Court records show that the narrative Flock and a Texas Sheriff's Office has told the public isn't the whole story, and that police were conducting a 'death investigation' into the abortion.
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Court records show that the narrative Flock and a Texas Sheriff's Office has told the public isn't the whole story, and that police were conducting a 'death investigation' into the abortion.
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> “As much as Flock tries to be good stewards of the powerful tech we sell, this shows it really is up to users to serve their communities in good faith. Selling to law-enforcement is tricky because we assume they will use our tech to do good and then just have to hope we're right.”
> The Flock source added “Even if Flock took a stance on permitted use-cases, a motivated user could simply lie about why they're performing a search. We can never 100% know how or why our tools are being used.” A second Flock source said they believe Flock should develop a better idea of what its clients are using the company’s technology for.
In other words, why bother with safeguards when they'll just lie to us anyways?
> Even if Flock took a stance on permitted use-cases, a motivated user could simply lie about why they're performing a search. We can never 100% know how or why our tools are being used.
I think this is a legitimate problem.
But...isn't this what warrants are for? With a warrant, the police have to say why they want to perform a search to a judge, under threat of perjury. They have a powerful incentive not to lie.
So...should warrants be required for this kind of Flock data also? Couldn't Flock set a policy that these searches are performed only under warrant? Or a law be enacted saying the same? I imagine it would make Flock much less attractive to their potential customers, and searches would be performed much less often. [1] So it's not something Flock is going to do on their own. I think we'd need to create the pressure, by opposing purchases of Flock or by specifically asking our elected representatives to create such a law.
[1] If I'm being generous, because of the extra friction/work/delay. If I'm being less generous, because they have no legitimate reason a judge would approve.
By Terr_ 2025-10-0718:06 > So...should warrants be required for this kind of Flock data also?
Based on another incident [0] I feel Flock's explanation for their actions boils down to:
1. "We are familiar with the customer the person claimed to be an agent for."
2. "We didn't know whether the person was doing something illegal with the data... And we don't want to know, and we don't try to find out."
3. "They didn't force us. They gave us money! We like money!"
As you might guess, I don't find these points especially compelling or exculpating. Certainly nothing that would/should stand up against state or local laws that prohibit the data being shared this way.
_____________
By kevin_thibedeau 2025-10-0717:341 reply Any law would upset the third-party data broker constitutional runaround that the government has become addicted to. It is already a breach of privacy. We just need legislators willing to serve the public and ignore the lobbyists and executive.
By godelski 2025-10-0719:41
Which requires us, the people, to replace them if they won't.> We just need legislators willing to serve the public and ignore the lobbyists and executive.It requires us, the people, to stop buying into their games of misdirection.
This is no easy task, but it is critical. They know they can throw a million issues at us and then we'll just argue over what's more important instead of actually solving things. So at this point I'll suggest a nonoptimal, but simple solution: stop arguing over what's more important and just concentrate on what you think is most important. If they're going to throw a million things at us we can be a million little armies. Divide and rule only works by getting those little armies to fight each other. If instead we are on, mostly, the same side then they lose power. They have to fight on a million fronts.
It's far from an optimal solution but it's far better than what we've been doing for the last half century. Because for during that time they've only grown and divided us even more. People are concerned that a small forward isn't enough. They're wrong. It isn't that by not making enough progress we're standing still, we're losing ground. We can't even take a small step forward, we need to first stop losing ground. Once we do that I think we can build momentum moving forward. But it's insane to constantly give up ground in order to maybe make small steps forward. That's certainly a losing battle
By lukan 2025-10-0718:00 "So...should warrants be required for this kind of Flock data also? "
Yes.
By thomastjeffery 2025-10-0718:273 reply Yes, this is what warrants are for.
Flock's entire business model is a flagrant violation of the 4th amendment. What Flock does for their core business is called "stalking", which is a crime.
The issue here is not that the law is inadequate to resolve this problem. The issue is that the current administration has chosen to collude with private corporations that flagrantly violate the law, thereby replacing our entire judiciary system with a protection racket.
Please don't be generous. Fascists depend on our patience to insulate them from consequences.
