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Driver Ticketed for No Insurance Just Because Flock (YC 2017) Said She Didn't

76 points · 40 comments · HotGarbage

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matroxmemories · 1790617215 · focus · HN ↗
I find that hard to believe. I know several people that drive trucks and motorcycles with fake registration stickers from their other cars, and without insurance, and never been flagged by flock remotely or even alerting an office that’s behind them.
1. mhb · 1790617456 · focus · HN ↗
  You find this one example hard to believe because you have several sort of counterexamples? Weak.
2. schainks · 1790617553 · focus · HN ↗
  "I know people flouting the law in front of ALPRs, why aren't they getting caught?"
  That still means these systems of humans working with machines are broken, does it not?
3. aetch · 1790617763 · focus · HN ↗
  Those aren’t counter examples, that shows that flock is useless
  1. matroxmemories · 1790618376 · focus · HN ↗
    It shows that what we’ve been told, that flock does not do active policing of basic moving violation type infractions, is probably correct since I know people driving/riding with invalid reg and no insurance for years in the heavily monitored SF Bay Area.
4. jamiek88 · 1790618130 · focus · HN ↗
  All you’ve done here is show further that flock fucks up - which makes your ‘hard to believe’ pretty hard to believe.
5. BeetleB · 1790619424 · focus · HN ↗
  I know several people who drive above the speed limit and never get pulled over/ticketed for it. Therefore I don't believe any claims about people being ticketed for speeding. It just doesn't happen.
6. tzs · 1790650641 · focus · HN ↗
  Flock is not magic. It can only flag a plate for fake registration if they have previously been caught and added to one of the external law enforcement databases that Flock checks with.
  It flagged in this case because the plate was NOT in a database that insured cars are supposed to be in.
schainks · 1790617396 · focus · HN ↗
This is infuriating.
A modern police department should actively discipline officers that are too lazy to run the necessary checks to prove the human's paperwork is legit, especially when they have a computer that can do it for them right in front of them!
Cities adding ALPRs should also be holding the ALPR company financially liable for _every single mistake_ these systems make.
1. wat10000 · 1790617710 · focus · HN ↗
  There a frightening lack of accountability all the way up the chain. The officer doesn’t care because their bosses don’t hold them accountable. The chief doesn’t hold the bosses accountable for that. The local government doesn’t hold the chief accountable. And ultimately the voters don’t hold the local government accountable.
  1. ToucanLoucan · 1790618009 · focus · HN ↗
    You can continue that all the way up to the President, a 37-felony convict.
    It feels like every new innovation in our society now is just a new way to diffuse responsibility.
    schainks · 1790618232 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, the US is the most litigious country on earth, so that tracks.
    tzs · 1790649079 · focus · HN ↗
    The US is the most litigious country on Earth if you go by the total number of lawsuits filed per year, but of you go my the more reasonable measure of lawsuits filed per year per capita the US is #5 [1]. Here are the top 5 by number of lawsuits per 1000 people per year:
    123.2 Germany 112.2 Sweden 96.8 Israel 95.9 Austria 74.5 United States
    [1] <a href="https://eaccny.com/news/member-news/dont-let-these-10-legal-myths-stop-your-doing-business-in-the-u-s-myths-6-and-7-the-u-s-is-very-litigious-and-that-is-too-threatening-to-a-small-company-like-ours-as-a-result-the-risk/" rel="nofollow">https://eaccny.com/news/member-news/dont-let-these-10-legal-...
    wat10000 · 1790620947 · focus · HN ↗
    In theory, the highest and last level of accountability is the voters. The system isn't perfect, but it's still democratic enough that this sort of thing couldn't happen without the approval or at least indifference of a big chunk of voters.
    ToucanLoucan · 1790632991 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think you can call voters a level of accountability given how trivial it is for voters to be lied to. Like politicians lie constantly, not even in the weasely "well I said this, not this" sort of thing, I mean they just lie. They tell easily dis-proven lies, on camera, with no accountability from the media or any kind of overseeing entity.
    wat10000 · 1790645695 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s easy to detect their lies. The problem is that the voters don’t want to know they’re being lied to.
  2. schainks · 1790618201 · focus · HN ↗
    A literal bozo explosion going on in some cities / law enforcement organizations, and the _lowest_ layer has been handed Big Brother tech and told, "Just do what the computer tells you to do".
