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I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

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Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#71

Post by pksebben »

snowwrestler wrote: post #50
kstrauser wrote: post #2

I wrote this. I had/have absolutely no expectation that Flock would comply with my request, but figured I should try anyway For Science. Their reply rubbed me wrong, though. They seem to claim that there are no restrictions on their collection and processing of PII because other people pay them for it. They say: > Flock Safety’s customers own the data and make all decisions around how such data is used and shared. wh…

It’s not clear to me that it is actually your data. If I take a picture of you in a public place, I own the picture, not you. But maybe I am unclear on how Flock works.

Isn't flock's whole thing that they extract information from the pictures they have?

Like, say I have an interview in your office and you step out for coffee. I take a picture of the applicant list on your desk. That doesn't make the list of applicants "my data".

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#72

Post by zbrozek »

kstrauser wrote: post #2

I wrote this. I had/have absolutely no expectation that Flock would comply with my request, but figured I should try anyway For Science. Their reply rubbed me wrong, though. They seem to claim that there are no restrictions on their collection and processing of PII because other people pay them for it. They say: > Flock Safety’s customers own the data and make all decisions around how such data is used and shared. wh…

I tried the same, got a similar response, and complained to the AG. Nothing.

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#73

Post by tptacek »

kstrauser wrote: post #40
tptacek wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, is it your data? If you drive your car in front of a Ring camera on my house (I don't have a Ring camera don't @ me), is it your claim that you own the data on that camera?

Did you put up a Ring camera on a stand in front of your house for the specific purpose of selling that I drove past at this specific timestamp? If so, yes. The CCPA[0] gives me explicit legal rights: * The right to know about the personal information a business collects about them and how it is used and shared; * The right to delete personal information collected from them (with some exceptions); * The right to opt-…

I think you're going to find that you're wrong about this, and that you're not going to get anywhere targeting Flock in particular, as opposed to the owners of Flock cameras. Consider that California has had multiple rounds of legislation about red light camera legislation, including new limitations on it, and all of those cameras are also from commercial providers collecting your PII. Your argument proves too much.

You're going to get a lot of cheerleading and support about this in venues like HN and Reddit, because you're narrowcasting to an audience already primed to be hyperconcerned about surveillance technology (I am too). I think you're going to find those attitudes do not in fact generalize to the public at large, and especially not to the legal system.

Best of luck either way. It'll be an interesting experience to write up, and I'm happy to read about the outcome, even if I do think it's highly predictable.

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#74

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #38
yabutlivnWoods wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example is apples and oranges. Flock maintains private infrastructure that stores data. If the DSLR uploaded them to Rent-A-Center owned/leased servers it would in fact require Rent-A-Center to take the necessary steps. As Rent-A-Center would be the only group with proper access to data storage they would have inserted themselves into the chain of custody, and thereby have such obligation to ensure others data i…

AWS also maintains private infrastructure that stores data. Go write them asking to purge data pertaining to you from S3 and see how that goes.

[deleted]

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#75

Post by necovek »

tptacek wrote: post #34
kstrauser wrote: post #2

I wrote this. I had/have absolutely no expectation that Flock would comply with my request, but figured I should try anyway For Science. Their reply rubbed me wrong, though. They seem to claim that there are no restrictions on their collection and processing of PII because other people pay them for it. They say: > Flock Safety’s customers own the data and make all decisions around how such data is used and shared. wh…

Wait, is it your data? If you drive your car in front of a Ring camera on my house (I don't have a Ring camera don't @ me), is it your claim that you own the data on that camera?

I believe you are still the owner of that data, but if you are holding someone's PII — which time of passage, car model and license plates can be argued to be especially with a fixed location — according to privacy regulations, they can ask a business to remove it unless they have a legally acceptable reason to keep it (eg. they hit-and-run a parked vehicle).

Now, with you likely not keeping that Ring tied to a business account, how that applies to non-businesses holding PII is a different matter.

