Police behaviour in public inquiries (usually stonewalling and obfuscating) has been so bad that the government has just passed a law placing a "duty of candour" on the police and other civil servants, with criminal penalties for serious breaches.

That was less than a month ago so we'll see how it works.

I wouldn't care if they were at least consistent.

What I take issue with is that the same individuals will toss the official narrative if it contradicts their viewpoint. That is a personal moral failing.

American conviction in religion has fallen ~20% since 2000 but that still leaves ~60% bought into skywizards as media owned by older more religious intentionally helps peddle Newspeak that obfuscates attempts to bring science to the masses.

That's one view of justice anyway. I'm more inclined towards crimes being against specific persons or groups of distinct persons, in which case your thesis would be correct, but it's a minority opinion.

For instance, just making it a rule that they are not allowed to lie to you about how things are being used -- we know that won't work because if they're willing to lie they are also willing to ignore contract violations.

Instead, put in a rule that says misuse of the system costs $X for each documented case. Now the vendor has a financial incentive to detect misuse, and the purchasers have a FINANCIAL incentive to curb misuse by their own employees.

It's not a magic fix, but it's the sort of thing that might help.

I think this is a legitimate problem.

But...isn't this what warrants are for? With a warrant, the police have to say why they want to perform a search to a judge, under threat of perjury. They have a powerful incentive not to lie.

So...should warrants be required for this kind of Flock data also? Couldn't Flock set a policy that these searches are performed only under warrant? Or a law be enacted saying the same? I imagine it would make Flock much less attractive to their potential customers, and searches would be performed much less often. [1] So it's not something Flock is going to do on their own. I think we'd need to create the pressure, by opposing purchases of Flock or by specifically asking our elected representatives to create such a law.

[1] If I'm being generous, because of the extra friction/work/delay. If I'm being less generous, because they have no legitimate reason a judge would approve.

It was implied, both by our department and, more vaguely, by Flock, that sharing was reciprocal: if we didn't enable it, other departments wouldn't share with us. That's false; not only is it false, but apparently, to my understanding, Flock has (or had?) an offering for PDs to get access to the data without even hosting cameras of their own.

That obviously leaves Flock's own attestations of client data separation, and I get the cynicism there too, but basically every municipality in the country relies on those same kinds of attestations from a myriad of vendors, and unlike Flock those vendors have basically nothing to lose (since nobody is paying attention to them).

I think you can reasonably go either way on all this stuff. But you can't run these stacks in their default configuration with their default sharing and without special-purpose ordinances and general ordinances governing them.

I write this mostly to encourage people who have strong opinions about this stuff to get engaged locally. I did, I'm not particularly good at it (I'm a loud message board nerd), and I got what I believe to be the only ALPR General Order in Chicagoland written and what I know to be the only ACLU CCOPS ordinance in Illinois passed.

You shouldn't.

When a company spies on everyone as much as possible and hordes that data on their servers, it is subject to warrant demands from any local, state, or Federal agency.

> Avondale Man Sues After Google Data Leads to Wrongful Arrest for Murder

Police had arrested the wrong man based on location data obtained from Google and the fact that a white Honda was spotted at the crime scene. The case against Molina quickly fell apart, and he was released from jail six days later. Prosecutors never pursued charges against Molina, yet the highly publicized arrest cost him his job, his car, and his reputation.

https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/google-geofence-locatio...

The more data you collect, the more dangerous you are.

I would rather trust companies making a legitimate effort not to collect and store unnecessary data in the first place

It could be possible that crime is out of control because police are doing these things instead of their actual job.

Compare the efforts police will go through to play with their toys vs the efforts they will go through to actually solve crime.

Despite living in a literal panopticon where the cops can buy infinite tracking information on anyone and even on just a query, violent crime clearance rates are abysmal.

Police just don't do their jobs.