I can see some nuance to this one. Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average. Tracking cops and then publishing that information is not exactly the same as turning Flock back on the Flockers.<p>I think the best solution is to just say nobody can do this, including the government. Or that if we allow things like Flock to exist, then we'd need actual legislation that tightens considerably how available the data is to be searched, and what approvals are necessary to access it.<p>The obvious next step, otherwise, is for someone to start OpenALPRMap and we all get to suffer together.
> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.<p>Isn't Flock's alleged legality predicated on the principle that there is no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in public? I don't see why that would change depending on whether it's "Joe Average" or a police officer at the controls---IIUC I'm allowed to capture images, video, etc. of people in public just as much as cops are.<p>Agreed that these systems simply need to be banned.
This is exactly what the YouTuber was trying to illustrate - the whole legal justification of Flock cameras is that it's equated to someone sitting down in the location and writing down license plate numbers.
The Youtuber is in Canada which may have a different legal underpinning for Flock than the US.
Yes except the analogy is better served as trillions of people watching, relaying license plates instantly, with other trillions of people doing pattern matching and math calculations to figure out where each license plate will be tomorrow.
There's a sometimes fine distinction between "reasonable expectation of privacy" and stalking or harassment. Not that it's applicable in this case because courts have generally made the bar against police officers very high.
Youtube has a lot of videos of British "police auditors" who go to stand near police stations to take videos, get police attention and hilarity ensues. It's worth watching a few of them to get the taste.
We have the same auditors in the states, except that the auditors in the states who do this are often detained illegally by the police, then sue and win, and get paid out of taxpayer dollars with no repercussions for the police whatsoever who acted illegally. One guy in particular I know who used to do this went by TheBattousai or similar name and I believe went through this cycle 2 or 3 times with various police agencies. Not exactly hilarity here
The American cases are indeed not funny, because the American police are not only incompetent, but also aggressive, violent and are trigger-happy. The UK police are incompetent, but at least not murderous, therefore the situation is often hilarious.
I've long thought (but not deeply enough to find a hole in it) that constitutional violations need to carry severe criminal penalties. Not just a "don't do that", a payout from the tax coffers, or dismissal of evidence but hard jail time.
You’d think something would have to give at some point. But as you say the police have very little incentive change since they bear little to no consequence for egregious behavior.
American police have a tendency to use their unions to hold their cities hostage, not to simply lobby for better pay/conditions for their officers.<p>Part of this is refusing to ever accept accountability for their actions, either individually or collectively.
You're correct, and also the pushback to these needs to be less a concern of privacy (though they are) and more an infringement on freedom of movement. There is no expectation of broad strokes "privacy" in public, that's true. However what flock is effectively doing would be considered stalking by any other execution method, and the way they're getting around that is because they're stalking <i>everyone at the same time</i> and calling it surveillance instead.<p>If you attach a GPS to your wife's car without her knowledge, you can (and should) be prosecuted. Flock cameras collect the same data (rough location of a vehicle) and they just do it for <i>every single vehicle</i> passing their sensor. Then, through analysis of that massive dataset, you can now effectively stalk anyone, in the past, for the cost of a database search.<p>And I have no interest in the distinction between Joe Average and LEOs. That's about 6 months of training, and we have an absolute avalanche of evidence of how LEOs are:<p>* Prone to unnecessary violence (google 40% cops)<p>* Are ALREADY abusing this system to stalk wives, girlfriends, exes of the two formers, or just people when they're fucking bored<p>The clear solution is to ban it, but our Government has both a financial and power stake in keeping people surveilled, which is why I'm a huge fan of how many people are just destroying these things at scale.
Agreed, how many times does the public have to be burned before "storing vast amounts of detailed, identifying information" will be banned. Not to be too hyperbolic, but to speak their language, shouldn't keeping this database of American's movements be considered a national security threat.
> And I have no interest in the distinction between Joe Average and LEOs. That's about 6 months of training<p>This simply isn't a reasonable position to hold. Either we maintain a restricted class of people with authority that exceeds the authority of regular people, or everyone in society has the same level of authority (be that the level of police now, the level of regular people now, or somewhere in between). But the latter scenario is obviously worse, even taking into account occasional abuses by those in the restricted class.<p>You might as easily say that the only difference between Joe Average and a surgeon is X years of medical school.
Not quite the same. Attaching a GPS tracker involves physical trespass and can track a person to non-public locations. Also, collecting data does not restrict one’s freedom of moment. Nor is it stalking. Stalking is a pattern of conduct designed to intimidate or inflict emotional distress. Flock may facilitate staking, but it is not stalking itself. If knowing that someone else knows you were at a particular location at a particular time causes you distress, you have issues. Do you flee from every other car that sees on the road?