By array_key_first 2025-10-091:491 reply Yes, but the problem is deeper than flock or even privacy as a concept. The problem is that we routinely fail to recognize organization crime. Basically, you're allowed to just spread and obfuscate accountability and get away with basically anything.
If I stalk someone, I go to jail. If 100 people get together and invent Super Stalking and they stalk everyone all the time, nobody goes to jail. It's completely counter-intuitive but this is how we structured society and justice.
By thomastjeffery 2025-10-1216:271 reply If 100 police officers get together and stalk you, that is a crime.
The problem here is not the lack of law, it's the lack of law enforcement.
By array_key_first 2025-10-153:211 reply No, it's literally not a crime. That's what flock is used for and it's perfectly legal.
By thomastjeffery 2025-10-1517:06 Not according to the 4th amendment, and precedent set by the supreme court. Police can't just keep notes on every time and place they have seen your license plate. Doing it digitally, and feeding that info to an LLM isn't meaningfully different, apart from how much obviously worse it is.
Flock isn't legal. It simply hasn't been prosecuted, either.
By godelski 2025-10-0719:45 I'm not sure why we've decided that if one dude named Mark stalks one girl then he's a creep, but if he stalks a million girls he's a hero and role model.
By thomastjeffery 2025-10-0718:411 reply What's your point?
By queenkjuul 2025-10-085:411 reply From where I'm at, both parties enjoy their warrantless stalking data. The problem isn't limited to the current administration.
By UncleMeat 2025-10-0812:05 It is true that the dems have not been good on the topic of mass surveillance. Obama leveraged and expanded what Bush had built, the Obama DoJ defended mass surveillance in court, and Biden didn't do anything to change this direction. The dems found this stuff to be too useful and appealing to resist and helped build the machine that now supports Trump's fascism.
But it is also correct to say that Trump is a fascist and that Biden wasn't one.
By samrus 2025-10-0719:09 Warrants for this is actually a great idea. Thats the exact correct solution to gov/leo overreach
Eh, if a cop sat at a Dunkin Donuts and wrote down every license plate they saw that wouldn't require a warrant.
Why should contracting that out to a private company require a warrant?
Flock isn't say Google which collects location data because it needs it for Google Maps to function. Flock is only here because the local government paid it to setup equipment.
It's really an issue for the local community. Do you want your local tax dollars going to support parks or tracking individuals?
if a cop followed you for private reasons in a private car while off duty, they wouldn't need a warrant. why should they need a warrant if they pay a private individual to do it? why should they need a warrant if they pay a private company to do it electronically? why should they need a warrant when they pay a private company to do it electronically while on the clock as part of their official duty? why should they ever need a warrant? they could just kill her if they wanted, nobody would do anything about it.
By iamnothere 2025-10-0717:441 reply > they could just kill her if they wanted, nobody would do anything about it.
Exactly, people act like “warrants” are going to protect you from authoritarians. It’s literally just a piece of paper! All this going on about surveillance and privacy really is futile.
By samrus 2025-10-0719:12 If you cant teust the government then yes, the laws are all just words. The contitution is just words at this point. But if you cant trust some parts of the government (including, opposition and non executive branches) then laws can help protect the innocent a little bit
I'm not talking private.
Think of it this way. The government pays somebody to collect data about how many bicyclists use an intersection to decided if they should add a dedicated bike light. Why would the government need to use a warrant to get that information?
That's the same situation here. Flock is placing the cameras because the government has paid them to.
The 4th amendment is complicated, and the interpretations from the last 250 years, make it more so: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
There's a few issues
1. Unreasonable is the key word here. You purposely chose an arguably reasonable thing (counting you anonymously as you pass through an intersection).
Many people think that personally logging your movements throughout the day using automated superhuman means crosses the line into unreasonable.
2. There is also a separate issue that the law allows third parties to willingly hand over/sell information about you that many people think would be subject to warrant rules. You only need a warrant when the information is being held by a party that doesn't want to hand it over willingly.
3. Intent matters in the law. The intent behind counting cyclists is very different than the intent behind setting up a system for tracking people over time, even though the mechanism may be the same.
