> The Flock source added “Even if Flock took a stance on permitted use-cases, a motivated user could simply lie about why they're performing a search. We can never 100% know how or why our tools are being used.” A second Flock source said they believe Flock should develop a better idea of what its clients are using the company’s technology for.
In other words, why bother with safeguards when they'll just lie to us anyways?
I think this is a legitimate problem.
But...isn't this what warrants are for? With a warrant, the police have to say why they want to perform a search to a judge, under threat of perjury. They have a powerful incentive not to lie.
So...should warrants be required for this kind of Flock data also? Couldn't Flock set a policy that these searches are performed only under warrant? Or a law be enacted saying the same? I imagine it would make Flock much less attractive to their potential customers, and searches would be performed much less often. [1] So it's not something Flock is going to do on their own. I think we'd need to create the pressure, by opposing purchases of Flock or by specifically asking our elected representatives to create such a law.
[1] If I'm being generous, because of the extra friction/work/delay. If I'm being less generous, because they have no legitimate reason a judge would approve.
> We just need legislators willing to serve the public and ignore the lobbyists and executive.
It requires us, the people, to stop buying into their games of misdirection.
This is no easy task, but it is critical. They know they can throw a million issues at us and then we'll just argue over what's more important instead of actually solving things. So at this point I'll suggest a nonoptimal, but simple solution: stop arguing over what's more important and just concentrate on what you think is most important. If they're going to throw a million things at us we can be a million little armies. Divide and rule only works by getting those little armies to fight each other. If instead we are on, mostly, the same side then they lose power. They have to fight on a million fronts.
It's far from an optimal solution but it's far better than what we've been doing for the last half century. Because for during that time they've only grown and divided us even more. People are concerned that a small forward isn't enough. They're wrong. It isn't that by not making enough progress we're standing still, we're losing ground. We can't even take a small step forward, we need to first stop losing ground. Once we do that I think we can build momentum moving forward. But it's insane to constantly give up ground in order to maybe make small steps forward. That's certainly a losing battle