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Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

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Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#191

Post by warumdarum »

ultrarunner wrote: post #177
boring_twenties wrote: post #158

This shouldn't be hard to understand. Don't talk to the police, without your attorney present, under any circumstances whatsoever. Dating the police is just such an astoundingly egregious violation of this principle that I can only wonder what, if anything, those people are thinking. Anyway, the key takeaway seems to don't date anyone who dates the police. Firstly, because it directly puts your own safety at risk, as…

> Dating the police is just such an astoundingly egregious violation of this principle There are still quite a few people who think the police are the friendly government-provided customer service agents of life, although I've watched this viewpoint decline markedly over the last twenty years at least. Locally, a woman went on a hiking date with a Phoenix cop and wound up dead [0]. Notably, the woman was from New Eng…

[flagged]

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#192

Post by fzeroracer »

tptacek wrote: post #186
duld wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify, you're stating that "Don't talk to the police" is an "extremely online belief"? Or were you referencing the dating portion of the comment?

Correct: "never talk to the police" is a very online belief. I watch people talk to police all the time . People go out of their way to do it. I don't even know what to do with the "never date police officers" thing. Most police officers are married. It's a shift-work job, so they have high divorce rates, but they just remarry.

Saying never talk to the police is an 'online belief' is frankly baffling.

There are multiple examples of prominent law professors bringing in ex-police professionals who all say the exact same thing: never talk to the police. If you spend five minutes around a lawyer they will say the same thing. If you ever end up finding yourself in legal turmoil it is the very first thing a lawyer will directly advise you to do.

People being stupid I don't think suddenly makes this advice terminally online. I was hearing it, in person, when I was in college over a decade ago.

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#193

Post by tptacek »

fzeroracer wrote: post #192
tptacek wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct: "never talk to the police" is a very online belief. I watch people talk to police all the time . People go out of their way to do it. I don't even know what to do with the "never date police officers" thing. Most police officers are married. It's a shift-work job, so they have high divorce rates, but they just remarry.

Saying never talk to the police is an 'online belief' is frankly baffling. There are multiple examples of prominent law professors bringing in ex-police professionals who all say the exact same thing: never talk to the police. If you spend five minutes around a lawyer they will say the same thing. If you ever end up finding yourself in legal turmoil it is the very first thing a lawyer will directly advise you to do.…

Most people simply don't see themselves as being in zero-sum contests with the police. If you are in such a contest, those videos you've watched are quite useful and important. But when there's a hit and run on your block, expect your neighbors to go out of their way to volunteer information to the police.

I've read threads here where people have made impassioned arguments that you yourself should never volunteer information to the police investigating a crime such as a hit and run. The police will turn it against you and somehow make you the target of their investigation! Ordinary people out in the world do not think that way, and you will not succeed in making them think that way by showing them videos of lawyers explaining why the only thing you should ever say is "I do not consent to any searches and will not answer any of your questions".

If you said that to a police officer doing a canvass in my neighborhood, people would look at you like a space alien.

I think it's helpful to understand all this stuff when reading things about Flock. People on HN and in activist communities seem gobsmacked that all the Flock cameras haven't been taken down yet (in fact: ALPR deployments are growing, not shrinking). But they have wildly different priors about policing than the median resident of a muni with ALPR cameras.

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#194

Post by BrenBarn »

tptacek wrote: post #186
duld wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify, you're stating that "Don't talk to the police" is an "extremely online belief"? Or were you referencing the dating portion of the comment?

Correct: "never talk to the police" is a very online belief. I watch people talk to police all the time . People go out of their way to do it. I don't even know what to do with the "never date police officers" thing. Most police officers are married. It's a shift-work job, so they have high divorce rates, but they just remarry.

The fact that most people believe it's not good advice doesn't mean it actually is not good advice.

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#195

Post by _carbyau_ »

Manuel_D wrote: post #150
Ancapistani wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I would oppose a city setting up CCTV to be used the way Flock is used - that would be orders of magnitude less bad than Flock. As it is, you can assume that at the very least, every time your vehicle has passed one of the >100k Flock cameras, there's a database entry and a photo that will never, ever be deleted. Your full travel history from this point forward is available for a nominal fee, and without any re…

Who says the city's retention period would be smaller than Flock? Furthermore, do you realize that you're free to photograph people in public and sell those images, no permission required: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nussenzweig_v._DiCorcia People seem to struggle to wrap their head around the fact that privacy laws don't prevent people from recording them in public. You can be recorded at any time in public, by th…

> You can be recorded at any time in public, by the government or another private person.

Similar to "free speech", it is not as simple as that. Harassment and stalking among other things. I dare you to try hanging around a school with a DSLR taking pictures of kids in the playground and defend yourself with "But I'm in public!"

Without going into the list of misdemeanors, generally the point is intent.

If you take a picture, or ten, ostensibly of Times Square, no one cares. You can't piece together a person's day.

