This is the big problem with mass surveillance as a whole. With enough time, they'll find some pretext to bring you in, even if the original crime they want you for is weak.
This will ruin lives, even if they're eventually let go. Jobs lost, evicted from homes, cars towed, pets surrendered and put down.
Lives will be completely derailed, police and judges will not be held accountable. The wrongful arrestees will still be in debt to the local jail and court for various fees they racked up. Trust in the justice system will continue to degrade and more and more violence will be used against people to maintain order.
We hold police to high standards for search/arrest because they have the monopoly on violence. Even if they're wrong, you can't shoot back. Even if they're slamming your loved ones into the pavement, breaking their teeth, you cannot kick the cop in the head or else they have permission to murder you both.
Someone that is innocent is going to get killed soon because flock flagged them incorrectly. I recall reading the auto journalist that got flagged for a stolen car while test driving a car. We have seen how often pull over/arrests can derail when a stupid cop that is aggressive pulls out their weapon first, fires fast and then investigates last. An innocent person that reacts wrongly is eventually going to make the news. :-(
Depends on the situation. You'd absolutely be arrested. Get in front of a jury of 12 people and you might have a chance if you have enough evidence for a self-defense claim and the cop acting outside of the law.
Only if the jury believes in nullification, which isn't common. The jury is instructed to follow the law. The selection process asks "even if you think they were right, if it's against the law and they were guilty would you issue a guilty verdict?" and people answer "yes" consistently.
Honestly getting arrested would be lucky. If recent years have shown anything, they don't need to be particularly concerned about removing you from the picture more permanently regardless of the circumstances.
I'd highly doubt that. I've actually been on scene of a few LE-involved shootings (ex-paramedic).
If LE "just" shoots at you (i.e. you're not actively firing or an immediate threat - and without commenting on the "should" of that) then... you might be "fine", once you're disabled.
If you're actively firing at LE, they're going to hit you with "overwhelming force" and any survival on your part is going to be sheer dumb luck and "not very likely".
The choice in this hypothetical scenario is to be killed initially through the unlawful use of force or potentially be killed at some later time before reaching trial.
>This will ruin lives, even if they're eventually let go. Jobs lost, evicted from homes, cars towed, pets surrendered and put down.
Yes. That's exactly the point. Comply with every little thing, no matter how absurd, or else your life will unravel.
Look through a historical comment (especially from back when "big data" was the buzzword) thread on any subject where HN is pro regulation and pro government. This is EXACTLY what the useful idiots want.
They want some NYC liquor store owner to pay a hundred grand to the state because that one time he visited NH he loaded up his van with tax free henny to sell back home.
They want that exurban undeveloped lot owner to lose their house for letting their buddy with a tree service dump there and fill in a few hundred square feet over the course of half a decade.
They want some random industrial employer that makes nuts and bolts or something to be fined millions of dollars because their maintenance employees spray painted a piece of equipment in the parking lot without the PPE and pollution compliance measures befitting a commercial paint operation.
They want the jackboot on the throat of everyone who steps out of line on any axis that they care about.
They see the way the banking industry tries to stay away from weed, porn and guns because the upside isn't worth the risk of being combed over by the enforcers. And instead of seeing it as cautionary, they see it as a model that needs to be scaled down to the small businesses and the lowly individual peasants.
Of course they don't lay it out so plainly. They use words like "negative externality" and "antisocial" and "dis-incentivize" to whitewash it but that doesn't change what it is.
All very terrifying but you're building a "Hollow Man" by using an "Appeal to Extremes".
Instead of arguing against actual regulatory policy, you are mind-reading malicious intent into hypothetical scenarios (and people) you just invented. Or real examples that you're broadstroking against a "they" which is somehow "HN."
I am not sure how you can justify trying to paint so broad a stroke across an entire community, or feel justified in creating a bucket of "useful idiots" into which you just throw whole classes of unnamed people without engaging with any particular argument.
