A cop who wrote “idiot” got away with it because by the time the department learned about it, it had passed a 90-day time period in which the cop’s union contract allowed for internal investigations.

ACAB. Flock is big brother

The reason box should require a warrant number. What the fuck.

The fact that these even exist is bad enough, but the fact that they simply just allow such blatant abuses is unconscionable. Every one of these "reasons" need to be audited. Realistically, they should require a warrant.

Odd how similar those reasons are to my git push messages..

I love how actual news stories sound like posts from the onion now.

I don't get why this comes as such as big surprise. It's human nature. I grew up watching funny home videos and CCTV videos etc. Cops have access to the system, I think most others would abuse it the same way.

It's a gross invasion of privacy and Flock should be banned everywhere. it's disgusting how it can easily be abused and should be avoided at all costs. Imagine what Joseph James DeAngelo would have done with access to Flock.

Catching a quick glimpse of a person that they deemed attractive could end up being high end stalking.

The bad very much outweighs any good that these cameras are alleged to help with. Fucking traffic violations?

Okay, maybe tracking a murderer etc. might be a good use of the system, but the ratio of that happening, and what they are being used for is ridiculous.

It's as much a joke to them as it is to the rest of us. The most flaccid form of oversight imaginable.

«asdfg» is going into my «professional resume» of excuses.

Shocked. Well not shocked. Surprised. Well not surprised. Mildly amused. Well. What an absurd time we live in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtnmvOP703A

reminds me of this

Any tool can be used for good or evil.

TIL cops are evil.

The EFF was able to do this analysis because of the way that Flock documents police use of the system. Each time a search is performed, a record of it is saved in the Flock system, which can be obtained by the public using government records requests. These audit logs show hundreds of thousands of searches of the system; after 404 Media and other news outlets used these types of logs to show police using the Flock system to look for undocumented immigrants on behalf of ICE, a woman in Texas who had an abortion, and protesters, cops were warned by government surveillance centers to be “as vague as permissible” about the reasons for their searches. Late last year, Flock changed its system; rather than having to type in a reason, Flock now has a drop-down list of prepopulated reasons, which the EFF called “a loss for transparency.”

The EFF contacted departments whose cops performed these “joke” searches, and found that many of them did not do anything about cops who button mashed or put jokes. Cops who wrote “hehe” and “idk” were “counseled,” they were told. A cop who wrote “idiot” got away with it because by the time the department learned about it, it had passed a 90-day time period in which the cop’s union contract allowed for internal investigations. Several other police departments said they would investigate the behavior. The Fishers Police Department in Indiana said that a detective who searched Flock for reasons of “blah” only did so “when he has issues with the technology,” or when “the technology is not moving fast enough for him.” A police department said it investigated a cop who wrote “driving around being weird” in the reason field but found it was for “legitimate public safety purposes.”

Easy solution:

Federal law that requires any sort of abuse of power by police is a felony and prevents them from ever working anything near law enforcement.

Get rid of the "bad apples" and ensure the remaining cops understand the balance of power.

For those who are slow like me: "asdfg" is the order of keys on the home row left to right. It doesn't stand for anything.

This took me way too long to figure out.

Audit trails mean nothing if nobody is looking at them.

Fire em.

Most literate cops

Well, as long as they had good reasons 🙄.

does the g mean they home row with their thumbs too?

The world doesn't hate cops nearly enough, so it's grand that they keep creating new reasons... I guess...

I would literally rather be murdered than have a flock camera prevent it