> Stalking is a pattern of conduct designed to intimidate or inflict emotional distress.<p>I don't think you could get out of stalking charge by just being so good at stalking that person affected didn't detect it, assuming you get detected at some point for some reason.
> Not quite the same. Attaching a GPS tracker involves physical trespass<p>Why does that matter? If your car is in public, do you not have any right to it's privacy either?<p>> and can track a person to non-public locations.<p>... what does that even mean? All locations are public, because by definition, locations only exist in public. What location have you been to that permits no one to see you arrive and later leave?<p>> Also, collecting data does not restrict one’s freedom of moment.<p>I mean, if that data can be used to imprison you, I think it's just matters of gradation whether you consider that true or false.<p>> Nor is it stalking. Stalking is a pattern of conduct designed to intimidate or inflict emotional distress.<p>But it clearly is. It's both a way to dragnet the public from doing illicit things, and it's deployed with a common selling point of reducing crime. You can say that instilling emotional distress in criminals is <i>good</i> but that also means you're doing that to at least some amount of the public.<p>> If knowing that someone else knows you were at a particular location at a particular time causes you distress, you have issues.<p>I do have issues! I have issues with my country being turned into a surveillance state because dipshits already worth more money than I will ever see in my lifetime need even more money. Yes I have issues with that.<p>> Do you flee from every other car that sees on the road?<p>As a woman, I've several times in my life had the experience of being followed by a car and not going my usual direct route home for fear of my safety. So not every car certainly, but if one was, I dunno, following close enough to get my license plate? Yeah I probably would try and "flee" that car.
Jesus man. Don’t choke on the leather.
The recording may be allowed but later use of that data may not be. For example if it was being used to aid criminals to commit crimes.
Is Flock equally liable for criminal use of its data by law enforcement officers?<p>Edit: Flock is/was breaking California state law by allowing outside partners to illegally access data collected in California.
Isn't that like saying that guns may be legal but later use of those guns may not be?
> Isn't that like saying that guns may be legal but later use of those guns may not be?<p>Guns are legal but murder is not, so ... yes?<p>It makes sense to me that recording public activity may be legal but publishing those videos would not be (for example name-and-likeness copyrights).<p>Or that you'd need a warrant to search those videos and issuing a warrant comes with a one-time key that decrypts the search parameters you specified in advance to get the warrant.
That’s a completely logical and true statement… I can own a gun but I can’t threaten your life with it.
In the US, photographing and recording police are first amendment-protected activities.<p>Likewise, the fourth amendement doesn't forbid a police officer from recording someone in public, because there's no expectation of privacy when out in public.<p>The courts have found that legally, one officer recording one person is no different from a large-scale, automated surveillance system recording everyone.<p>Well, that argument goes both ways. If the scale and automation don't make a difference, they don't make a difference.
Given that this is Canada, the first and fourth amendments don't come into the discussion.<p>Canada's rights are in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and they aren't absolute.<p>Part 1, Section 1.<p>The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.<p>Subject to that, we get Section 2.<p>Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:<p>(a) freedom of conscience and religion;<p>(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;<p>(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and<p>(d) freedom of association.
I would think the natural follow on would be that police have a relative expectation to be photographed and recorded by the public, their actions being public record - they're acting on behalf of the government, FOIA and all that sort of thing applies, right?<p>Isn't this effectively outsourcing body cams? The frequent stated reason for lack of which is "we would but our department can't afford it :'( anyway check out this new armored vehicle we bought!"<p>"Tracking" on duty cops doesn't seem unusual, though I think a different argument could be made for their off duty time.<p>* Edit: this is Canada, so my feelings likely don't apply to their laws.
While this doesn't apply to Canada, an American law professor (who leans very conservative politically) has argued that the public has the right to record the police doing their jobs, based on the due-process clause of the U.S. Constitution rather than on the First Amendment. (<i>EDIT</i> to clarify: he's not arguing that there isn't a First Amendment right to record the police, he's saying that besides the First Amendment, the due-process clause <i>also</i> gives citizens a right to record the police doing their jobs). You can read the 2012 paper "A Due Process Right to Record the Police" at <a href="https://ir.law.utk.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1460&context=utklaw_facpubs" rel="nofollow">https://ir.law.utk.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1460&cont...</a><p>I have only skimmed the paper myself, so if it contains any mistakes I'm likely to have missed them. But his argument seems good to me.
> Isn't this effectively outsourcing body cams?<p>I think its equivalent to putting a tracker in everyone's car and giving the police access to it.<p>Surveillance is also firmly in pre-crime territory. People being stalked when they haven't (yet) done a crime.
