They simply didn't properly identify the vehicle because Flock's ALPR gave them the pass. The innocent person would not have needed "photo proof" of his distant location if the ALPR didn't exist in the first place. Then he would not have been forced to spend a month of his life in jail.
We blame the technology because police misusing their powers is a tale as old as police, is demonstrably not fixable, and this technology is at fault for aggressively selling itself to police to give them these powers that we all know will be misused. Flock absolutely bears significant responsibility for creating the technology and conditions for this unjust behavior to exist, and continuing to advocate against those pushing back on it by trying to brand them as terrorists.
There are two possibilities: One is that Flock is genuinely only being used for legitimate law enforcement purposes and proves useful in less than 0.1% of cases -- a data point the taxpayers footing the bill certainly deserve to know; the other is that there are a very large number of illegitimate uses, which any reasonable citizen should oppose.
Why are people like you so eager to defend Flock rather than simply expecting transparency on its uses?
"Ownership" of data may have little or nothing to do with control of the data, depending on what other rights you agree to give up. Your Flock contract may specify your ownership of the data and then in the next sentence release to Flock all or most control of that data (you still own it!).
The people creating, funding, controlling, developing, deploying and using the tech are not neutral, and the technology is indistinguishable from those people. In light of that, I would argue your assertion, that the "tech is neutral", is nothing more than rhetoric and that in every meaningful way the tech lacks neutrality.
Isn't PG's conflation of Denmark's high income tax with a proposed wealth tax a clear flaw in his math and argument re: "the highest taxes in the world"? Why wouldn't you instead compare to other countries that also have both income and wealth taxes?
Just as much as voting for a narcissistic pathological liar and sex offender is Christian. Turns out people are not very consequent with their supposed values when it gets in the way of their personal interests.
The data set IJ is providing here is situations where stalking was reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted. Other stalking cases could fail any one of those stages and be invisible to the public.
> Other stalking cases could fail any one of those stages and be invisible to the public.
"could" is doing a lot of work here...
> where stalking was reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted.
No, that's not what IJ said. From the article: "Nearly all of these officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs, either by resigning or getting fired."
So not all 14 of these were "reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted".
If you're trying to make significant social change, make the strongest argument that you are capable of.
I don't think "could" is doing a lot of work here at all. It seems logical that if cases where the misuse of flock systems were discovered only when the same officers misbehaved in other, more visible situations then there are officers that avoid the more visible situations and continue to use the system that does not expose their bad behavior (flock).
Logical as in fits your world view or as in can be backed up by observable evidence?
The IJ (which I financially support) is a very serious organization that understands datasets, rules-based evidence and also public relations. If there was a stronger case that they could have made with the data that they had available, they would have.
I've already stated that I agree with the premise suggested, but I'm making the point that if you actually want to do anything about it, you need the evidence to back it up.
I can't go to my boss with a proposal to do something significant without measurable evidence to back up my reasoning and neither can you.
I have personally had a traffic ticket thrown out because the officer had a DV case brought by his spouse, who worked in the court. This caused the officer to be fired. I'm VERY aware of problems with LEO, but if you want to do something with a high administrative or human resources cost like any change to the status quo would obviously have -- you need real hard proof. Not "oh isn't it obvious"?
In my town, we have Flock. I request the audit logs that show how police are searching the Flock system.
In November 2025 and prior, the logs were listed by USERID and I could independently correlate quantity of searches by USERID to detect unusual search behavior. This same methodology has been used to catch police stalking in at least one other city.
In December 2025, Flock decided to "improve" its system. All searches on the audit log are now completely serialized, anonymized. This "improvement" came after 2025 turned out several cases of police stalking using Flock.
I would guess the only way to make this data available long term is by regulation. Then again, I would hope Flock is subject to FOIA already if they are collaborating with state or local law enforcement...
YC CEO funded Flock and is involved in politics to remove police regulations
To quote him responding to criticism against Flock: "You're thinking Chinese surveillance. US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims."
Cameras are free speech and are a shield against property crimes and assault.
Our building complex has rampant break-ins. We've needed more cameras for years and we're only now starting to add them.
Worse, someone recently someone set fire to the roof which caused a 12-hour long debacle. Not sure what the "#-of-alarms fire" ranking it was, but several people lost their homes to months of remediation and they tore apart the roof.
Cameras would have implicated the contractor responsible (we know it was a contractor, but there were no cameras or access logs).
One theory as to why the number of violent crimes is going down in this country isn't that we just de-leaded the water and taught better conflict de-escalation, but that there are cameras and smartphones everywhere.
All of that said - camera networks in the hands of an all-powerful state are bad.
The state does not need access to these systems outside of a rigorously documented system with proper judicial oversight. We need regulations and even civil liberties that limit the scope of state access and state dragnets to these camera networks.
But individuals, companies, and communities should be at liberty to hire surveillance tech to protect their persons and their property.
> Cameras are free speech... individuals, companies, and communities should be at liberty to hire surveillance tech to protect their persons and their property.
At scale, corporate surveillance can effectively intermingle with, and/or become indistinguishable from, state surveillance. We see that happening today: why wiretap when Palantir exists?
Cameras may be speech, but surveillance has a chilling effect against it.
I think this is a false dichotomy. You can feel and be more protected against crime while also being exploited for your data by a shadowy camera company. We should let the state step in to regulate Flock et al, assuming we can do something about the corruption they're already involved in.
The same one that I make when I stand somewhere and describe what I see. So I hold a camera to do it more accurately. And then I get tired so I mount the camera on a trip setup instead.
ACLU of IL v. Alvarez (2012): "The act of making an audio or audiovisual recording is necessarily included within the First Amendment’s guarantee of speech and press rights as a corollary of the right to disseminate the resulting recording."
Which is one of many reasons why privatizing government services probably isn't a good idea.
You could also make different laws but that's probably not going to happen. Think about just about any of the important laws that we rely on for a stable and just society in the USA, and consider that most or all of them would be politically unviable if they didn't already exist. Including FOIA itself. Not a good situation.
On the subject of those Flock cameras, it really is amazing how much high-purity copper they manage to put in one of those. They might as well be putting ingots of copper on those poles.
What would you do with stolen copper, anyways? Drive down to the junkyard off Manchester Trafficway in South KCMO and tell the guy working there that you "collected it from a demolition site at the behest of the foreman" and get paid $3.23 a pound for it?
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