Cops Continue To Prove They Can’t Be Trusted With Surveillance Tech

from the give-em-an-inch-and-they’ll-take-a-panopticon dept

This is probably nothing more than another data point in a deluge, but it’s worth pointing out because it’s instructive.

Cops are using a whole lot of surveillance tech these days. Flock Safety has been especially aggressive in pursuing the law enforcement market, offering cops access to a nationwide network of cameras, including many owned and operated by private citizens.

Flock — and its law enforcement partners — have generated a lot of negative press over the last couple of years. Some of this is due to cops abusing their access and/or performing searches for federal agencies that aren’t allowed to directly access Flock’s database. Some of this is due to Flock itself, which has seen the negative press and largely chosen to ignore it.

But now Flock has real problems. Federal legislators are demanding answers to uncomfortable questions. And dozens of cities are attempting to rid themselves of Flock cameras following public outcry and/or evidence of abuse by those with access.

In San Francisco, it’s a blend of both. And the answers/excuses made by Flock and the SFPD make it clear law enforcement agencies cannot be trusted with the tech they now have easy access to.

“During a routine compliance audit in May, SFPD officials found that the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) had queried SFPD’s Flock network on behalf of federal and out-of-state agencies. There were 299 improper inquiries over approximately one year, which accounts for 0.005% of inquiries over that period,” the release states.

Each of these searches performed on behalf of federal agencies broke state law. To its credit, the SFPD pulled the plug on access following the results of this audit. And while that’s the sort of response we’d like to see from more law enforcement agencies, the statements issued by those involved (SFPD, Flock) make it clear the only way to prevent abuse is to never allow cops to have access to this tech in the first place.

Here’s what Flock Safety had to say about the audit results:

A Flock spokesperson in February said the company had disabled its national lookup feature for all California agencies and is confident its privacy protections comply with state law, local policy and community expectations.

[…]

In response to the San Francisco audit, Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel told KTVU that the searches were not a result of a software malfunction, platform issue, unauthorized access, or any failure of the Flock system.

Without more information, it’s impossible to tell whether the first statement issued by Flock (in response to a lawsuit) is true. It could be that feds asked the SFPD to perform local searches, which would lend credence to Flock’s initial statement. The fact that 299 potentially illegal searches took place over the last year doesn’t generate a whole lot of confidence in either the supply or demand side of the Flock equation.

The second statement makes things a bit more clear: this wasn’t SFPD officers going outside of any limitations imposed by Flock or the department itself. Instead, they broke the law by running searches they most likely knew violated state regulations. In other words, this wasn’t Flock enabling lawlessness. This was cops working within the system to violate the law.

The implication gets even stronger now that the SFPD has issued its own statement. This appears to have been officers breaking the law, rather than the law being (accidentally or otherwise) bypassed because the software wasn’t configured correctly.

The San Francisco Police Department identified the activity through a routine audit of its own Flock network and took immediate action, Lewbel noted. 

He added that no out-of-state or federal agencies had direct access to SFPD’s Flock system or any California Flock system. 

The first sentence means something. The second sentence, however, is meaningless. The limitations placed on access by Flock and SFPD policies were circumvented to perform exactly the sort of searches they were meant to prevent. This audit could have come back completely clean if SFPD officers hadn’t decided to break the rules.

And even if 299 illegal searches are only “0.005%” of the total number of searches, that doesn’t mean the other 99.995% of searches were justified. Most people assume ALPR databases are only accessed when a license plate generates a hit due to prior placement on a watch list. That’s an false impression that’s been perpetrated for years by law enforcement, which constantly claims these are used to track down car thieves, kidnappers, bank robbers, and other dangerous criminals.

But when audits are only looking for searches that route around parameters, they don’t see all the searches being made by cops who are bored or are tracking their exes or trying to hunt down women who are doing nothing more than seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies. The “0.005% of searches” assertion is likely misleading as well. Plaintiffs suing the state over its ALPR use alleged more than 1.6 million illegal searches during the same time period across the state. Not only that, but the number of total searches is likely inflated by those triggered by the system itself, which involve minimal interaction by officers utilizing the ALPR network.

On one hand, if we decide Flock is actually telling the truth this time, the blame lies with the officers who choose to break the rules and the law. On the other hand, if Flock’s representation of the facts is inaccurate, it only means cops who knew what the law was chose to break it simply because they easily could. Neither of these scenarios add up to the SFPD being trustworthy. And splitting the difference just means we can’t trust the SFPD’s camera provider either.

Filed Under: alpr, license plate readers, location tracking, san francisco, san francisco police, surveillance

Companies: flock safety