this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
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[–] WesternInfidels@feddit.online 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Bear in mind that we only hear about the most egregious and / or dumbest cases like these. Like with all crimes.

[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Yeah the number of times this is being used just a couple of times to track people is likely mind blowing. And with little to no oversight or repercussions

[–] spacegoat@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

An officer in Saint Augustine Florida killed his girlfriend and took her house, and the local PD covered it up. When an independent investigator started poking around, they killed her too. They all got away with it. The cop’s sister lives in the house now.

[–] Malyca@lemmy.zip 1 points 22 hours ago

I have no doubt this is not an isolated incident

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

I think vigilantism may achieve what legislators never will, because the public anger around Flock cameras is substantial.

That said, the most likely scenario in the US is that serious regulation of this tech won't materialize until a cop deletes their entire family that was hiding out after having obtained a restraining order.

[–] ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 38 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I find the funniest part about this case is that flock has detailed logs on everything he did. Who could have guessed that the company dedicated to spying on everyone without a warrant would also be spying on the cops using the service? You wanna take bets on whether or not his usage was used to train an AI?

[–] feannag@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And yet they let him do it 717 times without reporting it. Company working as intended I guess.

Just because something is logged, doesnt mean its monitored like that.

Even without monitoring though when something does trigger someone to look, you now have a record.

They absolutely should have been monitoring for things like this though.

[–] schwim@piefed.zip 45 points 1 day ago (1 children)

He's using it for what it was designed for. He could be a spokesperson for the company.

700 times? Is the woman a delivery driver who works double shifts? Send this pig to a physical therapist; its wrist must be fucked.

[–] dabu@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I'm not American and I see stuff about flock cameras everywhere. Can you ELI5 what are they about? Are they a speed camera registry that saves the video to a centralized database?

[–] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 3 points 23 hours ago

in America whenever you go to a supermarket (grocery) or diy (hardware) store there are giant poles mounted on industrial generators surrounded by lights and signs that track your every move.

[–] a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

They track cars, humans, literally everything. Society is one massive database. And the cops are basically given free reign to do whatever they want with that. That could include stalking people they don't like or their exes. In one case a dude got in his car drove for hours to get some legal weed in another state drove all the way home and they showed up to arrest him.

We're headed into a massively dystopian surveillance state where the government and major corporations will be able to monitor, plot, and plan for virtually everything that we do.

Edit: Downvoter: I normally don't care about your type because fuck random internet people, but why do you want a surveillance state? Boggles my fucking mind.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They are ALPRs (automatic license plate readers) which have a shared database around the country. Police from cities which have a contract with flock are able to search this database which is across the whole country.

They are not ALPRs at all. They can ID you with facial recognition, that's not a license plate.