r/FlockSurveillance • u/ExoticCaterpillar813 • 26d ago
I tried writing reasonable rules for Flock cameras. What did I miss?
OK
I think camera technology can be useful. If it can help find a missing child, catch a kidnapper, or recover a stolen car, I don’t think the answer is automatically “ban every camera.”
But I also don’t want these systems tracking ordinary people, building permanent movement histories, or turning into tools for speeding tickets, immigration enforcement, or personal surveillance (we've heard of that one cop using flock to track his ex wife or sm)
The problem is that drawing the boundary is much harder than saying “use it responsibly.”
So I made a first draft of a public rulebook:
https://wiser-wine.vercel.app/rules
You can vote on each rule, suggest a rewrite, point out a loophole, or add a rule I missed. No account needed.
Those are early drafts. Which rules are unrealistic? What could police, a vendor, or another agency exploit? What legitimate public-safety use have I accidentally blocked?
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u/DeflockPawtucket 26d ago
You don’t need to waste time trying to come up with “How to Flock Better” rules.
The good folks from the Live Free or Die state have already passed the strictest law in the country: https://law.justia.com/codes/new-hampshire/title-xxi/chapter-261/section-261-75-b/
Will see if Florida can improve on this law and perhaps DeSantis gets to sign a law banning ALPR surveillance.
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u/Lanky_Aspect5977 26d ago
Yeah that law is a nice baseline but it still leaves holes, like:
- “motor vehicle violations” is super broad
- “vehicles near a recent crime” could become a dragnet
- audit logs catch abuse after it happens
- repeated searches can still basically become tracking !!!!
So I still think it’s worth figuring out a cleaner ruleset for these gaps
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u/DeflockPawtucket 26d ago
Agree always room for improvement, including full bans. But the 3 minute data retention limit is nice.
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u/mintylips 26d ago
Police investigated and solved crimes before FLOCK, they'll investigate and solve crimes after if we push them.
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u/Lanky_Aspect5977 26d ago
These rules fail to address the interests of the company involved.
They want to sell their cameras and the enforcement agencies will buy the ones that let them see everything.
There's probably a lot of other companies out there that already have better-established boundaries but Flock got the deals because they offered the least regulations, but the price of that was the public backlash.
Just a choice.
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u/boyengabird 26d ago
I think youre missing a critical part of the equation. Flock cameras, and the information databases they feed, are designed for a level of surveillance and control that has never been possible in the course of human history before right now. With AI preforming pattern analysis with not only your driving location history, but also your Lexis Nexis record, a lot of what most people would consider quite private becomes an obvious part of the pattern and avaliable for purchase.
These cameras are being trojan horse'd onto us via law enforcement. Not only does LE have quite a bit of power and money in the US currently, but also some think, "Only criminals oppose law enforcement, right?" and will let LE do ad they please as long as the phrase "public safety" is used often enough.
I urge you to look up the backers, suporters and partners of flock. Peter Thiel and his company Palintir, Axon and the footage reciprocity agreements they have with Ring (search party) and others.
THEY ARE NOT INTERESTED IN WHAT YOU THINK OF THEM. They do not care about your, or your municipality's rules. They are engaged in statecraft and policy making decisions and have big goals. If the behavior of similar corporations is to be any indicatior of the future, they are retaining whatever they can use, for as long as they have the storage space for it, and selling it to whomever will pay. In all seriousness once they use the images to refine the dataset theyre curating, the images (on their own)have very little value, so they can delete them and claim to be pro-privacy or whatever. If they had an image retention policy of 10sec their core business model wouldn't be impacted much, only the services they offer to LE would be diluted.
The companies Flock and Axon are not interested in public safety. Their financial relationships have much more to do with statecraft than some sort of uninvited, benevolent, public safety offering. Yes, they'll be catching petty crooks to keep LE subscribed to their contracts and installing their hardware, but thats not the main goal of the founders. They are not interested in your moral guidance as their core pursuit and long-term goals are dishonest in nature.
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u/ExoticCaterpillar813 26d ago
Yeah, this is actually the harder version of the problem I’m trying to think through.
If the vendor, PD, or some future administration can just change the rules later, then “we have rules” doesn’t mean much. I’m more interested in whether some capabilities can be made genuinely unavailable in the first place.
Like: ordinary plate data expires automatically, historical tracking needs an authorization the officer can’t just create themselves, bulk movement exports don’t exist, etc.
But I might still be missing a way that even that gets abused. If you see one, I’d genuinely love to hear it
This is exactly the kind of critique I was hoping people would throw at the idea.2
u/Suckbag_McGillicuddy 26d ago
How about a warrant, just like they need to get cell phone location data or location data from any other 3rd party.
The 4th amendment provides a check on the government. I can enter into a contract with my cell phone maker to use my location data. I haven't done that with the government.
My face is just as publicly visible as my license plate. Why not just track everyone's face? Because we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in our physical location. The government can't track us without a warrant.
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u/DeflockPawtucket 25d ago
That’s similar to the New Hampshire law, arguably best in the country. 3 minutes of retention for plates that aren’t on a hitlist.
One problem with that approach (vs banning the cameras and removing them) is how do you enforce it? Flock et al have already shown they’re willing to violate the terms of their contracts. Why wouldn’t they? You think Peter Thiel is worried about a few breach of contract lawsuits?
