In my town, we have Flock. I request the audit logs that show how police are searching the Flock system.
In November 2025 and prior, the logs were listed by USERID and I could independently correlate quantity of searches by USERID to detect unusual search behavior. This same methodology has been used to catch police stalking in at least one other city.
In December 2025, Flock decided to "improve" its system. All searches on the audit log are now completely serialized, anonymized. This "improvement" came after 2025 turned out several cases of police stalking using Flock.
I would guess the only way to make this data available long term is by regulation. Then again, I would hope Flock is subject to FOIA already if they are collaborating with state or local law enforcement...
YC CEO funded Flock and is involved in politics to remove police regulations
To quote him responding to criticism against Flock: "You're thinking Chinese surveillance. US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims."
Cameras are free speech and are a shield against property crimes and assault.
Our building complex has rampant break-ins. We've needed more cameras for years and we're only now starting to add them.
Worse, someone recently someone set fire to the roof which caused a 12-hour long debacle. Not sure what the "#-of-alarms fire" ranking it was, but several people lost their homes to months of remediation and they tore apart the roof.
Cameras would have implicated the contractor responsible (we know it was a contractor, but there were no cameras or access logs).
One theory as to why the number of violent crimes is going down in this country isn't that we just de-leaded the water and taught better conflict de-escalation, but that there are cameras and smartphones everywhere.
All of that said - camera networks in the hands of an all-powerful state are bad.
The state does not need access to these systems outside of a rigorously documented system with proper judicial oversight. We need regulations and even civil liberties that limit the scope of state access and state dragnets to these camera networks.
But individuals, companies, and communities should be at liberty to hire surveillance tech to protect their persons and their property.
> Cameras are free speech... individuals, companies, and communities should be at liberty to hire surveillance tech to protect their persons and their property.
At scale, corporate surveillance can effectively intermingle with, and/or become indistinguishable from, state surveillance. We see that happening today: why wiretap when Palantir exists?
Cameras may be speech, but surveillance has a chilling effect against it.
I think this is a false dichotomy. You can feel and be more protected against crime while also being exploited for your data by a shadowy camera company. We should let the state step in to regulate Flock et al, assuming we can do something about the corruption they're already involved in.
The same one that I make when I stand somewhere and describe what I see. So I hold a camera to do it more accurately. And then I get tired so I mount the camera on a trip setup instead.
ACLU of IL v. Alvarez (2012): "The act of making an audio or audiovisual recording is necessarily included within the First Amendment’s guarantee of speech and press rights as a corollary of the right to disseminate the resulting recording."
Which is one of many reasons why privatizing government services probably isn't a good idea.
You could also make different laws but that's probably not going to happen. Think about just about any of the important laws that we rely on for a stable and just society in the USA, and consider that most or all of them would be politically unviable if they didn't already exist. Including FOIA itself. Not a good situation.
On the subject of those Flock cameras, it really is amazing how much high-purity copper they manage to put in one of those. They might as well be putting ingots of copper on those poles.
Worth noting that these weren't low level employees watching the children's gymnastics areas but included the accounts of the Director of Growth, and the VP of Strategic Relations and Business Development among several other staff members. You really have to wonder what these people mean when they say "think of the children".
When the IJ says it, they mean they have proof that they will stand behind of 14 examples. They decidedly aren't saying that it only happened 14 times.
It is a given that any power will be abused. However not giving power out is often worse that the abuse of power.
The real question is what do we do to detect and prevent that abuse so it is minimized. All too often people are "this person is mostly on my side so I will overlook their abuse" which is the wrong answer.
I agree but the combination giving power without doing anything to detect and prevent abuse in my opinion is worse than not giving power at all, in 100% of the situations - no exceptions. if 14 detected incidents here end up with 14 convictions and enough time in prison to deter anyone else from doing this ever again (5-10 years, per incident minimum), cool with me. it is no different than any other "law breaking" - people will people and law should be there to protect the citizens. but in our society it is obvious we cannot give power to people of authority cause whenever they abuse that power - there is either no law to charge them against or even if there is one they'd be immune to it
Why? Is there something about their dataset and/or methodology that you can identify as deficient that would indicate that the rate is much higher than what was published?
I agree with the sentiment, but if you want anyone to do anything about it we need evidence and not vibes.
I'm trying to help you make your case. So far the only comments in this thread are the most low-effort reactions that don't say anything substantive.
> I agree with the sentiment, but if you want anyone to do anything about it we need evidence and not vibes.
I don't believe your concern trolling tone here - I'm not asking anyone to do anything either. I'm pointing out this is likely much more prevalent, based on the absolute fact most abuse/stalking cases go unreported, so this is likely a small subset of a larger problem. The "evidence" is these cases existing at all. In any case, flock data is mostly invisible and the police that use it get very little oversight. So how do you suggest I get any evidence? Shall I hack into their systems? Get real.
Even in the article:
> Most incidents came to light only after victims reported the officers’ behavior to the police, typically in the context of a broader stalking allegation.
> The 14 cases listed below are almost certainly an undercount. Not all police misconduct gets detected, and some cases likely get resolved quietly. Officers frequently cite vague or inaccurate reasons for their searches in ALPR systems, sometimes to evade detection of misconduct.
The evidence is just "human nature". Honestly, it's just negligence at this point to give people power over others without due oversight and accountability. But it's nice we have concrete examples of abuse to help motivate action.
