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Comments (274)

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  mrweasel
  Every time law enforcement is given surveillance tools the same thing happens, the people with legal and approved access will abuse it.Politicians are completely naive in their understand how people works, if it's abused, the system isn't locked down enough or that one person circumvented the procedure. They completely fail to understand that there exists people to whom you cannot grant access and screening people in advance probably impossible. Some cop checks all the boxes, gets access to databases, then their partner leaves them and they are now no longer safe to grant access.I don't understand why it's hard to grasp that surveillance tools are dangerous and rather using them to protect others, law enforcement will use these tools to do bad things. It's as if that we assume that cops are better people and follow rules better. Even in countries that actually train their police force this isn't remotely true.The US might be different, I doubt it, but society is getting increasingly SAFE, there is less and less need for these tools.
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  Jcampuzano2
  > Harpe accepted responsibility for sharing her credentials but argued that firing her was excessive.> In her appeal, Harpe said her husband was a certified federal law enforcement officer and that every search was conducted for law enforcement purposes.> “The violation occurred because I gave my husband, who is a certified law enforcement officer with the Department of Homeland Security, access to my Flock account,” Harpe wrote. “Every search he conducted was for law enforcement use only and not for personal gain.”There seems to be a subset of law enforcement officers who fundamentally don't understand privacy, checks and balances, and responsibility. They believe they should have unrestricted access to everyone else and that they are above us all.Firing her was not excessive, it is the bare minimum. Officers should be held to a higher standard, not lower. She and her husband should be in a jail cell.
• lionkor
  Weird that Flock (YC17 [1]) is clearly being used for more than license plate reading, and is built to do more than that, and is actively abused for that without any repercussions, and we point at the officers misusing it rather than the company supplying it?The old "if we don't do it, someone else will" doesn't apply if you're the only person evil enough to run Flock.[1]: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety
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  kylecazar
  Wait, this system is standard SaaS and they can sign in from anywhere, not locked to department devices? That's crazy.
• schnitzelstoat
  They should both go to prison. One for giving out unauthorised access of the resource and the other for exploiting it.If the authorities want people to accept systems like Flock etc. then they need to severely punish abuse like this.
• Schlagbohrer
  Edward Snowden said that some NSA workers had used their huge surveillance systems to peep on their partners and ex's. One cannot give a bunch of people access to a vast surveillance network without abuse ensuing.
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  DebtDeflation
  In Chatrie v. United States (June 2026) the SCOTUS ruled that individuals maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in their digital location history and that geofence warrants constitute a search under the 4th Amendment. It's only a matter of time until a similar case involving Flock comes before them and they rule that a search of the Flock database constitutes a search under the 4th Amendment and that every single search requires a specific warrant.
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  mysterydip
  > He said every search was related to his federal law enforcement work and denied using the system for personal reasons.Assuming that’s true, why wouldn’t he have his own flock account to do his searches?
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  Kevin_Flynn
  [movies] Big Brother is an evil AI, that controls all our lives.[reality] It's just the police, beating us with better batons, same as it ever was.
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  ellyagg
  Why is this the top post on this website, what is going on?
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  wuschel
  "Sorry, this content is not available in your region."Why is that the case? Logged in from DE atm.
• fedpost
  I wish you all a safe and fruitful Halloween night
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  fugalfervor
  Is this not cybercrime and illegal surveillance?
• jwr
  "Sorry, this content is not available in your region."It's sad how the internet is getting worse by the day.
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  armcat
  I get "Sorry, this content is not available in your region." when trying to access this link. EU/Sweden.
• anon
  undefined
• steveBK123
  There are probably systems that even if they should exist (debatable for some), they should do so only in secured facilities that the government worker must badge into physically to access.This would at least reduce some of the avenues for abuse.
• testhest
  When you give any tool to any law enforcement agency, you give it to all of them, that's just reality.
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  kotaKat
  Wonder how many low level Lowes or Home Depot asset protection employees would also happily hand their credentials over for nationwide search access, too.
• myko
  They should both be arrested. This is abuse of power. I hope we can clean up this next of corruption but fear we're too far gone.
