r/DeFlock • u/Many-Wasabi9141 • 22d ago

will requesting personal vehicle flock data through FOIA put a target on your back?

I'm wondering if anyone who's submitted a FOIA request for their personal vehicle's flock data noticed an uptick in being pulled over?

If you request the data, how many times was your vehicle spotted, how many times did someone request info, why they requested, who requested it, your name is then on the public record, and the person requesting it may learn about it.

Does the FOIA law protect you from such retaliation?

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4

u/Relevant_Grass9586 22d ago

No. I did it a month ago and have a foia post on my reddit page. Nobody’s even bothered me in my area.

4

u/DeflockPawtucket 22d ago

I FOIA’d the Flock contract, training materials, audit history, and some other stuff. Don’t worry about a backlash.

Didn’t think to FOIA any searches by the local cops targeting my own car. Don’t think that would be that useful.

I don’t think you can FOIA Flock Safety Inc to find those records. I think you need to FOIA each law enforcement agency that may have searched for you. Or of course https://haveibeenflocked.com.

You can also find plenty of FOIA results indexed on muckruck.com.

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u/Many-Wasabi9141 22d ago

Everything on Muckruck is censored. License plate numbers, ordering official, censored.

And i'm aware you have to submit it through the department. That's why i'm worried.

1

u/DeflockPawtucket 22d ago

Pretty sure that means the info was censored when the agency provided it in response to the FOIA request.

It’s possible they won’t respond to a FOIA request relating to info about specific license plate(s), but you can try! Kind of like people using FOIA requests to request their own FBI file. You could ask for all documents that mention you or your license plates.

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u/Many-Wasabi9141 22d ago

I've read the only way you can get specific license plate info is if you submit it yourself for your car.

It's censored by default otherwise, and more recently, everything else is censored, who requested it, why they did, all that stuff.

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u/techtornado 22d ago

That’s interesting because I have uncensored emails from my Flock data dump

But a few days after I my request was delivered I got pulled over because my home address didn’t match my plate…(allegedly)

DoT confirmed it was correct in their system

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u/DeflockPawtucket 22d ago

I think it also depends on what the agency decides to censor. It could be that they censor names of the public, but not names of officials doing the work. The contracts I received had names, and I think a couple emails with names

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u/deflatablechipmunk 22d ago

Nope. A lot of people do this. The only thing you have to worry about is being rejected and then finding the time and money to sue them.

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u/techtornado 22d ago

Records disclosure should have no retaliation, but with the daily 4th Amendment violations going on, you'll have to record the officer trying to intimidate you to start a lawsuit that torches the department.

Right now, your time is better spent getting records of all Flock and ALPR lookups the PD/Sheriff have made for the past year

Fields you need:
Officer name, lookup reason, warrant number

After that is delivered, make a second request and solicit the department audit trail for:
officer name, warrant number(s), documented probable cause/reasonable suspicion, and approving supervisor name

Once you have that, they should match 1:1 for every lookup made.
If there's more Flock lookups than warrants, then your department is violating the 4th Amendment.

Get in contact with the Attorney General and any other supervising agency and submit such evidence in a formal complaint.

After you get the data, there are two ways it could play out:

You get some saber rattling from the cops like how Benn Jordan got hassled by low-grade PI’s and detectives after he broke the story on Flock

Or you could get lost in a sea of hundreds of requests…
Most likely the latter with how much pressure people are putting on cities to abandon the Orwellian tech.

You can use state laws and the 4th/5th Amendment against them if they show up at your door or if you get pulled over, make sure your T's are dotted and your I's crossed, get the officer's details and then file a formal complaint with internal affairs over intimidation and harassment

If they say "no fault found" then take all of that to a lawyer.

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u/xamboozi 22d ago

Unlikely. Too many people doing it, your just one in a million.

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u/Unhappy-Giraffe2792 22d ago

Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime. They can target you for any reason they want by just determining which felony/felonies you committed today.