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Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

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Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#71

Post by JohnFen »

vablings wrote: post #44
Cider9986 wrote: post #33

There's a map of ALPRs based on OpenStreetMap so you can see ones near you: https://maps.deflock.org/ There's a lot more than just Flock, Flock is just one of thousands of terrible companies creating mass spying on innocent people. And there's also other ALPR companies like Axon and Motorola. Flock may be worse than those because of the AI features and large databases, but other companies making surveillance tech are…

There is a huge difference between the likes of Flock + Axon/Motorola currently. Flock is bad not because its surveillance its bad due to the scale, size and centralization.

And because of its surveillance and desire to turn the entire nation into a panopticon. Axon/Motorola is no better.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#72

Post by vel0city »

nielsbot wrote: post #69
vel0city wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, we do need regulations on this. We do need to also hold our elected representatives accountable. They're literally asleep (or in the alzheimer's ward) while on the job. And we also need to hold our police and other organizations who are actively abusing these tools that are already deployed. But we should also be holding the groups building these tools accountable for what their tools are doing, especially s…

> They're literally asleep (or in the alzheimer's ward) while on the job No. They're being bought off.

That too, I agree!

I'm just also pointing out situations like Kay Granger.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#73

Post by projektfu »

ItsBob wrote: post #61

I haven't read the transcript yet but are there no "human in the middle" loops here? Surely we could just get a pair of eyeballs on everything flagged and if it's not 100% crystal clear what's going on, then it gets flagged for a senior pair of eyes to look at? I'm against the Minority Report kind of stuff but a system (AI Flock cameras in this case) flags up , surely it should then go into a queue for humans to look…

The best read I can give it is that the police like slop just as much as anyone, and when the computer says "found it" they say "ok" and don't bother checking, especially if they're not the ones who have to stop the car themselves.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#74

Post by JohnFen »

ItsBob wrote: post #61

I haven't read the transcript yet but are there no "human in the middle" loops here? Surely we could just get a pair of eyeballs on everything flagged and if it's not 100% crystal clear what's going on, then it gets flagged for a senior pair of eyes to look at? I'm against the Minority Report kind of stuff but a system (AI Flock cameras in this case) flags up , surely it should then go into a queue for humans to look…

The "human in the middle" is supposed to be the cops. However, what we've seen is what history tells us we can expect: the "human in the middle" will tend to just accept whatever the automation says and not give it a second thought.

This is why "human in the middle" doesn't provide much protection or solace.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#75

Post by goatlover »

pjc50 wrote: post #58
scrapcode wrote: post #21

I am absolutely biased, but there is a lot of attempt to shift or at least share the blame here and not a lot of accountability. Flock themselves mis-translated the plate, plain and simple, and should not be being used in production for alerting authorities on very serious matters. We are already very aware that the police overreact and make plenty of mistakes. The obvious here being that even if this was the exact p…

> We are already very aware that the police overreact and make plenty of mistakes This is the deeper problem. See BLM, and then the backlash against that to create a much less accountable federal paramilitary/carabinieri force, ICE, resulting in the Minnesota conflict and several people getting killed. And what lies underneath all that? Dirty Harry and a whole stack of subsequent propaganda. There's a very powerful s…

The being tough on crime narrative ignores that police can act like criminals, have biases, enforce societal stereotypes and class systems, be incompetent or just make mistakes like any other human. Having a gun and a badge doesn't prevent any of that, thus the need for accountability. But voters also have to hold their representatives accountable for making sure police departments and justice systems do this.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#76

Post by JohnFen »

f154hfds wrote: post #4

> Garrett: At the highest level, nothing would make me happier than if we had state-by-state regulation on this type of technology. That to me is so crystal clear, because the lack of regulation on this type of technology just shows that our elected officials need to move faster than they have historically. Agreed. We've had a lot of this - tech companies begging for tech regulation. Without the regulation it seems w…

> tech companies begging for tech regulation

Companies are perfectly capable of being well-behaved without regulation. They simply choose not to. When I see these companies crying for regulation (even though I agree we need it desperately), it makes them look even more craven than they looked before.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#77

Post by Bender »

jakubmazanec wrote: post #16

What a coincidence, John Oliver just talked about this company [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnBPhelCdWE

Benn Jordan has released a number of them as well showing how insecure they are among other things. [1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/@BennJordan/search?query=flock

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#78

Post by lovich »

sib wrote: post #27
lovich wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s referencing jury nullification. Juries actually can “make them have not done it”, although that’s been used for good and ill purposes.

"Not guilty" does not mean "did not do it" - it means "the state didn't prove that they did it beyond a reasonable doubt."

Yea and that’s effectively “did not do it” when it comes to anything involving consequences.

It was obvious what the rhetorical point `nekusar was making. I’ll give you the pedantic point of being technically correct when looking at it from a gods eye view.

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#79

Post by voxic11 »

vel0city wrote: post #57
scrapcode wrote: post #21

I am absolutely biased, but there is a lot of attempt to shift or at least share the blame here and not a lot of accountability. Flock themselves mis-translated the plate, plain and simple, and should not be being used in production for alerting authorities on very serious matters. We are already very aware that the police overreact and make plenty of mistakes. The obvious here being that even if this was the exact p…

> Flock themselves mis-translated the plate, plain and simple To be fair to Flock, from what was said in this conversation they were told to be on the lookout of a partial plate of 34DTM. Meaning, there could be some additional characters that were not originally caught. So 34DTM10 and 1034DTM could potentially both be matches. It doesn't seem to me like Flock mistranslated the plate.

> The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM, not 34 10 DTM. But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM. Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle. And Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town. It just saw 34 DTM in large type and started alerting the local police.

No, it wasn't looking for partial matches, it was looking for an exact match of "34 DTM" and it missed the "10" in the middle of the victims plate because it was in non-standard small lettering (as required by law for those types of plates in their state).

Re: Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop

#80

Post by buttercraft »

pc86 wrote: post #49
scrapcode wrote: post #21

I am absolutely biased, but there is a lot of attempt to shift or at least share the blame here and not a lot of accountability. Flock themselves mis-translated the plate, plain and simple, and should not be being used in production for alerting authorities on very serious matters. We are already very aware that the police overreact and make plenty of mistakes. The obvious here being that even if this was the exact p…

> Flock themselves mis-translated the plate, plain and simple, and should not be being used in production for alerting authorities on very serious matters. I am anti-Flock to the point that my friends and family roll their eyes when the topic comes up, but saying that because the image recognition software did not achieve 100% accuracy it can't be used under any circumstances is just silly. I agree Flock shouldn't be…

"Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town"

That sure sounds like an accuracy issue to me!

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