4. There is also the issue that currently legal != morally correct.
The 4th amendment is tangential to my claim.
Your claim is that the local governments shouldn't be allowed to collect this data period.
My claim is that the local government doesn't need a warrant to get information from a contractor whose only reason for collecting that information was to produce it as part of their contract.
By kaibee 2025-10-0718:52 > Your claim is that the local governments shouldn't be allowed to collect this data period.
Not OP but that is obviously not his claim..? The cyclist data doesn't identify specific people. How are you missing the distinction between that and a report on specific individuals?
So when you say
> My claim is that the local government doesn't need a warrant to get information from a contractor whose only reason for collecting that information was to produce it as part of their contract.
You're missing the whole disagreement. Yes, even if the contractor might capture specific license plates so that the report can say "yeah this road has X unique users" its very different from a report that says "the road has these specific users".
By latexr 2025-10-0718:16 > That's the same situation here.
There is a monumental difference between counting how many cyclists use an intersection and recording the license plates of cars.
If the former, you don’t store any personal information, all you know is how many pass by. You don’t even know if they were different people, 10 of the 50 cyclists you saw could’ve been the same person going in circles.
In the latter, you know which vehicles went by, and when. Even if you don’t record the time you saw them, from the dates of the study you can narrow it down considerably. Those can be mapped to specific people.
By hobs 2025-10-0717:53 It's actually very simple - because of the nature of their use of the data. Laws can have subtlety, its not a magic on or off switch - if you want aggregate data for the number of bicycles that's not the DNA sample from each passerby.
By samrus 2025-10-0719:10 The government should need a warrant to track a person in ways that violate their privacy. Phone taps need warrants. Alpr lookups should too
> if a cop followed you for private reasons in a private car while off duty, they wouldn't need a warrant.
No, they wouldn't need a warrant, because they'd be stalking you.
By JumpCrisscross 2025-10-0718:27 > It's really an issue for the local community. Do you want your local tax dollars going to support parks or tracking individuals?
Correct. In your analogy, the Texas cop is being paid by your community to write down your license plate. (Otherwise, he has no authority to be operating outside his state.)
By jfim 2025-10-0717:36 They wouldn't require a warrant, but at the same time, that wouldn't be scalable to be able to record every license plate everywhere in the city.
Having a barrier to accessing data can help prevent casual abuse in my opinion, so that officers can't look up say some ex girlfriend's license plate, but if they get a warrant they can look up some suspect's license plate.
By jncfhnb 2025-10-0718:29 It is an emergent effect of scale. The first principle reasoning logic of small scale examples doesn’t work as you zoom out.
Being able to scope out a small scale example of why something is ok is a very poor indicator of how it operates in a massive one.
By b00ty4breakfast 2025-10-0719:18 >Eh, if a cop sat at a Dunkin Donuts and wrote down every license plate they saw that wouldn't require a warrant
I would say that there is an appreciable qualitative difference between a man using his eyeballs and a piece of paper to write down license plate numbers and a technologically sophisticated network of computerized surveillance apparatus installed over a geographically large area being used to track an individual.
Call me old-fashioned I guess
We knew this going in with Flock: that with full sharing to Flock's network of law enforcement agencies, we'd be trusting our data to every one of tens of thousands of tiny, often completely unaccountable police departments around the country, many of whom wouldn't give the slightest possible fuck about whether they were contravening our own department's general orders. That's why we disabled sharing, first to any out-of-state departments, and then altogether; PDs that wanted data from us could simply call us up on the phone like human beings.
It was implied, both by our department and, more vaguely, by Flock, that sharing was reciprocal: if we didn't enable it, other departments wouldn't share with us. That's false; not only is it false, but apparently, to my understanding, Flock has (or had?) an offering for PDs to get access to the data without even hosting cameras of their own.
That obviously leaves Flock's own attestations of client data separation, and I get the cynicism there too, but basically every municipality in the country relies on those same kinds of attestations from a myriad of vendors, and unlike Flock those vendors have basically nothing to lose (since nobody is paying attention to them).
