whatever they want them to mean. E.G. Corporate officials bribing officials etc. Turns out Money is Speech, it's not really a bribe after all. I thought Bribe meant to corruptly pay an official for a favor. Checks and Balances.
Expect them to do much more "interpereting" in the near future. Does Two really mean 1 and then another 1 ?
Warrants (Score:3)
Sounds like we will need to go down the route of requiring warrants to access the data. If a judge can be convinced of the need to run a particular query, then law enforcement should be allowed to run that query. No warrant, no access.
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That's a good start. Assuming that many of these searches aren't being used for personal reasons.
Imagine having a case go to court and the defense counsel asks, "What was your probable cause for detaining my client?" And the cop on the stand can only cite the Flock evidence with "LMAO" as justification. Thrown right out of court.
So many of these searches may never reach a courtroom. Fine. Until the DOJ gets a few complaints and they come in to investigate. And uncover this b.s. (see Seattle Police Departm [wikipedia.org]
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This ship has sailed mate. DOJ is at the fucking helm.
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Which administration? The DOJ complaints/investigations/consent decree against the Seattle police department started during the Clinton administration (or before), generated findings during G.W. Bush's and was acted upon during Obama's.
Law enforcement in general and the DOJ in particular are less political than you think*. And it's not Flock they will be doing something about. It's the abuse by the local police departments.
*Every time I hear accusations of politicized law enforcement, I just envision the
Trying to look at all angles here... (Score:3)
...and I know from years of experience in I.T. that any time you give people the ability to do a database search, you'll get people putting nonsense in fields for testing purposes. So at least SOME of the "button mashing" and entries like "dickhead" sound to me like officers trying out the system for the first time, or experimenting because they weren't trying to conduct a REAL license plate search.
That doesn't disturb me as much as the overall problem of allowing these searches without a warrant or at least a judicial review. Even if it's decided that a license plate search doesn't rise to the level of requiring a warrant to conduct it? There should absolutely be someone reviewing the searches being done. (EG. The officer who is too lazy to properly document why he/she is doing them and consistently leaving fields empty needs to be punished.)
Re:Trying to look at all angles here... (Score:4, Insightful)
One rule for thee, another for me (Score:2)
Seems like some people only care about things, like privacy, rules, etc... when it's concerning and/or affects them. I expect more from law enforcement officers -- any public servants really -- but am not naive enough to believe we'll (always) get that. A lot of dickheads are drawn to positions of power/authority over others.
Police chief to read out selected reasons given (Score:2)
Before a council meeting...
Should have the desired effect!
I'm no constitutional scholar, but... (Score:2)
Warrant (Score:3)
That should be the only way to access flock.
Who let the reason for a warrantless search be opt (Score:2)
Those in charge who let this get deployed with the reason for the search being optional are the most egregious offenders. If that is a design choice by the manufacturers or the police is irrelevant. The statement is loudly displayed that they don't even need a reason to search much less a warrant. Bad faith from the start if you ask me about the constitutionality.
Humans (Score:3)
It's unacceptable, but not necessarily nefarious.
You have a case, you have a case number. The interface is stupid and you can't paste it in, you have to type it out every time. And every selected camera is another query with that same field waiting for the 15 character code.
You get bored, you type in crap knowing A) people rarely check if there's no complaint and B) you have a case.
I can't say that's what happens with every system, but that's why the video logs look like this on the ones I've touched. Which is also why we captured logon ID and didn't just rely on trusting the manual input.
You know what they fucked with far less often? CPIC queries. Abuse CPIC and you lose your job because if you don't lose your job, the RCMP pulls the police service's access. It should be the same locally, but it typically isn't.
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Should this also work for when they request a warrant from a judge?
Judge 'Why do you need this warrant'
Officer 'LMAO'
Citizens rights should not be tossed aside because they don't audit a lot or because they didn't want to type the real reason in correctly.
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As I said... not acceptable, but not necessarily nefarious.
I'm all for an arms-length agency that controls police data and equipment so there's no opportunity for people within an agency to cover each other's asses.
I think when you put on a badge and assume the authority it grants over others, you should be held to a much higher standard. This does not seem to be a common enough belief to actual have such standards implemented.
Re: Humans (Score:2)
Avoiding oversight IS nefarious.
If they were testing then they should have put that in as the reason.
Don't make excuses for those who should be held to the highest standard.
A simple fix. (Score:2)
Chuckle Chuckle (Score:2)
It's rather amusing that Flock also spies on the cops using it.
"a cop" (Score:2)
every single one should be discipline at least (Score:2)
The "reason" needs to be a warrant number, full stop.
Just the most recent police abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider:
Traffic stop. Officer is making 'small talk'. "Where ya goin?". Where ya comin from?".
These are generally not 'small talk'. They are fishing questions, cop asking for info that could lead to suspicion, and detention while they dig for more.
And these sorts of questions can generally be answered by, simply, "None of your business, officer".
Every subsequent question, such as "I'm just making small talk", or "Hey, no big deal", or "What's the problem, you have something to hide?" are all just follow up fishing questions. And deserve no answer.
During a traffic stop, Flock gives officers information they would normally be lawfully denied, like "Where ya coming from?". Flock sidesteps your right to constitutionally refuse such information (and in the absence of reasonably articulable suspicion or other evidence, during a traffic stop, denies the officer the right to demand such information) and as such is a blight on constitutional protections. Flock must be better controlled, or abandoned.
