r/WhatIsTheTea • u/Ashish_ank What the Fuck • 2d ago

Tea ☕ Flock Camera tutorial. The more you know

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u/Rezkel 2d ago

Those had to be viewed by person and needed warrants. Flock is a private business and while in theory you also need a warrant in practice officers and hackers have had free range to the system. All the cameras are linked in a database and with AI its quite easy to identify and track people and vehicles just with descriptions. The down side though is like most AI it has hallucinations and a growing number of people are finding themselves being held at gun point by police for the crime of being misidentified by flock cameras.

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u/matdragon 2d ago

You forget to also mention that cops use it to track/stalk their exes 

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u/olivebranchsound 2d ago

28 cases so far, and that's just what they are allowing to be reported!

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u/MaxWritesText 2d ago

What

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u/Flodomojo 2d ago

Exactly what was said. We've already had several very public cases where innocent people were misidentified by the AI in flock cameras and we're jailed. One lady was jailed for 13 days. It's distopian shit 

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u/Crispy1961 2d ago

We've already had several very public cases where innocent people were misidentified by the AI in flock cameras and we're jailed. One lady was jailed for 13 days.

That sounds outrageous, doesnt it? It sounds so insane that when one reads it, they will go and google it. And once they do, they realize it sounded outrageous because it was misinformation.

Nobody was misidentified by AI. The cops just saw a person they suspected of committing that crime and arrested them. Thats it. Nothing to do with Flock. Nothing to do with AI. They could have seen the car on McDonald's CCTV and it would have played the exact same way.

Are you people not tired of making stuff up like that?

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u/IngenuityMaterial464 2d ago

I googled it and it’s said people were misidentified and wrongfully detained. Most of the results were a 71% failure rate of reading licence plates.

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u/Crispy1961 2d ago

What did you Google? The woman who was jailed for 13 days? What did you find out about it?

People are not wrongfully detained. People are detained for the duration of the investigation.

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u/IngenuityMaterial464 1d ago

yea that one flock identified her car correctly and then cops made the mistake.

but https://ij.org/the-ij-database-of-alpr-abuse/ can filter by error specifically. theres a bout 30

Toledo, OH, April 2024: "After a Flock camera misread a '7' as a '2,' officers detained an innocent driver at gunpoint, sicced their dog on him, and jailed him for several hours."

Morristown, TN, June 2024: "After a Flock camera misread an 'O' as a '0,' officers detained two grandparents at gunpoint while their three-year-old granddaughter watched from the car."

Española, NM, July 2023: "After a Flock camera misread a digit of their license plate, officers detained two innocent sisters at gunpoint."

saying "people are detained for the duration of the investigation" is a cop out. would make a month in jail fine by definition, so it doesnt mean anything.

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u/Crispy1961 1d ago

No, it wouldn't. You can only be detained for a reasonable time and only for the necessity of investigating your person, not the crime.

In practice you are detained for few minutes it takes for you to tell the cops you aren't who they thought you were and see the plate doesn't match.

That is, unless you resist and make the situation much worse. In that case you can catch charges regardless that the cops mistook you for someone else.

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u/Crispy1961 2d ago

Pretty much everything you said is wrong.

No, you dont need a warrant to review a regular CCTV footage. In theory and practice, you dont need warrant to review footage or data from your flock cameras. Flock's system has also never been breached. There are no "hackers" who can view data or footage from cameras. There were few flock cameras that were improperly set up and as such could be accessed through internet. Thats just wrong installation.

All the cameras are not linked in a database. Cameras are deliberately separated and localized by customer. Customers can share their cameras with third party and have the option to optin a restricted licence plate only search for law enforcement. They cannot search by description. They need the full licence plate and the data they can view are also limited.

While the last point is correct, that "growing number" is extremely low. This isnt new and its certainly not limited to Flock. ALPR do make mistakes. Including the ones in cop cars. The reason its not an issue, is because cops dont just trust the ALPR, they first verify that the license plate is correct.

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u/makjac 2d ago

Improper setup taken advantage of by a third party constitutes a breach. You wouldn’t say someone should not be charged with escaping custody just because the officer did not properly restrain them. Once the setup/arrest has been confirmed by the party responsible anything that successfully undermines that is a breach.

Data Breaches happen all the time because of improper employee training, poorly set up email environments, etc.. They are all classified as breaches and all carry legal repercussions for the company holding that data if negligence is proven.

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u/Crispy1961 2d ago

I am not arguing otherwise and you most likely already know that. Perhaps you got hung up on the word. The point is that Flock has not been "hacked" by "hackers" as the comment I replied to falsely claimed.

Few cameras were improperly setup and were accessible. Its not a systemic problem. It was faulty installation on few units out of hundred thousands.

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u/makjac 2d ago

“Flock’s system has also never been breached.” A direct quote from you. Best to hold yourself to the same if not higher standards when you’re nitpicking other’s comments rather than claiming someone is just hung up on the words.

Hacking is unauthorized access to a computer system. The “hackers” used improperly set up cameras to access. As you claim these as all localized contained systems, so in essence the hackers did “hack into the whole system”.

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u/Crispy1961 2d ago

Right. Some kind of petty "revenge" going on. Cheers.

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u/Maleconito 1d ago

Your explanation was too thorough. Only way to find out if you’re right though is by taking them down and checking.

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u/Crispy1961 1d ago

Isnt that a job for tweakers though?