I think you can reasonably go either way on all this stuff. But you can't run these stacks in their default configuration with their default sharing and without special-purpose ordinances and general ordinances governing them.
I write this mostly to encourage people who have strong opinions about this stuff to get engaged locally. I did, I'm not particularly good at it (I'm a loud message board nerd), and I got what I believe to be the only ALPR General Order in Chicagoland written and what I know to be the only ACLU CCOPS ordinance in Illinois passed.
> I write this mostly to encourage people who have strong opinions about this stuff to get engaged locally. I did, I'm not particularly good at it (I'm a loud message board nerd), and I got what I believe to be the only ALPR General Order in Chicagoland written and what I know to be the only ACLU CCOPS ordinance in Illinois passed.
What’s an ALPR General Order and a ALCU CCOPS ordinance? How did you get them passed?
A General Order is a documented police policy.
Flock is an ALPR.
CCOPS is a model ordinance that requires board approval for any surveillance technology deployments.
Cool, thanks! Any suggestions on how to get something like that implemented in my city?
By tptacek 2025-10-084:12 Find the most important message board or mailing list that politics in your municipality happens on. For us, it's 2-3 Facebook Groups (I wish it weren't, but it's not even a little up to me). Learn as much as you can about how things work, be generally helpful on the forums, volunteer when opportunities open up, get to know the people on your police oversight and technology boards (you probably have both), and start talking to them about this stuff.
Anybody interested in more details, you can reach out and I can shoot you our General Order. I should write this up somewhere.
There are ways to work around that problem.
For instance, just making it a rule that they are not allowed to lie to you about how things are being used -- we know that won't work because if they're willing to lie they are also willing to ignore contract violations.
Instead, put in a rule that says misuse of the system costs $X for each documented case. Now the vendor has a financial incentive to detect misuse, and the purchasers have a FINANCIAL incentive to curb misuse by their own employees.
It's not a magic fix, but it's the sort of thing that might help.
By godelski 2025-10-0717:15 Those are the same thing. Either way you need to go to court. Putting a number in doesn't magically make the contract more binding.
By colechristensen 2025-10-0717:102 reply Better: require them to purchase misuse violation insurance.
Make a neutral third party liable for the cost and then that third party which is mostly disinterested gets to calculate risk and compliance procedures.
The only way we're really going to get data handling under control is to give the victims of data abuse financial beneficiaries of liability through the courts and insurance companies.
By wat10000 2025-10-0718:59 Better yet: make willful violation of constitutional rights a crime, with repeat violations punishable by prison, and an independent body empowered to investigate and bring charges against officers.
By jasonjayr 2025-10-0717:17 ... a neutral third party where the some of the board of directors have a seat at the camera company, or city concil seat?
This all ends in corporate feudalism, doesn't it?
By Forgeties79 2025-10-0718:50 I would ask them “why bother with DUI laws if some people will drive drunk anyway?”
If the only way we can have rules is if they are 100% followed 100% of the time, then we wouldn’t have any rules to begin with. Very publicly revoke the licenses of people who break your rules. You can’t stop everybody, but you can do something. This is just a lame excuse for in action.
By heavyset_go 2025-10-0719:06 I want to know how much Flock paid the guy who came up with, "How could we know that building a nationwide panopticon for police would be used for police-state things?"
Flock could shut off any PD they think is abusing their product. No excuses.
By hnrich 2025-10-0718:57 Then they will stop getting paid. They do not want to stop getting paid.
By jayd16 2025-10-0717:16 If only there was a process where a trusted individual could judge if an invasion of privacy was warranted.
By pyrale 2025-10-0718:01 In yet another set of words: we built a spy network, how could we ever know that people were going to use it to spy on people?
By BriggyDwiggs42 2025-10-0717:52 Imagine being the person who talks to the media on behalf of the police mass surveillance company. Like man you fucked up in this life if that’s where you ended up.
By b00ty4breakfast 2025-10-0717:19 Maybe they should've tried not getting into the "dystopian surveillance network" business.
By advisedwang 2025-10-0717:53 If only there was some person with good JUDGEment who could decide whether a situation WARRANTs police having data.
