A human must always be held responsible, but a tool must expose its limitations to enable human judgement. I put this in the same basket as Autopilot, which already fails with its name.

I’ve seen too many cases where people intuitively trust the magic technology instead of verifying it. The tool shouldn’t not present itself as magic or AI or whatever the current term is.

1. I for one do not want "Flock Safety" in the loop for this at all. Police departments can flag a license plate in the system; that's on them. Flock is just a tool for departments to communicate what would previously have been an APB and have better detection than relying on chance sightings.

2. The vehicle was correctly identified by Flock as being the one flagged, and verified by the local PD that it was the one that was flagged. That said, they could have verified that the flag was still meaningful before converging on the vehicle.

3. This is a real problem and this is really the core of the oversight.

When the lawsuit over this is filed, it seems like 80% of the liability should attach to #3, and 20% to #2, and essentially none to #1. It's hard for me to see why Flock is even relevant to this discussion except to drum up outrage.

Likely never again with this Supreme Court.

The municipalities that employ them are held accountable (and often prevented by unions from firing them).

"Flock is absolutely responsible and they should not be releasing or selling products that are this poorly made."

I am not a fan of flock, nor police surveillance state, but what could they have done better here?

"Milwaukee police later admitted the alert should have been cleared out of the system days earlier, but an employee simply forgot to remove it. "

The system seemed to work as intended - that numberplate was flagged for investigation with homicide - and gave the alarm as intented, nothing more. The problem was wrong data given to them by humans.

The flock cameras were clearly misused. Misuse is 100% user error.

Them is flock responsible for reducing auto thefts and should be counted too?

I wish e.g. browser fingerprinting were implemented with little red-eyed robots that physically watched your screen.

Make software as creepy as you want, intangibly creepy, and there’s not enough for normal people to latch on to.

(If I could only permaban one not sure whether I would choose Facebook or Flock)

The problem is, this behaviour and training fails the legal standard of a presumption of innocence which should guide such.

Devils advocate here but your argument is that they should change their safety policy because the job has great safety statistics? What if they change tactics and danger goes up?

I agree with all of this, but I'm not the biggest fan of the way it gets framed. There are reasons for this beyond the common Internet sentiment that police are just evil bullies who became police solely so they can bully people. There was a shootout broadcast on live television in 1997 in North Hollywood between heavily armed and armored bank robbers and police, nearly an entire precinct and a SWAT team, in which the two robbers held out for nearly an hour in a parking lot, mostly because they so severely outgunned the police. They fired over 2000 rounds in the span of scarcely 20 minutes. It became pretty famous for being so similar to what happend in the movie Heat. This was only five years after the LA Riots, in which 63 people were murdered and the National Guard had to occupy the City of Los Angeles because the police couldn't handle the mayhem. Combining all the various criminal escalation of the 80s and 90s, major city police kind of started vowing that they might fail for other reasons, but they weren't going to fail simply because they were being outgunned by the criminals. This wasn't just police doing it of their own accord, either. Thanks to all of these events being televised and terrifying people, plenty of ordinary citizens and talking heads demanded the police do something. This wasn't like the American of today, when protesters block a street or throw a brick through a window and crazies of the Internet start talking about running them over with trucks and accusing them of rioting. These were real riots, with completely innocent people being pulled out of their cars in broad daylight and getting beaten to death with bricks on live television.

Then 9/11 happens a few years later and we end up with 1) police being trained in counterinsurgency tactics and antiterrorism response by the FBI, and 2) an ongoing military surplus program where the Army dumps all of its used weapons, armor, and armored vehicles on the police every time they upgrade.

As far as I'm personally concerned, all of these things were mistakes, but I'm not going to sit here and act like they were completely unjustified responses to nothing. My own experiences having been in the Army during the Iraq and Afghanistan years is suck it up. You volunteered for a job knowing you'd get shot at every now and again, but you're not a hostile occupying force. Your job is ultimately to serve the people, which does mean protecting them from some extremely violent criminals out there, but the bar for action should be a lot higher than it is. The overwhelming majority of the time I served, the rules of engagement stated you can't shoot unless fired upon first. It is legal to open carry in the countries we were in, so it was never acceptable to shoot someone simply because they were carrying or because you felt your life was in danger. I never understood why the police couldn't be held to the same standard.

These things ebb and flow in a series of counterveiling overreactions, but the Internet of today does a poor job of remembering just how violent the 80s and 90s actually were.

> But being a police officer in the US isn't even in the top-10 most dangerous fields

You don't think that has something to do with the exact policies you are objecting to? They call them "high risk stops" for a reason.

> Police in the US are trained to respond to the hilt by default, and then lower their heavy-handed response later if they warrant it.

Citation needed.

Police in the US should respond to the hilt because the likelihood of the suspect being armed is significantly higher than any other country...

> I try to explain that in the USA, the ratio of guns to people is far above 1:1. Therefore, if I was a police officer approaching any car, I would assume that the driver had a gun.

