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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

#111

Post by tptacek »

ScoobleDoodle wrote: post #80
necovek wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because Flock isn't a data broker. Flock's customers own their data, not Flock, and they use Flock's platform voluntarily to share data with other customers.

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

#112

Post by TheRealPomax »

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…

Except the data does NOT belong to the government, that's the whole point of Flock operating the way it does. It's not governmental data collection it's data collection by a private company that is then made available to the government upon request. And yeah: it is literally allowed to delete data, because again: it's not a government agency, it's just private data, collected by a private company, with the exact same status as you recording an public intersection with a camera from your window.

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

#113

Post by kasey_junk »

danudey wrote: post #94
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?

The laws say that data about you is your data, information about you is your information. No one is saying that you "own the data", but by virtue of the data being personal information about you specificially you are allowed to exert control over that data, such as asking for it to be deleted.

That view of data ownership is _highly_ jurisdiction dependent and is not the overwhelming norm in the US.

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

#114

Post by tptacek »

kstrauser wrote: post #100
tptacek wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

FWIW, I just did this as an experiment and turned it into a blog post afterward. I didn't really set out with an agenda or a deliberate audience, and I didn't share it here. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to chat about it! But this ended up here without any special effort on my part.

I know the feeling! My arguments here are positive, not normative. I don't know that I think it would be a worse world if your hypothesis was correct. I'm just reasonably sure it isn't.

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

#115

Post by lacker »

Isn't that how it should work?

If you write the police and ask them to delete all their data about you, that isn't a thing that they do. It shouldn't matter if the police store their data on AWS or their own servers.

Flock is a tool used by the police so it should work the same way.

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

#116

Post by dsr_ »

Remember that the difference between "Flock can do whatever the hell it wants" and "Flock is required to delete your data at your request" is a law. Citizens vote for legislators. If you want this to be a higher priority for your legislators, buy them off.

Or vote for/against them, that might work too.

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

#117

Post by wakamoleguy »

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…

The data ownership is really interesting, as many threads here are going into. I wonder if it's possible to sidestep that entirely, though! Under the CCPA, "personal information" is defined as 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. That says nothing about ownership.

To the extent that Flock is only storing the data on behalf of their customers, I'd understand they wouldn't be required to delete it. But to the extent that they are indexing it, deriving from it, aggregating it across customers, and sharing it via their platform, it seems they should be required to remove that data from those services.

But then again, I am not a lawyer!

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

#118

Post by snowwrestler »

tadfisher wrote: post #101
snowwrestler wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, it matters if the photographer is the government (or contracted by the government, or subpoenaed by the government): see Chatrie v. United States [0]. The Fourth Amendment exists, and it remains to be tested whether querying massive surveillance networks is a "reasonable" search. [0]: https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/chatrie-v-united...

True but the Fourth Amendment doesn’t rely on the CCPA for authority!

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

#119

Post by [deleted] »

carefree-bob wrote: post #8
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…

They were saying "don't write to us, talk to the people who own the cameras and ask them to delete the data". A company that manufactures video cameras is not the one to talk to when someone records you, talk to the person who recorded you. But a reasonable person would say -- the data is stored on Flock servers, not with the camera owners. And Flock would say, just because we sell data storage functionality to camer…

[deleted]

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

#120

Post by necovek »

patrickmay wrote: post #105
necovek wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal information usually does include photos of someone in public without their consent: exceptions usually hold for taking photos of people where it is in the public interest to be able to show them or impractical to get consent. This covers large gatherings and celebrities, but a portrait photo of a stranger might put you on the wrong side of the law. Obviously, the idea is to not disallow having someone take a…

> Personal information usually does include photos of someone in public without their consent This is not the case in the United States. There is no presumption of privacy in public. In fact, there is a whole genre known as "street photography" that involves taking pictures in public without explicit consent of the subjects.

You seem to be right, thanks for the correction!

If https://legalclarity.org/can-you-post-someones-picture-witho... is to be trusted though, at least you get protection from your likeness being used for commercial purposes, though that seems a bit more limited than I'd expect.

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