Posted by stevenhubertron 2 days ago
This whole story reads like:
"Something bad happened to Person A. They were accused by Person B of something they didn't do. They were the victim. The victim. Flock doorbell cameras were nearby. They're sort of similar to Ring doorbell cameras but they're Flock. Flock. Did we mention Flock? Person A was a victim, and Flock cameras were nearby. Flock. Flock. Did we mention Flock? Flock cameras were nearby..."
But maybe some people don't see the pattern, so (again, forgive me for writing this!) let me write another story using that same "journalistic" pattern:
"A group of people tortured, raped and killed (or allegedly tortured, raped and killed) a second group of people. The first group of people we'll call a "gang" or a "junta" or a "militia" (as opposed to "a group of people"), the second group of people we'll call "The Victims" (as opposed to "a group of people" -- which was probably another gang, junta or militia!). The second group were Victims! Victims! And during the time of their victimization, their intense victimization, a bunch of Oreo Cookies(tm) sat on the table near where the atrocities (or alleged atrocities!) took place! Oreo Cookies! Oreo Cookies! Did we mention that Oreo Cookies were nearby when the victimization occurred? Oreo Cookies! Oreo Cookies! Oreo Cookies were nearby when the atrocities occured! Did we mention Oreo Cookies? Oreo Cookies were on the table near the victims!"
(Again, forgive me for writing this...)
Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
(AKA: "Guilt By Association")
The article explicitly claims that the police officer claimed that they had footage from a Flock camera:
> "The proof, according to Milliman: Footage from Flock surveillance cameras showing Elser’s forest green Rivian driving through the town from 11:52 a.m. to 12:09 p.m. on the day of the theft."
That's exactly what the headline describes. It's not clear why you're trying to downplay the role of the Flock camera, given that this seems to be the central piece of evidence that the police used, incorrectly.
> Forgive me for writing this
You would need to explain yourself first.
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(It would have been the same story -- just less biased against a single equipment manufacturer in a product category (Doorbell Cameras)...)
So, why couldn't the journalist simply have said "Doorbell camera" every time they said "Flock camera"?
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And when isn't any public facing video camera a "surveillance product"?
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???
Doesn't any public facing video camera (including camera doorbells, including the public facing video cameras on people's smartphones) -- contain the potential for for civil rights implications (and other problems) if misused?
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Is the issue of civil rights implications really with Flock specifically?
Or does the issue exist more broadly with the usage of any public facing video camera where the misusage of that camera results in civil rights implications?
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???
When is any public facing video camera (such as those in people's smartphones) not a "public street surveillance camera"?
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Can we really change the function of a group of devices (which use the same physics and create the same effect), by labeling them something else?
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At least with the police you have rights. When the building inspector gets to rifle through the Home Depot camera records for the plate number of everyone who DIY'd an un-permitted shower renovation or the conservation commission asks Flock for every address the Sunbelt Rentals truck went you have no rights.
Hah!
But just wait until anyone else comes after you. It's beyond insane how you basically have no rights when the parts of the government who aren't gun toting cops are after you (the information gleaned in the investigation thereof.
And this isn't to say the police don't violate rights left and right, they do. But at least you have a shred of hope that the courts will pay out at the end of the day. You've got none of that with the rest of the bureaucracy.
The reason I ask is because it seems like you are trying to turn this into an anti-regulation conversation.
The fact that someone who gets a government paycheck and spends most of their day poking his nose in other people's business with the prospect of levying fines is the defining feature of enforcement. The fact that one may have a bullet proof vest and a gun and the other a safety vest and a clipboard doesn't change much. A government backed threat of a $10k sized problem is still a government backed thread of a $10k problem is close to the same whether you're being railroaded on a questionable DUI (pretty common scandal type) or you've run afoul of some local commissioner/inspector (health, building/zoning, conservation, etc) who's got much more nebulously worded rules/laws at their disposal.
It just boggles the mind that someone facing a $2k criminal fine has all sorts of rights but some inspector can just waltz across your property, be all "this culverts looks too new, you've violated the clean water act, that'll be a ton of money and I'm forcing you to fix it" or "you should have brought X up to modern code when you did Y, that'll be $300/day retroactively back 2yr to the date that X showed up on our records"
You have no real procedural protections from non law enforcement parts of government. They more or less make their own rules for how they operate in enforcement of whatever they're tasked with enforcing. They can use not talking to them against you, etc, etc. Your only "real" option is to plead your case to this office or person who has fairly unilateral power of enforcement and who (unlike with cops/criminal matters) is subject to scant public records or quality of evidince or sharing any of that. Like it's absolutely routine to show up at a hearing for something and then the enforcers read off correspondence, calculations, etc, etc, which you could counter but were never told existed until they're used against you. Not that cops can't do that stuff too, but there's a ton of rules to prevent that from going in their favor which the rest of the bureaucracy mostly doesn't have.
Sure you can sue them, but that'll often cost an obscene amount of money and you can't really do that until after you've been harmed. The whole system up until you get into a "real court" is working against you and more or less presumes the enforcer is correct. Furthermore, unless you sue and you get into a court there's nothing analogous to a judge or jury for these types of things. This is in stark contrast with criminal matters and "high volume" civil matters (e.g. traffic stuff) where they have to at least pay lip service to the principals of it and courts or court like things are on the "default track" for how the process works.
For a real world example, in my town the commissioner would cruise around looking for new windows, issue fines presuming you've done a bunch of renovations, and then pressure people for entry, and if they denied him he'd send them a fine presuming that the entire room was renovated and that plumbing and electrical were done without permits and of course the fine is per day until you're in compliance. And of course even if none of that was done you had to let him in to prove it and he'd nab you for anything else he could. The only "winning" move was to know that the correct answer was "it was an emergency repair GFY." He's gone now thankfully.
> She later watched footage from the victim’s doorbell camera, which was posted on NextDoor, showing the package thief.
It seems like a package theft did in fact happen, and that the house owner themselves chose to put up cameras to record their door and posted the footage of it on the internet. In fact this footage was evidence the person in this article used to exonerate themselves, so this isn't even a general argument against surveillance cameras.
I wish this article explored more why the cops thought the thief was this person, or tried to suggest a better procedure for the police to use. Should the police have been legally required to just send the court summons and not try to talk to the suspect? Is there a better procedure than having a court case for incidents like this where a theft seems to have actually occurred and the police think they have a suspect? How ought the system to work here?
So, this story is about Flock peripherally, and a miscarriage of justice using their tools specifically.
It really doesn't seem like any surveillance camera system, Flock or otherwise, did anything wrong here. Flock (accurately) suggested her car was in the general area when the theft happened, a non-flock camera did record a person stealing the package who was apparently not her, and have no idea how reasonable it was for the cops to think that footage justified charging her (although the fact that they would not show her the footage is very suspicious).
It doesn't seem like there's any particular policy on use of surveillance cameras that would've prevented this false accusation, and this is purely about the cops (or maybe just this one cop) charging someone based on bad evidence; which is problem in and of itself and isn't directly related to Flock or any other brand of surveillance cameras in particular.