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Comment by variety8675 | Hacker News Reader

I'm no fan of flock, but I dislike how these articles are blaming the technology when the real issue is the police not bothering to check the information they're given

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Yeah this reads like the cops simply didn't properly identify the vehicle. If anything, the Flock camera photo proves he was miles away.

But flock hit is the entire reason for the cops to go arrest them. And you’re right if they did careful assessment of other flock camera data, even the data of this particular flock camera they would have known this car was 5 miles away 23 seconds later. The whole point being misusing/abusing flock data to wrongly jail people and that is precisely what happened here. Flock is the center of this story.

> [T]hey would have known this car was 5 miles away 23 seconds later.

Tack on a reckless driving charge and a speeding ticket.

782.6mph is way too fast.

As long as the vehicle traveling above Mach 1 remains a ground vehicle, the FAA won't get involved.

Police would just argue that the second datapoint was wrong.

Obviously so, maybe society should hire criminals to catch the police.

Schrodinger's flock - the 'hit' helped us catch the criminals and the hit is wrong. but we are going ahead with prosecution nonetheless.

They simply didn't properly identify the vehicle because Flock's ALPR gave them the pass. The innocent person would not have needed "photo proof" of his distant location if the ALPR didn't exist in the first place. Then he would not have been forced to spend a month of his life in jail.

A tool that requires perfect human oversight to avoid harming innocent people is a problem

We blame the technology because police misusing their powers is a tale as old as police, is demonstrably not fixable, and this technology is at fault for aggressively selling itself to police to give them these powers that we all know will be misused. Flock absolutely bears significant responsibility for creating the technology and conditions for this unjust behavior to exist, and continuing to advocate against those pushing back on it by trying to brand them as terrorists.

Ironically, they're showing a situation where more tracking makes innocence clear. There's countless examples of innocent people being caught in a dragnet, based on data that correlates with but does not prove guilt, where more data collection leads to more innocent people suffering. That's what they should be focusing on.

There is absolutely that, but the CEO of Flock has said he believes a false-positive is better than a false-negative, so everything around the stack pushes police that way, too.

I love these elites who say "Yeah, it's no big deal, the police will arrest you but they'll figure it out and you can go on your way, and if you have to spend a couple of nights in jail first, or hire an attorney at considerable expense, or you lose your job or become less hirable because your state reports arrest records, not just charge or conviction records, well, that's a small price to pay for Zero Crime State, presented by Flock(TM)!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

It is Flock's responsibility to grant access only to trained professionals who undergo routine training and testing in how to and how not to use the system.

So they can't show it to the police in the US?

Every police officer with access to the system must ideally have to undergo mandatory annual training and testing in using it to protect the rights of innocents. If they don't pass the testing, they ideally should not be granted access.

Flock should be held accountable for ensuring adequate protections exist to prevent misuse.

It's not a training problem, it's an incentive problem. You put these guys in a structure that requires them to justify their jobs at minimal cost of effort and then ooh ack surprise when they don't take the proper care to ensure that they're not stepping on innocent people in the pursuit of a healthy career.

Couple that with overburdening them with petty nonsense all the time and training them in military equipment and tactics and like it doesn't matter what tools you give them, those tools will be abused at convenience.

The issue is structural, not technical, but power tools = more damage per capita.

It's not a dichotomy. "Checks and balances" are a thing since the founding of the United States. If the local government fails to institute them, it should be the complementary responsibility of the vendor to have them. In their absence, lawsuits targeting all parties are highly desirable.

It's kinda funny that all our personal data leaks out of companies all the time and little to nothing happens to them, and now you're thinking Flock is going to be held accountable?!

We should have laws against collecting this in the first place.

What do you mean nothing happens to them?:

https://news.google.com/search?q=location%20data%20lawsuit%2...

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