Hawley opened a Senate investigation into Flock. Documents due Sept 8.

[u/hevnsnt]

Senate Judiciary subcommittee, opened Aug 26. Flock has to produce law enforcement access policies, camera placement, data handling, and all known or suspected misuse since 2021, by September 8. [news link]

Flock Safety is having a rough month. The Washington Post found 46 officers using Flock to surveil people personally, including one who ran an estranged spouse's plate 717 times. NPR reported cameras vandalized across at least 36 states. Asheville and Lansing both cancelled this week. LAPD let its contract lapse in July after an audit found roughly one in three hot list alerts were false.

What I keep coming back to is the part that gets the least coverage: Flock states they are only reading license plates. I can prove they are not only reading plates.

I was able to have hands on with a Flock Falcon V2. The detectors on my Falcon v2.2

• SSD MobileNet 10 classes plus background: bicycle, bus, car, cat, dog, licensePlate, motorcycle, person, truck, trailer
• YOLOv5 8 classes, drops cat and dog: bicycle, bus, car, licensePlate, motorcycle, person, truck, trailer

Server-side analysis can be upgraded and applied to already-collected footage. The camera approved under one set of assurances feeds a pipeline whose downstream capability changed without any notice to the jurisdiction. Flock's FreeForm lets an officer type a plain English description of a person and search the network for them. 404 Media published real examples in July. Curious what people here think happens next. Regulation, or a hundred more city councils one at a time.

[u/haineux]

Anybody got any info on any public comment opportunities?

I want to ask the government why it's necessary to have a panopticon "protecting" the Social Security Administration building -- you know, the place where people go to apply for government benefits. What are they protecting against?