Abuse by police officers and other individuals with access to these systems is <i>the</i> answer to the stupid but common question "why should I worry about surveillance if I have nothing to hide".
I never hear that question from Flock supporters. The question I hear[†] is "why <i>shouldn't</i> we be pulling over stolen cars?". It's a much harder one to answer than the straw man questions we set up for these things.<p>(To be clear: I think the current generation of ALPRs is a policy failure and that major changes need to happen inside state law enforcement systems before they can be deployed successfully. But I also think people on HN have a real problem in convincing themselves about the obvious righteousness of their anti-surveillance arguments.)<p>[†] <i>I heard arguments like these because I was deeply involved in getting the cameras disabled in the inner-ring Chicago suburb in which I live, getting the first ACLU CCOPS ordinance in Illinois passed there, and helping draft what are probably the most detailed ALPR police General Orders in any municipality, or at least were at the time. Which is a long and pretentious way of saying I spent a lot of time talking to people who are not Very Online.</i>
There's basically 3 ways to get a council to cancel a contract. 1) Persuade them to do it because it's the right thing for the community. This is best done in private. 2) Convince them that the legal liability out weighs the public benefit. This is best done in public. 3) Run for office.<p>If you have the energy you can do all 3 in parallel.<p>Here's my attempt at 2: <a href="https://rmnoflock.com/2026/07/29/rolling-meadows-flock-cameras-used-in-holiday-hills-stalking-case/" rel="nofollow">https://rmnoflock.com/2026/07/29/rolling-meadows-flock-camer...</a><p>Does anyone have advice or experience with 2?
Please compare the number of officers doing such a thing to the number who did not. Also compare it to the number of incidents where the cameras helped capture criminals and pursue other illegal activities.<p>I'm betting that the number of officers who used it this way compared to the value it provides is minute to almost nil.<p>It would be interesting to find the number of Meta employees or Google employees who do similar activities.
Flock cameras appear to be one of the few things that can get police officers fired.
Silver lining! The cameras are catching criminals.
Right, because you don’t want to let the little guys mess it up for the big guys: <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/fbi-seeks-us-wide-access-to-license-plate-cameras-wants-data-in-near-real-time/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/fbi-seeks-us-wid...</a><p>Gotta make a statement with the low level grunts so the citizenry think these systems have accountability.
Not true, but also not widely reported. Cops are fired all the time for a wide variety of reasons.
Until they negotiate protections in their next contract.
Whatever protections your area police have from these kinds of firings are a matter of public record. Have you FOIA'd your local department to see what they are? You might be surprised.<p>The real teeth behind these disciplinary events, at least in suburban/metro areas, are that departments don't want to lose the cameras, and know that they will if abuses aren't answered.
Flock is importing China's ubiquitous surveillance in America until every habitable space is captured
I get that this comment is meant to warn about the creeping government overreach and a curtailment of free speech, by comparing the US against a society where government surveillance is already commonplace.<p>I wonder if it does a disservice to readers to not make that same comparison against more similar countries instead (UK, Germany, Australia to name a few examples)?
UK police simply do not have warrantless access to any system anything like as broad in scope as Flock.<p>Much of the American hysteria about the UK as a surveillance state is profoundly misapprehended based on dramatisations, built in part on a misunderstood and misleading article about King’s Lynn back in the late 80s.<p>There is no mass seamless CCTV network available to UK police, at all. It is myth. We are not at all trackable from door to door. They only fully control a couple of hundred cameras in London, for example. In the town where I live I don’t think there are any police controlled cameras, and only a handful of council controlled cameras (some ANPR to control a complex traffic flow and catch drivers abusing a pedestrian section, presumably the shopping mall security cameras since the council now owns the mall), some speed cameras that are only capable of stills.<p>Almost all CCTV footage British police do get is either from council controlled traffic cameras (with a warrant) or private, fully closed circuit cameras (usually by knocking on doors and asking, sometimes with a warranted request to a CCTV provider). There’s a pretty extensive legal framework for what access they do have.<p>Local councils do operate more cameras, for road management etc. and for some shopping streets with serious shoplifting. They also operate some cameras around historic sites. But the police have a process to go through to get this.<p>With Flock and Ring (and Shotspotter before it) the USA has quietly built a surveillance system that is <i>vastly</i> more powerful and less accountable than anything the UK has, for real. Because you don’t hold your police accountable or restrict them in any meaningful way.