The application of computing@scale (processing, storage, pattern recognition) changes the outcomes significantly. The hard to piece together day of the everyperson suddenly becomes a trivial query away.

Whether that should be legal or not is quite rightly up for debate.

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#196

Post by BrenBarn »

TZubiri wrote: post #123

Big fan of court ordered warrants as a way to limit law enforcement here. That said, warrants protect law enforcement like searching someone's house. It seems that some less intrusive powers like running someone's plate has been given to the police with lower controls. And it makes sense right? If every judge needed to approve every potential plate check, it might be too much for daily operations. So option A, push t…

There are other options. One is to allow them to be audited not just by judges but by various "watchdog" groups which themselves go through some kind of vetting process. If you think police would be wary if they knew judges were watching 1% of their videos, imagine how they'd feel if they knew the ACLU had the option of watching every single one.

The other side of it, though, is enforcement, and to me this seems like what's mostly lacking. It remains to be seen what will happen with this case but the article mentions a variety of actions over a period of time

1. he tracked six separate people

2. he ran license plates for these people 140 times

2. he searched the database while off duty

3. he called the ex-boyfriend

4. he said "This is the only time I'm going to be nice about this" which pretty clearly is threatening statement

For this he was charged with. . . two Illinois class-3 felonies, which from what I see online means each charge can get you 2-5 years in prison. So he's looking at 10 years max, if he gets convicted with the charges as they stand.

What each individual misuse of the tracking was charged as a separate offense? What if the standard of proof for officer misconduct was drastically lowered, so that, for instance, they could be fired or incur significant financial penalties with a much quicker process? And if the full criminal process does go through, as far as I'm concerned, a police officer who misuses their position in this manner should probably be wearing an ankle monitor for the rest of their life and/or have to register in a manner similar to sex offenders. We are way too lenient with the punishments for misuse of authority.

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#197

Post by BrenBarn »

FireBeyond wrote: post #57
Avshalom wrote: post #12

>>Flock and law enforcement regularly cite documented cases where LPR helped solve violent crimes, recover stolen vehicles, and locate missing persons. Those outcomes are real. My opposition wouldn't change regardless but are those outcomes real?

Flock's position, statistically, is that if during the course of an investigation into a crime, a detective queries Flock, and the crime is later solved, that Flock "helped solve a crime", regardless of the merit or value of the query. "Saw a vehicle, look it up, "nope, unrelated", but still "helped solve".

So stalking your ex-girlfriend's ex-boyfriend is actually a public service as long as you solve some crimes along the way!

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#198

Post by coffeefirst »

ACCount37 wrote: post #62
asveikau wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cops can politely ask owners of private cameras for access for things like murder investigation. If the polite answer is no (most people will say yes), they can go to court for a subpoena. This has happened for a long time. This is how it should work. If the cops are too lazy or chicken to ask a judge while investigating a murder, they don't deserve the footage.

This is very doable when what you're dealing with is a Major Crime That Gets Full Institutional and Individual Attention. What about a bike theft, a jacked car or a stolen parcel though? There is a price to having information easily available to the law enforcement. There is a price to not having this information easily available to the law enforcement too.

A few years ago I had police knock on my door to see if our camera had footage of a crash on our block. This is not a problem.

A little friction in the right places is a good thing.

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#199

Post by derektank »

eclipticplane wrote: post #63
ACCount37 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very doable when what you're dealing with is a Major Crime That Gets Full Institutional and Individual Attention. What about a bike theft, a jacked car or a stolen parcel though? There is a price to having information easily available to the law enforcement. There is a price to not having this information easily available to the law enforcement too.

Even with Flock, police aren't solving those crimes.

That entirely varies by locality. My parents just had their vehicle broken into and their credit and debit cards stolen (in addition to some cash) and the local police department visited the grocery store where the thief used the cards to buy gift cards multiple times to collect security footage to try and track them down (the grocery store store’s security lead was out the first time on vacation). If your local police department won’t do this and you want them to, ask your community to raise taxes to hire more and/or better cops.

Re: Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

#200

Post by Manuel_D »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #195
Manuel_D wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says the city's retention period would be smaller than Flock? Furthermore, do you realize that you're free to photograph people in public and sell those images, no permission required: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nussenzweig_v._DiCorcia People seem to struggle to wrap their head around the fact that privacy laws don't prevent people from recording them in public. You can be recorded at any time in public, by th…

> You can be recorded at any time in public, by the government or another private person. Similar to "free speech", it is not as simple as that. Harassment and stalking among other things. I dare you to try hanging around a school with a DSLR taking pictures of kids in the playground and defend yourself with "But I'm in public!" Without going into the list of misdemeanors, generally the point is intent. If you take a…

> I dare you to try hanging around a school with a DSLR taking pictures of kids in the playground and defend yourself with "But I'm in public."

You'll probably get harassed by school staff and parents, but the police will have no grounds to arrest you.

> If you take a picture, or ten, ostensibly of Times Square, no one cares. You can't piece together a person's day.

Yes, you can. Private investigators often do exactly that.

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