flock enables local cops to become even more petty and dictatorial than is usually the case giving them more tools to use in their bully tactics;

 

Morale inside the surveillance company has deteriorated so badly amid the public backlash that employees are considering leaving. Flock has now introduced a voluntary separation program offering severance, subsidized healthcare, and additional time to exercise vested stock options. People familiar with the program believe a significant number of Flock’s roughly 1,500 employees could apply. This is what happens when people finally discover what has been constructed around them.

Flock was sold to communities as a crime fighting tool. Put cameras around town, read license plates, find stolen cars, catch criminals. It always begins with something that sounds reasonable. Nobody walks into a city council meeting and announces, “We would like to construct a nationwide surveillance network capable of recording where ordinary citizens travel.” You sell it incrementally under the banner of safety. Then the network expands, databases become interconnected, thousands of agencies gain access, and suddenly technology created to find a stolen automobile can potentially reconstruct the movements of people who have committed no crime whatsoever.

The abuses are precisely why the public has become angry. Neowin recounts cases involving officers allegedly using Flock to track women with whom they had personal relationships. In Georgia, an officer was accused of searching for his former girlfriend and her teenage daughter hundreds of times. In San Jose, an officer was fired after authorities said he used the system to obtain location information involving a woman and shared information with a man accused of abusing her. There have also been reports of innocent motorists being stopped after automated systems incorrectly identified vehicles...........more..........