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#76

Post by itsdesmond »

tptacek wrote: post #38
yabutlivnWoods wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example is apples and oranges. Flock maintains private infrastructure that stores data. If the DSLR uploaded them to Rent-A-Center owned/leased servers it would in fact require Rent-A-Center to take the necessary steps. As Rent-A-Center would be the only group with proper access to data storage they would have inserted themselves into the chain of custody, and thereby have such obligation to ensure others data i…

AWS also maintains private infrastructure that stores data. Go write them asking to purge data pertaining to you from S3 and see how that goes.

Flock has knowledge/use of the data. Their system processes can relate the photos “owned” by two different entities. They’re interacting with it and selling their access to it as a feature. That’s obviously distinct from S3.

But you knew that.

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#77

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

snowwrestler wrote: post #56
kstrauser wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you put up a Ring camera on a stand in front of your house for the specific purpose of selling that I drove past at this specific timestamp? If so, yes. The CCPA[0] gives me explicit legal rights: * The right to know about the personal information a business collects about them and how it is used and shared; * The right to delete personal information collected from them (with some exceptions); * The right to opt-…

“Personal information” has a legal definition and photos of you in a public street might not satisfy it, regardless of the photographer’s intent.

Indeed, that definition is included in the CCPA.

> (v) (1) “Personal information” means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household. Personal information includes, but is not limited to, the following [...]:

> (E) Biometric information.

> (H) Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar information.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

To your point, the intent would presumably still matter for exceptions to when deletion requests must be honored (say for journalism), but a photo of someone walking down a public street would still logically be considered the subject's personal information, by the above definition.

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#78

Post by barelysapient »

ldoughty wrote: post #12
barelysapient wrote: post #3

If that's a valid excuse than the CCPA isn't worth the paper its written on.

I would argue that the request was invalid in the first place. If I see a flash on a speed camera operated by a business on behalf of a police department, your argument states I should be able to use CCPA to force the business to delete my picture and the record of me speeding If I can get the request to them before the police can file with the court and request that data as evidence. The data belongs to the governme…

But we're not talking about speed cameras or a private entity with exclusive contract with the police to provide traffic enforcement.

We're talking about Flock. A company offering surveillance as a service. Per their website:

>Trusted by over 12,000 public safety customers including cities, towns, counties, and business partners.

If Flock's argument holds then most of the CCPA be circumvented this same way. All it takes is a few entities and clever contract language.

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#79

Post by fsckboy »

tptacek wrote: post #36
ldoughty wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the data collected is property of the government and flock is not allowed to use that data for additional business gain (according to their statements)... So they can't sell the fact that you're at Target at 8:00 p.m. on Thursday to anybody... Nor build profiles to sell to advertisers... And if that's the case that's very similar to cloud storage vendors. If I access hacker news, and the record of my visit is sto…

This is also true according to their contracts (we were one of the first munis in the country to ostentatiously cancel our Flock contract, and the lead up to that was a bunch of progressive legal experts poring over that contract looking for holes.)

>a bunch of progressive legal experts poring over that contract looking for holes

all attorneys represent their clients; your attorney does not have to share your opinion of the law or public policy, they can still interpret what the law means to you.

if you are afraid your attorney might have a bias (they are human) you may get better advice from the "misaligned" POV: the flaws/holes in a privacy law found by a pro-business conservative attorney are more likely to find sympathy in the courts from both fellow conservatives and progressive judges.

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#80

Post by ScoobleDoodle »

necovek wrote: post #67
thaumaturgy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Flock very clearly benefits financially from having direct access to this data: owning (and in their own documentation, they very clearly do own it) a network of 80,000 surveillance devices across the country, and owning every single transit point for the data they collect, is what gets them to a $7.5 billion valuation from investors. The fact of the matter is that Flock is playing two-step with the conce…

That makes them a data broker in my reading, and at least in California, Data Broker legislation should apply. CA Data Broker registry gives me access denied, but that could be because I am outside US.

I looked it up at https://cppa.ca.gov/data_broker_registry/ and didn't find Flock / Flock Safety in that list of the currently registered 566 data brokers.
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