The data set IJ is providing here is situations where stalking was reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted. Other stalking cases could fail any one of those stages and be invisible to the public.
> Other stalking cases could fail any one of those stages and be invisible to the public.
"could" is doing a lot of work here...
> where stalking was reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted.
No, that's not what IJ said. From the article: "Nearly all of these officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs, either by resigning or getting fired."
So not all 14 of these were "reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted".
If you're trying to make significant social change, make the strongest argument that you are capable of.
I don't think "could" is doing a lot of work here at all. It seems logical that if cases where the misuse of flock systems were discovered only when the same officers misbehaved in other, more visible situations then there are officers that avoid the more visible situations and continue to use the system that does not expose their bad behavior (flock).
Logical as in fits your world view or as in can be backed up by observable evidence?
The IJ (which I financially support) is a very serious organization that understands datasets, rules-based evidence and also public relations. If there was a stronger case that they could have made with the data that they had available, they would have.
I've already stated that I agree with the premise suggested, but I'm making the point that if you actually want to do anything about it, you need the evidence to back it up.
I can't go to my boss with a proposal to do something significant without measurable evidence to back up my reasoning and neither can you.
I have personally had a traffic ticket thrown out because the officer had a DV case brought by his spouse, who worked in the court. This caused the officer to be fired. I'm VERY aware of problems with LEO, but if you want to do something with a high administrative or human resources cost like any change to the status quo would obviously have -- you need real hard proof. Not "oh isn't it obvious"?
The decades-long history of police abuse of power isn't enough? There is not a single power they have not abused eventually, and it's quite obvious that introducing new powers will inevitability be exploited.
A "review of media reports" is not going to capture any incidents that the media didn't report on. That doesn't strike me as likely to capture every incident, or even a majority of incidents.
FTA: The 14 cases listed below are almost certainly an undercount.
I feel that supports the original comment, considering it's all subjective.
Now, you are going to be tempted to start arguing that "almost certainly an undercount" doesn't support the original comment. But remember, it's subjective, and any reasonable person reading that comment and the article could see how "at least" could be seen as doing a lot of work.
Around me these Flock cameras are spreading like fleas.
Also, local psycho cop incidents seem to be on the rise. Last year a veterinarian and her bf were murdered by her ex (a state trooper) that blew his brains out after[1]. Just a month ago next town over one of the officers was arrested for placing tracking devices on his ex. [2]
Around a decade ago I was harassed through the mail after a road-rage incident (plainclothes dude ran up to my car window after I parked to go to gym and claimed I cut him off, said: 'I'll remember you, you should be more careful'). He ran my plate and sent a vaguely threatening anonymous letter to my car's registered address. I opened a case with the Somerset County prosecutor's office of internal affairs. The prosecutor's office claimed there were no hits through the federal NCIC system, but in-state there was no audit log of plates checked through NJMVC, and even if there was a smart cop (or MVC employee, lots of people have access to it) could just ask a dispatcher to run it over the radio. They claimed that this system was getting moved to the New Jersey State police and it was expected this would have an audit log. So no resolution there, I found out who the guy was years later by chance when I saw him writing parking tickets and got his name off a ticket. I informally reported it to prosecutor's office at this point and they said something to the effect of 'Yeah, nobody likes the parking enforcement guy, if he pulls shit like this again let us know and we'll put an end to it'
I wouldn't say I am a huge proponent of Flock, especially considering their lack luster security for the individual cameras at least in my area, but the title makes it sound like it's an institutional procedure that the department stalking their romantic interests instead of individual officers that need to be properly reprimanded.
It is institutional in the sense that Flock and the individual PDs have not put steps in place (either post auditing or pre not allowing bad queries) that prevent the abuse.
Post auditing is obviously not taken seriously by these departments, and Flock could build tools to do this out of the box (identify weird search patterns) if they wanted to.
Police abuse of power in the US is a systemic problem. Your opinion is akin to thinking the Catholic church bears no burden for all the diddling they neglected to observe.
Do you make any distinction between sheriff's departments that are elected into their office (e.g. Jacksonville Sheriff's Office) vs commissioned LEOs?
I personally wouldn't, both positions are going to attract the same personality and be working in the same culture with the 99% the same influences. Maybe elected sheriffs are a bit better on average, but certainly not enough for it to show through ancedotaly or trust them in any capacity.
Honestly, a great question that I would have to think on. Whatever limits both their power, haha. Not really an answer, but I think what it boils down to is accountability. I work with a lot of state and federal cops. They are good people for the most part with good hearts. I am still incredibly weary of police on the whole. It seems that both commissioned and elected LEO lack the right level of accountability and we would do well to curb their immunity.
Thanks for the thoughtful answer and not kneejerk snark and downvotes like I'm getting elsewhere in the thread.
I think that I agree to a large degree, but with the caveat that elected sheriffs that don't serve their communities get voted out. Incoming elected sheriffs know well why their predecessors lost their seat. In theory, but to a much lesser degree, this should also apply to commissioned LEO, but often in large municipalities there's only one pool you can pull candidates from.
This isn't perfect, but it does largely function in places with sane government/electorate. Also it kind of just follows that in such cases abuse of power (and who it is abused against) is at the direction of voters.
These abuses happen because at some level, we want them to. Just not to us.