I get you're angry, my man, but maybe you should question exactly who it is you're angry with.
Maybe they can start enforcing the law when it comes to blatant offenders that terrorize large cities. Illegal blocking of sidewalk selling fake handbags, selling untaxed marijuana on street corners, violating traffic laws on e-bikes. A lot of wood to chop before they get to my jay walking so I think I’m safe for the time being. But I welcome more enforcement
Brother, you want mass surveillance because of bikes, handbags, and weed.
I guarantee there is _some_ group that finds some aspect of you, your life, or that of some of your loved ones at least as annoying as you find those things.
Not from the US, but I really wish folks from the US started thinking of creative ways to "produce probable cause" (if that makes any sense), get stopped without any harm, assemble enough individual cases into some kind of catalogue, and then be able to show people just how much the whole thing is bad with evidence that did not result in them actually getting what they were looking for.
If I asked a random person about this, they'd probably just say - "but they found weed, right?"
Based on my observations (news reports, local chatter, etc) it seems that every state that borders a state with legal Cannabis does this. Idaho does this very frequently (since just about every border is a legal source). They take advantages of the bottlenecks on highways and have cameras and/or officers there.
If it is Flock, interagency communications, license plate readers or just "enhanced stops" for things like a crack in the windshield.
People seem to forget that while buying in one state is legal it actually can become a much larger crime than just possession as soon as you cross state lines. It "can" become a federal matter...
This person in the article attracted the gaze of Sauron.
North Idaho started adding license plate readers and cameras back in the early 2k's using funding given out after 9/11.
Locally there was a recent pushback on them and the sheriff basically said "They've been there forever" and "Don't worry...it's just us with the footage"
I am misunderstanding the article, if "The searches came to light in a Wisconsin criminal complaint against Edward Abrams-Phillips, who was wanted for bail jumping on domestic violence charges." he was wanted, why do they need a pretext for the stop?
> The case is an example of Flock cameras being used to arrest a wanted alleged criminal suspected of committing a violent crime. But it is also an example of police surveillance overreach *in that the cameras were specifically used to create a pretext to tack on additional petty crimes* based primarily on where a person’s vehicle had traveled.
I think everyone agrees. Where the disagreement lies is if this is how the technology is actually used, and the answer seems to be: no.
Regardless, even if the technology was used currently purely for good, when you’re “pro surveillance” you’re actually arguing it will always be used for good, even in some hypothetical future with hypothetical politics. That’s a very hard sell.
does this work for any allegation? if it was a serious one surely they could get a warrant. if it's not enough for that it might as well be gossip imo.
Ok, the article is confusing but the complaint is a little better.
> The vehicle was registered to Edward 12-01-1993. Edward had an active Brown County felony warrant with nationwide extradition.
so he wasn't just wanted but also had an active warrant.
> Multiple Deputies checked the area but were unable to locate the vehicle at that time
Police tried arresting him before, but couldn't find him. The police then used flock to find a pattern of coming/going over the state line. I'm guessing they stationed someone nearby to wait for a flock alert and arrest him.
The following is total speculation on my part: The police are including the "Based on prior flock hits, the vehicle travels to Michigan frequently which is a known source State for Marijuana as it is legal there." to build probable cause for searching the car and finding the marijuana.
Otherwise the only PC is: "He declined consent to search his vehicle. However, DeputyKowalski informed him he would be conducting a search of his vehicle due to the odor of marijuana".
Maybe the olfactory skills of officers are so dubious that courts need more facts than just an odor? That'd be my guess.
They don't need probable cause to search his vehicle if he had a warrant. They can search his car because they are arresting him and towing the vehicle
> The bail jumping charge was dismissed; Abrams-Phillips was found guilty only of weed possession in the case, according to the court records.
Apparently the bail jumping charge was weak? That seems like a black-and-white situation to me so no idea what the details were, but there was clearly something wrong with that charge.
