> the cop illegally looked up her vehicle information on DAVID
It continually surprises me that these tools operate on basically trust. Why cops have direct access to these databases is baffling. I don't have much hope for florida to regulate its police but at least mandating providing a reason to use the database seems like a very reasonable thing to legislate.
This seems fairly common in most countries, and I would guess the reason is for practical reasons. When police are out they have a fairly high probability to stumble onto more than just the specifics things they was sent out to do, and so they need to have access to check up people and vehicles.
What my country do (and others?) is to keep a strict records of every lookup, with different levels of auditor, some which checks every record in a shallow way and some which do random sampling with more deep checks. The punishment for misuse of the database is also fairly harsh.
Flock knows what inter-agency data sharing is legal and not legal in what states. So you think they'd have the functionality to disable forbidden data sharing when they sign a new agency in that state. They don't do that. "That's not our responsibility." And not only that, but:
Agency: Could we get training on how to do [forbidden data sharing]?
Flock: Absolutely. It's illegal in your state. Now that I've said that, here's how you do it in the app.
Because republicans continue to fight each other over how much they can lick authority boot. Gone are the days of fiscal conservatives or small government… no sir they are all on board for locking this place down.
> Because republicans continue to fight each other over how much they can lick authority boot
Because Americans think everything is a partisan issue, despite things like this happening under multiple federal administrations of differing parties and in States that are, effectively, single party of both major parties.
Just because a party is in power doesn't mean that party hasn't worked towards reform or correcting an issue. Lot's of arguments of "it happens under both parties" completely ignore corrective actions taken under one party and subverted by the other. Police in particular have an insane amount of political power and it would take decades to clean out the rot.
Republican Chester Arthur signed the Pendleton Act / civil service reform, which arguably virtually assured the way to gain power in the civil service was to add people or resources, meaning each president after had to grow the apparatus in order to implement their campaign promises or favors rather than just shit-canning all the previous people and regrowing it to the old size.
Before that the "spoils" system was able to check size of the executive branch as the people were allowed to elect someone to shit-can the previous servants. As it stands now the people have been essentially ripped of their previous voting power to elect an executive to make significant reductions of the civil service.
I think at this point both parties love the effects of civil service reform. Any handwaving about DOGE notwithstanding. It assures that the size of government can really only ratchet up, at least without stars aligning in congress, and bigger civil service means more executive power.
To get the party nomination you need to promise lots of things to lots of people, "I'm going to bankrupt the party favors to those who get me into power in order to help the little guy" might be a decent campaign slogan but you damn well better be pushing to put the peasants in debt/inflation as fast as possible if you actually want to get into office -- or else someone else will and snatch the nomination from you.
This guy only got punished because he wasn't enough of a bullshit artist to come up with an implausible but not-provably-false accusation against her, and he actually said the quiet part out loud about how this is used for tyrants. If he had just stuck to the story he overheard she was slinging crack or something he'd have likely gotten away with it with little more than side eyes and maybe some refresher class for appearances.
He was mad she didn't follow him back on instagram!
> “When Deputy Roman approached she stated, ‘I knew it was you’ and asked, ‘does all my information pop up on your screen?’ and further inquired, ‘How did you know it was me?’ She stated Deputy Roman responded, ‘I told you I'd find you and pull you over.’ She stated Deputy Roman also stated, ‘And I was hoping your boyfriend was in the car so I can pull him out and give him a hard time.’ She stated she responded that she did not think that was a good idea,” the police report reads.
> She said that Roman asked her why she didn’t follow him back on Instagram, that she needed to leave, and said she would follow him back on Instagram but didn’t want to text and drive. She told investigators that she “said this to get Deputy Roman to leave her alone.” She “advised Deputy Roman she was late to getting where she was going and repeatedly asked if she could leave. [She] stated Deputy Roman eventually told her she could leave.”
If you require a reason that is bureaucracy which people complain about for good reason. Requiring a reason adds great cost and we would rather not pay it. We might be forced to because not everybody is honest, but it is much better if we can trust others and so not have to do this.
Who on earth is complaining about bureaucracy in the police station? Maybe the VA, maybe the DMV, maybe the fish and wildlife service, but who wants the men who run around with guns and shoot people to do so without any administrative oversight?
Edit: anyway, the "bureaucratic" overhead of providing a reason seems to be unlikely to impede police work if indeed there is a legitimate reason to access these databases.
People who’ve consumed some of the decades of hollywood movies and TV shows where the hero is portrayed as having to break the rules to get their guys and people enforcing rules are portrayed as officious bureaucrats.
