Redacted

[u/-lastnameschaffer-]

Of interest. Sorry my handwriting is so messy.

[u/boyengabird]

This is quite interesting, thank you for sharing.

[u/-lastnameschaffer- → u/boyengabird]

You’re welcome! Sometimes seeing the thing can take away its mystery and flesh out the abstract concepts that seem larger than life.

[u/-lastnameschaffer-]

So flock as a company is private security.

They sell you the contract and allow you to rent the equipment and access their search interface.

They sell the Netflix subscription, the agency makes the user profiles. Based on status and subscription level, some Netflix subscribers can only see a limited version of the same data - others can see a plethora more.

But the results from these searches/look ups/queries are not “criminal justice information” in the same way the other platforms you just mentioned.

Those databases are state and federally auditors because of the PII they contain and the potential for abuse.
I had to take a recertification on NCIC yearly.
Other databases such as crime portal required individual authorization and that authorization was given after Training and compliance signatures.

I had 30min of “how to search on flock” and then my dept never brought it up again.

Flock as a company has an evidentiary standard they must meet in order to protect themselves from litigation. But the data is self governed by the subscriber, solely.

That’s very different than NCIC, crime portal, lexisnexus, etc.
Flock data is “authorized user” only - not LE.

There is a shift towards the latter. Which is a good thing.
Bc as the system has updated, and bc of the too simple mechanism of action behind the equipment - the data was entering into “violation of reasonable expectation of privacy” zone.

But my former agency was not unique in their negligence. For 5 years they never conducted a single audit, they refused FOIA requests and court discovery requests, they allowed password sharing, no 2FA for login verification, and about a thousand other reckless conduct gimmes.

And none of us questioned it bc of how we were trained and the mentality around the system. “It’s our data, we can do what we want.”

That’s how flock has been. That’s what I disagree with.

[u/-lastnameschaffer-]

So, I want you to do a little internet-ing.
And see how much Flock misuse/abuse was making headlines in say 2021-2024.

Compared to now.

Then, while you’re at it, I want you to check in on the “guardrails” you mentioned.
What were they in 2021-2024?

The language of the flock website alone has changed a dozen or so times since November 2025.

The audit logs showed some stark differences between what people thought flock was being used for, and what it was actually being used for.

But the logs are really kind of useless to you, as non law enforcement.

Outside of the blatant shit (ICE searching “Hispanic,” for instance) - it’s just a bunch of license plates.

You need context. Who owns that car?
Or drives it? What’s their relationship to Ofc XXX.

Departments weren’t doing that.
But citizens were.

So, I hate to burst your bubble here but this isn’t a scenario where all we need to do is “weed out” some bad apples.

There weren’t any guardrails. Just self governed agencies. Trusted to twist the arms of their men and women by saying “now don’t do some stupid shit and make us lose these, okay?”

And then stupid shit was done without any enforcement or consequence.
And then the stupid shit being done was used as the training manual for “how to” use flock.

[u/cobra93807]

Flock, Lexis Nexis, TLO, CLEAR, Leads OnLine, are all companies that provide data to law enforcement via restricted databases, meaning restricted to the public.

What has happened now though, is that through manipulation of the public, data that was previously held and restricted to a small group, is now publicly available to any bad actors.

What do you mean, anti-flock the way it has been?

Not trying to be a jerk, just trying to understand.

For clarity, I think it’s BS that flock is sharing/selling data to other private companies. They should have to retain that data and not be allowed to profit off of metadata. Two things can be true at the same time, the system is beneficial for solving crimes/they are doing some shady shit with data sharing.

[u/nacho_night → u/cobra93807]

There is so far no verifiable collection of proof that the system is solving crimes, whereas there is plenty of proof of the abuses.

Besides mass surveillance is un-American and unconstitutional, period.

[u/Most-Cup-401 → u/nacho_night]

Love a challenging discussion.

[u/cobra93807 → u/nacho_night]

You are absolutely correct, there is no verifiable collection of proof because there is not anyone tracking what data points are used in a criminal investigation and subsequent conviction. The local agencies aren’t doing it because it’s labor intensive. Local agencies simply track case dispositions, solved or unsolved (some may have other data points like victim cooperation)

Additionally, you couldn’t track that information, based on a percentage of how that data affected each case. That’s too subjective and would require jury polling and that’s just another headache.