    So, voters have to ban this tech or get a bill passed that makes the company responsible financially for screw ups. Is there a third option?
  3. brg · 1790618842 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    Gibbon1 · 1790627507 · focus · HN ↗
    My belief is we should require all fines and fees be turned over to the social security administration.
2. ourmandave · 1790618554 · focus · HN ↗
  He didn't need to run any check. She showed him a current insurance coverage card and he ignored it.
  I don't even want to blame Flock for this level of incompetence.
ViktorRay · 1790617832 · focus · HN ↗
Here’s an interesting quote from Paul Graham about Flock. Paul Graham co-founded Y Combinator and created Hacker News. Since Flock was at a Y Combinator batch, Paul Graham provided valuable advice to them and makes money from them.
Quote in the link below:
<a href="https://x.com/paulg/status/1493719302725197825" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/paulg/status/1493719302725197825
1. MonkeyClub · 1790621915 · focus · HN ↗
  The top reply there goes right for the gut:
  "Rebranding surveillance capitalism as ethically driven is one of the more cynical takes I've seen".
2. downrightmike · 1790621948 · focus · HN ↗
  never going to tiwtter
rolph · 1790617989 · focus · HN ↗
[delayed]
cgearhart · 1790618205 · focus · HN ↗
This has been going on for awhile. There was a fella that got flagged by facial recognition in a casino. He was hauled back by security and arrested by the police for trespassing. Even though he gave police his license. They thought it was more likely a fake id than than the “99% match” from the software was wrong. And no accountability afterwards; no change in policy or training.
inerte · 1790618248 · focus · HN ↗
Oh so Flock doesn't just record / monitor stuff, but while doing so, it proactively tells the police a car worth stopping is on the street? How did the cop know how to stop the car?
ourmandave · 1790618257 · focus · HN ↗
This is 100% cop's fault.
She presented a current insurance coverage card to the officer and he still ticketed her because Flock said she wasn't covered.
What would have happened if she showed the current coverage using the insurance app on her phone?
1. caconym_ · 1790621696 · focus · HN ↗
  Why should a police officer trust a scrap of paper somebody could easily have faked vs. a massive networked software system that claims to have the up to date ground truth? What if, for instance, the victim got her insurance cards and then stopped making her monthly payments?
  (Incidentally, I assume paper insurance cards will cease to be considered valid before too long, and handing your unlocked phone to a cop will be coercively normalized.)
  Cops aren't intellectually inclined (or equipped, for that matter) to second guess a surveillance tool that's showing them an unequivocal answer to a question. This is 100% on Flock for selling a tool to users they know won't reliably question its output, despite whatever bullshit CYA terms and conditions come attached to it, and then failing to ensure that its output is correct.
  1. downrightmike · 1790621835 · focus · HN ↗
    Paper is how it has always been. If 71% of the calls flock sends cops on are false positives, that means that 71% time is time cops aren't doing their jobs and we are less safe.
  2. ourmandave · 1790624081 · focus · HN ↗
    Ignoring the legal document that's supposed to be proof and going with the system is following your phone navigation into a lake level bad.
    caconym_ · 1790625771 · focus · HN ↗
    The thing you need to realize is that reality is the way it is and as a result cops are going to behave the way they do and there's nothing we can do about it in the near to mid term. You appear to think what the cop did here is stupid, and that means you think many cops are stupid, because we've seen far worse examples of "surveillance platform trumps reality according to cop" stories in the news recently. And if you think cops are stupid in this particular way then it would be hard not to agree with me as far as: they can not, in aggregate, be trusted with access to surveillance tools whose outputs are not 100% reliable.
    So whose responsibility really is that? Should the governments that purchase surveillance tools, and the companies that sell them, be held accountable for the (predictable) harms they enable? Or should we ignore them, ignore the fact that we all knew this was going to happen and the fact that it keeps fucking happening, and just blame the individual cops? (which, as we all know, amounts to nothing.)
