Cops Use AI Camera System To Stalk Their Exes And More

So — maybe we’re using technology to give cops way too much power.

I’m sure that when author George Orwell wrote his novel 1984 and started lecturing the world about “Big Brother,” government surveillance and two-way telescreens that monitor citizens 24/7, there were those who thought he was crazy. I’m also sure most of those people haven’t lived long enough to witness Flock cameras.

What are Flock cameras, you ask?

Well, the Washington Post describes them as a “sprawling network of artificial-intelligence roadside cameras, which record passing license plates into a mappable database that officers can search while investigating crime.” Flock, the company, began with one man, its chief executive, Garrett Langley, a recent engineering graduate from Georgia Tech at the time, who installed his company’s first camera in Atlanta to protect his neighborhood from smash-and-grab robberies. Now, thousands of cities and police departments across the U.S. are using this technology.

So, what can go wrong, amirite?

Let’s start with Marci Bakely, whose ex-husband, Braselton Police Department Chief Michael Steffman, used Flock cameras to stalk her, tracking her every movement as she went to the grocery store, on a date, and whenever he suspected she was spending time at another man’s residence. He would even text her to let her know he knew exactly where she was, and she couldn’t figure out how he was doing it until she asked him and he fessed up to his misuse of the system. This led to his arrest last November, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, which said he was charged with stalking, harassment and license-plate-reader misuse. Steffman never saw the inside of a prison cell or even a trial date, because in April, he was found dead in his home from what officials said was a suicide.

Bakely and Steffman’s story is far from unique.

From the Post:

But bad actors have used this massive camera network as a powerful weapon for intimate surveillance. Authorities have charged or accused at least 50 law-enforcement officers of using license-plate readers for unauthorized purposes, including to stalk women without their knowledge or consent, a Post analysis of police and court records found.

In 26 of these cases, police investigators and prosecutors said the officers used the technology to spy on their wives, their girlfriends, their exes, their exes’ new partners or women they wanted to meet. In other cases, police or prosecutors have not specified the alleged surveillance targets. Flock’s system was used in 46 of the cases analyzed by the Post, while the other cases involved competing products.

Many of the plate-reader misuse cases were previously covered by local media outlets, and some were first compiled by the Institute for Justice, a civil liberties law firm in Arlington, Virginia.

The Post reviewed thousands of pages of court documents and internal police reports and conducted interviews with seven alleged victims, some of whom spoke publicly for the first time, to paint a comprehensive picture of the misuse of Flock and other license-plate readers by police officers around the country.

In Wisconsin, a police officer has been accused of using Flock to check whether his ex-girlfriend had gone to an abortion clinic, according to a police affidavit for a case set for trial this month. In Kansas, a police chief was fired after he tracked his ex through Flock and snuck up on her while she was having intimate relations with another man. In Florida, a deputy was arrested in March after being accused of speeding to pull over a young actress he’d added to a watch list feature included in a license plate surveillance tool of a different brand called Guardian (yes, there’s Flock and then there are non-Flock brands that provide the same service), nearly causing a head-on collision, according to a police report and the officer’s dashboard camera. In California, a former deputy used Flock as part of a months-long campaign of “stalking” and “humiliating” his former fiancée, which included following her around and installing a hidden camera in her roommate’s bathroom, according to prosecutors.

Nah, but seriously — who could possibly have seen this coming except literally everyone who isn’t a blind “back the blue” bootlicker?

Also, the egregious misuse of Flock and similar tech hasn’t been limited to stalking. It has also been reportedly used for good ol’ fashioned searches based on manufactured probable cause.

According to 404 Media, deputies in Wisconsin used Flock to track a man who authorities said frequently traveled to Michigan, where cannabis is legal, then back to Wisconsin, where it is illegal, and used said tracking to create a pretext for searching his car for weed and calling it justifiable probable cause. The civilian, Edward Abrams-Phillips, was wanted on bail jumping and domestic violence charges. According to court records, though, the bail jumping charge was dismissed, and the only crime he was found guilty of was possession of marijuana.

Imagine that: you’re convicted of a “crime” — a far lesser one than the others you were accused of, at that — because cops tracked your every movement on the road from one state to another, with no warrant and no reasonable suspicion, using secret cameras planted everywhere. And we’re just OK with that?

In fact, according to Gadget Review, in Madison Heights, Michigan, a cannabis dispensary called JARS was required to install a Flock camera at its parking lot entrance and give police “unhindered live access” just to keep its operating license, and when JARS put up a “No Flock Zone” sign to block the camera’s view, the city sent a demand letter threatening sanctions.

Wait — there’s more.

Gadget Review also reported that police in Texas used Flock to scan more than 83,000 cameras nationwide while searching for a woman accused of a self-administered abortion.

And if all that wasn’t horrific enough, according to the ACLU, Flock data has been and is likely still being shared with the Trump administration and agencies, including ICE. (Again, what can go wrong?)

So, we’re talking about illegal uses of Flock, as well as legal uses that seem to treat the U.S. Constitution like it’s an old, obsolete document that just can’t keep up with 21st-century technology.

Langley told the Post that misuse of his system was inevitable, saying, “We’re not going to change humans, and humans make bad decisions.”

“What we can do is make sure that they know if you use this tool, you will be held accountable,” he said.

Flock officials also claimed officers who misuse its technology represent a small fraction of its 140,000 active users, and that the company offers training guides and search logs to help police departments run internal audits.

So, we’re supposed to trust the police to police the police who are misusing this surveillance system — the misuse of which is “inevitable” — even as police are also using the system in ways that are legal, but damn sure shouldn’t be.

For now, all we have at our disposal to protect ourselves from this Orwellian nonsense, or at least check to see if we’ve been tracked, are tools such as Have I Been Flocked, a website that “aggregates police search logs made available through public records,” according to the Post.

SEE ALSO:

Authorities Implement AI Cameras As Crime Increases In Altadena

Black Woman Found Hanging From A Tree In Jackson, Mississippi

What The Flock? Cops Use AI Camera System To Stalk Their Exes And More was originally published on newsone.com