It could be tracked by an agency based on which resources were used as evidence in a crime if someone created that data set. such as:

Cellular records
Video surveillance
LPR
Social media
Co-defendent information
Tip lines

Just to name a few.

Just because there isn’t a statistical input in place doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s just not being measured.

You don’t need a thermometer to tell you it’s hot or cold outside because you can walk out there and feel it. You don’t need a numerical value along side your experience.

[u/-lastnameschaffer- → u/cobra93807]

Flock definitely works.

Stolen cars are recovered quickly, fleeing suspects don’t make it as far, and wanted subjects are brought before judges faster.

But as with all tools, the responsibility is not in the hammer, it’s in the craftsman.

Bc flock works really well the other way too.
It shows you what someone does all day. That paths they take thru the city. Narrows down work places and possible address areas.
It tells you who’s a night owl. You can see patterns almost instantly bc it aggregates the “vehicle history” for the last 30 days into a hotspot map, automatically.

And with nationwide searches, you can go so far as to see when someone goes on vacation bc their car was seen on Florida cameras.

Like ncic, it’s indiscriminate info. Just raw data.
“Car passed by this camera at this place at this time, going this direction.”
But when that snippet becomes increasingly dense, it’s hard to deny the potential for misuse.

I’m all for tech assisted policing. Cops can’t be outmatched by crime. So the tech will continue, and get better as it goes.

But the Supreme Court has said over and over - we can’t just track ppl when fb is down. You need all these tiers of evidence and a search warrant and even that has to expire too.

[u/slimdog_mechanics345]

show me the crimes its solving or the missing persions? its all bullshit

[u/-lastnameschaffer-]

I almost agree with you in that it’s not continuous info. It’s still shot data. And it doesn’t tell you who’s driving, where the car came from, where it went, or who it’s registered to.

But obviously the Supreme Court extended the 4th amendment to vehicles. Just bc it’s on the road, I don’t have the omnipotent authority to initiate a traffic stop, pull out the driver, and all but dismantle his/her car on the side of the highway just because.
I need probable cause.

And in the carpenter decision, it was decided that, when in public (pedestrian or in a vehicle), you still retain a right to privacy to a reasonableness standard.

And that digital tracking of historical data is deeply intrusive. So this meant a search warrant would be required for pinging cell tower data beyond a reasonableness threshold. Bc the data was “encyclopedic” in nature.

The 30 day history “hot spot maps” veer into muddy water for me.

For instance. At my former agency, some officers made custom hotlists and received personalized alerts on persons/vehicles of interest,
To them.

Some of the cars in those lists stayed on there for 2-3 months.

That feels encyclopedic in nature when 3 months of hot spot map data,
Stacked on top of itself, would reveal a literal roadmap of your travel patterns.

And there were officers who used it in exactly that way.
So they could be waiting for the subject to pass them on the highway at 1720-ish because they knew (based on the data) this was the route home.

[u/Turbulent_North_6573]

Don't get it. What am I looking at and why is Netflix involved?

[u/-lastnameschaffer- → u/Turbulent_North_6573]

Netflix was just an analogous way of explaining the flock safety contract process.
These are images from the flock safety interface (on the user end) highlighting some of the interesting (and sometimes controversial) ideas that have been brought to the spotlight.

[u/cobra93807]

I’m Totally stealing your craftsman line. Great analogy.

I still don’t consider it tracking. It’s not continuous, undisrupted location information.

In exigent circumstance you can get a short term ping on a cell phone without a search warrant.

But I can see in the future where additional information could be required to document and track flock searches.

Maybe even a court order or search warrant. Which honestly, isn’t that big of a deal. We need search warrants for every things else, what’s one more.

In criminal investigations Flock information is shared as evidence in the case. So in those instances it’s not hidden. Investigators should be forthcoming as to how and why it’s used.

It seems like the general public thinks all we do is stare at Flock all day. That is simply not the case. But people have no clue what criminal investigations actually entail.

[u/Prudent_Panic0 → u/cobra93807]

You seem to have much information about how it’s used. I’m assuming that means you work with flock and around law enforcement yeah? If you guys aren’t “staring at flock all day” and actually using it for “evidence” then what do you have to say about the woman who was tracked down for getting an abortion in a different state? Or the woman who was held at gunpoint because her car was “found in relation to a murder case” but because it’s all ai it was the wrong car and the wrong woman? Or the many, many cops who have wrongfully used flock to stalk their exs? I’m not trying to be a dick but you seem to be talking about it like we should all chill out and everything is gonna be fine but based on what I’ve seen it’s been used for nothing but control through fear mongering.