    The fabric of our society continues to be eroded by these big moneyed interests because we (the public, the parts of our government that are supposed to protect us from predation) continually and happily swallow all the disingenuous mealy-mouthed bullshit they spew to deflect past, present, and future responsibility for predictable harms. If we keep swallowing then we are headed for bad times. I am done swallowing.
    tzs · 1790646020 · focus · HN ↗
    > You appear to think what the cop did here is stupid, and that means you think many cops are stupid, because we've seen far worse examples of "surveillance platform trumps reality according to cop" stories in the news recently
    Didn't those all involve major crimes? In those cases the person who has wrongly been identified is not going to present the officer with evidence showing that the crime did not happen or that they have already been tried for the crime and either acquitted or served their sentence.
    This involved driving without insurance. The person presented what is supposed to be legally accepted proof of insurance. This is not even a crime in most jurisdictions, I believe, unless there were repeat offenses or causing an accident while uninsured or falsifying documents.
    The default assumption when someone who was flagged for driving without insurance is pulled over and they present an unexpired insurance could should be at worst that after whatever incident that got them in the system (which in many cases will be that they didn't realized their insurance had expired) they correct the problem by getting insurance.
    caconym_ · 1790660369 · focus · HN ↗
    > Didn't those all involve major crimes?
    I'm not sure about all, but many did (at least, a serious crime was alleged), which is why I described them as "far worse examples". But they are examples of the same pattern (cops blindly trusting the surveillance oracle), so severity of the alleged infraction/crime apparently won't protect you in either direction.
  3. throw0101a · 1790633034 · focus · HN ↗
    > Why should a police officer trust a scrap of paper somebody could easily have faked vs. a massive networked software system that claims to have the up to date ground truth?
    Why is the "scrap of paper" a problem now after they've been around for several decades (as has Photoshop and colour printers). It's a legal document: if the cop thinks it's fake they can call the insurance company and confirm.
    In Georgia, where one of the incidents took place, the cops can lookup insurance status in real-time:
    > The GEICS system works through required insurer reporting. Every insurance company doing business in Georgia must notify the state when a policy is issued, renewed, canceled, or lapses. Companies report these changes within 30 days. The Department of Driver Services maintains this data and makes it available to law enforcement statewide.
    * <a href="https://www.bubbahead.com/blog/can-police-pull-you-over-for-no-insurance/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bubbahead.com/blog/can-police-pull-you-over-for-...
    caconym_ · 1790637095 · focus · HN ↗
    > Why is the "scrap of paper" a problem now
    You misunderstand. I am attempting to present the situation from the point of view of a hypothetical police officer, especially one who may be motivated to view the information in front of him in a certain way that will justify him writing a ticket.
    > if the cop thinks it's fake they can call the insurance company and confirm
    I expect that the cop in question would not have been willing to do this, if asked to.
    > In Georgia, where one of the incidents took place, the cops can lookup insurance status in real-time
    I expect that the cop in question had no interest in doing this, or in divulging to the victim that he had the capability to (if, indeed, he was aware of the possibility himself).
    Neither of the former two facts is good, but they are facts nonetheless, and holding the officer in question accountable for the error or related broader misconduct will have no preventative effect, because it's impossible to hold American police officers accountable in any meaningful way (i.e. a way that serves as a deterrent in future situations).
    ---
    The first part of the point I'm trying to make is that if we give cops access to surveillance software that purports to tell them whether or not somebody is driving with insurance, they're inevitably going to treat that data as ground truth in many cases. It doesn't matter that you think this officer should have taken the paper as authoritative, or gone to these other sources to verify it: he failed the test and trusted Flock instead, because Flock is a slick commercial product consciously designed to make its users trust it and use it more and rely on it more.
    Saying 100% of the blame lies with the cop here (as the comment I originally replied to does) is pretty similar to saying 100% of the harm resulting from teenagers getting addicted to social media is their own fault, and the tech companies who designed their platforms to be addictive to teenagers and chased growth at any cost are blameless. Why don't the kids simply not use social media? It's so easy! Personal responsibility!
    The difference is that in the case of cops and Flock (etc.), the harm is turned outwards onto other innocent people.
2. tzs · 1790651296 · focus · HN ↗
  Actually the State of Georgia said she wasn't covered. Flock reads the license plate, looks it up in various external databases including the state maintained insurance database, and reports the results.
  In several states, including Georgia, that database is the electronic state database is the only legally authoritative record.
