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Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

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Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#131
post #9

Why did they need to have guns drawn and that many cops, even if the flag had been correct? A car involved in a homicide investigation doesn't mean it's even being driven by the suspect. It's not a positive ID at all

I am currently in the countryside, outside of the USA. I speak to folks about the USA sometimes, and guns come up. We are known for that. They think they want them. I get it... they do sound cool. I try to explain that in the USA, the ratio of guns to people is far above 1:1. Therefore, if I was a police officer approaching any car, I would assume that the driver had a gun. That reality increases the chances of bad t…

Whether or not the people being investigated have guns or not, won't showing up with guns up escalate the situation rather than defuse?

I would be absolutely terrified if people with guns came up to me, whether they're cops or not, and if I had a gun with me, I'd be much more likely to go for it in that scenario compared to a normal human interaction. But IDK, maybe I'm an outlier?

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#132
post #75
post #19

That's not a Flock error. That's a law enforcement error. Flock isn't responsible for a bogus warrant in the system. The woman probably has a good case for damages from the police department for doing it twice. That's sloppy police work.

How often are police actually held accountable for anything?

The municipalities that employ them are held accountable (and often prevented by unions from firing them).

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#133
post #19

That's not a Flock error. That's a law enforcement error. Flock isn't responsible for a bogus warrant in the system. The woman probably has a good case for damages from the police department for doing it twice. That's sloppy police work.

Plenty of blame to distribute.

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#134
This happened while I was up in Maine - friend had purchased a used vehicle with all the paperwork earlier in the day. Both parties happy, somehow flock wrongly flagged the vehicle as "stolen" and dispatched police without any probable cause or ask from the buyer or seller. This is completely NOT ok.

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#135
post #19

That's not a Flock error. That's a law enforcement error. Flock isn't responsible for a bogus warrant in the system. The woman probably has a good case for damages from the police department for doing it twice. That's sloppy police work.

This behavior would not be possible at scale without Flock's technology.

There's enough blame to go around to hit Flock and the PD both.

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#136
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. A perfect surveillance state is still wrong by design. If you dont accept this, consider the perfect surveillance state under president N, used by president N+1 given the inevitable flipflop in party control.

Unfortunately, the Trump presidency has conclusively proved the "imagine if your opponent was in power" argument doesn't work. Everybody says Trump should be impeached, nobody says the office of the president should be deprived of the powers Trump used to do the things he should be impeached for.

Exactly, the abuse of power and the everyone going along with it is the issue. The supreme court and executive now function as a complete governing body without any input from congress. Every spending bill gets passed with bipartisan support, even if the Democrats need to sacrifice a few members. Meanwhile I hear very few people complaining about colonizing Venezuela.

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#137
We shouldn't be wasting time figuring out how to make these tools usable. A healthy society requires privacy and a healthy society leads to long term safety trends. Mass surveillance as a tool, fundamentally, even if perfectly implemented and used, is fundamentally flawed and unfixable since it destroys the long term health of society. That is why I am against Flock and similar technologies.

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#138
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the Trump presidency has conclusively proved the "imagine if your opponent was in power" argument doesn't work. Everybody says Trump should be impeached, nobody says the office of the president should be deprived of the powers Trump used to do the things he should be impeached for.

that's strictly not true. at least one person doesn't believe in absolute presidential power. a lot of us believe that the president should really be an administrative head, and very limited ability to effect policy directly at all.

People say that and maybe even believe it but, even more than they believe that, the believe that the one thing the next president is going to unilaterally do is too important to let Congress deliberate on and, possibly, not do.

Re: Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide

#140
post #96
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this is bad logic. Flock is absolutely responsible and they should not be releasing or selling products that are this poorly made. Saying that the responsibility is only on the user is extremely myopic. It's also dismissing the role Flock has in how they make and design their software. If they can't handle this maybe they should be disbanded as a company or nationalized for better public control.

"Flock is absolutely responsible and they should not be releasing or selling products that are this poorly made." I am not a fan of flock, nor police surveillance state, but what could they have done better here? "Milwaukee police later admitted the alert should have been cleared out of the system days earlier, but an employee simply forgot to remove it. " The system seemed to work as intended - that numberplate was…

> I am not a fan of flock, nor police surveillance state, but what could they have done better here?

Flock should stop existing. I hope people help them with that, enthusiastically.

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