Also, not just an isolated incident: https://youtu.be/8BImTddknfk
We need strong laws preventing any AI process from being used for law enforcement at all. The mere presence of AI at any step in the process should result in complete exoneration.
Edit to respond to smt88:
IBM knowingly selling services to the Nazis specifically to violate human rights is not the same as Flock selling services to cops to aid in identification. In addition, going after 1 business is simply an inefficient use of resources, when the government employees can simply use a different business to abuse their power.
If you sell a tool and know that it'll be used for evil, are you innocent?
Emphatic yes
Bayer lost their exclusive rights to aspirin because they aided the Central Powers during WW1
I want people who break the law to go to jail. I don’t care if they’re cops or c-suite execs.
But what I really want is laws (preferably federal) that make it illegal to build systems that can be used for mass surveillance, and I want law enforcement to HAVE to get a warrant to receive data from surveillance companies, even if they offer it without a warrant, because I want oversight.
Is such a law realistically enforceable? A lot of the surveillance systems used today are benign services like Push Notifications, SMS and online filesharing sites. A significantly motivated threat actor (like the NSA, Unit 8200, Salt Typhoon, etc.) would have no problem appropriating that data for themselves.
Something like an oversight committee might work better, but there would be a bipartisan effort to neuter them the moment they take action.
I simply don't find the argument that something isn't illegal compelling anymore since our justice system is so deeply misaligned with society. We live in the era of grift.
Why?
It seems to me that the biggest problem with policing is qualified immunity that prevents proper feedback (or what my dad would have called "consequences").
Without that, the tools the police use are largely irrelevant.
Turns out police are putting ambiguous plates in the system under all variants, and Flock is lapping it up. The cops who do so should also go to prison.
Insane. Practice.
As always, this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI, but "law enforcement has an insane lazy practice" doesn't make for a very good headline anymore.
Police are starting to use AI as a shortcut to avoid doing actual policing, and that's the real problem.
AI has no place in law enforcement. Its use should result in complete spoilage of the case, and complete exoneration of the accused, with prejudice.
AI has nothing to do with this. Cops have been using facial recognition since the 2010's, computers and databases with glitchy connections even longer than that. AI is just the latest boogeyman hiding the actual issue.
Edit: it was North Dakota, not North Carolina.
Yup, exactly. Look that case up, it had nothing to do with Flock. It was facial recognition software and an old school database built in 2014, so likely not big-data ML (AlexNet hadn't even come out) but classic CV.
Productivity improvements will be needed in all industries. I'd rather have fewer well-paid and well-trained, accountable LEO's that have all the productivity tools they need vs. a mini-army of union-protected tom-dick-harry's grabbed of the street, handed a gun and a database. No thank you.
Maybe if the cops can prove they actually did investigation and were only prompted by the AI to do that investigation, I'd agree. But the whole problem is that the cops are blindly using AI to tell them who to arrest, which is such a blatant rights violation that I can't see how anyone could support it and sleep soundly at night
Also, a non-zero number of cops have been using AI to stalk ex-partners. That's just known cases, and it stands to reason there are also a non-zero number of cops who have done it and not been caught. Since a single such case is too many, it needs to stop.
Also, don't forget, "good" cops who aren't reporting bad cops and trying to get them off the force are also really bad cops
Edit: the one I was referencing was North Dakota, not NC. But there was a very similar case that I think involved Maryland. The fact that there are multiple cases to confuse in this scenario only emboldens my viewpoint that AI has no place being anywhere near LEO
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/29/us/angela-lipps-ai-facial-rec...
As has been explained numerous times, this was a problem with the police and the courts, not AI. Get rid of bad cops first, then worry about AI.
There is no sense in limiting yourself to doing the next-to-impossible task first.
This story wouldn't exist without flock cameras constantly surveilling the public...cameras have EVERYTHING to do with this story.
wouldn't be a story? It should be! We should have a higher standard for the people with guns and a badge on the street.
Let me put in simple terms: Flock flags license plates that are given to it. Someone, somewhere says, license plate "ABCD1234" has a warrant out. And guess what, if Flock sees that plate, it _will_ flag it each. and. every. time!
Tomorrow, say an "Amber Alert" is issued for a pink Ford Taurus with plate "PINKLADY" (when in fact it was a red Taurus with the plate "MADLAD"). Don't you think anyone driving around in a pink Ford Taurus with that plate should be pulled over?
Well then clearly they are not a problem.
Multiple times? Police laziness fueled by AI incompetence
The people getting caught up in this have been pulled over multiple times.
They're alerting on a license plate but yet somehow they can't turn off that license plate alert using just the license plate number? Fucking bullshit
What's the need to allow both `O` and `0` on a plate if it's supposed to be hard to tell apart anyway? Say there was some reason to want to both characters, why allow assigning a new plate which would match with an existing assignment? It's just a loss of time, resources, and safety for both law enforcement and everyone else to allow duplicate matches to be a possibility.
We're approximately halfway down the slippery slope, and I don't see any way out other than hard revolution, which is very touchy talk on the internet.
Ultimately it's all modern capitalism's fault, else there would be much less incentive for these companies to fuel what is rapidly becoming the effective Fourth Reich
The police are not your friends. Their job is to arrest. Some departments still have quotas which incentivize their cops to do this even harder.
The license plates in my state keep numbers and letters separated so they can’t be confused. It’s super low hanging fruit, and I can’t understand how someone could design a license plate system without considering that.
https://www.dafont.com/uk-number-plate.font?text=OO01+III
Software that handles number plates needs to take account of this. Not all of it does but the glyphs being identical makes it quite clear where the responsibility lies.
I'm kinda one of them
ELIZA they are not
Agree.
> As always, this story has have nothing to do with the cameras or AI, but "law enforcement has an insane lazy practice" doesn't make for a very good headline anymore.
Flock allows them to execute their intent at scale. That's a regression, unless it leads to the realization their intent is harmful and stupid.
(Lots of other reasons Flock is bad too.)
The cameras also confuse D and Q with 0 and O. And 5 & S, and 2 & Z, and 6 & G, and 8 & B.
That practice isn't insane. It's what you'd always want.
To the extent that it causes problems, you'd want to fix the practice that doesn't make sense, which is using an alphabet for license plates that contains both O and 0.
That is a suspicion of what might be the problem.
And he's facing a Kafkaesque problem that in order to get him removed from the list they need to know who the warrant is for, but he also can't find out who the warrant is for. Someone can clearly figure this out and help to get it fixed, but he's been unable to talk to a person that has the ability and authorization to query the system to figure it out for him.
We really need some anti-Kafka laws in this country so that if you wind up any sort of list like this, including bans from companies like Apple/Google/Meta/etc, that you have the right to know why and to appeal, and that they must not by default assume that you're a fraudster and refuse to speak with you.
Dont forget the comment from the local police...
"We can remove him from our list...we cant do anything about others list"
only half /s
baby_souffle•1h ago
Or is that just going to be nigh on impossible to use as grounds for a lawsuit?
LocalH•1h ago
garciasn•1h ago