  Still, the officer should probably have tried to look deeper because this was a temporary plate for a new vehicle and there is often a several days lag before the data gets into the database.
octol · 1790618380 · focus · HN ↗
This reminds me of the opening scene of Back to the Future when the robotic arm dumps more dog food in to an already overflowing bowl. Can we coin this sort of technological outcome “feeding Einstein”?
righthand · 1790618405 · focus · HN ↗
Gee…I wonder why no one likes cops?
1. RunSet · 1790618617 · focus · HN ↗
  <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you_can_beat_the_rap,_but_you_can%27t_beat_the_ride" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you_can_beat_the_rap,_but_you...
tzs · 1790658802 · focus · HN ↗
It wasn't clear to me how this actually happened. I did some Googling and this is what appears to have happened.
This is actually an old problem that could hit nearly anyone who bought a car, but generally you would only run into it if you did something to get pulled over in the first few days after driving off the lot.
Now, with ALPRs checking everyone that drives by it is massively easier to hit.
Also, there are ways to hit the problem even with a car and plates you've had a long time and has been properly insured the whole time. I'll cover those and ways to avoid them below.
1. Georgia, like many (most?) states maintains an electronic car insurance database. In Georgia and many other states this database is the only legally authoritative record.
2. There is often a few days lag between your temporary plate being issued by the dealer and the insurance records being updated in the database.
3. In other words basically anyone who buys a car spends a few days driving around where if anyone tried to verify their insurance in the state database they would show up as not having insurance.
4. Before Flock you would have to be unlucky enough to do something an officer sees that gets them to run your plate or pull your over.
5. Now with Flock you just have to drive by a camera. It reads your plate, checks the state database, gets back that your car is not insured, and it then broadcasts an alert that is received by any squad car in the area.
6. That sounds an alarm on the terminal in the squad car, and a window pops up with your license number, a photo of the car, it's GPS location, the direction you were going, and the reason for the alert. Officers also often have a Flock app that also gets a push notification with the same info.
7. It often takes less than a minute for an office to find you and pull you over.
8. There is no mechanism whatsoever in place for an officer who issues a ticket to do anything that will change the record in the state database, or to tell Flock that a ticket has been issued so they can stop alerting over that particular record in the database.
No doubt you can think of ways this could be added, or at least something could be added so at a more local level to keep the same person from getting ticketed repeatedly. I'll put something at the end about the problem there.
To be fully accurate, though, technically the problem is not that the person is ticketed more than once. In cases like the present one the problem is that the lag in getting the database updated for a new car leads to people being ticketed who should not be ticketed at all.
That's because legally driving without insurance is an ongoing violation. If you are actually driving without insurance what you are technically supposed to do when ticketed is no longer drive until you get insurance. If you can't immediately park somewhere you are willing to leave the car you are supposed to get it towed. If you are caught driving again before getting insurance that counts as another offense.
9. For cars with established plates and insurance, there shouldn't be a data lag problem when renewing. The insurance company promptly updates your records, so there is no gap.
10. It you switch insurers it is possible to have a gap. If you want to make sure this does not happen, this should cover pretty much all cases:
For your new policy have it start 3 days before your current policy expires.
Make your first payment to the new company at least 3 business days before the new policy starts.
The reason for paying at least 3 business days before the new policy starts is most insurance company upload to the state database almost immediately after you pay. 3 business days allows time for them to fix any problems that arise on their end.
The reason for making the policies overlap for 3 days is to allow for any glitches in the state system after it has the new record but it is not yet the active record. It is 3 days rather than 3 business days because the things that break this kind of processing on the state end are major enough that it is considered to be an emergency. On the insurance end something that delays uploading is just a "fix it on regular time" level of urgency.
11. The obvious mechanisms you can probably think of to make sure you only get one ticket for something like this run into a variety of problems.
• There are almost 20k independent police agencies in the US.
• There are not many, if any, statewide standards for how they work. Each agency often does its own procurement. The result is that county and city police in a state could be using dozens of different systems from dozens of different software vendors for their in-car systems, the ticket tracking, and nearly everything else.
• These are often 25+ year old architectures with no modern APIs. They were never expected to need data sharing outside their own agency.
My understanding is that in some counties they do have a regional dispatch system all the agencies in that county go through a centralized dispatch, and some of those do log at recent logs when there is a Flock alert, and will radio the officers that the car was already recently cited. But as soon as you leave that region you might get ticketed again.

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