Aside: I would like to see more departments where the boss of cops is not just an appointment by politicians, but an elected position accountable to voters and not controlled by other political office.
It's a system whose implementations don't do anything to prevent or even detect this. It's not licensed by seat, so it doesn't require SSO and when the data was available it was obvious that most departments use shared accounts. There are no laws to regulate the use of it, so they do not. It gets rushed into production via Federal grants with limited time windows.
If you have a system that isn't designed around accountability in a place like a police department, you won't get accountability, and you will get institutionalized poor behavior. It's one of the reasons that state police organizations are usually considered more "professional" or better disciplined than most local departments.
Bureaucracy and size reduces random dumbass employee use of their discretion. People look the other way less often when there is a record of malfesance right in front of them. You don't need to be "pro" or "against" police to demand accountability.
The title doesn't make that sound like that at all. Unless you think in any world there woukd be able institutional procedure to abuse systems like that. To normal people it reads like police abusing the systems they have access to.
Of course it does, it says "Police have used license plate readers..." not "Police officers have used license plate readers..." or indicated that individual officers have abused their authority.
The classic "just some bad apples" argument in defense of corruption.
In Toronto, police are pressured into gang-like conformity to support their bad apples - from last week:
> A Crown attorney is being accused of suggesting a police witness should have provided false evidence while testifying in court.
> According to the Toronto Star, a heated interaction occurred in the hallway of a Toronto courthouse earlier this year, between Crown attorney Marnie Goldenberg and Constable Edin Hasanbasic of the Toronto Police Service.
> Hasanbasic had been called as a witness in the case of a man accused of hitting a different officer with his motorcycle, with the intent of causing harm.
> Hasanbasic had just told the court that the officer who was struck by the motorcycle “seemed like he was fine” after the incident.
> Goldenberg, according to Hasanbasic’s notes about the encounter, allegedly got angry about his testimony, because it went against the Crown’s case.
> “What am I supposed to do? Lie?” Hasanbasic recalls saying.
> The attorney allegedly responded by saying, “We protect our own.”
> The classic "just some bad apples" argument in defense of corruption.
Not really, something definitely should be done to correct it but some people have this notion that throwing out the baby with the bath water is and starting over from scratch is the correct action. If anything that will just create new problems and make the ability to hide misdeeds even easier.
I don't see why any plates should be looked up for any reason without evidence of a crime. If someone isn't enough of a problem for their plate to be flagged otherwise, it is not the governments business to know who is where or when.
Ah, so then they just resumed another law enforcement job in the next town over like so many do, whose investigations into their criminal activity was terminated because they resigned, and because they were never charged or fired, then they have a clean record to apply elsewhere.
I've mentioned this before but I've been a volunteer court watcher for domestic violence court for some years now. Cases where a state surveillance tool or database was used to stalk or harass the victim are completely routine.
Very often it is someone in an administrative role who has access to the tool, and I think they get caught more often because it's easier for automated audits to flag their use as clearly unnecessary. LEOs have a lot of benefit of the doubt on that and, from what I can tell, are pretty much free to do what they want with these tools.
I do follow up on cases, I'm not supposed to participate in court but I can contribute community impact statements about systemic patterns I've observed. I haven't so far ever seen one of the cops in front of another court for this behavior, even when it was clearly documented by an order of protection being granted in DV court.
I assume this problem is far far worse than I can perceive. Victims will only bring this to court with a lot of support and clear evidence, and even then with the offender being police, it's risky and frightening. Our police are automatically placed on administrative leave if served an order of protection, so the local judges are extremely resistant to ever actually granting one.
Can you tell me more about what a volunteer court watcher does? That sounds fascinating. What do you do when you see something questionable in a court? Are there broader organizations you raise concerns with or submit statistics to?
I volunteer for a local organization, most areas have one. Some are specialized around a specific kind of court, others are big enough to be broad and then have specialized training, usually following however your local jurisdiction divides up its courts.
I fill out a form for each session and case and write descriptive notes about what happens in court, including things like language and tone of the judge, conduct of the counsel, etc. I don't evaluate "questionable" myself and I do nothing personally with the notes. They are submitted to the organization and eventually in aggregate make their way into data used by researchers, journalists, law schools, legislators.
I have always gravitated towards a market model. Force police, like doctors, to have malpractice insurance. Let for-profit insurance companies model what that risk looks like. Now cities have to make a financial decision when hiring cops that is directionally accurate to the risk of said cop. Imperfect but I don’t believe perfect systems exist.
But this goes back to government agencies never thinking about budgets. Modern politics is about marketing a tax reduction but never how that impacts the budget.
That might help for straight up murder cases, but I think it leaves a LOT of room for continued abuse of position and power with the only real risk being a small increase in monthly payment to offenders that makes it seem acceptable.
Absolutely! This would also mean when cops break the law taxpayers don't pay out. Their privately held insurance does. Enough bad behavior and a criminal cop becomes uninsurable. This also prevents the abuse where a criminal cop gets fired, then moved over to another jurisdiction to repeat the process all over again. The insurance companies should have to share history with one another.
Perhaps the only tweak would be to regulate these insurance companies to control their profit margins. We don't want to end up in the same situation as medical insurance in the US. Tax payers will have to pay some of the insurance premiums indirectly. So this idea can work well so long as insurance is in that goldilox zone: enough to provide incentive for the companies to exist, but not so much that their greed creates an even worse system.