And digital billboards in every space will tell us what to think.
Can't wait for the two to pair up and the billboards to target whoever is seen in the nearest camera. Or are they already doing it?
It's not that useful to single out Flock for that purpose. Google Nest and Amazon Alexa are also in that category.
China is not responsible for your fuck-us, you own it
nobody saw this coming
> weren’t authorized<p>this is easily solved with current technology, if they had an incentive to do so.<p>besides firing folks that get caught, flock themselves should be brought to court.
This feels like a weird comment on an article about how they monitored usage, identified misuse, and terminated the people involved.<p>There's surely plenty of entities that need better controls around usage of technology / records / etc, but this is an example of somebody having an incentive and then following through.
its good PR for these systems that they are very keen to roll out, i would say theres a vested interest in stories like these from the exact agencies deploying them
I'm getting <a href="https://xkcd.com/810/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/810/</a> vibes.<p>If government entities get good PR for rolling out strong policies, practices, and tooling for the data they have, and that makes more of them very keen to do so... mission accomplished?
it's also possible that we're only seeing a few select departments fire their officers. there are no laws around this as far as I'm aware so enforcement is purely departmental policy. how many sheriff's offices and police departments do these audits and how many of them act on abuses?<p>you should need a warrant to monitor the products of mass surveillance and it should be as narrowly targeted towards a suspect as possible. or just not have any of the mass CCTV placements everywhere in the first place
I think we may be agreeing?<p>I'm in favor of pushing for police departments (and really any governmental body with access to any kind of data) to have regulations around access to that data, access controls to restrict illegitimate access, and monitoring to detect improper access by people who do have legitimate access but don't follow the proper regulations.<p>I think you're correct that we don't tend to see the instances where improper usage occurs, tautologically because those entities aren't doing their homework on the above.
Systems should be built so abuse isn’t allowed in the first place, in addition to monitoring for compliance.
There always ends up being a real world to digital interface and it always has the potential for abuse, and thus always requires some level of monitoring and validation.<p>The department in this article appears to be doing just that:<p>> Every search run through the Flock Safety platform is automatically logged — who ran it, when, and the reason they gave for doing it. SPD said they also have other safeguards in place, including mandatory training, role-based access controls and supervisory oversight.
Ah but you see flock doesn't own the data so they're not responsible for misuse of it and other such legal deflections.
My town's covered with them already, without much warning in the local news, at least none I saw. And they're about to add 50% more all over the county. Planning on going to the zoning meeting Tuesday to speak against them. Also had a handful of yard signs printed up and put them at major intersections around town warning about the expansion, pointing people to the zoning meeting.<p>Very much not okay with this surveillance state bullshit.
I don't believe a legal solution is possible. We need a three-tiered response to Flock's surveillance state business strategy, depending on what level of meddling each citizen is comfortable with.<p>1. Protest via yard signs and awareness (what you're doing)<p>2. Impermanent vandalism. I like the idea of hanging copies of the fourth amendment over the lenses<p>3. Permanent vandalism. I think we need bounties on camera destruction and public legal funds to assist in defense, bail, etc.<p>The police as a class/caste are not interested in the fundamental principles that America was founded on. Individual officers may be interested in civil freedom and privacy but as an entity they only ever march in the direction of total surveillance and domination of the citizenry.
I would encourage you to add arrows to your signs/ stickers pointing out the cameras. More impactful when people see (and are unconsensually recorded by) the device first hand.<p>Good work!
...andd they are now working for ICE HSI for higher pay.
From reading the article it seems the problem was not surveillance in any form but unauthorized use of police systems. I am not seeing anything new here. For decades police can be investigated for any improper searches of license plates or personal IDs, which can result in criminal referrals.