Comment by burningChrome
9 hours ago
>> This is a quite scary map.
It can be. FLOCK data was used to put Bryan Kohberger at the scene along with other people's security camera's. Cops regularly use FLOCK camera's to get hits for criminals that have warrants for violent crime.
I can see why people are ok with them when they're used to get criminals off the streets. However, I've seen multiple times where cops initiate a felony stop (where people are pulled out at gunpoint and detained) against a car they got a hit on - only to find out the person they really wanted wasn't driving or even in the car at all.
What's interesting is businesses and houses have so many cameras nowadays that the first thing cops do when they get to the scene of a violent crime is canvas the area for camera's. So yeah, you can avoid FLOCK, but there are most likely hundreds of other camera's that will capture you driving through any given area.
Do you have a source to your Bryan claim?
If you look at the map, there are zero flock cameras reported in that region.
None in Moscow Idaho where the murder happened, none in Pullman where he lived, and none showed between the locations.
I can't find anything corroborating that example either.
I've been seeing a lot of similar grandiose claims made in random comments/Tweets/etc recently that Flock solved this or that specific high profile case that have also turned up zero proof when I did research.
I'm not sure whether it's just individual techno optimist fantasy that somehow becomes confabulated in the brain with some other crime in the news as if Flock was actually used, an organized persuasion/lobbying/misinformation campaign, or something else. But I'm seeing it a lot now which feels a bit concerning.
There's a disclaimer when you first open the page that the map is incomplete and that users need to submit the data. It's possible that data hasn't been submitted/parsed yet
It's possible, but I can't find a corroborating news report, and it's the first I've heard this claim made about that case.
You can't rely on Flock's "transparency" reports either, they're woefully inadequate. In our County, the Sheriff spoke of a PD in the County getting a Flock hit. It was news to many, including Flock's transparency site, that that PD was a user of their services.
So I'm not overly surprised by this.
But the cameras that the law enforcement officers canvas in the area aren't centrally aggregated and tagged with meta data such that they can be queried at scale.
There have been numerous instances where cops used it to stalk exes, etc. If it isn't already, it will be used to stalk a blacklist of dissidents. It will continue to happen as long as the system exists.
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Sounds like it's working as intended. These systems don't track people, they provide objective clues and evidence.
By tracking everyone at all times.
> However, I've seen multiple times where cops initiate a felony stop
At what point do we accept that all systems are flawed? There could be many variables as to why the perp wasn't in the car. Maybe the perp stole the car. Maybe the perp borrowed the car. Maybe these systems do not work well in fog etc etc. I don't know how we're supposed to advance technology that makes us safer without getting into these muky situations from time to time.
Why do anything at all?
Why even deploy such systems? I would support less for sure.
Technology is a means to an end, not the end itself. If you can’t make it safe then don’t deploy it.
There must be some level of acceptable failure.
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