If the charge was so weak then they probably couldn't get a warrant to arrest him outright? Therefore they needed the marijuana probable cause to stop and search him.
Regardless the disturbing part is that they're using surveillance state footage of a person traveling to a state where something is legal as "probable cause" for a crime.
IANAL - if they break the bail conditions the judge may issue a warrant depending on severity, clearly a warrant was not issued here, otherwise there’s no need for pretext like you said.
Article also states bail jumping charge was dismissed but the weed charge is the only charge that remains.
They still have to bother with actually going to a judge and actually getting that warrant. Why do that if you can just skip it and not deal with inconvenient questions.
The article claims multiple times that the cops used the interstate travel as a pretext for the search that turned up the marijuana, but in most jurisdictions, the arrest would have allowed them to inventory the car anyway as part of the impound process.
Unless this jurisdiction is an outlier, the pretext wasn't needed for the search. As the parent comment says, the cops used the interstate travel as a timing strategy to increase the charges.
I've seen it suggested to add a warrant requirement for police to use ALPRs. A warrant requirement is not a reasonable bandaid to consider allowing mass spying. There should be no mass spying by default.
A warrant requirement makes sense for something like the locations of customers on cellular networks, because it's built into the tech.
When you make the optional choice to create mass spying, safeguards do not make it acceptable.
Indeed. Like, no shit strapping a camera and microphone and sending it to an all knowing AI to analyze it all is going to reduce crime. But it's a violation of our human rights.
It's clear these people do not understand the importance of privacy or rights. Crime is already decreasing. The bigger improvements would come from improving society, not restricting people's rights for more "safety".
I don't quite get the thesis of the author here. Regardless of the view that one may have on Cannabis laws, they are illegal, if the system is correctly detaining people that break those laws, and you have a problem with that, is the problem with the enforcement system or the law?
If you don't like some aspect of this, should you be campaigning for removal of flock cameras? Or campaigning for cannabis rights and Controlled Substances reform?
The issue isn't prosecution for illegality, among other things it's the anti-Fourth-Amendment methods for constructing the case. So, I'm going to campaign for government entities to follow the Constitution (as amended).
I'm surprised Trump hasn't federally legalized marijuana as a last-ditch effort to boost his popularity. He's good at embracing popular left-wing policy measures when he needs a boost; stimulus checks worked well for this purpose during his 2016-2020 term.
This is the big problem with mass surveillance as a whole. With enough time, they'll find some pretext to bring you in, even if the original crime they want you for is weak.
This will ruin lives, even if they're eventually let go. Jobs lost, evicted from homes, cars towed, pets surrendered and put down.
Lives will be completely derailed, police and judges will not be held accountable. The wrongful arrestees will still be in debt to the local jail and court for various fees they racked up. Trust in the justice system will continue to degrade and more and more violence will be used against people to maintain order.
We hold police to high standards for search/arrest because they have the monopoly on violence. Even if they're wrong, you can't shoot back. Even if they're slamming your loved ones into the pavement, breaking their teeth, you cannot kick the cop in the head or else they have permission to murder you both.
Mass surveillance is a loophole to this contract.
Someone that is innocent is going to get killed soon because flock flagged them incorrectly. I recall reading the auto journalist that got flagged for a stolen car while test driving a car. We have seen how often pull over/arrests can derail when a stupid cop that is aggressive pulls out their weapon first, fires fast and then investigates last. An innocent person that reacts wrongly is eventually going to make the news. :-(
https://www.jalopnik.com/2219072/auto-journalist-harassed-by...
Link for the curious
That might already have happened for all we know
How do the municipalities "own" this data if anyone from any agency outside of a jurisdiction is allowed to access the data?
"Even if they're wrong, you can't shoot back."
Depends on the situation. You'd absolutely be arrested. Get in front of a jury of 12 people and you might have a chance if you have enough evidence for a self-defense claim and the cop acting outside of the law.
