Police Technology Controversy Deepens as Flock's Camera Software Allows Searching for Writ
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Amid mounting controversy over how police use and abuse its cameras, Flock's long-held position has been that its technology records plates and not the drivers behind them. Its own public trust pages tell customers that its technology is built for specific, case-based investigations and “not for watching people.” Experts who reviewed the AI tool for WIRED say those assurances are hard to square with what they found in the code.
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EngadgetThis gets to one of the primary reasons people are so uncomfortable with Flock cameras. Police officers abuse them. There have been numerous reports that allege that cops have used the technology to cameras to spy on people and stalk ex-partners. This forced the company to introduce a number of safeguards to prevent abuse, like the ability to lock out flagged users and a requirement to attach case codes to searches. We have no idea what kind of safeguards would be needed to prevent abuse with the beta software that Wired took a look at.
MIT Technology ReviewFlock, the police-tech giant known for its network of some 120,000 automatic license plate readers around the US, announced some changes to its platform last Thursday. The updates are meant to prevent officers from using the platform for illegal or illegitimate purposes.
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Wired says the tool can "search for people in an area drawn on a map based on nothing more than a physical description." In other words, an officer doesn't even need a plate, name or a crime to begin searching. They just have to provide a location, a time and a pattern of behavior. The algorithm does the rest.
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WiredDrawing on a network of cameras that logs the movements of drivers in more than 6,000 communities, the tool can pick out potential witnesses by how often their cars pass through a neighborhood, or surface a driver’s “associates” from the cameras they pass together. Because the system also reaches police case files, 911 dispatch logs, and commercial identity records, those plates can be turned into names, home addresses, and relatives. It can search for people in an area drawn on a map based on nothing more than a physical description.
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"I don't know how else to say this, but this sounds completely insane," says Noel Pichardo, a former police officer who reviewed the software and related prompts for Wired. "I don't know how anyone can argue against the idea that Flock literally tracks people."
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Wired“I don't know how else to say this, but this sounds completely insane,” says Noel Pichardo, who was briefed on Flock’s technology during a pilot program while serving as a Pawtucket, Rhode Island, police officer and who reviewed the prompts for WIRED. “I don't know how anyone can argue against the idea that Flock literally tracks people.”
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A current police officer who remains anonymous said that the witness-finding aspect makes him "slightly uncomfortable" but added that "as law enforcement, we need to use every tool available, in spite of what the 'defund' people say." The independent security researcher Buchodi took a more tactful approach, noting that "there are a lot of innocent activities that could be flagged, even if it also might be quite useful for investigators."
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WiredThe detective said the witness-finding prompts made him slightly uncomfortable, but added, “As law enforcement, we need to use every tool available, in spite of what the ‘defund’ people say.”
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Faith Abubey reports. #news #flock... pic.twitter.com/JUimuW3OBi Chad Marlow, an attorney with the ACLU, says that the danger lies in the idea that officers could basically go fishing for crimes. "The difference between a police officer saying, 'Do you see any criminal patterns' or 'Find me criminal patterns' is going to produce two different things," he notes. "And I think the fact that they don't seem to have any limitations on the prompts enables the police to almost lead the AI in what it does."
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WiredChad Marlow, an attorney who runs the ACLU's “Get The Flock Out” campaign, says that is where the danger lies. “The difference between a police officer saying, ‘Do you see any criminal patterns’ or ‘Find me criminal patterns’ is going to produce two different things,” he says. “And I think the fact that they don't seem to have any limitations on the prompts enables the police to almost lead the AI in what it does.”
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Consider, for example, its new requirement that officers enter a case number before running a search on Flock’s platform. This is meant to ensure that searches have a legitimate purpose. But Flock confirmed to MIT Technology Review that it doesn’t verify those case numbers, so an officer can simply enter a bogus one. One could imagine a system that instead requires case numbers that match the police department’s records—a more intrusive integration, perhaps, but also a far stronger safeguard and one that leaves a more useful audit trail.
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WiredBefore an officer runs a search, the software can ask for a justification. The code shows that by default an officer has to type a reason for the search; however, the form appears to place no requirements on what that reason says or how long it must be. If a department also requires a case number, the form checks only that it contains at least three characters. WIRED could not determine whether Flock applies additional checks on its servers after the information is submitted.
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Independent claims that didn't surface elsewhere in our corpus. Treat as supplementary — not corroborated across outlets.
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01 Engadget It's worth noting that this prompt doesn't require that a user input an actual incident or crime. Flock says it's testing the product right now with certain law enforcement partners and that the current capabilities "may not reflect" what it eventually sells. It also hasn't disputed any of the aforementioned capabilities, instead just saying that this is a separate product from the license-plate reader technology.
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02 Wired The suggested prompts sit in a cache of more than 450 files that WIRED found on Flock's own website, served by its login pages to anyone who loaded them. The code describes 45 tools at the AI’s disposal, giving it access to plate scans and camera metadata, arrest records, case files, dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives and associates.
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03 MIT Technology Review Or what about finding people who have been kidnapped or have gone missing, the use case that Flock cites more than any other? Efforts to solve these crimes would hugely benefit from Flock’s nationwide network of cameras. But if Americans want officers to tap into that network only for this purpose, we could design it that way: Searches tied to an active Amber Alert, or a similar emergency, could perhaps access larger amounts of data from surrounding cities. That would preserve the network’s value in emergencies without requiring people to accept mass surveillance.
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Sources (3)
- mittech
- engadget
- wired