I believe the American Supreme Court explicitly ruled against that in the past ~10 or so years. Except it was one GPS tracker on one car, done without a warrant.<p>I don't know why that decision, explicitly founded on "making warrantless surveillance too easy violates the intent of warrants" is being used as toilet paper.
But in the inverse, right? It's like putting a tracker on <i>every cop's car</i> and giving the public access to it.
> The courts have found that legally, one officer recording one person is no different from a large-scale, automated surveillance system recording everyone.<p>That is not the case. It hasn't been truly tested, and there are very strong hints in SCOTUS's previous opinions that scale dramatically changes the equation for them.<p>Of course SCOTUS is currently much more amenable to the idea of changing their mind, so who knows how it'd actually hit, but it's far from decided law in the US.<p>For one example, Sotomayer's concurrence in US v. Jones (2012)<p>> Awareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms. And the Government’s unrestrained power to assemble data that reveal private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse. The net result is that GPS monitoring—by making available at a relatively low cost such a substantial quantum of intimate information about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to track—may “alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.” United States v. Cuevas-Perez, 640 F. 3d 272, 285 (CA7 2011) (Flaum, J., concurring).<p>> I would take these attributes of GPS monitoring into account when considering the existence of a reasonable societal expectation of privacy in the sum of one’s public movements. I would ask whether people reasonably expect that their movements will be recorded and aggregated in a manner that enables the Government to ascertain, more or less at will, their political and religious beliefs, sexual habits, and so on. I do not regard as dispositive the fact that the Government might obtain the fruits of GPS monitoring through lawful conventional surveillance techniques. See Kyllo, 533 U. S., at 35, n. 2; ante, at 11 (leaving open the possibility that duplicating traditional surveillance “through electronic means, without an accompanying trespass, is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy”). I would also consider the appropriateness of entrusting to the Executive, in the absence of any oversight from a coordinate branch, a tool so amenable to misuse, especially in light of the Fourth Amendment’s goal to curb arbitrary exercises of police power to and prevent “a too permeating police surveillance,” United States v. Di Re, 332 U. S. 581, 595 (1948).*
The case you’re commenting on took place in Brampton. The Charter is slightly more nuanced on this topic than the American Bill of Rights.
> The courts have found that legally, one officer recording one person is no different from a large-scale, automated surveillance system recording everyone.<p>If you're talking about US courts, then no. If they <i>had</i>, then we wouldn't see -for example- SCOTUS ruling that "geofence warrants" were searches that require Fourth Amendment analysis, rather than being equivalent to picking up a recording of events that happened in plain sight. We also wouldn't see at least one Federal judge openly noting that the judges that cite US vs. Knotts <i>really</i> need to read the entire opinion, rather than just the bit that agrees with what is convenient for them.<p>US v. Knotts is the forty-year-old case that is the source of the "You've no right to privacy when you're on public roads" idea that both people and judges have been parroting for quite a while now. In addition to establishing that principle, it <i>also</i> considered a possible future where the electronic surveillance that -at the time-<p>* had to be manually installed into cargo destined for the target's vehicle<p>* was only capable of tracking a <i>single</i> target vehicle<p>would become sufficiently advanced as to permit 24/7 <i>dragnet</i> surveillance... at which time, courts would need to reconsider what was <i>just</i> and <i>right</i> in light of such dreadfully advanced mass surveillance capabilities.<p>Pages 28 (starting at section C.) through 38 of this judge's opinion and order [0] are good reading... it can be hard to tell, but the judge <i>really</i> takes other judges who rely on Knotts but <i>clearly</i> haven't actually read it to task. If you have a half hour free, you should <i>really</i> read the whole thing.<p>[0] <<a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.oknd.76981/gov.uscourts.oknd.76981.62.0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.oknd.76...</a>>
> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.<p>Oh - this had me in stitches.<p>Juxtaposing "law enforcement" and "Joe Average" in that way is entertaining for Australians, as "Joe Average" is literally one of the entry requirements for law enforcement.<p>From <a href="https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/recruitment/application_process" rel="nofollow">https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/recruitment/application_proces...</a> :<p>"Academic Eligibility Year 12 HSC (minimum ATAR 50 or equivalent)"<p>"ATAR 50" is Australian for "of your high school cohort, half of them did better than you."
"When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny."
-- Thomas Jefferson<p>Filming cops in public is a legitimate activity protected by the Constitution, according to the Supreme Court. Using a nationwide surveillance network to track people not suspected of any crime and without a warrant is not.
