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Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

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Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#101

Post by pc86 »

buttercraft wrote: post #80
pc86 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flock themselves mis-translated the plate, plain and simple, and should not be being used in production for alerting authorities on very serious matters. I am anti-Flock to the point that my friends and family roll their eyes when the topic comes up, but saying that because the image recognition software did not achieve 100% accuracy it can't be used under any circumstances is just silly. I agree Flock shouldn't be…

"Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town" That sure sounds like an accuracy issue to me!

> But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM.

The license plate is 34 DTM. How would this have turned out any differently if a cop had run the plate behind this car at a traffic light?

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#102

Post by scoofy »

patrickmay wrote: post #91
scoofy wrote: post #88

I think a discussion we're not having is how policing should exist moving forward given this technology exists for criminals as well. We literally have people driving around with electromagnets on their license plates to cheat any number of perfectly reasonable traffic instruments. We have folks breaking into and going for joyrides in cars that lack engine immobilizers by exploiting them, then ditching them often aft…

> how do we have law enforcement without hiring a literal army of police officers? Just like we did way back in 2023 before the massive nationwide rollout of Flock cameras. A surveillance state is the antithesis of what the U.S. founders gave us. It is fundamentally illiberal.

2023 was a pretty miserable year in SF, in large part, because organized crime was using modern reselling platforms to create wildly productive fencing operations, driving extreme increases in car break-ins and burglaries.

This lead to a massive political shift towards stronger policing in the city, much of which has been facilitated by drone surveillance of groups engaging in burglaries without the dangers of high-speed car chases to the general public.

I do not think “just go back” is anything other than a nostalgia for a world we no longer live in.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#103

Post by xboxnolifes »

dylan604 wrote: post #9
nekusar wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YCombinator and HN would run a "Slit your mommas throat as a service" if they though there were hockey stick growth profit. Flock, and anybody who funds them are the real domestic terrorists. Anybody who destroys these devices are patriots in my book. And if I ever serve for jury duty over a case like that, they didn't do it.

> And if I ever serve for jury duty over a case like that, they didn't do it. Now you're bending facts. You can decide they are not guilty of a crime, but you can't make them have not done it.

And you're just being a pedant, aiming for the worst kind of correct.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#105

Post by joquarky »

charcircuit wrote: post #59
righthand wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we should give guns to children then because it’s just a tool to defend themselves right? Or a more common metaphor, if you give chimpanzee’s a gun… The police have no actionable method of abuse if you take Flock cameras away. They wouldn’t be acting on flagged random license plates if you took away the dragnet and surveillance system that’s randomly flagging people. This is 100% fault of Flock.

[flagged]

What is your point?

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#106

Post by righthand »

pc86 wrote: post #100
righthand wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope! Traditional ALPR systems follow the law and do not give out access like candy and do not automate flagging and tracking individuals. Traditional systems are not a dragnet. This is 100% the fault of Flock.

> But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM. The license plate is 34 DTM. There is nothing about Flock that caused this to happen - had any officer run this plate while sitting behind the car in traffic, exactly the same thing would have happened.

The difference is the officer doing police work and running a plate and it wouldn’t have happened. Instead the officer did not do police work and responded to an automated flagging by a dragnet like a drone. The dragnet did the police work.

This is 100% the fault of Flock!

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#107

Post by righthand »

charcircuit wrote: post #59
righthand wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we should give guns to children then because it’s just a tool to defend themselves right? Or a more common metaphor, if you give chimpanzee’s a gun… The police have no actionable method of abuse if you take Flock cameras away. They wouldn’t be acting on flagged random license plates if you took away the dragnet and surveillance system that’s randomly flagging people. This is 100% fault of Flock.

[flagged]

In Usa a citizen has a right to bear arms. That is distinctly different than ALPR dragnets that are being used to get around the 4th amendment. I’m not sure what your point is here.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#108

Post by Cider9986 »

gumby wrote: post #98
zenapollo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Pampano beach FL my 76 yo mother got pulled over for driving a stolen vehicle. Luckily the police had some common sense to decipher what happened. Plate swap, same make model and color.

I’m not a criminal*, but I hope when I’m 76 I’ll still be sufficiently lithe and compos mentis to pull off a career in crime, should I so choose. * Though wouldn’t a criminal say that?

They might be open about their career when they can be anonymous on a website as you can on HN.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#109

Post by scrapcode »

general1465 wrote: post #40
scrapcode wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as much as I dislike Flock, it seems like it wasn't at fault here. 34DTM != 34DTM10

But 34DTM* == 34DTM10 which is exactly what Flock did.

As stated in voxic11's comment, that is not what it did. It did more like a 34DTM.

Is that what it was asked to do? If it was, sure - the onus of accountability should be shifted to the law enforcement agency that decided to act in the way it did on potentially* matching information, as by asking in that way they would explicitly know it was only a potential match.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#110

Post by miyoji »

asdff wrote: post #46
miyoji wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Executives really don’t have free will. This is pure bullshit, an accountability dodge. Executives don't have to accept the job. Executives don't have to stay in the job when they find out they have to compromise their ethics. These are not people who are forced to steal bread to eat, they're highly compensated elites who have been given everything by society and they choose to do evil in exchange for the high comp…

If they don’t, capital will put in an executive that will. You will notice profit has strong alignment. No one gives a shit about you or me or this green earth. All those execs give a shit about the next quarter.

And? Other people's immorality does not excuse one's own. Other people kill and steal, that doesn't mean that I should do it anyway because other people are going to whether I do or not. That just makes the world, and me, worse.

"They'll find someone else to do it, so it's okay for me to do it" is a classic example of flawed and immoral ethical thinking. We could go for broke and add in "I was just following orders" and "But I didn't know people would die"

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