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.
Why should contracting that out to a private company require a warrant?
Flock isn't say Google which collects location data because it needs it for Google Maps to function. Flock is only here because the local government paid it to setup equipment.
It's really an issue for the local community. Do you want your local tax dollars going to support parks or tracking individuals?
Having a barrier to accessing data can help prevent casual abuse in my opinion, so that officers can't look up say some ex girlfriend's license plate, but if they get a warrant they can look up some suspect's license plate.
No, they wouldn't need a warrant, because they'd be stalking you.
Exactly, people act like “warrants” are going to protect you from authoritarians. It’s literally just a piece of paper! All this going on about surveillance and privacy really is futile.
Think of it this way. The government pays somebody to collect data about how many bicyclists use an intersection to decided if they should add a dedicated bike light. Why would the government need to use a warrant to get that information?
That's the same situation here. Flock is placing the cameras because the government has paid them to.
Based on another incident [0] I feel Flock's explanation for their actions boils down to:
1. "We are familiar with the customer the person claimed to be an agent for."
2. "We didn't know whether the person was doing something illegal with the data... And we don't want to know, and we don't try to find out."
3. "They didn't force us. They gave us money! We like money!"
As you might guess, I don't find these points especially compelling or exculpating. Certainly nothing that would/should stand up against state or local laws that prohibit the data being shared this way.
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[0] >>45382434
There is a monumental difference between counting how many cyclists use an intersection and recording the license plates of cars.
If the former, you don’t store any personal information, all you know is how many pass by. You don’t even know if they were different people, 10 of the 50 cyclists you saw could’ve been the same person going in circles.
In the latter, you know which vehicles went by, and when. Even if you don’t record the time you saw them, from the dates of the study you can narrow it down considerably. Those can be mapped to specific people.
There's a few issues
1. Unreasonable is the key word here. You purposely chose an arguably reasonable thing (counting you anonymously as you pass through an intersection).
Many people think that personally logging your movements throughout the day using automated superhuman means crosses the line into unreasonable.
2. There is also a separate issue that the law allows third parties to willingly hand over/sell information about you that many people think would be subject to warrant rules. You only need a warrant when the information is being held by a party that doesn't want to hand it over willingly.
3. Intent matters in the law. The intent behind counting cyclists is very different than the intent behind setting up a system for tracking people over time, even though the mechanism may be the same.
4. There is also the issue that currently legal != morally correct.
Flock's entire business model is a flagrant violation of the 4th amendment. What Flock does for their core business is called "stalking", which is a crime.
The issue here is not that the law is inadequate to resolve this problem. The issue is that the current administration has chosen to collude with private corporations that flagrantly violate the law, thereby replacing our entire judiciary system with a protection racket.
Please don't be generous. Fascists depend on our patience to insulate them from consequences.
Correct. In your analogy, the Texas cop is being paid by your community to write down your license plate. (Otherwise, he has no authority to be operating outside his state.)
Being able to scope out a small scale example of why something is ok is a very poor indicator of how it operates in a massive one.
Your claim is that the local governments shouldn't be allowed to collect this data period.
My claim is that the local government doesn't need a warrant to get information from a contractor whose only reason for collecting that information was to produce it as part of their contract.
Not OP but that is obviously not his claim..? The cyclist data doesn't identify specific people. How are you missing the distinction between that and a report on specific individuals?
So when you say
> My claim is that the local government doesn't need a warrant to get information from a contractor whose only reason for collecting that information was to produce it as part of their contract.
You're missing the whole disagreement. Yes, even if the contractor might capture specific license plates so that the report can say "yeah this road has X unique users" its very different from a report that says "the road has these specific users".
I would say that there is an appreciable qualitative difference between a man using his eyeballs and a piece of paper to write down license plate numbers and a technologically sophisticated network of computerized surveillance apparatus installed over a geographically large area being used to track an individual.
Call me old-fashioned I guess
> 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
Seriously, though, stalking generally requires targeted behavior.
But it is also correct to say that Trump is a fascist and that Biden wasn't one.
If I stalk someone, I go to jail. If 100 people get together and invent Super Stalking and they stalk everyone all the time, nobody goes to jail. It's completely counter-intuitive but this is how we structured society and justice.
The problem here is not the lack of law, it's the lack of law enforcement.
Flock isn't legal. It simply hasn't been prosecuted, either.