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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

#201

Post by justinclift »

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…

Wonder if Flock could be DMCA'd to remove the data they're hosting then? :)

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

#202

Post by rjmunro »

jnovek wrote: post #154
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…

I don’t care. I don’t care who owns the data. If I can’t easily get private information like my movements removed from a database like this, the legislation does not sufficiently protect me. It should absolutely be Flock’s responsibility to remove my data and we should absolutely require it by law. Full stop.

The problem with this is where do you draw the line? If I film you with my iPhone (e.g. you walk past in the background of my video), Apple should delete my video from my phone and iCloud account based only on your instructions?

Apple hold the data in iCloud, Apple (or a phone network) may be leasing me the phone. That sounds pretty similar to the Flock situation.

I guess the difference is that flock might be sharing the data from a customers camera with other customers. Then they are definitely controlling it.

I think the bigger problem with Flock is the fact that their cyber security is so laughably bad that non-customers can easily access the data.

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

#203

Post by rjmunro »

tadfisher wrote: post #130
tptacek wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Flock charges to access the data which is voluntarily shared by other customers. I am struggling to note a difference in this practice from any other data brokerage service in existence. Does Flock do some kind of P2P dance to avoid the data transiting their systems?

Legally how does it work if I upload a file to Google Docs and then share it with my contacts? Is Google then a data brokerage for my files?

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

#204

Post by tptacek »

shye wrote: post #197
tptacek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know quite a bit about Flock, having been intimately involved in the process of evicting it from our municipality, and I don't think the distinction you're trying to draw here is meaningful. Flock will say they provide a service, one avidly sought by the actual owners of the data, to generate analysis based on that data. They're contractually forbidden from "selling their access to it" to arbitrary parties; they ca…

Flock's facilitation of data-sharing is a huge part of their value proposition over other cameras, and why their customers buy from them over their competitors. As such, even if they can contract it such that they are not legally responsible for such use, they are very much knowingly facilitating it. If this was physical goods, rather than data, they would probably been as responsible as their customers.

I've read our contract. I know what it says. This isn't an abstraction. They can do lots of things. What they actually do is not data brokerage under California Law, at least not that I can tell.

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

#205

Post by tptacek »

taotau wrote: post #199
tptacek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Devils advocate here. There is currently an article on the front page about a US bill to compel operating systems to collect age verification / id data. If something like that was actually in place and every packet on the internet was stamped with your digital id then you could feasibly demand that aws purge/filter your data out of their systems.

You can't even request AWS delete your actual PII from S3. If you've been to a doctor in the last 2 years, you have HIPAA PII somewhere on S3, and AWS won't do a thing about it for you. I don't know why people have this idea that service providers will scrub their customers data for you.

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

#206

Post by tptacek »

rjmunro wrote: post #203
tadfisher wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flock charges to access the data which is voluntarily shared by other customers. I am struggling to note a difference in this practice from any other data brokerage service in existence. Does Flock do some kind of P2P dance to avoid the data transiting their systems?

Legally how does it work if I upload a file to Google Docs and then share it with my contacts? Is Google then a data brokerage for my files?

They are not, because they are not operating a business that acquires and resells your data. You own your document, and Google isn't selling it to third parties. Flock doesn't own municipal data, and Flock is also not "selling it to third parties"; it's facilitating a sharing system that law enforcement agencies avidly desire.

Presumably the California data brokerage statutes were written specifically to prevent the kind of nerd-lawyering happening on this thread.

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

#207

Post by tptacek »

I'm not sure how this request even makes sense. By the logic of the demand made here, a municipality can set up an ALPR system to record evidence of crimes (after the grim failure of Flock's alerting in Oak Park where I live, we rolled Flock back to a configuration where that was all it was used for), and random people can mail Flock to be exempted from that evidence collection.

It's good to want things, and I get why people want this specific thing, but the logic that says this is a viable demand under current law seems like it would prove way too much.

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

#208

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

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…

You know... you might have some success getting LeaglEagle involved, especially since they'd make money on the attention it would bring. Benn Jordan would probably love to be an expert witness.

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

#209

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

SoftTalker wrote: post #57
inetknght wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Sounds reasonable to me. If the police want to put up a camera, then the police should put up…

So police departments should have to develop and host all their administrative software also? I think we can all see why that would be a terrible idea. Police are like any other government agency or business in that they contract with the private sector for a variety of services that are not in their area of expertise.

Develop, no. Host, yes. They should buy, own, and operate any technology like this on-prem. The only involvement that 3rd-party tech should have is sales, tech support, and maybe blind, encrypted backups accessible only by the municipality.

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

#210

Post by tedggh »

“United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that installing a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device on a vehicle and using the device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(2012)

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