Once the police started to record every interaction with the public, along with their existing habit of placing traffic cameras left and right, they acquired enough data to track people.
Trying to restrict the analysis of existing data is never going to work. The police can always point to some death that wouldn't have happened, if they had ran Flock's software on their surveillance footage.
And even if by some miracle you manage to forbid plate recognition, cross referencing, etc, every ambitious (or lazy) detective would start doing it on the down low with OSS software.
> Once the police started to record every interaction with the public
I don't think this is true? As far as I can tell any time the recording is mentioned in a complaint at the police behaviour the camera was off due to [battery life|maintenance|other].
I get the feeling that judges & juries are less and less likely to give the benefit of the doubt if charges/lawsuits are ever actually filed against the officer, year by year.
You also get just rank intimidation. My friend got out of jail and the next day tried to file a complaint about an officer stealing his pocket money during an arrest. He was placed in a room with the arresting officer, who explained that any complaint which was filed would incur retribution from the DA with regards to the thing that got him arrested. This is happening in a large urbanized precinct, in a blue state.
To ever regain control of the police force, the various civilian & political oversight bodies would need to prosecute thousands of felony exortion, kidnapping, and assault cases a year.
Courts have previously held that heuristics based determinations are not sufficient to serve as probable cause. E.g. "predictive policing" technologies can be used for e.g. scheduling officers to different areas, but aren't valid to conduct a search.
If this feature is used to make an arrest, there's a good chance the case would be thrown out.
The case can be thrown out, but it's still going to cause you massive disruptions. Everything from just being arrested in the first place and being held in custody for some amount of time, to having to hire a lawyer, to the social consequences of your name being tied to being arrested. It's going to cost you time, money, stress, family and social relationships. And there's a non-zero chance that if your life starts being investigated after such an arrest, something could be found to still affect you or your family and friends.
And once you're on their radar, you're probably going to also end up being marked for extra scrutiny. You might find yourself being pulled over more often, or getting the SSSS on your airplane boarding pass.
ICE are to a large extent above the law. Their entire purpose is to snatch people and move them to locations where they can be denied legal redress. A couple of high profile cases have only got redress due to very dedicated intervention by congresspeople, which does not scale.
I think people need to start reckoning with the underlying problem, which is that oppressive policing in America is popular provided it's happening to someone else.
How much of the damage done was specifically by ICE agents and how much of it was done by illegal immigrants resisting arrest? I suspect that some of them went to hide in many of the spaces that were “torn up” by ICE agents. In many of these raids , people are not turning themselves over peacefully. If you harbor criminals you should not be surprised when law enforcement combs every inch of the building to find them.
There is also the option of being paid to self deport if you know that you are in the country illegally.
I’m sure there are also ways to anonymously report illegal immigrants to ICE as well. People are still free to criticize Trump all they want. The First Amendment is pretty clear on this.
I'm not sure such cases would be thrown out. See "parallel construction" for examples of illegally obtained data the DEA was advised to build an evidence chain NOT based on the illegally obtained info, but based upon evidence gleaned after the fact but built to show discovery during the course of investigation.
Who says the feature will be used to make an arrest?
The heuristics are clearly about who to pull over, etc. Evidence for arrest/search will be determined afterwards. And, as far as search is concerned, it could be as simple as getting a dog to bark.
Why? Because the prosecutor doesn't want all their work to go to waste because they didn't disclose Brady evidence. Even if they successfully argue that Officer Flock's reporting isn't exculpatory, they still have to do extra work to respond to a Brady motion for a case that already got a conviction.
In cases of parallel construction of evidence, is the prosecution still obligated to disclose everything to the defense in discovery? Is the tree from which the Fruit is picked only obscured from the jury, or from the defense as well?
But flock now has an Api for to Cause, the parallel construction AI. /s
So if they flock to the cause, all arrests are go. And there are always fallback crimes everyone in a modern society commits, that can be dragged in after a search .
I live in the neighborhood where Flock started. The three Georgia Tech grads moved into a house in the West End in Atlanta. It’s a great neighborhood but like any urban neighborhood, you often deal with car break-in’s, so the roommates built a prototype security cam.
All fine so far. Except that the direction it was pointed at was the neighborhood middle school. Which means these three notably white college students started flock by surveilled predominantly black young kids.
The neighborhood was pissed - but what are you going to do?
Eventually Flock took off and they moved out.
My point is that if your product started as surveillance on not just another age demographic but a racial and class demographic, is it any surprise that all of this is fundamentally in the DNA of the company?
There are passive ways too on AliExpress like IR reflective sprays, coatings and films, but in my country, and I suspect in most of Europe, any intentional tampering with the legibility of your license plate is illegal and can land you hefty fines or even jail if caught.
They also don't help much any more. Not with cameras that do color, infrared, 4K or 8K video, high dynamic range, and vehicle make and model recognition.[1][2]
In the first video, note the checkbox in the analysis program for displaying vehicles with "strange plates" which were in range for reading but not read. Trying to obscure a plate draws automated attention.
I feel the ship has sailed here.
Once the police started to record every interaction with the public, along with their existing habit of placing traffic cameras left and right, they acquired enough data to track people.
Trying to restrict the analysis of existing data is never going to work. The police can always point to some death that wouldn't have happened, if they had ran Flock's software on their surveillance footage.
And even if by some miracle you manage to forbid plate recognition, cross referencing, etc, every ambitious (or lazy) detective would start doing it on the down low with OSS software.
> Once the police started to record every interaction with the public
I don't think this is true? As far as I can tell any time the recording is mentioned in a complaint at the police behaviour the camera was off due to [battery life|maintenance|other].
I get the feeling that judges & juries are less and less likely to give the benefit of the doubt if charges/lawsuits are ever actually filed against the officer, year by year.
