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Authorities say Flock cameras' data allegedly used for immigration enforcement

ohio.news

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Re: Authorities say Flock cameras' data allegedly used for immigration enforcement

#41

Post by JohnMakin »

tencentshill wrote: post #40

Ohio dot news doesn't sound credible. Nothing on the About page. https://www.ohio.news/about/ . One email contact for statenewsdesk.com, the only indication about who might run this website. WHOIS entirely redacted. I'll assume it's a foreign influence operation until they put some names and faces out there.

If only people assigned such strict scrutiny to AI blogslop "news." From a 30 second google search shows plenty of other similar results:

https://www.courierpress.com/story/news/local/2025/07/22/eva...

https://www.wyso.org/news/2026-05-01/dayton-suspends-automat...

https://www.daytondailynews.com/local/dayton-suspends-licens...

Re: Authorities say Flock cameras' data allegedly used for immigration enforcement

#44

Post by ocdtrekkie »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #38
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of Illinois, this is not lawful, I'm not sure about the laws in Ohio, but if a village in Illinois buys a Flock camera and that data is accessible to ICE, than they have violated Illinois law. So they either need Flock to provide assurances that ICE cannot use the data, otherwise they have to remove the cameras entirely.

I suspect that the supremacy clause makes this a grey area. Simplified: you can make something illegal locally, but federal law will almost always win out.

Sure but the end result of that is simply that local agencies could not legally use this technology, not that they can just ignore local laws because the federal government wants them to. The federal government can maybe force Flock to turn over data, but local governments then cannot use Flock in accordance with Illinois law. In the case of Illinois, this is indeed causing some local governments to reconsider their Flock contracts.

Re: Authorities say Flock cameras' data allegedly used for immigration enforcement

#45

Post by jancsika »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

Does Flock have a competitor who can undercut it on price and provide entirely local data storage and management (or a zero-knowledge cloud)?

If I understand correctly, a police query to Flock makes inferences from the set of all municipality/HOA/BigBogStore flock cameras. Or at least the ginormous subset who haven't opted out of the default settings that make Flock appealing to police in the first place.

If your imagined competitor doesn't offer that feature, then how is it a competitor?

If your competitor does offer it, then why would it even matter whether ICE gets access to inferences derived from the cloud vs. some federation of local storage devices?

Re: Authorities say Flock cameras' data allegedly used for immigration enforcement

#46

Post by ocdtrekkie »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

Does Flock have a competitor who can undercut it on price and provide entirely local data storage and management (or a zero-knowledge cloud)?

Any security camera product can do this, Flock is winning on having an integrated cloud solution with an all in once price that integrates with a lot of other law enforcement tools.

You can put a camera on a pole with a cell router and enable the LPR plugin in your recording software pretty darn cheap. But you probably can't do that with a single subscription apart from Flock.

Re: Authorities say Flock cameras' data allegedly used for immigration enforcement

#47

Post by righthand »

GorbachevyChase wrote: post #37
righthand wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spying on people is a violation of plenty of amendments. Illegal immigration is a misdemeanor not a felony. Stop treating the law as a binary illegal or not. It just leads to brain dead interpretations of the law. There is plenty of “illegal” things people do every day and yet we don’t install public dragnet cameras to stop it. Illegal immigration hasn’t shown any real harm to people that regular citizens don’t also…

So assuming you drive, when a police car gets really inappropriately close behind you for a couple minutes and then backs off, then they are probably using their eyes to look at your license plate and having someone run that or texting while driving to do that on the computer in the car. I don’t think there is a fundamental difference between this process and using a camera other than a camera doesn’t expect you to g…

The cops actions are vetted and have responsible party attached. The camera is used to bypass responsibility of bad actors entirely. Infact the camera is used to enable bad actors instead of catching bad actors. Huge difference in my opinion but okay just shrug your shoulders and claim there’s no difference.

Re: Authorities say Flock cameras' data allegedly used for immigration enforcement

#48

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #46
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

Does Flock have a competitor who can undercut it on price and provide entirely local data storage and management (or a zero-knowledge cloud)?

Any security camera product can do this, Flock is winning on having an integrated cloud solution with an all in once price that integrates with a lot of other law enforcement tools. You can put a camera on a pole with a cell router and enable the LPR plugin in your recording software pretty darn cheap. But you probably can't do that with a single subscription apart from Flock.

> Any security camera product can do this, Flock is winning on having an integrated cloud solution

Flock provides a fire-and-forget service. The city contracts Flock, and then the cameras are put up and managed. I'm asking if anyone else does this without Flock's baggage.

Re: Authorities say Flock cameras' data allegedly used for immigration enforcement

#49

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #23
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I get that. My impression is that the angle here is specifically not against Orwellian mass surveillance, but „the evil fascists at ICE use it too“ which I find hypocritical.

Why is that hypocritical?

Because if public video surveillance was only used for legitimate purposes, worked well and made everyone‘s life better as a consequence there wouldn’t be as much opposition to it. In practice this is not always the case.

If every new proposed law to combat „child abuse“ was well intentioned and actually worked, there wouldn’t be much opposition either. But since they are mostly an underhanded tactic to censor the internet, there is.

So to use this legitimate actually useful example of fighting illegal immigration leaves a very bitter taste.

Re: Authorities say Flock cameras' data allegedly used for immigration enforcement

#50

Post by JohnMakin »

tencentshill wrote: post #42
JohnMakin wrote: post #36

This should not be flagged. @dang

ohio.news is not credible.

Ok? So change the URL to any number of credible sites that are reporting this same information:

https://www.daytondailynews.com/local/dayton-suspends-licens...

I think it's fairly obvious why this got so aggressively flagged.

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