Comment on Dayton, Ohio covers its own 72 Flock cameras with trash bags after data went to ICE by chrisvpnet

Parent Post: Dayton, Ohio covers its own 72 Flock cameras with trash bags after data went to ICE · In Reply To

chrisvpnet · 6/11/2026, 2:38:47 AM · permalink

The camera gets a digit wrong, a common one is zero vs O 0O0O really hard for the cameras to make out, especially when different plates use different fonts.  
  
Here is an example of that particular issue, this poor 76 year old woman has been pulled over repeatedly because  of 0 vs O issue:  
https://guessingheadlights.com/colorado-grandma-keeps-getting-pulled-over-because-police-cameras-cannot-tell-the-difference-between-a-zero-and-the-letter-o/  
  
In this case, it misread a 7 as a 2.  They pulled him over and immediately ordered him out of the truck. He kept asking why he had been pulled over. Police said they were going to deploy a K9 unit if he didn't get on the ground. As he started to get down on the ground, they released the dog which grabbed him by the dreadlocks, smashed his face down on the ground and sunk his teeth into his arm.  After being released from the hospital, he spent around 4 hours at the police station before they dismissed all charges, because the camera got the plate wrong and he was in fact the truck's registered owner.  
https://www.businessinsider.com/flock-safety-alpr-cameras-misreads-2026-3  
  
In San Francisco, a 47 year old woman was pulled over by multiple squad cars and between 4 and 6 offices pointed their guns at her, including  shotgun and told her to raise her hands and exit her car. She was then ordered to kneel and was handcuffed. Four officers kept their guns pointed at her through the entire stop as they searched her car for about 20 minutes. The officers were responding to a tip from Flock Safety, which got a character wrong.  
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/san-francisco-woman-pulled-out-car-gunpoint-because  
  
In this case, officers pulled over a Tahoe, drew his weapon and detained the driver, a female passenger and her 1 month old child.  Again, the camera got a character wrong, leading to a cop pointing a gun at a mother and her 1 month old child.  
https://katv.com/news/local/sherwood-stop-sparked-after-flock-camera-misread-plate-by-one-letter-as-stolen-katv-news-share-inform-public-community-safety  
  
This 62 year old woman on her way to work at a nursing home was pulled over and ordered to get out of the car with her hands up. In this case, criminals had stolen her license plate, used it to commit crimes, then put her plate back on, which is very common in some areas like Oakland, where this happens. But, it also points to another issue. Cars don't commit crimes. If someone uses your car or license plate and commits a crime, you may get pulled over and treated as a dangerous criminal:  
https://oaklandside.org/2026/03/23/alameda-county-sheriff-flock-safety-license-plate-camera-thieves/  
  
That same article discusses another issue: rental cars. If you rent a car, but a previous renter committed a crime, again, you may be treated as a dangerous criminal. That article discusses how that happened to Brian Hofer and his brother, who were pulled over at gunpoint, because months earlier, someone had committed a crime in that rental car.  
  
There are MANY more cases like this.  
  
Now, you raised a good point. They are supposed to be looking for a specific plate number AND color, make and model of the car, which should prevent this from happening, right?  
  
In almost every case I just mentioned, the officers "confirmed" the plate number (which was wrong), and in each one, the vehicle did not match, but that did not stop them from pointing guns at these people.  The lady in San Francisco was driving a burgundy Lexus car. The stolen vehicle tip was for a gray GMC truck. Not even close.  
The 62 year old woman on her way to work was in a silver Honda Fit. Police were looking for a black Honda Civic. Very different body styles and color.

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saarnok · 6/11/2026, 3:43:48 AM · permalink

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chrisvpnet · 6/11/2026, 4:04:31 AM · permalink

Oh yea, it's for sure improper use in these particular situations, however the problem is the technology is changing quickly and it's not financially possible to properly train every single officer on how to use the technology and keep them up to date on advancements, so they are just given the app, told the basics and off they go.   
I'm not sure that's a problem that can be solved, because it would require a massive investment in training, which means huge budget increases at every single police station, many of which are already struggling to operate within their budget.  
  
But, these are just accidents during proper use. There are also MANY cases of abuse, such as officers stalking their partners, their partners exes, their exes, etc. There was even a case of an officer regularly watching children's gymnastics classes live from a Flock AI camera inside a Jewish Children's Center.  
  
And then there's the security issues. These can, and have been hacked. And sometimes, you don't even have to hack them, because they just leave the default password on or in some cases, have no password protection at all, so literally anyone can login and operate cameras. 404 Media did that with 60 cameras, and controlled one to take videos of himself to prove it. He found the cameras pointed at children's playgrounds, churches, political organizations and rallies and protests.  
  