Only if the jury believes in nullification, which isn't common. The jury is instructed to follow the law. The selection process asks "even if you think they were right, if it's against the law and they were guilty would you issue a guilty verdict?" and people answer "yes" consistently.
Obviously. It sounds like the kind of question you always say yes to unless you're trying to get out of jury duty. And yet, people aren't machines.
No one who has answered "no" made it thru the selection process, so there might be some survivor bias at play here.
Honestly getting arrested would be lucky. If recent years have shown anything, they don't need to be particularly concerned about removing you from the picture more permanently regardless of the circumstances.
I'd highly doubt that. I've actually been on scene of a few LE-involved shootings (ex-paramedic).
If LE "just" shoots at you (i.e. you're not actively firing or an immediate threat - and without commenting on the "should" of that) then... you might be "fine", once you're disabled.
If you're actively firing at LE, they're going to hit you with "overwhelming force" and any survival on your part is going to be sheer dumb luck and "not very likely".
Good luck living long enough to see a jury
The choice in this hypothetical scenario is to be killed initially through the unlawful use of force or potentially be killed at some later time before reaching trial.
>This will ruin lives, even if they're eventually let go. Jobs lost, evicted from homes, cars towed, pets surrendered and put down.
Yes. That's exactly the point. Comply with every little thing, no matter how absurd, or else your life will unravel.
Look through a historical comment (especially from back when "big data" was the buzzword) thread on any subject where HN is pro regulation and pro government. This is EXACTLY what the useful idiots want.
They want some NYC liquor store owner to pay a hundred grand to the state because that one time he visited NH he loaded up his van with tax free henny to sell back home.
They want that exurban undeveloped lot owner to lose their house for letting their buddy with a tree service dump there and fill in a few hundred square feet over the course of half a decade.
They want some random industrial employer that makes nuts and bolts or something to be fined millions of dollars because their maintenance employees spray painted a piece of equipment in the parking lot without the PPE and pollution compliance measures befitting a commercial paint operation.
They want the jackboot on the throat of everyone who steps out of line on any axis that they care about.
They see the way the banking industry tries to stay away from weed, porn and guns because the upside isn't worth the risk of being combed over by the enforcers. And instead of seeing it as cautionary, they see it as a model that needs to be scaled down to the small businesses and the lowly individual peasants.
Of course they don't lay it out so plainly. They use words like "negative externality" and "antisocial" and "dis-incentivize" to whitewash it but that doesn't change what it is.
All very terrifying but you're building a "Hollow Man" by using an "Appeal to Extremes".
Instead of arguing against actual regulatory policy, you are mind-reading malicious intent into hypothetical scenarios (and people) you just invented. Or real examples that you're broadstroking against a "they" which is somehow "HN."
I am not sure how you can justify trying to paint so broad a stroke across an entire community, or feel justified in creating a bucket of "useful idiots" into which you just throw whole classes of unnamed people without engaging with any particular argument.
I get you're angry, my man, but maybe you should question exactly who it is you're angry with.
Maybe they can start enforcing the law when it comes to blatant offenders that terrorize large cities. Illegal blocking of sidewalk selling fake handbags, selling untaxed marijuana on street corners, violating traffic laws on e-bikes. A lot of wood to chop before they get to my jay walking so I think I’m safe for the time being. But I welcome more enforcement
Brother, you want mass surveillance because of bikes, handbags, and weed.
I guarantee there is _some_ group that finds some aspect of you, your life, or that of some of your loved ones at least as annoying as you find those things.
> terrorize large cities
Oh I wonder what kind of terror he's talking about
> Illegal blocking of sidewalk selling fake handbags
Jesus Christ. If this is what brings you to a surveillance state with open arms maybe you should talk to people outside of your bubble.
This comment is satire, correct?
You seem hateful.