Except that majority of households (58%) do not have a firearm:

* https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts...

and when it comes to individuals, it is the majority (70%) that do not own one. The numbers are 'skewed' by a few individuals that own a lot of them. Statistically you'd be more correct to assume the person in the car does not have one (unless, perhaps, they're a white guy):

* https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-dem...

Whether or not the people being investigated have guns or not, won't showing up with guns up escalate the situation rather than defuse?

I would be absolutely terrified if people with guns came up to me, whether they're cops or not, and if I had a gun with me, I'd be much more likely to go for it in that scenario compared to a normal human interaction. But IDK, maybe I'm an outlier?

"Do you really want every speeding pull-over to become a wild-west situation? Maybe your kids are in the car!"

That sort of thing depends on what is "normal". Many states in the US could have around 10% of the population carrying a firearm. Armed interactions with the police are common and the vast majority are a non-issue. The typical police response to "I have a license to carry and a firearm in the vechicle" is typically "Where is it? Just don't touch it". Happens all the time.

Now, is there a statistical difference? Maybe. It's hard to say because you would need to apply the same policing culture, legal system, and population dynamics to a lesser armed country. I don't know of any good choices for that combination.

> "Do you really want every speeding pull-over to become a wild-west situation? Maybe your kids are in the car!"

Why would every speeding pull-over become a wild-west situation? If possessing a gun is a right, then mere possession is no reason to suspect criminality is afoot.

While I agree with need more and better gun control, American police officers are abhorrent for a very simple reason: lack of basic training, discipline, and practically zero screening/qualification process.

Anyone can become a cop in 6 months. Not everyone is temperamentally setup to be a great cop. That, there, lies the rub.

What if we just didn't have as many police interactions? They love pulling people over because it let's them run everyone for warrants.

If I were going to approach a vehicle whose driver was suspected of homicide, I would do so in a very obvious, slow, and non-threatening manner, probably without obviously being a cop. The last thing I would want to do if someone is potentially a hair trigger threat is give them a surprise and cause them to start shooting.

Police could solve a ton of these issues if they investigated before they tried to apprehend. If we're going to live in a surveillance state, use the damn surveillance for situational awareness. Right now, the cops just get a hit like "APB - Homicide" with no retrospective analysis or attempt to verify. It's essentially an unverified tip - they should use some expertise and tools to try to validate it before they commit.

But they don't, because there's no cost or penalty to them for overreacting, and there's a risk if they underreact. It's really an incentives problem. I don't know if the right spot to address it is with the individual officers or the department, but someone should have some huge liability for this mistake.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If police treat every situation as a potentially dangerous engagement, they're actually actually increasing the likelihood that dangerous engagements occur.

In the scenario where president n achieves a perfect surveillance state, I don’t see us getting a president n+1.

The Christians have to vote just once more, right?

Unfortunately, the Trump presidency has conclusively proved the "imagine if your opponent was in power" argument doesn't work. Everybody says Trump should be impeached, nobody says the office of the president should be deprived of the powers Trump used to do the things he should be impeached for.

    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

While I merely quoted the text of the Forth Amendment, the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth are also arguably limits on policing power, making fully half the original ten amendments about limiting policing.

I invite anyone and everyone to peruse the contents of https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/

Unless we change the law, selective enforcement is the default. Courts have found again and again that cops have effectively no responsibility to even try to do their job. They can enforce what they want, and ignore what they don't.

So the question isn't: "Should we take away the tools these cops use to serve the public?" but "Should we give even more powerful surveillance tools to a group of unaccountable thugs who routinely abuse what they already have?"

I'm not for “successful policing”: the term is way too ambiguous and I know that many people would have definitions in mind that I would find repugnant.

Virtually everyone is, including those who oversimplify and go too far with words like "abolish". The problem we have right now is that "successful policing" is currently defined in such a way that there's almost zero accountability for those who enforce the law.

Go get successfully policed and then come back here.

Should they? There's lots of things that are currently crimes that I don't believe should be crimes, so I have no reason to support policing in at least those cases.

Policing is enforcement of law, which inherently lags/fails to reflect reality. "100% Successful Policing" would have even larger swaths of the population in prison for use of controlled substances, which includes you if you've ever even TRIED smoking weed.

Sure, if anyone could agree on a definition of success. Police forces don't even obey legislative bodies where their definition of success and the public's definition of success differs.

Why should I be in favor of 100% successful policing? I don't accept the premise that all de facto law should be in line with de jure law. That sort of society is unprecedented

Successful policing looks like directing funding away from police and towards solutions better tailored to problems they do a poor job of handling.

Perfekt enforcement never existed and our current laws were written for a reality where that was an impossibility. Not considering second order effects is reckless IMHO.

> I want the laws changed, not selective/arbitrary enforcement of them.

Flock does not force cops to be less arbitrary/selective any more than bodycams do.

If policing was really "successful" there will not be a single person not charged with some crime. So fuck that. There has to be a balance. Lots of laws serve anything but "the people"

Or else!