And then, there's the really bad stuff. When we had Dan Haley from Flock Safety on Hide & Speak, I told him that this technology could potentially be used to assassinate a world leader and he laughed at me.  
  
Roughly 2 weeks later, Israel announced that they had hacked traffic cameras in Iran and used them to track the locations of their Ayatollah to the building where they executed him.  Our infrastructure is under CONSTANT attack from Russia, North Korea, China in addition to hacker groups, private organizations, individuals, etc. Many of them absolutely have the ability to hack Flock cameras and could use that to track the movements of our political and military leaders, use it to find our hidden military bases, etc.  
  
You don't have to just look at the dangers of proper use, you have to look at all possible dangers, and they are extensive and have potentially world changing implications.

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saarnok · 6/11/2026, 4:38:03 AM · permalink

I think the angle of attack should not be directed at what seem to me, and I presume most other people to be blatant abuses of police power.  
  
I also think it's really playing into the narrative of innocence to suggest that cops need to be trained to not be idiotic pervs and power abusers. That excuse wouldn't fly for me or you for even a hot second and shouldn't work for a cop for god's sake for a nanosecond.  
  
Don Haley laughing at you is the reaction of someone who knew damn well that what you were saying was completely reasonable, and you can damn sure bet he thought of it before you did.  
  
That said: I was literally next-door adjacent to a Joe Biden rally in 2020 and I can assure you beyond any doubt, the Secret Service absolutely did NOT check me out!  
  
It seems our security services are beyond incompetent, simply lazy and stupid.  
  
It would have been absolute simplicity for me to have taken him out, maybe even with decent odds of escape and they didn't do even the least degree of securing the perimeter that you or I would have done in their place.  
  
The Israeli's seem to be tops in their profession, but I'm not sure the competition is very stiff.  
  
If I were in your shoes I'd switch from framing the cop incidents as tech problems to framing them as ludicrously accepted excuses. Seriously, this is only slightly better (though I'm not sure why) than claiming they had a "funny feeling" they needed to pull over those people.  
  
Clearly, the excuse doesn't match the reality. Clearly. So, why is anyone giving them a pass other than because it feels helpful in presenting the technological innovation in a bad light?  
  
The very fact that you have to pull individual instances which are all clearly problems of people deciding to ignore the information or clearly abusing the potential power for their own purposes indicates it's not a problem innate to the tech. It's a problem innate to the people involved and the lack of transparency in what they're doing.  
  
Someone aims a camera at a group of prepubescent girls? Who? Get past the hurdle of "them" having privileged and unaccountable access and the problems largely disappear.

9 bumps

chrisvpnet · 6/11/2026, 1:17:35 PM · permalink

"I think the angle of attack should not be directed at what seem to me, and I presume most other people to be blatant abuses of police power."

"If I were in your shoes I'd switch from framing the cop incidents as tech problems to framing them as ludicrously accepted excuses. Seriously, this is only slightly better (though I'm not sure why) than claiming they had a "funny feeling" they needed to pull over those people."

This may be true, but functionally, does it matter? It is financially impossible to have true oversight. In Dunwoody, GA, a man filed records requests to see what Flock data was being looked at in the past 30 days. NOT including Dunwoody, GA police, there were so many searches done on Dunwoody residents from OTHER law enforcement agencies, that they would not put it into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet because it exceeded the maximum row limit in Excel, which is 1,048,576 rows btw.

One town, one month, more than 1 million searches done from OUTSIDE their city, NOT including the searches they did themselves.

To do real oversight, at a minimum, you would need to pull up each search, made, review the reason the officer entered, search for and open up the case file and briefly review it to make sure the reason stated makes sense. I think it would be EXTREMELY generous to say this could be done in 30 seconds per search. In reality, I think a minute average is still probably a bit low, but I will be generous and say they can pull it off in only 30 seconds.

Again, we don't know how many searches there were, we just know it was MORE than 1,048,576. It could literally be 5 million searches, but we'll just use the number we know, which is the lowest possible number it could be.

1,048,576 searches x 30 seconds each = 31,457,280 seconds = 524,288 minutes = 8,738 hours, 8 minutes = ~1,092.25 x 8 hour shifts, we'll be generous again and round down to 1092. Let's say they do this in 3 x 8 hour shifts per day, so people are reviewing these 24 hours per day. 1092 / 3 = 364 x 24 hour days worth of work. Since there will be data every month, they need to finish this each month. 364 / 30 = 12.133 officers. Obviously, you can't have .133 officers, so that means that one police department would need to have 13 additional officers on staff 24/7/365 to be able to review these searches. And remember, these aren't even THEIR searches, these are just searches made by OTHER agencies, and again, we used the lowest possible numbers, it could've been 5 million searches for all we know.