Also Flock, in the past week:
All of Winona Police Department's Flock cameras cut down and stolen
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171656
241 comments
How Cops Are Trying to Hide Their Use of Flock
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49172076
9 comments
Flock's CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156650
118 comments
Flock – Chilling Effects: Long Island's Emerging Open-Air Prison
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49148541
38 comments
Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158837
17 comments
Not from the US, but I really wish folks from the US started thinking of creative ways to "produce probable cause" (if that makes any sense), get stopped without any harm, assemble enough individual cases into some kind of catalogue, and then be able to show people just how much the whole thing is bad with evidence that did not result in them actually getting what they were looking for.
If I asked a random person about this, they'd probably just say - "but they found weed, right?"
[delayed]
Based on my observations (news reports, local chatter, etc) it seems that every state that borders a state with legal Cannabis does this. Idaho does this very frequently (since just about every border is a legal source). They take advantages of the bottlenecks on highways and have cameras and/or officers there.
If it is Flock, interagency communications, license plate readers or just "enhanced stops" for things like a crack in the windshield.
People seem to forget that while buying in one state is legal it actually can become a much larger crime than just possession as soon as you cross state lines. It "can" become a federal matter...
This person in the article attracted the gaze of Sauron.
They did this in my state, and now that other state has been legal for over a year and a half, but the cameras are all still there
North Idaho started adding license plate readers and cameras back in the early 2k's using funding given out after 9/11.
Locally there was a recent pushback on them and the sheriff basically said "They've been there forever" and "Don't worry...it's just us with the footage"
I am misunderstanding the article, if "The searches came to light in a Wisconsin criminal complaint against Edward Abrams-Phillips, who was wanted for bail jumping on domestic violence charges." he was wanted, why do they need a pretext for the stop?
1. those charges were dismissed
2. the article address that specifically:
> The case is an example of Flock cameras being used to arrest a wanted alleged criminal suspected of committing a violent crime. But it is also an example of police surveillance overreach *in that the cameras were specifically used to create a pretext to tack on additional petty crimes* based primarily on where a person’s vehicle had traveled.
I think using technology to capture alleged criminals is a good thing.
I think everyone agrees. Where the disagreement lies is if this is how the technology is actually used, and the answer seems to be: no.
Regardless, even if the technology was used currently purely for good, when you’re “pro surveillance” you’re actually arguing it will always be used for good, even in some hypothetical future with hypothetical politics. That’s a very hard sell.
I agree. You stole $5 from me and I'm glad with the help of Flock you can be tracked down and brought to justice.
I can confirm. I saw him take the $5.
The Party was great at using Viewscreen technology to catch thought criminals.
does this work for any allegation? if it was a serious one surely they could get a warrant. if it's not enough for that it might as well be gossip imo.
According to Flock's CEO, yes. He has stated he sees a false positive as a better outcome than a false negative.
Ok, the article is confusing but the complaint is a little better.
> The vehicle was registered to Edward 12-01-1993. Edward had an active Brown County felony warrant with nationwide extradition.
so he wasn't just wanted but also had an active warrant.
> Multiple Deputies checked the area but were unable to locate the vehicle at that time
Police tried arresting him before, but couldn't find him. The police then used flock to find a pattern of coming/going over the state line. I'm guessing they stationed someone nearby to wait for a flock alert and arrest him.
The following is total speculation on my part: The police are including the "Based on prior flock hits, the vehicle travels to Michigan frequently which is a known source State for Marijuana as it is legal there." to build probable cause for searching the car and finding the marijuana.
Otherwise the only PC is: "He declined consent to search his vehicle. However, DeputyKowalski informed him he would be conducting a search of his vehicle due to the odor of marijuana".
Maybe the olfactory skills of officers are so dubious that courts need more facts than just an odor? That'd be my guess.
direct link to the complaint (it's also embedded in the article) https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/28537132/2025cf000671...
They don't need probable cause to search his vehicle if he had a warrant. They can search his car because they are arresting him and towing the vehicle
> The bail jumping charge was dismissed; Abrams-Phillips was found guilty only of weed possession in the case, according to the court records.
