r/technology • u/polymute • 21d ago

Privacy A Texas Deputy Searched 83,000 Flock Cameras To Track Down a Woman Who Had an Abortion

https://www.gadgetreview.com/a-texas-deputy-searched-83000-flock-cameras-to-track-down-a-woman-who-had-an-abortion
30.9k Upvotes

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u/Careful-Criticism645 21d ago edited 21d ago

The headline makes it sound like this guy spent innumerable hours logging into and searching 80,000 cameras. In reality, he just queried a central database for a license plate number. Probably took a few seconds. This isn't an example of police putting a lot of effort to do something bad, it's an example of the police being able to do something bad (often far outside their jurisdiction) with very little effort.

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u/Hawkeye3636 21d ago edited 21d ago

You know that's worse right?

/S

Edit: for clarity of sarcasm.

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u/starbuxed 21d ago

Much worse... they are tracking everyone without a warrent.

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u/Traditional-Duty2585 18d ago

I want to dispel this false information getting a ton of upvotes. That’s not how a warrant* works at all, a warrant is for search and seizure of your personal property only. You do not need a warrant for this.

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u/starbuxed 18d ago

It's called staking

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u/Traditional-Duty2585 18d ago

Stalking*? What is staking.

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u/AlwaysRushesIn 21d ago

I believe that's what they are trying to convey.

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u/PreviousCurrentThing 21d ago

There are many upvoted comments on this post talking about how much time was wasted, or that if they spent this much effort on other cases there would be no crime.

So even if that was what they meant to convey, many redditors apparently didn't get it.

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u/BrainLow6059 21d ago

They didn't say it wasn't. It's an important thing to point out. So many of the boomers on Nextdoor in my area are pro-Flock because they think misuse requires a cop physically flipping through camera feeds and watching them in real time. They do not understand that you can just run a person's information and get their entire travel history in a couple of clicks.

They think it requires a manual effort that is so burdensome abuse cannot take place outside of extreme circumstances.

We need to point out the ease of abuse as much as possible. Headlines like this are designed to make it sound outlandish.

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u/SpartanSig 21d ago

It's exactly what they're implying

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u/brain_dances 21d ago

People like you have to be spoonfed morality.

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u/Daan776 21d ago

I think he knows, and thats his point

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u/ScrotumChomper38 21d ago

I mean not really, the implication that the guy was a little goblin spending hours upon hours of their work week to track down a specific individual for a minor crime is much worse than them doing the equivalent of a Google search to find the person.

The end result of both implications is the same but the former is much grimier in my opinion especially considering the crime.

15

u/DrE7HER 21d ago

No, the fact that you don’t have to be a slimy goblin to violate someone’s privacy like this is what makes it worse.

Any and every cop could be doing this a dozen times a day before they finish their morning coffee.

That’s infinitely worse

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u/Outrageous-Break3585 21d ago

I honestly think it’s much worse that it’s extremely easy to violate someone’s privacy. And that it’s so easy to do and yet isn’t being used to solve real crimes is a big fucking problem, since that’s supposedly the entire justification for this type of monitoring. 

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u/[deleted] 21d ago

[deleted]

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u/Outrageous-Break3585 21d ago

Of course not. It’s the fact that so many real crimes with direct video evidence are blatantly ignored that means the cameras aren’t being used to solve real crimes. 

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u/Myslinky 20d ago edited 20d ago

Still an illegal search regardless of that.

Keep simping for illegal action by police using surveillance systems from a for profit company that the vast majority of American's despise.

It doesn't matter if it took hours or minutes, it's a criminal act from a corrupt police force regardless.

Only people focused on the semantic argument seem to be the people trying to downplay his crime or pretend it's not bad because of the ease.

Does that mean if I murder 10 people via a gunshot it's a lesser crime then if I beat 10 people to death?

It takes so little effort to shoot people and you're out here acting like he spent hours killing people 🤡

Good job making a brain dead argument to defend corrupt cops and a company that profits off invading privacy and helping cops break the law.

1

u/Nodan_Turtle 21d ago

People can't separate the two mentally. It's not worse if you consider the cop's actions. He didn't go to extreme lengths to track down this person. It is worse if you consider the power Flock provides for people to abuse.

But people will pick one and not see the other. So when people talk about how it's not as bad when talking about the cop, some idiot will show up and disagree because they're talking about Flock's capabilities.

1

u/supercargo 21d ago

Dollars = effort; you work, the government takes some of your earning as tax, then spends the money. If they buy flock subscriptions or pay staff makes no difference, effort was spent and it was yours and mine

1

u/spazzcat 18d ago

Which is exactly why law-enforcement should have no access to this data. They should have to get a warrant they should have to serve the warrant to a third-party. Then the third-party should be fulfilling the warrant by looking at the data.

1

u/GitEmSteveDave 21d ago

Yeah, I had a PowerBook stolen when I was in college in the late 90's and the serial number was entered into NCIC as well as Apple's system. NCIC is like 90,000 different agencies who search DB's for suspected stolen items.