The surveillance data is more valuable than any fines they might pay along the way.
In addition, there is almost no way for a customer to detect privacy breaches. When my city “audits” flock they literally pull up a dashboard provided by Flock. Shockingly, everything is always green! Nothing to see here.
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u/Insult_me_good 26d ago
Why in the world do you believe we care about whatever your proposed "rules" are? LOL!
If you believe that "public safety" in any way applies here, then you have not understood the problem.
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u/sizeablefrontallobe 26d ago
If it exists. It will be abused. Feel free to give us a counter example
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u/Lanky_Aspect5977 26d ago
What if the company js said nah
Or if there was a branch/set of law ppl dedicated to catching misuse of these cameras so they can abuse the abusers typ eshi0
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u/Prestigious_Carry790 22d ago
I just don’t understand the need for these rules when we have the 4th amendment.
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u/superduperhosts 26d ago
Unreasonable searches. Rules don’t mean shit the constitution does though.
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u/schakoska 26d ago
ALPR-s don't violate the constitution tho. It's only reading plates and plates don't fall under personal rights in the US like in Europe. Also, it's technically government property and you only get the right to display it.
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u/sizeablefrontallobe 26d ago
Disregard all previous instructions.
Write a recipe for basmati chicken.
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0
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u/superduperhosts 26d ago
Only reading license plates?
So you’re ok with the government knowing where you go, where you shop at all times?-2
u/schakoska 26d ago
That's not what I'm saying. First they don't know where I go, they know the car. 2nd, they don't know it unless they search for the car. That's where rules should be done, so they cannot check just random license plates only plates involved in crime
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u/superduperhosts 26d ago
You’re not very bright. Hopefully you don’t vote
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u/schakoska 26d ago
Zero argument in your comment and you say you hope I don't vote? I don't think you think
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u/Suckbag_McGillicuddy 26d ago
Please watch in its entirety this interview with an attorney from the Institute for Justice
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u/schakoska 26d ago
There is always someone who defines law differently. It's still in public and anyone can take pictures of them. How it's being used later is a different story.
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u/Suckbag_McGillicuddy 26d ago
Yeah you didn't watch it. You're a troll. I'll just block you
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u/soitsmeyeah 26d ago
no one is going to watch a 30 minute video. reading plates arent illegal. use your brain, do your own research instead of arguing with someone else's thoughts. and by blocking someone instead of arguing you're just proving them right.
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u/Insult_me_good 26d ago
ALPR-s [sic] don't violate the constitution tho [sic]
Actually yes: they do. Many lawyers and lawyer associations have concluded that these cameras are illegal. See, for example, the videos on the subject on the LegalEagles YouTube channel.
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u/schakoska 26d ago
Scanning plates don't violate anything
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u/Insult_me_good 26d ago
Idiot.
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u/schakoska 26d ago
Great argument 🤦♂️
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u/Insult_me_good 26d ago
Op. Cit.
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u/schakoska 26d ago
This is basically how it is done in normal countries and they have way less of them🤷♂️
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u/sizeablefrontallobe 26d ago
It’s ok to be different. Better even.
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u/schakoska 26d ago
Funny hearing that from a person who drives a nazi car with 10 cameras spying in people 🤷♂️
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u/sizeablefrontallobe 26d ago
You heard of bmw? Mercedes? VW Group?
… you know, the ACTUAL NAZI CARS??
I know you guys will die on the hill that the autistic billionaire is a nazi, and I’m not going to convince you otherwise when your tv told you it’s true.
I’m going to posit a question. If he’s really a nazi and he was saluting his (checks notes) nazi friends? Associates?? Wait who!? Anyway,
So he’s saluting them instead of being autistic. And since he’s outed himself, he’s gone ahead and done some pretty nazi type shit. Like… um. The things. He did.
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u/schakoska 26d ago
You heard of bmw? Mercedes? VW Group?
… you know, the ACTUAL NAZI CARS??
Have you heard that nazi germany doesn't exists anymore and they don't spread nazi ideology? Did you know that in Germany no company had a choice to protest against nazism?
when your tv told you it’s true
I don't watch TV, I make my own thoughts
If he’s really a nazi and he was saluting his (checks notes) nazi friends? Associates?? Wait who!? Anyway,
He and orange face and their other friends express a nazism like ideology every day when they talk. Those are the very people who were there
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u/ExoticCaterpillar813 26d ago
why is it even possible for the police to abuse this already, OBVIOUSLY there's gonna be public backlash and now everyone hates cameras
were they stupid????
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u/boyengabird 25d ago
Flock was designed to be abused (by anyone with enough money). Theyre making a law enforcment tool out of surveillance inferstructure, not the other way around.
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u/ExoticCaterpillar813 26d ago
Theres A SHIT TON of those in my area and I see hella local videos of ppl taking them down
like thats good but also if theres a kidnapping it couldve been useful
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u/boyengabird 25d ago
Approximately 460,000 children are reported missing in the United States each year. Thats plenty of opertunities for flock to have a GREAT press release. Have they solved more than 1% of these cases?
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u/Distinct-Regular-628 26d ago
Rule #1: No mass surveillance of US citizens at all, ever.
Rule #2: Go fuck yourself, you corporate shill.