Yes. Chatrie v. United States (No. 25-112), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that law enforcement's use of a Google geofence warrant to acquire a person's historical cellphone location data constitutes a "search" under the Fourth Amendment. The court ruled that these reverse-location requests must comply with standard Fourth Amendment requirements—specifically, that they must be supported by probable cause and describe the place to be searched and the items to be seized with particularity.

The ALPR networks run into the same problem as this case but you don't have to take my word for it - go look at lawyers talking about how this messes up surveillance networks because while you might not have an expectation of privacy overall, the constitution says police can't just do dragnet surveillance, or farm out dragnet surveillance.

The point is that they (the government and ALPR companies) are CLAIMING this is NOT real-time surveillance. The moment they admit to it is the moment they find themselves afoul of US Supreme Court cases on dragnet surveillance. That includes the recent case of police using Google's data.

Contract law is weird and it could've cost the college a LOT of money if they "damaged" anything.

You'd better believe Flock is adding a new rider about covering their cameras since so many communities started doing just that when they want them removed.

However under the current contracts you can likely have someone arrested for doing unauthorized work, to remove the coverings. Also, built into any future contract, people should be making sure the companies need PERMISSION to access the camera. When asking why state it's a safety thing you can't budge on at all. When they balk, apologize and start to walk away.

I don't care if it's an internal security camera vendor, network contractor installing an AP, or someone replacing a light, no vendor should have free access to your grounds / facilities to do ANY work without explicit approval for that particular work, and oversight.

These aren't supposed to be real-time surveillance, remember? That's the Flock, and other, ALPR out for these things. The moment they admit they're real-time tracking is the day every single one of these cameras is ripped out under precedent that the government doesn't get to track everyone in public on the off-chance of catching a criminal.

Double that when it includes facial recognition and SIGINT.

1984 wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual.

We should also be keeping an eye out for them adding, or separately mounting, corollary surveillance items.

We already see Flock, and I'll guarantee other vendors are looking to add it as well, SIGINT to the cameras. That means even if they can't see your plate, or even your car very well because you rented a trailer, they can track you by WiFi/Bluetooth to a few feet.

We should also be keeping an eye out for them to roll out facial recognition integration. They have it all set to go, and may even have live near you. Axon has it. ACTi sells long range zoom cameras with it. There are even vendors that add it to Flock as a software layer..

There are a few thing we should do:
1) Make it a state felony worth a 5-10 years in prison for law enforcement to abuse the cameras. No warrant? Congrats snowflake you just caught a MINIMUM 5 year sentence in prison with no early release option. When they whine about the penalty, remind them that they say you need hefty punishments to deter crime. When they inevitably whine about the warrant remind them they say "this isn't mass surveillance" and "this isn't real-time surveillance" so waiting a few minutes on the phone to personally affirm to the judge under penalty of perjury isn't a big deal. You're only looking backward in time.
2) Put vendors on the hook for not following data retention / sharing limitation standards. That latest update flipped a switch that changed a customer's share settings? Congratulations snowflake, you just caught a fine worth 10 times the original contract, per day.
3) Make it illegal to repackage and sell ANY data from the cameras, or other sensors, to anyone. I mean, seriously folks, how long do you think it will take for the companies to start selling? That is, if they aren't already under the table.

Police and many politicians will whine. You can be dang sure the companies will screech loud to the Calvinball Court. I don't care. Not only is this stuff reek of fascism it's a national security nightmare.

I would say contacting one of the guys who was working the solution, offering to share credit from the work they cribbed from him, but only if he kicked the other person off, kinda shows mens rea.

At least OpenAI and Anthropic are running out of road (blank check financing) for their "let's pretend LLM is really AI" shenanigans.

Maybe after they implode the field will actually improve.

are they just stealing credit for this time?

I mean that's a horrible systems for it to cost that much for a search. My wife would've been fired for even suggesting a database that poorly coded. Let me guess: The system was built by people using LLM's to code.

You mean kind of like how Flock (and to be fair other ALPR companies) seem to call the police for a favor when anyone points a camera in their direction?

https://www.atlantanewsfirst.c...

Wrong person to put that out to man. I grew up, QUITE LITERALLY, on the wrong side of the tracks. Yes when "wrong side of the tracks" was a literal thing. When "salt and pepper" teams existed for that reason. What you call a "bad neighborhood" was just home. Also it wasn't like the "bad" part of the neighborhood wasn't accentuated by the powers that be to ensure that as few people as possible got ahead and out.

You have a rather ignorant view of how police, even the judicial system itself, works. The pay isn't low because it's blue collar. They literally don't want brighter people to choose the work. Calling a judge an expert on innocence of guilt shows you are hilariously uneducated view of the legal system.

I'm sorry you grew up in a red state like Methissippi, but then you should really know what many cops are like: Violent, self-serving, abusive, pieces of crap. I grew up in as much fear of cops as I did of criminals. Why? Because the criminals knew I lived in the neighborhood and where to find me. The cops just looked at me and saw another powerless target. I'm not sorry but I have friends who volunteer with abuse victims who can give you chapter and verse on how crappy cops treated them when they called in about their husbands or boyfriends or girlfriends. I have people I know who worked with sex workers who will tell you the first person who abused them was a cop. For Flock: I think we've seen enough videos about cops rolling in with SWAT or tactical response gear for something that could've been resolved IF THEY MANUALLY RAN THE LICENSE PLATE. Quit pouting.

Did you hear me say, "Defund the police!" or something? *checks thread* Nope, not once. In fact I'm a firm believer in funding the police to do police work. I'm also a believer in having other people do work police are not suited to at all, for example mental health calls. That being said I'm also on point with ending qualified immunity. The logic is the same as "You do the crime, you do the time." because it's a deterrence to officers committing crimes. For that same reason I'm all for ending a fair chunk of immunity for federal agents, eliminating any vestiges of the so-called USA PATRIOT Act, and so on.

I see a lot of pointlessness in Flock, especially given their error rate. Worse than that, I see nothing but potential abuse, something the police and Flock have proven relentlessly. Keep in mind, however, that I apply that to ALL of the ALPR / SIGINT (frequency tracking) / Facial Recognition / et al. surveillance systems. To add to that pile of suck is they are all massive nightmares from a national security perspective.

Grow up.

should accept they will be paying 91% taxes for the benefits of society.

According to the propaganda Flock promotes their company also causes auto theft because auto theft in Denver fell after the city canceled their Flock contract.

because they encourage laziness. They also encourage a whole host of petty, or even outright dangerous, behaviors in people who aren't always the most stable. ON top of that it doesn't matter if it's the government, or a private company, building a database of everyone's movements: THIS IS STILL A TERRIBLE IDEA!

I'd argue it's even worse if a private company does it because how long will it take for a third party (corporations) to start abusing it? When they start selling access to corporations, of course.

What? Did you think this would remain a government only tool?

No they just don't like cops who have a brain and can think instead of just following orders. When you want a force that just walks out and beats down people you don't want someone who has actual empathy / emotional intelligence / fill in word, the ability to reason independently, and who actually looks for information. Tehy certainly don't want a situation where police might prioritize say, something else over property crimes.

I'm not going to claim that cops were Sherlock Holmes or actual geniuses, but we (America in particular) prioritized the ability to blindly follow orders.

Tell that to Tesla because they're wetting their pants at the thought of the company being annihilated by regulators at the same time as liability lawyers.

This just needs to be treated as product liability, and then we start letting trial lawyers shred the companies. I can pretty much guarantee they'll find evidence the C-Suite, desperate to keep the hype train running as they barrel to IPO, that they created this intentionally.

At that point the intent makes it criminal.