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LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

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Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#251

Post by Sebguer »

ihumanable wrote: post #242
dude741 wrote: post #143

[flagged]

Why couldn't the police, who you pay taxes to, do their jobs? Apparently a sophisticated robbery ring was operating with a well understood MO in a predictable location and the police couldn't figure out how to use those facts to effect an arrest? Instead of "protecting" one neighborhood by installing privately owned surveillance devices, seems like the police could have just sat there, waited for a BMW full of Tren d…

Nothing about OP's story sounds plausible or reasonable. The criminal gangs are magically afraid of flock cameras but not any other kind of surveillance? They had footage of the crooks but it took too long to evaluate it, and yet the cops knew exactly which gang was doing it?

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#252

Post by cadamsdotcom »

tptacek wrote: post #208
etdznots wrote: post #96

The best part is that flock owns the cameras and the poles so even when the contract expires the cameras keep running and recording data that flock can sell to e.g. CHP, LASD, FBI, Palantir; and LAPD can just call them and access the data the flock scam was engineered to be resilient to political pressure by giving departments and jursidictions this fake exit ability while the data continues to be harvested, it is a…

The Flock contract I read from Oak Park, where we designed what I think are the country's most restrictive ALPR rules and ultimately took our cameras down, did not allow Flock to continue running, recording, and selling data after we turned the cameras off. In fact: they explicitly didn't allow them to sell the data at all . Can I ask where you got this idea from?

Thank you for pointing this out, I would just assumed the parent commenter was correct.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#253

Post by tptacek »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #252
tptacek wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Flock contract I read from Oak Park, where we designed what I think are the country's most restrictive ALPR rules and ultimately took our cameras down, did not allow Flock to continue running, recording, and selling data after we turned the cameras off. In fact: they explicitly didn't allow them to sell the data at all . Can I ask where you got this idea from?

Thank you for pointing this out, I would just assumed the parent commenter was correct.

We didn't really negotiate the contract, either; these were just their stock terms. Does someone have a Flock contract that says something else? A reminder: for most munis deploying Flock, these contracts are public record; you can just ask for them.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#254

Post by bflesch »

ses1984 wrote: post #164
bflesch wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to say these anti-capitalistic platitudes, but do you really want to live in a society where the concept of private ownership is not supported by the state? Society is not starting at zero right now, it has developed for 10.000 years with many genocidal wars. As a result, 1% of the population has achieved generational wealth due to some sort of "value creation" by their ancestors. Through trial and error an…

It would be fine if they protected property rights if they also protected human rights.

I agree. Society needs to be intolerant against intolerance.

But there is no better way to overcome old money than inflation.

Any violence is basically a struggle between different factions of old money, and it's overall impact is net negative for the majority of people. That's why certain factions of old money bring in their religious beliefs in order to justify violence - but in the end the normal people suffer from it.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#255

Post by ckosidows »

Sebguer wrote: post #251
ihumanable wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why couldn't the police, who you pay taxes to, do their jobs? Apparently a sophisticated robbery ring was operating with a well understood MO in a predictable location and the police couldn't figure out how to use those facts to effect an arrest? Instead of "protecting" one neighborhood by installing privately owned surveillance devices, seems like the police could have just sat there, waited for a BMW full of Tren d…

Nothing about OP's story sounds plausible or reasonable. The criminal gangs are magically afraid of flock cameras but not any other kind of surveillance? They had footage of the crooks but it took too long to evaluate it, and yet the cops knew exactly which gang was doing it?

Glad I'm not the only one who thought this story sounded completely fabricated. It reads like a Flock ad.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#256

Post by mistercheph »

bix6 wrote: post #211
mistercheph wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but making some assumptions to fill in gaps, it seems they are avoiding having to comply with CCPA and other privacy laws like this: they harvest camera data and retain the images probably forever, but only turn it into identifying data on demand for customers. So you really do have to go talk to the customer, because Flock never "has" any identifying data about anyone, they just have anonymous images that whe…

> but only turn it into identifying data on demand for customers. How could this seriously hold legal weight? The data is identifiable. Just because it’s gated by some transformation doesn’t mean they are magically not holding my identifiable information.

Reading the definition of personal information from CCPA (https://cppa.ca.gov/regulations/pdf/ccpa_statute.pdf), I'll produce the relevant parts:

1798.140 (v)

> “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 if it identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could be reasonably linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household."

The phrase "reasonably capable of being associated with" seems like it would apply against this transformation argument, but later:

> (2) (A) “Personal information” does not include publicly available information or lawfully obtained, truthful information that is a matter of public concern.

> (B) (i) For purposes of this paragraph, “publicly available” means any of the following:

> (II) Information that a business has a reasonable basis to believe is lawfully made available to the general public by the consumer or from widely distributed media.

So I think the above comment was wrong, this might be the actual way around it, AIUI courts have long established that individuals don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy from being photographed or recorded when in public, so it seems like public surveillance footage is actually exempt from CCPA even if it can be reasonably linked with personally identifying information.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#258

Post by shevy-java »

etdznots wrote: post #96

The best part is that flock owns the cameras and the poles so even when the contract expires the cameras keep running and recording data that flock can sell to e.g. CHP, LASD, FBI, Palantir; and LAPD can just call them and access the data the flock scam was engineered to be resilient to political pressure by giving departments and jursidictions this fake exit ability while the data continues to be harvested, it is a…

Is that legal though? Usually the poles stand on public ground, so there is no way, in my opinion, that the ground on which the poles stand are owned by that company.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#259

Post by JamesSwift »

saghm wrote: post #97
JamesSwift wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualified immunity is more nuanced. It allows the first offense to be absolved but it works like legal precedent where future offenses by _any law enforcement officer_ is not covered. Now there’s plenty of loopholes where you can craft “unique defenses” based on nearly identical underlying offenses. But it’s important to have the distinction

How many instances of are there of qualified immunity actually resulting in an officer being found liable because of past precedent where someone else was considered to have had qualified immunity in the same circumstances? If it's not anywhere close to the number of times when they were found to be immune, then the distinction is theoretical only, and it's arguably more misleading to emphasize it as if it's a real l…

Well, I didnt bring it up but the other element of qualified immunity is that its purely for civil suits. So it would only show up if an officer was basically sued personally. It doesnt apply to criminal prosecution. Thats another can of worms though.

Re: LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire

#260

Post by dpoloncsak »

smalltorch wrote: post #190
alex43578 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the government couldn’t collect this information themselves? ALPRs are legal, cameras covering a public roadway are legal, and the 4th amendment doesn’t extend to driving on a public roadway.

Could the government set up 80,000 cameras to spy on everyone? No, they are not aloud to create dragnets or conduct mass surveillance. They need warrants. Thats the loophole that flock capitalized on.

There is no expectation of privacy in public. Look at NYC, the government most certainly has setup a network of cameras without a warrant. Flock cameras are all (to my knowledge) in public as well

Reference: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/06/scale-new-yor...

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