People do complain about bureacracy with the police. They dont phrase it that way. What they say is that when they need the police, its never able to help. People dont realize that in addition to the police being corrupt and lazy, its also because the systems to help can be slow and cumbersome to use effectively and quickly
What an absolutely terrifying situation for that woman. It reminded me of a story from the UK where a police officer pulled over a woman, arrested her (for no reason) and raped and murdered her. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do in that situation because the law says you’re supposed to submit to police officers, not resist arrest, etc.
HIPAA is pretty strict and hospitals will flag and fire you if you access unauthorized patients, the police should be subject to the same restrictions for accessing civilian info without cause. They would never police themselves, though.
Apparently in the military, special forces in particular, this is even worse.
If you have a terrible soldier in a Tier 1 unit and you are trying to get rid of them via transfer to another unit, when asked why he is transferring you can just say "sorry, that's classified". The receiving unit then has no idea of the problems associated with that soldier.
I immediately thought this was like something from a Carl Hiaasen novel, then read “He was tracking and chasing a woman that he met and harassed on the set of the AppleTV+ show Bad Monkey.” Bad Monkey is based on a Carl Hiaasen novel.
> the cop illegally looked up her vehicle information on DAVID
It continually surprises me that these tools operate on basically trust. Why cops have direct access to these databases is baffling. I don't have much hope for florida to regulate its police but at least mandating providing a reason to use the database seems like a very reasonable thing to legislate.
This seems fairly common in most countries, and I would guess the reason is for practical reasons. When police are out they have a fairly high probability to stumble onto more than just the specifics things they was sent out to do, and so they need to have access to check up people and vehicles.
What my country do (and others?) is to keep a strict records of every lookup, with different levels of auditor, some which checks every record in a shallow way and some which do random sampling with more deep checks. The punishment for misuse of the database is also fairly harsh.
That's mass surveillance for you.
Beyond that.
Flock knows what inter-agency data sharing is legal and not legal in what states. So you think they'd have the functionality to disable forbidden data sharing when they sign a new agency in that state. They don't do that. "That's not our responsibility." And not only that, but:
Agency: Could we get training on how to do [forbidden data sharing]?
Flock: Absolutely. It's illegal in your state. Now that I've said that, here's how you do it in the app.
Its a tradeoff between efficacy and accountability. Its tough. What access syrem would you propose? Genuinely asking
How about accountability? How could that possibly be too much to ask?
Because republicans continue to fight each other over how much they can lick authority boot. Gone are the days of fiscal conservatives or small government… no sir they are all on board for locking this place down.
Like the evil Republicans running San Francisco!
https://www.sf.gov/news--san-franciscos-new-public-safety-ca...
Oops, only six days later!
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/sfpd-says-license-plate-...
"San Francisco police said they have disabled access to their network of Flock Automated License Plate Reader cameras"
Also of note, how much backlash the Mayor and SFPD faced about approving the contract in the first place against public opinion.
London Breed is certainly no friend of the people. I agree that coppery is a bipartisan issue.
> Because republicans continue to fight each other over how much they can lick authority boot
Because Americans think everything is a partisan issue, despite things like this happening under multiple federal administrations of differing parties and in States that are, effectively, single party of both major parties.
Just because a party is in power doesn't mean that party hasn't worked towards reform or correcting an issue. Lot's of arguments of "it happens under both parties" completely ignore corrective actions taken under one party and subverted by the other. Police in particular have an insane amount of political power and it would take decades to clean out the rot.
So, by this logic, it wouldn't make sense if programs like this hadn't been _started_ under administrations of both parties, right?
I'm looking for what evidence it would take to convince you that this isn't a partisan issue.
Republican Chester Arthur signed the Pendleton Act / civil service reform, which arguably virtually assured the way to gain power in the civil service was to add people or resources, meaning each president after had to grow the apparatus in order to implement their campaign promises or favors rather than just shit-canning all the previous people and regrowing it to the old size.
Before that the "spoils" system was able to check size of the executive branch as the people were allowed to elect someone to shit-can the previous servants. As it stands now the people have been essentially ripped of their previous voting power to elect an executive to make significant reductions of the civil service.
So I'd argue the Republicans did start it.
And Democrats are fighting against it, right?
https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/10/newsom-vet...
I think at this point both parties love the effects of civil service reform. Any handwaving about DOGE notwithstanding. It assures that the size of government can really only ratchet up, at least without stars aligning in congress, and bigger civil service means more executive power.
To get the party nomination you need to promise lots of things to lots of people, "I'm going to bankrupt the party favors to those who get me into power in order to help the little guy" might be a decent campaign slogan but you damn well better be pushing to put the peasants in debt/inflation as fast as possible if you actually want to get into office -- or else someone else will and snatch the nomination from you.
