Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Flock cameras keep telling police a man who doesn't have a warrant has a warrant

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 152 posts

Re: Flock cameras keep telling police a man who doesn't have a warrant has a warrant

#121

Post by cucumber3732842 »

virissimo wrote: post #26
pj_mukh wrote: post #6

Paraphrasing the crux of the issue: "It's regular practice in Colorado to list license plates with both versions, the one with 'O's and the other with Zeros in the warrant list." Insane. Practice. As always, this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI, but "law enforcement has an insane lazy practice" doesn't make for a very good headline anymore.

It's not insane at all to return both in a lookup. The "reporting person" will often be wrong about slight variations when calling in a license plate and the downside of errors are asymmetric: it is much more dangerous for the officer to think a driver doesn't have a warrant when they do versus thinking they have a warrant when they don't.

>it is much more dangerous for the officer to think a driver doesn't have a warrant when they do versus thinking they have a warrant when they don't.

Yeah, god forbid they let the car drive on by.

The stop wouldn't even have happened if not for the warrant.

Re: Flock cameras keep telling police a man who doesn't have a warrant has a warrant

#122

Post by thaumasiotes »

kajman wrote: post #115
thaumasiotes wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As always, this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI, but "law enforcement has an insane lazy practice" doesn't make for a very good headline anymore. That practice isn't insane. It's what you'd always want. To the extent that it causes problems, you'd want to fix the practice that doesn't make sense, which is using an alphabet for license plates that contains both O and 0.

I personally don't want people violently dragged out of their cars at gunpoint when they don't actually have warrants.

So?

Re: Flock cameras keep telling police a man who doesn't have a warrant has a warrant

#123

Post by antonvs »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #62
LocalH wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, AI has no place in law enforcement. It's the hammer that is being used to put screws in. It enables injustice at a far larger scale than ever before. See: the TN woman who was extradited to NC, having never been there, for a crime that the AI "face recognition" flagged as her, and the cops did zero actual investigation, they just took the AI at its word and put her in jail for six months. I also remember a man…

See: the TN woman who was extradited to NC, having never been there, for a crime that the AI "face recognition" flagged as her, and the cops did zero actual investigation, they just took the AI at its word and put her in jail for six months. As has been explained numerous times, this was a problem with the police and the courts, not AI. Get rid of bad cops first, then worry about AI.

That's completely backwards. The whole point is, giving AI to bad cops only makes things worse.

Re: Flock cameras keep telling police a man who doesn't have a warrant has a warrant

#124

Post by antonvs »

LocalH wrote: post #101
dylan604 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the question does not really seem like a good faith question. if people on this forum can't see a reason why someone would want to use AI to make their life easier is kind of hypocritical. what, it's only good for techbros to use it, but other's can't? we know that pretty much every police agency is understaffed and those working are humans and would like to make their job easier/faster/more successful just like ever…

There are a lot of people here who are against any so-called modern "AI" I'm kinda one of them ELIZA they are not

ELIZA was a trivially simple hardcoded chatbot, that mainly reflected your statements back at you as questions, so it's not clear what you mean by that comparison.

If you were looking for an impressive example of early AI, SHRDLU would be it.

Re: Flock cameras keep telling police a man who doesn't have a warrant has a warrant

#125

Post by CamperBob2 »

antonvs wrote: post #123
CamperBob2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See: the TN woman who was extradited to NC, having never been there, for a crime that the AI "face recognition" flagged as her, and the cops did zero actual investigation, they just took the AI at its word and put her in jail for six months. As has been explained numerous times, this was a problem with the police and the courts, not AI. Get rid of bad cops first, then worry about AI.

That's completely backwards. The whole point is, giving AI to bad cops only makes things worse.

They are going to get AI, regardless of what you or I or anyone else piling on thinks about it. It will happen. That's how this works. That's how this has always worked. For the cops, it's just a matter of waiting for the right crisis to come along to justify it.

So we need to make sure the people and processes are in place to prevent, recognize, and redress the inevitable abuses.

