Texas City Demands $2 Million For Public Records On Flock Usage (arstechnica.com) 47
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As bipartisan backlash against Flock grows, some cities are asking anti-surveillance advocates and media outlets to pay eye-popping fees -- including charging tens of thousands or even millions -- to get information about how police departments are using and potentially abusing AI-enabled camera systems that track every vehicle that passes them. On Monday, the Texas Tribune reported that city officials in a Fort Worth suburb, North Richland Hills, asked one group to pay $2.3 million before it would fulfill a public records request for Flock data. To reach that high fee, officials claimed that searching "about a terabyte worth of communications about errors, misuse, and effectiveness of the Flock system" would take approximately 14 years of labor at a rate of $15 per hour.
Phil Mynona, who filed the request using a pseudonym on behalf of his group, the Texas Privacy Coalition, told the Tribune that the fee seemed "ludicrous" and designed to stifle his public records searches. Mynona has sought similar records from more than 200 law enforcement agencies across the US, and he said it was impossible to predict how cities assessed fees for Flock records. Some cities provided more than 400,000 pages of documents for free, while others charged $5,000. Other groups, including a Houston news station called KPRC, have seen officials quote up to $121,000 for Flock records, the Tribune reported. The high price tags may be hiding data that anti-surveillance groups note have triggered audits, arrests, and changes in how law enforcement uses cameras, including decisions to get rid of cameras. Further reading: Flock Blamed for Wrongful 13-Day Imprisonment and a Police Stalking Incident in Florida
Phil Mynona, who filed the request using a pseudonym on behalf of his group, the Texas Privacy Coalition, told the Tribune that the fee seemed "ludicrous" and designed to stifle his public records searches. Mynona has sought similar records from more than 200 law enforcement agencies across the US, and he said it was impossible to predict how cities assessed fees for Flock records. Some cities provided more than 400,000 pages of documents for free, while others charged $5,000. Other groups, including a Houston news station called KPRC, have seen officials quote up to $121,000 for Flock records, the Tribune reported. The high price tags may be hiding data that anti-surveillance groups note have triggered audits, arrests, and changes in how law enforcement uses cameras, including decisions to get rid of cameras. Further reading: Flock Blamed for Wrongful 13-Day Imprisonment and a Police Stalking Incident in Florida
lol (Score:4, Insightful)
america wtf
Re: lol (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
30 years of republicans running Texas.
Re: lol (Score:3)
And ruining education.
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I have placed cameras in your house (Score:5, Insightful)
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You've made it very clear.
malicious (Score:3)
There is a name for this: malicious compliance. The law says they must provide information to the taxpayers, they do it in a way that makes it impossible.
Re:malicious (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's my CV (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
"It'll be the easiest (albeit the scummiest) analytics scam...er, public-sector job I've ever had."
And that says something.
If finding abuse is hard... (Score:5, Insightful)
searching "about a terabyte worth of communications about errors, misuse, and effectiveness of the Flock system" would take approximately 14 years of labor at a rate of $15 per hour.
Then it shouldn't exist.
Re:If finding abuse is hard... (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly this, if there was a threat against property or person of the city, and it would take 14 years to look through it, then the system is broken.
One measurable aspect of information quality is its timeliness. (Others are accuracy, relevancy and understandability). 14 years is NOT proportionate to what is being requested. It should be a week at the most. I know it says "14 years of labor" but that is also loaded to the max and not proportionate.
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It's a good platform to run for office on. Our city is not accountable to it's citizens becuase of the rampant mis-management of our tax dollars. Here's an example, if one of you needed information from the city it could take over a decade to get a result.
No one should be surprised (Score:3)
This is Texas. The last thing they want is to have the public nosing around and holding government accountable.
Re:No one should be surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
"They" is not Texas, it is Republicans. Texas is the canonical Republican state, what is going on here is simple corruption.
Texas has always been corrupt, though. It was founded by criminals who moved in to steal the land, then settled by slave owners and dominated ever since by racists. But Texas has cities too, just like everywhere else. The political mix is standard, but in Texas it is controlled by cretins. This is a typical result.
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"They" is any group exercising unmonitored power. It's not just the Republicans. Democrats to it too. And it's not just political groups. Police is one common example, but that's because lots of people notice it's affecting them.
EVERY center of power needs to be transparent, or this problem will occur. Unfortunately, for some centers of power, transparency itself leads to other problems.
re: TX as "The Republican state" (Score:2)
Fact of the matter is, TX has been more the extreme, modern Facist-Republican governed state than "traditional Republican" for decades now. It took a lot of people some time to come to that realization. But definitely by the 1990's, watching what was happening in Texas made me solidify my views as more Independent/Libertarian than Republican.
As just a couple of examples?
- TX passed a law requiring people get a permit to legally possess Pyrex glassware. (Thought was, if you weren't a research lab or a scho
Flock can provide it free (Score:2)
If Flock is so innocent in all this it should provide the data free of charge. If the gov had any brains they would write it into the contracts (pending their approval, obviously).
A-hole news (Score:2)
I love this news because it made me laugh. Some a-hole, whether some arrogant clerk or higher up gave out the quote, who knows. (hopefully, it will come out). If the later it's trickle down from the top, as that seems to be the attitude that has proliferated public offices. This belligerence towards it's own citizens seem to becoming more normal in TX, at least those who ask uncomfortable questions or ask for help. Those in charge, seem to have zero morals and are used to pulling 'facts' out of their ends.