“Sir, we are coming by today because we are concerned you are insufficiently supportive of our public servants in uniform. It has come to our attention that you have been disparaging some members of our law enforcement divisions to groups as large as 100 people! This is part of our new thought policing initiatives, we need everyone to support our policing efforts!”

“Yes, I work for Flock Online. We only index statements posted at publicly accessible URLs, which in principle anyone can see. We are able to profile every person at scale for a more effective community policing database. This new thought policing initiative is being carried out as a public-private partnership with the full support of your county’s representatives, as a way to preserve our community’s harmony and enhance social cohesion.”

“Please don’t be alarmed, the AI flagged you but I assure you, this is a real human in the loop wanting to talk to you about your comments. I am here because we know you’d be home around this time. Can you please come down to the station with us?”

To touch on the probabilities, they're probably more likely to die getting side swiped by a car, than getting shot by the person they're stopping.

Community policing, it aint.

There are probably thousands of easily searchable videos showing police lying about circumstances and facing no consequence. The CEO of Flock does not need to convince people to record things for proof of their point of view, the judicial system provides plenty of motivation.

There are also plenty of videos of drivers scamming others by cutting in front of them and suddenly stopping. All the way up to organized crime. Obviously, you are going to want to spend a couple hundred dollars on cameras and memory cards to prevent yourself from being a victim.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/20/the-car-crash-...

Another common one is for dog owners to be able to prove someone else’s dog attacked theirs, so there might be a chance of recouping veterinary costs.

Finally, I don’t see why all daycares should not have cameras. As a parent, I want to know that the employees handling my kids are being monitored, at least by management, if not the parents. The kids cannot speak up for themselves, why would we not want to ensure there is proof of abuse or neglect if it happened?

Thems the rules.

Also, my sheriff's department isn't exactly known for respecting constitutional boundaries. We had the whole predictive policing national story a few years ago.

Hell, go for a stroll on Google maps in my neighborhood and maybe 1/4 of the neighbors are cops.

Is what it is. Can't be too scared to speak out when it matters.

I’d be happy to contribute to this effort, be it financial or technical or just uploading my video sources (home camera feeds and Teslas). I’m retired with young kids and community safety is a top priority for me. Some local police departments here (Orange County) would probably appreciate this as well.

I’ve always thought millions of camera-equipped cars on the road combined with AI/ML would be an excellent tool for catching criminals.

This is just crowdsourcing a surveillance state. For now, people can still record everyone passing by their property (not even through!), although there's an argument for changing it because your right to recognize people out of your window shouldn't automatically imply a right to digitally catalogue every one of them 24/7.

But even if we take the legal status quo. The ability to automatically tag people moving through different areas is what is really dangerous. Both well-meaning people going after criminals as well as stalkers, vigilantes and private businesses that will find a way to scrape this data love the idea.

Bluntly, whatever risks Flock has, this has too. Just about the only thing this would have over Flock is that it would be not for profit, which is not the concern people are expressing over the automated mass surveillance of everyone. Enjoy your fortune, please stop trying to bring online surveillance to the real world to watch over the rest of us. I'm still young, I want to live in the world that you lived in, not the hellhole that everyone is enthusiastically trying to turn it into now. We did just fine in the 20th century when violent crime rates were obscene compared to now, I'm sure we will survive without this.

How do you find the donors?

When's the next election for county commissioners, where are candidates running against them likely to come from, and is there any local vibe on the issue?

Running yourself would be a whole lotta work. Fear that they'll soon be out of office should be ample incentive for the anti-privacy commissioners to suffer sudden changes of heart. Or if not - are there any energetic local reporters, who might dig up some evidence of Flock greasing palms?

Way too much money gets spent on local elections in this area, and just about everybody there is a legacy name of one sort or another. I'm also in the middle of my second startup, with a toddler. I can raise some hell though.

Edit: I just (had claude) looked up how much was spent on each elected seat across the candidates, and for each of the 5 county commissioner's seats, the election spend between the candidates for that seat was an average of 250k.

The wonderful lady in pink (salmon?), Mrs Starkey, has a bit of sway in the area: https://photos.app.goo.gl/WBPRWMduJ15k9Aj46

This is a broad, broad statement about journalism that's just... untrue. Local investigative journalism is wonderful and you should consider donating to a local newsroom to see more like it.

Nope. Like people working in all sorts of safety-critical jobs around the world, we exercise care and (hopefully good) judgement.

I always find it interesting that everyone outside the industry focuses on the downside and completely ignores the positives like, you know, actually keeping people alive.

> If cops were successfully using this technology they'd be beating that drum loud and proud at all hours.

See also anti-terrorism efforts. "Supporters" will argue they keep quiet about their successes for opsec-type reasons or to hide their methods. But we are perfectly happy to publicise blowing fishing boats out of the water so I don't believe that for a second. These people can't help but brag.

No, these cameras are used to erode our rights and let police stalk their ex's/women/etc without consequences.

They certainly do in my area! Which is why I appreciate the cameras.