Re: Flock cameras keep telling police a man who doesn't have a warrant has a warrant

#126

Post by _DeadFred_ »

tcp_handshaker wrote: post #113
LocalH wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flock is the problem too because their system is enabling the rights violations to scale up.

Its by design. By using a third party, they can get around the 4th amendment.

How are they not an 'agent of the state' and how does the 4th not apply? If the government asked for the scan/info on the vehicle, they are acting on behalf of the government?

https://www.fletc.gov/audio/definition-government-agent-unde...

Re: Flock cameras keep telling police a man who doesn't have a warrant has a warrant

#127

Post by _DeadFred_ »

mlmonkey wrote: post #47
jeremywho wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI This story wouldn't exist without flock cameras constantly surveilling the public...cameras have EVERYTHING to do with this story.

This wouldn't be a story if the cops did not put the wrong license plate in the system. How is it Flock's fault? Flock is just doing what it is being asked to do! Let me put in simple terms: Flock flags license plates that are given to it. Someone, somewhere says, license plate "ABCD1234" has a warrant out. And guess what, if Flock sees that plate, it _will_ flag it each. and. every. time! Tomorrow, say an "Amber Ale…

If Flock flags license plates at the request of the government, it is acting as an agent of the state and is required to meet governement/constitutional requirements.

How does flock get around this? It can't be an agent of the state AND be private and exempts from 4th amendment/all constitutional requirements?

https://www.fletc.gov/audio/definition-government-agent-unde...

Solari: No sir, unless he was for some reason acting on behalf of the government or had been asked by a government agent to do that. Unless that were the case then if that person was acting in his own private capacity as a UPS or FedEx employee then he would not be a government agent for 4th Amendment purposes.

Miller: Can private parties ever trigger the 4th Amendment?

Solari: Yes, as we discussed, if a private party were to be acting at the behest of the government -- if a government agent were to ask that FedEx person to open up a package and look inside, or to ask someone’s girlfriend to go through their things looking for evidence to turn over to the police, then that would be government activity. That would be the actions of a government agent because government agents can’t ask private parties to do something they themselves couldn’t do under the 4th Amendment, so in that type of instance it would be extended to that private party.

Re: Flock cameras keep telling police a man who doesn't have a warrant has a warrant

#128

Post by ranger_danger »

tcp_handshaker wrote: post #113
LocalH wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flock is the problem too because their system is enabling the rights violations to scale up.

Its by design. By using a third party, they can get around the 4th amendment.

I'm not convinced they can always get around it... I think they could challenge their arrest in court on Fourth Amendment grounds and have a chance at winning:

https://epic.org/vehicle-fingerprinting-through-pervasive-ca...

>In the 2018 case Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court affirmed that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their long term movements (even in public spaces) and, because of that expectation, queries into long term location tracking data constitute a Fourth Amendment search that requires a warrant.

I suppose they would also have to argue that they are not the actual target of the warrant.

Re: Flock cameras keep telling police a man who doesn't have a warrant has a warrant

#129

Post by ranger_danger »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #126
tcp_handshaker wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its by design. By using a third party, they can get around the 4th amendment.

How are they not an 'agent of the state' and how does the 4th not apply? If the government asked for the scan/info on the vehicle, they are acting on behalf of the government? https://www.fletc.gov/audio/definition-government-agent-unde...

Flock claims that "Fourth Amendment case law overwhelmingly shows that LPRs do not constitute a warrantless search because they take point-in-time photos of cars"

And that may be true, however Carpenter v. US established that long-term tracking of a person's location without a warrant is still not allowed under the Fourth Amendment.

Re: Flock cameras keep telling police a man who doesn't have a warrant has a warrant

#130

Post by zzgo »

calin2k wrote: post #78

the number of flock apologists comments in this post are a aberration from normal, there must be an artificial factor at play

We discuss Flock occasionally in my local subreddit since they granted our city of fewer than 100K like 40 of these within the last year. Plenty of Flock apologists appear as soon as the threads on the subject are posted. I'm convinced the majority of that is astroturfed.
Post reply on HN