By mulmen 2025-10-0717:44 This is the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” bad faith argument applied to surveillance technology.
By awlirjalwk 2025-10-0718:50 I mean, this argument has worked for the firearms industry for centuries.
But oddly not for encryption ...
A lot of folk tried to justify the situation as being not as bad as it sounded, citing the official narrative as a source of truth.
It's amazing to me that people will still trust police narratives.
It's the same in the UK. I first became aware of it after the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting. He was the innocent electrician shot in 2005 as part of a terrorism panic. Every detail released by the police to justify the killing turned out to be a lie. Having paid attention since then I've come to realise it is standard practice.
Police behaviour in public inquiries (usually stonewalling and obfuscating) has been so bad that the government has just passed a law placing a "duty of candour" on the police and other civil servants, with criminal penalties for serious breaches.
That was less than a month ago so we'll see how it works.
By hylaride 2025-10-0718:39 Similar story with the infamous NYC case of Kitty Genovese in the mid 1960s, whom was sexually assaulted and murdered. The police claimed dozens of people heard and saw her screams, but nobody did anything. The truth was many people called the police, but nobody came. It was an essentially a coverup, but it did end up becoming a symbol of NYC’s moral decay. The narrative wasn’t officially challenged until many years later. (There is a recent is documentary out there where her brother digs into it all).
Lying in an official statement is already an illegal act punishable by jail (Perjury act of 1911).
Don't hold your breath.
By rcxdude 2025-10-0719:11 Duty of Candour is a lot stronger than perjury. You can obstruct an investigation in all kinds of ways without perjuring yourself (especially since the standard of evidence is quite high). Duty of Candour basically makes any kind of obstruction an offense.
By chaps 2025-10-0719:21 Yeah. And lying cops still testify despite.. systems.. inplace to prevent that sort of thing: https://chicagoreader.com/news/police-misconduct-brady/
(disclaimer, I'm one of the authors)
By collingreen 2025-10-0717:07 The alternative is sometimes life shattering cognitive dissonance and then a constant feeling of dread. So much of the human condition is willful ignorance it's kind of amazing anything works.
By hughieloseit 2025-10-0717:461 reply The majority of the global population still abides faith based story mode narratives.
American conviction in religion has fallen ~20% since 2000 but that still leaves ~60% bought into skywizards as media owned by older more religious intentionally helps peddle Newspeak that obfuscates attempts to bring science to the masses.
By terminalshort 2025-10-0718:231 reply Conviction in religion has fallen 0%. It's just that the new religion doesn't call itself a religion.
By terminalshort 2025-10-080:181 reply Mostly seems to be political views.
By terminalshort 2025-10-081:061 reply IDK, you'd have to ask the people that treat politics like their religion these days. They're everywhere. Doubt it would help, though, because those people will never admit to it being their religion even though it very obviously is.
And maybe this has something to do with your personal definition of religion not matching the one that the rest of the world is operating under.
"This is something I believe in firmly and will defend my belief in" is not what makes something a religion.
Real religions have tenets, rituals, and beliefs beyond things like "people deserve to be treated well".
By terminalshort 2025-10-0819:271 reply Oh, but they do have rituals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_acknowledgement, an did you see the Charlie Kirk reaction?
By chaps 2025-10-0821:04 Love me some confirmation bias about how bad the "other side" is at inserting its dogma into its surroundings.
Here's mine: at my grandfather's funeral, the head pastor was comfortable enough in himself to start complaining about "cancel culture" in front of everyone while my grandfather's dead body was ten feet away from him.
Everything's so fucked.
It's amazing to me that people who openly distrust obviously untrustworthy US police departments continue to trust the US federal government.
There's a difference between trusting cops, trusting the high-level branches of the US Government, and trusting the various departments of the US bureaucracy.
For example, I trust NOAA or NASA, used to trust the CDC, would never trust the CIA or FBI (because cops).
By chipsrafferty 2025-10-083:202 reply Why no longer trust CDC?
By locopati 2025-10-0918:29 I'm sure the employees are doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. but i doubt the administration is going to be truthful about any disease outbreaks. and they're already pushing anti-vax nonsense.