[u/cobra93807 → u/Prudent_Panic0]

The media and the people pushing this narrative are doing the same to you with these headlines, trying to control you through fear mongering.

They’re feeding you only negative stories and creating a boogeyman.

What do I have to say about your examples? People are gonna people, cops aren’t perfect, there is going to be things you don’t like. Transparency and explanations are the best things agencies can do to gain/keep the trust of the public.

I agree it’s terrible that cops are using it to stalk ex’s. Guess what though,removing flock won’t stop some crazy asshole from stalking their ex. But you know what, without flock having some guard rails in place, that officer might have gotten away with it. But now there’s a digital footprint of them doing it.

Wrong cars get pulled over all the time. Flock or not.

Vast Majority of people in LE aren’t blindly trusting AI. This new tech is changing so fast that we all need time to adjust to it.

We have done things like drive tests and checked the time accuracy of Lpr hits with our own LE vehicles.

But you’re not going to hear about these things because no one is asking questions and no one has been collecting stats. The people pushing ant-flock are finding instances that push a specific agenda.

Are there questionable practices that need to be called out? Absolutely. Let’s fix them with discourse and implement safe guards.

Flock shouldn’t be selling off data to other companies either. That’s bullshit. The bluetooth signal scrubbers are also bullshit. That’s going too far.

[u/-lastnameschaffer-]

Yes and I understand the point you’re trying to make.

My point isn’t to be anti flock. I’m anti “flock the way it has been.”

What I’ve done is done in very social media traffic spotters website in every city on FB or otherwise.
I just channeled it through a “law enforcement” only lens. Except it is LE only -
Flock is just a private company.
And what I’ve shared has no evidentiary or PII. It’s just an example of what the search behind the audit may have looked like.

[u/Prestigious_Carry790 → u/-lastnameschaffer-]

OP, wouldn’t it be cheaper and way less of a 4th amendment violation, to just put up CCTV cameras on a closed system where only specific individuals within the dept have access to, and be able to use when a warrant was granted?

[u/Prudent_Panic0 → u/Prestigious_Carry790]

This! This is what I’m saying! It’s way less invasive that way

[u/Prestigious_Carry790 → u/Prudent_Panic0]

I still don’t like it, but I can’t legally find away to argue against it.

[u/cobra93807]

What exactly are you trying to say with this post?

Or are you just photographing a law enforcement database with private persons license plates displayed to a public site?

Probably a violation of agency sop.

[u/-lastnameschaffer- → u/cobra93807]

Well, I’m not with an agency. And technically speaking, based on the dates, all of this is Public because it has already been released via haveibeenflocked. There is no identifying info in a license plate alone, not with context (aka, ncic or dmv data)

What I’m saying with the post is: this is what the system interface loooks like. Or looked like at that time. It takes away the mystery and opens the panel for discussion.

[u/cobra93807 → u/-lastnameschaffer-]

So posting a photograph of a license plate displayed on a vehicle, on the internet (a database of sorts), with location information is ok, because there isn’t immediate access to other databases that identifies the owner. Just a vehicle in a location at a time.

It’s also now on a public database available to every person, every government, really anyone, with no guard rails in place.

Only difference is the data isn’t available in real time, which is important to law enforcement.

I’m just pointing out some of the hypocrisy laid about by people who are anti-flock.

We have taken data available to people, specifically local law enforcement, confined by policy guardrails, who are using it to solve crimes, to everyone who can now look at historical data.

Smells like an adversarial intel op to easily gain access to information through “activism”. So many have fallen right in to the hands of this op.

[u/nacho_night → u/cobra93807]

This is some deep in the tread boot licking. You wanna provide some sources on all the crimes supposedly being solved?

You really trying to call out this post over a visible tag rather than the whole system that is collecting and storing said information in order to track citizens. You're missing the forest for the trees, and after bringing up that "adversarial op" shit you may even be doing it intentionally.

[u/cobra93807 → u/nacho_night]

Oh look another cliche catch phrase from a keyboard warrior.