Apparently the bail jumping charge was weak? That seems like a black-and-white situation to me so no idea what the details were, but there was clearly something wrong with that charge.
If the charge was so weak then they probably couldn't get a warrant to arrest him outright? Therefore they needed the marijuana probable cause to stop and search him.
Regardless the disturbing part is that they're using surveillance state footage of a person traveling to a state where something is legal as "probable cause" for a crime.
The bail jumping charge was actually dropped in the end, so weed possession was the only charge.
IANAL - if they break the bail conditions the judge may issue a warrant depending on severity, clearly a warrant was not issued here, otherwise there’s no need for pretext like you said.
Article also states bail jumping charge was dismissed but the weed charge is the only charge that remains.
They still have to bother with actually going to a judge and actually getting that warrant. Why do that if you can just skip it and not deal with inconvenient questions.
The Flock camera network is much less of a stickler for those pesky civil liberties being respected
The article is wrong on this point: the fact that he was crossing state lines was not a pretext for the stop.
They actually wanted to add another charge. The cameras helped them find the right opportunity to do that.
If they just picked him up driving around, they would only be able to charge those existing crimes.
By waiting for him to cross state lines, they have a chance to add on another charge.
They already had enough PC for the stop, and they could have searched the car as incident to the arrest at any time.
Unless I'm misreading this is all covered explicitly in the article.
The article claims multiple times that the cops used the interstate travel as a pretext for the search that turned up the marijuana, but in most jurisdictions, the arrest would have allowed them to inventory the car anyway as part of the impound process.
Unless this jurisdiction is an outlier, the pretext wasn't needed for the search. As the parent comment says, the cops used the interstate travel as a timing strategy to increase the charges.
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-crime
I've seen it suggested to add a warrant requirement for police to use ALPRs. A warrant requirement is not a reasonable bandaid to consider allowing mass spying. There should be no mass spying by default.
A warrant requirement makes sense for something like the locations of customers on cellular networks, because it's built into the tech.
When you make the optional choice to create mass spying, safeguards do not make it acceptable.
https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png
;-)
is anyone else old enough to remember when cops first got tasers
suddenly EVERYONE was getting tased
it's like that
give them a new "toy" to combat violent crime and instead it's used on everything else because zero repercussions
I am starting to see Flock on the side of the road at every major shopping center
unfortunately like "kavanaugh stops" I suspect the supreme court is going to put their permission into concrete regardless how they are abused
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavanaugh_stop
>give them a new "toy"
Indeed. Like, no shit strapping a camera and microphone and sending it to an all knowing AI to analyze it all is going to reduce crime. But it's a violation of our human rights.
It's clear these people do not understand the importance of privacy or rights. Crime is already decreasing. The bigger improvements would come from improving society, not restricting people's rights for more "safety".
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLE/comments/1srugkv
"Don't flock camera me bro"
I don't quite get the thesis of the author here. Regardless of the view that one may have on Cannabis laws, they are illegal, if the system is correctly detaining people that break those laws, and you have a problem with that, is the problem with the enforcement system or the law?
If you don't like some aspect of this, should you be campaigning for removal of flock cameras? Or campaigning for cannabis rights and Controlled Substances reform?
The issue isn't prosecution for illegality, among other things it's the anti-Fourth-Amendment methods for constructing the case. So, I'm going to campaign for government entities to follow the Constitution (as amended).
The two hang together. You campaign in your state to legalize something. Some other state, where you have very little influence, goes the other way.
It isn't just cannabis.
what if the law categorizes abortion as felony/murder?
what if the law categorized certain types of sexual behavior as felony?
I'm surprised Trump hasn't federally legalized marijuana as a last-ditch effort to boost his popularity. He's good at embracing popular left-wing policy measures when he needs a boost; stimulus checks worked well for this purpose during his 2016-2020 term.