According to Flock’s announcement, its Ring partnership allows local law enforcement members to use Flock software “to send a direct post in the Ring Neighbors app with details about the investigation and request voluntary assistance.” Requests must include “specific location and timeframe of the incident, a unique investigation code, and details about what is being investigated,” and users can look at the requests anonymously, Flock said.
“Any footage a Ring customer chooses to submit will be securely packaged by Flock and shared directly with the requesting local public safety agency through the FlockOS or Flock Nova platform,” the announcement reads.
In principle, allowing police to place requests for security camera data is not necessarily a bad thing. There can be legitimate use cases for such functionality. But this needs to be done without sketchy companies like Amazon or Flock being involved and broad legal safeguards for this process (e.g. requests can only be placed for serious crimes).
yeah I feel this way about a lot of things. I think on some level there does need to be people protecting public safety, stopping people from murdering each other (which they very much occasionally do) etc. Do the cops actually do that, do it well, and restrict people’s freedoms only in the minimal and exact ways they need to to do that? …eeeeeehhhh.
I think it’s our responsibility as voters and members of the community to have police forces that are respected, well paid and also who have allegiance to the people at large.
In principle, allowing police to place requests for security camera data is not necessarily a bad thing. There can be legitimate use cases for such functionality. But this needs to be done without sketchy companies like Amazon or Flock being involved and broad legal safeguards for this process (e.g. requests can only be placed for serious crimes).
yeah I feel this way about a lot of things. I think on some level there does need to be people protecting public safety, stopping people from murdering each other (which they very much occasionally do) etc. Do the cops actually do that, do it well, and restrict people’s freedoms only in the minimal and exact ways they need to to do that? …eeeeeehhhh.
I think it’s our responsibility as voters and members of the community to have police forces that are respected, well paid and also who have allegiance to the people at large.
Getting there, that’s the real challenge.