By queenkjuul 2025-10-085:51 Bobby K
By Zigurd 2025-10-0718:07 Distrust isn't a single thing. Distrusting cops is an entirely different kind of distrust than distrusting RFK Jr. RFK Jr kills people with pseudoscience. Cops go hands-on. I don't know enough about the statistics to compare the magnitude of killing. But I do know that the solutions would have to be completely different.
By potato3732842 2025-10-0717:381 reply >It's amazing to me that people will still trust police narratives.
I wouldn't care if they were at least consistent.
What I take issue with is that the same individuals will toss the official narrative if it contradicts their viewpoint. That is a personal moral failing.
By titzer 2025-10-0718:23 The Orwellian doublespeak is just a sign of the requisite cognitive dissonance surfacing whenever it conflicts with the necessity of maintaining in-group/out-group dynamics.
Huge disconnect between these narratives:
- Crime is out of control, requiring deployment of active duty military to multiple cities.
- Police are so bored they are sifting through security cameras on fishing expeditions to maybe find someone accessing medical care.
By RandomBacon 2025-10-0718:161 reply Those are not mutually exclusive.
By Forgeties79 2025-10-0723:55 I’m not sure that I buy that argument but either way the data clearly shows crime has fallen consistently over the decades. Even over the last couple of years. This narrative that cities (of course only Democrat-dominated cities) are so crime ridden that they are basically under siege is completely manufactured.
The governor of my state went out of his way to ask Trump to come crack down on a few cities (all overwhelmingly or somewhat leaning blue) despite drastic drops in crime rates over the last five years. Ignoring the fact that he is the governor and has a super majority Republican legislature, meaning that ultimately he is saying “daddy Trump come save me I can’t do my job uwu,” he also very conspicuously left his home city off the list despite it sharing a similar population size and crime rate as another major city on the list.
It’s all a sham. The data does not bear their message out.
Crime is actually at its lowest point in 40 years, but you wouldn't know it looking at the constant fearmongering by legacy media and conservative politicians alike.
As a person old enough to remember the War on Drugs, I can agree that people who think things are worse now must have spent the late '80s/early '90s sheltering in libraries or something.
By 542354234235 2025-10-0812:37 It was also before the "if it bleeds, it leads" explosion of crime reporting starting in the 90s.
By stocksinsmocks 2025-10-0719:082 reply [flagged]
By runako 2025-10-0719:29 Sigh. I really do not want to get into the politicized language around abortion. Especially in this specific case, where we do not know many relevant facts. Let's just use the language in the police report:
> the abortion/miscarriage
Presumably that is neutral enough?
Back to my original point, which is that crime is not out of control. You say that
> Police believed they had identified a crime and investigated it
which is at odds with what the police say:
> No charges were ever filed against the woman and she was never under criminal investigation by Johnson County.
I am guessing the police have more information about this than you do.
The police creeped on a woman, invaded her extremely personal business, wrote reports about it with knowledge those reports could become public, without any of it being in service of crime reduction.
Edit: I'm not fully up-to-date on the law, but my understanding is that there is no justiciable crime in Texas around a woman herself terminating a pregnancy using medical means. Police could have witnessed her consuming the medication and there still would be nothing to charge as no crime would have occurred.
By sofixa 2025-10-0719:19 > post-partum abortion
What the fuck are you talking about?
By mrguyorama 2025-10-0718:152 reply There actually doesn't have to be a disconnect between the narratives.
It could be possible that crime is out of control because police are doing these things instead of their actual job.
Compare the efforts police will go through to play with their toys vs the efforts they will go through to actually solve crime.
Despite living in a literal panopticon where the cops can buy infinite tracking information on anyone and even on just a query, violent crime clearance rates are abysmal.
Police just don't do their jobs.
edit: I do not actually believe crime is out of control, because it is not. I believe that cops are bad actors and liars.
Narrator: crime was not, in fact, out of control.
https://projects.csgjusticecenter.org/tools-for-states-to-ad...
By runako 2025-10-0719:40 > Police just don't do their jobs.
So naturally, our police budgets increase every year.
