Is it legal for US citizens to all put cameras on their cars and set up a network where we can all see where all police are at any given time?
Seems like a good idea at this point.
The reason these strategies (for the same goal) don't seem equivalent is due to the nature of oversight. Flock as a centralized private company governed by a procedural system, can be corrupted and abused more easily than a distributed network. Flock's systems have already been abused and will continue to be.
Re Title: Flock doesn't "want" anything in particular, other than to sell more contracts and make more money.
There are already precedents - for example it's legal to film ICE agents in public spaces, it's not necessarily legal to use information to dox if that can be construed as harassment.
Even if you crowd sourced the identification of somebody involved in a potentially criminal act, you can only share that with the police and not the wider public.
The law is asymmetric here because the police have powers reserved for themselves to stop vigilantism.
Perhaps an interesting angle here would be if you can make the case that companies like flock are involved in harressment themselves...
This is an incorrect understanding of the issue, these individuals are protected using a unique and unusual statute. In a mass broadcast scenario, without identifying their profession in context, there's arguably no crime here. There's certainly no crime to broadcast that you've seen their license plates with no association with their names (the statute doesn't cover that.)
> Even if you crowd sourced the identification of somebody involved in a potentially criminal act, you can only share that with the police and not the wider public.
What are you talking about? This is most certainly legally false in the United States. If you are incorrect about someone you might be found against for libel, but there's no crime here. This is basic First Amendment activity. Have you never watched the news or read a newspaper? Allegations are part and parcel.
These are also entirely the wrong analogies. Both of these are highly individualized scenarios that are not akin to Flock. "Public Flock" is more like a public traffic cam that anyone can view, and these already exist without issue.
For example:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/federal-prosecutors-char...
or https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/santa-monica-man-pleads...
The statute in question is 18 USC § 119: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/119
To preface: this statute is very arguably prior restraint and unconstitutional, which is likely why you only see those cases (non-affluent, non-connected defendants.) Furthermore, you'll notice that it requires "intent to threaten, intimidate, or incite the commission of a crime of violence."
I hate to get specific into this one very questionable statute, but no general/broad restrictions exist with regards to disseminating the video data or license plate information contained within. License plate data doesn't fall into the statute's definition of "restricted personal information," and the operator of a hypothetical service that doesn't single out these "protected" individuals amongst the rest of the population cannot be possibly construed as having malicious intent. This is an extremely unusual statute, few others like it exist.
A "public Flock" would let any interested party query the entire database of observed license plates. Collection isn't individualized to any one person, use and intent resides with the individual consuming the service.
I can see how a public flock, which is just a queryable database, would be ok under the current rules. But would it make the government want to regulate? They could just continue to go after data use where legal asymmetry already exists.
You could frame almost any use as some sort of stalking/harassment.
Even in this case if they shut it down, government carve outs would apply.
Every door man, every hotel employee, every uber driver, every concert-goer, every grocery shopper, every student, and on and on and on. Anonymously streaming their encrypted feeds. Have them turn their cameras onto the street. Especially, say, in front of hotels or at certain restaurants and resorts. Ohhh, and at convention centers as well. Just to show it can pick out subjects at busy places and track them around any city reliably.
Naturally, we'd need some sample facial recognition queries just to show how to use the system. We could start with, say, public figures like Representatives, and Senators? And just to prove it works for less famous people, maybe we could have some example names of regular, everyday employees. Like employees at, I don't know?? Palantir, Flock and Clearview maybe? Just to demonstrate the value and effectiveness of public surveillance networks.
Sure. There's absolutely nothing illegal about monitoring the location and activity of police (unless you broke some other law to do so, like hacking).
Hell, most of them will simply tell you where they are and what they're doing, as they tend to broadcast over unencrypted radio (which is also not illegal to listen to).
In theory, sure. In practice? Good luck.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2025/10/03/apple-t...
Though bizarrely in the UK that's legal if you do it via Waze, not if you do it via whatsapp.