• superkuh
  So, when are both of these people going to be indicted, have their court hearings set up and face trial for their crimes?
• sublinear
  These stories still don't belong on HN
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  motbus3
  Ironic that defending "justice" makes them to break several laws. It is almost like they are always on the verge of not respecting the laws anyway until they are the ones controlling the laws. What could possibly go wrong?
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  educar
  "Sorry, this content is not available in your region."
• fuomag9
  Article not available in the EU
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  Alexander-Barth
  Apparently the system was not protected by 2FA.
• lenerdenator
  And this is why cities are letting their contracts expire, or citizens are shooting, stealing, and vandalizing Flock cameras.
• psychoslave
  Anything that can be abused through collusion in a wide scale scenario will eventually happen.This is not a contingent issue, it’s a fundamental integrated flaw of any system that put general totalitarian spy as an aimed outcome. Whatever the way it’s green-washed over safety tradeoffs won’t change this obvious fact.
• Razengan
  @Americans who laugh at China and Russia thinking you're still much better off in freedom and rights: That is exactly how you look like to the rest of the world.
• close04
  > Interim Maj. Max Nowinsky sustained the allegation and recommended an eight-hour suspensionLots of explanations provided for wanting to go easy on her. Is the same logic applied for the many victims of a police department? If it's preferential treatment then maybe Interim Maj. Max Nowinsky should also be kicked to the curb.> Tyler Harpe, a federal ICE agentFederal ICE agent Tyler Harpe, may you enjoy your new found fame.
• nekusar
  Can't give access if you dont collect it.I'm not completely opposed to 'camera, cell, solar, battery on a pole'. Its pretty low tech honestly... But there absolutely be a minimum standard of search warrant approval in front of a judge before using it. AND it should be a criminal offense to use it without a search warrant.However there's this whole problem of "illegal for government to do it but whitewashing through for profit company to do illegal thing".
• whh
  Exact same idiotic issues with the NHS in the UK - people looking up patient medical records who have zero right doing so.
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  cucumber3732842
  I've said it before and I'll say it again, the abuse is tangential to the fact that "the system working as intended" is designed to comprehensively and cheaply subjugate us all to the whims of whoever or whatever has the ear of government at any particular minute.If you wave a magic wand and fix the abuse you will not fix the very nature and purpose of these systems. 1984 would not magically become acceptable if cops couldn't stalk their girlfriend or creds could not be shared among agencies off the books.A large enough to be a problem subset of the people decrying abuse fancy themselves an armchair central planner (the more self aware ones fancy themselves armchair despots). In the back of their mind they're thinking "if only we got rid of the abuse then the public would buy into this Orwellian system then I could get the government enforce my pet policies with an iron fist and get minimal pushback". Beware of these people. They are the true evil. They all seek to take a bite out of your day to day freedom and it doesn't take all that many of them getting their way before there is nothing left. The politicians feeling emboldened to sign contracts with Flock or any other surveillance vendor only feel emboldened to do so due to the existence and frequency of these people.Abuse or not these systems are rotten and incompatible on a fundamental level with a free society.
• shevy-java
  And ICE in turn guns down US citizens, as is already documented.This is literally a repeat, with modification, of Europe in the 1930s. It is not 1:1 comparable, also in part because the US justice system, even if undermined by orange scumbag loyalists, works to some extent still. I am not saying all of it works, but on youtube you can often listen to discussions by several judges discussing issues at hand. I forgot which one it was, but it was linked in "Audit the Audit", and the judges there asked very good, and very objective questions. In the end they denied a cop immunity by default, based on very logical arguments they made. I was quite surprised when I listened to that. It also means that the Trump oligarch team is not able to kill all of the US justice system, even though they placed their agents into it already.
• giancarlostoro
  [dead]
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  p-e-w
  I’m less surprised that such things are happening (much worse has been happening for over 20 years) than by the fact that many people seem to genuinely believe that voting, protesting, or calling some representative is going to get us out of this.
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  giantg2
  Is this any different, legally, than sharing your Netflix login etc?Because the data is purchased, most jurisdictions don't require a warrant. The only legal issue I can see currently is that Flock lost revenue from having another subscriber.