If Flock is specifically for law enforcement then it is a cut and dry violation of the 4th amendment. Case closed.<p>However, they are simply commissioned by law enforcement and law enforcement are just one of any number of customers. There is either an expectation of privacy or there isn't. This case highlights this exactly.
That's trying to unbake the cake. This technology will not go away. The powerful will use it in secret; and sometimes the less powerful too.<p>I'd rather see surveillance first pointed towards government leaders, and then once the government is highly surveilled, then maybe we can trust the government to surveil everyone else.<p>I don't know. My idea here isn't very realistic. It's not going to happen (though we should still try), so maybe just outlawing all of it would be more realistic.
I concur, but let's be real here, surveilling the government is a non starter, 99% of HN will be screaming bloody murder when someone makes an app to tell jobsites when to have break time based on where the unmarked Ford Explorer that probably has the OSHA guy in it is.<p>People have no principals and no stomach for giving up a little bit of state jackboot applied on those they hate exchange for it not being applied on those they don't.
It doesn't seem all that different. Cops use these cameras to stalk ex-girlfriends, target political foes, and perv on the public at large. The public watching them hardly seems worse.<p>I do agree that we just shouldn't have this kind of mass-surveillance in general, and I think that's kind of the point of this particular endeavor.
> I can see some nuance to this one. Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.<p>I feel that's like saying there's "nuance" when the police choose to pull someone over because--unlike the other car--they <i>didn't</i> have a "I Donated To Cops" license plate.<p>Yes, it's technically a difference, but if it matters then the police are abusing their power to play favorites.
<p><pre><code> > I feel that's like saying there's "nuance" when the police choose to pull someone over because--unlike the other car--they didn't have a "I Donated To Cops" license plate.
</code></pre>
That's not unusual at all. Here is New York parking enforcement ticketing cars who are not participating in a specific activity, while disregarding other double-parked cars that are participating. He even explicitly states that the policy is to allow double parked cars, so long as the driver participates in the desired activity:<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/shorts/J7yJfhsuJls" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/shorts/J7yJfhsuJls</a>
If you’re driving a publicly funded vehicle we can know where you are and what you’re doing. Seems straightforward.<p>We should be able to subpoena the GPS records of the car’s location as well - or potentially FOIA that information. Sunlight is good. The opposite should only be done by going through a metric ton of hoops. Otherwise you end up… where we are now.
99% of law enforcement are suppose to be "average joes" though. They do not have some special Citizen Plus status. Anything cops can do to the people the people should be able to do to the cops.
Why do you equate government and the honorable Joe Average? The government works at the pleasure of the Joe Average, so it's natural that the said Joe is interested to watch how his servants perform their duties - after all, he elected them to do that and pays them for that. At the same time Joe might be not interested for his lowly servants to keep tabs on him - that's none of their business, after all they don't compensate him for that information, so why shouldn't we have cameras to watch the police while completely denying them to use cameras to watch us?
> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.<p>Let’s pretend that police will only use the footage for good. No one else has access? That seems unlikely.<p>The IT department? Flock employees? Contractors? Managers?
<p><pre><code> > I can see some nuance to this one. Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average. Tracking cops and then publishing that information is not exactly the same as turning Flock back on the Flockers.
</code></pre>
The fine article mentions that 3% of the queries against the database are from local law enforcement.
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/26/us/flock-kentucky-police-officer-arrest" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/26/us/flock-kentucky-police-offi...</a>
cops are Joe Average with badges and a higher rate of spousal abuse.
I see no issue with tracking and monitoring public servants, just how public servants see no issue with tracking and monitoring the public.
Flock being only accessible to people who are statistically more likely to beat their wives doesn't make me like it more
It’s completely reasonable that citizens should have access to this data, tracking cops is exactly the type of use case this technology is good for.