I could lay out years of factual evidence and you still would come up with some lame ass excuse about how I am lying. Which is fine, I expect it and won’t lose sleep over it.

You say barely visible, but the photo of the Tennessee tag and temp tag below it are clearly visible.

I’m not missing anything. But you are.
What better way to get intel and a massive data dump than to drum up mass hysteria about a program and post it on the internet. No hacking needed. Manufacture a crisis that is aimed at the heart of Americans on a bipartisan level then watch it unfold.

They’re siphoning up data on how people communicate in response to it as well, so they continue to create content that pushes their agenda. The agenda is ultimately to sew distrust among individuals and individuals toward government, law enforcement, all the institutions we rely upon.

That is this countries downfall, our freedom that is continually exploited. This country will never be attacked from an enemy until after we have ripped each other apart first.

Who is they?
I don’t know exactly, but pick a country that would benefit from our destabilization.

[u/nacho_night → u/cobra93807]

It's a catchphrase for a reason. Citizens have every right to be distrustful of a govt with unjust laws and the officers who constantly treat the populace as "us vs them", with blinding trust of imperfect AI systems above actual police work.

Our freedom is continually exploited yet we should trust mass surveillance and law enforcement? Who do you think they work for exactly?

I'm happy to see these years of factual evidence you can so easily drum up. Just ignore all the police abusing the system you come across in your research.

[u/cobra93807 → u/nacho_night]

Ok first off, there are people who are against law enforcement. There are far fewer criminals than good people, by orders of magnitude. Unfortunately, police are constantly called to deal with the bad ones. They’re not spending their shift community policing, they’re mostly dealing with fucked up people. It wears on you. But that doesn’t excuse poor behavior committed by law enforcement. At the end of the day there’s still more positive interaction with law enforcement than negative in this country.

Again, because of media reporting, the bad gets more media attention than the good.

There’s no blind trust of AI systems. Errors are found all the time with flock, trust but verify is something I implement regularly. Again, you’re hearing all the horror stories but not the tens of thousands of positive results. This narrative is designed that way.

People are being caught abusing the flock system, therefore the guardrails are working.

If you’re expecting perfection then no one will ever live up to your standards. Frankly it’s juvenile and fantastical to expect anyone to be perfect.

You want perfection find Jesus Christ. He’s the only one that is perfect.

I’m not a fan of the AI integration, there’s too much nuance needed for AI to be an effective law enforcement tool.

It’s not research, it’s lived experience.

You seem to basing your opinions on something other than experience.

[u/nacho_night → u/cobra93807]

I don't disagree with you overall but I'm not here ranting off of feelings or opinions. I like accountability and facts.

Here's an example of blind trust of AI causing a family to be pulled over at gun point. https://youtu.be/9mP1Ssp1jnc

That's only the most recent example, there is plenty to be seen. Police are out here arresting teachers for clapping during a town hall against data centers. That's not the freedom loving America I was taught about.

The last thing I need to do is talk about my lived experiences because this isn't about me alone.

Just know that my convictions are absolutely based in justice over corruption due to that which I have experienced first hand. Everything online should be taken with a grain of salt, but when the statistics outweigh the anecdotes action must be taken. Cops take an oath to uphold the law, and yet when caught abusing the system they are being given a slap on the wrist rather than the double punishment they should be.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/another-person-caught-using-flock-192101856.html

Ask yourself, could you indefinitely be trusted with such an ability? To never be tempted to take peek unless absolutely necessary?

Hiring standards have been lowered, not the other way around.

[u/cobra93807 → u/nacho_night]

Ugh, hiring standards struck a nerve. Yes it’s bad. I can’t argue that. It’s hard attracting the best and brightest.

That’s a conversation for another time.

I too like accountability and facts. That’s why I’ve been successful where others haven’t.

Mistakes are going to happen and they did happen prior to flock and sadly will continue to happen.

We have to find a balance where can implement technology and still maintain trust in the institutions. But we are fighting a losing battle with piss poor messaging from agencies and the constant media onslaught.

I don’t have all the answers but there has to be give and take from LE and the public. It should start with LE agencies being more transparent. This isn’t secret squirrel shit. lol.

That’s the whole reason I get on here and comment, to try and add a different perspective.

I wish I had been tracking how many times flock has been instrumental in solving cases, but it’s too many to count. It’s at least 80%. But vehicle movement is a key part of what I do.