> but not so much that their greed creates an even worse system.
The market model won't work because greed isn't real when discussing corporations. That's like calling a tree growing towards the sun "greedy." No, the tree is fulfilling it's biological imperative: put more leaves closer to the sun.
Corporations must maximize profit. The corporation that maximizes profit best is the one that can consume other ones and tend towards monopoly, the perfect state. All actions are permitted when fulfilling biological imperative.
So, trying to fenangle a market based solution to police brutality issues will result in a couple predetermined outcomes: insurance payouts won't happen because why would they voluntarily pay, furthermore, cop insurance companies would leverage their superior capital to lobby the government to protect their profit margins, which individuals can't prevent through market efforts or individual actions since the corporation's power is so much greater.
Agree but better than the system we have today. There will always be issues with it but I think on average it would better incentivize hiring lower risk employees.
This is pretty straightforward actually. The third party doctrine [1] has been extrapolated to the digital age to the massive detriment of privacy. All it takes is for Congress to pass a law clarifying to the courts that the third party doctrine isn't correct.
There's also an alteration to the interpretation of "reasonable expectation of privacy" that could be made (again, by Congress) to account for the total sum of information, rather than each individual piece of information in isolation. For example, I have no expectation of privacy that people don't see my license plate when I'm driving but I don't expect that a single person/entity would have all of the locations my license plate has been in the last 3 days.
The other clarification/change Congress could make would be to change the "reasonable expectation" test to something less susceptible to erosion over time. (I didn't used to expect I'd be tracked in certain way because I thought it would have been illegal but now I do expect it even though I still feel it's illegal). The reasonable expectation test encourages normalizing surveillance for as long as possible before it gets to court so that it's unreasonable to expect otherwise.
All of these things, of course, would be still within the grasp of investigators with a simple warrant which would normally take less than an hour to attain.
I'm not a lawyer or anything but the third party doctrine holds because you're willingly and knowingly giving your information to said third party. I expect that the difference there is that the contents of a storage locker or safety deposit box are explicitly confidential from the company their are leased/rented from.
I feel like this actually isn't that complicated. Just remove any special protections that they get on the judicial end. The judicial is already there with the intention of balancing the powers of the executive, it just doesn't do that currently because they limply decided that the executive can go and do whatever the hell they please.
Do you think given how ubiquitous cameras and microphones are now, that we should change the doctrine around right to record in public, or the expectation of privacy?
For example, I have no problem with people recording in public a news cast, or even taking down a sick trick on a skateboard, but I think generally people would say ' a camera that tracks my movements' violates my privacy in some way, even though I understand someone theoretically could post agents on every block and do so
In my town, we have Flock. I request the audit logs that show how police are searching the Flock system.
In November 2025 and prior, the logs were listed by USERID and I could independently correlate quantity of searches by USERID to detect unusual search behavior. This same methodology has been used to catch police stalking in at least one other city.
In December 2025, Flock decided to "improve" its system. All searches on the audit log are now completely serialized, anonymized. This "improvement" came after 2025 turned out several cases of police stalking using Flock.
I would guess the only way to make this data available long term is by regulation. Then again, I would hope Flock is subject to FOIA already if they are collaborating with state or local law enforcement...
Washington State just exempted Flock data from its public records law. https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?billnumber=6002&year=2025...
that's craaazy
YC CEO funded Flock and is involved in politics to remove police regulations
To quote him responding to criticism against Flock: "You're thinking Chinese surveillance. US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims."
Cameras are free speech and are a shield against property crimes and assault.
Our building complex has rampant break-ins. We've needed more cameras for years and we're only now starting to add them.
Worse, someone recently someone set fire to the roof which caused a 12-hour long debacle. Not sure what the "#-of-alarms fire" ranking it was, but several people lost their homes to months of remediation and they tore apart the roof.
Cameras would have implicated the contractor responsible (we know it was a contractor, but there were no cameras or access logs).
One theory as to why the number of violent crimes is going down in this country isn't that we just de-leaded the water and taught better conflict de-escalation, but that there are cameras and smartphones everywhere.
All of that said - camera networks in the hands of an all-powerful state are bad.
The state does not need access to these systems outside of a rigorously documented system with proper judicial oversight. We need regulations and even civil liberties that limit the scope of state access and state dragnets to these camera networks.
But individuals, companies, and communities should be at liberty to hire surveillance tech to protect their persons and their property.
> Cameras are free speech... individuals, companies, and communities should be at liberty to hire surveillance tech to protect their persons and their property.
At scale, corporate surveillance can effectively intermingle with, and/or become indistinguishable from, state surveillance. We see that happening today: why wiretap when Palantir exists?
Cameras may be speech, but surveillance has a chilling effect against it.
I think this is a false dichotomy. You can feel and be more protected against crime while also being exploited for your data by a shadowy camera company. We should let the state step in to regulate Flock et al, assuming we can do something about the corruption they're already involved in.
Pray tell, what speech do cameras make?
The same one that I make when I stand somewhere and describe what I see. So I hold a camera to do it more accurately. And then I get tired so I mount the camera on a trip setup instead.
I'm still not hearing any speech from the camera doing the recording. Can you tell me specifically, how recording with a camera is speech?
