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Comment by pj_mukh

7 hours ago

"Law enforcement is setting up a multi-county dragnet by putting every version or mistype of a license plate into a warrant list"

wouldn't be a story? It should be! We should have a higher standard for the people with guns and a badge on the street.

8 comments

pj_mukh

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LocalH  7 hours ago

Flock is the problem too because their system is enabling the rights violations to scale up.

  • kayfox  1 hour ago

    Flock can also fix this by validating the description of the target vehicle against the detected vehicle.

    The dispatch backend can fix this by annotating this warrant with a warning that its not this particular vehicle.

    Police themselves can fix this by being a human check on dumb entries in computer systems.

    • LocalH  1 hour ago

      As we've seen with multiple incidents across the country, police largely don't want to be a human check. They want the computer to tell them who to arrest, regardless of facts in reality.

  • tcp_handshaker  6 hours ago

    Its by design. By using a third party, they can get around the 4th amendment.

    • LocalH  5 hours ago

      Using a third-party to bypass legal restrictions should in and of itself be considered willful and knowledgeable intent to violate the Constitution under color of law, regardless of the specific actions taken

    • ranger_danger  5 hours ago

      I'm not convinced they can always get around it... I think they could challenge their arrest in court on Fourth Amendment grounds and have a chance at winning:

      https://epic.org/vehicle-fingerprinting-through-pervasive-ca...

      >In the 2018 case Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court affirmed that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their long term movements (even in public spaces) and, because of that expectation, queries into long term location tracking data constitute a Fourth Amendment search that requires a warrant.

      I suppose they would also have to argue that they are not the actual target of the warrant.