N.Y.P.D. Officers Used Flock Safety to Track License Plates Without a Contract | Hacker News Reader

N.Y.P.D. Officers Used Flock Safety to Track License Plates Without a Contract

nytimes.com

33 pointsjaredwiener7 comments

How does their business model work with subpoenas? If the police don't pay to use them, but the camera witnesses a crime, can't they get a judge to order the video because it's evidence in a criminal investigation and/or trial?

What about a civil case? Can an individual get a court order for flock to release evidence that it may have (or definitely has) relevant to a divorce case or other lawsuit?

They evade accusations of constitutional violation because they're a private company. But other private companies have to turn over records all the time (credit card purchases for example).

Paying a lawyer to petition a judge for a subpoena (which the judge may or may not grant) is probably much more expensive than whatever Flock charges.

The Government has full time lawyers on salary, they generally don't pay by the hour for things like that

This doesn't necessarily change the dynamic, though. The government has a finite number of lawyers. Diverting them to write subpoena after subpoena to request Flock data is still a hefty opportunity cost relative to what those lawyers could be working on instead.

Paying that fee would absolutely be worth it in a costly divorce if it prevented someone from paying out.

I'm assuming flock have some sort of legal protection that gets them out of that for regular plebs. Otherwise people would hate them even more knowing they were used for people's personal matters.

https://archive.today/4UotC

"The department never had a contract with Flock, but the officers used the technology in an ad hoc manner, the police said in a statement. The officers received access to Flock after representatives of the company offered them a free trial, the statement said."

Ah, the good ol' shadow IT method of selling directly to the end users. Good ol' salesman scum.

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