ACLU of IL v. Alvarez (2012): "The act of making an audio or audiovisual recording is necessarily included within the First Amendment’s guarantee of speech and press rights as a corollary of the right to disseminate the resulting recording."
What is your definition of speech? It seems like you are defining it literally.
My recording of police interactions is free speech, for example.
My recording my property is free speech.
My taking a camera into public spaces and recording is free speech.
> I would hope Flock is subject to FOIA
Isn't FOIA only applicable to federal government agencies?
Most states have a version of it.
This is true. I often forget because my state has an equivalent law.
FOIA does not apply outside government entities. Maybe you can get the data from the entity itself, but good luck.
Which is one of many reasons why privatizing government services probably isn't a good idea.
You could also make different laws but that's probably not going to happen. Think about just about any of the important laws that we rely on for a stable and just society in the USA, and consider that most or all of them would be politically unviable if they didn't already exist. Including FOIA itself. Not a good situation.
Can you FOIA some unique identifier of the officers (badge number, name, etc) associated with the serialized searches?
On the subject of those Flock cameras, it really is amazing how much high-purity copper they manage to put in one of those. They might as well be putting ingots of copper on those poles.
Are you suggesting that they might be targets for stealing copper?
Two independent studies established that police families experience higher rates of domestic violence than the rest of the population.
Do not let your loved ones get romantically involved with cops.
Lmao, anonymization of usage
This man alleges Flock employees show up in the logs snooping in on private business feeds for pools, gymnastics studios, etc.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-193593234
If you build it they will come.
Worth noting that these weren't low level employees watching the children's gymnastics areas but included the accounts of the Director of Growth, and the VP of Strategic Relations and Business Development among several other staff members. You really have to wonder what these people mean when they say "think of the children".
Gives the heebeejeebies, how is it that so many companies are so casual with spying.
"at least" is doing a lot of work here. That's just what was analyzed. You have to assume the behavior is much more prevalent.
"14x times" to me sounds like statistically "zero" since I assume the sample size would be in the millions "at least."
How many millions of police officers do you think there are?
How many of those do you think have open and available records for their use of surveillance tech?
When the IJ says it, they mean they have proof that they will stand behind of 14 examples. They decidedly aren't saying that it only happened 14 times.
So, as long as something only grievously harms a small percentage of people, it's fine. Good to know.
Humanity has used strategic nukes a statistically "zero" number of times, therefore nuclear proliferation is not a concern, nor should it be.
if 1 of those 14 was your daughter, wife, sister, mom you would not be writing this. 14x is exactly 14x too many
It is a given that any power will be abused. However not giving power out is often worse that the abuse of power.
The real question is what do we do to detect and prevent that abuse so it is minimized. All too often people are "this person is mostly on my side so I will overlook their abuse" which is the wrong answer.
I agree but the combination giving power without doing anything to detect and prevent abuse in my opinion is worse than not giving power at all, in 100% of the situations - no exceptions. if 14 detected incidents here end up with 14 convictions and enough time in prison to deter anyone else from doing this ever again (5-10 years, per incident minimum), cool with me. it is no different than any other "law breaking" - people will people and law should be there to protect the citizens. but in our society it is obvious we cannot give power to people of authority cause whenever they abuse that power - there is either no law to charge them against or even if there is one they'd be immune to it
Why? Is there something about their dataset and/or methodology that you can identify as deficient that would indicate that the rate is much higher than what was published?
I agree with the sentiment, but if you want anyone to do anything about it we need evidence and not vibes.
I'm trying to help you make your case. So far the only comments in this thread are the most low-effort reactions that don't say anything substantive.
> I agree with the sentiment, but if you want anyone to do anything about it we need evidence and not vibes.
I don't believe your concern trolling tone here - I'm not asking anyone to do anything either. I'm pointing out this is likely much more prevalent, based on the absolute fact most abuse/stalking cases go unreported, so this is likely a small subset of a larger problem. The "evidence" is these cases existing at all. In any case, flock data is mostly invisible and the police that use it get very little oversight. So how do you suggest I get any evidence? Shall I hack into their systems? Get real.
Even in the article:
> Most incidents came to light only after victims reported the officers’ behavior to the police, typically in the context of a broader stalking allegation.
> The 14 cases listed below are almost certainly an undercount. Not all police misconduct gets detected, and some cases likely get resolved quietly. Officers frequently cite vague or inaccurate reasons for their searches in ALPR systems, sometimes to evade detection of misconduct.
And regarding this:
> I'm trying to help you make your case.
Nah, I don't believe you.
The evidence is just "human nature". Honestly, it's just negligence at this point to give people power over others without due oversight and accountability. But it's nice we have concrete examples of abuse to help motivate action.
The data set IJ is providing here is situations where stalking was reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted. Other stalking cases could fail any one of those stages and be invisible to the public.
This. They almost certainly use it for parallel construction 99% of the time. Just get lucky and "show up" when your spouse has someone over.
These 14 just were sloppy and left such an egregious fact pattern in their wake that a public record was created (firing, charges filed, etc)
> Other stalking cases could fail any one of those stages and be invisible to the public.
"could" is doing a lot of work here...
> where stalking was reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted.
No, that's not what IJ said. From the article: "Nearly all of these officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs, either by resigning or getting fired."
So not all 14 of these were "reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted".
If you're trying to make significant social change, make the strongest argument that you are capable of.
