Flock is a pretty useless tool, not in the least because of the error rate. An error rate that Flock papers over when talking to police.

This lack of understanding for how fallible the technology is leads police to treat it like it's always right. To be blatantly honest: Most cops are dumb as a box of rocks when it comes to technology. I watched a Civil Rights Lawyer video where an "AI" (it's not f**king AI) system in a casino incorrectly marked a person as someone else entirely. The guy had documentation and more, and the cop still believed the computer.

The same thing here, except it's compounded by a lack of an actual license plate. That license plate is the MOST likely thing for Flock systems to match on using character recognition. The cops just couldn't get past the camera system telling them this was the car. Why? They were flipping idiots.

The towing company? I'm sorry but it your employee managed to tear a bumper off a car PARKED IN THE STREET, you're terrible at your job. Heck you and your employee worse than terrible, you're absolutely incompetent. Not only that but then you get shocked when a more modern car suffers more than cosmetic damage from a bumper being ripped off. There's sensors now in bumpers, for parking and for other safety systems. Replacing and calibrating those things costs MONEY.

Paraphrasing a former economics professor of mine, who escaped USSR dominated Eastern Europe:

"We're going to have to elect Socialists to save Capitalism from itself."

On the flip side I've had good managers who have reached the point in their career that they want more of a say in the projects being run.

A good manager is someone who can understand the technical side of things and has a bit of project management experience to keep things running smoothly. Then toss in fun stuff such as treating people like human beings that have lives outside of work.

Depends: Do you know an electrician or can you do it yourself? I think we were automatically quoted $800 (including permits) in 2021 when we bought the LPG generator, but I didn't really pay much attention.

I had my cousin (master electrician) and uncle (plumber) come over after I installed our Automatic Transfer Switch and whole house generator and they checked / signed off. The co-op buried the 500G LPG tank for the generator "for free" because they'd be supplying the LPG.

Another thing to consider is permitting and a possible panel upgrade. You might be at the limit of 200 amp house service.

If you assert your rights they pretty much do need a warrant... it's just that most people / businesses reflexively hand things over.

The reason people reflexively hand things over also falls into either a desire to be helpful, or the threat.

There is an exception for National Security Letters and similar. Those should be annihilated except for very specific circumstances dealing with counter-espionage.

To whit I say that lawyer's hogwash (the law in general) here broke the idea of randomly determining totality. That is the theory of each court having to determine exactly how much tracking is required for a warrant, and what the warrant needed, even using data from a third (non-governmental) party.

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...