[1]: https://lookout.co/georgia-police-chief-arrested-for-using-f... [2]: https://www.404media.co/emails-reveal-the-casual-surveillanc... [3]: https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-...
What's frightening is it's not rare, it actually happens constantly, and this is just within the systems which have a high level of internal logging/user-tracking.
So now with Flock and data brokers we have authorities having access to information that was originally held behind a judge's signature. Often with little oversight, and frequently for unofficial, abusive purposes.
This reality also ties back to the discussion about providing the "good guys" encryption backdoors. The reality is that there are no "good guys", everyone exists in shades of grey, and I dare say there are people in forces whom are attracted to the power the role provides, rather than any desire for public service.
In conclusion it's a fundamental design flaw to rely on the operator being a "good guy", and that's before we get into the problem of leaks, bugs, and flaws in the security model, or in this case: complete open access to the public web - laughable, farcical, and horrifying.
Same was found in Australia when they looked into police access of data [0] [1] [2]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/...
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-15/victoria-police-leap-...
[2] https://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/Docs/Public-H...
Would not be surprised if these types of abuse serve to obfuscate other abusive uses as well and are thus part of the system operating as it should. Flood the internal logging with all kinds of this "low-level" stuff, hiding the high-level warrantless tracking.
Those were people with much higher scrutiny and background checking than your average cop. Those were people that themselves were more closely monitored. And yet... we want to give that to an average cop? People who have a higher than average rate of domestic abuse?
I don't know where you are, but some of the highest paid public employees in my state are police. In fact, median salaries for cops are higher than those of software engineers.
Add the fact that they get generous pensions + benefits, and can retire at 45 and draw from that pension until they die, they have it better than most of the people they police.
It's one of the only professions where you can make north of $250k+ a year doing overtime by sitting in your car playing Candy Crush all night.
What are the chances that nobody at Flock has ever abused their access?
Cynical-me assumes that if you're the sort of person who'd take a job at a company like Flock, which I and evidently a lot of other people consider morally bankrupt, then you are at least as likely as a typical cop to think that stalking your exes or random attractive people you see - is just a perk of your job, not something that should come with jail time.
And as a result, they got rid of the cameras. Funny how that works!
Come with a pension and active lifestyle with a club(FoP) and a union in some positions, its ostensibly public service and you get to much more than peek behind the curtain.
Personally, I feel both ways about cops writ large. I feel like we could do a lot better really easily(mandatory body cam recordings please? Our guys literally just take them off.), and on the other hand I get it, they’re doing important work often enough.
These aren't people who should hold any kind of intel. It's an actual danger to the population to give these people this much power.
>“That’s so extreme, they just shouldn’t have power, freedom is paramount, return to normal” etc.
Sorry, too late for this. I advocated for more gentle measures 10 years ago when they were possible/plausibly effective. Just like any other infection, if you wait too long to address the problem you are forced towards extreme action. Or death. No third option.