You're asking us to believe that, absent evidence to the contrary, 100% of stalking cases were publicized enough to make this list.
Your Bayesian priors desperately need an update.
I don't think "could" is doing a lot of work here at all. It seems logical that if cases where the misuse of flock systems were discovered only when the same officers misbehaved in other, more visible situations then there are officers that avoid the more visible situations and continue to use the system that does not expose their bad behavior (flock).
Logical as in fits your world view or as in can be backed up by observable evidence?
The IJ (which I financially support) is a very serious organization that understands datasets, rules-based evidence and also public relations. If there was a stronger case that they could have made with the data that they had available, they would have.
I've already stated that I agree with the premise suggested, but I'm making the point that if you actually want to do anything about it, you need the evidence to back it up.
I can't go to my boss with a proposal to do something significant without measurable evidence to back up my reasoning and neither can you.
I have personally had a traffic ticket thrown out because the officer had a DV case brought by his spouse, who worked in the court. This caused the officer to be fired. I'm VERY aware of problems with LEO, but if you want to do something with a high administrative or human resources cost like any change to the status quo would obviously have -- you need real hard proof. Not "oh isn't it obvious"?
For those following along, this was the original comment:
> Other stalking cases could fail any one of those stages and be invisible to the public. > "could" is doing a lot of work here...
I'd be careful replying to someone commenting and editing with such large diffs without calling it out. Fairly deceptive.
There's no deception. I added to my comment before anybody replied. I didn't change a word of the original text.
You're throwing unnecessary shade.
The decades-long history of police abuse of power isn't enough? There is not a single power they have not abused eventually, and it's quite obvious that introducing new powers will inevitability be exploited.
A "review of media reports" is not going to capture any incidents that the media didn't report on. That doesn't strike me as likely to capture every incident, or even a majority of incidents.
LOVEINT.
This term was coined at the NSA where roughly 1 case is reported per year and overwhelmingly through self-reporting during polygraph exams.
That's quite different from this situation.
> Why?
FTA: The 14 cases listed below are almost certainly an undercount.
I feel that supports the original comment, considering it's all subjective.
Now, you are going to be tempted to start arguing that "almost certainly an undercount" doesn't support the original comment. But remember, it's subjective, and any reasonable person reading that comment and the article could see how "at least" could be seen as doing a lot of work.
"almost certainly an undercount." isn't the same thing as "prevalent", which was the accusation by the comment I was responding to.
Around me these Flock cameras are spreading like fleas.
Also, local psycho cop incidents seem to be on the rise. Last year a veterinarian and her bf were murdered by her ex (a state trooper) that blew his brains out after[1]. Just a month ago next town over one of the officers was arrested for placing tracking devices on his ex. [2]
Around a decade ago I was harassed through the mail after a road-rage incident (plainclothes dude ran up to my car window after I parked to go to gym and claimed I cut him off, said: 'I'll remember you, you should be more careful'). He ran my plate and sent a vaguely threatening anonymous letter to my car's registered address. I opened a case with the Somerset County prosecutor's office of internal affairs. The prosecutor's office claimed there were no hits through the federal NCIC system, but in-state there was no audit log of plates checked through NJMVC, and even if there was a smart cop (or MVC employee, lots of people have access to it) could just ask a dispatcher to run it over the radio. They claimed that this system was getting moved to the New Jersey State police and it was expected this would have an audit log. So no resolution there, I found out who the guy was years later by chance when I saw him writing parking tickets and got his name off a ticket. I informally reported it to prosecutor's office at this point and they said something to the effect of 'Yeah, nobody likes the parking enforcement guy, if he pulls shit like this again let us know and we'll put an end to it'
[1] https://nypost.com/2025/08/06/us-news/screaming-and-gunshots...
[2] https://nj1015.com/clinton-police-stalking-arrest/
I wouldn't say I am a huge proponent of Flock, especially considering their lack luster security for the individual cameras at least in my area, but the title makes it sound like it's an institutional procedure that the department stalking their romantic interests instead of individual officers that need to be properly reprimanded.
It is institutional in the sense that Flock and the individual PDs have not put steps in place (either post auditing or pre not allowing bad queries) that prevent the abuse.
Post auditing is obviously not taken seriously by these departments, and Flock could build tools to do this out of the box (identify weird search patterns) if they wanted to.
Edit -- I see Flock does have some audit tools, https://www.flocksafety.com/trust/compliance-tools. If those work as they should, it is more on PDs to use them properly.
Police abuse of power in the US is a systemic problem. Your opinion is akin to thinking the Catholic church bears no burden for all the diddling they neglected to observe.
Do you make any distinction between sheriff's departments that are elected into their office (e.g. Jacksonville Sheriff's Office) vs commissioned LEOs?
I personally wouldn't, both positions are going to attract the same personality and be working in the same culture with the 99% the same influences. Maybe elected sheriffs are a bit better on average, but certainly not enough for it to show through ancedotaly or trust them in any capacity.
Honestly, a great question that I would have to think on. Whatever limits both their power, haha. Not really an answer, but I think what it boils down to is accountability. I work with a lot of state and federal cops. They are good people for the most part with good hearts. I am still incredibly weary of police on the whole. It seems that both commissioned and elected LEO lack the right level of accountability and we would do well to curb their immunity.
Thanks for the thoughtful answer and not kneejerk snark and downvotes like I'm getting elsewhere in the thread.