And officers using Flock to look up the plates of their ex, former landlord, or the random guy who gave them a dirty look at a stop light are plainly violating these individuals' rights, and must be sanctioned. And the supervision of the abuses systems similarly sanctioned. Meaningful sanctions, every incident.
The Government rarely surrenders access to information. They seek power at every opportunity. In America, only the Constitution, and adherence to law, can nominally restrict this.
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We give them a lot of leeway because they have a hard job, it's stressful, and it's very difficult to keep people on the police force for more than 5 years. Most of the cops I know that lasted through the first 5 years are Army or Marine combat veterans. None of that gives them the right to violate people's rights, and I'm not sure why they do it. They'll get paid the same whether they actively seek out cases or not. I think some of them are the kinds of people who seek conflict. That tracks with the domest
Re: Just the most recent police abuse (Score:3)
The proper question is why should you be required to answer such a question if it's not related to a traffic stop. Your response is riddled with assumptions that first, the officer is investigating another crime, in which case indeed they may have questions to ask. A robbery? Do they have a description of the vehicle? Does it match yours, even minimally? If not, they really don't have any evidence on which to base a further expansion of the stop. Nonetheless, if you go to trial, you're not going to be requi
Re: Just the most recent police abuse (Score:3)
Correct. The proper response is "I don't answer questions". And if they detain you, "I don't answer questions without a lawyer present".
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Years ago, there was a man hunt in my area, and the cops had all the main roads blocked for spot checks. I was on a motorcycle, wearing a backpack too small to contain another person, and rolled up to the stop. The cop said,
"Where are you coming from?"
"That way," pointing behind me
"Where are you going?"
"That way," pointing in front of me
He got all butt hurt because I wouldn't play his stupid fkn game. I'm not fkn around with you jack-booted low life thugs. Either I'm th
How are the requirements that ridiculous? (Score:2)
It wouldn't prevent abuse, but it would slow it down, and provide a chain of verification, so a single officer alone couldn't violation peoples freedom.
Bad cop. (Score:2)
No donut.
burn it down. (Score:3)
There's simply no way to make this tool not be abused.
Why is anyone ok with Flock doing this? (Score:2)
agencies (Score:2)
agencies can't be trusted to oversee themselves.
We knew that. But now we have proof.
Will anything happen because of that? Nah, I don't think so. A few token gestures maybe. A friendly mail to everyone saying to write better reasons, followed up by an informal mail that tells them to ignore the previous one.
This isn't a mistake. It's intentional. The more arbitrary and uncontrolled the police can act, the more it is feared, the more it is a tool for oppression and not a part of civil society, the more likely the cops will stand on the side of the powerful
Some unedumacated comments here (Score:3)
LMAO: Law Maintenance And Operations
ROFL: Regional Operations & Field Liaison
GTFO: General Transport & Fugitive Operations
Destroying all respect for the police (Score:3)
No authentication? (Score:2)
Do they not have the names of the officers who VIOLATED THE LAW and gave these bs reasons?
And if they have the names, why are they not being prosecuted?
Kinda hard to pass the blame on this one when the departments are not holding their officers accountable
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You forgot to check the "post anonymously" box on your racist troll there, sport.
Re:You're shitting me! (Score:5, Insightful)
Racism is in fashion now they don't have to hide.
I mean they can't thanks to surveillance (Score:2)
The advertising networks know all, Flock sees all, and the dullards post the rest to facebook willingly. We live in the panopticon.
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So many Hollywood scriptwriters who lazily decided, "I'll just use Nazis for the bad guys, they're universally-recognized evergreen enemies," are facepalming these days.
Re:You're shitting me! (Score:5, Informative)
Nazi are still the bad guys. They're only "evergreen" because we failed to get rid of all of them. Damn things are like roaches.
Well, they were. They don't scatter when you shine a light on them anymore. On the plus side, that should make them easier to eradicate next time we get the chance.
Re: You're shitting me! (Score:3)
And you don't appear to be a person, you're just a coward
Re:You're shitting me! (Score:5, Insightful)
Or a phone [wikipedia.org].
Or nothing at all [npr.org].
Yeah, there are racists involved here, but they're blue, not black.
Re: You're shitting me! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a real problem because that information is supposed to be used for oversight.
Any cop who misused the system should be disciplined, but we all know that only happens for not being abusive enough.
Re: You're shitting me! (Score:2)
Lol did I make an ACAB cry?
Re: You're shitting me! (Score:2)
Re: You're shitting me! (Score:2)
We're not guessing because we're familiar with these kinds of systems. And by we I mean not you.
Re: You're shitting me! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why would they need a warrant? Flock consents to their customers accessing Flock's data.
[various anticipated objections] Yes, but this is in America.
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So where's all the hue and outcry of age identification on PCs which will require a mandatory ID check just to play a game or use the internet?
We have been talking about it here.
Same answer as your other bullshit.
Fuck off, coward.
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Is your Google broken? The EFF has an entire tagged section [eff.org] on exactly that.
Since we all know you're not going to bother checking, I'll give the tl;dr: They're quite opposed to it.
Re: (Score:2)
It is well known that you can only think about one issue at a time. This is the core reason why "what about X" is always the best and valid defense to anything you disgree with. If you are trying to reform police camera use then it's impossible to be actively trying to stop other things.
At least that is what the politicans and small minds tell us every time they say "But what about X?"
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Re: And people expect some sort of legal protectio (Score:2)
I don't, that's why I'm armed.
I've so far resisted getting a CCW but I think it's time to stop resisting that as the nation becomes more lawless from the top down.