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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

#141

Post by unethical_ban »

ldoughty wrote: post #24
fudgy73 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK Flock owns the cameras and leases them out [0]. [0] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-does-my-neighb...

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 worth validating independently, but to be clear:

Are you saying Flock itself does not have access to any of the data, and that the data they store on behalf of local governments is not fed into any central datalake? That every organization's data is completely, unalterably separate from everyone else's?

If so, that makes the panopticon slightly less powerful.

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

#142

Post by throwway120385 »

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.

You also might not be considered a commercial entity under the law. It's a bit more nuanced and the words written in a particular statute have to be interpreted together. So statements about "commercial entities" have to be limited to such entities even if we'd really like to be able to go to our neighbor's house and ask them to delete all of the surveillance they have of our cars driving up and down the street in front of their house. I think these laws are often narrowly written to avoid unintended consequences like de-facto banning private operation of surveillance systems on private property.

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

#143

Post by unethical_ban »

tptacek wrote: post #111
ScoobleDoodle wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If Flock's customers, using Flock's infrastructure or tooling, can share data with each other, that would be bad.

I'm not saying that's what's happening, but that's what I thought was happening before reading this thread, and now I have to go and run through their policies.

Either way ALPRs and AI-facial scanners in public are a huge violation of privacy and I loathe them, but I hope it's correct that Flock customers cannot easily share information with one another.

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

#144

Post by Karrot_Kream »

tptacek wrote: post #95
danudey wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If AWS maintained private infrastructure that stored and indexed data associated with people's license plates and vehicles and then charged customers to do searches against that data then yes, you could write them to ask them to purge data pertaining to you. If Flock was just an opaque cloud storage service for law enforcement to back up their mass surveillance to then sure, your argument would have merit; it's not,…

The argument you're making implicates way more than just Flock, and is in a practical sense novel. If you can cite jurisprudence (or even legal experts) backing it up, I'm interested in reading it. Otherwise, I'm happy to accept that we just have premises about the law that are too far apart for an argument to be productive. My experience on HN is that these kinds of discussions almost immediately devolve into debate…

Realistically speaking you're never going to get pro Flock people in any numbers on this site writing comments at all. The anti surveillance position's popularity when it comes to up votes, down votes, and flags on this site is such that pros will continue posting about what they want the law to be and antis will stay out. That's just how crowd voting dynamics shape out.

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

#145

Post by pwython »

mmmlinux wrote: post #63

Lot of Flock Defenders in here.

Not Flock defenders, just people explaining how this is not a CCPA violation. I could set up 100 cameras around town (with property owners permission) and record cars driving by, birds, etc all day. Then I could sell access to that footage to whoever I want. If they want to scrape license plates that's up to the customer and their problem. Or if they want to track birds, cool, that could be in the frame too.

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

#146

Post by throwway120385 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #129
pksebben wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

>I take a picture of the applicant list on your desk. That doesn't make the list of applicants "my data". If the list is sitting there out in the open, then yes, it does make it your data.

Well, maybe not. A reasonable person might not think that about that applicant list. I bet you could make a different argument for taking a picture versus memorizing the list too.

The legal system thrives on specifics of a situation, so simply asserting that the list of applicants is or is not "yours" because you can see it seems like a gross oversimplification. The specifics of how you came to be there, what your relationship with the officeholder is, and so on probably matters a lot in that situation and I think there might be some unwritten rules or social norms that you'd be expected to follow as well.

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

#147

Post by shermantanktop »

fsckboy wrote: post #79
tptacek wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a practical matter, this may be good advice. But it also places a demand on someone with a legitimate concern that they go find an ideological "beard" to make themselves more palatable and sympathetic.

It's not hard to see how this enables an institution to gate itself from criticism.

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

#148

Post by thebaine »

halJordan wrote: post #53
carefree-bob wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It easily goes both ways. But we do sue American gun makers for deaths caused by lunatics. We sue drug makers for drugs prescribed by a doctor. We sue cloud providers for not reporting illegal photos. Printers are forced to id every printed page to combat counterfeiting. Banks are forced to do close accounts even though it's not their dirty money

Most of those examples have to do with the manufacturers knowing that their products were dangerous, addictive or illegal and advertising them aggressively as safe. They're mostly litigated on product liability claims. Banks are regulated by an entire architecture of laws, and we could enact laws that would regulate Flock too, as one of the other commenters pointed out they're doing in Oregon.

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

#149

Post by valeriozen »

ldoughty wrote: post #24
fudgy73 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK Flock owns the cameras and leases them out [0]. [0] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-does-my-neighb...

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…

The AWS analogy breaks down because AWS doesn't encourage customers to pool their S3 buckets into a nationwide searchable index.

Flock operates a federated network. If you drive past an unmarked camera, you have absolutely no way of knowing which specific HOA or town leased it so how are you realistically supposed to know who the "data controller" is to send your ccpa or deletion request to?

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

#150

Post by kstrauser »

pwython wrote: post #145
mmmlinux wrote: post #63

Lot of Flock Defenders in here.

Not Flock defenders, just people explaining how this is not a CCPA violation. I could set up 100 cameras around town (with property owners permission) and record cars driving by, birds, etc all day. Then I could sell access to that footage to whoever I want. If they want to scrape license plates that's up to the customer and their problem. Or if they want to track birds, cool, that could be in the frame too.

It gets a little weird when you explicitly market them for a purpose, though. Flock doesn't advertise a fleet of cameras suitable for birdwatching or other random activities. They market them specifically for the collection and processing of PII.

By analogy, Google Docs isn't marketed for healthcare use. If you wanted, you could put a bunch of PHI in a Google doc and it wouldn't be their responsibility. They certainly didn't tell you to do that. However, if they marketed Google Docs as a great place to store PHI, yeah, then suddenly they're on the hook for complying with the relevant laws like HIPAA.

(Although in this case Google will sign a HIPAA business associate agreement with you and voluntarily agree to comply. They still don't market it that way, or at least don't predominantly do so.)

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