I think that I agree to a large degree, but with the caveat that elected sheriffs that don't serve their communities get voted out. Incoming elected sheriffs know well why their predecessors lost their seat. In theory, but to a much lesser degree, this should also apply to commissioned LEO, but often in large municipalities there's only one pool you can pull candidates from.
This isn't perfect, but it does largely function in places with sane government/electorate. Also it kind of just follows that in such cases abuse of power (and who it is abused against) is at the direction of voters.
These abuses happen because at some level, we want them to. Just not to us.
Aside: I would like to see more departments where the boss of cops is not just an appointment by politicians, but an elected position accountable to voters and not controlled by other political office.
Isn't that your opinion also?
It's a system whose implementations don't do anything to prevent or even detect this. It's not licensed by seat, so it doesn't require SSO and when the data was available it was obvious that most departments use shared accounts. There are no laws to regulate the use of it, so they do not. It gets rushed into production via Federal grants with limited time windows.
If you have a system that isn't designed around accountability in a place like a police department, you won't get accountability, and you will get institutionalized poor behavior. It's one of the reasons that state police organizations are usually considered more "professional" or better disciplined than most local departments.
Bureaucracy and size reduces random dumbass employee use of their discretion. People look the other way less often when there is a record of malfesance right in front of them. You don't need to be "pro" or "against" police to demand accountability.
The title doesn't make that sound like that at all. Unless you think in any world there woukd be able institutional procedure to abuse systems like that. To normal people it reads like police abusing the systems they have access to.
Of course it does, it says "Police have used license plate readers..." not "Police officers have used license plate readers..." or indicated that individual officers have abused their authority.
The classic "just some bad apples" argument in defense of corruption.
In Toronto, police are pressured into gang-like conformity to support their bad apples - from last week:
> A Crown attorney is being accused of suggesting a police witness should have provided false evidence while testifying in court.
> According to the Toronto Star, a heated interaction occurred in the hallway of a Toronto courthouse earlier this year, between Crown attorney Marnie Goldenberg and Constable Edin Hasanbasic of the Toronto Police Service.
> Hasanbasic had been called as a witness in the case of a man accused of hitting a different officer with his motorcycle, with the intent of causing harm.
> Hasanbasic had just told the court that the officer who was struck by the motorcycle “seemed like he was fine” after the incident.
> Goldenberg, according to Hasanbasic’s notes about the encounter, allegedly got angry about his testimony, because it went against the Crown’s case.
> “What am I supposed to do? Lie?” Hasanbasic recalls saying.
> The attorney allegedly responded by saying, “We protect our own.”
> The classic "just some bad apples" argument in defense of corruption.
Not really, something definitely should be done to correct it but some people have this notion that throwing out the baby with the bath water is and starting over from scratch is the correct action. If anything that will just create new problems and make the ability to hide misdeeds even easier.
I'm shocked that one of the most abusive groups of people have engaged in such behavior!
A surveillance technology, intended only for lawful use, is being used unlawfully. Huh. Who could have seen that coming?
I am not against Plate Readers in theory but feel like you should have to have a warrant to look things up in the database.
I don't see why any plates should be looked up for any reason without evidence of a crime. If someone isn't enough of a problem for their plate to be flagged otherwise, it is not the governments business to know who is where or when.
>>media reports has identified at least 14 cases nationwide...since 2024.
>>Nearly all of these officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs, either by resigning or getting fired.
> by resigning
Ah, so then they just resumed another law enforcement job in the next town over like so many do, whose investigations into their criminal activity was terminated because they resigned, and because they were never charged or fired, then they have a clean record to apply elsewhere.
HN has become so reddit-like in its comments that I'm afraid I'm going to give up on it as the last social media site I visit.
Last line:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
could try lobsters, pretty much everything posted is the same
I've mentioned this before but I've been a volunteer court watcher for domestic violence court for some years now. Cases where a state surveillance tool or database was used to stalk or harass the victim are completely routine.
Very often it is someone in an administrative role who has access to the tool, and I think they get caught more often because it's easier for automated audits to flag their use as clearly unnecessary. LEOs have a lot of benefit of the doubt on that and, from what I can tell, are pretty much free to do what they want with these tools.
I do follow up on cases, I'm not supposed to participate in court but I can contribute community impact statements about systemic patterns I've observed. I haven't so far ever seen one of the cops in front of another court for this behavior, even when it was clearly documented by an order of protection being granted in DV court.
I assume this problem is far far worse than I can perceive. Victims will only bring this to court with a lot of support and clear evidence, and even then with the offender being police, it's risky and frightening. Our police are automatically placed on administrative leave if served an order of protection, so the local judges are extremely resistant to ever actually granting one.
Can you tell me more about what a volunteer court watcher does? That sounds fascinating. What do you do when you see something questionable in a court? Are there broader organizations you raise concerns with or submit statistics to?
I volunteer for a local organization, most areas have one. Some are specialized around a specific kind of court, others are big enough to be broad and then have specialized training, usually following however your local jurisdiction divides up its courts.
I fill out a form for each session and case and write descriptive notes about what happens in court, including things like language and tone of the judge, conduct of the counsel, etc. I don't evaluate "questionable" myself and I do nothing personally with the notes. They are submitted to the organization and eventually in aggregate make their way into data used by researchers, journalists, law schools, legislators.
