Flock license plate reader wrongly linked a San Diego man to a violent crime (opens in new tab)

Yeah this reads like the cops simply didn't properly identify the vehicle. If anything, the Flock camera photo proves he was miles away.

A tool that requires perfect human oversight to avoid harming innocent people is a problem

We blame the technology because police misusing their powers is a tale as old as police, is demonstrably not fixable, and this technology is at fault for aggressively selling itself to police to give them these powers that we all know will be misused. Flock absolutely bears significant responsibility for creating the technology and conditions for this unjust behavior to exist, and continuing to advocate against those pushing back on it by trying to brand them as terrorists.

Ironically, they're showing a situation where more tracking makes innocence clear. There's countless examples of innocent people being caught in a dragnet, based on data that correlates with but does not prove guilt, where more data collection leads to more innocent people suffering. That's what they should be focusing on.

There is absolutely that, but the CEO of Flock has said he believes a false-positive is better than a false-negative, so everything around the stack pushes police that way, too.

I love these elites who say "Yeah, it's no big deal, the police will arrest you but they'll figure it out and you can go on your way, and if you have to spend a couple of nights in jail first, or hire an attorney at considerable expense, or you lose your job or become less hirable because your state reports arrest records, not just charge or conviction records, well, that's a small price to pay for Zero Crime State, presented by Flock(TM)!"

It is Flock's responsibility to grant access only to trained professionals who undergo routine training and testing in how to and how not to use the system.

Quite often the cops job is to find someone close enough and then toss them into the jaws of the criminal justice system. We like to say "innocent until proven guilty", but you goddammed better be ready to prove yourself innocent unless you want to find yourself imprisoned.

Cue recent video of a cop giving armless woman ticket for holding a cellphone.

right, its the cops who decide "criminal culpability" all Flock did was lead them to the wrong person...poor innocent Flock

There's a well-known story about a man who escaped a murder conviction because he was at a Dodgers game when the murder happened, and there just happened to be a TV show filming at the stadium that just happened to record him there.

https://innocenceproject.org/news/how-curb-your-enthusiasm-s...

I'd like to think motive and a police sketch wouldn't be enough evidence for a conviction, but that's optimistic.