You also get just rank intimidation. My friend got out of jail and the next day tried to file a complaint about an officer stealing his pocket money during an arrest. He was placed in a room with the arresting officer, who explained that any complaint which was filed would incur retribution from the DA with regards to the thing that got him arrested. This is happening in a large urbanized precinct, in a blue state.
To ever regain control of the police force, the various civilian & political oversight bodies would need to prosecute thousands of felony exortion, kidnapping, and assault cases a year.
Courts have previously held that heuristics based determinations are not sufficient to serve as probable cause. E.g. "predictive policing" technologies can be used for e.g. scheduling officers to different areas, but aren't valid to conduct a search.
If this feature is used to make an arrest, there's a good chance the case would be thrown out.
The case can be thrown out, but it's still going to cause you massive disruptions. Everything from just being arrested in the first place and being held in custody for some amount of time, to having to hire a lawyer, to the social consequences of your name being tied to being arrested. It's going to cost you time, money, stress, family and social relationships. And there's a non-zero chance that if your life starts being investigated after such an arrest, something could be found to still affect you or your family and friends.
And once you're on their radar, you're probably going to also end up being marked for extra scrutiny. You might find yourself being pulled over more often, or getting the SSSS on your airplane boarding pass.
“You can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/emiliano-s-agents-left-beh...
ICE are to a large extent above the law. Their entire purpose is to snatch people and move them to locations where they can be denied legal redress. A couple of high profile cases have only got redress due to very dedicated intervention by congresspeople, which does not scale.
I think people need to start reckoning with the underlying problem, which is that oppressive policing in America is popular provided it's happening to someone else.
How much of the damage done was specifically by ICE agents and how much of it was done by illegal immigrants resisting arrest? I suspect that some of them went to hide in many of the spaces that were “torn up” by ICE agents. In many of these raids , people are not turning themselves over peacefully. If you harbor criminals you should not be surprised when law enforcement combs every inch of the building to find them.
There is also the option of being paid to self deport if you know that you are in the country illegally.
https://www.ice.gov/self-deportation
Geez, East Germany's State Security, but with supremely better surveillance tech, and AI.
Curious how "Homeland Security" and "State Security" are equivalent names.
Looking forward to a "Report suspicious neighbors"-program next. Your neighbor made fun of Trump? Report this unamerican activity to Kristi Noem!
Minnesota implemented this during COVID…
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/coronavirus-in-minnes...
I’m sure there are also ways to anonymously report illegal immigrants to ICE as well. People are still free to criticize Trump all they want. The First Amendment is pretty clear on this.
I'm not sure such cases would be thrown out. See "parallel construction" for examples of illegally obtained data the DEA was advised to build an evidence chain NOT based on the illegally obtained info, but based upon evidence gleaned after the fact but built to show discovery during the course of investigation.
Who says the feature will be used to make an arrest?
The heuristics are clearly about who to pull over, etc. Evidence for arrest/search will be determined afterwards. And, as far as search is concerned, it could be as simple as getting a dog to bark.
Why would the police even inform you that flock was used?
Why? Because the prosecutor doesn't want all their work to go to waste because they didn't disclose Brady evidence. Even if they successfully argue that Officer Flock's reporting isn't exculpatory, they still have to do extra work to respond to a Brady motion for a case that already got a conviction.
In cases of parallel construction of evidence, is the prosecution still obligated to disclose everything to the defense in discovery? Is the tree from which the Fruit is picked only obscured from the jury, or from the defense as well?
But flock now has an Api for to Cause, the parallel construction AI. /s
So if they flock to the cause, all arrests are go. And there are always fallback crimes everyone in a modern society commits, that can be dragged in after a search .
> With our new Multi-State Insights feature, law enforcement is alerted when suspect vehicles have been detected in multiple states
So, using our freedom of movement is now suspicious?
That's not what the sentence you cite is saying.
If they decide you are suspicious, they'll get an email alert about your location.
It's not someone "deciding," it's a black box algorithm.
I live in the neighborhood where Flock started. The three Georgia Tech grads moved into a house in the West End in Atlanta. It’s a great neighborhood but like any urban neighborhood, you often deal with car break-in’s, so the roommates built a prototype security cam.
All fine so far. Except that the direction it was pointed at was the neighborhood middle school. Which means these three notably white college students started flock by surveilled predominantly black young kids.
The neighborhood was pissed - but what are you going to do?
Eventually Flock took off and they moved out.
My point is that if your product started as surveillance on not just another age demographic but a racial and class demographic, is it any surprise that all of this is fundamentally in the DNA of the company?
Grab a pole saw, cut em down, take a shit ton of free nice Tenergy battery packs and a SIM card with free data.
It’s time to snip the flock.
Are there IR lights you can put on your license plate to block cameras from taking pictures of it?
Sure, if you're doing a going to prison any% glitchless.
There are passive ways too on AliExpress like IR reflective sprays, coatings and films, but in my country, and I suspect in most of Europe, any intentional tampering with the legibility of your license plate is illegal and can land you hefty fines or even jail if caught.
They also don't help much any more. Not with cameras that do color, infrared, 4K or 8K video, high dynamic range, and vehicle make and model recognition.[1][2]
In the first video, note the checkbox in the analysis program for displaying vehicles with "strange plates" which were in range for reading but not read. Trying to obscure a plate draws automated attention.
Big Brother has AI, too.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qJsvBW05RI
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U2LWuBFIR0
Big Tech is building a dystopia and we all here are complicit. Become aware of the consequences of your actions and try to minimize the harm.
People ITT talking about probable cause like the rule of law still exists in the US
"They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks." - big tech / small tech / startups (every year)
Isn't this what Palantir also does?
Welcome to the future. Minority Report's coming. How terrifying.