That's super cool, thanks for the information and also thanks for doing that!
Is there a framework—any framework, however hypothetical—that actually makes police accountable and subject to the laws they supposedly enforce?
I have always gravitated towards a market model. Force police, like doctors, to have malpractice insurance. Let for-profit insurance companies model what that risk looks like. Now cities have to make a financial decision when hiring cops that is directionally accurate to the risk of said cop. Imperfect but I don’t believe perfect systems exist.
But this goes back to government agencies never thinking about budgets. Modern politics is about marketing a tax reduction but never how that impacts the budget.
That might help for straight up murder cases, but I think it leaves a LOT of room for continued abuse of position and power with the only real risk being a small increase in monthly payment to offenders that makes it seem acceptable.
Absolutely! This would also mean when cops break the law taxpayers don't pay out. Their privately held insurance does. Enough bad behavior and a criminal cop becomes uninsurable. This also prevents the abuse where a criminal cop gets fired, then moved over to another jurisdiction to repeat the process all over again. The insurance companies should have to share history with one another.
Perhaps the only tweak would be to regulate these insurance companies to control their profit margins. We don't want to end up in the same situation as medical insurance in the US. Tax payers will have to pay some of the insurance premiums indirectly. So this idea can work well so long as insurance is in that goldilox zone: enough to provide incentive for the companies to exist, but not so much that their greed creates an even worse system.
> but not so much that their greed creates an even worse system.
The market model won't work because greed isn't real when discussing corporations. That's like calling a tree growing towards the sun "greedy." No, the tree is fulfilling it's biological imperative: put more leaves closer to the sun.
Corporations must maximize profit. The corporation that maximizes profit best is the one that can consume other ones and tend towards monopoly, the perfect state. All actions are permitted when fulfilling biological imperative.
So, trying to fenangle a market based solution to police brutality issues will result in a couple predetermined outcomes: insurance payouts won't happen because why would they voluntarily pay, furthermore, cop insurance companies would leverage their superior capital to lobby the government to protect their profit margins, which individuals can't prevent through market efforts or individual actions since the corporation's power is so much greater.
yeah market models are working so great everywhere else...
Instead of being hyperbolic why don’t you share your idea then?
Markets are not perfect but on average they do a decent job of finding equilibrium.
“Democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others that have been tried.”
I'll join in to proffer that where they lack, it's often exactly the sort of thing you describe: some externality is missing in the price
Agree but better than the system we have today. There will always be issues with it but I think on average it would better incentivize hiring lower risk employees.
I'm agreeing with you: it would essentially be applying a missing cost to the current externalities
Yes, I was agreeing with you and just saying differently that no system is perfect but it would attempt too price as best as possible.
This is pretty straightforward actually. The third party doctrine [1] has been extrapolated to the digital age to the massive detriment of privacy. All it takes is for Congress to pass a law clarifying to the courts that the third party doctrine isn't correct.
There's also an alteration to the interpretation of "reasonable expectation of privacy" that could be made (again, by Congress) to account for the total sum of information, rather than each individual piece of information in isolation. For example, I have no expectation of privacy that people don't see my license plate when I'm driving but I don't expect that a single person/entity would have all of the locations my license plate has been in the last 3 days.
The other clarification/change Congress could make would be to change the "reasonable expectation" test to something less susceptible to erosion over time. (I didn't used to expect I'd be tracked in certain way because I thought it would have been illegal but now I do expect it even though I still feel it's illegal). The reasonable expectation test encourages normalizing surveillance for as long as possible before it gets to court so that it's unreasonable to expect otherwise.
All of these things, of course, would be still within the grasp of investigators with a simple warrant which would normally take less than an hour to attain.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
A storage locker or bank deposit box is private property even if it's effectively held by a 3rd party.
There's no reason the same doctrine couldn't extend to digital papers and effects.
I'm not a lawyer or anything but the third party doctrine holds because you're willingly and knowingly giving your information to said third party. I expect that the difference there is that the contents of a storage locker or safety deposit box are explicitly confidential from the company their are leased/rented from.
I feel like this actually isn't that complicated. Just remove any special protections that they get on the judicial end. The judicial is already there with the intention of balancing the powers of the executive, it just doesn't do that currently because they limply decided that the executive can go and do whatever the hell they please.
there's never been a point human history where the ruling class was subject to its rules. so no.
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the unauthorized uses outnumber the legitimate ones.
time to get rid of license plates
These cameras record bumper stickers, dents, accessories, etc. Many vehicles can be uniquely identified by a computer without a license plate.
Do you think given how ubiquitous cameras and microphones are now, that we should change the doctrine around right to record in public, or the expectation of privacy?
For example, I have no problem with people recording in public a news cast, or even taking down a sick trick on a skateboard, but I think generally people would say ' a camera that tracks my movements' violates my privacy in some way, even though I understand someone theoretically could post agents on every block and do so
sounds way low to me
It’s not surprising that no one is reviewing usage of these tools proactively, but it is disappointing. EDIT: typo
Welcome to the panopticon, everyone! Law abiding citizens have nothing to fear. Keep drinking the kool-aid and don’t look behind the curtain.
In other news, the Sun rises in the East.
Nice it was highlighted but the big question, will something be done about this ? I think we all know the answer to this.
The only surprise is "14 times", I would expect hundreds of times.