Hacker News Reader

Comment by nonethewiser | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

That wasn't an initial safety feature. It was added after abuse had already been reported. Flock also needs to require a case number or some other method of validation for legitimate use. Presuming the continue to exist in any capacity. Otherwise we're just going to keep discovering incidents like this.

They'll just keep a random old case number on a notepad to put in.

That's a fair point. The only other validation gate I can think of within our current system would be a valid warrant number. A system where the warrant automatically limits the search by time and geo-fence could be interesting.

I don't think warrants are currently cataloged and formatted in a way that can easily be retrieved and parsed by Flock to validate that a given warrant covers the requested data.

I don't think it would need to validate the applicability of the warrant to the requested data. It would just be checking that a valid warrant exists. The deterrent to abuse would be that a Judge's name is attached to each warrant. Cops have lied to judges before to get bogus warrants but I think it would make abuse less likely overall.

> So Flock and the local governments are acting responsibly here. The police officer is not and should be reprimanded.

Who is responsible for ensuring that agents of the government in jurisdictions that host Flock cameras adhere to proper procedures, if not the local governments themselves? Who is designing access systems that permit random text in lieu of actual case numbers that can be verified in real time and properly gate the system? If Flock and the IT departments of local governments cannot provide proper locks against this sort of random surveillance then the cameras should be removed.

They also designed some amazing validation for that audit software:

>Data reviewed by the EFF included searches labelled 'LMAO', 'LOL', 'Hehe', 'Haha', 'idk' and 'blah'. Other entries included 'asdfg' and strings of apparently random keyboard characters. In one case, an officer entered: 'robbery I don't remember the case number leave me alone'.

Seems like they really put a lot of thought into preventing abuse

>Network Size and ReachTotal Count: Flock Safety reports having over 120,000 active cameras.Community Spread: These cameras are placed in more than 6,000 communities.Data Collection: The system records roughly 20 billion vehicle scans every single month. [1] (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/09/14/trump-e...), [2] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_Safety)

He searched ~1/5 of the cameras available in America..

What do you mean validation? The reason field is for auditing. Auditing is not validation. And its how the public knows this officer is not meeting quality expectations.

Not anymore.

Flock has updated the reason field to a drop down choice menu.

Now the many officers that typed in LMAO, dunno, and geafdghdstr will now choose a more realistic looking "reason" and the public will no longer know how many police are covering up stalking by entering "robbery".

You seem very keen to make shallow excuses and defend flock and the LEOs here.

Buuuullshit that the local governments made the logs public. So many local governments charge absolutely insane amount PER MONTH for the logs. And you're happy that they are public at all? Yeah they are public because activists pay for access out of their own pocket, not because local governments actually care about people and act "responsibly"

>... and should be reprimanded.

L O fucking L

The point is: whose to blame if they aren't reprimanded? It's not flock.

why is flock good?

>Flock designed their software so that the police have to state a reason.

And yet none of this stopped an individual from first accessing 19,000 cameras across 1558 cities with "LMAO" as the reason. The damage is already done and it could have been prevented.

The reason is for audibility not prevention. Flock surfaced the officer whose not meeting quality expectations.

Yes that’s why I’m not satisfied. It doesn’t actually stop the problem. It’s a legal safety net for them at best. Our data is not safe from rogue officers, which there are many of as we have seen with US policing for many years.

The reason should need to be approved. This would all be so laughably ridiculous if the consequences weren’t so serious.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com