How Cops Are Treating Mass Surveillance As a Joke: Cops Search Flock Database Typing Reasons for Searches Such as "LMAO," "LOL," and Random Keyboard Mashing
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The High Crime of “LMAO”: How Cops Are Treating Mass Surveillance As a Joke
With no warrant requirements, limited guardrails, and deficient audit processes, ALPR databases have fostered a culture of unrestricted access to everyone’s location information. This culture of abuse has allowed police to treat a mass surveillance network like their own personal search engine, permitting the tracking of the movements of everyday citizens for low-level complaints, personal whims, and sometimes, seemingly, for the lols.
Cops are usually one of two things.
bullied future stalker
(rarely) defending us from bullied future stalker
The later is possible, and I’d bet many try to get into policing because of that ideal, but I hear they tend to get bullied out of the profession by the former, or else converted by them.
As the saying goes, one bad apple spoils the bunch.
[pigs are to bacon as power is to greed](youtu.be/8zYYEXzaiKo?
psst, delete everything after the ? in your link
They took that way too literally.
yeah, should have kept the ) but no more tracker is good
Thanks, but I am already known.
…also, pigs are to power as bacon is to greed?
It doesn’t surprise me at all. Who knew the maniacs who frequently abuse their power would abuse their power?
It’s just demonstrating that the “reason for search” field for accountability actually has zero accountability. This should be tied to the identity of the person filling the field and mockery of procedure should be grounds for demotion and/or loss of access, but we know that neither is the actual way things run.
It’s because of dilution of responsibility.
Private companies aren’t restricted by the Constitution, so they’re not on the hook. Police are just using a private service, so the department isn’t on the hook either
So really, it’s no one’s responsibility to make sure this isn’t abused. That’s what we have to fix
Thats by design. We know about accountability. We know how to implement it into software. Thus was designed this way on purpose. Dont count on it being fixed by itself. We will have to force them.
The problem is the accountability, but we can’t fix this by just forcing them to modify the software. We have to fix the incentives
It’s not only that we need police to have a signed warrant or adding auditing and punishing the cops who misuse the system, because this is only one symptom of the root problem
It’s deeper than just the misuse, it’s also that these systems don’t care about security. It’s also that these companies are happy to sell this information to anyone willing to pay. It’s also that police blindly trust the output of these systems without verifying the information
We can’t legislate rules to make these systems work. They’ll never work, because no one is responsible when they don’t
That’s the actual problem we have to fix.
Private companies should not be allowed to possess this data at any point. They want to sell cameras and sell software to search through the data? Fine.
But flock can’t own the data. Flock employees can’t have access to it. Police should only be allowed use them in their own jurisdiction. If they want to track someone across the country, they should be in the FBI
We need to protect this data the way we do health records. We need HIPPA laws for individual privacy, because without clear legal restrictions on the who can own and access the data, this entire concept is a constant mass constitutional violation
And it goes far beyond the cameras… Credit card companies will sell our purchase history to anyone for a couple hundred dollars. Phone manufacturers and cell providers will sell our location data to the police and private companies. Black box systems will mislabel innocent people for crimes they didn’t commit, leading to arrests and unjust jail time for those not in a position to defend themselves. And these are real world examples happening now
This problem has been around for a while, it’s just that the cameras have finally gotten people to pay attention to the ongoing violations against us all
We can’t let private companies trade our personal data just because they are able to collect it.
We need to treat this data like health information, with strict access rules and certifications that the information is properly protected, and consequences that will make both police organizations and private companies have an incentive to care
Even if we made the flock cameras illegal, without a new HIPPA for privacy they’ll just find new ways to collect the information and continue to violate our rights
When I worked for a healthcare software company one of my roles was technical support on a controlled substance monitoring program on a state-by-state basis.
Cops had a separate login portal, and had to go through quite a process to get their account. Once they did, they could submit a search, but had to justify it with a reason that included the warrant number. And even then, it required secondary approval of the search request by a state-level employee.
Why the fuck is that not the minimum for searching someone’s whereabouts?
(To add, I think such programs are unethical when available to cops. For doctors, it was used to make sure a patient wasn’t doc-shopping for opiates, and even then I’m hesitant. It has a potential to save lives via intervention upon finding someone’s 'shopping, but I don’t think it’s usually used as a safe intervention.)
The thumbnail reminds me of Patapon.
Maybe cute surveillance could fool more people into being okay with it.
Pata pata patapon! Gotcha gotcha now you’re gone!
Thought this thumbnail was Welcome to Nightvale for a moment
You know things are really bad when the comparison is wtnv, not the onion.
Just wait until we reach Lovecraft levels of unhinged.