This guy only got punished because he wasn't enough of a bullshit artist to come up with an implausible but not-provably-false accusation against her, and he actually said the quiet part out loud about how this is used for tyrants. If he had just stuck to the story he overheard she was slinging crack or something he'd have likely gotten away with it with little more than side eyes and maybe some refresher class for appearances.
He was mad she didn't follow him back on instagram!
> “When Deputy Roman approached she stated, ‘I knew it was you’ and asked, ‘does all my information pop up on your screen?’ and further inquired, ‘How did you know it was me?’ She stated Deputy Roman responded, ‘I told you I'd find you and pull you over.’ She stated Deputy Roman also stated, ‘And I was hoping your boyfriend was in the car so I can pull him out and give him a hard time.’ She stated she responded that she did not think that was a good idea,” the police report reads.
> She said that Roman asked her why she didn’t follow him back on Instagram, that she needed to leave, and said she would follow him back on Instagram but didn’t want to text and drive. She told investigators that she “said this to get Deputy Roman to leave her alone.” She “advised Deputy Roman she was late to getting where she was going and repeatedly asked if she could leave. [She] stated Deputy Roman eventually told her she could leave.”
If you require a reason that is bureaucracy which people complain about for good reason. Requiring a reason adds great cost and we would rather not pay it. We might be forced to because not everybody is honest, but it is much better if we can trust others and so not have to do this.
Who on earth is complaining about bureaucracy in the police station? Maybe the VA, maybe the DMV, maybe the fish and wildlife service, but who wants the men who run around with guns and shoot people to do so without any administrative oversight?
Edit: anyway, the "bureaucratic" overhead of providing a reason seems to be unlikely to impede police work if indeed there is a legitimate reason to access these databases.
People who’ve consumed some of the decades of hollywood movies and TV shows where the hero is portrayed as having to break the rules to get their guys and people enforcing rules are portrayed as officious bureaucrats.
People do complain about bureacracy with the police. They dont phrase it that way. What they say is that when they need the police, its never able to help. People dont realize that in addition to the police being corrupt and lazy, its also because the systems to help can be slow and cumbersome to use effectively and quickly
People also have unrealistic expectations of how much cops can and will do because of tv. Just look at the uvalde shooting
> which people complain about for good reason
But bureaucracy itself exists for a good reason. The hard part is finding a balance.
That was my point. Finding the balance is hard.
I think it's intresting to read about the guy who made yolo. Take a look at his website and later, his thoughts about the monster he may have created.
https://x.com/pjreddie/status/1230524770350817280
https://pjreddie.com/darknet/yolo/
https://medium.com/@graham.wallington/the-evolution-of-yolo-...
What an absolutely terrifying situation for that woman. It reminded me of a story from the UK where a police officer pulled over a woman, arrested her (for no reason) and raped and murdered her. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do in that situation because the law says you’re supposed to submit to police officers, not resist arrest, etc.
It's worth mentioning that the ALPR's in the Florida keys are unavoidable due to it basically being 1 road.
ALL car traffic in or out of Manhattan is subject to ALPR b/c all of the bridges and tunnels have ALPRs.
The penalties for police abusing the power we grant them should be severe.
HIPAA is pretty strict and hospitals will flag and fire you if you access unauthorized patients, the police should be subject to the same restrictions for accessing civilian info without cause. They would never police themselves, though.
Best we can do is a paid vacation and taxpayer-funded settlement, maybe transfer them to neighboring jurisdiction if they were real bad.
Apparently in the military, special forces in particular, this is even worse.
If you have a terrible soldier in a Tier 1 unit and you are trying to get rid of them via transfer to another unit, when asked why he is transferring you can just say "sorry, that's classified". The receiving unit then has no idea of the problems associated with that soldier.
Worked well enough for the Catholic church that the cops decided to adopt it.
Doesn't make sense.
As a federal system administrator I face up to 5y prison, if I misuse my permissions. (And I do not carry a weapon.)
Why would any police force be so negligible if I comes to punishment of crimes in their own ranks?
Rare good news story about a cop facing consequences (arrest). Was he fired as well? I couldn't tell from the article.
The linked article does not say what happened to him, but if you Google his name there are lots of hits. This one says he was fired:
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/monroe-county-deputy-arr...
Hey, maybe we shouldn't build out this infrastructure so aggressively?
I immediately thought this was like something from a Carl Hiaasen novel, then read “He was tracking and chasing a woman that he met and harassed on the set of the AppleTV+ show Bad Monkey.” Bad Monkey is based on a Carl Hiaasen novel.