Georgia police officers fired after Flock camera misuse

They're not remotely the same Constitutional question. The people asking this aren't saying "I'm fine with being profiled because I've got nothing to hide unlike the people driving stolen cars". They're just as upset about abuses of these systems as you are (though: some of them think these cameras are no more intrusive than cell tower tracking). They just see an upside to the system that privacy advocates refuse to recognize.

I get that this sounds like standard-issue message board rhetoric where I'm Mary Sue'ing normies to make my points for me, but I don't agree with my neighbors about this stuff, and you'll probably have to take my word for it that I'm not making any of this up.

To spare you the search of his comment history, my memory is that it's roughly: the stolen car databases have tons of cars listed that weren't actually stolen, or have already been recovered, so you end up pulling over a ton of unsuspecting people just driving around.

One answer is that ALPRs have much too high an error rate (John Oliver claims it exceeds 30%) to rely on them for dragnet surveillance.

Maybe it makes sense to track specific vehicles, with safeguards such as warrants and also checking make/model/color, but it makes less sense to just give the government a 30-day rolling database of the public's movements in total, especially when 30% of those data points are inaccurate and thus not useful as evidence.

Yes, I find that quite unpersuasive. Should we not allow the analysis of hair found at crime scenes because someone might steal some of my hair and place it there? Someone framing me in this manner is incredibly unlikely, would be disproven by the other broad investigative powers afforded to law enforcement, and, at least in my opinion, is ridiculously less likely than the cameras photographing real criminals. And that doesn't even take into account that camera footage is already collected from homes and businesses, just very inefficiently.

> The people who want to be police officers tend not to be the people everyone else would want to be police officers.

It's tiring for good people when everyone they interact with thinks they're the villain.

You think unions shouldn't be looking out for their members?

It's not on the unions, it's on the people who hired the officers.

> Have you FOIA'd your local department to see what they are?

That's an effective way to get put on a list for harassment, or worse.

Most definitely ring. I used to park near one of their offices, for at least 3-5 months they had one of those podium pole camera systems, with a big ring logo on the side, and ring workers occasionally tinkering with it. You know, the kind you see in Home Depot lots.

Certainly! And probably a multitude of other devices and phone apps as well.

You’re right, it was just completely pointless China baiting.

I think we may be agreeing?

I'm in favor of pushing for police departments (and really any governmental body with access to any kind of data) to have regulations around access to that data, access controls to restrict illegitimate access, and monitoring to detect improper access by people who do have legitimate access but don't follow the proper regulations.

I think you're correct that we don't tend to see the instances where improper usage occurs, tautologically because those entities aren't doing their homework on the above.

I'm getting https://xkcd.com/810/ vibes.

If government entities get good PR for rolling out strong policies, practices, and tooling for the data they have, and that makes more of them very keen to do so... mission accomplished?

There always ends up being a real world to digital interface and it always has the potential for abuse, and thus always requires some level of monitoring and validation.

The department in this article appears to be doing just that:

> Every search run through the Flock Safety platform is automatically logged — who ran it, when, and the reason they gave for doing it. SPD said they also have other safeguards in place, including mandatory training, role-based access controls and supervisory oversight.

Who's more effective at protesting, USA or France?

And, which country routinely sets a bunch of shit on fire when they need to?

That's right.

In what possible way would the broader public destroying Flock cameras on sight and allying with one another to defend those caught doing it benefit intelligence agencies?

Genuinely effective protests are rarely entirely legal.

America started with an illegal protest.

You'll never gain traction with your post on social internet forums like this despite the reality and truth of it. You'll be downvoted to quiet and eliminate your opinion.

The first sentence is correct insofar as the criminal proceedings are concerned, but assuming that the targets of the searches have had their rights violated they could very well be denied their ability to sue for restitution under Qualified Immunity.

The second sentence is just wrong. Qualified immunity is a shield from civil actions without regard to if the violation was/was not malicious or with/without intent.

This is from one of the IJ pages I linked:

"Does qualified immunity apply when government workers intentionally violate the law?

Yes. Qualified immunity applies even when officials intentionally or recklessly violate the law. The primary consideration in a qualified immunity analysis is whether there is an earlier court case specifically stating that the particular actions of an official are unconstitutional. So, for example, the Ninth Circuit U.S Court of Appeals held that police accused of stealing $225,000 while executing a search warrant were entitled to qualified immunity because that court had 'never addressed whether the theft of property covered by the terms of a search warrant…violates the Fourth Amendment.' It did not matter 'that virtually every human society teaches that theft generally is morally wrong.'"

-- (https://ij.org/issues/project-on-immunity-and-accountability...)

Or more directly from the summary of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion:

"The panel held that at the time of the incident, there was no clearly established law holding that officers violate the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment when they steal property seized pursuant to a warrant. For that reason, the City Officers were entitled to qualified immunity."

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/09/04/1...

Theft requires criminality and intent and is arguably malicious. Yet, the court held that they couldn't even be sued on the basis of qualified immunity being applicable... that's not saying that the victims sued and lost... but that the suit was never heard on those grounds.

At least the court went on to say that the police should have known theft was morally wrong:

"The panel held that although the City Officers ought to have recognized that the alleged theft was morally wrong, they did not have clear notice that it violated the Fourth Amendment. The panel further held that the Fourth Circuit’s unpublished decision in Mom’s Inc. v. Willman, 109 F. App’x 629, 636–37 (4th Cir. 2004)—the only case law that the time of the incident holding that the theft of property pursuant to a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment—did not put the 'constitutional question beyond debate.'"

Because the question was not previously answered, the officers received the de facto protection of qualified immunity and not having to face the civil suit, criminality/intent/maliciousness notwithstanding.

I dont think thats everywhere. CA freeways have speed sensors every mile or two, and from that, along a given route you can estimate time

So you think that is the unauthorized use that the officers were fired for?

That seems overly complicated when simple speed sensors would do the job.

It absolutely is not, and you’re not in a debate anyway.

I guess you mean the “right now”

Good move by them, wait until nobody is paying attention anymore and they’re on to the next gig.