From Newsgroup: alt.privacy

Police in Wisconsin searched a man's car for cannabis because Flock
cameras told them he often traveled to Michigan, where weed is legal.

The thing about surveillance states is that you societally back into
them relatively slowly. A nationwide network of cameras easily accessed
by police (or ICE, or CBP, or hackers!) is first installed, and then
justified by immediately turning that network against whichever segments
of society will garner the least widespread sympathy. By employing mass surveillance tech against wanted criminalsrCoeven to pursue suspicions of
petty crimes, without actual evidencerCoyou can get the public on the side
of that mass surveillance campaign and normalize the idea that we should
not only accept being watched and tracked wherever we go, but actively
welcome it as a tool to keep us all safe. But then a few years pass, and suddenly you're being pulled over by police on the highway under
suspicion of trafficking drugs because you "frequently" travel to states
where cannabis is legal, and Flock cameras have been tracking your
movements each time you set foot outside your door. How do you feel
about the cameras now, when they're apparently all the justification
police need to search your vehicle? How's that surveillance state
treating you?

That example is more or less what recently happened to a man in
Wisconsin, albeit a man who was already wanted by police for bail
jumping on domestic violence charges. Police could have used Flock
cameras to track down the individual solely for that reason, but here's
man in question, Edward Abrams-Phillips, "travels to Michigan
frequently," and because recreational cannabis is legal in Michigan but
not Wisconsin, that they should specifically wait until he traveled
across state lines again to search his car on suspicion that he would
have weed on him, and thus be hit with another criminal charge. Did they
have any particular evidence suggesting the man was transporting an
illegal drug into Wisconsin? Court documents uncovered by 404 Media
somehow don't mention that. What they do mention is the police solely
citing the man's pattern of travel (thanks to Flock camera tracking) as
enough justification to search his car. He was subsequently pulled over
and arrested on cannabis possession charges.

This is the entire probable cause for the stop, as presented in court frequently which is a known source State for Marijuana as it is legal
there."

Again, the choice of person here is not some kind of accident. This kind
of justification for search and seizure is being rolled out against a
man with bail jumping and domestic violence charges as an attempt at
setting precedent to use Flock tracking as the pretext for vehicle stops
and searches of all kinds, with the police knowing perfectly well that arguments about the individual's rights will be shouted down by cries of
"WELL HE WAS A CRIMINAL, SO IT'S FINE." Nor did the bail-jumping charge
amount to anything; it was dismissed, and Abrams-Phillips was instead
found guilty of cannabis possession according to the court records.

It's only a small, small jump from that point to a new normal where
police are using Flock (and AI, no doubt) to algorithmically log all of
our movements to compile probabilities that any given person is breaking
the law when they do something like cross state lines. Your trips to
that little B&B town across the state border? That's now suspicious
evidence building up in your file, if that town also happens to have a
cannabis dispensary. You fish across state lines on the weekend? Police
want to know if you're bringing back reefer in addition to walleye. And
they don't need any specific evidence or testimony that you've been
buying cannabis, eitherrCono no, that would be an onerous expectation for police to possess! All they need is Flock's data saying that you
frequently go to an entire state where cannabis is available. That's
plenty! Now pull over; if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to
fear!

It should go without saying that this is an exemplary instance of what
has become a hot-button national debate over Flock cameras, mass
surveillance, and the ease of such technology being abused by
practically anyone who has any form of access to it. In Georgia alone
(Flock's home state), at least 20 law enforcement officials have been
arrested or charged for abusing the technology, and there are more than
50 known cases in this vein nationwide, which is likely just the tip of
the iceberg. Police officers in particular cannot seem to stop
themselves from using Flock camera technology to stalk or spy on women,
whether those women are wives and girlfriends, exes, or merely targets
of male obsession who barely even know the officers constantly tracking
their movements. The technology can be adapted to empower seemingly any
found to have searched through more than 83,000 cameras in their search
for a woman who was suspected of having an abortion.

The company behind Flock cameras, Flock Safety, meanwhile, has been
desperately attempting to launder its now tattered image by directing
attention toward instances where the camera network was used to either
catch unambiguously reprehensible criminals or reunite families with
sweet, darling missing children. Just yesterday, the company began
promoting an online ad spot featuring footage of abducted children being reunited with their parents, with executives across the company clearly
having been roped in to make grandiose statements on social media about
the company's massive philanthropic achievements. For as we all know, if
you rescue a few kids, you now have unlimited license to facilitate all
the stalking and surrender of privacy/rights you want! I for one am
champing at the bit to surrender any expectation of privacy I might have
once possessed.

"Every child in this video is home tonight because Flock gave officers
the right information at the right second," tweeted the company's Chief Strategy Officer Rahul Sidhu. "That's the mission. That's the whole
company. I wouldn't trade that for anything."

Seeing news stories about the widespread abuse of such cameras has
increasingly turned the name of Flock into something of a pariah, and a
rare issue that seems to provoke bipartisan outrage in American voters
on both sides. These often seem to be people who might have originally supported the idea of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in the
abstract, but are horrified to see how easily they are applied to
purposes far beyond the original pitch of "catching criminals," etc. A
robust anti-Flock counterculture has subsequently taken root, whether
that's in the form of websites tracking the locations of ALPRs in
public, cities that have reversed their position and taken down the
cameras, or vigilante groups that are physically attacking, vandalizing
or removing the cameras. One wonders when a major politician will swoop
in to attach their name to the trendy, anti-Flock cause, or if they're
all so inextricably in bed with the police/surveillance state that this
could never be a possibility.

Regardless, making the likes of MAGA America and Rational America land
on the same side of any issue at this point represents a significant
cultural moment. Who would have thought that literally no one wants to
be surveilled any time they set foot in public?

"I think that people all over the country are opposed to mass government surveillance, but for different reasons," said Chad Marlow, senior
policy counsel of the ACLU. "This national display of public unity on
this issue is very inspiring and refreshing."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/thanks-flock-cameras-drove-a cross-145634632.html
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