Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by genewitch » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 6:43 PM UTC

M3L0NM4N wrote: post #123

nemomarx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it comes down to it, I would prefer an officer die compared to an innocent civilian mistakenly die because a cop was scared or already had their finger on the trigger. Their job is to serve the public, accepting some level of risks is part of this. "About as risky as low paid delivery work" doesn't seem unreasonably high to me basically. Most cops die in car crashes, not being shot by potential suspects as it stan…

More police are shot and killed every year than people who were accidentally shot by police. Imagine if they didn't approach every high-risk situation with guns drawn. There would be orders of magnitude more officers killed.

This is not correct. to the best of my memory, no year since the 90s has had more than 100 or 200 total officer fatalities in the line of duty. Police routinely kill 3 people a day.

it's a pretty high bar to say that all three people the police kill every day were warranted.

most line of duty deaths involve not wearing a seatbelt.

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

#172

Post by lkey » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

Animats wrote: 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.

American police have no obligation to protect, serve, or tell the truth. The police steal more money than all petty thieves every year.

Qualified immunity makes accountability a distant mirage.

The police operate exactly as they are allowed and encouraged, by the system they labor within, to behave.

Your words 'sloppy' and 'error' imply that a 'careful, correct' approach fixes these ills. History and experience shows us that this hypothetical good will not be produced until laws and incentives more broadly, change.

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

#173

Post by nemomarx » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

M3L0NM4N wrote: post #123

nemomarx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it comes down to it, I would prefer an officer die compared to an innocent civilian mistakenly die because a cop was scared or already had their finger on the trigger. Their job is to serve the public, accepting some level of risks is part of this. "About as risky as low paid delivery work" doesn't seem unreasonably high to me basically. Most cops die in car crashes, not being shot by potential suspects as it stan…

More police are shot and killed every year than people who were accidentally shot by police. Imagine if they didn't approach every high-risk situation with guns drawn. There would be orders of magnitude more officers killed.

can you show me those numbers please

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

#174

Post by andrewla » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

aftbit wrote: post #143

Animats wrote: 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.

You should read Normal Accidents. "Human error" is an excuse. It isn't really actionable. Instead of trying to fix the "human error", you must design the system such that it does not permit life-threatening errors. Sometimes that means a tradeoff in terms of efficiency, cost, or something else. Often this tradeoff is not one that people in charge of the system are willing to make, unless they are forced to do so by a…

1. I for one do not want "Flock Safety" in the loop for this at all. Police departments can flag a license plate in the system; that's on them. Flock is just a tool for departments to communicate what would previously have been an APB and have better detection than relying on chance sightings.

2. The vehicle was correctly identified by Flock as being the one flagged, and verified by the local PD that it was the one that was flagged. That said, they could have verified that the flag was still meaningful before converging on the vehicle.

3. This is a real problem and this is really the core of the oversight.

When the lawsuit over this is filed, it seems like 80% of the liability should attach to #3, and 20% to #2, and essentially none to #1. It's hard for me to see why Flock is even relevant to this discussion except to drum up outrage.

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

#175

Post by NyxWulf » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

WillAdams wrote: post #114

ElevenLathe wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless we change the law, selective enforcement is the default. Courts have found again and again that cops have effectively no responsibility to even try to do their job. They can enforce what they want, and ignore what they don't. So the question isn't: "Should we take away the tools these cops use to serve the public?" but "Should we give even more powerful surveillance tools to a group of unaccountable thugs who…

When I was younger, in the summer, when I had a (very dark) tan and worked a night job which involved my driving around at odd hours I would get pulled over once or twice each summer for pretty flimsy reasons which equated to me matching the profile of the sort of person the police officer in question felt should be stopped/questioned. It should be a quick bit of data work for records to be made of such stops based o…

The arrest/conviction generally follow the pulled over stopped rates. It's pretty hard to arrest/convict people you aren't stopping. These types of biases and stereo types are often pervasive within certain groups of people, including law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, and often the subset of the local community in power. If you've ever been to court (even traffic court) you'll find the word of the officer is given tremendous weight, while the word of the defendant is almost totally marginalized (no matter what your race). Even though you are "presumed innocent", the defendant has a natural incentive to lie and the officer presumably doesn't.

To top that off there is almost no "suitable oversight" of any police departments in the US of any kind, let alone by the community.

There really are no simple solutions to this, even places not plagued by bigotry and racism have major structural power problems for the average citizen.

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

#176

Post by firefoxd » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 6:45 PM UTC

I parked in a mall when someone stole my plate and replaced it with one from a stolen car. The next day, my brother, brand new in the country, borrowed my car to go to his first job. He was surrounded with dozens of LAPD cars, held at gun point in the middle of a boulevard and dragged through the mud in his first day work clothes.

He tells me the only thing that saved him that day for not getting shot was not having the vocabulary to ask questions or explain himself. He was kneed, arms twisted, humiliated, then tossed in the back of a cruiser. Our car was a white infiniti. The stolen car was a black honda.

When the cops get information there is zero investigation. It's "we got him!" And act immediately. It's like having a giant llm generated PR and you just comment "lgtm" and merge, only someone's life is on the line.

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

#177

Post by cortesoft » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 6:45 PM UTC

VariousPrograms wrote: post #13

The inaccuracy of our omniscient AI surveillance network isn't why I'm against it. The conclusion of this article is that we need more humans in the loop for a successful police state.

While I don't think inaccuracy is the ONLY reason to be against a surveillance state, it is certainly a big part of why omnipresent surveillance is always going to lead to more problems than it will solve, and can be a good way to convince people of why we should not have it even if they don't agree with us on all the other reasons it is bad.

This case is a perfect demonstration of the Base Rate Fallacy, and shows what happens when you surveil EVERYONE hoping to find a small percentage of bad people you want to stop.

Almost every car that Flock scans is a normal, law abiding citizen. Even at very high levels of accuracy, any sort of flagging it does is going to most likely be an innocent person simply because of the Base Rate Fallacy.

There are going to be a LOT more of these types of stories than there will be where they actually find a bad guy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

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

#178

Post by genewitch » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 6:45 PM UTC

kittoes wrote: post #153

M3L0NM4N wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is obviously true... but also a fairy tale hypothetical, and we are in the real world. So the question is, what's the solution, right now? Not 200 years ago.

A fairy tale? The UK, Australia, and Brazil all have something to say about that claim. In developed countries, the United States is an extreme outlier so why pretend this is a completely unapproachable problem? Our constitution itself gives us a blueprint because it states, in no uncertain terms, a "well-regulated militia"; not "each individual citizen".

I notice you put a semicolon there. You forgot to put the rest:

> the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

what does "the people" mean to you?

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

#179

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 6:45 PM UTC

consumer451 wrote: post #36

nemomarx wrote: 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…

[deleted]

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

#180

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 6:45 PM UTC

gibspaulding wrote: post #98

jvanderbot wrote: post #67

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.

In the scenario where president n achieves a perfect surveillance state, I don’t see us getting a president n+1.

Well, not by free and fair election, but unless the perfect surveillance state also solves the problem of mortality, there will probably be a successor.

Possibly at a time facilitated by the security apparatus that puts the teeth in the surveillance state, because even if they theoretically have the capability autocrats rarely are interested in running their surveillance and security systems themselves, and want to spend time doing other things—which puts a lot of power in the hands to which those tedious bits are delegated.