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New Bedford police officer accused of using Flock cameras to track ex-partner

newbedfordlight.org

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Re: New Bedford police officer accused of using Flock cameras to track ex-partner

#81

Post by wyclif »

goosejuice wrote: post #66
sixothree wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Celebrities get special treatment in hospitals built into pretty much all EHR software. Names are obfuscated, while searches and views get instantly flagged. I highly suspect the same thing exists here.

That's to protect the hospital. Inappropriate access to any medical record covered by HIPAA carries the same weight, it's just less of a legal shit show and less tempting for employees when they aren't rich powerful or famous.

It's not on the same level at all as medical records, but I remember years ago when I got my first "real job" working as a credit adjuster at a major credit card bank that you've definitely heard of.

Any employee could just search the name of a celebrity who was a card holder and view all their transactions. Not sure if that's still the case, but the only point I want to make here is that when this was brought up internally as a security issue, the top management clearly didn't care and did nothing about it.

Re: New Bedford police officer accused of using Flock cameras to track ex-partner

#83

Post by Eufrat »

threatofrain wrote: post #47
duxup wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patrol officer isn’t the equivalent of a CEO.

I've built such software for bigger police departments. I listen to what the stakeholders want and balance them against users. If the stakeholder wants a way to bypass this or that, then that's what's going to happen. Neither users nor stakeholders will want to be handcuffed in the name of public accountability. Nobody wants to be handcuffed, really.

Police do not want any accountability, that much has been exemplified by the way the police leadership and police organizations object to any attempt to regulate them.

Re: New Bedford police officer accused of using Flock cameras to track ex-partner

#84

Post by petterroea »

infinite_spin wrote: post #67
petterroea wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that I disagree, but police looking up protestors license plates in order to trigger a "law enforcement looked you up" email is one hell of an intimidation tactic

Welp, glad I posted this, because that's an extremely good point. Will have to think about this more. It kind of reminds me of how the reddit self harm notification system was abused. Maybe it can be an opt in type of system, or even based on some threshold. I wonder though, if I were a protestor, and that lookup happened more some expected number of times, it could be important to know.

In my experience there's almost always a way in which things like this can be abused, which is why I lean more towards it being made illegal altogether and accepting the cost of not having mass surveillance. I am yet to find a way in which its not a large can of worms no matter what you do.

But if prohibiting mass surveillance is not an option, the second best thing would be good checks that make sure tools like this can't be used in silence.

Re: New Bedford police officer accused of using Flock cameras to track ex-partner

#85

Post by My_Name »

pudgywalsh wrote: post #27
newsomix9xl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not attacking tools or people. This article and my statements aren't attacks. The article is an (alleged) fact, and mine are opinions. I didn't bring up New Bedford. I agree trust is good. I also believe Flock has implemented some auditing tool to flag frivolous searches which is why these cases are popping up. I am not against trust, but verifying those who we trust are trustworthy is important, I think.

I'm using it as a literary device and I think you're reading my post too literally. If we assume surveillance tools will be use inappropriately, that alone is not justification to do away with it. As with nearly all tools comes great responsibility. The same argument can be made for police carrying weapons. Some places like the UK deny the police weapons but have surveillance up the ass.

Widespread indiscriminate surveillance tools are inappropriate whether they are misused by users or not.

Some places like America give every cop a gun but fight against widespread surveillance.

The police should not have either.

Re: New Bedford police officer accused of using Flock cameras to track ex-partner

#86

Post by Coeur »

petterroea wrote: post #64
infinite_spin wrote: post #44

At this point I think it's necessary to notify anyone who has been tracked after a fixed number of days, unless a court order is used to extend that period. An officer using this for legitimate reasons should have few problems getting that court order. This would at least give people some amount of safety net from stalking by LE.

It's not that I disagree, but police looking up protestors license plates in order to trigger a "law enforcement looked you up" email is one hell of an intimidation tactic

The trigger email should obviously go to somebody with more power than a police officer (so that the fear of getting asked ugly questions might slightly intimidate the police officer). Not sure who exactly that somebody would be.

Re: New Bedford police officer accused of using Flock cameras to track ex-partner

#87

Post by wfvr »

veec_cas_tant wrote: post #59
aqme28 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some places, like Germany, that reasonable expectation of privacy standard extends into public. You’re not allowed to just film strangers that have nothing to do with you. In some ways, I feel like this is a better system for our future.

Regardless of their laws, Germany has plenty of CCTV style cameras outdoors just like NYC and other major cities worldwide.

CCTV cameras that are recording on a rolling tape that only keeps a few days of footage that is looked at by no one unless something happens can't be compared to internet connected systems that centralize all the camera feeds and uses AI to track vehicles and people.

Re: New Bedford police officer accused of using Flock cameras to track ex-partner

#89

Post by kotaKat »

sixothree wrote: post #32
none2585 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because no one important cares and no one will do anything about it.

Celebrities get special treatment in hospitals built into pretty much all EHR software. Names are obfuscated, while searches and views get instantly flagged. I highly suspect the same thing exists here.

The funny thing is if you have the Karen HOA edition of the Flock cameras (eg the “private” ones for gated communities etc):

https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/how-the-safe-list-solves-pr...

The HOA ones come with “safe list” whitelisting to somehow cause it to dump local reads for some plates? This slightly also seems like a bad idea at least because then you just need to steal a car inside the gated community to defeat its "safe list" and wander around it without its Flocks reading you.

(I mean, once you leave the gated community, you're fair game again, but still: the 'safe list' feature provides bullshit privacy relief to even more ignorant people who are probably more relieved that they think they're suddenly not the ones that will be tracked but only the evil minorities will be.)

Re: New Bedford police officer accused of using Flock cameras to track ex-partner

#90

Post by cucumber3732842 »

Cops abuse every system that's given to them, to varying extents.

Whining about lack of access controls and rogue (i.e. not using to do their job properly) cops is implicitly saying that this system could/would/should exist if it has "proper" access controls, whatever that means.

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