And again, that's 13 officers on 24 hours a day, which actually means 39 new officers, just to review the external searches. In reality, if it included ALL of the external searches plus the internal ones, it's highly likely they would need to hire 50+ full time employees to do nothing other than review Flock searches. Dunwoody, GA officers start out at $62,301 per year which can rise to $99,682, plus they get a $15,000 signing bonus.

Adding 50 officers would cost the city:

$15,000 signing bonus x 50 = $750,000 one time expense  
$62,301 starting pay x 50 = $3,115,050 / year in salary  
~$30,000 in benefits x 50 = $1,500,000 / year in benefits

$4,615,050 per year + $750,000 one time.  
  
The 2026 budget shows $14.5 million for the police department in Dunwoody. This would require a 31.8% increase in their annual budget, plus the bonuses. That money has to come from somewhere - either more taxes, or cutting other services, neither of which would be very popular.  
  
The Dunwoody, Georgia police department. only has 58 officers. They would have to nearly double in size just to have the manpower to provide real oversight.

They would also need somewhere to set up 17 desks for them to work from (and that means sharing your desk with 2 other people on different shifts, which most would probably not be ok with).  
  
You would also need to have a supervisor on for all 3 shifts, that's 3 more salary/benefit/signing bonus packages.  
  
Basically, in order to have true oversight on these Flock searches, we basically have to double the number of law enforcement officers in the US, which would be a wildly unpopular idea. And also inflate the police budget by more than 30% in most cities, leading to increased taxes or a reduction of other services, which would also be wildly unpopular. So, any politician who tries to do this, would become hated very quickly and wouldn't get reelected.  
  
And again... I have still only seen ONE study showing that Flock cameras actually reduce crime, and it was paid for by Flock Safety and highly criticized by independent researchers and scientists.  On the other hand, there are several studies from cities showing no benefit, and in some cases, crime got worse.  
  
So, to recap, we're talking about a technology that:  
  
1\. Does not work as intended. It is supposed to help solve more crimes and prevent crime. The numbers do NOT reflect that.  
2\. Can and has been misused many times.  
3\. Has almost no oversight in most jurisdictions.  
4\. Costs the taxpayers a lot of money.  
5\. Can and has been used to target political opponents, dissidents, people seeking abortion care, BLM protesters, MAGA protestors, etc.  
6\. Can potentially be used to assassinate world leaders.  
7\. Can (and has) been hacked.  
8\. Cannot have true oversight without nearly doubling the number of LEOs and increasing every PD budget by 30%+ leading to increased taxes and reduced services.

7 bumps

saarnok · 6/11/2026, 4:27:20 PM · permalink

That's very compelling.  
  
 What if every search cost a dollar and abusing the system cost $10,000 per incident?  
  
It seems the system isn't administered in any real sense of the word, meaning no one is responsible for how it's used or misused.  
  
Dunwoody is a small town. Someone needs to explain why a town of less than a hundred thousand should be the locus of tens of millions of searches per year.  
  
There's something missing in this information. It's perhaps in some sense reasonable that one cannot realistically view the information in  aggregate, but surely the raw number is knowable at the very least.  
  
As with any large set of numbers, some "frequent flyer" will make up the bulk of these searches. Again, this shouldn't be tricky to find out.  
  
FLOCK specifically seems to be designed to obscure those who access it while providing no protection for the public.  
  
What this indicates is not that security of this sort is useless or worse, but that this implementation is in all likelihood an outright scam.  
  
There is no logical chain that I can follow which comes to the conclusion that more information leads to criminals being as able to operate as before, and certainly not that criminals are even more able than before.  
  
What this indicates from a reasonable perspective is that the system simply is not being used for it's advertised purpose. It simply cannot be the case that criminals prosper due to lack of information and that increasing information does not decrease criminal activity. It just cant.  
  
The problem must therefor lay in the law enforcement/justice system itself.  
  
I'm obviously not well versed in this issue, so understand my musings are largely speculative.  
  
But, it wouldn't be out of character for many jurisdictions to fail to capitalize on using a tool such as this for it's advertised purpose because the criminals caught would too often fall into one particular demographic.  
  
Anyway, your case is well made.

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chrisvpnet · 6/11/2026, 5:16:19 PM · permalink

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saarnok · 6/11/2026, 7:15:36 PM · permalink

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