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Comment by ryandvm | Hacker News Reader

Flock can make all the promises it wants, but the reality is that once growth stalls out on camera installations, which it must, shareholders will immediately insist that they pivot into other monetization schemes. There aren't really any laws holding them back, just their already weasel-worded contracts that they could easily renegotiate once the police departments are putting pressure on the city/county/state/federal legislative bodies.

The possibilities are endless:

  - Is your employee visiting your competitors?
  - Where has your husband/wife/lover been?
  - What medical buildings has this person been to?
  - Does this person go to churches / gun ranges?

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Ironically, those questions are more legal than Flock's current usage. The vast majority of Flock's revenue comes from government, and government cannot hire a 3rd party to do what would be unconstitutional if done directly. Thus far, pervasive monitoring without a warrant has been considered an unreasonable search.

[Edit: I think Flocks "victims" have a decent argument for injunctions for the removal of the cameras on the basis that Flock is conducting an illegal search on behalf of the government.]

However, the government can generally do what the public is allowed to do. So, if there are companies serving a genuine market for monitoring your employees, etc. via video surveillance installed on private property... then the government would not be restricted from accessing what private businesses have access to buy.

> government cannot hire a 3rd party to do what would be unconstitutional if done directly

Is there actually a legal precedent for this?

It's a general principle of agency law, but one example would be Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn., 489 US 602 (1989) involving a drug test performed by ostensibly private railroads, but pursuant to federal regulations. That was considered sufficient government action to implicate the 4th Amendment.

It’s an important reminder: I think a lot of people think that online privacy is just a thing that keeps you from being micro-targeted by ads and algorithms - and many don’t care about that. But it’s also a thing that keeps that data from governments that are increasingly confident that they can control the narrative, if and when they use this information in violent ways against their own residents. Because once it’s collected, it can and will be laundered for government use.

I look forward to purchasing this data and building whereismycrush.com. Enter someone’s license plate and find out where they are, where they’ve been, and who’s riding with them. No more guessing games! After all, people have no right to privacy in public—especially that special someone.

  whereismycrush.com
  whereisthatguywhocutmeoff.com
  whereistheopposingteambus.com
  whereismyassholebrotherabel.com
  whereisthepolice.com

Those are small potatoes. The obvious big customer is the federal government. Founders Fund was an early investor, Flock's enormous volume of data would be a great fit for Palantir, and as early as 2020, Flock was facilitating direct access for fusion centers:

> “FLOCK already has their license plate reader systems in several neighborhoods in North SA [San Antonio] now,” James Glass, the deputy director of the Southwest Texas Fusion Center, wrote in an October 2020 email to colleagues. “In order to be granted free access to search the FLOCK system for license plate reader hits, we are asked to agree to sign this MOU.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/talon-flock-safety-cameras-p...

> Flock can make all the promises it wants

They lost me when the CEO lied to a city official in a public meeting. ( https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-c... )

That wasn't the CEO, and "lie" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. A non-product person (CISO) was being asked if a specific feature exists and they believed it did not. Should they have said something along the lines of, "as far as I know, no" yes, they should have. It's a mistake, not a lie. Lie would require intentionally having knowledge of it and trying to obscure that fact.

They do not deserve the benefit of doubt. If anything their executives or officers say is not truthful it must be interpreted as being knowing and malicious. Flock's systems have been too easily abused to assume anything else. A company their size can't be so stupid as to allow for the abuse that's happened without everyone in the decision chain being well aware of the possibility and those use cases.

this one felt like lying though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H30Ub6olYL4&t=907s

I think it’s a problem to not clarify what “track” means. Usually people are referring to and afraid of a system tracking their location, building a profile, facial recognition, etc. Yes the camera can recognize what a person is vs another object and if PTZ, will follow them. No it doesn’t do all that other stuff.

As an aside, have you noticed falcons point at the driver now? As in at the face? What's the purpose of this? Especially after lots of open PR that the alprs only capture the rear of vehicles.

I don't quite understand the leap that's made to argue in good faith they don't track people or build a profile.

You can retrieve images with FOIA. You’re not going to see good images with faces.

Some research done by others has uncovered a good bit of how they’re designed to function. They’re aimed to get a good look at plates.

The same cameras can be sold for purely video functionality. Those would be aimed differently. Like at the entrance to a store, etc. Whatever the customer wanted.

This is different, what would be the purpose of having two falcons on one pole. One pointed at the driver, one at the license plate?

They are all over the interstate in my area now. It's to see who's driving obviously, no? These cameras are top of the line with great resolution.

The smaller cameras can serve two product lines. Not at the same time though. One is live video, one is alpr. You will see what looks like falcons aimed at areas with no cars for this reason. Btw, all of this is on their website

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