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One Piece of Flock Camera Data Put This Innocent Woman in Jail for 13 Days

257 points · 145 comments · HotGarbage

  1. nrmitchi · · focus · HN ↗
    > Police didn't care that Lindsey Isaacs' car was the wrong color, and wasn't damaged. They still arrested her because of Flock data.

    This is literally the first sentence of the article.

    You can dislike public surveillance, but statements like "Flock camera data put this woman in jail for 13 days" blatantly ignores the the fact that Flock didn't put anyone in jail, a bunch of cops who very clearly knew that it wasn't her.

    > The Flock camera, meanwhile, had recorded Isaacs’ car and its license plate several miles away from the site of the accident, sometime around the time of the incident.

    Blaming a tool, when the cops in question are clearly willing to grasp to whatever piece of "evidence" makes their job "easier" is a giant cop-out and excuse for the people who are abusing it.

    Any piece of evidence requires some form of critical examination; that is what law enforcement's job is. If you're just going to go with the first theory/piece-of-evidence they find.... they're not doing their job (and violating peoples constitutional rights through sheer laziness).

    1. alistairSH · · focus · HN ↗
      That’s all true. But we’ve known police and prosecutors are like this forever. No need to give them tools to be even lazier and that make it easier for them to abuse us.
      1. beepbooptheory · · focus · HN ↗
        Right. It's not even clear to me what the alternative critical position is here (for gp)? At the end of the day, the company is not putting you in jail, the cops who do are simply their customers.

        "Flock is bad" metonymizes the situation, but doesn't let anyone off the hook.

        1. wredcoll · · focus · HN ↗
          Multiple things can be bad at the same time and cops have a demonstrated record of failures such that add a system like flock is most likely going to lead to more injustice, not less.
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