Perhaps some officially recognized oversight committee could "track cops" licitly for good reasons. But I see no reason for random citizens (especially these self-appointed idiot "citizen auditors") to know what police are up to, where they are, what they are seeing or saying at every moment of the day.<p>Think this through, please. Municipal police work is not "national security" level, but it still requires discretion. Leaking activity information to adversaries on the ground would be detrimental to their operations. At the very least, police run into emergencies, intimate partner issues, lots of violence, and generally see all the bad stuff. If someone like me were looking over their shoulder, that would be profoundly unjust to victims and a betrayal of public trust in the discretion and privacy that police offer to us on a regular basis. I have no reason. You've got no reason. Nearly nobody has any reason, except champing at the bit to catch them out at some transgression, so they can post it to social media and foment outrage and rebellion.<p>I don't want to see through their eyes nor hear through their ears. I believe that this propensity to DV and other crime is precisely because cops and their families are legitimately, profoundly, traumatized by the hazards of vocation, and when everyone's mental health is fragile, who's going to bear the brunt of the trauma, and how are they going to cope with that in a reasonable, even superhuman fashion?<p>It is not an uncommon tactic to lure or bait police (and/or Fire, EMT, Paramedics) into traps or mere distractions, so that some organized group can carry out something much worse without the heat breathing down their necks. Now all the local gangs are "tracking cops" and they know how effective those moves are. They all have heads-up just before the cops arrive to bust them. This is how you want to "track cops" constantly? Why have protest groups become so small and far-flung in recent years? Why aren't they turning up <i>en masse</i> in a single location to march and picket? Because a distributed protest also distributes first-responders, and dilutes response times and strengths. And "tracking the cops" becomes easier.<p>They are mostly not secret agents. They are not slipping through the streets under cloaks of invisibility or cones of silence. Even unmarked cars are fairly noticeable if you're experienced. The insignia, the lights and sirens, the uniforms are meant to get noticed and stand out. But are you going to "track cops" right into their precinct offices and cars? Their radio channels and comms were not always encrypted or private, but eventually they had the tech, and they had it up-to-here with all the prying ears and busybodies trying to second-guess them.<p>Police just sitting in their squad car looking at a computer display is not for public consumption. Police inventory of weapons and ammunition, and tallying of shots fired, and who fired them when: that is not public information. Police offering a towel or a garment to a nude woman who's just been raped: why do you want to "track cops", again?
Under the American theory of government, Cops tracking people without warrant is the same amount of lawful as people tracking cops without warrant, in fact, the former is more restricted.
Cops usually are worse than average Joe on many negative statistics (domestic abuse, etc), and that's not even factoring in how numbers are skewed by the well established thin blue line.<p>It's safer to give your info to average joe population than cops.<p>I would feel better if only cops didn't have access to see me on flock cameras and cops had to request footage through a public reddit or something.<p>This is all a bit of a joke sure, but less than police access to flock cams is.
Flock has the rights of a private citizen. Police accessing flock cameras is like asking you for the security camera footage from the camera on your house.
> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average<p>Joe Average would be charged by Flock per search, and could only afford to stalk his ex wife a couple of times via Flock, because it would get expensive soon.<p>Police officers can stalk their exes over 2000 times: <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/26/us/flock-kentucky-police-officer-arrest" rel="nofollow">https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/26/us/flock-kentucky-police-...</a>
I'm not sure how it is in Canada, but my understanding in the US is that data gathered by a public (government) entity (the police) is just that... public. And we've seen that play out in some cities where people asked for a copy of their town's Flock data, and everyone got all surprised pikachu on them because it turns out that's legal, and suddenly the government doesn't want to collect that data anymore.
The only nuance possible here is either that the government is more trustworthy than the average person (rather than less, as has been repeatedly proven), or that the police deserve special immunity in their activities (rather than needing closer scrutiny, as has been repeatedly proven as well). Either that, or that Flock is somehow a more trustworthy steward of the data, in terms of controlling access by agencies and individuals. It's also been proven that they're not, though, so that can't be either. IMO, this entire thing is just stupid hypocrisy.
Unfortunately, Joe Average knows a cop willing to sell their Flock credentials on the dark web so Joe can perform nationwide searches of his ex-wife.<p>You have to assume it’s not just used by sworn law enforcement officers, especially when Flock’s own civilian employees have abused it.
Well, actually mostly Average Joes become cops. As a matter of fact those Average Joes stalked on random people with 'LOL' in reason column.
This was in Canada so I don't know if the same laws apply. In the US the justification for this tracking without a warrant is that you are in public. That same justification allows for filming police in the public.<p>The intent of Flock in the US at least was just to use technology to get around the 4th amendment.<p>The police shouldn't be allowed to use automated tools like this without a warrant.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance</a><p><a href="https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=snPDoXl9ZPs&si=mxrTyJpsBrZtdtNy" rel="nofollow">https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=snPDoXl9ZPs&si=mxrTyJpsBrZ...</a>
What nuance though? Did everyone give the state permission to sniff after them? Because I did not. And I am almost certain a majority would not be ok with it either. There is a reason people hate flock sniffers.<p>When the people turn it around and sniff on cops, why is that then any different suddenly?<p>> we'd need actual legislation<p>Can the people do legislation? It's always some judges and politicians who form a clique at the end of the day.
> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average<p>Then why can Lowes and Home Depot buy their own units, place them across properties that aren't theirs and search them nationwide?
bro we have PRISM what are you talking about?