Just give (Score:2)
Wait, you don't like the idea of someone just browsing through your data...because some of those data may be PRIVATE...?
better ask for more than that (Score:1)
They'll need the money to settle all the resulting lawsuits.
What a terrible system (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No. I think it's older than LLMs.
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Easy Blame Game When You're Clueless (Score:1)
Lot's of keyboard warriors out here talking about how easy it would be to... And, I'll agree that 14 years sounds ludicrous.
But if you'd ever had to satisfy a records request or subpoena, especially if you didn't have eDiscovery logging and software already in place, you'd understand what a massive, manual, and painstaking task it is. It sucks BAD! Especially if you don't have the staff. Did I mention the arbitrary deadline in which you have no say?
Re: Easy Blame Game When You're Clueless (Score:3)
All of this crap is in a database, it's a relatively simple matter of writing and running a report. I used to do that for a living, it's not as hard as people imagine it to be.
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It is as hard as people imagine when those people are clerks, middle managers, and what not, rather than people who do it for a living. Even the typical click ops help desk person is going to struggle.
Now take your time limited subpoena or FIO request and go try to hire the right person for the job? If the plan/infrastructure is not already in place, they're going to put a clerk in front of a screen and tell them to start searching and printing, manually!
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Now take your time limited subpoena or FIO request and go try to hire the right person for the job? If the plan/infrastructure is not already in place, they're going to put a clerk in front of a screen and tell them to start searching and printing, manually!
Correct, not without a mandate. But when the government above says now it's time to do the thing, the thing happens. And that's why this is a problem that must be solved at a higher level. For too long we have allowed uneven standards in policing and its administration, from state to state, county to county, city to city. We must institute strong laws which rein in police to protect citizens, and this must include a national registry which police departments are required to use during the hiring process so
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especially if you didn't have eDiscovery logging and software already in place
It seems pretty negligent if a police department doesn't already have something like this in place.
Re: (Score:2)
As I alluded in my initial comment, everything "seems" easy, negligent, obvious to the clueless. Those that aren't familiar with exactly what needs to happen, how it happens, and how much it costs. Do you know what the cost of eDiscovery systems and the people to run them are? Do you understand the budget constraints of city governments. 'More money? For IT? Fuck that! The constituents are already complaining about taxes.'
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I'm not a lawyer, but I do know that that is not how the law works. You give them ONLY what they request and nothing more, after you have ascertained what they are legally entitled to. What they are entitled to is often significantly less than what they request. The data provided has to be found, reviewed, redacted, blessed by legal before being delivered. It is a cumbersome and difficult process. "Just give 'em everything" demonstrates that you're unfamiliar with the legal requirements and the process.
Noth
Re: Easy Blame Game When You're Clueless (Score:2)
This is only true when the data is insufficiently characterized to begin with. It should be obvious which parts are confidential. You flag records as such ahead of time specifically for purposes like this.
Maybe It's Unreasonable Public Records Requests (Score:3)
Public records requests are essential for establishing cases of malfeasance. However, with the rise of AI making giving every person the ability to make unlimited Public Records requests, the burden can be extreme.
I work for a major public university and we are absolutely drowning in PR requests. Anyone who does something that pisses off another person gets hit with a PR request... or 30. There are hundreds in queue and it's preventing actual work from being done. Where I live, there are not protections against malicious, repeat, or unjustifiable requests. There have been no adjustments for AI. There is no requirement to submit to a specific location or in a particular format.
Our campus certainly spends over $1M on PR responses given the time it takes for qualified people to seek and prepare the data and communication.
Of the MANY PR requests I've fulfilled, only two have been for decent reasons. The rest have been to satisfy vendettas and nothing has ever come of the data provided-- even for the good reasons.
How does this relate to the obvious issues around the use of Flock cameras? I'm willing to bet that the PR requests have gone something like this:
1. All records of all license plate scans since the inception of the program ... etc.
2. All communication (digital, printed, or otherwise) from every employee discussing the system be it emails, text messages, written notes, etc.
3. All documents related to the purchase/contracting process that resulted in the Flock vendor being selected
4. All reports
And it's very likely multiple requesters submitting requests for information in different formats. This takes worker time to aggregate.
Re: (Score:2)
I've been on both sides of public data requests, but not in Texas. My first thought was "malformed request" because people typically throw everything they have into these requests - they want all documents, communications, etc., and they want it going back forever, and to/from every employee. And they typically attach several pages of "about" topics. In a few years, LLMs might make "about" searches easy, but for right now, they just ensure that your request is going to take 10x the amount of work that it
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The private sector has a solution to all of this that "just works". You acknowledge the supply and demand. Swamped with public record requests? Great! Hire more people to handle them as their job description/title, and charge enough for them to cover their salaries or hourly contractor rates.
IMO, asking one group to pay $2.3 million for a records request is unreasonable. But why can't you ask all of them to pay a fair share so the process works smoothly and effectively for everyone involved? A qualified gov
Electronic searches are not human labor. (Score:2)
This isn't like manually digging through dead tree archives in some musty basement.
Re: (Score:2)
Executing a keyword search is involves minimal human behavior, but sifting through the results, and most importantly, redacting any irrelevant or personal information that should not be made public very much is human labor. For broad keyword searches that could easily be thousands or tens of thousands of hours of human labor.
But it didn't take 14 years to generate it (Score:2)
Funny how that works.
Admission of guilt basically (Score:3)
Saying they need the fee to search for errors is admitting they werent already monitoring for errors. Woops.
Basically they are saying - (Score:2)
Flock You!